Latest / TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast / #626: Bitcoin Treasury Strategies for Real Estate Developers with Leon Wankum
Transcript
- 0:00You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
- 0:10You talk about a Fed just gone nuts.
- 0:13All the central banks going nuts.
- 0:16So it's all acting like safe haven.
- 0:18I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency,
- 0:24Bitcoin wins.
- 0:25In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
- 0:28I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
- 0:31If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
- 0:36We're bringing in a housing expert to talk about the real estate market and Bitcoin,
- 0:42corporate adoption, and the crazy frenzy that's going on right now in public markets.
- 0:49Leon, welcome back to the show.
- 0:51Thanks for having me back.
- 0:54It was great seeing you, even though it was briefly in Vegas last week.
- 0:57I caught you literally as I was running to the airport off the stage.
- 1:02Yeah.
- 1:02And we can pull that back up because I think this is a good jumping off point.
- 1:08We'll start with like a personal story.
- 1:10I'm currently in the middle of a move right now, but decided to rent a house because I was looking at the prices for housing and the places I'm looking to buy.
- 1:21And they were too high.
- 1:22Not only were they too high, we put a bid in on one house and it wound up going a million dollars over asking.
- 1:29And I think over here in the United States is a big topic of discussion right now, which is the real estate market.
- 1:37It feels a little toppy. Prices are still very high, very sticky. Rates are still very high.
- 1:44And that's one thing I'm trying to discern as somebody who would like to buy a house in the next few years,
- 1:50a forever house for my family. What is going on? As we can see here, Redfin reported earlier this
- 1:56week that there are 34% more sellers in the market than buyers. At no other point in records dating
- 2:02back to 2013 have sellers outnumbered buyers this much. There are a total of $698 billion worth of
- 2:09homes for sale in the U.S., up 20.3% from a year ago and the highest dollar amount ever. So it seems
- 2:16like there's a ton of people who have rode the real estate market and they're being a bit stingy
- 2:21on pricing and we're waiting for a correction is that your take on this yeah we definitely need to
- 2:28wait for price equilibrium to build because since 2008 really since we had low interest rates
- 2:35um prices were skyrocketing and now with a different interest rate environment
- 2:42and what I personally also feel is that people are not willing to sell their houses for a price
- 2:48that they believe is not what they could get because they still have the prices in mind that
- 2:53they were able to receive two or three years ago and the buyers are not willing to pay prices that
- 2:58people want because interest rates are higher meaning the cost of capital the cost of borrowing
- 3:03went up so I think this is a healthy and a healthy development we need a price equilibrium we need
- 3:11demand and supply prices to match, it's going to take a long time, I think. It also depends
- 3:17on interest rates. If Powell is going to lower interest rates, which I don't think he will,
- 3:24even though that's something that the president would like him to do, but I don't think he will
- 3:27because it would cause inflation to go up again, especially in goods and services and groceries.
- 3:33and judging by that I think interest rates will stay above three percent at least for the foreseeable
- 3:41future meaning I believe that real estate prices will come down a little bit till we meet that
- 3:47equilibrium but something that's important to to remember which makes it a little bit odd that
- 3:54because as a bit corner when you look at housing I think you constantly think now it's going to
- 3:59crash. Now it's going to crash. But the reason it's not really going to crash is as soon as new
- 4:06money is being introduced to the economy or as soon as interest rates are lowered, that money
- 4:11is being funneled into real estate. And also the existing system that is depending on real estate
- 4:16as collateral has an interest in propping prices up. So this can go on for another 10 or 20 years,
- 4:22I think. I mean, there could be, there's definitely a correction that we can see right now.
- 4:27And I personally wouldn't get into real estate development at this point if you'll ask me from the perspective what's the better investment, of course, that is Bitcoin.
- 4:36But I just want to make a point that this can go on for longer than we think because housing is limited, not as limited as Bitcoin.
- 4:45But there's something called the 18-year property cycle.
- 4:49And it says that every 18 years we'll have a correction in housing.
- 4:55And the reason for that is if the money supply is expanded and that money goes into land, it's not going out of land because land is limited.
- 5:05It's similar to Bitcoin.
- 5:06But what happens is that after around 14, 15 years, prices start to come down.
- 5:11And then they find a new price equilibrium, which is higher than when the cycle started.
- 5:17And we are at the end of this 18-year property cycle.
- 5:20And I suggest that prices will fall until 2026.
- 5:24And then in 2026, if interest rates are lowered, I think prices can find price equilibrium and then possibly move up a nominal value.
- 5:33Of course, if you start now accounting for real estate and Bitcoin, it's a whole different story.
- 5:38I know it talked from the lens of a fiat-based system.
- 5:44Yeah, that note on Powell and the Fed is interesting.
- 5:49It is very obvious.
- 5:51Trump's wanted him to lower rates since before.
- 5:53he even got elected. But I was reading an article yesterday that made a lot of sense to me, which is
- 6:00he's not going to lower rates for multiple reasons. One of which you mentioned, which is
- 6:07it would reignite inflation, which nobody wants to see right now. And then number two,
- 6:12profit margins are going up because the productivity increases due to AI. I mean,
- 6:18And we're still at the early stages of that where you have many of the big tech, the MAG-7, beginning to lay off people because they're creating all these efficiencies via AI.
- 6:29So we're able to increase productivity and profit margins.
- 6:36And so there's no reason to lower rates from that perspective.
- 6:42Agreed. Absolutely true.
- 6:46Yeah.
- 6:47Which is, it'll be, it's crazy the confluence of events that are happening right now,
- 6:52whether it's real estate market looking a little toppy, at least temporarily,
- 6:57the interest rate environment, the progression of AI and the adoption
- 7:01by many large companies and small companies alike.
- 7:06And then you have Bitcoin sitting over here, sitting over $2 trillion,
- 7:11establishing itself as a $2 trillion asset.
- 7:13And it still seems a bit fringe where we are certainly as Bitcoiners, individuals who get Bitcoin, decided that it is the best performing asset.
- 7:26And that's where we'd like our wealth to sit.
- 7:28But it seems like it's getting more popular, but it's still on the fringe.
- 7:32And as it pertains to real estate market, do you think people are honestly beginning to weigh the opportunity cost of allocating toward real estate or Bitcoin?
- 7:42I think it's starting.
- 7:44People are starting also to understand what opportunity cost means.
- 7:48Because in the fiat system, there was little reason to pay attention to that,
- 7:52especially in the real estate market.
- 7:54Because if you, for example, bought a property that was overvalued,
- 7:58you got a cheap loan.
- 7:59Let's say you got a loan at a percent or two.
- 8:02You just waited another five years and the property then rose in value.
- 8:07And due to the cheap money that you used to leverage into the property,
- 8:11the bad deal that it was at the start over let's say five years became a good deal simply because
- 8:18of monetary debasement so there was little opportunity cost when you were in real estate
- 8:22because other than real estate there were little investments that performed better even though
- 8:28maybe real estate wasn't the best performing asset bitcoin of course was since 2009 but
- 8:36few were aware of the existence of Bitcoin.
- 8:40And now people are aware of Bitcoin.
- 8:43It's a topic that's been publicly discussed.
- 8:45I think the strategic Bitcoin reserve also had a positive effect,
- 8:49generally speaking, on the importance that people,
- 8:54large institutions, capital allocators, but also households,
- 8:59place to Bitcoin.
- 9:00And from personal conversations, judging by what I hear
- 9:04from people working in the real estate industry in particular,
- 9:07they are starting to weigh the opportunity cost
- 9:10of not putting money into Bitcoin,
- 9:12but very few are able to comprehend the necessity
- 9:16of quickly investing large part of the capital waste into Bitcoin.
- 9:22So a good friend of mine who is a real estate broker,
- 9:27who I've done deals with in the past
- 9:29and they've done significant deals in Europe,
- 9:32they started now to build a Bitcoin treasury.
- 9:35And that's the first real estate developer
- 9:37that I personally know in Europe
- 9:40that wasn't into Bitcoin, let's say a year ago.
- 9:43And now they are into Bitcoin.
- 9:45They're starting to build a Bitcoin treasury,
- 9:47but they're doing it very slowly.
- 9:48So they're tapping into Bitcoin slowly.
- 9:51And to really tap into Bitcoin with significance,
- 9:56I think that's still rare.
- 9:58But we do see also from the credit side,
- 10:00products like battery finance and I see there's other products popping up that do make it easier
- 10:07for owners of real estate and people that own significant amounts of real estate to tap into
- 10:15Bitcoin without needing to sell their real estate because it is true that selling real estate and
- 10:22putting that money into Bitcoin is the better savings or investment options but it's not that
- 10:27easy because think about it a property is actually a capitalist structure if we can if you take it to
- 10:32the abstract level real estate has been priced away from its utility value now it's being treated
- 10:38as a store value meaning that large institutions that develop and hold real estate they treat it
- 10:44not as a good that's used for utility but as a capital structure and within that capital structure
- 10:50you have different parties with different interest on the credit side you have banks that lend money
- 10:55And then on the borrowing side, you have different partners that either provided capital or knowledge in developing a house.
- 11:04And these different parties have different preferences.
- 11:09And from personal experience, I know it's very difficult to juggle these different preferences.
- 11:13So I think it's important for the real estate sector to start to understand Bitcoin as the new hurdle rate and the opportunity cost of not participating in Bitcoin, that we have products on the credit side that make it easy to refinance existing structures.
- 11:31And then over time, as people become more aware of how great Bitcoin is performing, they will likely also sell off their properties and that should create more sell pressure on real estate.
- 11:42But the fact that Bitcoin is a superior store value to real estate is a little bit shadowed by the fact that it's easier to obtain credit to leverage into property developments than it is to obtain credit to buy Bitcoin.
- 11:57But once we reach the point where we have products on the credit side that do allow to also receive credit to buy Bitcoin, I think that will help real estate professionals and people in the real estate industry to consciously be aware of the necessity to include Bitcoin more aggressively in their capital structure.
- 12:21Now, I think you highlight a couple of really important things here. I was talking to some people at this intersection of real estate credit and Bitcoin. And there's some interesting anecdotes out there where you'll have a real estate developer that'll typically raise a fund and they have LPs behind them.
- 12:38And the developers really into Bitcoin, but the LPs aren't on board.
- 12:44So the developer desperately wants to get some Bitcoin exposure.
- 12:48And so they're creating unique structures where they themselves will get Bitcoin exposure,
- 12:54but they'll keep their LPs only exposed to the real estate because they don't want to deal with the Bitcoin.
- 12:58And so you're beginning to see these different dynamics at play.
- 13:02And I'm interested if you're willing to share just for some actionable advice for anybody in real estate who may be interested in dipping their toes in Bitcoin, your friend or the colleague that you spoke to that is beginning to allocate to Bitcoin.
- 13:15How are they doing that?
- 13:17Yeah, I'm going to the same problem.
- 13:19So also myself, I'm at the development side.
- 13:24So we are actively doing the development.
- 13:28And on the credit side, we have banks, of course, that work with us.
- 13:31and then we have capital partners.
- 13:33And our capital partners are not as bullish on Bitcoin as I am, for example.
- 13:38So I had to find ways to stack Bitcoin both in the company
- 13:42and also on the private side that is in line with what the LPs expect from us
- 13:48as the people that receive the money and do the development.
- 13:51So there's risk in giving us the capital and the money.
- 13:54So I want them to feel comfortable, of course.
- 13:56So what we did was once we started to sell properties and we sold, this is three years ago, but I've been doing this for five years now.
- 14:05So I'm going to share some stuff also from three years ago.
- 14:08So three years ago, we sold a property that we held together with LPs.
- 14:13And then we very simply and kindly explained to the LP that the profits that we made, we do not want to reinvest it into another property with the LP.
- 14:23We are going to put it into Bitcoin.
- 14:24So they went forward, they invested into another property, we invested into Bitcoin.
- 14:30Now after three years, they saw that the property that they invested in actually fell in nominal value.
- 14:37And the Bitcoin that we purchased, I think went from 35,000 or 40,000 to whatever the price is today.
- 14:45So around 100k.
- 14:46And the interesting thing is that this was a tax-free event.
- 14:50because in Germany, the way that Bitcoin is treated,
- 14:54if you hold it for longer than 12 months,
- 14:56there's no capital gains.
- 14:58So we had a better deal going into digital real estate
- 15:02and this helped our LPs to understand
- 15:05the significance of Bitcoin as the new benchmark
- 15:08and of Bitcoin as a digital and scarce,
- 15:10absolutely scarce store value
- 15:11that's superior to real estate in that perspective.
- 15:15And now step number two is
- 15:17some of the properties that we own with our LP
- 15:20for the past, let's say eight to nine years,
- 15:23there significant cashflow significant free cashflow And we are in charge of managing the cashflow because we are also managing the property So we are doing like a 360 degree deal where we find property we secure financing from
- 15:38a bank, we get in a capital partner that puts in the money that we need as equity, we execute the
- 15:45property development and then we manage the property. And the property management side,
- 15:49we are responsible for managing the cash flow that comes in. And as long as everything is paid for
- 15:55and there are enough maintenance reserves
- 15:57and we pay the debt off.
- 15:59Our LPs are happy and they don't ask many questions.
- 16:02So what we did is we took some of the cash flow,
- 16:05around 20% of it,
- 16:06we put it into Bitcoin in the depths of the bear market.
- 16:10So of course, these are favorable timeframes
- 16:13that I'm referring to now.
- 16:14But if you have a long enough timeframe,
- 16:16let's say five years minimum or 10 years,
- 16:19the numbers will look similar.
- 16:21So 20% of the cash flow that we put into Bitcoin
- 16:24is now worth more than the 80% that we did not put into Bitcoin.
- 16:28And the 80% we did not put into Bitcoin actually lost around 4% to 6% purchasing power year on year.
- 16:34So by gradually tapping into Bitcoin and doing it in a way where we don't erode the trust with our LPs
- 16:40and our capital partners, specifically the banks that lend us the money to develop,
- 16:45we are helping them to sort of build a consciousness for what Bitcoin is.
- 16:49And at the beginning, I was a little bit stressed about it
- 16:52and I wanted to tap into Bitcoin more aggressively.
- 16:55And I saw other people, for example,
- 16:57like Michael Saylor doing it so fast.
- 17:00But I think it's also important to remember
- 17:02everybody's in a different situation.
- 17:05So if you are the founder of a company
- 17:07and you hold more than 50% of the voting rights
- 17:09and the board is on your side,
- 17:11if you're publicly listed,
- 17:13you can do whatever you want.
- 17:14But if you are a smaller company
- 17:16or if you're a publicly listed company with a board
- 17:19that's not on board with Bitcoin,
- 17:20I think it's important to consciously help everyone understand what Bitcoin is, not missing the opportunity, but doing it in a way where you can align incentives.
- 17:31What's up, freaks?
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- 18:19So it's a beautiful thing.
- 18:21Yeah, incentive alignment is extremely important.
- 18:24And you're not the only one who senses that urgency,
- 18:28looking at what Michael Saylor's strategy are doing,
- 18:32what other Bitcoin treasury companies are beginning to do in public markets.
- 18:36You look at that and you say, oh, my gosh, I'm falling behind.
- 18:40But I do think in the long run, being very patient, very methodical,
- 18:45and somewhat risk averse and how you get in this is going to be the best play.
- 18:52And anybody out there who feels the FOMO, don't worry.
- 18:56Leon and I have been in Bitcoin for a while and we feel it too.
- 18:59But I think having been in for 12 years is falling back to the age old adage of stay humble,
- 19:06stack sats and just stay in your lane, blinders on, just work on your personal accumulation
- 19:12strategy or your business accumulation strategy is wise.
- 19:15Don't get over your skis. Don't get crazy overextended because it is a volatile market at times.
- 19:22And it's important to just have a plan, stick with it.
- 19:24And as you described, it seems to be working pretty well for what you're doing.
- 19:29I think so. It is. And also there's something in having Bitcoin in self-custody.
- 19:36So if you're a publicly listed company, you can stack quicker.
- 19:40But the Bitcoin are not held in self-custody.
- 19:44I'm not taking anything away from that strategy.
- 19:46And I'm happy to discuss how public companies are tapping into Bitcoin later.
- 19:52But there's also something in owning a private company and owning Bitcoin in self-custody.
- 19:58So there's something to that that I really like.
- 20:00Also, when it comes to privacy, of course, or privacy in general.
- 20:04So there's space for both.
- 20:06There's space for individuals and households stacking.
- 20:09There's a place for smaller cap companies and privately held companies to stack.
- 20:14And then there's a place for publicly listed companies in the way that they approach Bitcoin.
- 20:20I completely agree.
- 20:20It's a good segue into the next topic.
- 20:22We were mentioning opportunity cost earlier.
- 20:26And I think opportunity cost becomes more front of mind to people when there's more options on the market for different types of exposure.
- 20:33We've been touching on it, alluding to it.
- 20:35companies like strategy bringing new structures to market where that's strike strife and now
- 20:43stride which they launched i believe late last week and um chris drishga drishga chris sorry if
- 20:53i'm uh mispronouncing your last name i saw on your twitter account you retweeted him uh yesterday
- 20:59based off of a conversation you had on the Block Rewards podcast.
- 21:04But I think this is an important topic to bring up as well.
- 21:07Bitcoin is rapidly outcompeting real estate as a store of value due to its superior properties.
- 21:11And now with products like Strike and Strife,
- 21:14investors need a great reason why they would allocate capital to management-intensive illiquid assets.
- 21:20And so I think when you look out at the ways in which you can acquire Bitcoin,
- 21:26like you mentioned, you can buy on an exchange, move to self-custody.
- 21:29Obviously, the ETFs launched within the last two years with massive success.
- 21:34And now we have these publicly traded equities with proxy Bitcoin exposure like strategy.
- 21:40We'll have 21 coming to market potentially later this year.
- 21:44A similar scientific.
- 21:46You can throw Tesla and Block in that basket as well, I guess.
- 21:51But as the optionality expands and these products get more unique, how much does this opportunity cost rise in your mind?
- 21:59and how should people be thinking about it? Yeah. So first of all, I just want to state that nothing
- 22:05beats Bitcoin in self-custody. Just so people understand, when I talk about strife and strike
- 22:10and stride, I don't talk about it because I think they're better than Bitcoin, because I don't
- 22:15believe anything is. When I talk about it, what I find interesting is that they're tapping into
- 22:21money that is held by people who not yet are willing to hold Bitcoin in self-custody,
- 22:28either because they don't understand Bitcoin fully yet,
- 22:30they have not comprehended the significance of the paradigm shift that Bitcoin brings,
- 22:36or they have their hands tied because they are regulated in a certain jurisdiction
- 22:41or they're not legally allowed to own Bitcoin.
- 22:44And also, I think it's part of a greater monetary reset
- 22:47where Bitcoin is becoming the new standard,
- 22:50where every investment product, for example, fixed income,
- 22:55has to now also compete with Bitcoin.
- 22:57If you look at the payouts, the distributions of Stride and Strike, which are between 8% to 10% on par.
- 23:09So in Strike, which is a preferred stock with a conversion option,
- 23:15in Strike you have the option to convert 10 strikes into one MSTR common share if MSTR hits $1,000.
- 23:24and that would be a conversion price of $100 per strike.
- 23:29And based on that, you get an 8% payout.
- 23:32If strike goes up in price, that yield goes down, obviously, percentage-wise.
- 23:36And if strike goes down in price, that yield goes up percentage-wise.
- 23:40And with strike, you have a 10% yield on $100 par.
- 23:45There's no option to convert into common shores,
- 23:50but the payouts are cumulative.
- 23:52Meaning if the payout is not happening, they have to be paid out at a later time.
- 23:59So it's almost like an investment grade fixed income product based on Bitcoin.
- 24:04And then Stride, which I'm aware of since yesterday.
- 24:07And I did watch the clip of Sailor explaining how it works.
- 24:11It's non-cumulative.
- 24:13So it sits below Stride and Strike in the capital structure.
- 24:17and it's almost like a junk grade fixed income product based on Bitcoin.
- 24:24So now you have three fixed income products based on Bitcoin.
- 24:29One has a convertible option, which is strike,
- 24:31and they are all yielding higher returns than the average bond.
- 24:36So that means that Bitcoin as a near perfect form of money
- 24:40that has a compound annual growth rate of around 50%
- 24:44is starting to become the new hurdle rate
- 24:48that all other financial products have to abide to
- 24:52and it's setting a standard.
- 24:54So instead of buying a regular bond issued by a nation state,
- 24:59now as an allocator of capital,
- 25:02you can actually buy a fixed income product issued by strategy
- 25:06and you have a higher return on that.
- 25:09And I, as somebody that comes from real estate,
- 25:12and I've tweeted about this multiple times
- 25:15and I'll explain it again.
- 25:17I find Strike extremely interesting
- 25:19and a light bulb moment happened for me.
- 25:22I was at Strategy World
- 25:23and I was listening to Feng Li
- 25:25and he was explaining how he has neighbors.
- 25:28He was telling a story about his neighbors.
- 25:30It's a couple that retired
- 25:31and they have real estate
- 25:33and they are not developers.
- 25:34They're not particularly interested
- 25:36in managing their properties
- 25:37and keep them intact,
- 25:39but they have to
- 25:40and they bought the property
- 25:41because they wanted cash flow after stopping to work.
- 25:46So there's a lot of people that get into real estate.
- 25:49They are kind of unaware of the tax benefits.
- 25:52They do know about the leverage and the upside,
- 25:54but they are primarily there for cash flow.
- 25:57So if they are there for cash flow, they could buy Strike
- 26:01because Strike has a similar cash flow year on year like a property,
- 26:07but obviously it has less upside.
- 26:09You can't buy it on leverage.
- 26:10there are also no tax advantages. I'm aware of that. But let's say you also want some upside.
- 26:16You are not just interested in real estate because of the cash flow. You're also interested in real
- 26:21estate because you want some upside. Stripe also has upside because you do have the option,
- 26:28if MSTR common stock hits $1,000, you do have the option to convert 10 strike into one
- 26:37as MSDR common stock.
- 26:40And that option becomes particularly interesting
- 26:42if we go through a bear market
- 26:43because Strike was sold at a price of $85, right?
- 26:48I think now it's trading above $100
- 26:50because there's large demand for it.
- 26:53But now let's imagine there's a 60% drawdown in Bitcoin
- 26:57and Strike goes down to $60.
- 26:59That's a possibility.
- 27:01I'm not saying it's going to happen today or tomorrow.
- 27:03I'm just saying this is a possibility.
- 27:04if that happens the way I would look at it is the following if I'm a real estate investor that
- 27:11did not 100% understand bitcoin I'm looking to generate upside and cash flow I want to make a
- 27:17good deal so now I'm looking at the possibilities in real estate with high interest rates high cost
- 27:23of capital the leverage becomes less interesting and now I look at strike and I can buy strike for
- 27:29let's say $60, which is 40% below the conversion rate of $100.
- 27:37And I get still $8 in distribution.
- 27:43So now I bought an instrument.
- 27:44Let's say I buy 10 strikes for $600.
- 27:47That cost me 40% less than if I would buy it on par.
- 27:53But I still get $8 cash flow.
- 27:55And if MicroStrategy then in the next bull market goes to $1,000, I do have the option to convert Strike into MSDR.
- 28:05I don't have to.
- 28:07Maybe people don't want to because you sit higher in the capitalist structure.
- 28:10Meaning if Strategy goes bust, the holders of the preferred stocks are being paid out first and then the holders of the common stock.
- 28:18But let's say I do want to convert.
- 28:20I could.
- 28:20and that is for me coming from the world of real estate and applying how I was told to think about
- 28:28real estate a better deal than the average real estate deal because I can buy an asset 40 percent
- 28:35below its value so to say and I still get distribution so I still have the cash flow
- 28:41so there's an upside potential here there's the cash flow element and I think that I don't know
- 28:48in particular, but I'm assuming that Sailor is very much aware of this and Fong Li as well,
- 28:54because they discussed it on stage at Strategy World, that this is a product that could potentially
- 28:59tap into the real estate market. And I'm not saying that 80% or 90% of the people that invest
- 29:04into real estate would buy this product, but if it's just 1%, that's 3 trillion, that's enough.
- 29:10and I think that the bond market
- 29:13of course
- 29:14will now
- 29:16be faced with the reality that there
- 29:19are products that yield a higher
- 29:21return because they are based on
- 29:23Bitcoin which will lead to people that
- 29:25invest into bonds to start considering
- 29:27also these
- 29:29products like Strife and Stride
- 29:31that are fixed income products
- 29:33based on Bitcoin. They will start to ask
- 29:35why can they yield higher returns
- 29:37than a nation state and then they
- 29:39start I think also to understand maybe Bitcoin and the Bitcoin network which is the central bank of
- 29:44Bitcoin as an analogy is more trustworthy than a nation state because they can yield higher returns
- 29:50and now if you say they tap into one percent of the bond market that's three trillion which is a
- 29:57lot that's more than the market cap of Bitcoin and now let's assume there's also half a percentage
- 30:03of the people that would put their money into real estate now are willing to put their money
- 30:08into a strike. That's 1.5 trillion. So I don't think that the amount of people that invest into
- 30:15real estate and hold their capital in real estate needs to be that large to have a significant impact
- 30:20on the ability of MSTR to raise capital and then put that money into Bitcoin.
- 30:24The U.S. now has a strategic Bitcoin reserve. That's not clickbait. It's a policy directive.
- 30:29Unchained and the Bitcoin Policy Institute just dropped a new report and are hosting a live event
- 30:33to unpack it. It's called the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Era Begins. We've got Congressman Nick
- 30:38Bejic, Matthew Pines, and Joe Burnett breaking down how the first hundred days of the new
- 30:43administration flipped the policy script on Bitcoin. Go to unchained.com slash TFTC to register
- 30:49and read the full report That unchained slash TFTC A few questions here One comment and a few questions One comment being like bond investors looking at these strategy products I mean like why are they yielding higher than the nation state debt
- 31:07And then you look at the size of strategies, Bitcoin treasury.
- 31:11And I think in aggregate, it's larger than all nation state treasuries combined.
- 31:16And so we're in the beginning stages of them amassing enough economic or an amount of economic power that will rival nation states at some point down the road when Bitcoin gets mass adoption.
- 31:30We're going to manifest here.
- 31:33And then two, what are the risks in terms of that income, that cash flow that really appeals to you as a real estate investor?
- 31:43Where can that slip up?
- 31:44How is that cash flow being produced for strike investors?
- 31:49And is there any potential for that to dry up?
- 31:52Sure.
- 31:53I do have to state, though, for me personally, I don't own these products and I just own Bitcoin, to be honest with you.
- 31:59And I'm not interested in the cash flow because the year on year growth of Bitcoin outperforms any rate of cash flow.
- 32:05So I think it's important to state that so people are aware of how I look at this.
- 32:09But I do have like in my back of my mind, I have the education of a real estate investor that things like that.
- 32:15And then I try to evaluate how other people that are in real estate think about that.
- 32:20Right. So they don't understand that the compound annual growth rate of Bitcoin beats any cash flow that you can get.
- 32:26You can receive. And the idea of having cash flow is actually kind of also based on the idea of outperforming inflation.
- 32:33Like in the personal conversations that I have with people that are really interested in cash flow.
- 32:37there's two people now one it's people which also applies to me i guess um when we do talk about
- 32:44cash flow once you stop working um you need to have some cash flow right and it's and then real
- 32:51estate becomes interesting in that regard but but generally speaking from an investment uh standpoint
- 32:57people that want cash flow often think in fiat terms and they want to outperform the rate of
- 33:02monetary inflation you don't need to do that with bitcoin so you don't necessarily need cash flow on
- 33:07Bitcoin. But people want cash flow, right? And how is the cash flow being paid? How are the
- 33:13distributions on Strive, Strike and Strider being met? They're being met through the issuance of
- 33:19equity. So actually, I was looking into it yesterday and I made some notes on that. So if
- 33:27you think about it, that strategy has enough Bitcoin holdings to cover the dividends on the
- 33:36preferreds for over 200 years. So at the moment, it's around 250 million on a year by year,
- 33:42but it's going to grow because there's a plan to issue 21 billion in fixed income. And then it will
- 33:48be obviously significantly more. But at that point of time, the Bitcoin stack will also be worth
- 33:54significantly more. So assuming it would take strategy, another cycle in order to really fill,
- 34:01I think that will be very fast
- 34:03but let's say in the next cycle
- 34:05the next four years
- 34:06strategy is able to fill demand
- 34:09for 21 billion in fixed income
- 34:11by that time their Bitcoin treasury
- 34:13will be worth
- 34:14now it's 60 billion
- 34:17it will be worth maybe 200-300 billion
- 34:18and then they won't have 200 years
- 34:21in BTC holdings to cover the
- 34:23dividends of the preferred
- 34:24maybe it's 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years
- 34:27but they are still significantly
- 34:29in a good position
- 34:31to issue stock to pay the distribution and payouts.
- 34:36And also, and that's important to mention,
- 34:39strategy is a company with a business line that is working.
- 34:45So the credit rating of strategy is also tied to its ability
- 34:51to generate cash flow to its main line of business,
- 34:54which is business intelligence and AI services.
- 34:56So I think it's important because if you come as a Bitcoin treasury company and MetaPlanet works a little bit different and I still believe that they have a good strategy.
- 35:10Same goes for Strife, A.S.S.T., for example, who only focus on Bitcoin.
- 35:16But if you are a zombie company, because strategy was kind of a zombie company, actually.
- 35:21If you are a zombie company that only buys Bitcoin and you don't think about having a major business line or you don't think about trading demand for your stock, even in a downturn, I think you might run into problems paying out those distributions.
- 35:38And I think that in this bull market, even though I'm very much interested in the different offerings, especially of strategy and also the way that MetaPlanet is raising capital, there's a high potential that this bull market, the treasury companies will create a sort of a bubble.
- 35:58and I believe that is because leverage, generally speaking,
- 36:02always needs to be liquidated at some point.
- 36:05And over the past two bull markets, the leverage took place on exchanges.
- 36:10So we had in the last bull market, there's a number of exchanges that went bust.
- 36:15All these different yield strategies that were offered on exchanges
- 36:20and now we have the leverage in the equity market.
- 36:23But just because the leverage now happens on, let's say,
- 36:28The institutional level and in Treadfy does not mean there's no risk in it.
- 36:31And the risk is specifically centered around the fact that the payouts and the distributions that are offered by Bitcoin treasury companies are met by issuing stock.
- 36:44And strategy has such a large customer base and such a large Bitcoin base that even if Bitcoin now drops 60%, they can easily fill the distribution.
- 36:55but companies and zombie companies that are just starting with a bitcoin treasury model they have a
- 37:01very low bitcoin treasury and then maybe they have no line of business if they go in very very hard
- 37:07if they over leverage they might not be able to pay the distribution and that could create a
- 37:13cascade of selling pressure and that could then lead into the next bear market potentially
- 37:20and is that only the case if they issue strike like preferred stock offerings with a cash flow
- 37:28kicker i do i i would say uh the to the comment i just made i would say yes but i would think it's
- 37:38very important that they have a cash flow kicker because if you think about it the only reason for
- 37:44somebody from tretfi for example allianz an insurer from germany that's very conservative
- 37:50the only reason for them to buy convertibles or preferred stock offerings of strategy
- 37:56is because they believe that whatever strategy has to offer in that case the payout is higher
- 38:03than what they can get somewhere else in the market right and that's tied also to bitcoin's
- 38:08performance but if you're a bitcoin treasury company and you say oh i offer a convertible bond
- 38:14without the option to convert at the premium
- 38:17or I offer a preferred stock
- 38:20that yields less than the bond of a nation state,
- 38:23nobody will buy it.
- 38:24So you need to offer a distribution that is higher
- 38:28than whatever a nation state offers
- 38:30for people to get interested in that preferred stock offering.
- 38:36Yeah.
- 38:38Crazy times.
- 38:40It's a really exciting time to be in Bitcoin,
- 38:43but also unnerving in a certain sense because the magnitude,
- 38:47the order of magnitude of flows coming into these products is all inspiring.
- 38:54And that's why when you consider something like 21 backed by Tether,
- 39:00Bitfinex, and SoftBank, maybe that's a formidable competitor.
- 39:05Who knows how integrated Tether's operating business will be with 21.
- 39:11obviously that's cash flowing pretty heavily.
- 39:16Yeah.
- 39:18And in terms of the other question I wanted to ask,
- 39:20in terms of like real estate developers
- 39:22looking at the return profile
- 39:26and the risk profile of these offerings
- 39:29and allocating to it,
- 39:30do you get the sense that they would literally
- 39:33sell some of the real estate assets
- 39:35to get exposure to this?
- 39:36Or would they incorporate it
- 39:39And in sort of like a multi, not a multi strap, but like last night we were at the Bitcoin meet up here in Philadelphia.
- 39:49And somebody was saying like an easy ETF to launch would be basically an S&P index ETF with a 2% Bitcoin allocation.
- 39:59Just the juice returns would.
- 40:01Do you imagine a similar strategy arising in real estate where you have these real estate development funds with their typical real estate cash flows and return profiles with just like a 5% allocation to these preferred stock offerings or convertible notes to get a kicker on the returns?
- 40:19I just had a conversation with someone that actually sent me a business plan for that.
- 40:25So the idea was you could lend against your property, you invested into Strike,
- 40:31which gives you upside option and you have a payout, a distribution.
- 40:36So I think that there's different approaches for it.
- 40:40But judging by the conversations I have on a day-by-day basis,
- 40:43the people that are like hardcore Bitcoiners by now,
- 40:46they have sold their properties or they sell their properties.
- 40:50So over the past two or three years, I've met many Bitcoiners that own properties
- 40:55because they saved in real estate and they had a fiat job, let's say,
- 41:00and they stacked BTC as well.
- 41:02But over the past 10, 20 years, they built a real estate portfolio.
- 41:05These individuals usually sell off their properties quickly
- 41:09and make the switch into Bitcoin because they are only responsible for themselves,
- 41:14so to say and there are investors that invested their own money now talking about larger institutions
- 41:21and larger companies where you have different lps and different partners i see that people number one
- 41:29they use the cash flow from the rental properties to buy bitcoin to protect the cash flow from
- 41:34inflation so i think bitcoin is the best store value for real estate and something i also see is
- 41:40And that's something I came to realize.
- 41:43If you look at high net worth individuals, when they make new investments, usually they don't sell.
- 41:49They borrow against the existing asset base that they have.
- 41:53And then they make that investment.
- 41:54And with real estate, that works particularly well.
- 41:57So I have seen a number of individuals, a number of companies that refinanced the properties that they own instead of selling it.
- 42:06And then they took that money and allocated it to Bitcoin.
- 42:08and now the question is if you understand bitcoin but you are not somebody that's in real estate
- 42:15development because you bring the capital let's say you bring the knowledge right so you bring
- 42:21the knowledge as a developer somebody else brings the capital you build a property and for the work
- 42:27you receive 50 equity in the property right so that would be us for example for these individuals
- 42:33I see that they are starting to incorporate Bitcoin and capital raising.
- 42:38So I've been working on it myself.
- 42:40It's pretty difficult due to regulation and banks not willing to take the risk.
- 42:45But we are working on a deal right now where for the next development,
- 42:49we are taking on additional cash, additional capital, additional money.
- 42:54So we're raising more money and we're buying Bitcoin with that money.
- 42:58And that's something I believe is like a very smart thing to do.
- 43:02you add satoshis and not just fiat in your capital raising so you can build a bitcoin treasury from
- 43:07the beginning and then it takes away the stress it takes away the reliance on interest rates and
- 43:13on a central planner it gives a bit more freedom in the way you construct your properties and i
- 43:18also see people that now are offering new real estate investment products where they also publicly
- 43:25say that they take the money, put it into the cash flow, excuse me, and put it into Bitcoin
- 43:32to juice up the returns.
- 43:33So there's different practical ways of merging Bitcoin and real estate.
- 43:38And if you want to stay in real estate because you're a good developer and you have fun,
- 43:42I highly suggest to start now chatting with the institutions that you work with and suggest
- 43:48to also raise some sets, not just fiat, for your next capital raise to build that Bitcoin
- 43:53treasury because a bitcoin treasury by itself might be a business model if you're publicly
- 43:57listed because you can leverage the ability to to issue stock to raise money and dilute your
- 44:03shareholders which in this fact is not ad because you increase the btc per share so being a publicly
- 44:10listed company having a btc treasury actually becomes a business model but if you're a private
- 44:15company you can still hold a bitcoin treasury it won't be the main line of your business but it
- 44:21it will support you in whatever you do. Completely agree. I mean, that's something we've done at 1031
- 44:26since we launched is hold some of the money we raise in our funds in Bitcoin as reserves. And
- 44:33that's benefited us massively over the life cycle of our funds and highly recommend. Particularly if
- 44:39you have like a 10-year fund, at the very least, it makes a ton of sense to allocate a portion of
- 44:46your raise to Bitcoin. I mean, it's something we advocate that any of the companies we invest in,
- 44:50And they take a portion of the raise from the proceeds that we give them, put it into Bitcoin.
- 44:55And we've seen just that simple practice of raising money, putting a portion into Bitcoin, depending on what your particular company is, where your revenue profile is, where your profit profile is.
- 45:07It's different for everybody.
- 45:09But I think even a small toe dip into a Bitcoin treasury has paid off massive benefits.
- 45:15benefits. We have a number of companies that their Bitcoin treasury is now worth more than
- 45:20all the money they've ever raised, which is insane to think. And they don't have to go back
- 45:27to market to raise again because they have this treasury. That is great. And that will also allow
- 45:32the founders to keep more of their share distribution. You don't need to dilute yourself
- 45:36as a founder. Exactly. Exactly. Very founder friendly way of thinking about managing your
- 45:43treasury in the long run. But beating on this topic of the intersection of real estate and
- 45:49opportunity costs that exist between real estate and opportunity costs, you've mentioned it multiple
- 45:55times. You're a Bitcoiner. You prefer to hold Bitcoin in cold storage. You get it and you are
- 46:01allocating as aggressively as possible. I would put myself in the same bucket there.
- 46:08Obviously, there's a spectrum of people and their comfortability with Bitcoin specifically.
- 46:13But for the market overall, what do you think is the best path forward or the best outcome
- 46:21moving forward with all these options on the table and all these strategies that we're
- 46:26discussing Like to me what we been talking about what we been describing makes me incredibly optimistic because it paints a clear path towards a somewhat smooth transition to a Bitcoin standard where everybody not going out and dumping the real estate all at once crashing the real estate market which collateralizes a lot of the global economy
- 46:51basically beginning to toe dip, whether it's doing a juice return profile by having your
- 46:58typical real estate portfolio and adding something like strike or just a little Bitcoin allocation.
- 47:05How do you see the optimal path forward? Is it everybody going to dump the real estate,
- 47:11allocate to Bitcoin, let things reprice rather quickly? Or would you prefer a smooth transition
- 47:16where people just begin slowly but surely getting a little Bitcoin exposure at first,
- 47:22but increasing that exposure over time?
- 47:24Yeah, most definitely.
- 47:26I would also prefer a smooth transition.
- 47:30I really like the article that you wrote.
- 47:32So for the listeners, I would highly recommend reading that.
- 47:36Marty wrote an article of the dual collateralization of Bitcoin real estate and the importance of that.
- 47:41And that's also why I'm beating the drum on that,
- 47:44because I do not want to see a state of the world of chaos.
- 47:48I often go back to what happened after Weimar.
- 47:51Being a German, I'm very aware of the negative effects of inflation
- 47:54and the information problem and the calculation problem that can result from it.
- 47:59People are not capable of making...
- 48:03Once money loses value, most things lose value, including human lives, right?
- 48:09People don't value things, they don't value themselves.
- 48:12They make bad decisions.
- 48:13They start to vote very weirdly. Why is it that during times of high inflation, which is driven by central planners, people tend to vote for central planners?
- 48:24There's this contradictory paradox where people kind of dig their own graves, so to say.
- 48:29And now if Bitcoin is being included as a hard asset into the global financial infrastructure, it can create some resilience that we all benefit from.
- 48:40And generally speaking, I do take like the Austrian perspective where I try not to judge how things are.
- 48:48I kind of just try to look at it and understand it without necessarily judging it.
- 48:53And I think Bitcoin as near perfect money is being used wherever it's needed most.
- 48:58And in the less developed world, Bitcoin is being used as a medium of exchange predominantly because they are just very bad payment infrastructure.
- 49:07In the developed world, Bitcoin is also used as a medium of exchange, but it's predominantly used as a store of value.
- 49:14And I believe the reason for that is currency does not represent the bulk of the world's money.
- 49:20First of all, the money exists on screens and in digits.
- 49:25And then also certain asset classes like real estate, bonds, art and collectibles.
- 49:31They've taken on a monetary role due to decades of monetary inflation that has decimated people's purchasing power.
- 49:38And they now sit on corporate balance sheets.
- 49:40So all over the world, companies store their productivity in asset classes like real estate and government bonds that are actually bad forms of storing value and productivity.
- 49:52and now Bitcoin is kind of tapping into these pools of capital
- 49:58and is demonetizing these forms of money.
- 50:02So I think it's a net positive
- 50:04and I don't think it's like it's not mutually exclusive.
- 50:08In my opinion, Bitcoin can be both
- 50:10a medium of exchange and a store of value
- 50:12because it's just money.
- 50:13Bitcoin is money and money fulfills these different roles.
- 50:16We just kind of forgot what money is
- 50:19because we were living on such a bad monetary standard for the past couple of decades
- 50:24that sometimes it's shocking what Bitcoin is being used for.
- 50:28But then when I think about it, I understand, wow, this is actually a monetary use case
- 50:32that I totally underestimated because I myself had a distorted view of what money is.
- 50:39Yeah, thank you for I'm glad you're reading the newsletter and that you like that one in particular.
- 50:46Because, no, it's, again, I am similar.
- 50:50I try to prognosticate and project forward, but always fall back to first principles of that's where I would like things to go.
- 50:57But let's just dissect things as they are and make rational judgments based off of that.
- 51:04The market can stay irrational far, far longer than you can say solvent and every other sort of disclaimer trope that you have there.
- 51:12But it is, I've been talking about it for multiple years now.
- 51:17And after having had many conversations with yourself, Andrew Hones, Kelly Lennon, others,
- 51:23it just makes sense to me that if you want a smooth transition, the best way to do that
- 51:29is this dual collateralized credit structure that allows the borrower to participate in
- 51:35the upside of the Bitcoin.
- 51:36Because I think if, God forbid, this train doesn't stop, nothing stops this train, and you do have some sort of high inflationary to hyperinflationary event at some point down the line, hopefully it's later rather than sooner.
- 51:54and a sufficient amount of the market is engaged in these types of dual collateralized products,
- 52:00that creates somewhat of a safety net for people exposed to those products,
- 52:04which allows you to reorient and restructure the economy in a more regimented and less chaotic way.
- 52:21Yeah.
- 52:21there would be the greatest outcome for the greatest amount of people
- 52:28i guess done through bitcoin and that would be good yeah so what do you think is this cycle
- 52:33different than last i had a long very tense discussion with a very good friend of mine
- 52:41yesterday he's anonymous but he's been in bitcoin for over a decade as well and he's he's been he
- 52:46said Leon you're misjudging it now that's the point where we are going into some form of he
- 52:54didn't call it super cycle but he said that the volatility can't be bigger than 60 percent
- 52:58because large institutions and bitcoin treasury companies are buying so much bitcoin and they're
- 53:04hodling it they're not willing to sell it that even if let's say the leverage is being washed
- 53:09out at some point he can't see a drawdown more than 40 percent and I personally sort of have the
- 53:16opinion that bitcoin is doing what bitcoin did and does every single cycle and it's a net positive
- 53:23because it builds resilience so i wouldn't be able to pinpoint my finger into let's say it's
- 53:29going to happen november december on the first quarter of 2026 but just judging by my intuition
- 53:35i think that bitcoin at some point needs to wash out leverage and that creates like resilience
- 53:41because in the fiat system we've got these boom and bust cycles whereas over time once the market
- 53:47experiences a downturn new money is being created it's being funneled into the market
- 53:51to stop the downturn from happening but over time there's a there's a bust like an 08 or you had one
- 53:59in you know we had one in 29 that's also very known of course and you had various boom and bust
- 54:04cycles throughout the years and throughout the last century and with bitcoin because bitcoin
- 54:10naturally washes out leverage it builds resilience and we don't go through these crazy boom and bust
- 54:16cycles we go through bull and bear markets and i think that's a net positive also for the mentality
- 54:23of the stackers and the hodlers it wouldn't be good if bitcoin would just now go on an upward
- 54:28trajectory but judging by also the last three years things are changing where for example in
- 54:35about a year and a half ago we had a bull market in miners so if we talk about clean sparks for
- 54:40example clean sparks i think in december of 2023 please check the timeline here but clean sparks
- 54:48peaked around 23 24 25 dollars and now it hoovers around 10 dollars and some of the other miners
- 54:54like Riot and Marathon, they went through a small bull market at that time.
- 54:58Shortly before in the summer, we had an ordinance bull market.
- 55:00So what is interesting is that in specific asset classes that are tied to Bitcoin,
- 55:05like collectibles on Bitcoin or miners,
- 55:09we have bull markets that are not in line with the general price directory of Bitcoin.
- 55:14So that's something that I personally haven't seen before.
- 55:18And I am paying attention to that because what it tells me
- 55:23that the Bitcoin bull market is extended in a way.
- 55:26Bitcoin is not crashing from, let's say,
- 55:2990,000 to 10,000, right?
- 55:32But it still has volatility
- 55:33and it went from 100 to 30 to 82
- 55:37just a couple of weeks ago.
- 55:39And I do expect we'll have a 60% drawdown
- 55:42at the end of this bull cycle as well,
- 55:44just to wash out some leverage.
- 55:45I'm sure bad players will enter the market like always.
- 55:49So I don't believe in some sort of super cycle
- 55:52or the liquidity squeeze or supply squeeze happening like immediately.
- 55:58But I do believe that there's a change that we can see.
- 56:01The asset is maturing.
- 56:03The understanding of the asset from large pools of capital is maturing.
- 56:07Like Saylor is not going to sell his stack, right?
- 56:10And he's holding over 2%, I think, of the total stack at this point.
- 56:14And as these companies are stacking, volatility will dampen.
- 56:19But I don't think it will go away.
- 56:20And that's a beautiful thing.
- 56:22It really is. And I would agree. I think there's definitely going to be a correction at some point.
- 56:28Is it going to be the magnitude of 2017 correction or the 2013 correction, 2014 correction?
- 56:34Probably not. But as you mentioned, humans are incredibly social beings.
- 56:41Their mentality does take over. People make bad decisions and leverage has to get wiped out.
- 56:46But one thing I mentioned in that piece that you brought up and was actually tweeting about yesterday,
- 56:51One of the things I'm looking at, whether it's these dual collateralized credit structures with longer durations or now bit bonds are becoming more of a topic of discussion.
- 57:03You had the mayor of New York City announced that he would like to launch a municipal bit bond in New York.
- 57:11And yesterday you had Russia's largest bank, Spur Bank, launched a structured bond tied to Bitcoin.
- 57:18And that's one thing I'm trying to wrap my head around, get a better understanding of is if you have these structured credit products and bond products, bit bond products come to market and they reach a critical scale and they reach scale.
- 57:35like that has to do something for volatility because you have this forward looking duration
- 57:41curve that you can point at and say, OK, I know that X amount of Bitcoin are locked up for Y
- 57:46amount of time. So that supply is unlikely outside of bankruptcy to come to the market to be sold.
- 57:54And that has to give institutional investors some peace of mind from a volatility perspective,
- 58:00saying, all right, at least I know this portion of the Bitcoin supply is going to be locked up for
- 58:06this amount of time. And so then you try to calculate what the free float is beyond that
- 58:12and what effect that could have on price. And I don't know if there's a question there, but just
- 58:16something I'm paying attention to is this forward looking duration curve begin to affect the
- 58:21psychology of people and their comfortability with Bitcoin. Yeah, I think that is in line with
- 58:27Bitcoin being part of this greater monetary reset where as near perfect money, it finds its way into every capital structure, basically.
- 58:38Yeah. It's exciting times.
- 58:43And then it's something I've been jokingly tongue in cheek saying SuperCycle for a year just to trigger people on Rabbit Hole Recap.
- 58:51But we've been saying it on that show for years, too.
- 58:54It's like when Wall Street comes, like if you thought DGENs on BitMEX and Binance trading at 100x leverage where we're degenerate, just wait till TradFi gets in and tries to create products around this.
- 59:08And I think we're at the very early days, but I don't think people should discount the levels of degeneracy to which Wall Street and high finance can engage in as well.
- 59:24That is true. It's a very good point because sometimes people make the argument saying Treadfire is not coming to Bitcoin.
- 59:31And then I would say, well, that's not a good thing necessarily.
- 59:33It's definitely a good thing that you have companies, Bitcoin treasury companies, that are buying Bitcoin in large bulbs and they're holding it.
- 59:41Sure, there's also custodian risk to that.
- 59:44It's another topic that is worth a discussion.
- 59:49But Treadfire coming to Bitcoin, I think Bitcoin will give Treadfire a big slap in the face.
- 59:54And that is being done through washing out leverage.
- 59:56And that means downside volatility.
- 59:58yeah you had sorry there's somebody mowing the lawn outside so I want to make sure I'm on mute
- 1:00:06when you're talking but you had uh you had a pretty long tweet um and I won't read the whole
- 1:00:13thing but I think probably a good point to end on uh it's your tweet the truth stings at first
- 1:00:21I've been on building sites since my teens and I've spent my early career turning dirt into
- 1:00:26concrete cash flow. And as I told myself, lasting wealth, it took years as a bruised ego to accept
- 1:00:32that no asset, not even prime real estate can compete with Bitcoin's long term performance and
- 1:00:36absolute scarcity. Markets don't care about our feelings and math won't bend to sentiment.
- 1:00:41The sooner we face the reality, the sooner we can position ourselves to benefit from Bitcoin.
- 1:00:45Then you explain how you see it. But to any of the real estate developers who are listening or
- 1:00:52watching this interview because they're interested on your perspective as somebody in real estate
- 1:00:57who has gone all in on bitcoin or incorporated bitcoin into your strategy what would you
- 1:01:05say to the skeptics out there how do they get off zero or what questions should they be asking
- 1:01:11themselves i think the question you should ask yourself is start measuring your your wealth in
- 1:01:17Bitcoin. Take the value of the properties you own year by year, month by month from any time that
- 1:01:24you would like to choose four years in the past until today. And I can guarantee you, you'll be
- 1:01:29shocked by how rapidly the properties that you own are losing value. And I think that's what you
- 1:01:36should do. You heard it here first. Should we tease the book at all? Are you keeping that close
- 1:01:44to the chest?
- 1:01:45Not at all, not at all.
- 1:01:47I'd be happy to.
- 1:01:48Yeah, so I'm writing a book by the working title,
- 1:01:51Digital Real Estate.
- 1:01:52Hopefully it'll be released by the end of this year.
- 1:01:54I've been working on it for around three years.
- 1:01:57It's just taking a lot of time.
- 1:01:58I'm spending a lot of time on it, thinking about it a lot.
- 1:02:02And it's going to be released with Bitcoin magazine.
- 1:02:06And the idea is I have three chapters in the book that I also have smaller paragraphs, of course.
- 1:02:13The first chapter is explaining Bitcoin as digital real estate, the investment thesis behind real estate and Bitcoin being very similar.
- 1:02:21And then the second chapter, I take you deep into very practical strategies for using Bitcoin in the real estate industry,
- 1:02:31for real estate development, for protecting cash flow, using mining to generate heat and also
- 1:02:38offsetting increased energy costs. And also eventually, if you want to, going into the public
- 1:02:45markets, tapping into that and the effect of corporate adoption on Bitcoin. And in the final
- 1:02:50chapter, I go into the socioeconomic effects of Bitcoin replacing real estate and then becoming
- 1:02:56the bedrock of the global financial system and becoming hopefully the new hurdle rate.
- 1:03:01Well, Leon, thank you for your time. Thank you for writing this book. I can't wait to read it. It's always great catching up with you. I think you're on the cutting edge of this intersection of real estate, Bitcoin, and then just beyond that, thinking of Bitcoin generally more broadly and thinking of ways to dip your toe in, get more exposure in a somewhat smooth transition.
- 1:03:29so thank you for coming on having this conversation uh i hope to see you in person at some point
- 1:03:36soon i know you over in germany but hopefully next time i not running out of a conference when I see you in person Yes I hope so too Thank you for having me on
- 1:03:46I appreciate it.
- 1:03:48Alright. Peace and love, Freaks.
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