Latest / Simply Bitcoin / IGNORE Nation States: This $57T Market is Buying Bitcoin | EP 1162

Transcript

IGNORE Nation States: This $57T Market is Buying Bitcoin | EP 1162 · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  Yo, this $57 trillion market that is known for being very
• 0:05
  conservative was just exposed in an article in the Financial
• 0:09
  Times for quietly buying Bitcoin.
• 0:12
  While everybody is focused on this nation state strategic
• 0:15
  Bitcoin reserves, nobody is paying attention to what this
• 0:19
  $57 trillion market is doing. So who are we talking about?
• 0:24
  We are talking about the enormous pension fund market
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  that is adopting Bitcoin all around the world because we know
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  Bitcoin is growing way too big to be ignored.
• 0:36
  On the show today we have Rob Hamilton of Anchor Watch.
• 0:40
  Guys, if you don't know what Anchor Watch is, you should
• 0:44
  because they are one of the they're going to be or they are
• 0:47
  one of the most exciting projects and companies in the
• 0:51
  space, really solving some of the custody problems that need
• 0:57
  to be solved in order for mass scale Bitcoin adoption.
• 1:01
  So Rob, welcome to the show and of course, my legendary Co host
• 1:05
  who's always optimistic optimist fields.
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  Let's jump straight into the news anyways, here's the
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  Financial Times article. Absolutely massive.
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  This coming out the headline for the audio listeners is pension
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  funds dabble in crypto after massive Bitcoin rally.
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  It goes on to say Pension are dipping their toes into buying
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  Bitcoin and a sign that even typically stayed corners of
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  finance are finding it hard to ignore the potential outsized
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  returns from crypto currencies. Pension schemes for the states
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  of Wisconsin, Wisconsin and Michigan are among the top
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  huddlers of U.S. stock market funds devoted to crypto, while
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  some pension fund managers in the UK and Australia have also
• 1:52
  made small locations in recent months to Bitcoin using funds or
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  derivatives. Advisors say the surge in
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  Bitcoin last year, which more than doubled to touch 100,000,
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  has spurred the interest of conservative trustees.
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  Crypto analysts predicted it could double again this year
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  with the arrival of a pro crypto Trump administration.
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  The president-elect has vowed to make the US quote the Bitcoin
• 2:19
  superpower of the world and end a regulatory crackdown on the
• 2:23
  sector. Matt Scott, a consultant at
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  Mercer, which advises UK pension fund, said quote.
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  Since Election Day we have been getting a flood of queries and
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  trustees don't like to think that there's a hot asset class
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  out there that they don't know anything about.
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  More pension funds have turned to the regulated US exchange
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  traded funds approved last year, which invest directly in crypto
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  on investors behalf and track the price of tokens such as
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  Bitcoin and ethereum. The state of Wisconsin
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  Investment Board was the 12th biggest shareholder in
• 3:00
  Blackrock's Bitcoin ETF at the end of September, according to
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  its latest filings, a holding that would now be worth worth
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  155,000,000 after the fund left 50 left 50% since the start of
• 3:14
  the quarter. Michigan is the 6th largest
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  shareholder in Gray Grayscale's Ethereum ETF, and its stake is
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  worth $12.9 million based on a November regulatory filing.
• 3:26
  Anyways, you guys get the general gist of it.
• 3:29
  It continues to talk about other pension funds, including
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  including in the country of Canada.
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  This seems like a worldwide phenomenon.
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  The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, I mean, this is
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  exciting. And also, you know, I'm a big
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  fan in aligned incentives in Bitcoin, right?
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  And if pension funds start getting exposure to Bitcoin,
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  that means a lot of these federal workers are going to get
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  exposure to Bitcoin. And in the future, if there's
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  any politicians that are, you know, playing around with
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  potential hostile Bitcoin regulations, you know, all those
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  people that are benefiting from those pensions are going to say,
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  hey, what are you doing? Stop, stop effing with my bags.
• 4:09
  You know, so I love the fact that Bitcoin is really
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  penetrating traditional finance. You know, the Bitcoin no one can
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  resist Bitcoins number go up technology and it's really
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  spreading like wildfire. I think 2024 was the
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  introduction of Bitcoin and traditional finance with the
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  approval of the ETF in in January of 2024.
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  And I think this year that's that trend is going to continue
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  to accelerate, especially with the inauguration of Donald Trump
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  coming up in four days, the first pro Bitcoin president like
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  absolutely amazing. So I think the regulatory
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  environment is going to dramatically improve compared to
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  the last two or three years, four years where we saw, you
• 4:52
  know, the acceleration of the so-called operation Choke .2
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  point O Anyways, Rob, welcome to the show.
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  This isn't surprising. This isn't surprising at all.
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  You know, the pension funds are looking at Bitcoin.
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  No one can resist bitcoins number go up technology, can
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  they? No, they can thanks Nico and
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  Opti for having me today. So it's funny like the, the
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  structure of a pension fund, what it is, is they take in like
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  member dues. They, they, they contribute to
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  this like fund. So most like a four O 1K or IRA
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  for the members of whatever organizations running it.
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  And they have long dated future obligations, right?
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  You're paying into it today so that in 40 years you're able to
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  get access to some money that you can live on in the future.
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  This is traditionally in finance what is consumed by what's
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  called the fixed income market, right?
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  You have a bond where you put up $1000 today, maybe you're in 5%
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  interest over the next 10 years, right?
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  And this is how you kind of like maintain the treasury if you
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  have long dated liabilities like this in a pension.
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  And I think a lot of people have started doing the math and
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  realizing, wait a second. If I take a really small bite of
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  my $55 trillion pool of capital and I throw a little bit into
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  Bitcoin and it keeps having these massive returns, you're
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  going to be able to de risk the health of your pension in the
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  long run as those liabilities keep going and pushed further
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  and further out into the future. There's been a lot of work
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  around this I know for, but it was really hard before the ETFs.
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  You'd have to convince like a firefighter pension to like hold
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  Bitcoin directly or hold it in trust with someone else.
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  But now you're being plugged into all these traditional like
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  financial rails where you can just the same people who are
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  managing the pension have like a Schwab account or Fidelity
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  account or whatever have you and they're able to just click a
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  button and just buy exposure to Bitcoin through those ETFs.
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  So I think it's a massive trickling of capital that's
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  starting to get unlocked and get hyper bitcoinized.
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  This is just part of hyper bitcoinization though.
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  In the future, it's just other financial instruments and being
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  able to find their exposure and getting that number go up
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  technology. Absolutely.
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  And then Rob, you're you're helping build this stuff out,
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  right, especially with anchor, with Anchor watch like it play.
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  It's going to play such a pivotal role because what people
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  have to understand is listen it. If we don't solve the Bitcoin
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  custody problem, nothing changes.
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  I can't emphasize that enough, right?
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  The beauty about Bitcoin is that it enables you to take self
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  custody. That includes individuals, that
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  includes institutions and that includes nation states.
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  However self custody is not easy.
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  It's not pretty straightforward. And you have a lot of questions,
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  right? Like, OK, so you know, if you're
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  a company and you have part of your Bitcoin treasury in self
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  custody, are you going to use a single sig?
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  Are you going to use a multi sig?
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  Who are going to have those keys?
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  How are you going to trust them? Right?
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  And that's exactly what Anchor Watch is focusing on.
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  And you guys are the vanguard of this.
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  And it's absolutely incredible seeing this project play out
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  over the last couple years. And you guys just announced your
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  official launch, which is extremely exciting.
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  So could you talk a little bit about that, Rob?
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  Like what is the custody issue that you know companies are
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  facing when they look at Bitcoin?
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  And what is the problem that Anchor Watch fixes?
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  Absolutely, Yeah. So for larger traditional
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  financial players, they typically don't have the
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  infrastructure in house to custody those assets directly,
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  right. And this causes an unfortunate
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  like game theory outcome where you're going to have a lot of
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  coins sitting at a few places with custodians.
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  Now, structurally, this is a problem for many reasons for the
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  health of the network, for being able to actually have access to
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  your money itself, right? Using intermediaries starts to
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  break down kind of the network assumptions and how Bitcoin
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  should be governed. Now the our crack at trying to
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  change this is we leverage Bitcoin native smart contracts
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  to actually allow you to be able to hold keys in what we call
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  joint custody. We can get into the details
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  later, but we actually are having it set up so that you as
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  a customer have a multi sig, a two of three and Anchor Watch
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  has a multi sig of a two of three and both of them must
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  cosign for the length of an insurance policy to be able to
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  move the funds. Well, ultimately though, I view
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  too is that when you have pension funds, ETF, all these
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  long dated liabilities, they're either uninsured or heavily
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  underinsured. And fundamentally the way we
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  viewed as if the relationship, if you're going to work with a
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  custodian, the whole game is that you pay them fees for
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  managing the asset for you. But if something goes wrong, you
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  should be able to get identified, you should be able
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  to get paid out so you're not losing access to your, your
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  exposure to Bitcoin. And that's kind of, it was a
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  long time coming, but that's kind of what we've been building
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  out both on the technology side and offering regulated insurance
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  through Lloyds of London bound policies.
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  We are Lloyds of London cover holders.
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  So we are direct agents that are distributing Lloyds of London
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  policies, underwriting your name to your Bitcoin directly tying
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  that all together. That's awesome, man, And and
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  it's and it's so it's so instrumental in in Bitcoin
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  adoption, right? It's so you need to we need to
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  figure this out. Entrepreneurs like yourself need
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  to figure this problem out or there's only so much bitcoins
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  going to be adopted because again, it's it's so easy to talk
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  about self custody as an individual and it's even not
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  that easy too, because then you get you go down the multi sig
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  rabbit hole, you go down the 25th hole, the 25th word rabbit
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  hole. But again, and like for
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  institutions, things become even more complicated.
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  Like should my, what type of access should my CEO have?
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  What type of access should my CFO have?
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  Right. The insurance thing is extremely
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  exciting because it's like, even if you know, but you do a two of
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  three multi sig, what if someone shows up at your house, you
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  know, $5 rent attack like, you know, like that All of those
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  things need to be talked about. So I'm so happy that there's
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  actually someone out there who is very intelligent who is
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  actively trying to solve this problem.
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  Anyways, Opti, what is your take on this brother?
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  The pension fund news is absolutely massive.
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  I mean, dude, like we can't stop winning.
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  We have nation state adoption. We have a state level adoption
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  now pension funds. We have the largest bank in
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  Italy saying that they bought Bitcoin.
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  We covered that on like an episode 2 or three days ago.
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  I mean, it was Trump, right? Right when in the Nashville
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  conference, he said that you guys were going to get tired of
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  winning. Is this what he meant Opti?
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  I don't know, we'll see, we'll see.
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  We got a what, 3 days, three business days to see how much
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  winning we can actually achieve in, in, you know, day one.
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  So we're cautiously optimistic on that.
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  But really I want to go back to this article a little bit
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  because there is a couple quotes here that Nikko didn't cover.
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  They were a little longer in this article.
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  And I think this is a message that needs to be stressed more.
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  So obviously Nikko covered this one.
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  But interest from typically conservative schemes has grown
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  following the launch of the US crypto ETFs.
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  Like, I think this is one of those things like that Rob was
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  just saying, traditionally pension fund managers are the
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  most conservative investors, period.
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  And so the fact that they're looking at Bitcoin, I think that
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  signal for a lot of people that maybe Bitcoin isn't as risky as
• 12:02
  you may think. And then, of course, the next
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  one is kind of piggybacking off what Nico just mentioned, which
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  is this Trump effect that we're seeing.
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  And here's another quote. Since Election Day, we have been
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  getting a flood of queries in. Trustees don't like to think
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  that there's a hot asset class out there that they don't know
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  anything about. Again, we've been covering this
• 12:20
  so much on the show that really everyone here that hangs out
• 12:24
  with us on Simply Bitcoin, all the Bitcoiners, we'd still have
• 12:27
  asymmetric knowledge out there. And there's people that have
• 12:30
  been bamboozled by all the fun around Bitcoin.
• 12:33
  You know, they think it's just for criminals and it's just
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  Internet nerd money and it's too risky and volatile and I need to
• 12:39
  stay away. And then when you look at the
• 12:41
  numbers, it's like Bitcoin is the best performing asset the
• 12:43
  last 15 years. It basically was the best
• 12:45
  performing asset last year and they're missing out on all the
• 12:48
  gains. Obviously, everyone come for the
• 12:50
  money and then they'll eventually stay because it's
• 12:52
  better money. Now the last quote that Nico
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  didn't mention, which I think is essentially the key theme here
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  again, quote. We generally thought that even
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  though crypto is risky, new and not yet fully proven that it had
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  become too big and its potential was too great to continue to
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  ignore. Now this is this is the stage
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  that we are right now. People are starting to realize
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  that, hey, Bitcoin isn't going away.
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  Obviously, I like to get the the price appreciation of Bitcoin.
• 13:21
  I'd like to get the exposure. You know, this thing isn't just
• 13:25
  going to disappear here. It's not going to 0 here.
• 13:28
  It's becoming too big to ignore. And I think this is the signal
• 13:30
  we're going to see play out in 2025 that hey, you can ignore
• 13:34
  Bitcoin at your own peril. Like you can continue to say
• 13:38
  that Bitcoin is trash. Oh, it's too risky.
• 13:41
  I don't want to, you know, hold it or, you know, in Rob's arena,
• 13:45
  it's too risky for me to custody of this stuff.
• 13:47
  And now all of these solutions are coming out and people are
• 13:50
  starting to realize, wait, this Bitcoin thing is actually here.
• 13:53
  It's not going away. And now that the memes, that
• 13:56
  latest memes of hey, maybe it's going to $1,000,000 this year,
• 14:00
  maybe I want to get some. So, hey, if the most
• 14:02
  conservative investors in the world are starting to take
• 14:05
  Bitcoin very seriously, I think that's a lot of signal for
• 14:07
  people out there like, you know, your mother's and, and your
• 14:10
  friends and, and all the skeptics out there that, wait,
• 14:13
  maybe this Bitcoin thing is something I need to get all of
• 14:16
  the Satoshi quote. Maybe you want to get some just
• 14:19
  in case it catches on, because it seems to be catching on and
• 14:22
  the entrepreneurs in Bitcoin are building the tools that are
• 14:25
  needed to really take over the world.
• 14:27
  And we're going to talk about that more in the culture with
• 14:28
  Rob, because I think he built one of those products.
• 14:31
  So that's my takes on this stuff, Nico.
• 14:33
  We can keep it moving. Absolutely.
• 14:35
  Guys, we got a packed show for you guys today.
• 14:38
  So much to talk about in regards to an executive order.
• 14:43
  I spoke to the man who orange pilled, Michael Saylor.
• 14:47
  We had an hour long conversation yesterday.
• 14:49
  We're going to be dropping that podcast I think in about a week
• 14:53
  or two. His name is Eric Weiss and he
• 14:56
  was talking about the significance of the SAB 121
• 15:00
  order being repealed. So we're going to talk about
• 15:03
  that with the significance of that is going to mean.
• 15:07
  And then during the news segment, we have some news that
• 15:12
  are coming out that apparently we have an update for you guys
• 15:15
  regarding apparently Tether filed a lawsuit against Swan
• 15:19
  Bitcoin. So we're going to look at the
• 15:20
  details on that update you guys on that.
• 15:23
  So it's going to be a packed show, lots of stuff to talk
• 15:27
  about. So stay tuned.
• 15:28
  And of course, during the culture segment, we are going to
• 15:32
  talk talk to Rob about Anchor Watch.
• 15:35
  I'm telling you guys, this is one of the coolest projects in
• 15:39
  Bitcoin that you guys are going to hear a lot about in the in
• 15:42
  the coming years. So stay tuned.
• 15:44
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  At the time of recording, the Bitcoin price is $100,080 Block
• 19:19
  height 879,524 sats per dollar 999 market cap 1.98 trillion
• 19:28
  Bitcoin versus gold market cap 10.46% Oh, sats per dollar just
• 19:32
  broke 1000. That feels good.
• 19:34
  Percentage issued 94.33% decline from all time high -7.6%
• 19:40
  realized monetary inflation 1.07%.
• 19:45
  In the grand scheme of things, we are just getting started.
• 19:48
  There's a the very famous Twitter Spaces that Michael
• 19:52
  Sayler joined a couple years ago.
• 19:55
  I'm going to just have this like kind of playing or show you guys
• 19:59
  in the background. If you guys want to look it up.
• 20:01
  It's called Michael Sayler's three catalyst for Bitcoin to
• 20:04
  reach $5,000,000. We've played it for you guys so
• 20:07
  many times. But there was three things that
• 20:10
  he said needed to happen #1 the approval of the Spot Bitcoin ETF
• 20:15
  #2 the change in the Fazbee accounting rules.
• 20:19
  Those two things have already happened.
• 20:21
  The change in the accounting rules, I think went into effect
• 20:24
  in December and of course, the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF
• 20:27
  happened in January of 2024. But the third thing that he said
• 20:32
  was the ability for banks to custody Bitcoin, and that's why
• 20:39
  the SAB thing is very, very important.
• 20:42
  So why am I going to talk about this?
• 20:43
  Well, check out this latest article U.S.
• 20:46
  Banks may Hold Bitcoin and crypto under incoming Trump
• 20:50
  executive order. Remember, that's the third thing
• 20:53
  that Michael Saylor said needed to happen in order for Bitcoin
• 20:57
  to hit $5,000,000 per coin. Not Nico's words, those are
• 21:02
  sailors words. The article goes on to say
• 21:04
  president-elect Trump may issue an executive order, effectively
• 21:08
  allowing banks and financial institutions to hold BTC and
• 21:11
  crypto assets on behalf of their clients, according to a new
• 21:14
  report. The incoming order could reverse
• 21:17
  a regulatory guideline that has shaped how financial
• 21:20
  institutions account for and custody digital assets.
• 21:24
  Quote, Trump is expected to issue executive orders on the
• 21:29
  first day of his presidency that may address issues including de
• 21:33
  banking and the repeal of a controversial crypto accounting
• 21:37
  policy requiring banks huddling digital assets to count them as
• 21:42
  liabilities on the bank's own balance sheet.
• 21:45
  According to a person involved with the conversation.
• 21:48
  The potential executive order would reverse staff accounting
• 21:51
  bulletin or the SAB 121, an SEC guideline that requires certain
• 21:57
  financial entities to list even the crypto assets they hold on
• 22:01
  behalf of customers as liabilities.
• 22:03
  You can see why, you know, it's almost as if they didn't want
• 22:08
  people to do it. Not, I'm not saying that's the
• 22:11
  case, but looks like it. Crypto proponents say the
• 22:14
  guideline blocks financial institutions ability to enter
• 22:17
  the digital assets arena because treating custodial assets as
• 22:20
  liabilities could misrepresents the company's financial health.
• 22:24
  A bill aiming to eliminate SAB 121 recently passed both the
• 22:27
  House and Senate, but President Biden vetoed the bill.
• 22:32
  I remember when I was speaking to Eric yesterday, he was making
• 22:36
  the case that that was one of the major reasons that, you
• 22:39
  know, the, the Democrats, were they, they, they, you know, this
• 22:44
  election, you can make a very strong argument, I'm not saying
• 22:48
  my words, not Eric's, but you can make a very strong argument
• 22:51
  that one of the major reasons the Democratic Party lost this
• 22:55
  recent election was because of their, of how people perceive
• 23:00
  their stance is on the Bitcoin industry.
• 23:03
  I'll put it like that. So, you know, and, and, and
• 23:07
  again, if it passed the House, if it passed the Senate and then
• 23:12
  Biden, you know, vetoed it, that's not a good look, right?
• 23:16
  So anyways, Rob, this, you know, this is up your alley, man.
• 23:20
  Like you're part of your business is giving this
• 23:23
  functionality to institutions to custody Bitcoin and feel secure
• 23:27
  in their custody of Bitcoin. And I feel like this was a major
• 23:30
  roadblock in order for that to happen.
• 23:32
  So what is your take on this recent news?
• 23:35
  And again, this is pretty exciting, right?
• 23:37
  Four days from this potentially being repealed.
• 23:41
  It looks pretty good. Rob, what's your take?
• 23:44
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 23:45
  So this has been one of these like arcane, like regulatory
• 23:49
  frameworks with staff accounting built in 1/21 that put the
• 23:53
  entire kibosh on a bank touching this at all mechanically.
• 23:55
  What this meant though is that if you were a bank and someone
• 23:58
  maybe gave you one Bitcoin, you'd have to hold the dollar
• 24:01
  amount in equivalent withheld as reserves to have everything 1 to
• 24:04
  one. And it would just ruin the
• 24:06
  bank's ability to do any other sort of any other sort of
• 24:09
  lending or borrowing. It's actually a little known
• 24:11
  fact that this is like the one thing the Biden administration
• 24:15
  vetoed before in the last legislative session.
• 24:19
  This was bipartisan, where you had a Senate Minority Leader,
• 24:23
  Chuck Schumer from the Democrats with the Republicans all coming
• 24:26
  together saying this is ridiculous.
• 24:28
  Banks, if they want to be able to custody Bitcoin, should be
• 24:30
  able to do it. And ultimately, what happened
• 24:32
  was it got through the House, it got through the Senate like you
• 24:34
  would have in the United States, and passing laws for once,
• 24:37
  Congress did its job and it passed a law to stop this and
• 24:40
  basically overturn it. And then Joe Biden vetoed it.
• 24:43
  Now, The funny thing is that this is all an executive thing.
• 24:46
  It comes from the SEC. So the president, who is the
• 24:48
  ultimate source of power for the Securities and Exchange
• 24:51
  Commission, also could just pass an executive order that
• 24:54
  overturns it. Joe Biden refused to do it on
• 24:56
  the executive order side. He refused to do it by vetoing
• 24:59
  on the legislative side. And it looks like, you know,
• 25:01
  President Trump, when he's elected, inaugurated in four
• 25:03
  days, is just going to kind of clean this whole thing out.
• 25:06
  It's massive for institutional option.
• 25:08
  We're talking about kind of like the big unlocks the ETS
• 25:10
  provided. You know, the banks are looking
• 25:12
  at this and saying, wait a second, why aren't we getting
• 25:14
  fees for managing this stuff, right?
• 25:16
  Like, why is it have to go to like these third party
• 25:18
  custodians? And so you're going to see this
• 25:19
  democratization of the accessibility to Bitcoin for
• 25:22
  financial services. This is a massive catalytic
• 25:25
  unlock. It's just one of these things
• 25:27
  that it's not sexy, right? It's like we're talking about
• 25:30
  regulatory advisory bulletins from the Securities and Exchange
• 25:34
  Commission, but you start realizing how much capital is
• 25:36
  being locked up from here. This also goes into what the
• 25:39
  FDIC was doing with Operation Choke .2 Point O.
• 25:42
  All of that is going to be going away and it's going to be really
• 25:44
  wild to see how like how the ecosystem develops over the next
• 25:47
  six months and couple of years without having the government
• 25:50
  just actively trying to kill off the industry.
• 25:52
  It's a whole paradigm that we're entering.
• 25:55
  Absolutely. And and and again, like Rob,
• 25:56
  like they forced us, they forced our hand like Bitcoiner
• 26:01
  Bitcoiners, I think are inherently apolitical.
• 26:04
  We are, you can make the case that we're anti political.
• 26:06
  We didn't even want to get into the political discussion, but
• 26:09
  there was a point where me and Opti were like, and we were of
• 26:12
  course, you know, we we have a show.
• 26:13
  So we like talk, we speak our minds live sometimes and we're
• 26:16
  like Opti do are we going to have to move to El Salvador?
• 26:20
  You know like it like it was it was pretty scary at some point,
• 26:23
  like the attack on self custody, the proposed 30% Bitcoin mining
• 26:27
  tax all the information that came out with operation choke .2
• 26:30
  point O how they essentially sabotage some banks.
• 26:33
  They were actively asking banks not to onboard customers that
• 26:39
  had anything to do with the Bitcoin industry.
• 26:42
  Like it was, it was, it was, you know, pretty crazy at at it.
• 26:47
  It it was if you were a Bitcoin entrepreneur in the United
• 26:50
  States in 2024, There was there's lots of moments of
• 26:53
  uncertainty. So I'm really glad that, you
• 26:56
  know, this new incoming administration is coming in.
• 26:58
  And I don't think we're asking for special privileges.
• 27:01
  We just want to be left alone. That's all we're asking for.
• 27:04
  So and I think I think they're going to do just that.
• 27:07
  And I think they're going to do even more so very exciting
• 27:09
  stuff. Opti, what's your take on this
• 27:12
  man? I mean, sailors said this was
• 27:14
  back in when he recorded that Twitter Spaces.
• 27:16
  It was back in 2022 and again he said that three things need to
• 27:22
  happen in order for Bitcoin to hit $5,000,000.
• 27:23
  The change in fasby accounting rules, the spot Bitcoin ETF, and
• 27:27
  then what it seems like is about to happen, the ability for banks
• 27:31
  to custody Bitcoin Opti your take?
• 27:34
  Yeah, Well, obviously as a Bitcoiner, you know, I, I'm
• 27:40
  really not a huge fan of banks custodying your Bitcoin.
• 27:43
  But we all knew that this is where it was trending.
• 27:45
  And like Rob was saying, obviously they're having these
• 27:48
  conversations even though publicly they're flooding
• 27:50
  Bitcoin and they're attacking Bitcoin.
• 27:52
  You know, behind the scenes, they're asking themselves
• 27:55
  exactly what Rob just asked, like, why aren't we being
• 27:57
  allowed to custody this Bitcoin? They're leaving money on the
• 27:59
  table. We all know bankers want the
• 28:01
  money. So I think it was only an
• 28:03
  inevitability that this would happen, especially considering
• 28:05
  that the Trump administration has been, you know, pro crypto
• 28:09
  and that was one of their main stances going forward.
• 28:11
  So as Rob was saying, we've been saying this on the show for a
• 28:14
  while. It is going to be a very
• 28:16
  interesting, you know, four years in regards for Bitcoin.
• 28:19
  Hopefully we see some very significant changes happen
• 28:22
  within the 1st 100 days and speculating on what these
• 28:26
  executive orders will be. I think there's it's really the
• 28:29
  three things on the table. One, of course, repealing Saab
• 28:31
  121. Two, what everyone's been
• 28:33
  talking about, which is the strategic Bitcoin reserve
• 28:35
  announcements or rather actually implement this.
• 28:38
  And then maybe the third one is just freeing Ross.
• 28:40
  Like if we get those multiple three things like day one, I
• 28:44
  don't know how any Bitcoiner could be anti Trump at this
• 28:47
  point. It's just like get out of our
• 28:48
  way, though of course he might be unleashing the the shit coin
• 28:53
  wave as well. But as long as Bitcoin doesn't
• 28:56
  get caught up in the mess, I think we're going to win.
• 28:59
  So just like we're saying, as long as they get out of the way
• 29:02
  and allow for the use of Bitcoin, for people to custody
• 29:06
  Bitcoin, not fighting us with Operation Choke .2 Point O, it's
• 29:09
  going to be very huge. And also I, I didn't fully dive
• 29:12
  into it, but Caitlin Long tweeted this morning that
• 29:14
  there's been some huge resignations from the FDIC and
• 29:17
  these are people that were in, you know, in cahoots with
• 29:20
  Operation Choke .2 Point O. So I'm sure it's going to be a
• 29:24
  crazy, crazy 2025 if they just get out of our way.
• 29:27
  So I'm super bullish on all this stuff getting pushed through and
• 29:31
  we get some favorable laws here in the US and we don't have to
• 29:34
  leave anymore. Maybe we can get, you know, the
• 29:36
  Bitcoin wallets, the Lightning, well, it's a come back into the
• 29:38
  States and we can start using those again.
• 29:41
  Like, I'm pretty hopeful right now.
• 29:43
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 29:44
  I mean, elections have consequences.
• 29:46
  I think us Bitcoiners, we, we really believe in the theory
• 29:50
  from the sovereign individual that, you know, politics are
• 29:52
  irrelevant. You know, the internet's going
• 29:54
  to kind of change everything. But I think during the
• 29:56
  transitionary period, which is I think where we are, I think
• 30:00
  politics still play a very, very, you know, important role.
• 30:04
  Unfortunately, because, you know, I think that if, you know,
• 30:07
  the Biden Harris administration got another four years, if
• 30:10
  Harris got another four years, I think the policy that they had I
• 30:13
  think was going to continue. And Bitcoin, you know, Bitcoin
• 30:17
  doesn't need a politician. Bitcoin is, is, is government
• 30:19
  resistant, right? So I was never worried about the
• 30:22
  survival of Bitcoin. However, I think Bitcoin
• 30:25
  entrepreneurship and I think the Bitcoin industry in the United
• 30:27
  States definitely would have felt a little bit of hurt and
• 30:31
  pain. So I'm, I'm really glad that the
• 30:34
  results were like they were. So very excited for the next 4
• 30:38
  year, the next four years I think is going to be great.
• 30:40
  And I think a lot of innovation is going to happen in the space.
• 30:44
  All right. Everybody, we're going to hit
• 30:45
  the news. We will be right back.
• 30:48
  I want to give a very special shout out to our sponsor,
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  Bitcoin. Scan the QR code or check the
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  link in the video description. Also want to give a shout out to
• 32:59
  the 15th 1800 of you guys watching live between YouTube,
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  show so far, make sure to smash that like button.
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  Smash that like button. Of course, shout out to the
• 33:18
  Rumble and X audience as well. Anyways, I thought this was
• 33:21
  quite interesting before we jump into the news article of today
• 33:26
  60 According to this Twitter post by Hunter Horsley, he said
• 33:30
  that 61% of financial advisors think Bitcoin will be 100 to 250
• 33:36
  K by the end of 2025. I mean, it's not very helpful.
• 33:40
  This is a very big range of numbers.
• 33:43
  He goes on to say. Lots of interesting data points
• 33:45
  in Bitcoise Invest and Vetify. 6th annual survey of several 100
• 33:51
  advisors. And here's kind of the
• 33:53
  breakdown. 1% of advisors, for some reasons, I think Bitcoin's
• 33:57
  going to be at 0 dollars. 6% of advisors believe it's going to
• 34:01
  be between one and $50,000. You need, you guys need to get
• 34:03
  rid of those advisors if they fit into that category. 26% I
• 34:08
  believe it's going to be between 50 and 90 and and 99,999 sixty.
• 34:14
  1% believe it's going to be between 100K and roughly 250 K
• 34:18
  4% believe it's going to be between 250K and a million. 1%
• 34:22
  believe it's going to be between a million and 10 million and 1%
• 34:26
  believe it's going to be above 10 million.
• 34:27
  I want to get that advisor. Yeah, yeah.
• 34:29
  Who are that? 6% of advisors, that's who we
• 34:32
  need. Who are they?
• 34:33
  Who's the person that's saying it's going to be $10 million for
• 34:35
  a coin in 2020? I need to talk to to him.
• 34:38
  All right, everybody, so let's jump into today's article.
• 34:40
  Quick update. I do want to give a little bit
• 34:42
  of preface here. So guys, I, I, I worked at Swan,
• 34:46
  still have a lot of friends at Swan.
• 34:47
  So I'm not going to be offering any type of commentary.
• 34:50
  I'm just going to read you guys the article.
• 34:52
  I think it is an important update.
• 34:54
  So it goes on to say Tether files lawsuit against Swamp
• 34:58
  Bitcoin over joint venture dispute.
• 35:01
  It goes on to say stablecoin issuer Tether has filed a
• 35:04
  lawsuit against Bitcoin financial services company Swamp
• 35:06
  Bitcoin, accusing the firm of quote significant breaches in
• 35:10
  their agreements. In a statement to Coin Telegraph
• 35:13
  on January 15th, Tether, along with Co claimants 2040 Energy,
• 35:19
  confirmed the legal action against Swan Bitcoin.
• 35:22
  Throughout our relationship with Swan, Tether has consistently
• 35:24
  acted in good faith, supported mutual business objectives and
• 35:28
  adhered to all relevant agreements, Tether said.
• 35:31
  Conversely, Swan has acted recklessly and their actions
• 35:35
  have resulted in significant breaches by them of the
• 35:38
  agreements between us. Consequently, we have been
• 35:41
  compelled to take measure necessary measures to protect
• 35:44
  our investment. The case, filed in the High
• 35:47
  Court of England and Wales, escalates an ongoing legal
• 35:50
  battle between the two companies.
• 35:53
  It goes on to say what sparked the dispute.
• 35:55
  Swan and Tether established 240 Energy in 2022 as a joint
• 36:00
  Bitcoin mining venture. Under the partnership, Tether
• 36:03
  providing provided funding while Swan handled operations.
• 36:07
  Swan Bitcoin alleged that former employees from its mining arms
• 36:11
  stole proprietary information, including software, code and
• 36:15
  business strategies, to form a rival company called Proton
• 36:19
  Management. Swan described the employee's
• 36:21
  actions as part of a scheme labeled Quote Rain and Hellfire,
• 36:25
  designed to sabotage Swan's role in the joint venture.
• 36:29
  The companies claimed that key personnel carried out this plan,
• 36:33
  including Alex Home and its former head of business
• 36:36
  development Hafa Zaguri, its chief investment officer and
• 36:40
  mining head, who now serves as Proton CEO.
• 36:43
  Swan accused Proton of misusing its confidential trade secrets
• 36:46
  to establish published itself as a direct competitor, which it
• 36:50
  argued had, quote, irreparably harm Swan's ability to compete
• 36:53
  in the market. According to court filings,
• 36:56
  Proton management allegedly convinced Tether to cut ties
• 36:59
  with Swan and back Proton in the mining venture instead.
• 37:03
  On October on August 12th, 2024, Swan CEO Corey Clipson was
• 37:08
  removed as the CEO of 2040 Energy and Proton officially
• 37:13
  took over the operation. Operational and administrative
• 37:16
  functions of the mining operations.
• 37:18
  Swan Bitcoin has also accused Tether of facilitating what it
• 37:21
  described as a, quote, hostile takeover of its mining
• 37:25
  operations. Tether has denied any
• 37:27
  wrongdoing, asserting that it acted by its contractual rights
• 37:31
  under the joint venture agreement and a statement to
• 37:33
  Coin Telegraph on September 27th, 2024.
• 37:37
  Tether is aware of recent allegations made in a lawsuit
• 37:40
  that mentions a subsidiary of Tether dedicated to proprietary
• 37:44
  mining and other investments. While Tether is not not named to
• 37:47
  defend in the case, we have taken note of the claims and
• 37:50
  deny any implications of wrongdoings.
• 37:53
  It goes on to say Swan Bitcoin's legal troubles.
• 37:56
  Swan Bitcoin has also launched legal action against a law firm,
• 38:00
  Gibson Dunn and Cruncher. In November 2024, the company
• 38:04
  claimed the firm abandoned its case against Proton after taking
• 38:07
  on Tether as a client, violating attorney ethic rules prohibiting
• 38:11
  dropping a client to avoid conflicts of interest.
• 38:14
  Clips and described Gibson's move as a betrayal quote.
• 38:17
  Swan was blindsided, said Corey Clipson.
• 38:21
  And it goes on to say, quote, Swan is in, is in receipt of a
• 38:25
  lawsuit filed against in in English courts regarding control
• 38:29
  of a mining subsidiary. It will not be appropriate to
• 38:32
  comment on the substance of that lawsuit at the presence at the
• 38:35
  present time, save to note that Swan will vigorously defend all
• 38:39
  of its rights, a spokesman for Swan told Coyne Telegraph.
• 38:44
  So I don't really have any commentary on this, like I said,
• 38:47
  based on my history, but you know, a lot of yeah, I'm going
• 38:53
  to pass it on to Opti. Opti, what's your take on this?
• 38:57
  Yeah, so, well, first of all, this whole swan drama of 2024 is
• 39:02
  like a reality TV show at this point.
• 39:04
  It's it doesn't seem like it's going to end well.
• 39:07
  And my comment on this is I would not want to be caught in a
• 39:11
  position to try to fight tether in anything, considering that
• 39:14
  they have a huge war chest and they're just super well funded.
• 39:18
  So I mean, it's been crazy just watching this whole story play
• 39:22
  out and why and read the the court cases and the lawsuits.
• 39:26
  It's just, it's absolutely nuts. It's literally like a reality TV
• 39:30
  show. When when I read this stuff,
• 39:31
  it's it's almost mind blowing how all this stuff has happened.
• 39:34
  And, you know, just trolling a little bit.
• 39:36
  Nico, it looks like you made the best trade of 2024.
• 39:41
  No stop, stop, stop. No comment.
• 39:44
  Anyways, Rob, what's your take on all this?
• 39:47
  Well, I haven't seen any of the details for this.
• 39:50
  I know the previous lawsuit that Swan filed against Tether was
• 39:53
  made available in like public court documents in the United
• 39:55
  States. This lawsuit is in Wales.
• 39:58
  And I was confused. My wife is Welsh and I was like,
• 40:00
  nothing happens in Wales. Why would this be happening in
• 40:02
  Wales? And I guess it's because Tether
• 40:06
  is based out of the British Virgin Islands.
• 40:08
  So they roll up ultimately as a colony to the United Kingdom
• 40:12
  like court system. I haven't heard, yeah, I haven't
• 40:15
  seen any details of what the actual lawsuit alleges.
• 40:18
  I've only seen kind of the comments from the press release.
• 40:20
  So I would just kind of hang tight and see what actually
• 40:22
  unfolds out as those court documents become public.
• 40:25
  Absolutely. I think that's a, that's a
• 40:26
  really, really good take. Now the other thing I want to
• 40:29
  get your guys's take on is the recent news that came out, I
• 40:34
  think it was yesterday, U.S. government says stolen Bitcoin
• 40:38
  from 2016 Bitfenix hack should be returned to the exchange in
• 40:43
  kind. It goes on to say the quick
• 40:46
  note, the US government said Bitcoin stolen in 2016 should be
• 40:49
  returned to Bitfenix in a court document filed in ADC court.
• 40:54
  The latest filing is in line with an October court ruling
• 40:57
  that said both Lichtenstein and Morgan, as well as Bitfenix
• 41:01
  parent company believe that the crypto exchange is the sole
• 41:05
  victim. the US government says that over 94,000 bitcoins stolen
• 41:09
  the 26th hack of of Bitfinex by the by the two people Leela, I
• 41:15
  guess sorry and Heather should go back to the exchange in a
• 41:19
  court document filed this week. Now, what's really interesting
• 41:23
  to me, and of course you can't confirm this 100%, is I tweeted
• 41:28
  this out. I think it was yesterday.
• 41:30
  I don't know if they would have given this Bitcoin back if Biden
• 41:36
  or or Harris won the election. I don't think they would have
• 41:39
  done that. And I think that, you know, it's
• 41:42
  quite convenient that Trump said that.
• 41:44
  Listen, we're going to, you know, we're going to build a
• 41:47
  Bitcoin strategic reserve. None of this bitcoins going to
• 41:49
  be sold while, you know, while, you know, I'm in office.
• 41:55
  And then again, you know, four or five days before he's going
• 41:58
  to be sworn into office. the US government's like, oh, you know,
• 42:01
  that Bitfinex Bitcoin that we've been holding on to this entire
• 42:05
  time actually, you know, belongs to Bitfinex.
• 42:07
  So I'm not saying that's the right thing to do.
• 42:09
  Bitfinex should totally get their Bitcoin back that was
• 42:12
  stolen from them. However, I don't think the
• 42:14
  motivation, I don't think they're doing this for the right
• 42:17
  reasons is, is my opinion on this.
• 42:20
  So Opti, what's your opinion? And then we'll move on to Rob.
• 42:24
  Yeah, well, I just saw what was that girl's name?
• 42:28
  Frazzle, Drip, or whatever her name is.
• 42:30
  Razzle. Is that her handle?
• 42:32
  Razzle Khan. Razzle Khan I.
• 42:34
  Found that. Name.
• 42:35
  Yeah, sorry, sorry. I just saw her.
• 42:37
  Slapper, Slapper. Ever until.
• 42:40
  Yeah, exactly. You know, I just saw her latest
• 42:42
  music video, so it seems like maybe she's kind of lit about
• 42:46
  this. I don't know.
• 42:47
  But yeah, I, I mean, the coincidence is, is, is I think
• 42:52
  they're too big to ignore here. Obviously, Trump has been
• 42:56
  announcing an SPR. He did kind of talk, or at least
• 42:59
  was saying to the the DOJ, hey, we'll just take all the Bitcoin
• 43:02
  you had and that, you know, turn that into the strategic Bitcoin
• 43:05
  reserve. Then we saw the DOJ announced
• 43:08
  that they're going to sell a Silk Road coin.
• 43:10
  Now we're getting, you know, some more, some more stuff
• 43:13
  coming out of the court saying that they're actually going to
• 43:15
  give back a lot of the bit for next coin.
• 43:17
  So it does seem like a lot of this stuff is happening to
• 43:21
  essentially, you know, cut Trump's knee on this SBR stuff.
• 43:26
  But hey, if you're a bit Fenix holder and you're getting in
• 43:29
  kind returns of your Bitcoin, I mean, I guess a force huddle
• 43:32
  from 2016, it's, I mean, you're probably kind of happy right
• 43:35
  now. So hey, I, I guess, you know, no
• 43:39
  coincidences here, but in return in, in regards to getting your
• 43:43
  Bitcoin back, you're probably kind of happy about this.
• 43:47
  So it is going to be interesting how this actually plays out and
• 43:49
  how it gets distributed and if everyone actually gets the
• 43:52
  whole, the coin that they held, etcetera, etcetera.
• 43:54
  But yeah, I don't know, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm more thinking
• 43:57
  about just Razzlecon's music video here.
• 44:00
  So that's my whole thought. I'm sure Rob has some actual
• 44:07
  insight on this. Oh man yeah, Rob What?
• 44:11
  What's your opinion dude? I think this was inevitable.
• 44:16
  Even if like Biden Harris won, there just would have been
• 44:18
  lawsuits that that was stolen property get returned it.
• 44:21
  It was kind of weird that those coins had been seized for over a
• 44:25
  year, right? And they were just kind of
• 44:27
  hanging out in the US government's custody.
• 44:29
  It didn't make sense to me. So even if the Biden Harris
• 44:33
  administration had won and it was going to be hostile, there
• 44:36
  would have been very good legal standing to try and seize back
• 44:38
  those coins. Now that Trump is one, it seems
• 44:41
  like it's all kind of moving, like everyone's just kind of
• 44:43
  moving along knowing that this is going to get inevitably
• 44:45
  released anyway. It's better than the alternative
• 44:47
  where they could have sold the Bitcoin and gave them in kind
• 44:49
  dollars back, right? So the fact that the US
• 44:50
  government is returning in kind is also an interesting lens
• 44:53
  that, you know, they are respecting it as property and
• 44:56
  kind of giving it back to the rightful owners.
• 44:58
  Yeah, absolutely. I, I, I, I agree.
• 45:00
  It's just, again, not for the right reasons, but it was always
• 45:03
  going to be that outcome. And again, it's so interesting,
• 45:06
  right? They, they see like, you know,
• 45:08
  it, the US government is like, they seized it when you would
• 45:13
  think that they would give it back to who it was stolen from.
• 45:17
  They took a very long time. And is it just because it's
• 45:21
  Bitcoin? Because if it wasn't Bitcoin, I
• 45:22
  think they would have given it back a whole lot quicker, which
• 45:26
  anyways, the whole thing is quite interesting.
• 45:28
  All right, guys, we're going to hit the culture.
• 45:30
  We have Rob, Rob Hamilton in the house today and we're going to
• 45:33
  talk about Anchor Watch. So very.
• 45:35
  Very excited guys. Stay tuned we will be right
• 45:38
  back. I want to give a shout out to
• 45:40
  our sponsor Hive Digital Technologies.
• 45:43
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  Hive Digital Tech or check out their website,
• 46:14
  hivedigitaltech.com. All right everybody, I do want
• 46:29
  to give a shout out to our sponsor bit block boom guys,
• 46:32
  it's going to be one of the best Bitcoin conferences of the year
• 46:35
  April 3rd through the 6th of 2025.
• 46:39
  You want to get your tickets quickly because the prices do go
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  up. Guys, it's going to be one of
• 46:43
  the the best Bitcoin conferences of the year.
• 46:45
  Bit Block Boom is near and dear to my heart because it's
• 46:48
  actually the first conference for me and Opti met each other
• 46:50
  in person. Simply Bitcoin in its current
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  form would probably not be what it is today if it wasn't for
• 46:56
  this conference. It's awesome.
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  They have Texas BBQ, they have an axe throwing contest one of
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  the days it it's going to be awesome.
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  They have a workshop day, they have a conference day.
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  You're trying to get a job in the industry.
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  So one of the most effective ways is to go to Bitcoin
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  conferences, and the Bit Block Boom conference is one of the
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  best of the year. So it's going to be April 3rd
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  through the 6th of this year, 2025.
• 47:21
  And if you use promo code BBB21BBB21, you get $100 off of
• 47:28
  your ticket. Anyways, I've been looking
• 47:30
  forward to this show. Rob, I think the first time we
• 47:34
  met was on a news desk at the Bitcoin 2023 conference, I
• 47:42
  believe it was. And that was the first time like
• 47:46
  we talked and I think American Huddle was on the on the desk as
• 47:48
  well. My memory might be, you know,
• 47:51
  effing with me, but you know, you were blowing my mind in
• 47:56
  terms of talking about all the multi sig kind of functionality
• 48:00
  that you guys were working on and how that was going to be an
• 48:03
  absolute game changer for company treasury management.
• 48:08
  And with your guys recent launch, you you guys announced
• 48:11
  the insurance product that I again, I get this question all
• 48:16
  the time, specifically for like older, higher net worth
• 48:19
  individuals. They're like, OK, fine, two of
• 48:22
  three multi sig, three of five multi sig.
• 48:24
  There's so many companies that are offering this product.
• 48:26
  But like, what happens if someone shows in my house?
• 48:28
  Like what's what's going to happen, Nico?
• 48:30
  Like what's going on there? So Rob, thank you so much for
• 48:33
  coming on the show. Like I said, huge fan of this
• 48:35
  project, been paying attention to it.
• 48:37
  Congratulations on the launch. If you were to give everyone
• 48:41
  almost 2000 people watching live right now a quick elevator pitch
• 48:45
  on what anchor watch would be, the floor is yours.
• 48:50
  Yeah, so quick elevator pitch would be insured Bitcoin
• 48:53
  custody. Now there's a lot to unpack
• 48:56
  there, but to keep it brief, there's two parts here.
• 48:58
  The insurance that's offered is a Lloyd's of London insurance
• 49:00
  policy insuring your Bitcoin, your UTX OS directly tied to
• 49:05
  your name. The interesting of how we
• 49:08
  execute this is we leverage native Bitcoin technology called
• 49:13
  Mini script, but it allows us to do more advanced Bitcoin
• 49:17
  vaulting schemes today on Bitcoin without a soft work
• 49:20
  supported by most major hardware wallets as a just a very casual
• 49:25
  walkthrough. You can have let's say a two of
• 49:27
  three multi sig as you as the customer plus A2 of three multi
• 49:31
  sig at anchor watch now for an individual or a company.
• 49:33
  This gets really interesting because we're actually able to
• 49:37
  as joint custody. We both have to cosign.
• 49:39
  It's not a four of six. It's two separate 2 of threes
• 49:42
  that have to sign off on you have a distribution across
• 49:44
  organizations and risk. So let's say someone went and
• 49:47
  stole all your hardware wallets and taking the money, the keys
• 49:50
  may be gone, your keys may be gone, but the money hasn't moved
• 49:53
  yet because we have to cosign the transaction.
• 49:55
  And we actually leverage also in this scheme time locks which
• 49:59
  actually have over the life of your insurance policy over one
• 50:02
  year. We can make it say instead of a
• 50:03
  two of three from the customer, we can make it a one of three
• 50:05
  from the customer. And then maybe at the way end
• 50:08
  after your insurance policy expires, it goes to full
• 50:10
  sovereign self custody. And we have a layer in the
• 50:13
  middle where in the event someone stole all of your keys,
• 50:15
  all of your keys been lost or destroyed.
• 50:16
  If you were in those California wildfires, for example, we're
• 50:19
  still able to recover the funds where Anchor Watch has a two of
• 50:22
  three plus one of our recovery partners, Coin Corner out of the
• 50:26
  Isle of Man. We're able to come together and
• 50:28
  move those funds back to your control.
• 50:30
  And this is all handled Unchained natively.
• 50:33
  It's think of it as a multi sig as the next level.
• 50:35
  Multi sig has been around in Bitcoin since 2012.
• 50:38
  It's actually BIP 11 that was introduced by Gavin Andreessen
• 50:42
  back when he was the lead maintainer after Satoshi left
• 50:45
  the project. And then there's BIP 14 which is
• 50:48
  paid a script hash which was added in 2014 also by Gavin
• 50:51
  Andreessen. So he would like the initial
• 50:52
  person to kind of provide the framework on how multi sig works
• 50:55
  today. This was an observation we had
• 50:57
  that the really the custody technology landscape had not
• 51:00
  really evolved much since 20/14/2012.
• 51:03
  And So what we're doing is kind of putting forward this
• 51:06
  institutional way of being able to help protect those coins,
• 51:09
  distribute risk and it offer an insurance policy insuring you at
• 51:12
  the end of the day, ensuring things like wrench attacks, you
• 51:14
  know, violent coercion, like a kidnapping ransom equivalent of
• 51:17
  a policy. Being able to think about it
• 51:19
  from the perspective of if the event that we collude us at
• 51:24
  Anchor Watch are criminal and kind of stealing your coins at
• 51:27
  any point, you know that would be covered under the policy as
• 51:29
  well, right. So kind of thinking about the
• 51:32
  way risk works in Bitcoin, we, we, what we do is actually
• 51:35
  something called self insurance. You hold your keys, you own your
• 51:37
  risk, you mess up, there's no refunds.
• 51:40
  The other way that you could manage risk is doing a risk
• 51:43
  transferring, which is what you have with insurance.
• 51:44
  And that's what we're able to build out with Anchor Watch and
• 51:47
  just for institutional clients, high net worth individuals,
• 51:50
  people who want to have, you know, they believe in Bitcoin,
• 51:53
  they want to hold keys, they, they understand the greater
• 51:55
  vision, but they don't want to have to worry about if I mess
• 51:58
  everything up, do I lose my Bitcoin?
• 51:59
  And that's what we were able to kind of provide today as a way
• 52:02
  for being able to make sure we can backstop and protect your
• 52:04
  Bitcoin. It it's it's fascinating and and
• 52:07
  again, like this is a problem that needs to be solved for
• 52:12
  global Bitcoin adoption. The custody, Bitcoin custody is
• 52:18
  not easy. It's not easy.
• 52:21
  And you can't apply the same logic of the traditional
• 52:25
  financial financial system to Bitcoin custody.
• 52:28
  It does not work. You need to build out solutions
• 52:32
  for an entirely different technology.
• 52:35
  And it seems like you guys are doing an incredible job at just
• 52:38
  that. Opti, what are your thoughts?
• 52:40
  Brother Yeah, yeah, Well, actually we did get a good
• 52:42
  comment earlier in the show about self custody and they said
• 52:45
  like, I don't self custody because it's scary.
• 52:48
  And I think it's kind of a good segue into Anchor Watch.
• 52:51
  So you know, what are the use cases for Bitcoin insurance and
• 52:54
  who is it for? Like who are your ideal, you
• 52:56
  know, customers or who are you trying to target?
• 52:58
  What's the demographics you're looking at?
• 53:00
  Yeah. So I think the two buckets are
• 53:02
  one. Our minimum policy size starts
• 53:04
  at $250,000 worth of Bitcoin. Now that is like the minimum we
• 53:08
  can ensure if you had two Bitcoin you could over insure a
• 53:11
  little bit and our their highest size is up to $100 million per
• 53:15
  customer. And so anyone with Bitcoin
• 53:17
  exposure in that range which wants to have insured custody
• 53:20
  are people that today we can sign up and do business with.
• 53:22
  We are the first to be able to offer this kind of policy direct
• 53:25
  to individual customers and consumers in the United States.
• 53:28
  That's the other constraint is as of today, you have to be AUS
• 53:31
  domicile person or a company based out of the United States
• 53:34
  to be able to get the insurance policy coverage.
• 53:38
  So anyone in that broad spectrum, we've been since our
• 53:41
  formal opening at, you know, last Monday, we've been dealing
• 53:44
  with hundreds of inbound emails ranging the whole gambit from
• 53:47
  individuals, trusts, you know, businesses, right?
• 53:51
  Anyone who is looking to kind of like upgrade their security and
• 53:53
  know that if especially if you're a fiduciary, right, when
• 53:56
  you think about it like the gold ETFs are insured, right?
• 53:59
  Your stock shares, you have the SIPC, there's insurance for
• 54:01
  traditional securities. Bitcoin as digital gold, though,
• 54:04
  just has a very underdeveloped risk market associated with it
• 54:07
  where most of the insurance policies today are sitting at a
• 54:09
  custodian. So if you're using a custodian
• 54:12
  and you're a fiduciary managing funds, I would make the case
• 54:16
  that you actually have a fiduciary obligation to be
• 54:18
  pursuing insured custody because otherwise you're putting all of
• 54:21
  your risk at a counterparty who may have an insurance policy,
• 54:25
  may not have an insurance policy.
• 54:26
  If they do, you're as the customer are not named on the
• 54:29
  insurance policy maybe or you know, they have a level of
• 54:32
  insurance which is fractions of their total coverage.
• 54:34
  To my understanding today, Coinbase has a crime policy in
• 54:38
  the event that they commit a crime to steal funds.
• 54:40
  That's $350 million, I believe. But they have hundreds of
• 54:44
  billions of dollars of assets under management.
• 54:46
  So all of the ETFs, all of the the retail platform, everyone
• 54:50
  that's using Coinbase has one policy that they're sharing.
• 54:53
  And we just view this as like from a risk distribution and
• 54:55
  like kind of like the health materialization of the
• 54:57
  ecosystem. You're going to have insured
• 55:00
  custody becoming available, especially when you're talking
• 55:02
  like these pension funds, like long dated out like obligations.
• 55:05
  If you're managing these funds on behalf of other people, it
• 55:07
  makes perfect sense that you already accept the price
• 55:10
  volatility Bitcoin, right? You know, it goes up and it goes
• 55:12
  down, it goes up, but it goes up more than it goes down.
• 55:14
  The last thing you want to be in a position is like an FTX or
• 55:17
  Celsius where like, OK, I made the right directional bet, but
• 55:20
  then all the money was gone, right?
• 55:22
  And then at the end of the day that you need to have, if you're
• 55:25
  thinking about that from an institutional custody
• 55:26
  perspective, these I believe should be table stakes for how
• 55:28
  you're making the decisions on how to, you know, safeguard your
• 55:31
  Bitcoin. Love it, love it.
• 55:33
  OK, And I, I was looking through your website earlier and
• 55:36
  actually first question is for people in the chat is does
• 55:42
  Bitcoin insurance replace good security practices?
• 55:45
  I know there's something you harp on your website, so let's
• 55:47
  talk about that a little bit. No, I believe they're strictly
• 55:50
  complimentary, right? The idea that you're going to,
• 55:55
  this is actually kind of insurance called like a morale
• 55:57
  hazard. Like you don't want to be like,
• 55:58
  oh, I'm insured, I'm not going to care anymore, right?
• 56:00
  Like, oh, I have car insurance, I'm not going to wear a seat
• 56:01
  belt, right? Like it doesn't naturally work
• 56:03
  that way because the intent of insurance is for disastrous
• 56:05
  outcomes for being able to have, you know, not being totally
• 56:08
  financially impaired. I believe that for, for one, all
• 56:12
  of the security practices on chain that are governed with try
• 56:14
  to involve how it's built out. We put a lot of like guard and
• 56:17
  safety rails around like how that those funds can move over
• 56:20
  time in a much more robust way than what's really available in
• 56:23
  the larger market today. I'll give a huge shout out to
• 56:25
  the Liana wallet guys from Wizard Sardine.
• 56:29
  They were the kind of the only other people when I was building
• 56:31
  this out two years ago that were pioneering in this past.
• 56:33
  And they have a great solution too.
• 56:34
  That's fully self suffering, fully open source.
• 56:36
  You can download it, run it on your note and you can do these
• 56:38
  kind of more advanced recovery schemes.
• 56:41
  I don't think I think you need both though, because ultimately
• 56:43
  the insurability of the product is based on the security and the
• 56:46
  practices around the management of, of of the funds themselves.
• 56:50
  Like if you were to think about it like you, you wanna be having
• 56:54
  all of your bases covered and insurance is a part of your
• 56:56
  strategy. It's not the entirety of your
• 56:58
  strategy. Love it.
• 57:00
  And someone in the chat says you'll never get your actual
• 57:02
  Bitcoin back. So if you do wreck yourself, how
• 57:06
  does this insurance play out? You're getting paid back in
• 57:09
  cash. Like what?
• 57:10
  What? What's the way that this works?
• 57:12
  It is actually a great question and it actually ties into what
• 57:14
  we were talking about earlier, right with the Fasby rules and
• 57:18
  SAT 121. It's even worse for insurance
• 57:21
  companies. So I so directly answer the
• 57:23
  question, it's a dollar denominated policy.
• 57:25
  Why is that? So insurance, the way it
• 57:27
  naturally works is you have a pool of capital and that pool of
• 57:29
  capital underwrites a certain body of risk.
• 57:31
  And in the event that there's a loss, that pool of capital pays
• 57:35
  out the claims. Also the when you pay the
• 57:37
  insurance premiums, it goes to those that are providing the
• 57:39
  capital, right? So you can think about it that
• 57:41
  way. It's like, that's how the high
• 57:42
  level, like the relationship works for insurance and capital.
• 57:44
  Now to offer a Bitcoin denominated insurance policy,
• 57:47
  you'd have to have a big pile of Bitcoin sitting on your balance
• 57:49
  sheet. Well you'd think, well you know
• 57:51
  it's interesting, pension funds and insurance companies are the
• 57:53
  same way where they have long dated out liabilities and
• 57:57
  possible obligations to need to pay out in the future.
• 57:59
  Now this is where it gets interesting.
• 58:00
  There is a self regulatory body in the United States, the US,
• 58:04
  funny enough, insurance is one of the few things that doesn't
• 58:07
  have formal federal level regulations.
• 58:09
  It's a state by state regulated industry.
• 58:11
  Now there is the National Association of Insurance
• 58:14
  Commissioners, the NAIC. They are a self regulatory body
• 58:17
  of each head regulator from across the 50 States and
• 58:19
  territories that come together to set the insurance laws.
• 58:22
  Bitcoin is what's deemed as a non admitted asset.
• 58:26
  OK, that's a lot of word and technical jargon.
• 58:28
  What does that mean? It means that if you're an
• 58:29
  insurance company and you buy Bitcoin, you have to write 100%
• 58:33
  of the value of that off your balance sheet.
• 58:35
  So if you buy $1,000,000 of Bitcoin as an insurance company,
• 58:37
  you have to write off $1 million on the health of your balance
• 58:40
  sheet and your surplus capital. So it's massively penalized to
• 58:43
  be having any Bitcoin exposure if you're an insurance company.
• 58:45
  How the laws are written today, I think very much in the same
• 58:48
  vein as in the Fasby rules to have accounted Bulletin 121.
• 58:51
  This is going to be one of those next big milestones to get
• 58:53
  knocked over. And it's actually really just as
• 58:55
  a tangent, you can actually see the largest like some of the
• 58:58
  largest buyers of the MicroStrategy convertible bonds
• 59:00
  was Allianz, which is an insurance company.
• 59:03
  And it's because they get the Bitcoin price exposure.
• 59:05
  But since it's not they're not holding spot Bitcoin, they're
• 59:07
  holding a convertible debt note for a publicly traded company.
• 59:10
  They're not getting that 100% impairment note right.
• 59:13
  I'd also like call out the Ross Stevens mentions this actually
• 59:16
  in his the NYDIG annual shareholder letter.
• 59:19
  Just being able to think about like new combined ratios in the
• 59:22
  health of insurance companies and getting access to Bitcoin.
• 59:25
  I think it it's a really compelling use case for being
• 59:27
  able to think about how can you get these dollars to work and
• 59:29
  get the price exposure to Bitcoin in a way that doesn't
• 59:32
  impair your balance sheet. So I think this is part of the
• 59:35
  many pillars like pension funds, insurance companies over the
• 59:38
  next decade will be starting to understand that this is really
• 59:40
  powerful capital and they should be getting that price exposure.
• 59:42
  How it all ties back into Bitcoin of Anchor Watch today
• 59:45
  with our policies dollar denominated.
• 59:47
  Let's say you have $1,000,000 policy and you could pick either
• 59:52
  a 25% or a 10% deductible. Let's say you pick a 10%
• 59:55
  deductible, you have $1,000,000 policy, you have a loss that
• 59:58
  happens 1. Lloyd's of London are the ones
• 1:00:01
  who actually process and handle the claims.
• 1:00:02
  We believe this is good from a governance and kind of
• 1:00:04
  separation of process where I personally, I'm not able to
• 1:00:07
  like, you know, make a decision unilaterally one way or another.
• 1:00:10
  It's ultimately their capital. So they have the right to be
• 1:00:12
  able to review claims. Let's say claim goes through.
• 1:00:15
  Deemed that it is more likely than not this is a legitimate
• 1:00:17
  claim and the legitimate loss that occurred that's covered by
• 1:00:19
  the policy. They pay out historically very
• 1:00:22
  quickly. That's Lloyds of London as a
• 1:00:23
  reputation has been around since the 1600s and they're like when
• 1:00:27
  you think about it, I view it as is way in conversation.
• 1:00:30
  I'll describe it as it's kind of like the New York Stock Exchange
• 1:00:32
  for like equity, but they're trading risk instead.
• 1:00:34
  These are very large, well capitalized, A rated insurance
• 1:00:39
  carriers that are kind of participating with us and being
• 1:00:41
  able to underwrite this deal with Lloyd's of London.
• 1:00:43
  And they are very quick at being able to cross out those, process
• 1:00:47
  out those claims. I'm hearing stories about people
• 1:00:50
  who were impacted by the California wildfires and they're
• 1:00:53
  already adjusted, going out there surveying the damage and
• 1:00:55
  being able to pay out way faster than you would have from a
• 1:00:58
  traditional stateside regulated insurance carrier.
• 1:01:02
  This is more insurance than hurricane law, but you saw this
• 1:01:05
  with the California wildfires. The insurance companies, a lot
• 1:01:08
  of them left because California refused their ability to raise
• 1:01:11
  rates because they saw how much risk was there, because it's
• 1:01:13
  their capital. They're very invested in being
• 1:01:15
  able to appropriately price the risk, but there were people that
• 1:01:18
  like Lloyd's of London that were willing to come out and kind of
• 1:01:21
  underwrite and ensure these more boutique risks that are less
• 1:01:24
  common. And Bitcoin also falls into that
• 1:01:27
  hole ultimately. So on the claims processing
• 1:01:29
  side, on the order of weeks, very, very fast.
• 1:01:32
  They're also a dollar denominated business, so they
• 1:01:34
  have no incentive to try and arbitrage Bitcoin price because
• 1:01:37
  it's immaterial to their balance sheet today.
• 1:01:39
  I see a future though, where insurance carriers very
• 1:01:41
  naturally are going to be holding Bitcoin denominated
• 1:01:43
  policies. And I think in the longer arc of
• 1:01:45
  history, this is where you actually have Bitcoin banking
• 1:01:48
  exist. I don't think it makes sense to
• 1:01:50
  have custodians that are uninsured.
• 1:01:51
  And ultimately, if you're choosing a banking relationship
• 1:01:53
  with Someone Like You would today, you're picking someone
• 1:01:56
  who has a very healthy balance sheet of dollars that underwrite
• 1:01:59
  their business. You would have the same concept
• 1:02:00
  that would exist with Bitcoin banking that if you're going to
• 1:02:03
  use a custodian, you're going to use a counterparty, you're going
• 1:02:05
  to pay them fees to hold your Bitcoin for you.
• 1:02:07
  If it's a heads I win, tails you blue situation because they can
• 1:02:10
  just charge fees. And then if something goes
• 1:02:12
  wrong, they're like, oh, I'm so sorry, right.
• 1:02:14
  And I think insurance companies are the prime capital vehicle to
• 1:02:17
  be underwriting risk and being able to kind of be able to have
• 1:02:21
  the balance sheet health. And in the event that there's an
• 1:02:23
  impairment, they could be holding Bitcoin themselves to be
• 1:02:25
  able to make customers whole. And then they are way more
• 1:02:27
  motivated to make sure that everything is running correctly
• 1:02:30
  because it's their capital that is liable for being able to pay
• 1:02:33
  out if customers have losses. And I think that is a skin in
• 1:02:35
  the game traditional Austrian economic risk alignment for how
• 1:02:39
  the capital formation of like custodial relationships with
• 1:02:42
  Bitcoin are going to exist in the future.
• 1:02:44
  Amazing, amazing. All right, so we, we are getting
• 1:02:47
  in the weeds on insurance stuffs, but I think it's very
• 1:02:50
  important for our audience to kind of recognize that as
• 1:02:53
  Bitcoin does take over the world and it does get entrenched in
• 1:02:56
  traditional finance that you need products like this to
• 1:02:58
  really unlock a lot of capital into Bitcoin.
• 1:03:02
  And this is also one of those things of just de risking
• 1:03:04
  Bitcoin at large. And I'd like kudos to you and
• 1:03:07
  the company you're building, and I can't wait to see it succeed
• 1:03:10
  more. If you want to chat a little
• 1:03:12
  more of that or do you want to talk about the custody tech,
• 1:03:14
  which I'm sure the audience would love, You did kind of
• 1:03:16
  glaze over it a little bit. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:18
  I think maybe we should go a little bit more into the custody
• 1:03:21
  tech. I just think big vision.
• 1:03:22
  I know insurance is not traditionally sexy or fun, but
• 1:03:25
  it's what my Co founder Becca and myself get up every day
• 1:03:28
  really excited and jazzed about. I think this is part of the
• 1:03:30
  hyper bitcoinization of financialization of Bitcoin in
• 1:03:33
  general. It's a better way to have these
• 1:03:36
  kind of relationships of counterparty risk, right?
• 1:03:38
  You have counterparty risk always if you're working with a
• 1:03:40
  counterparty. Insurance is the mechanism in
• 1:03:42
  which you transfer counterparty risk to someone else.
• 1:03:45
  You pay your insurance premium, you follow the insurance policy,
• 1:03:47
  that counterparty risk still exists, but it's beholding up
• 1:03:50
  another party to manage that. And in the event that that
• 1:03:53
  counterparty risk comes to fruition and there's a loss, the
• 1:03:55
  insurance company steps in. It's a very natural Austrian
• 1:03:57
  economic like way to do risk distribution.
• 1:04:00
  So the technology side and now for those at home that want to
• 1:04:05
  be fully sovereign in self custody, all of the technology I
• 1:04:08
  spoke to today is entirely open source and available for you to
• 1:04:12
  go build off on your own. So mini script is something that
• 1:04:14
  actually came out of block stream in 2019.
• 1:04:17
  So the whole and I've done a bunch of conference talks on
• 1:04:20
  this, but let me at a very high level, Bitcoin is programmable
• 1:04:23
  money. Whenever you use a multi sig on
• 1:04:26
  Bitcoin, you have these things called OP codes and you have OP
• 1:04:29
  check multi sig and what it does is it does a thumbs up, thumbs
• 1:04:31
  down. Have you provided the necessary
• 1:04:33
  amount of keys to move these funds?
• 1:04:34
  Now we can take Bitcoin further and there's like 130 a 140 op
• 1:04:39
  codes that exist. What the the team that built
• 1:04:43
  mini script, which is Andrew Polstra, Peter Will and Sanket,
• 1:04:46
  like very senior engineers in the Bitcoin open source
• 1:04:49
  contributing ecosystem. The people who code up SegWit
• 1:04:52
  and Tapper, like the, the people who run the write the code for
• 1:04:55
  the softworks that we run traditionally in in recent
• 1:04:58
  history are the ones who came out with this and they said,
• 1:05:00
  listen, if we can just just kind of like take a subset of all of
• 1:05:03
  these op codes and we can kind of understand and do an analysis
• 1:05:07
  of how they all operate, We can create like little puzzle piece
• 1:05:09
  fragments that can click in together and you can make
• 1:05:11
  arbitrarily large Bitcoin contracts that do a couple key
• 1:05:15
  things. One, signatures.
• 1:05:16
  We all know and love signatures and how Bitcoin works today.
• 1:05:19
  Time locks. Now time locks.
• 1:05:20
  There's four flavors of them. There's two ways you can do time
• 1:05:23
  and there's two clocks you can keep So very, very quick.
• 1:05:26
  You have what's called an absolute time lock, which means
• 1:05:30
  after this moment in time, you can spend the Bitcoin.
• 1:05:33
  A relative time lock is another one which allows you to say when
• 1:05:37
  the funds get confirmed on chain, it starts a timer.
• 1:05:39
  So you almost can have like a dead man switch.
• 1:05:41
  And then there's two clocks. You can choose one of these two
• 1:05:43
  clocks. You either can pick block
• 1:05:44
  height, which I think is everyone more natively is
• 1:05:46
  familiar with, or you can use actual wall time.
• 1:05:49
  So the miners every block. This is a fascinating just point
• 1:05:53
  about Bitcoin and all of Bitcoin is entirely an endogenous
• 1:05:55
  system. It's entirely self referential
• 1:05:57
  to hashes and signals, signatures and you know, Merkel
• 1:06:00
  trees and it's all kind of connected together.
• 1:06:02
  There's one bit of information that comes from the outside or
• 1:06:05
  you want to call it the real world.
• 1:06:07
  It's the time stamp the miners put into every single block.
• 1:06:10
  So when you have the time stamp put in every single block, this
• 1:06:12
  is actually how the difficulty adjustment works.
• 1:06:14
  Every 2140 blocks, two weeks, the network does a reflection on
• 1:06:18
  itself and says, OK, well, how much time has really passed?
• 1:06:20
  And you know, and I'm sorry, not 214021 O four blocks.
• 1:06:24
  What you're able to actually do is have an inference of like,
• 1:06:27
  OK, well, three weeks. It took three like like human
• 1:06:31
  time weeks to be able to get this two weeks worth of blocks.
• 1:06:33
  Let's decrease the adjustment. Or on the flip side, you're
• 1:06:35
  like, oh whoa, it took a week to get two weeks worth of blocks.
• 1:06:37
  Let's increase the difficulty adjustment.
• 1:06:39
  So this is how Bitcoin natively works.
• 1:06:40
  You can leverage time locks to ride on top of this as well,
• 1:06:43
  right? So the way our anchor watch time
• 1:06:45
  locks work is since you're dated to an actual insurance contract,
• 1:06:47
  you're able to look out into the future and say your insurance
• 1:06:49
  policy expires on, let's say we wrote it today, expires on
• 1:06:53
  January the 16th next year. So it's expired two weeks after
• 1:06:57
  it expires. So let's say January 30th, we're
• 1:06:59
  actually able to say two weeks after your insurance policy
• 1:07:01
  expires. The funds are fully self
• 1:07:03
  sovereign. You're able to spend them on
• 1:07:04
  your own right? And this is a whole fascinating
• 1:07:07
  rabbit hole. Also, you can add ands and ORS.
• 1:07:10
  And all of this is infinitely customizable.
• 1:07:12
  It doesn't require fork. It's supported by the Ledger,
• 1:07:16
  the cold card, the bit box O2, the block stream jade, the
• 1:07:19
  Spectre DIYI think Crux wallets now adding support for it.
• 1:07:22
  So there's a robust open source ecosystem for actually building
• 1:07:25
  out these tools. What we use at anchor watches,
• 1:07:27
  Bitcoin dev kit. One of the big grantees from
• 1:07:29
  Spiral were huge fans of them. We work with them closely here
• 1:07:32
  at Bitcoin Park and you know this is just a wide open
• 1:07:36
  ecosystem. I gave them a shout out earlier,
• 1:07:38
  but I would check out Liana Wallet if you're interested in
• 1:07:40
  checking out how this is done by their team today at Wizard
• 1:07:42
  Sardine. There are a lot of great
• 1:07:44
  engineers and a lot of them were also helping add this to Bitcoin
• 1:07:46
  Core. This is a really interesting
• 1:07:48
  thing too is when you sign up for Evolve with us, we give you
• 1:07:51
  an output descriptor. You can load that into your node
• 1:07:54
  and verify the deposit addresses and verify the transaction.
• 1:07:56
  So you even if like we don't exist anymore, you would be able
• 1:07:58
  to interact and spend with your funds after the time lock
• 1:08:01
  expires by talking to your node directly.
• 1:08:03
  I think it's just a massive paradigm shift in how custody
• 1:08:05
  should work. And now we're actually seeing
• 1:08:07
  more products that are adding mini scripts such as the Bitcoin
• 1:08:09
  keeper. If anyone knows long time
• 1:08:11
  Bitcoin or Ben Kaufman, formerly of the Spectre project, he's
• 1:08:13
  back now he's a Bitcoin keeper and he's Mani scripting the app
• 1:08:16
  all over the place. I think this is a no brainer for
• 1:08:19
  how Bitcoin custody is going to work in five years.
• 1:08:21
  Being able to have contingencies and mitigation plans.
• 1:08:24
  It allows you to do things like inheritance planning, like more
• 1:08:28
  resilient recovery for your keys, right?
• 1:08:30
  You can have a two of three that becomes a one of three, maybe of
• 1:08:33
  a two of three that becomes a two of four.
• 1:08:35
  And you can have a key that your friend holds that can't do
• 1:08:37
  anything normally, but only if the funds haven't moved in a
• 1:08:40
  year. That Ford key can come in and
• 1:08:42
  help recover funds, right? Like all of this is possible
• 1:08:44
  today in Bitcoin. It doesn't require fork.
• 1:08:46
  The tooling is there to go out and be built.
• 1:08:48
  And that's just kind of like my open if you know, as a general
• 1:08:51
  plug for the technology, if you're not interested in
• 1:08:53
  insurance and anchor watch, just this underlying technology has
• 1:08:56
  been here for years and it's really starting to see the
• 1:08:58
  limelight now. And I really think this is kind
• 1:09:00
  of the future of how to manage self custody or enterprise
• 1:09:02
  custody or anywhere this is the best way to secure your Bitcoin
• 1:09:06
  today. 100,000,000% and that was why I was so excited to have Rob
• 1:09:12
  on the show today. This is look, and we say this
• 1:09:16
  every single day guys, self custody is a revolution.
• 1:09:18
  Self custody is what's going to change things.
• 1:09:21
  We actually released a poll in the chat. 308 of you guys
• 1:09:25
  watched. I'm really glad with the
• 1:09:26
  results. So 78% of you guys said that you
• 1:09:29
  do take self custody. 22% of you guys said that you don't and
• 1:09:35
  again, it like if you're, you know, if you're just starting
• 1:09:39
  out and for most people start with the Ledger and a single sig
• 1:09:44
  and 24 words. The self custody rabbit hole is
• 1:09:48
  very, very, very, very deep. And there's so many things that
• 1:09:54
  Bitcoin, you know, there's so many capabilities that Bitcoin
• 1:09:58
  gives you and eventually, you know, a single cig or a simple
• 1:10:03
  multi cig, I don't think is is going to cut it for, you know,
• 1:10:08
  large corporations, institutions, nation state
• 1:10:11
  custody, like you got to think ahead, right?
• 1:10:14
  So it's incredibly important that you know, this
• 1:10:17
  functionality, these tools are being built out.
• 1:10:19
  And I think that Rob and his team are doing just that over at
• 1:10:23
  Anchor watch. And like I said, this is an
• 1:10:25
  incredibly awesome project. I'm going to be paying attention
• 1:10:29
  to this. I also think I'm going to be
• 1:10:30
  recommending this to, you know, some people that talk to me like
• 1:10:34
  Nico, how do you take self custody?
• 1:10:36
  You know, the insurance thing is very attractive because it's one
• 1:10:38
  of the first things that they asked me.
• 1:10:39
  They're like, OK, fine. You know, we'll put it on Casa,
• 1:10:42
  we'll put it on Nunchuck, you know, we'll put it on Thea.
• 1:10:45
  But like, what if I fuck up, dude, you know, or what if
• 1:10:50
  there's a $5 wrench attack, what's going to happen?
• 1:10:52
  Like why can't I just buy the ETF and have it on Charles
• 1:10:55
  Schwab? And I'm like, no, but you don't
• 1:10:57
  understand. Like there's a revolution.
• 1:10:59
  They're like Nico, like I'm just trying to retire.
• 1:11:01
  Like what are you doing? So this is this is this is
• 1:11:04
  incredibly important project. Now, Rob, what would something
• 1:11:06
  like this cost? Right?
• 1:11:07
  So you said the minimum is 250 K and you insure up to 100 million
• 1:11:12
  or 10 million a 100 million? OK, A. 100 million a 100
• 1:11:17
  million. So what is this?
• 1:11:18
  Is this a yearly cost? What are you guys charging?
• 1:11:22
  Yeah. So it's a yearly cost and it's
• 1:11:24
  tied into the actual value of the asset itself.
• 1:11:26
  So what we've been actually seeing from customers over the
• 1:11:28
  past week who are signing up for the small size policy, it's
• 1:11:32
  actually somewhere in the range of like 1100 to $1500 a year
• 1:11:35
  depending how they go through insurance underwriting.
• 1:11:37
  It's not a uniform price for everyone because like any other
• 1:11:39
  insurance provider, we are asking you questions.
• 1:11:42
  We're understanding your intended behavior to interact
• 1:11:44
  with the vault which all affects the risk and the pricing of that
• 1:11:47
  risk. Our pricing though all in is
• 1:11:49
  starting at 55 basis points a year and we think this is a very
• 1:11:53
  massive unlock of value when it comes to those who are you know
• 1:11:56
  looking for a custodian like ETFs right now have been heavily
• 1:11:59
  discounting fees. They're going to start ramping
• 1:12:00
  up those fees being able to compare it to there is no other
• 1:12:04
  one to one insurance provider out in the market right now.
• 1:12:06
  And I think this is actually closer to the real cost of
• 1:12:09
  insuring, you know, Bitcoin in the sense that what a lot of
• 1:12:14
  other businesses will do was maybe they'll be way cheaper,
• 1:12:17
  but they're not offering insurance, right?
• 1:12:18
  So it's almost kind of creating a basically a wrapper to be able
• 1:12:24
  to kind of like use this as a loss leader or being able to use
• 1:12:26
  it as a way to kind of boast large AUMS and being able to
• 1:12:29
  kind of grow like from a growth strategy standpoint.
• 1:12:31
  But it's actually not the risk aligned way for being able to
• 1:12:34
  protect customers. Because if it was, it would be
• 1:12:36
  insured, right? So the moment you leave, you go
• 1:12:38
  into uninsured custody or heavily underinsured custody.
• 1:12:41
  Like I said, ratios that are you know, 10,100 thousand to $1.00,
• 1:12:45
  you know for every dollar on the asset, maybe it has access to
• 1:12:47
  like a 10th of a penny of, of actual insurance payout.
• 1:12:51
  This is the actual cost for being able to provide that one
• 1:12:53
  to one coverage. That's because capital is being
• 1:12:56
  locked up to be able to underwrite this risk and being
• 1:12:59
  able to understand that we want to make sure that in the event
• 1:13:02
  something goes wrong, you're actually able to get paid out.
• 1:13:04
  So it is on that value of an AUM business and kind of wrapping it
• 1:13:08
  all up in there. That man, that's incredible,
• 1:13:11
  incredible. And again, like this is this is
• 1:13:13
  solving a problem. Just based on my experience, the
• 1:13:18
  custody, the self custody thing, it might be like super easy to
• 1:13:22
  you because you guys are bitcoiners, but you know, for
• 1:13:25
  whether it's institutions or higher net worth, older
• 1:13:28
  individuals like this is an entirely different ball game.
• 1:13:32
  And again, they're they're they're just interested in
• 1:13:34
  protecting their assets, right? They're not they're not thinking
• 1:13:36
  about this type of stuff. And again, I think that this is
• 1:13:39
  going to provide a, a Peace of Mind.
• 1:13:41
  So congratulations on the launch.
• 1:13:43
  Very, very cool guys. If you want to find out more
• 1:13:46
  about Anchor Watch, go to anchorwatch.com.
• 1:13:49
  Again, anchorwatch.com, find out more information there.
• 1:13:53
  And whether you're interested in the the custody or the
• 1:13:59
  insurance, you can go check it out.
• 1:14:00
  They have a great website. And Rob, thank you so much for
• 1:14:03
  joining us on Simply Bitcoin Live Today.
• 1:14:05
  I really, really appreciate it. I appreciate it.
• 1:14:08
  Thanks for having me. Thanks.
• 1:14:10
  All right everybody. Today was January 16th, 2024.
• 1:14:13
  This was Simply Bitcoin Live. I'm your host Nico, our guest
• 1:14:16
  today, Rob Hamilton from Anchor Watch and of course my legendary
• 1:14:19
  Co host Optimus Fields. We're Simply Bitcoin Live and
• 1:14:22
  we'll be back tomorrow for a brand new episode.
• 1:14:24
  Until then, peace out everybody. Today's episode was brought to
• 1:14:27
  you by bitcoinwell.com, a Bitcoin only platform on a
• 1:14:31
  mission to enable financial independence.