Latest / Bitcoin for Financial Services Podcast / Why Bitcoin Always Wins in the Bear Market

Transcript

Why Bitcoin Always Wins in the Bear Market · Bitcoin for Financial Services Podcast

• 0:00
  What Saylor is doing is a very Bitcoin maximalist approach.
• 0:06
  And he is going into every pool of capital he can find.
• 0:11
  And he is creating a product for that pool of capital that fits their investment thesis, that fits their ethos.
• 0:19
  And then he is using that product to gain more exposure to Bitcoin himself.
• 0:23
  every single pool of capital you can find,
• 0:26
  you should be creating the Bitcoin instrument
• 0:28
  that allows that pool of capital to go unlock more demand for Bitcoin.
• 0:34
  And it's something that like,
• 0:37
  right now everyone is enjoying dancing on the graves, right?
• 0:40
  Everyone's like, ha ha ha, look at all these treasury companies,
• 0:43
  look at how they failed.
• 0:44
  I think that's a very myopic and short-term thinking approach.
• 0:49
  I think what you're actually watching
• 0:51
  is the orange pilling of the global capital markets.
• 0:56
  And that is a necessary and important step
• 1:00
  along the path to hyper-Bitcoinization.
• 1:03
  Bitcoin is a currency on the internet.
• 1:05
  If you don't trust any other currency,
• 1:07
  this is where you go.
• 1:08
  It's going to outperform everything.
• 1:09
  Bitcoin could eventually be worthless.
• 1:11
  Every day is a good day to buy Bitcoin.
• 1:13
  Bitcoin reached its highest price to date.
• 1:15
  Bitcoin getting a new high.
• 1:17
  It really has reached escape velocity.
• 1:19
  There is no second best.
• 1:20
  Who cares about Bitcoin?
• 1:21
  It's the only secure database that's ever been invented.
• 1:24
  Antisocial.
• 1:25
  Bitcoin is the real deal.
• 1:27
  Stupid.
• 1:27
  Everything is bullish for Bitcoin.
• 1:29
  Immoral.
• 1:30
  It's going up forever, Laura.
• 1:32
  Fix the money.
• 1:33
  Fix the world.
• 1:50
  Investments or investment strategies.
• 1:51
  Investments of all risk and almost otherwise stated are not guaranteed.
• 1:52
  Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives is not
• 1:55
  intended as a recommendation appropriate for any individual.
• 1:56
  Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax legal or investment advisor
• 1:58
  to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation.
• 2:01
  Past performance is not indicative of future performance.
• 2:02
  Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
• 2:09
  Welcome to Bitcoin for Financial Services Media, the podcast where sound money meets
• 2:14
  professional services.
• 2:15
  We explore how to build the financial services industry within the principles,
• 2:19
  values, and ethos of Bitcoin. Today, we're joined by special guest, Brandon Green,
• 2:24
  CEO of Bitcoin Inc., for a great conversation. Let's get started.
• 2:32
  Welcome back to Bitcoin for Financial Services podcast. We're honored to have Brandon Green,
• 2:37
  CEO of Bitcoin Inc. How are you doing, Brandon?
• 2:40
  I'm doing fantastic. It's a beautiful morning. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining,
• 2:45
  and it's a great day for Bitcoin. So we'll jump into it. I'm excited to see you guys.
• 2:49
  How about a great day for Bitcoin? We're gearing up for Vegas here. Jordan and I will both be going or a little less than a month out, almost a month on the nose. How crazy is your life right now?
• 3:01
  I mean, the last 30-day sprint into the conference is always a complete chaos fest.
• 3:11
  I mean, there's just, you know, that's putting it lightly.
• 3:14
  And so, you know, we're in the middle of it, but it's going really well.
• 3:17
  And, you know, there's a couple of announcements that we've just made that are fun.
• 3:23
  And then we have a couple more up our sleeve that we haven't made yet that will hopefully make some headlines.
• 3:29
  So, yeah, I'm ready to put on the show.
• 3:34
  You know, most of the elements of the show are kind of in place.
• 3:38
  And I think it's going to be a good one.
• 3:39
  You know, dude, the thing about the bear market events, right?
• 3:43
  Because, you know, we count this one as a bear market event.
• 3:46
  It's crazy to say that at $65,000 Bitcoin prices, you know, we're in a bear market.
• 3:50
  But we are.
• 3:52
  And so what that means is the conversation is a little more focused.
• 3:56
  Some of the tourists are kind of, you know, staying home this year.
• 4:00
  And it's more about the builders, the executives, like the people who are really impactful to the space coming to kind of, you know, we like to say pick up the pieces.
• 4:13
  There's not many pieces to pick up for this bear market, at least yet.
• 4:16
  And so it's more about really just talking through what went wrong, what went right.
• 4:21
  How do we continue to build this space?
• 4:23
  How do we continue to build Bitcoin into the global financial system?
• 4:26
  Yeah, it's a really, I mean, our audience is, I think, newer to the space. And so I'm just,
• 4:34
  I'm curious for anyone that doesn't know you well, doesn't know probably David Bailey very well,
• 4:39
  maybe give us your background, how you met Dave and like what just, how did you get into
• 4:45
  BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine? I think that'd be interesting for our audience to understand.
• 4:51
  Yeah, absolutely. So I've been working in the space now for eight years.
• 4:56
  And I started as an intern at BTC Inc. My first job was organizing the storage closet because we had a whole bunch of old magazines. And so I did that and I did it pretty OK, you know, for an intern. It was an acceptable job.
• 5:12
  My second thing I did as an intern was I wrote for Bitcoin Magazine for Aaron Van Wurdom, who's our technical editor, about how Bitmain was opposing SegWit, which was a protocol upgrade in 2017.
• 5:29
  That was a big fork, you know, massive block size war.
• 5:33
  If you don't know about it, go read about it.
• 5:34
  It's a fascinating time.
• 5:35
  and Bitmain was opposing it
• 5:39
  and no one was really sure why
• 5:40
  except that there was a thought
• 5:41
  that they were using a covert ASIC boost
• 5:45
  at the time to basically get 15% more efficiency
• 5:49
  out of their ant miners
• 5:50
  than you could kind of see in the actual hash rate
• 5:54
  and that a sort of particularity in SegWit
• 5:59
  would kind of remove that ability of their miners.
• 6:03
  And so they were blocking it solely for the allegedly they were blocking it solely for the reason that they didn't want to lose sort of that free 15 percent efficiency gain of all their their miners.
• 6:15
  And and, you know, Aaron needed someone to write that story.
• 6:19
  So that was my second job at Bitcoin was trying to write that story.
• 6:23
  And at the time, I knew nothing about Bitcoin.
• 6:25
  And so you can imagine someone who starts at zero and then has to be able to articulate that level of depth of the entire situation of Bitcoin.
• 6:39
  It was a fast learning on the job, basically.
• 6:42
  And so from there, I dove headfirst.
• 6:47
  I've done everything at BTC Inc.
• 6:49
  literally every job, you know, including like sweeping the floors, taking out the trash to now
• 6:55
  CEO. So and everything in between. So it's been a wild ride. And yeah, I'm really excited about
• 7:02
  kind of the future that we have and the company that we have. I mean, it's a fantastic organization.
• 7:09
  It really is. And you should be very proud, top-notch Borg. And I will stories like that,
• 7:15
  know literally starting from the bottom moving up to the top and then you to your point on bear
• 7:20
  markets too i don't know there's some kind of a little romantic or endearing about bitcoiners and
• 7:25
  in bear markets everybody really kind of like hunkers down gets back to basics what's most
• 7:29
  important so i'm looking forward to vegas i got into bitcoin in a bear market so it's got a little
• 7:33
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• 8:10
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• 8:13
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• 8:15
  Getting in the bull market sucks.
• 8:17
  You get in the bull market
• 8:19
  and then the bottom falls out
• 8:20
  and then you're like, why am I here?
• 8:22
  It's way better to get in the bear market.
• 8:25
  I'll also say, you know,
• 8:27
  in the bull market,
• 8:28
  there's so much stuff going on.
• 8:30
  I mean, everyone is sort of
• 8:32
  sprinting on whatever it is
• 8:34
  they think they're going to accomplish this cycle.
• 8:37
  And it's real, like,
• 8:38
  there's kind of just this
• 8:40
  veil or kind of, I don't know, curtain that people put up in front of them. You can't really
• 8:46
  just relax and have a conversation. Everyone's trying to get something done. And in the bear
• 8:51
  market, everyone's more focused on building. They're less focused on some external thing,
• 8:58
  right? You know, this appearance of, oh, we're growing and everything's crazy and all this kind
• 9:02
  of stuff. And you get to just have authentic conversations. You know, this is where you get to
• 9:06
  really make the friends, make the relationships, understand what's going on, understand the pain
• 9:12
  points, the opportunities. You know, this is like true signal. So I am super excited about it.
• 9:20
  Yeah, I mean, it's a very good American story right there, right? And I feel like those stories
• 9:27
  don't just don't pop up near as much where someone is able to rise to the top level of an
• 9:33
  organization and uh starting from sweeping floors writing articles uh and one other thing i want to
• 9:40
  mention is just at least the bitcoin community is very forgiving so when you wrote that article i'm
• 9:46
  sure it didn't get any blowback or any criticism uh so that's that's good too so all of the bitcoiners
• 9:54
  loved that article uh and it was the bitcoin cash people that that you know hated it and uh
• 10:00
  And they all forked off.
• 10:01
  So it worked out.
• 10:04
  Okay.
• 10:05
  Well, Wyatt and I did our first, you know, we did our first event, very small scale.
• 10:09
  There's 150 advisors in Denver last October.
• 10:15
  And man, I think Wyatt and I just, we have to tip our hats to you all just because putting
• 10:21
  on events, even small scale, I can't even really imagine at a large scale is just, it's
• 10:26
  a difficult thing.
• 10:28
  There's so many moving pieces.
• 10:29
  the parties that you're trying to keep everyone happy, whether it's the sponsors, the attendees,
• 10:35
  coordinating with the speakers who, you know, some are more responsive and, you know, stick to
• 10:40
  deadlines that you set and all those things than others. So hats off to you for that. How are you
• 10:46
  feeling just about Vegas? Are you all, I know obviously you're doing the second year in a row
• 10:51
  there. Is that you still feel like that is the spot for, you know, for having this conference?
• 10:57
  I know it's hard to pick a venue and a city, but just curious on your thoughts on Vegas in general, since this is the second year going into it.
• 11:05
  Great question. So and so to back up to right. Throwing events is really hard.
• 11:13
  It's there's like almost no barrier to entry. But then to do it well is like the most I mean, it's just a massive headache.
• 11:22
  the good news on it is that if you screw up which every year we find new ways to screw up
• 11:28
  we learn from that we never we never make the same mistake twice but we always make mistakes along the
• 11:33
  way the good news about it is that like the worst outcome is oh you know like the event had a problem
• 11:42
  you know it's not like you know no there's no fire you didn't burn the building down you know
• 11:47
  it's like, oh, this booth didn't come out right. Or that person's stage time had a conflict. You
• 11:53
  know, it's like the, it's trivial in terms of sort of the magnitude of the mistakes you can make.
• 11:58
  But the number of mistakes you can make is like exponential to the number of parties involved and
• 12:06
  the number of moving pieces you have and how they all have to come together. So it is a, it is a
• 12:11
  massive puzzle. And then, you know, you also have to, I tell the team all the time,
• 12:17
  throwing an event is like throwing a party. You know, the way that you throw a successful party
• 12:22
  is you have to get the right people there. And then you have to let the other people know,
• 12:26
  hey, so and so is going to be there, you better come. And it's like, it's this snowball effect
• 12:31
  of trying to really spread the word. You can market the heck out of it as much as you want
• 12:37
  on socials on you know paid ads all this kind of stuff but it really grows word of mouth
• 12:41
  uh and so it's really all about getting the right people excited the right people involved uh and
• 12:48
  and kind of checking the the proverbial box that this is going to be a good event and it's worth
• 12:53
  your time to show up so uh it's that is a impossible nut to crack every year you never
• 12:59
  know exactly what the thing is going to be that convinces people to come um and yeah and then
• 13:06
  you're always kind of like sitting waiting to see who's actually going to show up when you open the
• 13:10
  doors so it's it's a it's like a massive roller coaster you end up going on but uh you know
• 13:16
  alongside that is just the unbelievable payoff you get uh when you kind of feel it all come together
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  and and it's a good event and people will give you the positive feedback and uh and all of that so
• 13:27
  it's it's uh you know it's like a drip you hook yourself up to and you can't get off of it once
• 13:32
  you once you you know get ahead of it so uh but but to your question of uh you know what are we
• 13:38
  what was the question exactly like what are we looking forward to just like Vegas because you
• 13:41
  I mean maybe give everyone the background it was like California then it was Miami there's a
• 13:46
  Nashville year and then two Vegas years I was just curious overall how how all of those stack
• 13:52
  up against each other and and Vegas I guess yeah yeah so settled on it's it's a really good question
• 13:58
  You know, we moved it around quite a bit for various reasons.
• 14:03
  We started in California.
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  We left California because of COVID.
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  In 2021, we weren't allowed to – it was 2020 first.
• 14:10
  You know, we weren't allowed to throw the event there.
• 14:13
  It was our second event ever, right, was 2020, March of 2020.
• 14:18
  So we had to cancel it.
• 14:21
  I mean, there's crazy stories about that.
• 14:22
  We could talk hours about it, but I'll give you the cliff notes,
• 14:26
  which is we had to cancel it.
• 14:28
  We moved into L.A. for like the back half of the year expecting, oh, this pandemic thing is going to like blow over pretty quickly.
• 14:36
  Obviously, it didn't.
• 14:37
  L.A. refused to even talk to us about when we could potentially throw the conference.
• 14:42
  And so then we were like, we got to we got to host this thing.
• 14:46
  You know, at that point, it was kind of clear that the risk profile of covid was very uneven.
• 14:51
  You know, some people had high risk.
• 14:53
  A lot of people had low risk.
• 14:55
  People had been locked up for a year like they were just.
• 14:58
  fiending to be able to go be together in person again so uh at the same time mayor suarez of miami
• 15:05
  had like been going viral for this whole like how can i help you know uh kind of thing on twitter
• 15:10
  and so i dm'd him from the uh the conference twitter and i was just like hey we're trying
• 15:15
  to throw this conference like can you can you help us do it in miami and he was like absolutely
• 15:21
  like let's do it we were like can we do it in June and he was like yeah yeah we can do it in June and
• 15:29
  we were like can you promise us we can do it in June he was like of course you're like okay we're
• 15:32
  moving to Miami and that was that you know and like that that opened this chapter where Bitcoin
• 15:38
  21 was the first event in the world after COVID and the reason was it was because Bitcoiners first
• 15:45
  of all are just a little bit crazier than everyone else and and love Bitcoin and are just willing to
• 15:50
  you know risk it to go you know learn about bitcoin and celebrate bitcoin um but two like
• 15:57
  because we were the first event in the world it became an absolute mania like media fest uh we had
• 16:04
  every hit piece written about us you know the super spreader event all this kind of stuff like
• 16:08
  it was crazy uh and you know that event we had uh bukele announced legal tender it was michael
• 16:17
  sailors first public appearance um you know we called into ross from jail yeah uh i mean it was
• 16:24
  just nuts floyd mayweather showed up tim dylan you know it was just it was this crazy moment in time
• 16:30
  um and and so then we parlayed that to miami in 2022 and i'm going somewhere with all this so uh
• 16:37
  like our thought in 2022 was like okay we're the bitcoin conference uh we are like we need to
• 16:45
  leverage Bitcoin in order to make the city that we go to as pro-Bitcoin as possible. Because this
• 16:53
  worked in Miami. As we were in Miami, as we were creating this shelling point around Bitcoin in
• 16:58
  Miami, the city of Miami started to do things for Bitcoin. And the mayor was doing things for
• 17:04
  Bitcoin in order to signal along with the whole thing. And we were like, okay, that's a power that
• 17:10
  we have. Let's try and wield that. So then we start planning to move the conference to Nashville.
• 17:16
  And and so we go to Nashville in 2024. 2023 was a bear market conference. 2024 moved to Nashville.
• 17:24
  Massive event. A huge buy in from, you know, the state from Nashville itself. Obviously,
• 17:31
  you know, Trump was there and did his famous speech. And we were like, all right, let's keep
• 17:36
  is going and 2025 is going to be massive and just in terms of size and scale and scope there's only
• 17:43
  one place in the world you can go to throw just a huge event like that and it's Vegas you know
• 17:47
  like if we wanted this to be a hundred thousand person event you can only do that in Vegas right
• 17:53
  so we moved to Vegas in 25 it's a massive event I think you know like 35,000 people
• 17:59
  and
• 18:00
  but the costs are like extreme.
• 18:04
  You have to sign up for all sorts of,
• 18:06
  you know,
• 18:06
  things around it where it's like
• 18:10
  your margins just get eaten into
• 18:12
  over and over and over again.
• 18:14
  And so it a very expensive place to throw a conference And we were like okay we do it for 25 We do it for 26 And then afterwards it going to be a bear market So let go to a different city
• 18:28
  where the costs are lower up front
• 18:31
  so that we can kind of toggle the costs on our end
• 18:34
  and make sure we can pay everyone's salaries
• 18:37
  at the end of the day after the conference, right?
• 18:40
  Expecting there to be just a drawdown in size,
• 18:42
  a drawdown in sponsorship.
• 18:43
  And so we haven't announced where we're going yet. We'll be announcing that, I think, at the conference, of course. And then, you know, I will say that in the broad scheme of things, I miss Miami. So, you know, it's just fun there. People have a great time.
• 19:02
  and I think we just have an opportunity
• 19:06
  to maybe in the future make a home there.
• 19:10
  I'm not saying that we will,
• 19:12
  but I'm saying that that is kind of
• 19:13
  where our heads are at is like,
• 19:15
  okay, we've done this roadshow.
• 19:17
  It's tough.
• 19:17
  It's tough, man.
• 19:19
  You have to like reinvent so many wheels
• 19:21
  every time you move venues
• 19:23
  and then it takes away from your ability
• 19:26
  to like level up.
• 19:27
  You know, it's because you got to figure out
• 19:28
  the floor plan.
• 19:29
  You got to figure out where the stages are.
• 19:30
  You got to figure out registration,
• 19:31
  like all of these things.
• 19:32
  You can't then spend your time doing like the extra.
• 19:36
  And here's how we're going to implement Bitcoin in some fun new way or build some, you know, bespoke new activation.
• 19:45
  Like all of those things that we want to be doing because we're so focused on just like making the event work for the new space that we're in.
• 19:52
  So that being said, like, I think we will settle down in terms of our moving the conference everywhere all the time.
• 20:00
  We're not there yet, but it's coming.
• 20:02
  it's coming.
• 20:04
  No,
• 20:05
  that's awesome,
• 20:06
  man.
• 20:06
  And you're a couple of things on that.
• 20:07
  So when you're talking about like curating the right folks and getting,
• 20:12
  you know,
• 20:13
  uh,
• 20:14
  good people together,
• 20:15
  is that a little teaser that,
• 20:16
  you know,
• 20:17
  Elon's actually going to show up here in 2026?
• 20:20
  Uh,
• 20:21
  we'll see about that,
• 20:22
  but you know what?
• 20:23
  He's posting his memes again,
• 20:25
  isn't he?
• 20:25
  Uh,
• 20:25
  he's posting his Bitcoin memes.
• 20:27
  He,
• 20:28
  uh,
• 20:28
  you know,
• 20:29
  there's a funny story about,
• 20:30
  uh,
• 20:30
  2024.
• 20:32
  Uh,
• 20:32
  So like Elon, Elon was supposed to speak at 2024.
• 20:35
  Right.
• 20:36
  And, uh, and like the, the whole kind of deal was like, we weren't going to announce and
• 20:40
  we were going to let him announce it.
• 20:42
  And so, you know, we were just kind of like waiting for Elon to announce this thing.
• 20:47
  And, uh, and then he tweets laser eyes and we're like, okay, this is like, I guess this
• 20:53
  is it, you know?
• 20:54
  And so then David posts underneath that laser eyes tweet, like, are you ready in all caps?
• 21:01
  um and then elon uh uh not blocks david elon suspends david's twitter account uh and this is
• 21:11
  like the the week of our conference suspends his twitter account and um and then like you know we
• 21:17
  don't hear from him again uh at all and then like we have no clue whether he's still coming like he
• 21:23
  hasn't he won't you know is elon right he's off doing his own thing he's he's flying around i
• 21:28
  think he went to like paris for the olympics and but we're tracking him like we're tracking his
• 21:32
  private plane uh as he's like moving around and he leaves the paris olympics like with enough time
• 21:40
  to just be in nashville for his session right and uh and we're like is this still happening you know
• 21:49
  like we we don't know he he lands in new jersey and he's like kind of i'm guessing refueling the
• 21:54
  plane and he's there for a second. And we're like, okay, maybe, maybe he's, you know, maybe he's just
• 22:01
  not coming. Right. And then he takes off headed directly for Nashville. And we're like, oh my
• 22:06
  God, he's coming, you know? And like, meanwhile, the secret service, like we're dealing with them,
• 22:11
  like Trump's in the building, he's, you know, doing round tables and taking pictures and,
• 22:16
  you know, meeting donors and all this kind of stuff. And we're like, oh my God, Elon's coming,
• 22:19
  He's going to land in like two hours.
• 22:23
  And so we're losing our minds backstage.
• 22:26
  Trump goes up on stage.
• 22:28
  As Trump is giving his speech, we watch Elon's plane fly directly over Nashville, turn, and then go straight to Memphis.
• 22:38
  And he landed in Memphis for his super AI kind of cluster out there.
• 22:45
  And I think he flew over the event just to troll us.
• 22:48
  like no joke i actually think that that's what he did uh to this day i think that's what he did
• 22:54
  so um you know fair play elon uh well done we'd love to to see you again um and you know whether
• 23:02
  whether we'll see him in b26 we'll find out that's awesome he definitely listens to the pot
• 23:08
  so hopefully he'll take the message personally you know and uh on the locations here so this is
• 23:15
  comment than a question, but
• 23:17
  you guys probably already have
• 23:19
  27 locked down. I'm assuming those
• 23:21
  are things you've got to be working
• 23:23
  on well in advance. I still think
• 23:25
  you guys need to come to Denver
• 23:27
  and just crush East, take their
• 23:29
  capital, plant the flag, demoralize
• 23:31
  them. Just keep that in the back of your mind.
• 23:34
  Little PR play
• 23:35
  there. But you guys have also
• 23:37
  moved internationally. Is it four
• 23:39
  total conferences?
• 23:41
  Yeah, four or five.
• 23:43
  Four events on four continents
• 23:45
  and four quarters uh so we have wild yeah so how have you thought about expanding to those
• 23:51
  international markets are those like are you going through like the same you know horse and pony show
• 23:57
  it's like are we going to this city or that city are you kind of just like all the extra logistics
• 24:02
  that come with an international show or you just kind of settled where you're at we're definitely
• 24:06
  settled where we're at um for for those for a lot of reasons i mean first of all it's because like
• 24:12
  if you're going to move to a different place,
• 24:14
  you're probably moving to a different country.
• 24:17
  And that also comes with a lot of challenges.
• 24:21
  I mean, it's so hard doing these international events.
• 24:26
  So the first one we did was in Amsterdam.
• 24:28
  We did it in Amsterdam for a lot of reasons.
• 24:30
  We had a good partner there.
• 24:32
  It's also where the first,
• 24:34
  I think it was the second ever Bitcoin conference
• 24:36
  in like 2014 was in Amsterdam.
• 24:39
  And so it was kind of like a, you know,
• 24:41
  love note back to the the og days of you know 100 person bitcoin conferences and um and so that
• 24:49
  event was uh went really well and and then we were like okay the bull market's coming this was like
• 24:55
  2023 uh let's go ahead and place some bets of where else we think we could do like a massive
• 25:02
  conference when the bull market hits and so obviously like asia was a big market and we were
• 25:09
  like, how do we kind of hit that? Well, we wanted to be as close to China as possible, because that's
• 25:15
  where all the Bitcoin miners are. And so Hong Kong was a natural fit. We kind of, you know, lure them
• 25:22
  through, you know, through the trains and the light rail and stuff like they would come.
• 25:29
  And that was actually really cool. I mean, there was a ton of just OG Chinese Bitcoiners that
• 25:34
  that showed up to that event that people hadn't heard from or talked to in a decade.
• 25:39
  Right. And then the other market that we took a bet on was just the Middle East.
• 25:45
  Because, you know, there's a there's a whole narrative and a story of not only just gold there,
• 25:51
  but of also just a, you know, open and free, highly capitalistic financial system.
• 25:58
  And so, you know, like Bitcoin is sort of a natural fit for that market as well.
• 26:02
  and we threw our event in Abu Dhabi
• 26:05
  because that's where,
• 26:06
  that's like the seat of power of the UAE.
• 26:08
  It's very open for business.
• 26:10
  It's not Dubai.
• 26:12
  It's a little less crypto-y.
• 26:13
  It's much more kind of sound money,
• 26:16
  sound economics.
• 26:17
  So those are where our events are today.
• 26:20
  And yeah, I mean, they've all grown
• 26:22
  pretty well over the past couple of years.
• 26:25
  Yeah, I was still,
• 26:26
  I was jealous of why it last year
• 26:28
  got to go to Amsterdam and MENA.
• 26:31
  So, yeah.
• 26:34
  Great events.
• 26:34
  It's on my list definitely to get out to Amsterdam.
• 26:39
  And, I mean, I would love to go to Abu Dhabi as well at some point.
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• 27:13
  So, and when we were talking right before we went on, you know, you guys kind of control a lot of narratives, right?
• 27:22
  I mean, you're a media company, you throw these in real life events.
• 27:26
  and I'm just curious you know for our audience obviously in 20 what was it January 24 I guess
• 27:32
  was when the ETS launched and now there's just there's a lot of institutional you know players
• 27:39
  getting into the game just curious to hear your thoughts there's just been a huge shift I feel
• 27:46
  like in the space between kind of OG folks who are individuals built businesses but now we're
• 27:53
  you're having to also contend with the sailors, the Bitcoin treasury companies, the ETF companies.
• 28:01
  How are you all trying to balance all of those different, I don't know if you call them competing
• 28:07
  interests, but they're definitely different. They all have different incentives, I guess.
• 28:13
  Yeah. So great question. And man, there's like a couple of pieces I would want to pick apart on
• 28:19
  this. So first of all, we don't control the narratives. You know, we really try and lean
• 28:25
  in and understand the narratives. And then we try to kind of put a megaphone on them. But
• 28:31
  understanding the narratives is the hardest part, because what you're really trying to do is you're
• 28:35
  trying to put words to just like phenomena and like put reasons behind them and kind of create
• 28:43
  the understanding that people can be like, OK, I get what's going on. Right. And that's really hard
• 28:48
  Because sometimes it's just like chaos.
• 28:49
  You know, it's trying to figure out the narrative through just a bunch of data points that don't seem to connect.
• 28:57
  Here's what I would say on like, let's say since 2024, since the ETFs.
• 29:03
  There's been, I think, a confluence of new users in Bitcoin.
• 29:09
  And what does that mean?
• 29:10
  So, gosh, there's, let's take the institutions for a start, right?
• 29:17
  Everyone was saying for years institutions were coming.
• 29:20
  They were just waiting on that product they could use.
• 29:23
  I actually don't think the institutions are here yet.
• 29:26
  And here's why.
• 29:28
  What happened with the ETFs is that the institutions now had the ability to sort of interact with Bitcoin within their brokerage accounts without ever touching main chain, without having to worry about custody, all this kind of stuff.
• 29:43
  But they weren't, quote unquote, orange pilled.
• 29:46
  You know, they didn't start to fundamentally understand, like, why is Bitcoin amazing? Why is it superior money? Why should I be holding on to this? They weren't net long Bitcoin. What they did is the carry trade. They basically said, look at all this futures market. You know, the miners need the futures market in order to stabilize kind of their coins that they're mining and, you know, stabilize their revenues.
• 30:09
  Other people are playing the futures market to just speculate without having to, you know, settle into Bitcoin and get massive leverage, all this kind of stuff.
• 30:17
  There was like a 3% premium they could capture in the carry trade, hold ETF and then short the equivalent in the futures market, collect the premium when it expires, rinse and repeat over and over again.
• 30:32
  And so the ETFs grew a bunch because of that trade.
• 30:35
  the futures markets volume grew a bunch because of that trade.
• 30:42
  And then outside of that, there was a little bit of retail buying in the ETFs for sure.
• 30:48
  But there was also a lot of people who had held on to their keys for so long,
• 30:53
  were terrified of $5 wrench attacks,
• 30:56
  and either just wrapped their Bitcoin into the ETF directly,
• 30:59
  you know, once the like-kind exchange kind of came out,
• 31:03
  or they just sold their Bitcoin and rebought ETF.
• 31:07
  And so there wasn't a ton, in my opinion, of net new buying.
• 31:12
  Of course, there was some.
• 31:13
  Of course, it allowed like advisors to sort of tell people,
• 31:16
  oh, get your 1%, 2% allocation.
• 31:19
  Like all of that happened a little bit.
• 31:21
  But in terms of true institutional adoption,
• 31:23
  all they really found was a spread trade that opened up.
• 31:27
  It's hedge funds.
• 31:28
  You know, they hedge.
• 31:29
  They don't believe in things.
• 31:31
  They just find scalp trades.
• 31:33
  or low risk. And so throughout this whole process, like, I don't think we've actually seen authentic
• 31:39
  institutional adoption. I don't see Morgan Stanley coming out with their like Bitcoin is the future,
• 31:46
  you know, kind of mentality. You've seen Larry Fink do that, but probably mostly in service to
• 31:51
  his ETF and just growing demand for that. And so I just don't see it yet. Now, we could kind of
• 31:59
  speculate on what it will take to see that. And, you know, there's a million different answers to
• 32:03
  that question. But that's sort of my diagnosis there. At the same time, then, we saw MicroStrategy
• 32:09
  and everyone was like, oh, shoot, the ETFs are out. Like MicroStrategy is dead, right? MicroStrategy
• 32:15
  was sort of the ETF, the pseudo ETF. And so everyone was waiting for MicroStrategy to just
• 32:23
  collapse as soon as all the ETFs launched. And instead, the opposite happened. And everyone was
• 32:27
  like, whoa, what's going on? And Sailor had been coming out basically making this compelling case
• 32:34
  of, well, ETFs take a fee. Every year, every quarter, you have a little bit less Bitcoin
• 32:41
  than you had before if you just hold your Bitcoin in an ETF. MicroStrategy will actually increase
• 32:50
  the number of Bitcoin you have per share of MicroStrategy you own. And we do it through
• 32:55
  this accretive dilution process. And so then there became this, I think, retail rush to
• 33:01
  MicroStrategy, because all of a sudden, you know, everyone knew Saylor, he was already kind of a
• 33:07
  massive figure in the space. Now he has a compelling reason to not buy an ETF and instead buy his stock.
• 33:15
  And it happened, you know, in the run up, his stock started exploding that, you know, created
• 33:21
  like a flywheel of more people buying stock.
• 33:23
  And then that unlocked this narrative of like,
• 33:27
  oh, there should actually be a micro strategy
• 33:29
  in every market.
• 33:30
  And, you know, there's kind of unlimited demand
• 33:33
  for this right now.
• 33:33
  And there was.
• 33:35
  And so, and I don't think that
• 33:36
  that's necessarily wrong today, right?
• 33:39
  Like, I still think that there is a use case
• 33:41
  and a reason for there to be micro strategies
• 33:43
  in these different markets
• 33:44
  because what is ultimately happening,
• 33:46
  and this picks to like kind of the third piece
• 33:48
  of picking apart the narrative,
• 33:49
  is that what Saylor is doing
• 33:53
  is a very Bitcoin maximalist approach.
• 33:58
  And he is going into every pool of capital he can find
• 34:02
  and he is creating a product for that pool of capital
• 34:07
  that fits their investment thesis,
• 34:09
  that fits their ethos.
• 34:10
  And then he is using that product
• 34:13
  to gain more exposure to Bitcoin himself, right?
• 34:16
  Stretch is an easy example, obviously,
• 34:18
  because it's the main thing he's talking about.
• 34:20
  All he's going into there
• 34:21
  is he's disrupting the private credit markets.
• 34:24
  He's disrupting, you know, the fixed income investors.
• 34:27
  He's basically saying, look, you buy this fixed income,
• 34:30
  you know, 11%, whatever it is, instrument.
• 34:34
  You know, there's very little downside.
• 34:36
  It's capped on the upside, but you get this dividend
• 34:38
  and I'm just going to go buy Bitcoin with it.
• 34:41
  And the reality is, is like that should be happening.
• 34:45
  If you're a Bitcoin maximalist,
• 34:46
  that should be happening everywhere.
• 34:49
  Every single pool of capital you can find,
• 34:52
  you should be creating the Bitcoin instrument
• 34:53
  that allows that pool of capital
• 34:55
  to go unlock more demand for Bitcoin.
• 34:59
  And so I think that that's going to,
• 35:01
  you know, obviously that's
• 35:03
  gone through a hype and bust cycle
• 35:05
  over the past year.
• 35:06
  But I don't think that
• 35:07
  that is a fundamentally wrong thesis.
• 35:10
  I think that will come back
• 35:11
  in a really big way in the next bull run.
• 35:13
  It will probably be, you know,
• 35:15
  orders of magnitude larger than it was this past bull run. And it's something that like,
• 35:23
  right now everyone is enjoying dancing on the graves, right? Everyone's like, ha ha ha,
• 35:27
  look at all these treasury companies, look at how they failed. I think that's a very myopic and
• 35:33
  short term thinking approach. I think what you're actually watching is the orange pilling of the
• 35:40
  global capital markets.
• 35:42
  And that is a necessary
• 35:44
  and important step
• 35:47
  along the path
• 35:47
  to hyper Bitcoinization.
• 35:49
  So that would be my like
• 35:50
  picked apart thesis so far.
• 35:54
  Anything I miss?
• 35:56
  No, I think that's good.
• 35:57
  And this insight
• 35:58
  and yeah, really beautifully said.
• 35:59
  And this is something,
• 36:00
  you know, I talk about all the time.
• 36:01
  It's like, I don't really understand
• 36:02
  why Bitcoiners have such a gripe
• 36:04
  with finance.
• 36:05
  And it's like, yes,
• 36:06
  it's, you know, infallible industry
• 36:07
  that done a lot of dirty things.
• 36:09
  But if we want to achieve hyper-Bitconization, like we need to build the tools, products, and strategies to get dollars into Bitcoin.
• 36:16
  Like Saylor, obviously, I think is really, you know, leading that charge.
• 36:19
  And you guys now part of Nakamoto deploying that, you know, similar strategy.
• 36:25
  I would like to hear, you know, how you're thinking about it on the Nakamoto side.
• 36:28
  So, yeah, just two questions here.
• 36:31
  one, if you could just kind of take us like maybe behind the scenes some what that acquisition
• 36:35
  was like just as a professional you know getting bought and acquired by you know public company You guys obviously have a lot of different business segments just like what that experience was like And then two uniquely you know I think like and correct me if I wrong here Fold is
• 36:51
  the only other like public Bitcoin operating company that kind of comes to mind.
• 36:56
  So I think you guys are actually playing in a unique spot within like the subsect of the
• 37:01
  industry where you have a Bitcoin focus operating business.
• 37:05
  And, you know, when I'm talking to folks, that's always been a lot of the skepticism where it's like, OK, yeah, I conceptually get like this high level finance strategy, but it's like purely a financial play.
• 37:14
  You guys are bringing kind of more of a classical, we operate a business to generate cash flow, like buy some Bitcoin with it, you know, to the industry.
• 37:22
  So once you kind of walk us through how you're thinking about those two things.
• 37:26
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 37:26
  So first on the transaction, I mean, it was, if you've never gone through an M&A deal before, I highly recommend that you never do.
• 37:37
  It's like, it is the worst.
• 37:40
  Like, you would have thought it would have been easy to get this thing closed.
• 37:44
  When we launched Nakamoto, the goal of Nakamoto was to take BTC Inc. public, right?
• 37:49
  Like that was in every investment thing, like every, every communication that was talked about, it was like BTC Inc. and UTXO are going to be kind of the operating companies of this public vehicle.
• 38:00
  And the only issue is that like we didn't have PCA would be a financial audit, you know, so we had to like do that.
• 38:07
  And we couldn't go public until that was completed.
• 38:10
  And it took, you know, basically a year.
• 38:12
  So while we're doing that, we didn't want to just sit and wait for that to complete before we could go kind of get this public vehicle, try and do the treasury play.
• 38:24
  And so we launched Nakamoto ahead of it.
• 38:26
  We kind of create this option for Nakamoto to acquire BTC once the financials are audited.
• 38:34
  And then finally they get audited and then we do the transaction kind of as stipulated.
• 38:39
  And so it sounds on its face like that wouldn't have been a very difficult thing to do.
• 38:44
  But I'm telling you, it was chaos.
• 38:47
  And in fact, like, because we tried to solve it all up front, all that meant is that like there were these just narrow levers that could be pulled in order to allow the transaction to complete as stipulated.
• 39:01
  when the price had fluctuated massively in both directions
• 39:06
  between when we kind of inked the deal
• 39:08
  and when it was time to close it.
• 39:10
  And so it was a very difficult process
• 39:14
  and I never want to do it again.
• 39:17
  So that's first and foremost.
• 39:19
  I'm BTC and I don't have to worry about future M&A really.
• 39:23
  But I understand that I have a newfound sympathy
• 39:28
  for the investment bankers and the M&A people
• 39:30
  the M&A lawyers, it's like, man, that takes a lot of patience,
• 39:36
  of diligent work, of T's and C's and everything in between.
• 39:41
  And yeah, it's tough. It's tough.
• 39:44
  So, you know, without going back into like Vietnam in my head,
• 39:48
  we'll just set that aside and say, you know, we're happy it's complete.
• 39:52
  We're excited to be part of Nakamoto.
• 39:53
  We believe that we have everything we need to build –
• 40:00
  the best company in the world, frankly. And, you know, having Bitcoin as your savings tool,
• 40:06
  as you're building a business is just a massive unlock. There's just no two ways about it. You
• 40:12
  know, like, what else would you want to do with your treasury? Hold it in cash? You know, just
• 40:17
  buy back your stock and signal that you have no ideas of how to kind of grow your business beyond
• 40:23
  that. No, you want to own Bitcoin. Like you want to own hard money. You want to be able to leverage
• 40:29
  that into new investments you want to underwrite as a business or products you want to launch
• 40:34
  or, you know, M&A deals you may want to do in the future that I'm just not even going
• 40:39
  to try and play with.
• 40:40
  Right.
• 40:40
  Like those are all paths you can have when you have hard money that grows over time.
• 40:45
  And and so then the question on our end becomes like, well, what role do we have?
• 40:51
  The beauty of being a Bitcoin operating company is that your revenues and your size scales
• 40:57
  with Bitcoin.
• 40:59
  So this is like the difference between another company, if you were just, I don't know, a software company XYZ, right?
• 41:07
  And you do a Bitcoin treasury play.
• 41:10
  You know, at first, you may have tons of profits that you're putting into Bitcoin and, you know, it's great.
• 41:16
  But then when Bitcoin 10Xs, all of a sudden your profits are kind of tiny compared to where Bitcoin is at now, you know?
• 41:23
  And so you kind of diminish your ability to increase the Bitcoin treasury over time.
• 41:28
  Whereas if you're a Bitcoin company, usually your revenues, your profits, your size of your business is going to scale with Bitcoin. And so that allows you, especially in bull markets to the upside, that allows you to grow the treasury even more than you otherwise would have been able to do as just a regular operating public company.
• 41:51
  So, you know, that's part of the idea of what we want to do is, and I mean, again, all of this is just publicly stated.
• 41:58
  Like, we want to be a profitable business.
• 42:01
  We want to buy Bitcoin with the profits.
• 42:03
  We want to add those to the treasury.
• 42:05
  We want to grow the treasury over time.
• 42:06
  Like, all of that is what we want to accomplish.
• 42:09
  And I think that that's just a fundamentally kind of new concept in the public market space.
• 42:16
  So, you know, we're very excited to continue to run this.
• 42:19
  This isn't a, you know, a two year trade, right?
• 42:23
  You know, this is a business we've run our entire professional lives.
• 42:26
  We're going to continue to run our entire professional lives.
• 42:29
  And, you know, we're in it for the long run.
• 42:31
  So I'm very bullish on where it's going to go.
• 42:35
  And, you know, not to say that there hasn't been plenty of kind of challenges and heartburn and, you know, just chaos with, you know, managing a public company for the first time.
• 42:48
  And, you know, David is really had to weather a storm of just criticism and all sorts of stuff, you know, kind of around his crazy run up on the stock.
• 43:00
  And then the, you know, crazy kind of, you know, I don't know, pushing down of the stock price and moving down to the stock price.
• 43:09
  And so, you know, he's a first time public company CEO.
• 43:13
  Like you only learn that by trial by the fire.
• 43:16
  and he's been learning it in real time.
• 43:19
  So the good news is,
• 43:21
  and I said this in the beginning
• 43:23
  when I was talking about being an intern
• 43:24
  and with our conference too,
• 43:27
  we're fast learners, right?
• 43:28
  We make mistakes.
• 43:29
  We don't make the same mistake twice.
• 43:32
  And so I'm very bullish on our ability to level up
• 43:37
  as we continue to operate, as we continue to grow.
• 43:41
  And like I said,
• 43:42
  I think we have the best company in the world.
• 43:43
  So I'm very bullish on kind of our future.
• 43:48
  I love it.
• 43:49
  I think it's, yeah, it's very, it's important to point out, you know, I think a lot of people
• 43:54
  on the finance side are just, if they see that underlying operating business that is
• 43:59
  profitable, that is really, I think, all really that I want to see, right, is just how does
• 44:07
  this sustain?
• 44:08
  So I appreciate you speaking on that.
• 44:09
  this episode is brought to you by satoshi paccioli a full-service accounting and tax firm built for
• 44:17
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  term to learn more or book consultation visit satoshipacioli.com um if we could pivot real
• 44:43
  like to a different topic and turn but still stay on like dissecting narratives you know
• 44:49
  the world i come from right is is the tax world and like we're in the heat attack season we're
• 44:54
  helping people with their cost basis and all that kind of stuff and i'm just curious um
• 44:59
  And one of the big narratives that I am seeing in my everyday work life is this medium of exchange. And then, of course, like I think it was yesterday, all of the square terminals went online for Bitcoin payments.
• 45:14
  And then I know, obviously, you guys have gotten involved with politics to the degree that, you know, it's helpful to bring people in, whether it's Lamas or Trump, to speak on Bitcoin and give it legitimacy.
• 45:27
  But when it comes to like the policy that like the nitty gritty, I feel like we're kind of at this very pivotal point where, you know, if history is a teacher of politics, you know, the midterms are going to go, I think, a very specific way, right, where Congress is going to flip back over and we're not going to have a path to get to minimus.
• 45:49
  So I just wanted to get your thoughts on what role you all see the event coming up playing in trying to get that across the finish line in the reconciliation in a summer reconciliation bill, because it feels like that's kind of the only the only option that's on the table right now to get it done.
• 46:11
  Yeah, really great question. And, you know, let me preface all of this by saying that I am,
• 46:18
  I have no background in policy, I have no background in politics. Like, like everything,
• 46:24
  we've sort of stumbled our way into the position that we, you know, have found ourselves kind of
• 46:28
  since 2024. So there's a couple of things to pick on there. Number one is, you know,
• 46:35
  this de minimis exemption. I agree, it's, it's so important. And it's important for
• 46:41
  Um, many reasons, but the most obvious being like, you know, you can't buy a cup of coffee
• 46:46
  with Bitcoin if you have to track your, you know, three cent capital gains, you know,
• 46:50
  thing that you then are somehow going to be at fault for if you don't pay, you know, it's
• 46:55
  like, it's just, it, it prevents Bitcoin from being its ultimate use case, which is money.
• 47:01
  Right.
• 47:02
  And, um, and so we want to be able to allow for that.
• 47:06
  And what's interesting is as we have navigated that issue, there's a couple of challenges that have sort of emerged.
• 47:17
  So, man, like DC is a political machine.
• 47:26
  And so if you want to have a win, even if it's a common sense win, if one side is pushing for it, at this point, the other side is against it.
• 47:35
  And they're only against it maybe in spirit so that they can get a concession somewhere down the road.
• 47:40
  And they can say like, oh, look, we compromised here.
• 47:42
  So now you're going to compromise there.
• 47:44
  Even if it's a thing that like, why the heck are you compromising on this? You should be just for this, right? And specifically to the de minimis exemption for Bitcoin, you have this whole, I forget the name of it, but the sort of body that decides the cost of certain line items of a bill, right?
• 48:06
  You know, how does this affect the U.S. budget? And creating a de minimis exemption for Bitcoin is viewed by that body as actually it's net negative to the U.S. tax revenues.
• 48:18
  And so if you just take that away, then all of a sudden the bill becomes a cost to the U.S. taxpayer. And so the idea is, OK, you'd have to like now balance out this cost with some new revenue or, you know, something. Otherwise, your bill is kind of labeled as, you know, adding to the deficit. Right.
• 48:37
  And so the actual narrative that we are having to battle right now in D.C. is that erasing the de minimis exemption on Bitcoin increases the U.S. deficit.
• 48:50
  Like, if you don't pay your three cent tax on your cup of coffee, the U.S. deficit is going to explode.
• 48:55
  It's all your fault.
• 48:56
  So, you know, like, the irony of that is sweeter than could be.
• 49:03
  But we'll just set that aside.
• 49:05
  Like that is that is why it's not just the most obvious win here. And again, it's not to say that it won't happen, but it means that there's going to have to be a compromise that struck in order for it to happen.
• 49:17
  And so that makes it really challenging for it to go in something like the Clarity Act, because the Clarity Act isn't really supposed to add to the deficit.
• 49:28
  You know, it's like it's this sort of regulatory clarity bill, not necessarily a like funding or finance bill of, you know, the U.S. government.
• 49:40
  And so, you know, there's there's a little bit of interest in like separating the P's and Q's.
• 49:44
  I'm not saying this is right or wrong. I'm saying like, that's kind of the field as I see it.
• 49:49
  And so then the question becomes like, can we get to minimus before the midterms? Like you said,
• 49:53
  maybe there's this reconciliation bill and summer, yada, yada. I think that obviously,
• 49:58
  you know, someone like Lummis is going to be pushing really hard for this. I think she actually
• 50:01
  just introduced a brand new bill to try and get to minimus across before, you know, the midterms.
• 50:06
  And, and my honest answer is like, I don't know whether it's going to be possible if it's possible.
• 50:12
  I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying that like this is going to get into the inner workings of how D.C. operates. And, you know, that is, I think, by design, the blackest of black boxes.
• 50:25
  And so I, you know, what I'll say on the flip side is I know that the Trump administration would love to see a de minimis exemption.
• 50:36
  You know, like Trump wants to deliver for Bitcoiners. Right. And so there is this tension between what is what does the legislature want to do?
• 50:46
  And and, you know, the kind of what I would call like the proverbial swamp. Right.
• 50:49
  Like what do those people want to do versus like what does the administration want to do and how does that get translated?
• 50:55
  And, you know, in that comes all sorts of competing interests. And I was actually talking about this on a show just the other day. But like, you know, if I was going to criticize kind of how everything has gone down with the Trump administration so far, and again, this is not a critique of the Trump administration, this is a critique of us, is that Bitcoiners had no infrastructure in D.C. outside of like BPI and, you know, a couple of people.
• 51:22
  the entire infrastructure in DC was crypto. And so when something like a Trump administration comes
• 51:30
  in and, you know, they have kind of these things they can do within the administration,
• 51:35
  right, to support Bitcoin, to support the industry, they do those things, right? Like we got the SBR,
• 51:40
  we freed Ross, we, you know, we did a lot of the things that Trump said he wanted to do that he
• 51:45
  could do from the executive branch. And then all the things that required the congressional action
• 51:51
  in order to make happen, that got filtered through the crypto apparatus of DC.
• 51:58
  And there are just competing interests there.
• 52:02
  And it's not like any, and this is where like, you know, we were pulling our hair out a little
• 52:06
  bit.
• 52:06
  It's not like there's anything wrong with the interest that they have.
• 52:10
  There's nothing wrong with, you know, a stable coin bill.
• 52:13
  There's nothing wrong with, you know, a Clarity Act, all these kinds of things.
• 52:16
  We're not against these things happening, but it's the prioritization of them that I think was very short sighted because everyone could agree on a Bitcoin bill.
• 52:27
  Everyone could agree that, you know, helping cement Bitcoin as as like an important tool of the U.S. and like a mainstay in our economy like that is good.
• 52:37
  That is good for the whole industry. Right.
• 52:39
  but you know these people that are getting paid to advance policy initiatives on the stablecoin
• 52:45
  side they were like we got to get stablecoins done you know like we got to do it and and they're the
• 52:50
  ones talking to the congressional leaders in the senate every day and so all of a sudden in this
• 52:56
  translation of the administration uh prerogative to the sort of legislative agenda uh stablecoins
• 53:04
  became the the priority and it's like how did that happen well it happened because the bitcoiners
• 53:09
  weren't kind of guiding that conversation.
• 53:12
  It was Tether.
• 53:13
  You know, it was USDC.
• 53:14
  It was Coinbase, right?
• 53:15
  It was those folks who were like,
• 53:16
  how do we kind of create wins for the entire industry?
• 53:21
  And then, you know, the inevitability
• 53:22
  of both the stable coin bill of the Genius Act
• 53:25
  and of the Clarity Bill
• 53:27
  is that you had opposing sides within the industry itself.
• 53:32
  And what that meant is that you didn't have,
• 53:35
  like it was a Pyrrhic victory
• 53:36
  to get both of those deals done.
• 53:39
  And you had all of Congress being like, wow, you know, to get anything done for you guys is like pulling teeth. And, you know, everyone is having to compromise on one thing or the other. And you guys don't even have your own priority set. You don't even know what you want out of this bill. You know, like you're bickering with each other, right?
• 53:59
  You know, for stable coins, it's like, you know, the, you know, Tether versus USDC, right? And, you know, how easy is it for Tether to operate? How easy is it for USDC to operate? What's this yield thing? Athena, you know, like all of these kind of different priorities of how a stable coin works, all of that was fluttering around. And now you don't have like a clear path forward of how to just like easily make everything win for the stable coin industry. And then you have the banks, you know, and then now the banks are also upset, right?
• 54:28
  And so all these legislatures are like, oh, I thought this was going to be easy, you know, and instead like I'm sifting through a war that's been going on, as we know, for like years in the crypto space.
• 54:38
  And then the same thing happens with clarity between, you know, the banks as well as the exchanges, the layer one protocols, the DeFi protocols.
• 54:48
  They all want something different out of this. Right. And so then you run into the same issue where it's not an easy win for these guys to get this legislation across.
• 54:56
  because the industry isn all on the same page of what they want And so then all of these compromises have to happen Tons of political capital is spent And by the end of it Congress is just like
• 55:08
  okay, let's go focus on our bread and butter issues over here.
• 55:12
  And let's move on.
• 55:14
  And so that's where ultimately Bitcoin has been, in my opinion,
• 55:18
  deprioritized and left by the wayside.
• 55:21
  And it is frustrating from my perspective for a lot of reasons.
• 55:25
  At the end of the day, it's all incentives.
• 55:26
  I don't fault anyone personally for it.
• 55:29
  I think everyone's trying to just like do the right thing for themselves.
• 55:34
  But it's not the ideal outcome, that's for sure.
• 55:36
  So, you know, in some, because I know I'm rambling here, but in some, like I think that will we see De Minimis before the midterms?
• 55:47
  I don't know.
• 55:48
  Frankly, I really don't.
• 55:50
  I'd love to see it.
• 55:51
  but I just have a feeling that, you know,
• 55:55
  we're not going to see the wins that we want until the back half of the
• 55:58
  administration, if it's even possible by that point.
• 56:04
  That's really interesting, Brandon. No, I appreciate you sharing that, man.
• 56:07
  Cause no, I didn't, I didn't know that, or, you know,
• 56:11
  that helps me better kind of, uh, understand.
• 56:14
  It's an impossible situation, honestly. Yeah. And, and again, like,
• 56:18
  I don't fault anybody.
• 56:20
  Everyone's doing their jobs.
• 56:21
  Like they're doing what they're supposed to do.
• 56:23
  You know, and, and all of it is going to ultimately probably be good for the whole industry writ large in the end.
• 56:30
  Right.
• 56:31
  So it's, it's like, I'm not like slaying my fists.
• 56:33
  I'm not saying anyone's a bad actor here or anything like that.
• 56:36
  I'm just saying that because of all of this prioritization of other stuff, I think Bitcoin is going to get, has been deprioritized.
• 56:45
  And, you know, I would have loved to see kind of those wins happen first.
• 56:48
  Do you see anything like with the megaphone that we have in a month that can try to, I
• 56:57
  guess, create a like a sense of urgency?
• 57:00
  I think I've always felt that with Bitcoiners that they want to see something happen.
• 57:05
  They are disillusioned with the whole political process.
• 57:09
  And so they are just like, whatever, like ethic kind of thing.
• 57:13
  I'm just not even going to participate.
• 57:15
  But in order to bring this to the normie class of Americans and have people have the ability to spend Bitcoin at a local cafe using a square terminal, I think that tax burden, the cost basis burden for the person who's like, I just don't want to go to jail.
• 57:34
  Bitcoin seems interesting to me, but I'm not going to track all this stuff.
• 57:38
  It's just too much.
• 57:39
  Or the business owner on the other side is like, I'm not going to accept Bitcoin or I'm going to convert it immediately to cash because I don't want to track cost basis for when we need to sell to pay our cover our payroll.
• 57:51
  I guess that's my my main question is like the megaphone.
• 57:54
  Is there anything specific that you think that we might be able to do within a month to to try to get that across the finish line, create that urgency?
• 58:03
  Yeah, I mean, I think that we're obviously going to have conversations around it at the conference.
• 58:07
  Um, so, you know, I, I'm hopeful we can help move the needle.
• 58:11
  Um, but I don't know, you know, it's like, sometimes you can create a crazy, uh, uh,
• 58:18
  shelling point around, you know, something like a Trump coming to speak.
• 58:22
  And, you know, I, I believe that sort of changed the course of our whole industry's history.
• 58:26
  Right.
• 58:27
  Um, but it's, it's a little bit like, you know, it's art more than science.
• 58:31
  Right.
• 58:31
  And at the end of the day, like everything has to come together in the right way in order
• 58:36
  for you to be able to leverage that platform
• 58:40
  to make that kind of impact and change.
• 58:43
  And yeah, I just, it's an interesting moment in time.
• 58:47
  You know, all of this goes back to what I prefaced.
• 58:50
  Like I'm not a policy expert.
• 58:51
  So I couldn't tell you, if I could map out
• 58:55
  like if we get this to happen, then this will happen,
• 58:58
  which will cause this to happen,
• 58:59
  which will cause, you know, De Minimis to get passed,
• 59:01
  then I would have already, you know,
• 59:03
  like we would have already cooked that up
• 59:05
  and that would already be, you know, in flight.
• 59:06
  We wouldn't have done that last year.
• 59:08
  But the, you know, the reality is,
• 59:10
  is like it is a black box
• 59:13
  and all we can do is shed as much light
• 59:16
  as possible on the issue,
• 59:18
  be as clear as possible as a community
• 59:21
  of what we want to see,
• 59:23
  and then vote for the people
• 59:25
  that enact the things that we want to see.
• 59:28
  You know, like all we can,
• 59:29
  we have like one lever here.
• 59:31
  It's like the people that aren't doing this,
• 59:32
  they need to leave.
• 59:33
  the people that are doing this, they need to stay. And, you know, that's like our best kind of
• 59:39
  leverage that we have on the system. And it's strong leverage. It's worked, you know, pretty
• 59:46
  well generally so far. But in order for us to be able to, you know, if we were going to fix the
• 59:54
  issue that I highlighted at the beginning, which is this prioritization process, that is going to
• 59:59
  require an apparatus many apparati in dc interfacing with these uh politicians not just
• 1:00:07
  like a bpi you know that's a um you know it's an education it's a 501c3 you know they're not
• 1:00:13
  lobbyists i'm talking like we need lobbyists we need pack money we need like all of this kind of
• 1:00:18
  stuff why i always wanted to be a lobbyist so we should say there you go uh hard to do that from
• 1:00:24
  Denver. But, you know, yeah, that's what we would need in order to actually compete with, you know,
• 1:00:31
  the existing infrastructure that's already out there. And, you know, the reality is, and again,
• 1:00:38
  I don't want this to come off as me like throwing sand in anyone's eyes or anything like that. But,
• 1:00:43
  you know, when you have the sort of VC apparatus that has existed around crypto,
• 1:00:49
  When you have the token, you know, issuance and selling on retail that, you know, creates this free money for these different protocols, etc., etc.
• 1:01:00
  There's just a lot of money in that part of the industry.
• 1:01:06
  And there's like there's not that level of funding and financing of the Bitcoiners because, you know, like we have to kind of build it authentically from scratch.
• 1:01:16
  and it's a little less sexy
• 1:01:18
  and it's a little more work
• 1:01:19
  and you don't really just have
• 1:01:20
  the massive multi-million dollar policy budget
• 1:01:22
  to go through around.
• 1:01:23
  So it's just going to come with time.
• 1:01:27
  That's the best I can say
• 1:01:28
  is the difference between us and them
• 1:01:31
  is like our power only grows with time.
• 1:01:33
  Our influence only grows with time.
• 1:01:35
  We have a stable foundation that we're growing on.
• 1:01:37
  That's the whole point of Bitcoin.
• 1:01:39
  And so at some point,
• 1:01:40
  we're going to get to minimus.
• 1:01:41
  At some point, we're going to ensure
• 1:01:43
  that the strategic reserve is enshrined in law.
• 1:01:45
  at some point we're going to get everything we want at some point the the president will be
• 1:01:50
  uh just one of us bitcoiners you know he was like whose whose turn is it to kind of run the country
• 1:01:55
  right like that's where we're all headed eventually um but we just got to lower our
• 1:02:00
  time preference a little bit i think on on you know when it's all going to come together
• 1:02:03
  yeah that's beautifully said brandon um i haven't gotten a great question yet so i know we're almost
• 1:02:14
  at a time so i'm gonna ask one more yeah i knew why i was gonna bring that up i knew he's gonna
• 1:02:20
  we're so competitive every time i was like i don't even think these are that good questions
• 1:02:24
  uh i think all the questions have been great by the way and i apologize for rambling so uh you
• 1:02:31
  know you get what you get i appreciated it brandon i knew i was gonna rub him
• 1:02:35
  uh no they were phenomenal phenomenal answers but um maybe just and on a more optimistic note here
• 1:02:45
  you can you can keep this as brief as you like um or as long as you like to i've been really
• 1:02:51
  impressed with you guys at btc and kind of you know branching out into different you know things
• 1:02:54
  within the the bitcoin ecosystem you start with the magazine moving events adding you know bitcoin
• 1:02:58
  for corporations like all these things what opportunities do you think in bitcoin that are
• 1:03:04
  still like untapped like if you had to start over from scratch you know put your entrepreneur hat on
• 1:03:08
  like where are you starting yeah great question thank you thank you uh and and i would also just
• 1:03:17
  preface this by saying like let's set the whole ai thing to the side for now because i think that
• 1:03:24
  that's like you know the craziest part of building a company right now is that you have a truly just
• 1:03:30
  like outsized force coming in from left field and in the way that like AI is just disrupting
• 1:03:38
  everything that it, you know, a lot of business models, a lot of ways by which people would
• 1:03:47
  build businesses in the past have just been totally upended.
• 1:03:50
  And, you know, it also creates like massive opportunity.
• 1:03:53
  Anyone can go build a company right now and leverage these tools.
• 1:03:56
  but on the flip side, anyone can go build a company right now and leverage these tools, right?
• 1:04:01
  So it's like competition is going to be fierce.
• 1:04:03
  There's going to be a lot of new companies coming on and the best will succeed.
• 1:04:09
  But where I see in Bitcoin right now, it's the narrative that I was kind of spinning a second ago,
• 1:04:15
  which is the Bitcoin maximalist point of view is to create a Bitcoin product or service
• 1:04:22
  in every pool of capital in the world.
• 1:04:24
  And like we are just barely scratching the surface of the different pools of capital that could be buying Bitcoin. And, you know, like I would say right now we've got sort of public equities and most massive public capital markets at this point. And that's it.
• 1:04:44
  And then we have, you know, the fixed income in the U.S. And so, you know, building a fixed income product for, you know, any of these other public markets, I think would be a great place to start.
• 1:04:55
  I think the Bitbond, whenever it comes to fruition, will be probably another order of magnitude unlock from what Stretch looks like right now.
• 1:05:07
  Maybe a couple orders of magnitude.
• 1:05:10
  Municipal bonds.
• 1:05:11
  I think it's hard to even...
• 1:05:17
  I'm not an expert on all of these different pools of capital.
• 1:05:19
  Right. You know, it's hard to even like just walk you through every single thing that's going to be disrupted by sort of a Bitcoin product coming to market.
• 1:05:27
  So but yeah, I just I imagine that in the end we will get to a point where every dollar that you deploy.
• 1:05:38
  Someone on the other side will at least be using a part of that to buy Bitcoin.
• 1:05:43
  And so if you see a place right now where dollars are being deployed in mass and no one's buying Bitcoin on the other side of it.
• 1:05:49
  then I think that's an opportunity for you to go build a product.
• 1:05:53
  And, you know, apply that everywhere, man.
• 1:05:56
  I mean, you know, to the point of the operating companies even,
• 1:06:00
  you know, if you see a company that builds MRI machines
• 1:06:05
  and, you know, they're basically taking basic parts,
• 1:06:09
  they're turning it into an MRI machine,
• 1:06:10
  they're selling it for a massive premium,
• 1:06:12
  they're collecting a big bag on the back end, you know,
• 1:06:14
  because it's just this complex thing that's hard to build,
• 1:06:16
  and then they're sticking that in cash.
• 1:06:17
  well if you went and built a MRI machine or you just bought that company and put all the cash in
• 1:06:22
  Bitcoin like that is a better product that is a better company than the one that just buys cash
• 1:06:27
  with it so even like this whole I don't know I hate to use the term like PE like private equity
• 1:06:33
  but a private equity model where instead you are just taking cash flowing businesses and
• 1:06:40
  pointing the cash flow into Bitcoin that will drive dividends like you that will be one of the
• 1:06:46
  most profitable companies, you know, pools of capital out there is if you can just activist
• 1:06:52
  turn fiat companies into Bitcoin companies.
• 1:06:56
  So, yeah, that would be my wide ranging answer to that question.
• 1:07:01
  It's hard to pin down like a specific example of like this company doesn't exist right now,
• 1:07:05
  but it should.
• 1:07:06
  I also think like insurance is a big opportunity, both from like DNO and custody and, you know,
• 1:07:15
  some of these things that just everyone's going to need more and more of as we go.
• 1:07:19
  But also finding ways to just leverage Bitcoin in the insurance model is, I think, going to be a massive unlock.
• 1:07:28
  So, yeah, maybe that would be like, I guess, my singular answer to that question.
• 1:07:33
  If I were to take one.
• 1:07:35
  No, it's a great one. I love it.
• 1:07:37
  Yeah.
• 1:07:37
  Brandon, thank you so much for coming on.
• 1:07:39
  We want to make sure we're respectful of your time.
• 1:07:42
  Yeah, sorry, I went over.
• 1:07:43
  I know we were saying this is going to be like a 45-minute convo.
• 1:07:46
  Yeah.
• 1:07:47
  No, it's all good.
• 1:07:49
  All right.
• 1:07:49
  So if someone for some reason is not already planning to come to Vegas, how did they find out how to buy a ticket, get accommodations, all that stuff?
• 1:07:59
  Yeah, just go to 2026.b.tc.
• 1:08:03
  That's our conference website.
• 1:08:05
  You'll see all the information there.
• 1:08:07
  You can get your tickets there.
• 1:08:08
  You can get your hotel there.
• 1:08:10
  It's coming up soon.
• 1:08:12
  So you'll want to, you know, book now. I think we got I think our prices are increasing this week, too. So definitely don't wait around. And yeah, all I'll say is.
• 1:08:24
  You know, the the bear market events, I kind of said this in the beginning, the bear market events is where the magic happens like this. If you want to work in the space, you know, if you get a job in the space in the bull market, there's a decent chance your job goes away in the bear market.
• 1:08:37
  if you get a job in the space in the bear market, there's a decent chance that by the bull market,
• 1:08:42
  you know, you're going to have a massive team under you. You're going to have, you know,
• 1:08:46
  huge responsibility. You will have already leveled up in the company multiple times
• 1:08:50
  because the grind is on right now and the great people get hired. And then those people have
• 1:08:56
  massive latitude to do big things in the organizations. Similarly, the companies that
• 1:09:01
  get funded in the bear market, like those are companies that will grow massively in the bull
• 1:09:08
  market because they're not constrained by capital in the same way that, you know, other bear market
• 1:09:12
  companies might be. So if you're looking to start a company, if you're looking to launch a company,
• 1:09:17
  this is the best time to do it. This is the best time to go find your co-founder.
• 1:09:21
  If you're looking to get funding for your company, this is the best time to go pitch investors.
• 1:09:25
  You know, they're not getting flooded by a whole bunch of, you know, random projects that
• 1:09:29
  just launched yesterday, you know, like they're, they're looking for quality.
• 1:09:34
  If you are, you know, feeling down on your Bitcoin stack, because it's, you know, drawn
• 1:09:40
  down 50% from all time highs, this is a great time to just like go hang out with other Bitcoiners
• 1:09:44
  that are in the exact same position as you, you know, it's like the ego's gone. Everyone's humbled.
• 1:09:50
  You're in the bear market, you can just go enjoy your time with other people,
• 1:09:54
  with other Bitcoiners who have gone through the same cycle,
• 1:09:59
  the same ups, the same downs as you have,
• 1:10:03
  and they have the same outlook on it as you.
• 1:10:06
  And there's a camaraderie that's built there.
• 1:10:08
  There's a feeling, a deeper understanding of what Bitcoin is for.
• 1:10:13
  It's a great feeling.
• 1:10:15
  And again, the guards aren't up, the veils aren't up,
• 1:10:19
  and you really just get to have an authentic interaction with people.
• 1:10:22
  these bear market events I mean it's where all the magic happens and then the last thing I'll say
• 1:10:26
  to the broader point on narratives for us these bear market events is where the narratives for
• 1:10:32
  the bull market form and so we are very in tune with the programming that happens at these events
• 1:10:38
  more than any other event because we know that like what resonates here what is said here what
• 1:10:45
  is built during this time like that is the foundation by which Bitcoin is going to have
• 1:10:50
  its next leg up, its next growth cycle.
• 1:10:52
  And so we have to really be paying attention to them.
• 1:10:55
  And if you manage to pay attention to them yourself,
• 1:10:58
  like you can be that much further ahead of the curve
• 1:11:00
  and the upcoming bull market.
• 1:11:04
  So for all those reasons and more,
• 1:11:06
  if you haven't gotten your ticket,
• 1:11:07
  this is the event to go to.
• 1:11:09
  It's going to be a fantastic event.
• 1:11:11
  I'm going to be there.
• 1:11:12
  Y'all are going to be there.
• 1:11:13
  It's going to be a great time.
• 1:11:15
  You know, Vegas is fun.
• 1:11:17
  And we'd love to see you there.
• 1:11:20
  I love it. I'll be there. So and I'm first year corporate sponsor. We've got a booth. And so very excited. Thank you so much. Thank you for the support. We have the best companies in the world, frankly, are our sponsors. So, you know, it's seeing all these amazing companies come in every year. It just makes me that much more bullish on Bitcoin. These are the top people building the space.
• 1:11:44
  you know, Bitcoin is only as good as the people that use it.
• 1:11:48
  Right. And so being able to highlight and being able to work with
• 1:11:53
  the top entrepreneurs, the top people in the space,
• 1:11:57
  it just makes you that much more bullish on Bitcoin
• 1:11:59
  because you get to just see what people are building.
• 1:12:01
  So, yeah, I appreciate your support and Wyatt, appreciate your support too.
• 1:12:07
  And yeah, it's going to be a great year. It's going to be a great year.
• 1:12:10
  awesome anything else on your side i'm brandon no this is this is amazing i really enjoyed it
• 1:12:17
  appreciate your time likewise thank you guys for having me and uh thank you for letting me ramble
• 1:12:22
  for a little while uh if you just gotta go in and cut up some of the you know rambles and make
• 1:12:27
  them shorter feel free uh but yeah thanks guys all good all right we'll see you uh in about 30 days
• 1:12:33
  thanks good see you soon all right
• 1:12:40
  We appreciate you joining us.
• 1:12:43
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• 1:12:47
  a review, and most importantly, share this with someone in your network who's integrating
• 1:12:51
  Bitcoin into their practice.
• 1:12:52
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• 1:12:57
  better served.
• 1:12:58
  Stay sharp, stay sovereign.
• 1:12:59
  Keep leaning from the front.
• 1:13:10
  We'll see you next time.