Latest / Simply Bitcoin / The clarity Act SABOTAGE is Happening RIGHT NOW! (YOU HAVE 24 HOURS LEFT) | EP 1503

Transcript

The clarity Act SABOTAGE is Happening RIGHT NOW! (YOU HAVE 24 HOURS LEFT) | EP 1503 · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:02
  We have a massive update today on the Clarity Act that
• 0:05
  literally shouldn't surprise you one bit.
• 0:08
  The Clarity Act markup bill came in finally was released
• 0:12
  yesterday, and tomorrow's the vote.
• 0:16
  And everyone basically thought it was a done deal until a new
• 0:21
  sabotage on the Clarity Act in the middle of the night was
• 0:25
  launched when we woke up to the news that the Democrats, and I'm
• 0:30
  not, I'm not like trying to make this partisan.
• 0:33
  This is literally what happened. The Democrats submitted 100
• 0:36
  amendments to the Clarity Act, and forty of those were written
• 0:40
  by Elizabeth Warren herself. But before we get into the doom
• 0:44
  and gloom and breakdown, what was actually what these
• 0:46
  amendments actually are? We got a more optimistic update
• 0:50
  from Brian Armstrong this morning reporting on the ground
• 0:53
  from Washington, DC. So I'll play that and then we'll
• 0:56
  break down on what this amendments is and whether it'll
• 1:00
  even pass at this point. So here's Brian Armstrong.
• 1:05
  Hey everyone, Brian Armstrong here.
• 1:07
  I'm back in the Senate Office building in DC in anticipation
• 1:10
  of crypto market structure legislation going to markup on
• 1:13
  Thursday, which would be a historic moment.
• 1:15
  And the energy here is, is just palpable.
• 1:18
  So First off, just want to say a big thank you to the Senate.
• 1:21
  And of course, there's staff who have been putting in countless
• 1:23
  hours to get this bill to a good place.
• 1:25
  I don't think it's ever been in a more strong position and more
• 1:28
  bipartisan position. And I also want to thank the 3.7
• 1:31
  million standard with crypto advocates who have made their
• 1:34
  voices heard to get this legislation to where it is
• 1:36
  today. Now, there were a number of open
• 1:39
  issues that have now made incredible progress.
• 1:42
  Stablecoin rewards was a big one.
• 1:44
  You know, I think there was a healthy compromise there,
• 1:46
  brokered by Senators Tillis and also Brooks.
• 1:49
  And, you know, it was a good compromise because both sides
• 1:51
  left a little bit unhappy, but at least we got to a place that
• 1:53
  we can all live with. And then, of course, the other
• 1:56
  issues which I mentioned in my ex post back in January that
• 1:59
  were problematic in the prior draft, things like Defy and
• 2:02
  tokenized equities and CFTC authority, these have all been
• 2:05
  improved and fixed from our point of view.
• 2:07
  And so the bill is stronger than ever.
• 2:09
  It's bipartisan, it's ready to go to markup, and I'm incredibly
• 2:13
  bullish on what this could mean for American innovation and
• 2:16
  ordinary Americans benefiting from this technology.
• 2:18
  So we'll keep you updated and keep fighting the good fight.
• 2:21
  Thanks. So like I said, that's the more
• 2:26
  optimistic view of what is going on today.
• 2:30
  Again, they did have until today to get these amendments through.
• 2:35
  They're going to, they're literally right now talking
• 2:38
  about the amendments, whether this they're going to get added
• 2:41
  to the markup bill and then the vote is tomorrow.
• 2:43
  So there's still some time on the clock, but it is definitely
• 2:47
  running very, very short here. And I think this next portion
• 2:53
  that is covered in the Bitcoin magazine article will really
• 2:56
  kind of show you what the stakes are and will it even get passed
• 3:01
  at this point? This is this is where it does
• 3:03
  get a little tricky, a little technical.
• 3:05
  But anyways, the headline is Senate crypto bill faces over
• 3:08
  100 amendments ahead of Thursday markup.
• 3:11
  Of course, the Senate crypto bill faces a high stakes markup
• 3:14
  this Thursday as lawmakers debate 100 plus amendment that
• 3:19
  could determine the future of US digital asset regulations.
• 3:22
  Obviously we all know we got the Senate Banking Committee markup
• 3:27
  bill late on. What was that Tuesday morning or
• 3:32
  Monday night came out around midnight and we covered it
• 3:35
  yesterday. Apparently all of us were
• 3:38
  looking at it. We we all basically got a clod
• 3:41
  summary. And then this morning, again
• 3:45
  late last night and this morning, we wake up to 100 plus
• 3:49
  new amendments coming in. And I do have a screenshot of
• 3:52
  most of these and some of them are a little interesting to say
• 3:57
  the least. OK.
• 3:58
  So anyways, Senate Banking committees have filed more than
• 4:01
  100 proposed amendments to the Digital Asset Market Clarity
• 4:04
  Act, according to political reporting.
• 4:06
  The panel is set to convene on Thursday to do the long-awaited
• 4:10
  market vote. The committee is scheduled
• 4:12
  today. So they're currently, I would
• 4:15
  say, in session right now. It started this morning at 10:30
• 4:19
  AM. And I'm guessing I, I haven't
• 4:22
  seen anything before I went live.
• 4:24
  So I'm guessing they're still deliberating right now on
• 4:26
  whether these amendments are going to get added, whether this
• 4:29
  is going to get voted on tomorrow anyways.
• 4:33
  Of course, the flood of filings follow a 309 page release and
• 4:38
  Senator Elizabeth Warren leaves the opposition push submitting
• 4:42
  more than 40 amendments alone, with the bulk of proposed
• 4:46
  changes coming from the Democratic members of the
• 4:48
  Banking Committee. Again, I then, but as we've been
• 4:54
  trying to say for a long time on the show, it is not the
• 4:59
  Democratic Party or any party at this point is not a monolithic
• 5:02
  entity. There are some good Democrats
• 5:05
  out there that are supporting the Clarity Act that are
• 5:07
  supporting, quote, digital assets.
• 5:09
  But we have seen a very worrying trend that for the longest time,
• 5:14
  the Democrats obviously do not want to see, quote, digital
• 5:18
  asset clarity happening as Nikka likes to make the cases because
• 5:22
  they really want to make a push for the CBDC.
• 5:25
  Well, there is some interesting amendments that I will cover in
• 5:28
  a minute anyways, the waves of filings and this is where it
• 5:31
  gets interesting, all right. This is where the conversation
• 5:35
  of will it even get past the vote tomorrow or maybe even
• 5:39
  worse, will it even go up for a vote tomorrow considering the
• 5:42
  amount of amendments is This does remind us of what happened
• 5:46
  in January when they ended the markup session because 137
• 5:51
  amendments at that time came in and the session was cancelled.
• 5:55
  Obviously, the resistance stopped the bill.
• 5:58
  Well, that's when we got the famous infamous, I guess video
• 6:02
  at this point of Brian Armstrong basically saying, hey, this bill
• 6:06
  as it stands, we are not going to back it.
• 6:09
  I'd rather have no bill than a bad bill.
• 6:12
  That was January 137. Amendments came in at basically
• 6:16
  right before the clock, you know, struck midnight almost
• 6:19
  literally and figuratively. And now we are seeing something
• 6:23
  similar, maybe it's not 137, but it's 100 plus amendment.
• 6:26
  So there is still I guess a very real possibility of there not
• 6:31
  even being a vote tomorrow considering or rather in
• 6:34
  consideration of what will happen today or what is
• 6:38
  happening currently as we speak. Now here is a little bit of a a
• 6:43
  broad breakdown. Again, I did find a couple
• 6:46
  screenshots of what is actually these amendments actually
• 6:49
  entail, but here it is. At the center of the dispute is
• 6:52
  how the bill handles stablecoin yield products.
• 6:54
  Again, the stablecoin yield has been the biggest push here.
• 6:59
  The banks are absolutely terrified of stable coin yield.
• 7:03
  And from a Bitcoiners perspective, it's like we don't
• 7:05
  even care about stable coin yield.
• 7:07
  Like how are we a risk to you guys?
• 7:10
  You guys have all the money. We're just trying to, and I
• 7:13
  guess by we, it's not even me, but the stable coin guys, it's
• 7:16
  like we're just trying to give back to the people that are
• 7:18
  holding stable coins. Maybe you guys from the banking
• 7:21
  perspective, banking lobbying group, the banks themselves,
• 7:23
  maybe you guys should give more interest to your clients here.
• 7:27
  Maybe competition will be good for the customer customer, but
• 7:30
  no, they want the regulatory MO anyways.
• 7:33
  The banking groups argue such crypto products AKA the
• 7:36
  stablecoin yields threaten traditional deposit bases and
• 7:39
  crypto firms are countering that reward program support,
• 7:42
  liquidity and customer activity without functioning as bank
• 7:46
  deposits. Now going further, we did cover
• 7:48
  this yesterday. Excuse me, hold on.
• 7:52
  The American Bankers Association sent more than 8000 letters to
• 7:56
  Senate offices since last Friday targeting the stablecoin yield
• 8:00
  compromise. That compromise, of course,
• 8:03
  reach after months of negotiation, prohibits
• 8:05
  stablecoin issues from paying interest or year to users who
• 8:09
  hold tokens passively, while preserving exceptions for
• 8:12
  rewards tied to genuine platform transactions and payment
• 8:15
  activity. We covered that yesterday.
• 8:17
  Anyways, there is obviously this huge conversation about the
• 8:21
  ethics of the bill and ethics provisions and this is where one
• 8:26
  of the other kind of broader strokes comes in.
• 8:30
  Senator Chris von Holland. Van Holland introduced a
• 8:33
  proposal that would prohibit senior government officials and
• 8:37
  their families from owning or promoting crypto related
• 8:39
  businesses, a demand Democrats say is non negotiable given
• 8:43
  President Trump's close ties to the crypto industry.
• 8:46
  Remember, I think it was Friday of last week or maybe it was
• 8:49
  Thursday. I was trolling and saying that
• 8:53
  now that Elizabeth Warren is trying to fight the Clarity Act,
• 8:55
  maybe I'm a little more bullish on the Clarity Act.
• 8:57
  And that's exactly what she said.
• 8:59
  She basically said if this bill does not stop the president from
• 9:04
  profiting off the crypto industry, then it's not worth
• 9:07
  the paper that is drafted on or the paper that the bill was
• 9:10
  written on. So we're seeing that the sable
• 9:13
  coin yield is still one of the big points of contention.
• 9:16
  And now it seems like the non negotiable is basically barring
• 9:20
  the at least from here, they're going to say the president, but
• 9:23
  barring Trump from profiting off the crypto industry, which
• 9:27
  honestly, I it's not, doesn't even sound that bad to be
• 9:32
  honest. I mean, you know, I was trolling
• 9:34
  yesterday. Was that yesterday?
• 9:35
  I think it was yesterday saying, you know, Elizabeth Warren is
• 9:38
  saying that Trump has only made $1.4 billion off crypto.
• 9:41
  I think the number's higher and closer to like 3 billion.
• 9:44
  At least that's what I've seen. That's the reporting that I've
• 9:47
  seen. Anyways, that's the broad
• 9:49
  strokes here. Let's look at the screenshot
• 9:52
  that's going around about the amendments to the Clarity Act of
• 9:55
  2025. Now, I'm not gonna read all of
• 9:58
  them. Some of them are just like
• 9:59
  grammar and wording and, you know, whatever we, we really are
• 10:04
  going to hone in on these. I think these are the yellow
• 10:07
  boxes of what Senator Elizabeth Warren amendments are.
• 10:12
  And there's two in particular that I think stick out.
• 10:15
  The other ones are a little, I guess, more boring.
• 10:19
  It doesn't make the headlines. It it's not the big news, it's
• 10:22
  not the spicy news here. But the very first one is in
• 10:26
  fact, probably the spiciest one. And then there's actually one in
• 10:30
  here from Elizabeth Warren that I that I do actually agree with,
• 10:34
  which, you know, hot take. But anyways, let's start with
• 10:36
  the first one. And here we go.
• 10:39
  The first one. Oh, I can't, I can't zoom in
• 10:42
  more. All right, anyways, first one
• 10:44
  under the yellow box it is and you can see up here sponsor and
• 10:48
  Co sponsor. So it goes 66.
• 10:51
  I'm guessing this is on or this is just #66 And it goes this
• 10:57
  amendment would require the Fed, OCC and the FDIC to release a
• 11:02
  bank supervisory information regarding Jeff Epstein and his
• 11:07
  Co conspirators. So she's doing an amendment
• 11:11
  because she doesn't want people to know the bank statements of
• 11:17
  Jeff Epstein and Co conspirators.
• 11:19
  And I'm pretty sure that was like not even a part of the
• 11:22
  conversation here. And she just so happens to
• 11:25
  inject that into this conversation.
• 11:28
  I don't know, sounds a little fishy to me.
• 11:30
  Anyways, the next one is this amendment would exempt certain
• 11:34
  software developers identified in the White House digital
• 11:36
  assets report and address vulnerabilities to protect
• 11:41
  national security. The third one, this amendment
• 11:44
  would say uniform expectations for the monitoring of blockchain
• 11:47
  to provide more information for the law for law enforcement.
• 11:51
  And then of course, you know, define financial institutions
• 11:54
  under anti mundane laundering, yada.
• 11:56
  Some defy stuff. Those ones, these these ones are
• 12:00
  a little more I would say vanilla here.
• 12:03
  The one that I do agree with here, which I am a little
• 12:06
  surprised to see this is 1 I could actually stand behind is
• 12:12
  #44 here the second one under this box and it goes this, this
• 12:16
  amendment would prohibit digital asset custodians from
• 12:18
  rehypothecating customer assets. Honestly, that's a good one.
• 12:23
  I, that's a great one. I'm totally behind that one.
• 12:27
  That one is great. The other two, it's like, OK, so
• 12:30
  she wants to add an amend mix so that they can, you know, get
• 12:34
  more information from us using a blockchain, I'm guessing using
• 12:37
  chain analysis of some sort. And then the first one is like,
• 12:41
  hey, yo, Elizabeth Warren, where'd this one come from?
• 12:44
  What? What are we talking about here?
• 12:45
  This one just came out of nowhere.
• 12:48
  And then there is one more. It's not from Senator Elizabeth
• 12:52
  Warren, but it is from Senator Haggerty, and it goes right
• 12:57
  here. One O 8 prohibits the issuance
• 12:59
  of a central bank digital currency.
• 13:01
  So it's not all bad. And some of these are more
• 13:04
  benign than others. But that first one is like the
• 13:09
  biggest, like, whoa, hey, what? What are we talking about here?
• 13:13
  Where'd that one come from? So as you can tell, and I have
• 13:17
  another attack, we are seeing a more coordinated effort, not
• 13:21
  just from the Senate Democrats on the Banking Committee, but
• 13:25
  there is one more attack that I do want to cover real quick,
• 13:28
  which I did cover yesterday on yesterday's show was one of the
• 13:32
  big kind of sticking points on this idea of protecting open
• 13:36
  source developers. Well, it looks like we are
• 13:38
  seeing an attack on that as well.
• 13:40
  But before I get to that, Nico, are we surprised with this last
• 13:48
  minute 100 amendments added to the Clarity Act?
• 13:51
  And are we surprised by that very first one?
• 13:53
  Like what? What's going on?
• 13:54
  I mean, I, I read you guys exactly what Elizabeth Warren
• 13:58
  said on yesterday's show. Like this is not surprising
• 14:01
  whatsoever. I told I, I mean, if you guys
• 14:04
  watched yesterday's show, none of this should be surprising to
• 14:08
  you. Like I told you guys very
• 14:10
  specifically why this is not monolithic.
• 14:13
  And I, again, I don't want to make this partisan, but it is
• 14:16
  what it is. Elizabeth Warren.
• 14:18
  They made, they made. It partisan.
• 14:20
  Warren is the head of the Senate Banking Committee.
• 14:22
  I actually had an interesting conversation with Arthur Hayes
• 14:25
  this morning. We're going to be releasing that
• 14:27
  tonight. But his take on it was very
• 14:32
  unique on how he approached it, right?
• 14:35
  He basically said, Arthur Hayes told me on the show, he told me
• 14:41
  that the Democrats weren't necessarily against the whole
• 14:46
  crypto industry. What happened?
• 14:48
  Was that their poster boy? Again, I'm quoting Arthur Hayes
• 14:51
  here. Their their poster boy.
• 14:55
  Sam, Sam Bankron Fried was donating to a lot of the
• 14:59
  Democrats. And when the whole FTX explosion
• 15:03
  happened, essentially they got a lot of pie on their face and in
• 15:08
  order to kind of salvage their political, you know,
• 15:11
  perspectives and political viewpoint.
• 15:13
  It was the first time I heard this.
• 15:14
  Guy that it that is interesting. It was very.
• 15:16
  Fascinating to me in order for them to salvage like their
• 15:20
  political optics, like how people look at them essentially
• 15:24
  what happened was that they did a 180 so they started attacking
• 15:29
  the crypto industry, the Bitcoin industry because their.
• 15:33
  Poster boy, they got their handcuffs.
• 15:36
  Who was donating specifically, not not only to Democrats, but
• 15:40
  mostly to Democrats, ended up being a scammer, right?
• 15:43
  And ended up hurting a lot of people.
• 15:45
  So they did this kind of like 180 to kind of save face.
• 15:49
  That was the first time I ever heard that perspective, and I
• 15:52
  think it's a very good perspective.
• 15:53
  Now, what is my perspective on this?
• 15:55
  The same perspective that I told you on yesterday show, which is
• 15:59
  I think fundamentally, if you look at Elizabeth Warren and if
• 16:03
  you look at what her vision of the future of money is, her
• 16:08
  vision of the future of money are central bank digital
• 16:12
  currencies, right? So if you combine those two
• 16:16
  things, right, the fact that the Democrats poster boy in the
• 16:20
  crypto industry ended up being a scammer and then they have to
• 16:23
  save face and then them wanting a central bank digital currency,
• 16:27
  Elizabeth Warren is on tape saying this.
• 16:31
  If you combine those two things, listen, they're you.
• 16:34
  And this is where the Trump administration really kind of
• 16:37
  sabotage themselves a little bit.
• 16:42
  It doesn't help that Trump was shilling meme coins because it's
• 16:48
  not that what Trump did was bad. I would say he's done more good
• 16:53
  for the entire industry than bad.
• 16:55
  Like the fact that he got Ross Albrecht free, the fact that he
• 17:00
  signed the strategic Bitcoin Reserve executive order, the
• 17:03
  fact that, you know, he, he's attempting to end Operation
• 17:08
  Choke point 2.0. I know a lot of people in the
• 17:09
  industry are saying it's not 100% done, but it it, it's
• 17:13
  definitely better than where we were before from a regulatory
• 17:16
  perspective, right? So the point that I'm trying to
• 17:20
  make is no Opti, this is not surprising whatsoever.
• 17:24
  We literally talked about this yesterday and I literally read
• 17:28
  you guys the letter that she wrote against this.
• 17:31
  So it doesn't surprise me. I still think that this thing is
• 17:34
  going to pass. It's up to 70.
• 17:35
  It's up to 70% on the no. I think it dropped.
• 17:38
  I think it, I think it's down to 60.
• 17:40
  I'm pretty sure it dropped overnight.
• 17:42
  Let me see, let me let me go get it.
• 17:44
  But I'm almost positive it dropped.
• 17:46
  I I think they have the votes. I think they have enough.
• 17:48
  It's at 62% right now. I think they have enough votes.
• 17:51
  Remember, they only need 7 Democratic senators.
• 17:54
  They don't need the majority, right?
• 17:56
  And Chuck Schumer, I believe, did signal that.
• 18:00
  And and and Chuck Schumer is this, he's the lead for the
• 18:03
  Senate Democrats. He did say specifically that,
• 18:09
  hey, look, he supports it. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:12
  I saw Rizzo post about it, but I didn't see who it was.
• 18:15
  Compromise. So just Elizabeth.
• 18:17
  Remember Elizabeth? I mean, wait, hold on, Chuck.
• 18:19
  If it was Chuck Schumer who said this, the quote I saw, he's
• 18:21
  like, we are not going to stop or delay the Clarity Act.
• 18:25
  Was that Chuck Schumer? OK, what?
• 18:27
  Interesting. Was positive things and and you
• 18:29
  guys have to like zoom out and look at the bigger picture.
• 18:32
  If you look at the genius act, remember Elizabeth Warren lost
• 18:38
  her mind when it came to the genius act.
• 18:40
  She was 100% against it as well, right?
• 18:44
  So it doesn't matter that Elizabeth Warren could be saying
• 18:47
  those things. What ultimately matters is do
• 18:51
  the Republicans have those seven Democratic votes and do are all
• 18:57
  the Republicans going to sign for the bill?
• 18:59
  Right. So you don't need the vast
• 19:02
  majority of Democrats to reach across the aisle.
• 19:04
  You just need a portion of them to reach across the aisle to
• 19:07
  support the bill. You need that 6th, that 60 vote
• 19:10
  threshold. That's all you need.
• 19:12
  If you pass that 60 vote threshold, the Clarity Act
• 19:14
  passes. Another thing that I wanted to
• 19:16
  say that Arthur Hayes told me was he told me something very
• 19:20
  similar that what Kent told me, which was he doesn't really.
• 19:25
  Believe but. He doesn't really believe it
• 19:26
  matters He's like, look, if you're a Bitcoin entrepreneur in
• 19:29
  the United States, which is exactly what Kent said, this is
• 19:32
  actually good for you, but you know from a regulatory
• 19:35
  perspective and all that stuff, but is it going to stop Bitcoin?
• 19:38
  No is it going to stop number go up?
• 19:40
  No, why? Because they're going to print
• 19:42
  more money and one of the things that and I and I tried to get
• 19:45
  more information out of Arthur and I was like, and I asked him
• 19:48
  a very simple question. I was like, so are you trying to
• 19:50
  tell me that bitcoins price is just completely correlated to,
• 19:54
  you know, the amount of money they printed?
• 19:56
  And he didn't even give context. He was just like, yes.
• 20:00
  And I and I kind of just like nodded my head and I was like,
• 20:03
  is that your answer? And he's like, yeah.
• 20:05
  And he just started laughing and he just started to like go down
• 20:09
  deeper down the rabbit hole. So from a if you're a Bitcoin
• 20:13
  entrepreneur in the United States and you're looking to
• 20:14
  build a Bitcoin business, is this bill important for you?
• 20:17
  Yes. Could this potentially be
• 20:19
  bullish from a number go up perspective?
• 20:22
  Because again, it gives clarity to institutions in the United
• 20:25
  States. Yes.
• 20:26
  Will this stop number go up? No.
• 20:28
  And again, he went down the historical perspective.
• 20:31
  He's like Nico, the biggest number go UPS that Bitcoin has
• 20:35
  had were under Obama, they were under Trump, they were under
• 20:39
  Biden. Like it doesn't matter who's
• 20:41
  president. The only thing that matters is
• 20:44
  our governments gonna continue to debase the currency and print
• 20:48
  money. If the answer is yes, then
• 20:50
  nothing stops this train. Bitcoin's gonna go up, right.
• 20:54
  So you just said it like that and I that was such a great way
• 20:57
  again. And if you're hearing it from
• 20:59
  multiple entrepreneurs, Kent, from successful entrepreneurs,
• 21:03
  Kent from SaaS mining, Arthur Hayes, who founded one of the
• 21:06
  largest, you know, Bitcoin slash crypto exchanges in the world,
• 21:10
  right? And they're both saying the same
• 21:12
  thing. I mean, nothing stops this
• 21:15
  train, bro. Nothing stops this train.
• 21:17
  That's my take. That's my take.
• 21:19
  You know, Nico, I, I know, I know.
• 21:22
  I always do this where I bring up old stuff on the show, but
• 21:26
  remember when we were doing the initial talks about President
• 21:31
  Trump and I did that one show, I was like, it doesn't matter who
• 21:34
  who becomes president, they're going to print money.
• 21:36
  And you, Loki freaked out on me, man, it feels good.
• 21:40
  We all knew this was going to happen eventually.
• 21:42
  We were going to get Nico to this side of the aisle, guys.
• 21:45
  It took us a while, but we collectively did it as a team
• 21:49
  here. I.
• 21:50
  Don't like, I don't like your vocabulary.
• 21:52
  I don't like your vocabulary on those words.
• 21:55
  Remember Opti gate guys? I just want to say remember Opti
• 22:00
  gate 1 and 2? I don't like your vocabulary
• 22:04
  that you use during those. Words.
• 22:06
  Vocabs #1 is we got Nico on this side of the we got him, we got
• 22:10
  him like, like politics, like hell no.
• 22:12
  It's high school. It's high school.
• 22:14
  On our side, better said. On our side of the football, OK,
• 22:17
  I would, I would appreciate. That guys, I brainwashed him
• 22:19
  slowly. That's what I'm saying.
• 22:21
  The other. Thing that you said is
• 22:22
  collectively. Yeah, I met me and the.
• 22:24
  Chat OK, All right. What?
• 22:27
  So collectively and other side of the aisle.
• 22:29
  OK, OK. Dude you're doing you're what is
• 22:33
  bro you're mainstream mediaing me right now this is this the
• 22:36
  gas going on the gas lighting is insane right now to the signal
• 22:41
  let's. Go back to the signal.
• 22:42
  Enough banter. Let's go back to the signal.
• 22:44
  What's? Going on Oh yeah.
• 22:45
  Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I almost forgot.
• 22:46
  I'm sorry. I, I was gloating a little bit.
• 22:48
  OK, so there is more, there is more to this.
• 22:54
  Here we go. So I told you that yesterday we
• 22:57
  covered the section in the Clarity Act that there was a lot
• 23:03
  of contention on whether this was actually going to help open
• 23:06
  source developers or not. There, there's still a debate on
• 23:09
  this. But what we have seen since we
• 23:12
  covered the show and thank you to our boys over at TFTC, they
• 23:17
  covered this and they are literally attacking that exact
• 23:21
  provision. So we have the Fraternal Order
• 23:23
  of Police, the largest law enforcement organization in the
• 23:25
  United States with over 382,000 members is opposing a key
• 23:29
  provision of the Clarity Act and a letter to Senate Banking
• 23:32
  Committee Chairman Tim Scott and ranking member Elizabeth Warren.
• 23:36
  There she comes up again. The FOP national President,
• 23:39
  Patrick Yoes said the organization quote strongly
• 23:43
  opposes Section 6 O four of the bill, which would exempt non
• 23:47
  controlling developers and providers from being classified
• 23:51
  as money transmitting businesses.
• 23:53
  The FOP argues this change would strip prosecutors and law
• 23:57
  enforcement of the statutes used to track and take down criminals
• 24:01
  using digital assets to commit crimes and would make it even
• 24:05
  easier for criminal organizations to profit from
• 24:07
  illegal activity. This is exactly the provision
• 24:10
  that matters most for open source developers.
• 24:13
  The same section the FOP wants removed is the one that would
• 24:16
  protect developers from being prosecuted for what their users
• 24:21
  do with their software. Without it, building privacy
• 24:24
  tools, non custodial wallet or mixing software could make a
• 24:27
  developer criminally liable under money transmission laws
• 24:30
  regardless of whether they ever touch a user's fund.
• 24:34
  The FOP says it supports the right to trade digital assets.
• 24:37
  It just wants to make sure law enforcement keeps the ability to
• 24:40
  prosecute the people who build the tools those assets move
• 24:43
  through. That distinction is the entire
• 24:46
  fight. So again, we brought this up, we
• 24:50
  brought this up as being one of the big contentions amongst the
• 24:53
  Bitcoin industry that we you know, we've we've kind of
• 24:56
  discussed the the verbiage of this, whether this would help
• 25:01
  the Samurai wallet devs that are currently in jail or any other
• 25:05
  current crypto Bitcoin prosecution.
• 25:08
  And the basis of it is, at least in the wording, it seemed that
• 25:13
  as long as you don't know that the users are criminally using
• 25:18
  your product, or rather, if you you don't know that people are
• 25:20
  using your products in a criminal way, then you are not
• 25:23
  liable. Though the wording was a little
• 25:26
  vague. And again, it wouldn't
• 25:29
  retroactively free the Samurai wallet devs or the Tornado Cash
• 25:33
  guys or Bitcoin fog, etcetera, etcetera.
• 25:35
  It wouldn't retroactively free Bitcoin developers or crypto
• 25:38
  developers that already are in trouble with the law in regards
• 25:44
  to privacy and knowing, you know, that or rather marketing
• 25:48
  to criminals and for criminal activity.
• 25:51
  So now we're seeing that there's even more contention on that
• 25:55
  point, basically trying to wipe it out completely.
• 25:58
  So the sabotage, we are not, we're not, you know, being
• 26:02
  hyperbolic here in terms of the Clarity Act, some of the stuff
• 26:05
  that we were talking about that seem to be very good coming out
• 26:09
  of the Clarity Act are now actively being attacked.
• 26:12
  And it seems like with 100 more amendments, there's even more,
• 26:19
  you know, less clarity in if the Clarity Act will even pass and
• 26:24
  get voted on or the markup portion of it will get out of
• 26:26
  the Senate Banking Committee tomorrow.
• 26:29
  So I, I, we, I think we said it on Monday or Tuesday that we are
• 26:33
  going to probably have news all week in regards to the Clarity
• 26:37
  Act and it's just the story that keeps giving.
• 26:40
  So it's the story, it's what we're going to cover.
• 26:42
  Is it important? Yes, 100%.
• 26:44
  Again, if you have a Bitcoin business in the United States, I
• 26:47
  think it is very important from a number go up perspective.
• 26:50
  I think it is important. I think it's it will be bullish
• 26:52
  news if it gets passed. But as Kent said, and as Arthur
• 26:56
  Hayes told me this morning, again, like does Bitcoin need
• 27:00
  the clarity act? No.
• 27:02
  Does Bitcoin need the clarity act for number go up?
• 27:05
  No, absolutely not. I would even go, and I said this
• 27:08
  on yesterday's show, I would even say that the United States
• 27:13
  needs Bitcoin more than Bitcoin needs the United States that
• 27:18
  that's what I would say. So again, and we also, because
• 27:22
  the, the the piece of legislation is so large and the
• 27:25
  Democrats, I'm sure that all the amendments that they put in
• 27:28
  there are, you know, like land mines.
• 27:32
  Like, are you trying to say that, that Elizabeth Warren
• 27:35
  isn't putting language in there that's saying, oh, you don't
• 27:38
  have a right to self custody? Oh, these developers that are
• 27:42
  developing open source software aren't going to be liable if you
• 27:46
  know, a criminal uses them. Are you, are you trying to tell
• 27:48
  me that they're not trying to sabotage it using your words?
• 27:51
  Like, of course they're going to try to sabotage it.
• 27:53
  But again, I think the, the clarity, no pun intended, the
• 27:56
  clarity here was Arthur's take. Arthur's take was a very unique
• 28:01
  take. I've never heard that take
• 28:02
  before, which was, you have to go back in history, who was the
• 28:07
  poster boy for the Democratic Party as it related to crypto?
• 28:13
  It was Sam Bankman Freed, and that blew the F up.
• 28:18
  So what did they do? They did a 180 to again, protect
• 28:24
  their reputations, right? So that was very eye opening to
• 28:28
  me in the sense because for me, I was always approaching it from
• 28:31
  like, no, they just want a central bank digital currency.
• 28:34
  But if you look at it from that angle that perhaps maybe isn't
• 28:39
  entirely accurate. They could again just be.
• 28:44
  Saving their. Saving face and saving their
• 28:46
  skins because of how many people got hurt with FTX and it
• 28:52
  happened under a Democrat administration, right?
• 28:56
  Well, and he gave them like the majority of his money and he
• 28:59
  gave them a lot. What was it altruistic?
• 29:01
  What? Was it altruism?
• 29:02
  Whatever altruistic. Investing or?
• 29:05
  Something like that. So like if you look at it from
• 29:07
  that angle and that perspective like.
• 29:09
  It it makes. Perfect sense, man.
• 29:11
  So look, and I know I see some people in the comments or like,
• 29:15
  what are these guys? What are these folks going to
• 29:17
  talk about today? This is the news like this is
• 29:19
  what's going on in the Bitcoin world today.
• 29:22
  This clarity Act is a big deal, right?
• 29:24
  It's just not a big deal in the reasons that if you take self
• 29:29
  custody of your Bitcoin and if you're thinking 1020 years from
• 29:33
  now and you really believe in the sovereign individual thesis
• 29:37
  where you can literally just pick up and leave to a more
• 29:41
  favorable jurisdiction that treats you best like El
• 29:43
  Salvador. You know what like this doesn't,
• 29:48
  this shouldn't matter to you at all.
• 29:51
  Bitcoin doesn't need the Clarity Act.
• 29:53
  If Bitcoin needed regulation for it to exist, it would have been
• 29:58
  regulated out of existence by now, right?
• 30:01
  And another thing also too, and I, and I've tweeted this out
• 30:03
  before, I think governments fundamentally change, think that
• 30:10
  they are going to be able to change Bitcoin, where in reality
• 30:14
  over time, I think it's going to be Bitcoin that changes
• 30:18
  governments. And then this goes back to Max
• 30:20
  Keiser's very famous quote that I say all the time, you don't
• 30:24
  change Bitcoin. Bitcoin changes you.
• 30:26
  And the reason it changes you is because it changes your
• 30:29
  perspective and it changes your incentives.
• 30:32
  And ultimately, nobody is better than their incentives.
• 30:36
  No human being being on planet Earth is better than their
• 30:40
  incentives. Humanity runs on incentives.
• 30:43
  Human nature runs on incentives. And again, if you look at their
• 30:48
  system, it's a system based on coercion.
• 30:52
  You need to use the US dollar. the US dollar is the official
• 30:55
  currency of the United States of America.
• 30:58
  You are, by law forced to use it, right?
• 31:02
  If you look at Bitcoin, it's an incentive driven currency.
• 31:08
  People adopt Bitcoin not because there's a law, not because
• 31:12
  there's a regulation, not because Elizabeth Warren, not
• 31:15
  because of Donald Trump, not because of anyone.
• 31:18
  You adopt it literally because it's better money, it's a better
• 31:23
  savings technology. That is literally why you adopt
• 31:27
  Bitcoin, right? So I just want to be clear here
• 31:29
  because you got to divide the two things.
• 31:31
  Is the Clarity Act important? Yes.
• 31:34
  Does Bitcoin need the Clarity Act for it to succeed?
• 31:37
  No. Those two things could be true
• 31:40
  at the same time. And I think it's very important
• 31:42
  for you to differentiate the two, right.
• 31:46
  But anyways, what's I want to get?
• 31:47
  I'm, I'm curious, Opti, I want to get your take on on Arthur's
• 31:51
  comment because I've never heard that comment before.
• 31:53
  Yeah, no, I, I honestly haven't heard that comment, but it does
• 31:56
  make perfect sense. And I have been saying for a
• 31:58
  while that we we are still just barely getting rid of the stench
• 32:06
  of FTX and Sam Bakeman freed like we it seems to be old news
• 32:10
  to us. But if you talk to random normal
• 32:13
  people about Bitcoin or crypto, if you bring that up, I've
• 32:18
  experienced this, one of the first things they always say is
• 32:19
  like, Oh yeah, who is that? You know, the guy with the weird
• 32:22
  hair that scammed everyone in crypto, you know, and you're
• 32:26
  like SPF and they're like, yeah, that guy.
• 32:29
  And so like we still have that bad narrative from him.
• 32:32
  So it does, it does make a lot of sense to me like that that
• 32:36
  does that does kind of, you know, connect a lot of dots and.
• 32:40
  I'm I'm I'm here just just seeing the the X feed here just
• 32:45
  breaking it just seems like this is on Fox business right now.
• 32:49
  Brian Armstrong there's been a compromise on the clarity Act,
• 32:52
  says Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.
• 32:54
  We're ready to support a markup later this week mirroring
• 32:58
  exactly what you were the video that you played earlier.
• 33:01
  So it looks like, you know, if you again, you have to, you have
• 33:05
  to really pay attention to, you know, the people that are really
• 33:08
  in the thick of this. And also too, bro, like I want
• 33:12
  to vent a little bit. I'm going to vent a little bit.
• 33:15
  Like it's so annoying and I, I don't think that the country was
• 33:20
  originally structured this way, but it's so annoying that for
• 33:23
  you to pass a piece of legislation, it needs to be this
• 33:27
  like 3000 page bill. Like that's crazy to me.
• 33:31
  Well, it's 300, I know, but. I'm being I'm being hyperbolic
• 33:35
  bro. Like it like it it like it.
• 33:37
  Could you like if they just passed the bill on?
• 33:40
  Yes, we will protect the right to self custody.
• 33:44
  Yes, we won't go after open source developers like that will
• 33:48
  do two things. It removes the complexity.
• 33:51
  It removes the need to compromise and do all these
• 33:54
  things. It makes it very simple, but
• 33:57
  most importantly, it exposes incentives.
• 34:00
  It tells you exactly who you need to vote out of office
• 34:04
  because it's very clear that they don't want you taking self
• 34:08
  custody of your Bitcoin. It makes it very clear that
• 34:11
  they're not in support of open source developers, which by the,
• 34:14
  by the way, it's supposed to be protected by the 1st Amendment.
• 34:17
  Like like if if you look at developing code, like, what are
• 34:19
  you doing? That's a form of speech, right?
• 34:22
  That's literally a form of speech, which is supposed to be
• 34:24
  protected, right? It's not like they're writing
• 34:27
  software that is purposely designed to commit crimes.
• 34:32
  Like, no, not at all. It's like they they developed a
• 34:35
  piece of software and a small percentage of those people use
• 34:39
  that piece of software to commit crimes.
• 34:41
  Like you can't convince me of that.
• 34:43
  So again, if you're attacking that, you're attacking that for
• 34:47
  one reason and one reason only. You just don't want competition.
• 34:52
  Like that's literally what it comes down to.
• 34:54
  And you know, one of the things that I do like about what's
• 34:57
  happened recently is the exposed incentive of the banks.
• 35:03
  They are so worried. They were so worried that these
• 35:08
  crypto exchanges were going to offer interest, rewards,
• 35:12
  whatever you want to call it. It's the same thing.
• 35:14
  They were so worried that people were going to do that.
• 35:17
  And that tells me everything you need to know.
• 35:19
  Because right now, if you have money in your bank, the bank is
• 35:23
  literally using that money to make money off of your money and
• 35:27
  they pay you a laughable amount. It's like an insulting amount of
• 35:31
  interest. It's like .0004%, right?
• 35:35
  It's like, and you see it in your bank account.
• 35:36
  It's like, oh, your interest, you got three cents this year.
• 35:39
  You got $0.03 this month. It's like bro, like come on now.
• 35:43
  Generational wealth and. Then here comes innovation.
• 35:46
  Here comes innovation. That's basically saying, no,
• 35:49
  actually we're gonna provide a better product, a better
• 35:53
  service. And the big banks are like, no,
• 35:55
  we cannot let that happen. Like that is so anti American,
• 35:59
  that is so anti free market that it tells you a lot about the
• 36:04
  banks. It tells you a lot about how
• 36:06
  they think. It tells you a lot about how
• 36:08
  they operate, right? And no one should deserve that
• 36:12
  type of power. No one should deserve that type
• 36:15
  of power, especially the power over money, right?
• 36:18
  The power over money. And we've seen how this has been
• 36:21
  weaponized. Look at the Canadian truckers
• 36:23
  protest. What was the first thing that
• 36:25
  they did? The government did, they froze
• 36:27
  people's bank accounts. And if you take, if you look at
• 36:30
  it from all angles, right, we're supposed to pay taxes.
• 36:34
  You got to follow the law, pay your taxes.
• 36:38
  But then they tax you through currency debasement, which is
• 36:41
  doesn't get talked enough about. And then not only that, they can
• 36:44
  freeze the money that you spend your time and energy working for
• 36:50
  at a flick of a switch. I've always said a bank account.
• 36:53
  It's it's a multi cig between you have one key, the government
• 36:57
  has another key and the bank has another key, right?
• 37:00
  That's not a very good multi cig, right?
• 37:02
  So, yeah, man, like I mean, it, it, this is just a whole
• 37:05
  debacle. It's a whole piece of drama.
• 37:08
  Personally at this point, dude, like as a Bitcoin entrepreneur
• 37:12
  in the United States, and I really do want this industry to
• 37:15
  thrive in the United States. And I think ultimately that
• 37:17
  would be bullish for the price. I do want this thing to pass.
• 37:21
  Not again, because I think Bitcoin needs it.
• 37:23
  Bitcoin doesn't need anybody. That's the whole point.
• 37:25
  But because I think it will provide no pun intended,
• 37:29
  regulatory clarity in the United States.
• 37:31
  Opti, I gotta I gotta get our guest.
• 37:33
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah. No worries.
• 37:35
  OK guys. So we do as Nico just said, we
• 37:39
  we are changing things up. We got a guest live in here, so
• 37:42
  I'm gonna handle the numbers real quick while Nico, you know,
• 37:46
  kisses babies and shakes hands. I'll handle the numbers and then
• 37:50
  I'm going to swap out Nico. And our guest from Leaden is
• 37:54
  live in the studio. So that's today's show.
• 37:57
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  and CEO of leaden. How you doing man?
• 42:06
  It's so great to be here. Thanks for joining us bro.
• 42:08
  I appreciate you making the journey to the Simply Studio.
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  I think you're the 4th IRL guest to join us in here.
• 42:15
  It's so nice to do things in real life, you know?
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  It's so much virtual stuff. It's awesome to be here.
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  You have a beautiful studio. I'm so impressed, so thanks for
• 42:22
  hosting me. Thank you, man.
• 42:23
  I appreciate you coming in. But yeah, dude, we had a lot of
• 42:25
  things that we were talking about.
• 42:27
  Love to get your takes. Before I get into the numbers
• 42:29
  guys, I want to take, I want to get your take as a Bitcoin
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  entre. A long time coming, right?
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  So I think what we see is, you know, as we as we try to bring
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  more capital into the space, like our our business is, is
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  really matching, right. So we often say like as a
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  lending business, we have two customers.
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  We have the capital side that gives us the dollars or provides
• 42:53
  the dollars. And then we have the borer side,
• 42:55
  which is thousands of bitcoiners around the world.
• 42:57
  And what's really tricky is a lot of people want to jump into
• 43:00
  the space, but they need to know how the rules work.
• 43:03
  And so we're seeing as there's just like a mountain, a huge
• 43:06
  wave of of capital on the sidelines that's ready to come
• 43:08
  in as soon as there's clarity, no pun intended, on how they can
• 43:14
  participate in the space. And I think we're just going to
• 43:16
  see a lot better things down the road coming when this gets
• 43:19
  passed. Yeah, absolutely.
• 43:20
  And and another thing that I'll say to Adam is like it like one
• 43:23
  of the, one of the perspectives that that I'm hearing is
• 43:26
  basically like like from, from a, from the protocol level, from
• 43:31
  Bitcoins level, Bitcoin doesn't really need clarity, but from if
• 43:35
  you're building a Bitcoin business specifically in the
• 43:38
  United States, if you're a Bitcoin entrepreneur in the
• 43:40
  United States, it is very, very important.
• 43:42
  What's your take on that? Yeah, absolutely.
• 43:45
  Like I think, you know, we're asking a lot of businesses to
• 43:48
  come in that have established businesses, right.
• 43:50
  You know, a bank that wants to participate, they they need to
• 43:53
  follow the rules because if they don't, they lose that 99% of
• 43:57
  their other business that's working well.
• 43:58
  So to ask them to come in and risk that is a big deal, so.
• 44:02
  100% and and then this gives them, no pun intended.
• 44:05
  I keep saying this over and over again.
• 44:06
  It's in the name, right? This gives them regulatory
• 44:09
  clarity of what's going to happen in the industry.
• 44:11
  Exactly right. Absolutely.
• 44:13
  All right, everybody, let's let's jump into today's numbers.
• 44:16
  At the time of recording, the Bitcoin price is $79,330,
• 44:22
  declined from all time high. If you're buying Bitcoin right
• 44:24
  now, you're getting at a 37% discount.
• 44:27
  And the market capitalization of Bitcoin is currently at 1.59
• 44:31
  trillion and the block height of Bitcoin is 949,242 at the time
• 44:38
  of recording. So let's get into today's
• 44:41
  numbers. I think Opti, you have the video
• 44:43
  lined up. I believe this is a video of
• 44:46
  Michael Saylor on, it's a Coin Desk interview.
• 44:50
  So shout out to Coin Desk for recording this interview.
• 44:52
  I'll play you guys about a 2 minute clip.
• 44:54
  I don't know if we'll go through the whole thing, but let's check
• 44:57
  out the latest of what Michael Saylor has to say terms of
• 45:01
  leading up to the earnings call. And then knowing the I think
• 45:04
  anyone that's been observing the stock that selling Bitcoin is
• 45:07
  something that probably could have happened would have
• 45:09
  happened eventually, but announcing it, were you
• 45:13
  surprised how well one bitcoins held up into the the common
• 45:16
  stocks held up? I didn't expect Bitcoin to, you
• 45:20
  know, the price of Bitcoin to change at all on that
• 45:23
  announcement. You know, the truth is if we
• 45:28
  were to fund all of our dividends exclusively by selling
• 45:32
  Bitcoin over the next year, we would buy 21 Bitcoin for
• 45:37
  everyone Bitcoin we sold. And so it's no different than
• 45:41
  selling than buying 20 Bitcoin and selling no Bitcoin, buying
• 45:47
  21 Bitcoin and selling one Bitcoin.
• 45:49
  So it's kind of a big nothing burger from an economic point of
• 45:53
  view and then from a market point of view, the Bitcoin.
• 45:57
  End it with that because that gives us a lot to talk about and
• 46:00
  I have Adam in the studio again, Co founder and CEO of lead and
• 46:03
  to talk about this. So big change up Adam.
• 46:06
  So first of all, we, we know that sailor built this entire
• 46:10
  brand on never sell your Bitcoin.
• 46:12
  I I love how I could see lead in being threaded into this, but it
• 46:16
  was basically like never sell your Bitcoin.
• 46:18
  And then recently I believe it was like it was either on Monday
• 46:21
  or the Monday previous. He basically changed the
• 46:24
  argument, which is like, you know, try not to sell your
• 46:27
  Bitcoin, sell your Bitcoin when you need to, which to me is
• 46:30
  fascinating. And this is what I was talking
• 46:32
  about on the show because like, ultimately we've all been
• 46:36
  through that cycle as bitcoiners.
• 46:38
  Like initially we're all so hardcore committed to the idea
• 46:41
  of like, I'm never going to sell my Bitcoin no matter what.
• 46:44
  And then you go through the cycles and then you inevitably
• 46:46
  end up having to sell a little bit because you get overexposed
• 46:49
  or you put too much of it, too much of your net worth into
• 46:51
  Bitcoin and you have to sell some to pay the bills, etcetera,
• 46:54
  etcetera. But it seems like he, Michael
• 46:56
  Saylor, went through the same evolution that the rest of us
• 46:59
  did. He just has a much larger
• 47:01
  profile. So I do agree with him and he
• 47:04
  says on that podcast that it was a big of a, a bit of a nothing
• 47:07
  burger because the reality is, as he was saying, like the
• 47:10
  amount of Bitcoin that strategy is buying, like they're buying
• 47:14
  the entire supply. So what's your take on those two
• 47:17
  things? First, sailors change of opinion
• 47:20
  I would say and then second, the amount of Bitcoin that strategy
• 47:23
  is buying. Yeah, look, I, I think first,
• 47:26
  it's really difficult to generate yield on Bitcoin,
• 47:28
  right? And so there's a ton of
• 47:29
  institutions trying to figure that out right now and a lot of
• 47:32
  very risky ways to do it. But one of the less risky ways
• 47:36
  is to write structured contracts, right?
• 47:39
  So the idea of, you know, a call strategy where you're agreeing
• 47:42
  to sell Bitcoin at a price that's higher than the current
• 47:45
  market price in the future. And that's a a, you know, a
• 47:48
  method that's strategy again, no pun intended, maybe using a
• 47:51
  generate yield. So by by default, you, you
• 47:54
  effectively really have to be OK with the idea of selling Bitcoin
• 47:56
  at a higher price. But again, the idea is you don't
• 47:59
  intend to do that, you intend to rebuy that.
• 48:02
  So I think that goes back to how does he generate a yield on
• 48:04
  that. Look, I, I think the, the back
• 48:07
  to the question on the amount of Bitcoin they own, The
• 48:11
  interesting thing about Bitcoin is anyone can do whatever they
• 48:13
  want with it. So if he's the highest buyer, he
• 48:15
  will own more Bitcoin, right? The job of everyone else is to
• 48:18
  bid more than he can so they can own more Bitcoin.
• 48:20
  So I don't think we can control that.
• 48:22
  I think things are going to play out with market dynamics.
• 48:24
  Absolutely, 100%. And what is your take on the
• 48:27
  amount of Bitcoin that strategy is buying like it like 'cause
• 48:31
  they're they are buying like just their stretch product
• 48:34
  alone, right? Is buying more Bitcoin than the
• 48:36
  active amount of Bitcoin being mined on a weekly basis?
• 48:39
  I think the natural question is like, why isn't the price going
• 48:42
  up if they're buying all this Bitcoin?
• 48:44
  Look, I think you know what they're doing right now and just
• 48:47
  to kind of talk about, you know, Michael and his, his genius is,
• 48:50
  you know, anyone who's great at raising capital is incredible at
• 48:52
  a narrative, right? And so he has this whole
• 48:54
  narrative of digital credit. I mean, to turn it back to
• 48:57
  Leadin, you know, we've been doing Bitcoin back back loans
• 48:59
  for eight years, right? And and stretch is effectively
• 49:03
  the capital behind Bitcoin. It's effectively a Bitcoin back
• 49:06
  loan. It's just there's some bit more
• 49:08
  complications as to how it sits within the capital stack.
• 49:11
  So I, I think, you know, they're just finding it another strategy
• 49:14
  to buy as much as they can. And this is a new product that
• 49:16
  they've invented to try to tap a new source of capital.
• 49:20
  I love that you brought up Leaden, right?
• 49:21
  And I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll walk you through my Leaden story
• 49:26
  initially. So I was initially in contact
• 49:28
  with Mauricio and I decided to change from one provider to the
• 49:32
  other. And then initially you always
• 49:33
  have that hesitation, right, 'cause you are sending your
• 49:36
  Bitcoin to a platform. And one of the first things that
• 49:39
  I realized, like after, you know, I started alone with you
• 49:42
  guys and I went through the whole process is and I felt kind
• 49:45
  of embarrassed. But basically what I realized
• 49:48
  was that there was no monthly payments so like and I was used
• 49:51
  to a provider where like. Everyday at like.
• 49:53
  The month, you know, they would take, you know, the interest out
• 49:57
  of you know, out of your bank account and that's how you'd
• 49:59
  keep your loan. And one of the things that
• 50:01
  completely caught me off guard I was like, wait, there's no
• 50:03
  monthly like where I was I was so confused I was like where do
• 50:06
  you pay like there's no monthly payments here like what's going
• 50:09
  on? And then that's really when it
• 50:11
  snapped in my mind how powerful this product was if you're
• 50:14
  responsible, of course, right? Like you, you don't want to go
• 50:17
  100% of your Bitcoin stack and put it into a loan because you
• 50:21
  find yourself in a, you know, potentially getting margin
• 50:23
  called. But again, if you are
• 50:24
  responsible and I'm sure a lot of your customers approach it
• 50:28
  that way, this is a very powerful tool where you don't
• 50:31
  have, you're not in a position where where you can benefit from
• 50:34
  your Bitcoin, but you don't actually have to sell it.
• 50:36
  So could you talk a little bit about the philosophy behind
• 50:39
  designing it like that, that very unique approach, because it
• 50:43
  is very unique, Adam, and it's very, very powerful like it, it
• 50:46
  helped me build up my business. It helped me build up a lot of
• 50:49
  things that I wanted to do, but at the same time, I was in
• 50:51
  positions like, dude, I don't want to sell this bit like it's
• 50:53
  painful when you sell Bitcoin. So could you talk a little bit
• 50:56
  about that? Yeah, of course.
• 50:57
  Look, I mean, the idea when we created the Bitcoin back loan is
• 51:00
  people need cash to cover real world expenses and they don't
• 51:03
  want to sell their Bitcoin. So what we didn't want to do is
• 51:06
  turn around and say, OK, we just gave you cash, now give us back
• 51:09
  some cash that didn't make sense to us.
• 51:11
  So what we tried to do is work in the background to structure
• 51:14
  something so that you could defer that as long as possible
• 51:17
  and you know, figure out the right capital sources that allow
• 51:20
  for that. Now how we do that is we have a
• 51:21
  whole bunch of staggered maturities in the background.
• 51:24
  So not everyone is boring the exact same amount with the exact
• 51:26
  same time. So we've got this nice huge
• 51:28
  portfolio of different boards with different needs that allows
• 51:31
  us to compensate for that. I I love, I love that's like
• 51:35
  literally one of the the my most favorite features of you guys.
• 51:39
  And then one of the things that I also discovered recently with
• 51:42
  the drawdown is the auto top feature, which is genius, right?
• 51:46
  And it's genius for a couple reasons.
• 51:48
  Again, I've, I'm learning these things not by reading it, but
• 51:51
  like by actually experiencing experiencing it myself with the
• 51:55
  recent drawdown, of course, what do you do as a bitcoiner?
• 51:58
  You get, you know, ultra paranoid and you're like, OK,
• 52:00
  I'm going to make sure that my margin calls 15,000 dollars,
• 52:04
  right. But what's really cool about the
• 52:06
  auto top up feature is you're not necessarily putting your
• 52:09
  Bitcoin into the collateral, You're putting your Bitcoin into
• 52:13
  an account. And you could actually withdraw
• 52:15
  that Bitcoin back into your custody if you don't want if if
• 52:18
  if you don't want to leave it on the platform.
• 52:20
  But simultaneously, if there's a case where there is extra
• 52:24
  volatility, it automatically takes it from the auto top up
• 52:28
  account to collateralize the loan, which I absolutely love
• 52:32
  that. And it was super useful.
• 52:33
  Again, I again, I used it with this recent draw down and it was
• 52:36
  really, really cool that you guys designed something like
• 52:38
  that. Yeah.
• 52:39
  Look, what's interesting is every single one of our clients
• 52:42
  that had auto top up enabled in the February draw down didn't
• 52:45
  have any liquidations. So we had like 100% success rate
• 52:48
  with people using that. And yeah, it's illustrated is
• 52:50
  you could just over collateralize your loan even
• 52:53
  further to prevent from that. But then there's a bit more
• 52:56
  restrictions on how that Bitcoin can come in and out.
• 52:58
  We have some guidelines we have to abide by.
• 53:00
  So to your point, when you have it in the auto top up account,
• 53:03
  it's flexible. If you do want to draw it out
• 53:05
  later, you can. But again, it protects you in
• 53:07
  that time of need. Absolutely, 100% and again,
• 53:11
  learn these with experience. Now another thing also too Adam,
• 53:14
  and I think I saw this in Mauricio's presentation in Plan
• 53:18
  B in El Salvador, which was he? He basically showed a case study
• 53:23
  of one of your clients. Of course, it was anonymous and,
• 53:26
  you know, no one knows the name and all that stuff, but he
• 53:28
  showed the case study and it was fascinating to me is the amount
• 53:31
  of Bitcoin that was left on the platform in order to, you know,
• 53:38
  fulfill the obligations of the loan.
• 53:40
  Over time, the amount of Bitcoin actually went down and it
• 53:43
  actually tracked like the price cycle.
• 53:46
  So you could see that during the bull market, right, the amount
• 53:49
  of Bitcoin was a little bit lower.
• 53:50
  And then this person was very responsible when the bear market
• 53:53
  hit, they just put more collateral.
• 53:55
  And then when the bull market started again, the amount of
• 53:58
  collateral actually went lower then when they initiated the
• 54:02
  loan, which brings me to that third feature I want to talk
• 54:05
  about, which is if your loan is over collateralized over a
• 54:09
  certain percentage, you do allow people to to withdraw Bitcoin
• 54:12
  out of out of that Bitcoin collateralized loan.
• 54:15
  That's exactly right. Like our goal is to hold as
• 54:18
  little of your Bitcoin as necessary, right?
• 54:20
  Our requirements are our capital providers requirements.
• 54:23
  And so we're working with them continuously to lower that.
• 54:26
  But to the extent we can, we can reduce that.
• 54:28
  We're always trying. And so we have what we don't
• 54:30
  want to do is like we also want at the same time manage and
• 54:33
  protect you from liquidation, right?
• 54:35
  So it's like, OK, if the Bitcoin price spikes for a day, you
• 54:37
  know, that's why we have some time period on it to allow it to
• 54:40
  stabilize and make sure we're balancing that.
• 54:42
  Absolutely. Do you have any like crazy
• 54:44
  stories? I've asked Monisha the same
• 54:45
  question and he gave me some crazy stories as well.
• 54:48
  Do you have any crazy stories or, or use cases of, of people
• 54:52
  using their products to again, perhaps, you know, elevate their
• 54:55
  lifestyle or upgrade their business or, you know, again,
• 54:59
  perhaps you're in a in a crunch where you need some cash, right?
• 55:02
  But you don't want to be put in a position where you want to
• 55:04
  sell your Bitcoin. Do you have any case studies
• 55:07
  that particularly resonated with you that just popped out And
• 55:10
  you're like, Oh my God, that, that's crazy.
• 55:12
  My 1 case study that I always go to and this is not one, this is
• 55:15
  for thousands of people that we've helped out.
• 55:17
  And it's, you know, we're sitting in here in Miami, a city
• 55:20
  and country with massive privilege.
• 55:21
  But keep in mind, Bitcoin's a global asset and we have people
• 55:24
  all over the world that we get to interact with.
• 55:26
  And a lot of clients have told us, especially in Latin America,
• 55:29
  that this is the first loan they've ever been approved for,
• 55:32
  right? And that's just like, you know,
• 55:33
  you can use that for whatever you want.
• 55:34
  Hopefully you're doing it so you're using the proceeds for
• 55:36
  use something useful, maybe starting a business, paying for
• 55:39
  school, maybe helping a family member out with something
• 55:41
  medical. But the idea that you know
• 55:43
  something happens that you couldn't do before and now it
• 55:45
  enables things in real life is is so powerful.
• 55:49
  Absolutely now, and I agree with that and I, I love that that you
• 55:52
  guys service Latin America, cuz traditionally you wouldn't be
• 55:55
  able to do that with the traditional financial system,
• 55:58
  right? Like the traditional financial
• 55:59
  system is very strict, right? You need like, hey, you know,
• 56:02
  what's your credit rating, right?
• 56:04
  You know, where, where do you live, right?
• 56:06
  And the fact that you guys are able to, you know, service
• 56:09
  clients in Latin America specifically some I'm originally
• 56:12
  from or my parents are originally from Venezuela,
• 56:14
  right? So I have that background.
• 56:15
  I understand it. It's incredibly powerful because
• 56:19
  those are some of the people that need it the most, right?
• 56:21
  Like as you said, like you know, in the United States and, and
• 56:24
  specifically in Europe as well, right, you, you do like, whether
• 56:28
  you guys realize it or not, we are so privileged.
• 56:31
  We live in a country that has a relatively stable Fiat currency.
• 56:35
  There's no capital controls yet, but you know, it, it's, it's
• 56:39
  relatively stable, right? But in Latin American countries,
• 56:43
  that's not always the case, specifically with their local
• 56:45
  currencies. There's capital controls,
• 56:47
  there's, you know, again, the inflation rate could be double
• 56:50
  digits some months. It's, it's really, really crazy.
• 56:52
  So the fact that you guys offer those products to those people,
• 56:56
  I think it's incredibly important.
• 56:57
  And I think the minimum loan is $500 as well, right?
• 57:00
  That's right, yeah. And like back to the point of
• 57:02
  serving many countries. So we just did this this ABS
• 57:06
  right, we did the first ever asset backed securitization that
• 57:09
  hit investment grade status as a bond.
• 57:11
  So, you know, to put it in simple terms, this is like the
• 57:15
  same way credit cards, auto loans, real estate is financed
• 57:19
  in most of, you know, the global financial system.
• 57:23
  And most of the times that this happens, you package up
• 57:26
  borrowers by region. And you know, no surprise, those
• 57:31
  that are American borrowers tend to have higher credit status as
• 57:34
  it fits into the traditional financial system.
• 57:37
  We were told by our the groups that worked on this product with
• 57:41
  us that this was the first ever time they were able to take
• 57:44
  borrowers from many different countries.
• 57:46
  We had 30 different countries in the bond, a $200 million
• 57:48
  offering and get a Universal Credit rating for it.
• 57:51
  So it's, it's stopped this like double standard where it's like,
• 57:54
  OK, you're American, great, here's your financial terms.
• 57:56
  You're not American. Sorry, it's a little bit lower.
• 57:59
  And now we have the same because as we all know, Bitcoin is the
• 58:02
  same to everybody globally. It doesn't care where you are.
• 58:04
  And that's the, that's the unlock.
• 58:06
  Absolutely. That's the unlock.
• 58:07
  And again, it, it, it, it really seems like you guys developed
• 58:10
  this product specifically for Bitcoiners, right?
• 58:14
  And you guys approached it from being Bitcoiners.
• 58:17
  Could you talk to me a little bit about the early days?
• 58:19
  What was that like? You know, 'cause I, I, so this
• 58:22
  morning, just to give you perspective of why I'm asking
• 58:24
  you this question, right? So I had Arthur Hayes on, on the
• 58:28
  podcast and I was asking him like, hey, what were the early
• 58:30
  days like of launching that? He's like, look, for the first
• 58:33
  two years, we didn't make any money.
• 58:35
  Like it was horrible as a Bitcoin entrepreneur myself,
• 58:38
  right? Like for the first couple years
• 58:40
  it was dark. Like you're not getting any
• 58:41
  traction. You're like, why am I doing
• 58:43
  this? There's a lot of uncertainty and
• 58:44
  you kind of need that mental fortitude to stick it through.
• 58:47
  What was it like for you guys? Because it wasn't just the early
• 58:50
  years that you guys had to endure, but the with the whole
• 58:54
  Celsius debacle? Like, I mean, that must have
• 58:56
  been crazy for your part of the industry.
• 58:59
  Yeah, I mean, I could go on all day.
• 59:01
  I've got I'll, I'll, I'll try to keep it fairly concise.
• 59:03
  But look, I mean, in in the early days, I mean, we played
• 59:07
  out the borrower and lender phenomena really well because,
• 59:10
  you know, I grew up in Canada. I was able to play, OK, this is
• 59:12
  what the banks need, this what the pension funds need.
• 59:15
  I was coming from a background in structured finance
• 59:18
  specifically for the energy sector.
• 59:19
  So I was used to structuring, you know, fairly large capital
• 59:22
  allocations. And Mauricio played the role of
• 59:24
  the Bitcoiner growing up in Venezuela.
• 59:27
  For those that don't know, we met at at university together in
• 59:29
  Canada and we came together first as friends and then
• 59:32
  secondary as business partners and we played that out.
• 59:34
  Mauricio would say, OK, this is what I needed to Bitcoin and
• 59:36
  this is my needs. And I'd say, well, you know, you
• 59:39
  can't make them too good or we're not going to get the
• 59:40
  capital for it. So a loan is a balance and we
• 59:42
  played that out well. And you know we launched in
• 59:46
  Canada first, we were Canada only and then quickly again we
• 59:49
  realized why we limiting this product to Canada.
• 59:51
  We should be global. And you know, some of the funny
• 59:54
  stories, just like hacking the initial use cases, we knew the
• 59:58
  best way to develop client trust was to get people money really,
• 1:00:01
  really fast, right? It's like you're sending us your
• 1:00:03
  Bitcoin. That's super scary.
• 1:00:05
  We're a startup, we're new. And we used to say, you know,
• 1:00:07
  it's cool to have a startup restaurant, but people don't
• 1:00:09
  really like startup banks, right?
• 1:00:11
  It's like, no, I'd rather deal with the bank that's I know has
• 1:00:13
  been there for 200 years and they still have the money.
• 1:00:15
  And like all of this is really important.
• 1:00:17
  So instead we said, you know, let's make sure we can get money
• 1:00:21
  people super fast, but we're stuck with the banking system.
• 1:00:23
  Which takes three days. So what we did was we had a bank
• 1:00:26
  account at every single major Canadian bank and all the banks
• 1:00:29
  are on four corners. So we used to do is go to the
• 1:00:31
  one we had our our reserves at and literally walk it across the
• 1:00:35
  street to the bank. So if you know, if Nico, you,
• 1:00:37
  you bank that the Scotiabank, we would take $5000 out from my
• 1:00:41
  bank at TD and walk it across and put it in your account in
• 1:00:43
  seconds. And people say, how did you move
• 1:00:45
  the money that fast? But we have the perfect payment
• 1:00:47
  system. It's super automated.
• 1:00:49
  And you know, that was the amazing part, right?
• 1:00:51
  Because the Bitcoin's coming in seconds over the Internet and
• 1:00:53
  the money is just literally physically being transferred.
• 1:00:56
  And and that's what we did. That's how we growth hacked for
• 1:00:58
  the initial year. Of course, now things are
• 1:01:00
  completely. Different, of course, but that
• 1:01:02
  that's such a great story, man. That's it.
• 1:01:04
  And and again, no one kind of knows like how the sausage is
• 1:01:07
  made behind behind the scenes, but that is so fascinating and
• 1:01:11
  interesting. But again, it's those early
• 1:01:13
  years that always fascinate me with entrepreneurs because those
• 1:01:17
  are really the years where like you have to get over yourself,
• 1:01:20
  doubt. You have to be 100% confident in
• 1:01:22
  what you're doing. And there's still the odds are
• 1:01:25
  still sacked against you. Like there's still no guarantee
• 1:01:28
  that you're going to succeed. Anyways, ladies and gentlemen,
• 1:01:30
  we're going to be right back just after the break in just a
• 1:01:33
  bit. I want to give a shout out to
• 1:01:35
  our partner Hive Digital Technologies.
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  mining footprint and channels that same scale into high
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  performance compute, where their AI cloud is now ranked number
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  one in the world for network performance.
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  At Hive, you've got dual engines, Bitcoin and AI humming,
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  roaring, accelerating and unison.
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• 1:02:03
  rewriting the playbook on sustainable digital
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  infrastructure. You can catch the latest buzz at
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  Hive Digital Tech or at Hive digitaltech.com.
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  15% off anything on the store. Yeah.
• 1:03:12
  We're back and we got the Co founder and CEO of Leaden in the
• 1:03:17
  studio. Joining us today.
• 1:03:18
  We got Adam Reid's in the house. Adam, I want to go through some
• 1:03:20
  more news that's been breaking. I think this is absolutely huge
• 1:03:24
  from the kind of institutional side.
• 1:03:26
  So breaking. This is a Bitcoin magazine
• 1:03:28
  article. Shout out to our friends over
• 1:03:30
  there. 11.77 trillion brokerage giant Charles Schwab launches
• 1:03:36
  spot Bitcoin trading platform and here's the official post
• 1:03:40
  from Charles Schwab Corp Schwab crypto accounts are now being
• 1:03:43
  rolled out to retail clients starting today, the first group
• 1:03:46
  of clients can trade Bitcoin and etherium at Schwab right
• 1:03:49
  alongside their other investments.
• 1:03:52
  Now, the reason I wanted to bring this up is Adam, again, it
• 1:03:55
  seems like the institutional, the institutional, the
• 1:04:00
  institutions are here, right? Trad Phi is here.
• 1:04:03
  And as you know, when we got into this man, we were
• 1:04:05
  villainized like we were treated as the others, right?
• 1:04:10
  So let's talk. It is a perfect segue to talk
• 1:04:12
  about the bond that you guys were able to achieve, right?
• 1:04:14
  Can you talk about how unique that was, the fact that you guys
• 1:04:18
  were first, how difficult that was to achieve?
• 1:04:20
  And what were some of the difficulties that you had that
• 1:04:22
  you guys had to overcome? Yeah, no, thank you.
• 1:04:25
  So I I think First off, I just want to mention like what why we
• 1:04:28
  did this, right? Like why bother going through
• 1:04:30
  all the rigmarole that's required to, to structure
• 1:04:33
  something, get it rated in this piece.
• 1:04:34
  And it really comes down to it to, to our projection of need
• 1:04:38
  for capital. So I love the comparison,
• 1:04:39
  comparison of Bitcoin lending with real estate.
• 1:04:42
  And the thought is, is that 60% of US homes have a mortgage on
• 1:04:46
  them, right? And so if you extrapolate that
• 1:04:48
  to Bitcoin, we just said earlier that the market cap of Bitcoin
• 1:04:51
  today is almost 1.6 trillion, 60% of that, you know, is, is a
• 1:04:54
  trillion dollars, right? So that's a lot of capital and
• 1:04:57
  not even close, you know, far exceeds the amount of dollar
• 1:05:00
  capital that's in the space today, right?
• 1:05:02
  We all know, you know, Tethers, a major institutional lender in
• 1:05:04
  the space. But you know, when you add up
• 1:05:06
  all the players and especially look at the consumer lending
• 1:05:08
  segment, it's only about 3 or 4 billion today.
• 1:05:11
  So we might go from three or 4 billion to a trillion.
• 1:05:13
  And we thought, where can we get that amount of dollar capital,
• 1:05:16
  right? That just doesn't exist today in
• 1:05:18
  the Bitcoin ecosystem. So what we did was we looked
• 1:05:20
  around and said, you know, how are other types of assets
• 1:05:22
  financed? Is, you know, real estate
• 1:05:24
  finance, how is auto loans, how is credit cards?
• 1:05:26
  And the answer was the asset backed securitization market,
• 1:05:30
  which is a fancy word for the bond market and how that all
• 1:05:33
  fits in. And so we went down a path to
• 1:05:35
  said to you, what if we did this with, with Bitcoin?
• 1:05:37
  Like how, how would it work? And what we've tried to do is
• 1:05:40
  like, if you're going to do something new and hard, you
• 1:05:42
  know, my philosophy is like, try to just change one variable at a
• 1:05:45
  time. So what the variable we're
• 1:05:47
  changing, of course, is instead of real estate, replace it with
• 1:05:49
  Bitcoin, but try to keep a lot of the other things the same.
• 1:05:52
  And so that was the path we endeavoured on.
• 1:05:54
  We started on, you know, most of last year, you know, in
• 1:05:56
  February, we kicked it off. We interviewed different rating
• 1:05:59
  agencies, S&P Global was the 1:00 we, we chose to work with.
• 1:06:02
  They were the most ahead on, you know, Bitcoin at the time.
• 1:06:05
  And you know, they put us through the ringer as, as they
• 1:06:07
  should, right? That's, that's their job is to
• 1:06:09
  look at all of our processes and work through the pieces of it.
• 1:06:13
  And I would say the reason we were successful in getting it
• 1:06:16
  done was all of the data we had because we've been lending
• 1:06:20
  against Bitcoin for eight years and the product we created has 0
• 1:06:23
  losses, right? So that's incredible for a
• 1:06:25
  lending business. Most lending businesses, you
• 1:06:27
  know, someone takes a car loan, they don't pay it back.
• 1:06:29
  There's a percentage. Since that was like a really
• 1:06:31
  hard thing would be able to get their head around, right?
• 1:06:33
  It's like you've never lost money on this product.
• 1:06:35
  Like, how's that work? You know, where's your reserve
• 1:06:36
  ratio? So that was the path we went on,
• 1:06:39
  but you have to get to the punch line.
• 1:06:40
  For those that don't know, we did a $200 million offering and
• 1:06:43
  it was the first ever a Bitcoin related product to achieve
• 1:06:47
  investment grade status. Yeah.
• 1:06:49
  Thank you. That's amazing, man.
• 1:06:51
  So and again, So what? What is the significance of what
• 1:06:56
  you just said? Because that is a big effing
• 1:06:58
  deal. So when it comes to ratings for
• 1:07:01
  these type of securitizations is it's kind of like investment
• 1:07:05
  grade or or or nothing else. And so most institutions, if
• 1:07:08
  it's a pension fund or reinsurance company, they can't
• 1:07:11
  buy non investment grade paper, meaning like they can't allocate
• 1:07:15
  any, any capital to it. So you can't access the, you
• 1:07:18
  know, trillion dollars that are saying we need it.
• 1:07:20
  So we knew that we were on this kind of like pass or fail.
• 1:07:23
  It wasn't like a typical report card where it's like, if the
• 1:07:25
  teacher's really nice, they move you to the next grade and you
• 1:07:27
  can still advance. This is like you have to get,
• 1:07:30
  you know, the the best rating or it's like all or nothing.
• 1:07:33
  Yeah, absolutely, man. And it was so huge when I saw
• 1:07:36
  that like it's like, man, we're we're we're being accepted,
• 1:07:39
  we're being accepted, we're being LED in the in the big boys
• 1:07:41
  room, man, or before we were kind of sidelined.
• 1:07:44
  So that what what do you see Adam is like the the your vision
• 1:07:48
  on, on just the general Bitcoin industry as a whole and the
• 1:07:52
  Bitcoin collateralized a Bitcoin collateralized loan industry as
• 1:07:55
  well. Yeah, I, I think with every, you
• 1:07:58
  know, business making decision, it's always like risk reward,
• 1:08:00
  right. So before the market cap of
• 1:08:02
  Bitcoin was fairly small. And it's like, OK, you know,
• 1:08:05
  there's some news out there that's not positive and there's
• 1:08:07
  this perceived, you know, we've all learned that that's no
• 1:08:10
  longer the case like AML risk. And now it's like, wait a
• 1:08:13
  second, here's an asset that there's actually way more
• 1:08:15
  transparency on. There's way less fraud because
• 1:08:18
  you, you can't fake Bitcoin, right?
• 1:08:20
  You know, you know, whether you have the UTX or you don't.
• 1:08:23
  So there's just a whole bunch of attributes that makes it way
• 1:08:25
  better. And it's big enough now that,
• 1:08:28
  you know, let's be so let's be like honest, like most
• 1:08:30
  businesses, like, can I make money off this?
• 1:08:32
  And so I think now it's at the scale, it's like, wow, if I
• 1:08:34
  enable this, I can make a lot of money and the risk levels at a
• 1:08:37
  point where you can get it approved without fear of things
• 1:08:41
  going the other way. So that's what's tip the scales.
• 1:08:43
  That's amazing, man. And, and what do you see?
• 1:08:45
  Where do you see the the future of just this this entire
• 1:08:49
  industry five years from now? Look, I think it's going to be
• 1:08:51
  table stakes to have Bitcoin at every major institution.
• 1:08:56
  I think we're going to be talking about like what
• 1:08:58
  variation of it. But like whether you have it or
• 1:09:00
  not, I think a lot of things that have slowed us down is
• 1:09:03
  standardization, right. So what was like, you know, we,
• 1:09:06
  we did over 50 roadshow meetings, which means like these
• 1:09:10
  in person meetings that we have to sell the bond and educate
• 1:09:13
  people. And it's a lot of work to say,
• 1:09:15
  OK, well, you know, you can store Bitcoin in this way.
• 1:09:17
  Or like, you know, here's we used Fidelity's the custodian,
• 1:09:21
  but there's like, you know, 50 different custodians.
• 1:09:23
  Like the financial system is really set up to have like, you
• 1:09:27
  know, I say this in like a not to be too negative, but kind of
• 1:09:30
  have someone else to blame for everything, right?
• 1:09:32
  And then, and that's can be effective because then it
• 1:09:34
  doesn't, you have to think too much about certain decisions.
• 1:09:36
  That's OK. Well, who's the custodian?
• 1:09:37
  Well, they're rated by this group.
• 1:09:39
  OK, then. OK, great.
• 1:09:40
  Well, they rated them then I can trust them.
• 1:09:42
  And then that fits together. Who's the accountant?
• 1:09:43
  No, it's KPMG, right? And so we have all these like
• 1:09:46
  checks and balances, but we haven't done enough of that in
• 1:09:48
  the Bitcoin ecosystem, right? We need a bunch of
• 1:09:50
  standardization to happen and Clarity Act.
• 1:09:53
  That's going to be another one. It's OK Clarity Act to approve
• 1:09:55
  Boom. So we have all these checks.
• 1:09:57
  Once we run through that, it's easier to participate because
• 1:09:59
  you don't have to think about 50 things to make one decision.
• 1:10:01
  Absolutely. So Adam, before we close up, for
• 1:10:04
  anyone who's not familiar with Leaden at this point, can you
• 1:10:07
  walk through what the on boarding process is like?
• 1:10:10
  So if you go to, of course, you guys got to use the code you get
• 1:10:13
  .25% off your first loan. But if you go to Leaden dot IO
• 1:10:17
  today, right, what is the process like?
• 1:10:20
  You know, walk us A through Z. What?
• 1:10:23
  What is someone going to experience for the first time?
• 1:10:25
  Yeah, sure. Thanks for that.
• 1:10:27
  So super simple. So just like any web platform
• 1:10:30
  you said you signed up for, so you know e-mail, password, MFA,
• 1:10:35
  we just added Ubikey support. So we want your account to be
• 1:10:37
  super secure once we have your authentication.
• 1:10:41
  We do KYC, all of our clients were required to do that.
• 1:10:43
  We can't access great capital without that, but it's super
• 1:10:46
  quick. We use a, a piece of software
• 1:10:48
  for that, that allows that to happen in 2 minutes and then and
• 1:10:52
  we can fund you typically same day, right.
• 1:10:55
  So if you're depositing Bitcoin and you know, it's and you have
• 1:10:58
  everything ready, you know, and long as you know, everything
• 1:11:01
  comes together, we can disperse funds really, really quickly.
• 1:11:04
  So things can happen in hours. Absolutely, man.
• 1:11:07
  And I've, I've experienced this myself.
• 1:11:09
  I went through the initial because you always do like you
• 1:11:11
  always do for an initial platform.
• 1:11:13
  I went through the process and it was seamless.
• 1:11:15
  And you know, you send the Bitcoin to the platform, you
• 1:11:18
  collateralize the loan, you pick, of course, the amount of
• 1:11:20
  the loan that you want. I have to emphasize this many,
• 1:11:23
  many times. You have to be responsible,
• 1:11:26
  right? You could be a degen, but I
• 1:11:28
  don't recommend that, right? You know, be responsible in
• 1:11:31
  terms of the percentage of of your Bitcoin stack that that you
• 1:11:34
  know you you do want to take out a loan against and then again
• 1:11:39
  you send the Bitcoin as collateral and then let and
• 1:11:42
  sends you the money within 24 to 48 hours has been my experience.
• 1:11:45
  Yeah, exactly. And to clarify a little bit
• 1:11:47
  about that piece, So yeah, you're going to specify how much
• 1:11:49
  you want to borrow in Fiat or how much Bitcoin you want to put
• 1:11:51
  up as collateral. Again, choose a size that's
• 1:11:54
  right for, for your needs and, and risk profile.
• 1:11:58
  And then you can, you can receive, if you want to receive
• 1:12:00
  the proceeds super fast, you can select stable coins or put in
• 1:12:04
  your banking information and we can wire to the account.
• 1:12:06
  We can also wire to many different currencies.
• 1:12:08
  So sometimes people say, you know, I'm in Mexico, can you
• 1:12:10
  send me pesos? Of course we can.
• 1:12:12
  So there's a lot of different flexibility in how you receive.
• 1:12:14
  Amazing, amazing. Is there a point where if I if I
• 1:12:18
  take out a loan, you and Maudisio show up at my house
• 1:12:22
  with with a bag of cash? You know what for the for, maybe
• 1:12:28
  that's a feature we should we should add in.
• 1:12:30
  I think it would just be a great piece of content.
• 1:12:32
  But of course, I'm joking. All of this is automated guys,
• 1:12:35
  through the through the banking system, but my marketing brain
• 1:12:38
  is just spinning. Anyways, I do want to thank you
• 1:12:41
  guys so much for tuning in. It's a special edition of simply
• 1:12:43
  Bitcoin. Of course we got Adam Reeds in
• 1:12:46
  the house, Co founder and CEO of let in guys go check out let in.
• 1:12:49
  You know the link down in the video slash podcast description.
• 1:12:53
  Thank you guys so much for tuning in.
• 1:12:54
  Before we hop off, I do want to give a shout out to, of course,
• 1:12:58
  our sponsor Mine Disrupt. It's going to be the largest
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• 1:13:05
  You definitely don't want to miss it.
• 1:13:06
  Use the promo code Simply Bitcoin again, Simply Bitcoin to
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  get 10% off. All right everybody, thank you
• 1:13:12
  guys so much for tuning in. We'll see you on the next one.
• 1:13:15
  Take care, everybody. Today's episode was brought to
• 1:13:18
  you by bitcoinwell.com, a Bitcoin only platform on a
• 1:13:22
  mission to enable financial independence.