Latest / What Bitcoin Did / Why MSTR Will Underperform Bitcoin | Parker Lewis
Transcript
- 0:00People come to understand Bitcoin in a myriad of different ways.
- 0:06A lot of people have to touch the hot stove.
- 0:08Bitcoin treasury companies are not, you know, in general, the equivalent of alt-season and altcoins.
- 0:13But there's a very similar lesson that I think is going to have to be learned,
- 0:16which is that it's a great way to get less Bitcoin.
- 0:18If all else is equal to you, you know, it's like,
- 0:20oh, well, you can either go buy Bitcoin at this company X, Y, or Z, or buy the ETF.
- 0:25You are incentivized to get them to also buy your stock.
- 0:28And that's where I see the greatest misalignment because it's predicated on constantly raising more and more capital and most of which should be people just buying Bitcoin directly.
- 0:39The sentiment has never been worse for my 10 years around Bitcoin.
- 0:43The fundamentals of Bitcoin have never been better.
- 0:46And those two things are true at the same time.
- 0:48And I think that there's also, in my view, there also never was an adoption wave since 2021.
- 0:54And the next one will be particularly large because of that.
- 0:58I mean, we've started now.
- 1:01I was just having a chat, but we may as well just make this the show.
- 1:04Like the adoption wave, like new people come into Bitcoin when Bitcoin is ripping.
- 1:08Like they come in in the euphoria phase of Bitcoin price.
- 1:11Like that happens every single cycle.
- 1:12And I think because we didn't have that, we never got the kind of broader awareness.
- 1:18Like you didn't see it like posted in all the sort of major news articles and things like that.
- 1:23And I just think we never got that influx of retail because of AI, because everyone was going to AI.
- 1:28And if people were going to Bitcoin, they were probably going to the treasury companies.
- 1:32Yeah.
- 1:33I think that's, I mean, just from my own vantage point of being at meetups, being at conferences,
- 1:39of course, people are trickling in here and there in terms of new people, but there was
- 1:44not a decided wave like there was in 2017 or 2020, 2021.
- 1:50And why that is, I don't know if it was just that the price increase was a function of
- 1:56the ETF and a lot of low conviction, small, you know, institutional flows rather than
- 2:05an unlock of a wave of new people actually figuring out that there was signal on Bitcoin.
- 2:11And then with the, you know, kind of everything happening in AI, sucking both capital out as
- 2:16well as mindshare, which is like, you know, eventually they're going to print a shit ton
- 2:21of money and people are going to figure out that the Bitcoin is right.
- 2:24and the Bitcoiners will figure out that, you know,
- 2:27that was the North Star and get back to the basics.
- 2:33Yeah, I don't think retail's gone forever.
- 2:34But on the treasury company stuff,
- 2:37you've been fighting a lot online.
- 2:38I've loved to see it, to be honest.
- 2:41Do you think the treasury companies
- 2:42have been a net good for Bitcoin?
- 2:45Danny, everything's good for Bitcoin, okay?
- 2:48Is it though?
- 2:49Like in the sense that I think that
- 2:52Bitcoin has to humble everybody.
- 2:57And that
- 2:58people come to understand Bitcoin
- 3:01in a myriad of different ways.
- 3:03A lot of people have to touch the hot stove.
- 3:06Bitcoin treasury companies are not
- 3:07in general the equivalent of
- 3:11alt-season and altcoins.
- 3:13But there's a very similar lesson that I think
- 3:15is going to have to be learned, which is that
- 3:17it's a great way to get less Bitcoin.
- 3:21you know and like maybe a few people were the you know minority or exception and that created
- 3:28you know this idea that the market as a whole could and that the market as a whole learns that
- 3:36they can't and that markets might be efficient over short periods of time but as a function of
- 3:42time it becomes more efficient and people learn from their past mistakes and that the people that
- 3:47learned that mistake that they actually got less Bitcoin by buying a Bitcoin treasury company at a
- 3:54large premium to the actual Bitcoin it held was why they ultimately got less Bitcoin. And they
- 3:59will come to understand it and not make the same mistake twice. And so I don't think that it's
- 4:06brought in this large amount of net new adoption that a lot of other people seem to think it has.
- 4:16So I think it's been a lot more neutral to negative potentially on price.
- 4:21But it is what it is and the market has to process information.
- 4:26And I think the market is in part of what might get us out of this cycle is a bunch of people actually finding the real signal and rotating out of the treasury companies and buying Bitcoin.
- 4:42Yeah.
- 4:43I want to know what it is that you don't like about them.
- 4:45Because if you look at, say, strategy, obviously easiest one, biggest one, like their business model at first, I actually really liked as they were a cash flow positive company and they were moving their cash reserves on the balance sheet into Bitcoin.
- 4:58Makes total sense.
- 4:59What I started to like, it just didn't vibe with me quite right when they started doing the preferreds and they did the convertible notes.
- 5:06And it was becoming like a leverage debt play trying to get people to buy their common equity, which was then going to get diluted so they could buy more Bitcoin.
- 5:13I like that's where the whole thing got too complex for me and I just kind of fell out of I just didn't I didn't I don't really get it anymore.
- 5:19It's just this complex financial engineering thing.
- 5:23Yeah.
- 5:24So from my side, one, they did the converts first and actually made more sense to me when they were doing the converts because they were tapping cap, you know, money that capital that wouldn't otherwise have come into Bitcoin.
- 5:35now i you know truth be told like i didn't really have a an issue when they started doing the
- 5:44prefers for me it was really more when i started seeing things being said that i viewed as
- 5:50confusing the nature of bitcoin as a means to get people to buy stock
- 5:55rather than bitcoin so this is like digital credit narrative yeah i mean truth be told it wasn't it
- 6:03wasn't really even that um it was you know we turned bitcoin into money which i think just by
- 6:12its very nature begs the question of well if you turn bitcoin into money then what is bitcoin
- 6:17bitcoin is this very difficult thing to understand as money because it doesn't you know behave like
- 6:26the money that people are used to.
- 6:30And then when you start deviating away, say, oh, it's not even money, it's capital.
- 6:35It's like, well, that stands to confuse far more people than it is.
- 6:40It's like, hey, you think that money is fiat and that it can be easily printed and that
- 6:46it's stable in the short term but collapses in the long term.
- 6:49This is a different kind of money.
- 6:51It's volatile, but it holds its value because there's a fixed supply.
- 6:54And as more people opt into that, it will become less volatile over time and it will evolve from a nascent and early store of value that's volatile into a form of commerce that's being used every day for transactions.
- 7:11And so that was probably the first one.
- 7:12then there was a post from a guy who I know and like from strive talking about how
- 7:20digital credit is the most important inflection point in Bitcoin.
- 7:27And that I,
- 7:30I looked at and I said,
- 7:31so you're telling me that,
- 7:33you know,
- 7:34in my own view estimation,
- 7:36no more than 1% of people understand Bitcoin.
- 7:39But the thing that's going to make sense to them is,
- 7:42a professional preferred equity that is, quote, backed by Bitcoin.
- 7:50Bitcoin doesn't have any yield, but you're going to pay 13% to them.
- 7:58And that's going to be this transformational thing for Bitcoin.
- 8:02And what he said in this post or this video was that Bitcoin is too volatile for 99% of people.
- 8:08And again, that's where I started to observe this and say,
- 8:12okay now you're actually saying things that confuse people about the nature of bitcoin
- 8:19when bitcoin is already hard to understand is is this an is this a net net benefit you know like
- 8:26what what what is going on and when i started to call out what i perceived to be misleading
- 8:32marketing around these products people doubled down and um and then when i dug into it i started
- 8:41to see what in my view is a really broken incentive structure, which not only are they
- 8:48complex financial structures, but at a higher level, their whole strategy is to get people
- 9:03to not buy Bitcoin, but to buy their stock instead.
- 9:06And for one end of the bookend, which is the people investing in the common equity with
- 9:11The idea of getting more Bitcoin, and I have logical reasons to describe why you won't get more Bitcoin that way.
- 9:19The companies will.
- 9:21But you as an individual, if you were saving in Bitcoin, you'd be better off just saving in Bitcoin.
- 9:26And then on the other book, the people that they're shepherding or trying to shepherd into these preferred equity instruments that are fixed dollar equity instruments that are ultimately going to be left holding the bag as fiat loses its value and eventually hyperinflates.
- 9:52That the last person to hold those is the one holding the bag.
- 9:56And that those people would be better off just buying a smaller amount of Bitcoin.
- 10:01If Bitcoin is too volatile to you, you are the volatility.
- 10:04The market is the volatility.
- 10:05People pricing Bitcoin for the first time are the volatility.
- 10:10And Bitcoin doesn't have a yield.
- 10:11So the better thing for those people would be simply buying a smaller percentage of Bitcoin.
- 10:17And then learning and reading a book, rabbit holing, spending the 100 hours to understand how to keep your money.
- 10:26But there's actually a disincentive.
- 10:28And the disincentive also extends to the shareholders.
- 10:34That people who have bought the stocks have a direct incentive to get people not to buy Bitcoin, but to buy their stocks.
- 10:42And I'm not saying that everybody operates or effectuates that incentive, but the incentive exists.
- 10:51And the same incentive does not exist with the ETF because the ETF has managed to net asset value.
- 11:00So you could hold 90% Bitcoin in cold storage, but you decided to buy the Bitcoin treasury stock.
- 11:05You suddenly need people to buy your stock and not Bitcoin to validate your thesis around that 10%, which is meaningful, right?
- 11:16Because if all else is equal to you, it's like, oh, well, you can either go buy Bitcoin at company X, Y, or Z or buy the ETF.
- 11:24You are incentivized to get them to also buy your stock.
- 11:27And that's where I see the greatest misalignment because it's predicated on, you know, constantly raising more and more capital and most of which should be people just buying Bitcoin directly.
- 11:43The thing that keeps me up at night with Bitcoin cold storage isn't Bitcoin failing, it's my setup failing.
- 11:48And this is where AnchorWatch comes in.
- 11:50With AnchorWatch, your Bitcoin's insured with your own A-plus rated Lloyds of London insurance policy and all Bitcoins held in their time-locked multi-sig vault.
- 11:57so you have the peace of mind knowing your bitcoin's insured while not giving up custody
- 12:01so whether you're worried about inheritance planning wrench attacks natural disasters
- 12:05or just your own silly mistakes you're protected by anchor watch rates for fully insured custody
- 12:10start as low as 0.55 percent and are available for individual and commercial customers in the u.s
- 12:15you can speak to anchor watch for a quote and for more details about your security options and
- 12:19coverage visit anchorwatch.com today that's anchorwatch.com if you hold bitcoin long enough
- 12:25there's going to come a time when you need some dollars.
- 12:27It might be a tax bill, a business expense,
- 12:29life getting in the way,
- 12:30but whatever it is, it might come at a time
- 12:32when you don't want to sell your Bitcoin.
- 12:34That's where Ledin comes in.
- 12:35Ledin lets you borrow against your Bitcoin instead
- 12:37with tiered rates that go as low as 9.25%.
- 12:40So you don't have to sell your stack if you don't want to.
- 12:43Ledin have operated through every market cycle since 2018
- 12:45and have originated over $11 billion in loans.
- 12:49But the important part for me
- 12:50is the way Ledin handles these loans.
- 12:51Your collateral is held in custody
- 12:53and never lent out to generate interest.
- 12:54and leaden more than just loans tether gold is now live alongside your bitcoin with instant trading across 10 pairs and later this year you be able to borrow against gold in the same way that you do with Bitcoin Ledin really is an awesome company I used them multiple times The
- 13:09applications have taken me less than 15 minutes and you have the dollars in your account within
- 13:13hours. If you want to check out Ledin, go to ledn.io and use the code WBD for 0.25% off your
- 13:20first loan. That's leaden.io and use the code WBD. If you own a Bitcoin ETF, especially if it's GBTC,
- 13:27you need to listen up. Spot Bitcoin ETFs provide price exposure to Bitcoin, not direct ownership.
- 13:33You can't withdraw it, you can't self-custody it, and they charge you a management fee every year to
- 13:37hold it. Well, Swan recently announced Swan Real Bitcoin Exchange and it's ready to use right now.
- 13:44RBX is a structured in-kind exchange that converts your Spot Bitcoin ETF shares into real on-chain
- 13:49Bitcoin. It does that without selling on the open market and is designed to support a tax
- 13:53efficient outcome. So for example, if you hold GBTC, you're paying 1.5% a year in management fees
- 13:59for Bitcoin price exposure. But by swapping GBTC for real Bitcoin with RBX, you can drop that figure
- 14:04as low as 0% by just holding it in self-custody. This is designed in a way that maintains your cost
- 14:10basis and in a manner that supports the deferral of capital gains tax. So if you own a Bitcoin ETF,
- 14:15especially if it's GBTC,
- 14:17you need to talk to Swan Private about RBX today.
- 14:21Head over to swan.com forward slash WBD
- 14:23and book in a call with one of their team.
- 14:25That's swan.com forward slash WBD.
- 14:29That makes sense.
- 14:30So that's like the misaligned incentive for the shareholder.
- 14:33But for the companies, what's the misaligned incentive?
- 14:35Is it that they have to sort of market this
- 14:37as Bitcoin being too volatile or too hard to self-custody,
- 14:40let us do it instead of actually just buying Bitcoin yourself?
- 14:43I think the misaligned incentive is...
- 14:45that their incentive with their future shareholders is to get them to not buy Bitcoin, but instead to buy their stock.
- 14:52And selling their stock at a premium to the underlying value of Bitcoin, which in my view,
- 15:01and this has been a lot more controversial than it should be because I'm mostly talking to people that own the stock.
- 15:11But if you talk to a disinterested third party and ask them whether Bitcoin in a stock wrapper with leverage should trade at a premium to Bitcoin that's not leveraged, that's not in the stock wrapper, that doesn't have the implications of corporate taxes, double taxation,
- 15:35they would say that the underlying asset should trade at a premium and the stock should trade at
- 15:42a discount just from a pure risk perspective but the companies have an incentive which is where
- 15:47there's misalignment of selling that premium as a trading multiple and then they make analogies
- 15:54compared to things but they're really harvesting the premium to their benefit to the detriment of
- 16:00the person that's buying the stock.
- 16:03How were they doing that?
- 16:03Is that by diluting shareholders
- 16:05when it's above 1XM NAV to buy more Bitcoin?
- 16:08Right, but also think about the person
- 16:10who's buying the stock,
- 16:11the person who's providing that money.
- 16:13They're paying, you know,
- 16:1550% premium in the context of Strive.
- 16:18Today, the strategy premium is much smaller,
- 16:20but it was very large in 2024 and 2025.
- 16:24Those people were,
- 16:25what they were functionally doing
- 16:26was getting less Bitcoin
- 16:27than the Bitcoin equivalent
- 16:30that they were buying into because of the premium.
- 16:32And again, the incentive of the company is to do that
- 16:35where it's misaligned is the person who's actually buying it,
- 16:39in my opinion.
- 16:40If your whole strategy wasn't predicated
- 16:44on getting new capital in the door,
- 16:47new equity capital in the door,
- 16:49and you were producing Bitcoin-denominated returns
- 16:53not as a function of harvesting a premium that shouldn't exist,
- 16:57and again, because that premium exists,
- 16:59They're able to do it, but then they have to tell a story about how they're going.
- 17:06They tell a story about how they're going to be able to get more Bitcoin by raising these preferreds.
- 17:10The preferreds, in my opinion, are bad instruments for the people buying the preferreds.
- 17:14But the whole idea of making more Bitcoin is predicated on their ability to get people piled in to the preferreds.
- 17:21So it's kind of two ends of the barbell.
- 17:24and in both cases I think people would just be better off buying Bitcoin and that same
- 17:31misalignment wouldn't exist if it wasn't predicated on getting new equity in the door in my view.
- 17:39Why do you think that these companies aren't going to be able to sustain above 1x MNAV?
- 17:43Because for people buying the shares in these companies presumably they're betting that the
- 17:47companies can continue to increase their Bitcoin per share. Is that right?
- 17:52No, that's how it's been sold. I think from a risk perspective, that is fundamentally illogical. Why is that?
- 18:02Well, because first you have to start from this idea that there is more risk associated with the stock companies.
- 18:15Yes, there's potentially more upside dependent on whether or not you price the risk appropriately.
- 18:23But at a, say, one MNAV or whatever, which effectively means, and again, the way that I look at it is common equity to the net asset value attributable to common in the Bitcoin equivalent.
- 18:40If that was at one-to-one, then anything more than that would say that Bitcoin is riskier, the underlying asset is riskier than owning the stock.
- 18:53In which case, if you own the stock, you don't own Bitcoin.
- 18:57You own a stock.
- 18:58It's in somebody else's control.
- 19:01They have an expense load.
- 19:03They have execution risk.
- 19:06Are they going to be able to get the incremental leverage?
- 19:09Is something going to go wrong?
- 19:10In the context of GameStop, Citadel basically just said, or Robinhood said, you can't buy the stock.
- 19:22Censorship.
- 19:23A lot of censorship risk.
- 19:26That going from one to greater than one is an expression that the stock is less risky than Bitcoin.
- 19:37At a discount, it would signal that Bitcoin is less risky than the stock, which it is.
- 19:45Then if the stock was trading at a discount, there's an opportunity for that stock on a Bitcoin per share basis to both outperform Bitcoin and trend to one.
- 19:59It's always going to be riskier because there's more counterparty risk, there's more execution risk.
- 20:04But as those liabilities do trend to zero, it would then trend toward one.
- 20:09And it's a backward risk view that they basically sold on like it's a price to book value like a bank might be valued.
- 20:15But the difference in this context is you can actually own the underlying exact asset with less risk, but you are paying a premium to take more risk and not own the underlying asset that all of your return or quote outperformance would be predicated on.
- 20:33Why do you think that people don't understand this? Because is it as simple as people think that basically trying to take leverage? I think leverage is a way to become an OG.
- 20:41They think that leverage plus number go up means more Bitcoin. And the big thing that is missed is depending on what price you bought in at. And what is going to happen, what has happened to this point is like, you know, as it's traded at a premium, the company sells stock to buy Bitcoin or to hold cash, that they basically harvest that premium.
- 21:07Well, the market figures this out as a function of time that they were the premium and that as their understanding of Bitcoin goes up, because by and large, these are Bitcoiners that are buying the common equity as this way to get more Bitcoin.
- 21:25And to a person, when I brought up this idea, and again, I don't go around talking about my background, but I've worked for a hedge fund. I've worked for an investment bank. Before that, I've worked in credit restructuring.
- 21:40there seems to be an entire absence from this entire evaluation of applying discount rates to
- 21:52future scenarios to basically NPV or to calculate what, you know, based on what scenario you are
- 21:59ascribing in the future to say what the value of the stock should be today, that that's entirely
- 22:05absent from the discussion. They also seemingly none of them contemplate the consequences of
- 22:13corporate taxes. They say, well, why would they ever sell the Bitcoin? I say,
- 22:17it doesn't matter if they sell the Bitcoin. The value of a company is based on
- 22:22return of capital and the timing of that return of capital to you.
- 22:27So in order for it to get out of the corporate structure into your pocket so that you could go
- 22:33get something of actual value, like a car or a home or what value really is, they would
- 22:39have to incur that tax.
- 22:40So it doesn't matter if they're not incurring it today, you would have to contemplate it
- 22:44in your own valuation of it, totally absent from the discussion.
- 22:48And so I think that it is really a simplistic view of leverage plus number go up equals
- 22:56more Bitcoin.
- 22:57And that just certainly is not true if you are not accounting for the other variables. Again, if you set aside all risk and simply isolated the premium that the stocks are trading, which is a backwards risk to how risk should be priced, along with the impact of corporate taxes.
- 23:19They'd be like, you basically have to out, like on a Bitcoin-denominated basis, you would have to outperform by 20% if it was one-to-one, if Bitcoin went to infinity and fiat went to zero.
- 23:33But nobody brings that up.
- 23:35And when I bring it up, I was just on a spaces, that concept was like foreign to people.
- 23:39And for me, having valued companies, like if you valued a stock, say, outside the Bitcoin world that doesn't currently return any capital shareholders, you're still having to apply a tax rate at the corporate level because your whole reason for buying it is actually capital return to you.
- 23:57um and and it it seems to be just a very you know you know people are not
- 24:04precisely or like really um you know they might say oh i know that there's risk but they're not
- 24:12pricing the risk is what i'm saying the interesting there is like i remember maybe six months ago fong
- 24:19lee came out and said that 80 of the people are buying stretch were retail investors do you think
- 24:24this is why because the sort of institutions are looking at this company in the same way that you
- 24:29are and actually risking this appropriately yeah i think the reality is that it's a heavy retail
- 24:36base because it's the people who are buying the common equity are the people most bullish on
- 24:43bitcoiners and it is hard for an institution you know if one out of 100 people understand bitcoin
- 24:50it's hard for a group of people managing institutional capital to,
- 24:56you know,
- 24:58get over 50% consensus.
- 25:00Right.
- 25:00So I think that that's,
- 25:01that's mostly what it is because also it's like institutions.
- 25:04I don't,
- 25:05you know,
- 25:06they're,
- 25:07they make a lot of boneheaded decisions,
- 25:12you know?
- 25:12So it's not like retail's not as smart as,
- 25:15as institutional capital.
- 25:18Like everyone who's early to Bitcoin is,
- 25:20smarter than those
- 25:23institutions. So I don't think that it's that
- 25:25but I do think that
- 25:26there then is a lack of rigor
- 25:28or lack of thought process
- 25:30as to the risk or how to quantify those
- 25:32risks and it's more of like a feels
- 25:34and then the feels gets resolved
- 25:36over time because anytime
- 25:38the premium emerges
- 25:39somebody, whether it's the companies themselves
- 25:43or a shareholder
- 25:44will harvest the premium
- 25:46to realize
- 25:48it and
- 25:50you know that becomes zero sum so what do you think the long term looks like for these companies
- 25:56do you think obviously you think trading below 1xm now but will will they survive do you think that they can continue to pay the the preferred dividends like what do you think will happen yeah i mean like my my expectation is that no i can say for every one of them right but like i would expect
- 26:11strategy to survive i would expect strategy to materially underperform bitcoin i think that the
- 26:17the strategy shareholder base is going to figure that out and start selling the stock to buy bitcoin
- 26:23um now companies that are in worse positions more leverage um less reason you know to exist
- 26:34um higher expense base because like that's what you have to think about some of these companies
- 26:39have a really you know people say well the etf has a expense ratio of 0.25 well start looking at
- 26:46the expense base of these corporate treasury companies.
- 26:51And you'll see that they have expenses too,
- 26:53and they're higher.
- 26:56And so, at some point,
- 26:58the companies will just return capital.
- 27:02I would expect this strategy continues to operate
- 27:06and ultimately shifts the strategy.
- 27:08Once their equity begins to trade
- 27:11at a steep discount to NAV,
- 27:13it's like, hey, Bitcoin can go up
- 27:14with a stock not going up.
- 27:17And that's part of the misaligned incentive.
- 27:19It's like there actually has to be a market for stock
- 27:22and their incentive is to get people to buy stock
- 27:25so that they can buy Bitcoin and not buy.
- 27:27But the incentive of the shareholder is to figure that out
- 27:31and also if there's ever a premium there to sell it to buy Bitcoin.
- 27:36But that might be how Bitcoin goes up and the share price doesn't,
- 27:42but the company still has the Bitcoin.
- 27:44And then the incentives start to align with the remaining shareholders, then, you know, are living in a world where it's much more difficult for them to be diluted. They do have a large base of Bitcoin. And that, again, I can't predict the future, but I would expect in that world that strategy becomes a, you know, an allocator of capital to generate cash flows rather than raise capital to buy Bitcoin.
- 28:11If I had to factor it in, but I think that anybody who's in it today is going to materially underperform Bitcoin because of the very overwhelming – when I zoom out, one of the things that I struggle with, why people can't see this is why when they zoom out that they would think that the market for a single-name stock would be bigger than the global demand for buying Bitcoin.
- 28:41directly, you know, because somebody still has to buy the stock for the value of the stock to go up.
- 28:50And it's like, why are there going to be a lot more people that demand buying that stock with
- 28:54leverage, with more risk when they could just own Bitcoin? You know, and even that, like, you know,
- 29:00genuinely, that was always the case. And it was always uninteresting to me. But it wasn't
- 29:06problematic in my mind until they start talking about Bitcoin in a way that confuses the nature
- 29:12of Bitcoin. Because that's what I view. It's like that actually retards an understanding of Bitcoin.
- 29:19It does it, you know, intentionally, not intentionally, however you want to describe
- 29:25it, to the ends of selling stock. And, you know, Bitcoin working is predicated on more people
- 29:33figuring out Bitcoin, not less. And they will over time. I think it will just be better off for
- 29:38everybody if more people figure it out sooner. So I think confusing the nature of Bitcoin of like
- 29:43avoiding talking about it as money is really what, you know, perked me up and got me engaged to dive
- 29:51in and look into it. Because it's not semantics. Like it's not semantics to expressly go out of
- 29:59way to define Bitcoin as the one thing that makes it unique.
- 30:08Yeah.
- 30:08And also, you know, someone like Michael Saylor has, on public record, been critical about
- 30:15the use of Bitcoin for payments.
- 30:16There was some interview that he did with CNBC in 2024, I believe it was, where the
- 30:22host asked him, you know, does Bitcoin need to be used as currency to be successful?
- 30:29And he described it as like, you know, that was a misfortunate history of, you know, Bitcoin's narrative. And, you know, it's controversial, you know, that's controversial. But, you know, Bitcoin is, you know, digital real estate in cyberspace or, you know, in Manhattan.
- 30:44You know, it's like, that's where I view, you know, I put these things together and I say, hey, it's confusing people about the nature of Bitcoin. That's slowing people's understanding of it. And if you have an incentive for Bitcoin not to be used as money, and you have a view that this is controversial, are your incentives actually aligned with, you know, Bitcoin and your shareholder base? Like, that's what I see to be more problematic.
- 31:12it's interesting that um like bitcoin i think last cycle from bottom to top did something like
- 31:18a 7x and people are still not seeing it as volatile enough and are trying to chase additional
- 31:23leverage with with things like um these treasury companies but how do you try and explain to people
- 31:28that the asymmetry and just owning actual bitcoin is still there because of how few people understand
- 31:34And, you know, like by whatever metric you want to look at, I would say a conservative estimate is still 1%.
- 31:45You know, no more than 1% of people understand Bitcoin.
- 31:48Now, if you are confusing the nature of what Bitcoin is and how Bitcoin adoption increases and that it is money and that 100% of the world needs money and money is this very unique economic good that is differentiated from all other goods.
- 32:04and it's a basic necessity, not a luxury,
- 32:08that then it becomes easy to say,
- 32:10okay, well, if the end game is 100% of people
- 32:12buying Bitcoin and no more than 1% of people understand it,
- 32:17and you can look at the value of Bitcoin
- 32:18relative to all the market of financial assets,
- 32:25so first the market of money,
- 32:26in its broadest sense, something like 100 to 120 trillion.
- 32:30Bitcoin is roughly 1.2 to 1.3 trillion today.
- 32:34That's asymmetric if you look at the fact that I think only two of the companies in the S&P 500 own Bitcoin, Square, Tesla.
- 32:45There are other companies that have holdings, but I don't think on a primary basis.
- 32:50Goldman might have some of the ETF for their customers, but from my understanding, if you think about holding on a direct basis,
- 32:58again, I'm just looking for benchmarks that say that one out of a hundred number is conservative.
- 33:03that you can look at a number of different points and say,
- 33:06okay, well, if what's actually happening here
- 33:09is that the world's adopting a new form of money
- 33:11and they're adopting Bitcoin
- 33:12because it has a credibly enforced fixed supply,
- 33:14100% of people are going to need it
- 33:16and very few people understand it
- 33:18and they're about to have to print a lot more money,
- 33:20then there's a lot of asymmetry left inherently there.
- 33:26If you start to think about it as digital capital,
- 33:29I don't even know, like if I was to ask you,
- 33:31what does digital capital actually mean?
- 33:34I don't know.
- 33:35But I don't understand a lot of his analogies.
- 33:38Yeah.
- 33:39I don't know if that's what I've done.
- 33:40Imagine trying to explain the narrative,
- 33:45you know, like the fundamental demand for Bitcoin.
- 33:49And if someone was like, well, what is digital capital?
- 33:52And you're like, I don't think most of the shareholders.
- 33:56They're like, oh, it's something you can borrow against.
- 33:58It's collateral.
- 33:59So everyone's borrowing against this thing.
- 34:01but what is the thing?
- 34:04Why are they able to borrow?
- 34:05Well, because it's scarce,
- 34:08but it's zeros and ones.
- 34:10So everyone's just holding the zeros and ones,
- 34:15but borrowing against it for other money.
- 34:20How does this work?
- 34:24And so it might become more difficult
- 34:28to think about the asymmetry of it
- 34:31if you're not thinking about it in the context of money.
- 34:33And it's like when Michael Saylor came to understand Bitcoin,
- 34:36he read the Bitcoin standard, right?
- 34:39So it's like for one side of the shareholder base,
- 34:44they're saying, oh, Bitcoin's not volatile enough.
- 34:47You need more volatility.
- 34:49And then the other side's like, oh, but for the 99% of you,
- 34:51it's too volatile for you just by my digital preferred equity.
- 34:57and um and so i think that like when you're stuck in that um financialized mentality that um that it
- 35:09might be difficult to see asymmetry because you're missing something fundamental about bitcoin
- 35:13and i do think and not to everyone because i know people who are you know really you know
- 35:19long-time bitcoiners that have started to allocate money to these bitcoin treasury companies so they
- 35:24they clearly get Bitcoin.
- 35:26I think they might just be wanting to gamble.
- 35:28They like gambling or something.
- 35:29Yeah.
- 35:31But,
- 35:32but a lot of other people came to Bitcoin by way of these.
- 35:36They caught enough signal to,
- 35:37to understand that there is financial upside to Bitcoin.
- 35:42And it's something that they want to own with it.
- 35:43Never actually having rabbit hole,
- 35:44but and do have a very limited surface level understanding.
- 35:48And those people are going to rabbit hole Bitcoin when the,
- 35:53you know,
- 35:53When the premium flips to a discount, they realize that the narrative was wrong, but they were so close to being on the signal and that will be an unlock. So that's where I say, you know, everything's good for Bitcoin. You know, the treasury companies don't have to fail for people to, for their stock to go up in fiat, for people to have, you know, inevitably gotten less Bitcoin as a result versus the very, you know, early minority of people that were in it before.
- 36:23it started to get heavily diluted and traded at material premium.
- 36:29But, you know, it's like money is money.
- 36:32There's fundamental truth that exists in the world
- 36:35and people will figure it out
- 36:36because you can only solve the problem of fiat money
- 36:41with another better form of money and that's Bitcoin.
- 36:43Do you want to pay less in taxes and stack more Bitcoin?
- 36:46Of course you do.
- 36:47Well, by mining Bitcoin with Blockway, you can.
- 36:50Under section 168K of the US tax code,
- 36:52Bitcoin mining servers qualify for 100% bonus depreciation.
- 36:56This means every dollar you spend on miners
- 36:58can directly offset your income in a single year.
- 37:00And it's true for both business owners and W2 earners.
- 37:03So if you have $100,000 in ordinary income,
- 37:06you can purchase $100,000 in miners
- 37:07and potentially offset your tax liability entirely.
- 37:11Blockware's mining as a service does all the heavy lifting.
- 37:13They secure the rigs, they source the low-cost power,
- 37:16and they handle all the day-to-day maintenance.
- 37:18So you get to stack Bitcoin every single day
- 37:20while drastically shrinking your tax bill.
- 37:22Get started today at blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD and use code WBD for $100 off your first miner.
- 37:29That's blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD.
- 37:33You wouldn't reuse a Bitcoin address, so why does your phone broadcast the same identifier for life?
- 37:38Every SIM has a static ID and carriers, ad networks and bad actors all use it to track you.
- 37:43The big carriers have been caught selling that data over and over again.
- 37:47Cape is America's privacy first mobile carrier.
- 37:49Their identifier rotation feature changes your ID every 24 hours
- 37:53so you look like a different subscriber every single day.
- 37:56And sim swaps are off the table.
- 37:58Your number can't move without a 24-word phrase that only you hold.
- 38:02There's also no name at sign up, no social security number,
- 38:05and there's no profile to build on you.
- 38:07If you're a Bitcoiner in America,
- 38:08I honestly don't know why you'd use any other network.
- 38:11You can head over to cape.co forward slash WBD
- 38:14and use the code WBD for 33% off your first six months.
- 38:17that's c-a-p-e dot co forward slash w-b-d if you're already self-custody bitcoin you know the
- 38:24deal with hardware wallets complex setups clumsy interfaces and a seed phrase that can be lost
- 38:29stolen or forgotten bitkey fixes that bitkey self-custody built for real life it gives you
- 38:35an intuitive easy to use wallet with no seed phrase to sweat over and it has a strong recovery
- 38:39system and built-in inheritance for long-term peace of mind and bitkey's just had a massive
- 38:43upgrade. The new device now has a screen. So before you approve something, you can check it
- 38:48on the BitKey itself. The transaction, the address, or any account changes. It's a big difference.
- 38:53You're not just trusting what's on your phone. You're seeing it for yourself on the device.
- 38:57It simple secure self without the stress Go to bitkey today and use the code WBD to get 10 off the new bitkey that bitkey and use the code wbd so if one you think one in a hundred people
- 39:11understand bitcoin i think that's probably a fair number in terms of understand i think maybe
- 39:16more people would have some kind of x exposure to it um but i would say no more than one in a hundred
- 39:22people actually understand what bitcoin is what do you think the milestone we need to reach is
- 39:26to sort of move us from, I guess that's like the, when do we go from gradually to suddenly?
- 39:30Like how many people need to understand Bitcoin for us to reach that sort of escape velocity?
- 39:35I would expect that it's something like three to 5% of people.
- 39:39As low as that?
- 39:41Yeah. But I also don't believe that, you know, I anchor people to 1% because your question was,
- 39:48you know, is there still asymmetry in Bitcoin? And if you understand,
- 39:56If you come to understand the nature of Bitcoin as money and the importance of its fixed supply and that everybody needs Bitcoin and economic systems do converge on one form of money and it's not random that everyone in the US uses dollars.
- 40:09It's not random that everyone in Europe uses euros and yen in Japan and it's also not random that the gold standard existed.
- 40:16then you start to be, if you're at 1%,
- 40:19then you start to conceptualize that it's,
- 40:21you know, 1 to 100 asymmetric.
- 40:28But from a practical perspective,
- 40:30we're not, like, there are not 1%,
- 40:34there are not 80 million people in the world
- 40:36that really grok Bitcoin.
- 40:41No.
- 40:41No.
- 40:41um and so if it's something smaller than that you know which it which it is it's like if if 80
- 40:52million people in the world really understood bitcoin the bitcoin price wouldn't be where it is
- 40:58and uh because those 80 million people would be you know ceos of fortune 500 companies and you
- 41:09They have access to more information, more ability to adopt.
- 41:15It's probably less than 5 million people.
- 41:18Yeah.
- 41:19I would guess if it was 5 million people, the Bitcoin conference wouldn't have to appeal to altcoins and have 15,000 people out.
- 41:34It's still early, very early.
- 41:36And so when I think about three to 5%, I think about it from the perspective of who are those people, you know, like, because if it's more people like Michael Saylor, more people like, you know, Ross Stevens, the founder of Stone Ridge, if it's, you know, people who run companies, their spheres of influence in terms of just the people immediately around them that
- 42:06catch on to their signal,
- 42:10that if it's one in 20 people,
- 42:15if one in 20 people really rocked Bitcoin,
- 42:20that would be 400 million people, right?
- 42:25If I'm doing my math right,
- 42:278 billion, 80 million times five, right?
- 42:32That Bitcoin becomes very easy to see
- 42:35in that world.
- 42:37Like in terms of like,
- 42:39you're still a little bit crazy
- 42:40if you're the person in your circle
- 42:42that has had enough vision
- 42:44to see how Bitcoin goes
- 42:45from where it is today
- 42:46to a fully functioning money system
- 42:50that's being used
- 42:51to facilitate transactions
- 42:52for day-to-day commerce.
- 42:56And once enough people
- 42:58have figured it out,
- 43:00then it will be like a rush to the exit.
- 43:03It will likely coincide with fiat.
- 43:05hyperinflation um where where people won't be sitting around saying you know what's the benefit
- 43:13of investing in a bitcoin treasury company or not and thinking in you know fiat kegers
- 43:19they're going to be flooding to the only form of money that's holding its value um and so um you
- 43:27know another way i would look at it though is similar to when a when a currency hyperinflates
- 43:34like the Argentine peso or the Turkish lira
- 43:39or Venezuelan Boulevard,
- 43:43it wasn't because 50% of the people figured out
- 43:48that the money is not working.
- 43:50The smaller group of people figured it out,
- 43:53headed for the exits,
- 43:54and then the rest of the people figured out
- 43:56what's going on as a function of it.
- 43:58So that's what I viewed to be more likely.
- 44:01but it's also part of the reason why you know on the treasury companies i do think there's
- 44:07something about the treasury companies that just confuses a lot of people about bitcoin not just
- 44:11about what they you know how they talk about bitcoin and that that confuses them but like
- 44:16the idea of like but you buy you you know someone lends money to you and you buy bitcoin and
- 44:22you know what's the risk that you blow up even if i don't think that they'll blow up
- 44:26but I also think
- 44:29that they're adversarial
- 44:30and they're not all adversarial
- 44:32and maybe adversarial is a strong word
- 44:34but to talk about
- 44:37Bitcoin payments
- 44:38where it's not just like a meme
- 44:39like don't spend your Bitcoin
- 44:40like I understand those people
- 44:41but it's a difference to say
- 44:43like you know
- 44:43don't spend your Bitcoin
- 44:44to saying that
- 44:45Bitcoin payments
- 44:47is a misfortunate
- 44:49unfortunate part of
- 44:50you know
- 44:51the historical narrative
- 44:52and to be antagonistic
- 44:54to the use of Bitcoin as payments
- 44:56because that is a necessary part of the end game.
- 45:00If you hear someone like Jack Dorsey talk about it,
- 45:02where he says Bitcoin needs to be everyday money to work,
- 45:08to be successful.
- 45:09Now, that doesn't mean that everybody needs to be paying for things in Bitcoin today,
- 45:11but as an end state or an end game,
- 45:15that needs to be the end game
- 45:18because otherwise, if Bitcoin was just locked up
- 45:21in a relatively few large institutions,
- 45:23it would be so centralized that it would not be resistant to censorship.
- 45:27If it's not resistant to censorship, then the whole exercise is moot.
- 45:35If it's not resistant to censorship, you've just recreated the fiat system.
- 45:41If you can censor Bitcoin, it's too centralized to not be resistant to it.
- 45:47You can alter one rule, you can functionally alter other rules like the fixed supply.
- 45:51and so
- 45:52but where I'm going
- 45:54is that
- 45:54my view of it is
- 45:57and again
- 45:58I'm working on
- 45:58Bitcoin payments
- 45:59but I'm also doing that
- 46:00for logical reasons
- 46:01it's part of the reason
- 46:02why you know
- 46:02I see this as problematic
- 46:04but
- 46:05the vast majority
- 46:06of people
- 46:07are going to start
- 46:08to understand
- 46:08Bitcoin as money
- 46:09as they see it
- 46:10being used as money
- 46:11and so
- 46:12if you are
- 46:13if your position
- 46:16as a company
- 46:16is antagonistic
- 46:17to that
- 46:18I view it as problematic
- 46:19to
- 46:20to
- 46:21the future adoption of Bitcoin to working. And because for some people, only a certain number
- 46:28of people in the world will be able to sit down, read a book, listen to a podcast,
- 46:33see this very esoteric thing and be like, ah, yep, this is where the world's going. I'm going
- 46:37to buy Bitcoin today with the idea that everyone else is going to come to a similar conclusion that
- 46:42this is the best form of money. But when you can go down the street in Austin, Texas on a square
- 46:47terminal by beef for Bitcoin and eggs for Bitcoin and sourdough bread for Bitcoin, that for the
- 46:54person that doesn't have enough vision and not in a critical way, but just in a very logical way,
- 46:59be like, hey, it's hard for somebody to understand Bitcoin as money when it's not using money. Well,
- 47:05when they see it capable of being used as money, that is an unlock. It closes the mental loop.
- 47:12It's like, okay, I'm not using Bitcoin as money, but you can. And I'm now going to evaluate this in the context of all this other intellectual kind of thought process or logic about why somebody created Bitcoin to be this form of money that has this fixed supply and that it was expressly created because of all the trust that you had to put in banks and that trust had been broken.
- 47:39central banks creating money, quantitative easing, banks creating credit bubbles, everything.
- 47:45But if you don't have that being used, or if you're actively working to constrain that,
- 47:49that that is something that is in opposition to a wave of people that would start to turn on to it,
- 47:59turning on. You know, now Square do Bitcoin payments. What percentage of your payments
- 48:03that you're making, things you're buying is in Bitcoin? Because for me, like basically the only
- 48:07time i ever actually use bitcoin as money is around bitcoin events and bitcoin conferences
- 48:11because otherwise i just don't really have an opportunity to um i mean it's still low right
- 48:16but uh in terms of uh percent it's greater in number of payments smaller in um absolute value
- 48:26i'd say but like um my local grocer accepts bitcoin the uh the woman who cuts my hair
- 48:35she was already on Square
- 48:37so she now accepts Bitcoin
- 48:40it was her first Bitcoin
- 48:41you know
- 48:44so
- 48:44again when you think about it
- 48:48again
- 48:50it's a microcosm but
- 48:52a woman who had never bought Bitcoin
- 48:54I've been going to the same woman for 8 years
- 48:56okay
- 48:57since I moved back to Austin
- 49:00great lady
- 49:01super based
- 49:03and
- 49:05she the first bitcoin that she ever got was after square turned on bitcoin payments and i paid her
- 49:13in bitcoin that's cool that she had every opportunity i've been talking to her about
- 49:18bitcoin for eight years right but it was square turning the ability to accept bitcoin on and she
- 49:26was like yeah sure like that for whatever reason super easy for her you know going to an exchange
- 49:34wasn't.
- 49:39And so I do think it's a critical part.
- 49:42And one of the other things that occurred in my
- 49:45flippening on the Bitcoin treasury companies was like,
- 49:50we turned Bitcoin into money.
- 49:54Digital credit is the most important inflection
- 49:56in the history of Bitcoin.
- 49:59Credit on Bitcoin is bigger than lightning
- 50:01or multi-sig.
- 50:05That is implicitly the comment.
- 50:10But then Saylor also made a comment
- 50:12about how what was happening
- 50:13with the preferred stock of Strive
- 50:16was the most interesting thing
- 50:20happening in Bitcoin at the time.
- 50:23It was happening at a time
- 50:26where Square was rolling out
- 50:27Bitcoin payments to 4 million merchants.
- 50:31Yeah, crazy.
- 50:32What are we talking about?
- 50:35And so I don't think like Sailor's bad.
- 50:38You know, it's like, I wish that like 2020 Sailor would come back.
- 50:42Yeah.
- 50:43You know?
- 50:43That's exactly where I'm at.
- 50:44He's in there.
- 50:45He's in there.
- 50:46Like there was a podcast.
- 50:47I don't know if you were a part of it, but there was a podcast that he did with Eric
- 50:54Kaysen and John Ballas.
- 50:57Oh, Mr. Yeah.
- 50:58And HODL.
- 50:59It was a HODL.
- 51:00but like when you when you listen to it it's like man this guy gets like the fundamental
- 51:05importance of bitcoin and i'm like where's that guy he's in 100 he's in there i want to see him
- 51:11come back too yeah um i think he might be gone though um i think you know when you talk you do
- 51:17i hope so um you know when you talk about this like any state of bitcoin this bitcoin is hope
- 51:23um we hope he comes back yeah you know when you talk about like this end state of bitcoin this
- 51:28type of Bitcoinized world, however you want to call it. Do you think that Bitcoin is the global
- 51:34reserve currency? It's used in every single payment by every single person? Because there's
- 51:39this like growing idea that Bitcoin won't step into that role and instead will be the global
- 51:44reserve asset and will still have some like USDT stable coin type payment rails.
- 51:50No, Bitcoin will be the reserve currency. I think like there's two things that I think confuse
- 51:55people. They refer to
- 51:57a reserve asset versus a reserve
- 51:59currency, and when they're doing that,
- 52:01they're kind of like...
- 52:03The real
- 52:04Realistically, maybe conflating is the wrong term, but they look at the treasury as a treasury bill as a reserve asset and the dollar as a reserve currency.
- 52:17But the dollar is money and a treasury is a claim on future dollars at some future point in time.
- 52:26and if the dollar held its value rather than degraded in value then why would they need to
- 52:36buy the treasury right um so it's like hey they know the dollar is losing value the treasury
- 52:42is functionally speaking guaranteed by the u.s government so i'll i'll own the treasury because
- 52:49it's going to give me some nominal yield which is better than just holding the dollar
- 52:54but a large function of it is
- 52:57created by the decline in the dollar.
- 53:02And so it's like money is both an asset
- 53:04and a currency. Not all assets are money
- 53:08but money is an asset. It's not semantics.
- 53:12It's like the thing that makes money money is unique to it
- 53:15and the other assets don't have the
- 53:18properties that could allow it to be that thing.
- 53:21And so I do think that there's going to be an inclination to try to force Bitcoin into a box that says, oh, you have to use this fiat stablecoin and there's going to be Bitcoin and the institutions.
- 53:38That's part of what I see being problematic.
- 53:42Now, the economic gravity of Bitcoin will dictate that it will break through those barriers as well.
- 53:53But that doesn't mean that everybody, first people through the door aren't caught up in the crossfire.
- 54:00But the reason why, so one, it's just like a currency is an asset.
- 54:05Now, Bitcoin is unique in the history of money because it is a form of money that is both functional as money and as a currency.
- 54:14And, you know, for the longest time, I didn't really appreciate the distinction of when people were differentiated between money as currency.
- 54:20If you ask somebody about the dollar, they'd be like, is the dollar money or currency?
- 54:25They would probably look at you sideways like, what are you talking about?
- 54:29Because they sound like the same thing.
- 54:31Right, because they think of them the same thing.
- 54:32It's like money's currency, currency's money.
- 54:35Well, if gold was money, gold needed to be refined into a currency to have the utility in trade.
- 54:45You had to set a standard.
- 54:45You need to turn into coins.
- 54:47You had to turn into coins into a standard unit.
- 54:51The idea of one ounce needed to be standardized.
- 54:54Gold, the element on its own is just an element.
- 54:59putting it into a standard unit putting the stamp of a crown you know having a currency issuer that
- 55:06is turning into the coin ensuring that there isn't counterfeit out there was a functional part of the
- 55:14the role of the currency issuer relative to the money that there actually was a distinction and
- 55:19in the entire history of commodity metals that has that has functionally been the case and like a
- 55:27a gold bar that doesn't have the mark of a crown on it to this day
- 55:32is considered different, is not considered to be currency.
- 55:36That's why they call it bullion.
- 55:38Now, Bitcoin is unique because not only does it have this fixed supply
- 55:44and it has these monetary properties,
- 55:47but the Bitcoin network does,
- 55:51and I'm not distinguishing between Bitcoin, the asset, and Bitcoin,
- 55:54the network, I put those two things as one.
- 55:55The network is not valuable without the currency. The currency is dependent on having these nodes to be able to transmit money in the system to have final settlement. But Bitcoin in its totality issues the money, verifies all transactions, and has a standard unit baked in. You don't need someone to create one ounce of gold. You have one Satoshi.
- 56:23and so for the first time a form of money can be a currency as well bitcoin because the bitcoin
- 56:32network is capable of doing all of the things that a currency issuer was previously necessary for
- 56:37to refine money into something that was a utility in trade um so it doesn't need the issuer
- 56:46that's like the fundamental aspect of Bitcoin
- 56:50then when it comes to well
- 56:52yeah there are going to be people who want to put Bitcoin
- 56:56sitting in a stablecoin wrapper
- 56:58and say that you have to use this or they might even just think it's a good idea
- 57:01that it's a good way to scale
- 57:04that there will be that inclination
- 57:06Tether's already started to buy Bitcoin
- 57:08they'll probably allocate more to Bitcoin over time
- 57:11but to a holder
- 57:15However, the economic incentives dictate, even if you are going to use a custodian, this isn't about purity. It's about pragmatism. That if you were going to use a custodian or not, that if you were going to use a custodian and somebody was like, hey, you're going to deposit your Bitcoin to my bank or my bank-like entity.
- 57:41and I'm going to give you a note back
- 57:44that's denominated in some other money, not Bitcoin.
- 57:49You'd be like, well, why do you need to do that?
- 57:51Why don't you just denominate it in Bitcoin?
- 57:54Denominate your liability to me, your obligation to me.
- 57:58Or more likely the incentives will dictate,
- 58:01hey, this is not a deposit.
- 58:03This is a bailment arrangement.
- 58:05Like you can't, legally, you can't take my money
- 58:09and give it to somebody else.
- 58:10But in either of those two scenarios, the bailment arrangement or the deposit arrangement, the economic incentive would dictate, like, just make it denominated in the currency that I'm giving you, not some other currency for which you're the issuer of that has a different denomination.
- 58:32right and if and if one bank wants to do that another bank is going to follow the economic
- 58:37incentive and say well i'll let's all you know whether it's a different bank or a different
- 58:43jurisdiction they would say like i'll let you you know i'll denominate my liability to you in bitcoin
- 58:49rather than some currency i just made up and said that you know my currency is convertible to you at you know 10 to one you like 20 to one which was like dollars to gold
- 59:00at least around, you know, 1920 or 1930.
- 59:04So you basically would have to make up some new currency supply,
- 59:07or even if you were issuing it one-to-one,
- 59:10like imagine like a tether to dollar,
- 59:13if you were to do that with Bitcoin,
- 59:14if it wasn't actually in Bitcoin, but was in, you know, BTC tether,
- 59:20It's not Bitcoin.
- 59:21You know, like your liability to me would be the currency and the gravitational force of the economic incentive would just be like, well, it's all the same to you.
- 59:31Like just denominate your liability in Bitcoin, you know, and if you won't, I'll go find someone that does.
- 59:38And so for that reason, Bitcoin will just be the reserve currency.
- 59:45There's no – the network's capable of doing all the functions of a currency issuer.
- 59:52It's technically not needed.
- 59:53All it's introducing would be introducing greater economic friction.
- 59:58And that also aligns with the incentive of the individual on the other side.
- 1:00:03And so people will try to do dumb things.
- 1:00:08Don't get me wrong.
- 1:00:09um but at the end of the day all of the incentives are like squarely real behind you know you central
- 1:00:18bank hold bitcoin or you you government of country xyz hold bitcoin you individual in america just
- 1:00:25hold bitcoin or hold it with a bank that denominates in bitcoin um and so i've got like one
- 1:00:31bit of keynesian brain rot that i can't get rid of which is what credit looks like in a fully
- 1:00:36Bitcoinized world. Because I understand the positives of it are that if we live in Bitcoin,
- 1:00:44I'm denominating, any credit that I give is denominated in Bitcoin. That gets rid of so
- 1:00:49much malinvestment. But does it also slow investment to the point where it's much harder
- 1:00:54to build new things? No, not in my view. I think that deflation,
- 1:01:03if you think about it as a concept,
- 1:01:07because, and I'm not suggesting you're a Keynesian,
- 1:01:08but a lot of Keynesian struggle with this,
- 1:01:10is that if there is realized deflation,
- 1:01:14that is evidence of the fact
- 1:01:16that people are willing to sell their goods and service
- 1:01:18for less and less money.
- 1:01:21That they wouldn't do that
- 1:01:22if they didn't have an incentive to do that, right?
- 1:01:26And that there is nothing that precludes
- 1:01:30a fixed supply currency that is neutral with the creation of credit.
- 1:01:37All it eliminates, or the viability of credit for that matter,
- 1:01:42all it eliminates is the ability to bail out banks
- 1:01:45if banks lend money and can't return it to the depositors
- 1:01:53or then the shareholders after the depositors.
- 1:01:57and so the way that I think about it is
- 1:02:00and to compare with the fiat system
- 1:02:02because it is really difficult
- 1:02:04in the fiat brain world
- 1:02:07because the fiat world exists so far detached
- 1:02:11from any semblance of reality
- 1:02:13that like if the Fed system has
- 1:02:16six to seven trillion of base money
- 1:02:20in it right now
- 1:02:21there are like 105 trillion
- 1:02:25of dollar-denominated debt that exists.
- 1:02:29Like excluding, we're not talking about
- 1:02:31unfunded pension liabilities or derivatives,
- 1:02:34just government debt, state, local, federal,
- 1:02:39credit card debt, auto loans, student loans,
- 1:02:43mortgages, vanilla debt,
- 1:02:45things that are not preferred equity,
- 1:02:47things that have a fixed maturity
- 1:02:50and a fixed liability.
- 1:02:52well how in the world
- 1:02:56could the credit system
- 1:02:59the amount of debt be 105
- 1:03:01but all the money that exists is only 6 or 7
- 1:03:04that functionally means that the same dollar
- 1:03:08has been lent out
- 1:03:1016, 17 times
- 1:03:15that
- 1:03:18But because that is the system that exists today, where the credit system is actually larger than the amount of money that exists, which only exists because the Fed introduced dollars and prevented the entire credit system from restructuring and shrinking for 50 years.
- 1:03:41like it was turbocharged at the time of the financial crisis and the credit creation has
- 1:03:46accelerated as a function of all the dollars that they put into the system in the great financial
- 1:03:50crisis and then again in 2020 but but they were doing the same thing functionally in the 80s 90s
- 1:03:57early 2000s before the financial crisis that the only way that that could get to that extreme of
- 1:04:04there being 15 times to 17 times the amount of debt than the money in a world where you can create
- 1:04:12money and bail bad debt out. So the way that I see the Bitcoin world working is there's 21 million
- 1:04:20Bitcoin. All Bitcoin are always being saved by everybody. And some of those people are going to
- 1:04:27be 70 years old, 80 years old, 90 years old. Some of them are going to be 20 years old coming into
- 1:04:33the economy and they don't have any money and they're working. Well, in that world where everyone's
- 1:04:37on a Bitcoin standard, the opportunity for Bitcoin to increase by a factor of 10 when everybody's
- 1:04:43in this world, Bitcoin's the pricing mechanism. You're not just paying for things in Bitcoin.
- 1:04:49The ribeye is priced in Bitcoin or sats. The gas at the gas station is priced in sats.
- 1:04:55You're not thinking about a fiat price of Bitcoin. Well, in that world, Bitcoin's going to be,
- 1:05:01you know in a year it might lose a percentage or two if there's some contraction in the economy
- 1:05:07but more likely as it's going to be increasing in purchasing power as um as productivity
- 1:05:15increases as people are willing to sell the same good for less money because they're able to
- 1:05:21produce it more efficiently at less cost you know that's like saying like you know back when i was a
- 1:05:28child or a young adult when a beer was a dollar, say, rather than $8 today or whatever it is.
- 1:05:37It like a beer going from a dollar to 99 cents the next year Well in that world where money is appreciating and say that if there 21 million Bitcoin
- 1:05:53the amount of Bitcoin that's lent out
- 1:05:56is likely going to be a fraction of the 21 million.
- 1:06:00So let's say that 10% of the Bitcoin are lent out,
- 1:06:03but not like lent out to do some trading scheme.
- 1:06:06It's like, hey, I'm going to lend you this money
- 1:06:08and you go build a building,
- 1:06:11start a business,
- 1:06:11a business, whatever.
- 1:06:13Well, if 10% of Bitcoin are lent out,
- 1:06:17say 2.1 million,
- 1:06:21and I know there are lost coins,
- 1:06:22but let's just use the example.
- 1:06:24Well, the 21 million minus 2.1,
- 1:06:28the 18.9 million,
- 1:06:32that's the market of growth
- 1:06:33of who you're serving with that business.
- 1:06:36And so, yeah, Bitcoin's,
- 1:06:38you know, would be appreciating by productivity gains, but, and some businesses would fail and
- 1:06:44not be able to, you know, repay loans similar to how it existed on a gold standard, right?
- 1:06:49Not all loans were repaid, um, but economic activity flourished. So, um, now would there
- 1:06:57be a world where like you had 21 million Bitcoin and the amount of debt in the system was 200
- 1:07:03million Bitcoin? No, because the businesses that have those loans would fail and there couldn't
- 1:07:11be any bailouts. But it's not hard to imagine if you're thinking in that Bitcoin-denominated world
- 1:07:17and seeing the credit system as going back to its utility of productive capital formation,
- 1:07:25like actual capital, building a plant, building a manufacturing facility,
- 1:07:30building telecom infrastructure, or building satellites, whatever people are building,
- 1:07:37that if the amount of debt that exists is a fraction of the total supply,
- 1:07:43that your growth of that money base that's lent is all the other Bitcoin.
- 1:07:49because you're doing it, you know, you're speculating in some business to drive growth.
- 1:07:56And the rate of interest would likely be, you know, the way it used to work was that,
- 1:08:01you know, if the economy was growing at 8%, say if productivity gains were 8%,
- 1:08:06then like the most secure loan would be, you know, something underneath the rate of growth of the economic system.
- 1:08:13and that it all would be in harmony in that world.
- 1:08:19So I don't know if that helps from a context
- 1:08:22to see how, you know.
- 1:08:24No, it definitely helps.
- 1:08:26This is an impossible question to answer
- 1:08:27and I always ask it to you,
- 1:08:29but when do you think we do go from the gradually
- 1:08:32to the suddenly and end up in this world you're talking about?
- 1:08:34Do you think it'll be in our lifetime?
- 1:08:36Yeah, I hope it.
- 1:08:37I mean, like, hope, you know,
- 1:08:39we could get hit by a bus tomorrow.
- 1:08:41hopefully that doesn't happen but we if we live to the average lifespan of you know people in our
- 1:08:50countries it will be in our lifetime i don't know exactly you know there might be a lot of pain that
- 1:08:54happens along the way as fiat hyper inflates i don't view it as we're just gonna seamlessly
- 1:09:03transition from a world of excess and a bunch of zombie companies and a bunch of bad debts
- 1:09:09to a Bitcoin standard
- 1:09:12without economic volatility and dislocations.
- 1:09:18But yeah, I mean,
- 1:09:20I continue to believe that this is like a,
- 1:09:24you know, if we had this conversation two years ago,
- 1:09:27I would have said 10 years.
- 1:09:28If I'm, you know, keeping myself honest,
- 1:09:31I'll now say eight years
- 1:09:32because I would have said 10 years,
- 1:09:33but nothing's changed about that.
- 1:09:36And, you know, I added up to the amount of money
- 1:09:39that they're going to have to print the unsustainability of inflation as it exists today.
- 1:09:52Artificially manipulating interest rates higher doesn't make it cheaper to get oil out of
- 1:09:57the ground or to produce food.
- 1:10:00And so what people have found in the Keynesian view of economics, the raising of interest
- 1:10:07rates should have brought inflation down.
- 1:10:08And it might be bringing the price of houses down, but it doesn't make the production of any good cheaper. And the lion's share of people in the economic systems in the developed world are struggling to get by as it is.
- 1:10:26And so I don't know how with all the money that they're going to have to print to sustain the credit system, the fundamentals of Bitcoin being as strong as they've ever been in terms of like the amount of development that's happening at the wallet level, the multi-sig custody level, the payments level, the mining side.
- 1:10:50that, you know, now on the mining side,
- 1:10:54there is a big secular shift happening
- 1:10:55where a bunch of large miners that are unprofitable
- 1:10:59are pivoting to AI.
- 1:11:01But there's continuing to be innovation
- 1:11:04to drive the price of a hash down,
- 1:11:07which will, you know, ultimately drive the price
- 1:11:09of Bitcoin-denominated energy down.
- 1:11:11All of that, the fundamentals,
- 1:11:13it is, we might, I don't know if this was on,
- 1:11:16you know, we might have been talking about this
- 1:11:17off-screen before we came on,
- 1:11:18But it's like the sentiment has never been worse for my 10 years around Bitcoin.
- 1:11:25The fundamentals of Bitcoin have never been better.
- 1:11:28And those two things are true at the same time.
- 1:11:32And I think that there's also, in my view, there also never was an adoption wave since 2021.
- 1:11:39And the next one will be particularly large because of that.
- 1:11:43but that if Bitcoin increases,
- 1:11:48if adoption increases by 10 times,
- 1:11:51then Bitcoin is, you know,
- 1:11:5610 trillion to the,
- 1:11:59or 12 trillion to the broadest definition of dollars
- 1:12:02is like 25 trillion-ish today.
- 1:12:05If Bitcoin demand in the next eight years
- 1:12:08increases by 20 times,
- 1:12:10and I think about that in terms of like,
- 1:12:13If the number of people that actually understand Bitcoin is 0.1%,
- 1:12:16if that grows to 2% in the next year,
- 1:12:19what's more likely, that we get to 2% in the next eight years or not?
- 1:12:23And that they're going to have to print trillions upon trillions of dollars?
- 1:12:26That Bitcoin becomes in that time period,
- 1:12:30with two more halving events of the Bitcoin network continuing to enforce its fixed supply knowledge distributing at an accelerating pace the Bitcoin becomes as large or the clear second
- 1:12:44in terms of size of the currency system.
- 1:12:48And I don't mean by like a little spike up.
- 1:12:52I mean like at an equilibrium where I can hold a price like it's holding this price of
- 1:12:57you know 64k for a long period of time that um that wouldn't be when when it's clear that bitcoin
- 1:13:05is either the largest currency system in the world or the second largest that's where i think you see
- 1:13:10the um the wheels come off the fiat bus truly and and people instinctually move into bitcoin without
- 1:13:18having to have a intellectual conversation but um move into bitcoin to use bitcoin because it's the
- 1:13:24only form of money that's working, much like people pick up the telephone without thinking
- 1:13:29about it.
- 1:13:30I'm here for it, man.
- 1:13:31I hope we do see it in our lifetime.
- 1:13:34I'd be very disappointed if not.
- 1:13:35I hope this isn't like the quantum thing where it's always 10 years away.
- 1:13:39No, I mean, well, you know, quantum needs to achieve things that are theoretically possible
- 1:13:45and Bitcoin only has to do the exact same thing.
- 1:13:48I mean, realistically, more infrastructure needs to be built out.
- 1:13:52but from a fundamental of the validation
- 1:13:59of the base money
- 1:14:01and the enforcement of the fixed supply
- 1:14:03it doesn't have to do anything different.
- 1:14:06Yeah.
- 1:14:07To close out Parker
- 1:14:09you should tell everyone who's listening
- 1:14:10who wants to start taking Bitcoin as payments
- 1:14:12how they can find out about ZapRite.
- 1:14:14I use it every single month
- 1:14:16and it's fucking awesome.
- 1:14:17I was just going to ask for a testimonial.
- 1:14:19No, it makes my life so easy.
- 1:14:22I invoice everyone through ZapRite.
- 1:14:24I still don't do the discount in Bitcoin,
- 1:14:26but I need to do that.
- 1:14:27But everyone has the option to pay in Bitcoin.
- 1:14:28But what about for cheat code?
- 1:14:31Well, that actually worked really well
- 1:14:33because we had such a janky ticket setup
- 1:14:35the years before, before we used ZapRite,
- 1:14:37where people would have to pay with Bitcoin.
- 1:14:40We'd have to verify the transaction
- 1:14:41and go in and issue them a ticket.
- 1:14:43Using ZapRite was super straightforward.
- 1:14:45Awesome.
- 1:14:46And when we use it next year for cheat code,
- 1:14:49I mean, we did a discount for Bitcoin this time.
- 1:14:52And I think we're going to do something a little bit more interesting this year if we do cheat code.
- 1:14:56We've not quite announced it yet.
- 1:14:58Okay.
- 1:14:58Well, I hope it happens.
- 1:14:59I hope I can make it this year.
- 1:15:02Honestly, from my view in the States, it looks like a phenomenal event.
- 1:15:07But yeah, for anybody, whether it's a podcast, for people hosting Bitcoin events, we have a full ticket suite.
- 1:15:14I appreciate you plugging that.
- 1:15:16We love supporting you on that.
- 1:15:17But at ZapRite, we're bringing Bitcoin fiat into one platform.
- 1:15:23It's Bitcoin native.
- 1:15:25We meet everybody where they are.
- 1:15:27We support non-custodial solutions on both on-chain as well as Lightning, but we also have custodial solutions.
- 1:15:34And we're really just helping anybody.
- 1:15:36We really focus on people who already understand Bitcoin.
- 1:15:38and so I just encourage people that
- 1:15:41if they are running a business
- 1:15:43and they grok Bitcoin
- 1:15:45they understand why Bitcoin stores value
- 1:15:47that whether it's with ZapRite
- 1:15:50or somebody else
- 1:15:51it's like if people come through ZapRite
- 1:15:52and they're better off with Square
- 1:15:53given the nature of Square Suite
- 1:15:56and their type of business
- 1:15:56we send them straight to Square
- 1:15:57but my message to people is that
- 1:15:59if you understand Bitcoin
- 1:16:02and you're a key person
- 1:16:04in the operations of a business
- 1:16:06or if you own a business
- 1:16:07I would very much encourage you to evaluate your options in Bitcoin payments.
- 1:16:12We'd love to support you at ZapRite.
- 1:16:14If you go into zaprite.com, which is Z-A-P-R-I-T-E.com,
- 1:16:18and submit a contact form, I'd be the person that helps figure out
- 1:16:22if we're the right solution or help create a solution for you with us.
- 1:16:25We'd love to support you.
- 1:16:26We've got an API for custom-built websites.
- 1:16:29Our ticket solution is great that Danny uses.
- 1:16:31Invoices are a really popular tool.
- 1:16:34So, yeah, just chopping wood. And, you know, in my view, it's get back to basics that stacks, you know, stay humble and stack sats. I think Bitcoin is better than, you know, buying stock in a treasury company. And, you know, not everybody has to accept Bitcoin as payment today. Not everyone has to pay for their Bitcoin. If people only have 1% of their savings in Bitcoin, you got too much fiat, you need to keep rabbit holing Bitcoin.
- 1:16:58But that is also the light at the end of the tunnel.
- 1:17:01It's the end game.
- 1:17:02And so I encourage people that are further down their journey to put in the effort to make that investment and will pay off for people.
- 1:17:11The best thing about ZapRite is we had a little quirk when we were trying to launch the tickets and I emailed you and the fix was done overnight.
- 1:17:18So that's pretty good as well.
- 1:17:19That's the power of, you know, working with a Bitcoin company and we treat everybody with that same.
- 1:17:26It's like if there is an issue, we solve it, but it's also the beauty of AI.
- 1:17:31It's like everyone talks about AI and about how AI sucked the air out of the Bitcoin balloon.
- 1:17:37It's like, well, they solve two different problems.
- 1:17:38Bitcoin's money and AI needs money too.
- 1:17:42But it also accelerates the development of Bitcoin applications.
- 1:17:47And our team on the engineering side, Nate, our CTO, and all of our engineers have really leaned into that side.
- 1:17:52So we're able to really lock in and deliver high value features in a fast, efficient way.
- 1:18:01So our customers like you, Danny, are the best sources of feedback of what they need.
- 1:18:08Because if someone needs them like you, then 10 other customers do or 100 other customers do.
- 1:18:14So we appreciate getting that feedback.
- 1:18:16Yeah, it's awesome.
- 1:18:17If you run a business, check out Zapri.
- 1:18:19Thank you, Parker.
- 1:18:21Appreciate your time.
- 1:18:21we've got to do it again
- 1:18:23I'm going to come to Austin soon
- 1:18:24we're not the one in person
- 1:18:24in a long time
- 1:18:25yeah
- 1:18:25you come to Austin
- 1:18:26I'll get over to
- 1:18:28wherever you are
- 1:18:29whether it's at Cheat Code
- 1:18:30or you know
- 1:18:30further away
- 1:18:31across the world
- 1:18:32yeah Cheat Code
- 1:18:32next year
- 1:18:33I think we're going to do it
- 1:18:34but there'll probably be
- 1:18:35an announcement very soon
- 1:18:36well
- 1:18:37good luck to England tomorrow
- 1:18:39I think we're going to do it man
- 1:18:41did you see Spain
- 1:18:41just beat France
- 1:18:43I actually didn't
- 1:18:44I watched the first half
- 1:18:45so Spain beat France
- 1:18:47I think
- 1:18:48the only way
- 1:18:49we were ever going to win
- 1:18:49this World Cup
- 1:18:50is if Spain beat France.
- 1:18:52I don't think we could have beaten France,
- 1:18:53but I think we got a shot.
- 1:18:54Was it 1-0 or did they each end up getting-
- 1:18:572-0.
- 1:18:57Oh, well, okay.
- 1:18:58Yeah.
- 1:18:59So just Argentina's get through,
- 1:19:01but I think we're going to do it.
- 1:19:02All right.
- 1:19:03Fingers crossed.
- 1:19:03This might age like milk,
- 1:19:04but thank you, Parker.
- 1:19:05Keep my fingers crossed for you.
- 1:19:07See you, man.
- 1:19:08All right, see you.
- 1:19:20Thank you.