Bankless - 89 - Institutions are Bullish | Eric Peters

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Eric Peters is the Founder and CEO of One River Digital Asset Management. In this episode, he joins the Bankless Podcast to bring the perspective of a traditional hedge fund manager into a crypto context. Spending his career in the markets, his insights to the macro environment are vast and inform his investing decisions, and he sees crypto as a pathway to a renaissance – but also to a dystopia. Seeing a 'quantum' level change underway, Eric explores the bumpy road ahead with thoughtful views on generation gaps, income inequality, and the power of digital assets. Eric's approach is a pragmatic one, addressing the crypto revolution in realistic terms that makes these paradigm shifts feel simultaneously instant and drawn out. ✨ EPISODE DEBRIEF ✨ https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/exclusive-debrief-institutions-are  ***** 📣 POOLTOGETHER | DEFI LOTTERY https://bankless.cc/PoolTogether  ***** 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🍵 MATCHA | DECENTRALIZED EXCHANGE AGGREGATOR https://bankless.cc/Matcha  🔐 LEDGER | SECURE YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger  🧙‍♀️ ALCHEMIX | SELF-PAYING LOANS http://bankless.cc/Alchemix  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 6:00 Eric Peters of Greenwich, CT 12:45 Buying $600M of Crypto 16:25 Building a Team 23:55 A Macro History Lesson 32:19 A Quantum Change 40:20 Dystopia or Renaissance 49:16 Bumpy Road Ahead 55:12 Generational Stresses 1:03:25 Faith In Currency 1:10:52 Regulatory Wrestling Match 1:15:42 Young, Dumb, and Broke 1:24:48 DeFi Boomers 1:29:00 Money is an Illusion 1:37:49 One Grave at a Time 1:42:20 Predictions 1:46:39 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Weekend Notes: https://www.oneriveram.com/wknd-notes  The Case for Digital Assets: https://www.oneriveram.com/s/The-Case-for-Digital-Assets-One-River.pdf  The Crypto Renaissance: https://youtu.be/karddOiv4ZA  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to bankless where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. David, fantastic episode. This is with hedge fund manager Eric Peters. Really enjoyed this one. Got a ton of insights, even more than I thought actually going in.

I knew this would be a great conversation. It turned out even better than I thought. What were some of your takes? Eric is just a really pragmatic thinker, which is rare in this space, especially somebody who's in the hedge fund world, is almost as bullish on crypto and defy as we are. Picking Eric's brain really showed me that there are pragmatic thinkers out there who think in pretty real terms about how this crypto revolution is going to unfold. Eric and us were totally aligned on us thinking that this is a crypto renaissance, and he did that without listening to our crypto renaissance podcast. And so we pow out on that for a while. And overall had a deliberate discussion about how people that are not going to want to see change in the world, how they're going to have to deal with this whole crypto thing. And we talked about that from the perspective of governments and taxation, of federal reserves and monetary policy, of, you know, the wealthy boomers who have everything to lose versus the younger generations who have nothing to lose yet everything to gain.

And how that sort of friction between these very polarized parts of the world, how they're going to deal with this whole crypto revolution. So overall, a very pragmatic and interesting discussion with Eric Peters here. Yeah, it's super cool. It's very cool to see Eric come to many of the same conclusions separately that we've come to. It's like about money, you know, the history of money, about even this idea of crypto being a renaissance, about the core value proposition being decentralization, about how the

U.S. adoption might work. So he came to many of the same conclusions that I think we've come to on bankless only from a separate angle. The other piece of this is Eric's firm in 2020. was like the first, the largest institutional allocator to crypto. Okay. Now he talks about the first part of the conversation about how difficult it was to buy the amount of crypto that they were buying. It's like $500 million or something like that, $500, $600 million. So he talks about that. And I just can't get over how big this is for crypto, right? Like this is really the institutions are coming. And they're not

just coming for a number go up. Like I feel like Eric and his team really understand this asset class. why they're buying the space. It was also funny because I made an embarrassing mistake at the very early phases of this by like, anyway, you'll have to listen to hear what that mistake is. But it's another example of like the crypto world doesn't have a lot of ties into the financial institutional investing world. And they don't have a lot of ties to crypto. So I think bankless listeners who've heard us talk to all sorts of different crypto-native companies and funds will get a lot of value from this specific conversation because Eric comes at it from a traditional hedge fund manager. How is a large allocator of capital that's done very well in the traditional

world? How do they think about crypto and what realizations are they coming to about this asset class? So stay tuned for that. We talk about quantum change. We talk about young versus old and the generational stresses that might be a macro theme here. We talk about the story of the U.S. versus China, how they are playing the crypto thing, how this is going to turn out from a regulator's perspective. We asked Eric if he's worried about regulation in the U.S. You'll have to tune in to hear his answer to that. And then finally, we end with the case for digital assets. This is just a fantastic conversation. We think you guys are really going to enjoy before we get to the conversation. We want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Macha, everyone's favorite deck aggregator, has just launched an open

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plus a variety of yield strategies to choose from. Harness the power of Alchemics at Alchemics.fI. That's A-L-C-H-E-M-I-X.F-I. Follow Alchemics on Twitter at Alchemics FI and join the Discord to keep up to date with Alchemics V2 and to get involved in governance. Bankless Nation, we are super excited about our next guest, Eric Peters. Eric is the founder. He's also the chief investment officer of One River Digital Asset Management. This is a traditional hedge fund that gets crypto, really understands crypto.

They've been a massive buyer, a voracious buyer of both Bitcoin and I believe Ether, too. So investing in change, political, economic, technological change, quantum change, as Eric calls it. We're going to get into all of that today. This is our opportunity to pick the brain of a hedge fund manager that's been crypto-redpooled, I think. Eric, how are you doing today? It's great to have you on bankless. It's great to be here. Yeah, I have never been accused of being red pill, but that's usually the type of podcast I'm on.

So this is awesome. Well, you know what? This is going to be fun because we don't. don't often talk to you what we would call, you know, Eric, I don't know how you think of yourself, but it's kind of a traditional hedge fund manager, right? So like, we talk to a lot of crypto hedge fund managers. We talk to a lot of VC companies, obviously people in institutional space. But I think you have a really unique vantage point in that you've got kind of a bridge in the traditional hedge fund world and also in this crypto world. So we want to learn as much as we can from you.

But like, I guess my first question is, so you guys are based in Greenwich, Connecticut, right? And that's been called the hedge fund capital of the world. There's a lot of big hedge funds out of Greenwich, Connecticut. What does everyone think about crypto in Greenwich, Connecticut? Do they all think we're crazy? Is there a recognition that some of this is actually happening? Crypto is a real thing, or do they just think we're flat crazy? Well, number one, I love it. You call it Greenwich, just because it's Greenwich, so it just shows the total disconnect. Oh my God. Between the,

I mean, but that's, no, but no, it's good. We're not going to edit that out either. No, leave it.

Right. Leave it. Leave it. I mean, that, like this is all about, you know, filling gaps,

right? So your world and my world are colliding and, uh, and they're colliding in Greenwich, Connecticut, but she's, um,

so. Sorry to every, all the Greenwich listeners out there in bankless. Yeah, just shows my ignorance. Yeah, they're all, they're all just a bunch of,

you know, Wall Street guys that are meeting into the city anyway. Now, it's excellent. So look, there are, there are a growing number of people. I think you, you know, you see him. Paul Jones is on CNBC today. I don't watch CNBC, but everyone sends me his quotes all the time. So, you know, he's, he's been a big advocate of this space and, you know, and he's based here. So increasingly, I think, I, look, I think, I think people who have built their careers around identifying emerging trends and good investment opportunities are on this thing, and institutions are puzzled as to what to do, but increasingly are being drawn into it. And so a place like where we are, and quite frankly, our firm is kind of at the

center of that transformation. And I think it is a transformation. I think it's incredibly exciting. It's definitely the most interesting macro opportunity macro investment thesis I've seen in my career. And so a lot of it will happen here, right? I mean, a lot of the really exciting things on the technology side are not happening here. But the connection to the legacy financial system, let's call it Wall Street, with new technologies, is going to first happen in the pools of capital that are directed by a limited number of people as opposed to some kind of big investment committee. And those fast-moving, limited group of people, investment teams are sitting here in places like Greenwich.

Certainly not just Greenwich. But that's kind of how the capital moves. Do you guys feel like you're leading the way in Greenwich, like with One River Capital? Is there anyone else that's doing what you mentioned Paul Tudor Jones, right? I know he's got some exposure in the space. But are you one of the first? Well, I think that we are the first traditional alternatives manager, which is otherwise called hedge fund. But we're the first firm that's built a business around that.

We're over eight years old. So I started this firm in 2013. But we're the first alternatives firm that is recognized the opportunity that digital assets need a dedicated fiduciary. So there are a whole bunch of terrific broader financial services firms in digital assets. And a lot of those names are pretty well known. But when we entered the space, so we made our first big allocation last November, and right after the election. And as we did, we worked with one of our big clients to try to identify how to best access the space.

And what became clear is that, yeah, you could go out and buy, you could go directly and buy these assets. But if you're a large investment firm that needs to work with a fiduciary, there really weren't any dedicated fiduciary. So there are firms that look like, let's say, diversified investment banks for digital assets or crypto. And they tend to have a whole range of different services that they provide. They may be doing prop trading. They may be doing custody. They may be doing merchant banking. They may be market making.

They may have some asset management products. But there's no one that is just coming out and saying, look, we're focused purely on connecting our clients to the investment opportunities we see in this space. We have no conflicts of interest. We're working purely on behalf of our clients. And so that was the business opportunity that we saw. And so when we made the decision to kind of enter this space, we felt all of our clients should be allocated to these assets.

I'm sure we'll cover that over the course's podcast, but the reasons why. But there just was no one that they could really reasonably work with in order to get that exposure. And so we decided to start building out those products. That's how we entered this space. Well, that's super cool. Good timing to you, right, November 2020. And I believe that was at the time one of the, maybe the largest ever institutional asset allocation to crypto at the time. Yeah.

I assume what did you guys buy at that time? I don't know if you can go into all the details. Yeah, no, I mean, a lot of this is public. We bought over $600 million of Bitcoin and Eith just right after the election. And yeah, and it was a five-day, it wasn't 24-7 because I don't stay up that long. But pretty much, yeah, that was a lot of fun. Is it hard to buy that much? I've never tried personally.

I don't know. David probably has, but like how difficult is. is it to buy $600 million of Bitcoin and E? It was, it was, well, number one, I didn't know how hard it would be either. We needed, you know, we really needed to be extremely discreet. We work with multiple counterparties right now, but at the time, we worked directly with the folks at Coinbase on their institutional desk. And they were terrific, and quite frankly, we kept all of it quiet until we were pushed

to disclose it about a month. flater. But, but yeah, I mean, you know, it was, it really, it was such an interesting period, you know, kind of, it was such an interesting execution. If you just look at the whole thing in totality and said, look, we have to get this position on. We decided that it was important to get it on fast. Because if there was any news that leaked out, we thought the market would fly. And quite, you know, when, when news did break in December that we had made that allocation, that was the day that Bitcoin broke through the old highs. And so that didn't really surprise in the sense that there have been a whole bunch of years

where people have been talking about, institutions are going to come, institutions are going to come. And we were the first institution that came, right? So we kind of knew that if word trickled out, the thing would run away on us. And I didn't want to be having to buy that much in a market that was running away. So we, yeah, there are all kinds of, you know, games that we played with the market, which was really fun to do. I think it actually was, ironically, it was probably an advantage to not be someone who has grown up trading these assets at size because I think a lot of people are super dependent on algorithmic trading and lean on their algos. We used a lot of different algos that Coinbase had actually, but we used them in kind of unique ways.

and that helped us kind of mess around with the market so that I think they were a little confused as to what was going on and that worked to our advantage. So we got it on. We actually got the whole position on without moving the market. In fact, we ran an analysis afterwards. We got in below, you know, kind of below average prices during that period, which, yeah. That's amazing. It doesn't matter. These assets move so much, you know, a few percent here or there doesn't really matter, I don't think.

but, you know, whatever. It was gratifying that we got it on quietly, discreetly, and we learned a lot through that process. Well, and congrats on the timing is really good timing. Of course, we've seen big moves in both of those assets since. Now, here we are, as the time of recording, we're just at all-time highs for Bitcoin and approaching all-time highs, once again, for ETH. So the timing couldn't have been better. I'm curious about the allocation at that time. I don't know if that's public to you, but it's like how much ETH versus Bitcoin? What was sort of the split there? Yeah, we don't really go into that. But it was weighted more heavily toward Bitcoin.

Interesting. Okay. And now we've seen, obviously, you know, quite the appreciation of these since then. But I also wanted to ask, like, because you have a few other notable things, I think, at One River Capital. We're going to spend a lot of time on kind of the thesis and your general thesis for this space, why you're doing things in digital assets. But before we do, some other interesting tidbits, I think, is you've got a guy by the

name of Alan Howard backing you as well. understand that's a very big name in the institutional investor space. You pronounced it right too, Ryan. Yes. The W is not silent in this one. That's perfect. And also Jay Clayton, whom, of course, we recognize in the crypto world, former SEC commissioner, someone else is a former CIA legal counsel.

So it's like a lot of the established institutions, right, of the world are actually coming into this fund, which I think, you know, says something, a former chair of the SEC, somebody's former been deep in government, the CIA side, legendary fund manager in the past. What do you think they see in this space? Do they just fundamentally believe your thesis for this space? Is that why they're jumping aboard here? That's a great question. And it hasn't been phrased that way to me. Just, you know, the question is kind of whether there's a common thread. I would say that they're all interested for overlapping reasons, but they probably are weighted differently.

So Alan and I have known each other for the last decade. He actually invested, he took a 25% stake in one of our asset management before we entered digital assets, but he's since taken a bigger position in the digital subsidiary that we have. And Alan is one of the greatest investors, hedge fund investors of all time. He is, you know, he has, he's known for having kind of a unique ability to identify opportunities and really size up and manage risk extremely well. And those are very difficult things to kind of have in one person. I think, and you, you know, you rarely, rarely see that.

And so he, you know, he's done a tremendous job of jumping on all sorts of trends over the years and capitalize on them. He was the earliest traditional hedge fund person in digital. He tends to remain pretty quiet about it, but he was the first one. And so he has interesting investments throughout the ecosystem, and it's spent a lot of time on that. And so I think he and I have wanted to be in business for a long time. So I took a position in one river, the parent company initially, and then was even more excited after we entered the space. So after we entered the space, he and I spoke about it. I didn't tell him what we were doing ahead of time, of course.

But so I think he, you know, he sees the market opportunity and the business opportunity. You know, Jay someone, I hadn't known Jay until I, and I look, I generally don't want to spend much time with regulators. They've, you know, I will say just. Except Hester Purse. We love her, right? Yeah. Well, just to be clear, you know, we've had a couple routine examinations and, you know, we're, we've come out squeaky clean. But that's kind of the extent to which I ever really wanted to spend time with regulators.

But I recognize after we enter this space that if we are going to, if we are going to really be the best firm we can be for our clients and have a positive impact on the industry. And I think there's a national interest element to this as well. felt that we were, you know, really underarmed from a regulatory perspective, just because having spent my whole career not really wanted to spend time with them, entering a space that, where that's such a big driver, I felt like we really needed to have the right, and certainly advisors. And so I actually just picked up the Wall Street Journal. I saw it in an article that he'd left the SEC the day before, and I just cold called him and said, I'd love the chat. And what did he say?

He said, let's get together. You know, let's get together. You know, I think he, and then, and then we, you know, we had a number of, of, of, of, of, of, of lunches over the next few months. And, and, you know, before he agreed to do this, I think he just wanted to get, whatever, we both wanted to get to know one another. And what was evident right out of the gate is that he and I, the thing that we share more than anything is the belief that in order. to, in order to continue to have the leading financial services sector in the world, the U.S. has to get the regulatory foundation for this transition from legacy finance to digital finance, has to get that right.

That's right. And so, look, there are a couple approaches to this. I think some of the purists, and I have a lot of respect for people that were in this space really early. I've paid attention to it my whole career or throughout the life of, you know, Bitcoin onward. But I think that there's an element of people who think that this is the system that is there to be able to build something brand new after the old system crashes and burns. And at one level, they're right. It could. But I don't think the old system is going to crash and burn.

I think what's, and certainly that's just not the approach we're taking. This is, I think what we're building now and what you guys are. You know, what you guys are building and what your whole world is seeing is an opportunity to rebuild a better financial system. But I think it's going to be built upon and will displace the legacy players and systems in ways that contribute to healthier society, much more efficient financial system, et cetera. And I believe that that has to happen by working with regulators, which is not to say never pressing regulators. it's just to say to kind of coordinate and cooperate. So that's kind of how that all went down. And so that's Jay.

And then Courtney Elwood, so she was the general counsel for the CIA. And I think her position, she's not an investor like Alan Howard, and she wasn't a regulator like Jay. She looks at this from the national security perspective. And as do I, by the way. as a macro guy, one of the most interesting frictions is the one between the U.S. and China right now. And we'll probably talk about central bank digital currency, but there is a concerted effort to try to unseat the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. And I think that that would not be in the U.S.'s best interest, nor are allies. And there are all sorts of other kind of adjacent tensions between those countries.

but I think from Courtney's perspective, I always hate putting words in people's mouths, but I think she shares the view that getting all of this right is in the U.S. national interest. And so we all share, you know, I mean, she recognizes that that's probably also a good investment opportunity for people involved because that's obvious, but that's not a driver for her. Eric, I think we need to unpack what it means to get all of this right. And in some of your writing that both Ryan and I really truly enjoyed, you called this decade one of the most uncertain decades of our lifetimes. And so you are betting that we are going into this major transition, not just for, you know, investing, but just for how the world works. This isn't some like new social media platform.

This isn't some disruptive fintech company. this is what you are calling a quantum change, which I think maybe, if it were my words, we would be calling this a paradigm shift. This is a new paradigm. And so can you just unpack and elaborate on what you mean by a quantum change and why you think this change that is happening is of the magnitude that you think it is? Sure. Let's go with the kind of abbreviated version because we can spend, you know, time where your listeners would certainly fall asleep. I don't know. We're pretty into climate change, but yes, we'll go to the preview.

Really? All right. Well, look, we'll try the short version if you want to dig in any deeper. So let's take digital crypto. Let's take all of that. Let's take blockchain just out of the picture entirely for a moment. So I started my career in 89. And we have, from a global policy standpoint, we have been pursuing a consistent policy through that entire period of time.

And that policy has been more or less driven by central bankers. And so we came, you know, when I started my career, inflation was pretty high. So it was in 1970s high, but it was still, by today's standards, well, sorry, by today's standards, we're back to those levels. But like roll the clock back a year by those standards and by the standards of the last couple decades, inflation was high, bonyls were high, et cetera. And starting with Greenspan, a policy was really introduced to kind of every economic hiccup.

The Federal Reserve would lower interest rates in a material way, kind of never ratchet them back up to the starting levels as the federal reserve. the cycle progressed. And so, and kind of inflation came down, interest rates came down. The big, the really big macro trends were increased globalization and deepening kind of technology, technology deepening throughout our whole society. And by the way, you couldn't even, you couldn't even have globalization at scale without that technology. So all these things played, played in to one another and amplified the impacts. And what that led to, was it led to this period of kind of large income inequality, as I said, lower inflation,

lower interest rates, very high overall debt levels and leverage, right? Because you could just hold more debt if interest rates were low. Inflation was very stable. And it was kind of this, these big macro forces were pressing us to a point where that monetary policy, which was really monolithic. had run out of, you know, it was no longer as effective as it had been from a much higher starting point of higher interest rates. Is this like the morphine drip kind of effect where like patient gets a shot of morphine

and then another one and then another one? But gradually it's less and less effective until basically, you know, patient no longer feels the effective morphine. Yeah, it's like that. I mean, it's a little bit more mathematical. But, I mean, it's not the wrong analogy. And the only thing that I would say with that type of analysis, is I think that there are a whole group of people that look at that kind of policy and just say it was just morally bankrupt or, you know, it's terrible. And when you start talking about morphine, you're, I don't know, it has certain connotations. I think that what we witnessed was we saw a real leveraging of the, of the U.S. financial system. And it was a policy that wasn't, it wasn't a dumb policy. It just, but it had a natural endpoint. But by the way, if you look historically through economic and market cycles going back.

hundreds and hundreds of years, there are cycles, right? And cycles play out because these dynamics happen because it, you know, naturally societies want to take on more debt because what does debt do? It kind of pulls demand from the future to the present. It all feels good. Like, there are a lot of things that conspire to push society, you know, into these cycles. And it wasn't all the Fed's fault. It's like a lot of things worked together. But the Fed was the dominant driver of these policies. And because the, the, the, the, dollar is the global reserve currency, every other central bank in the world, more or less, certainly of the developed countries, more or less had to follow the Fed's policy. Because otherwise,

if they diverge from it, their currency would get really strong and their exporters would go out of business and they would scream at the politicians and the politicians would pressure the central bank. And so you ended up happening after 30 years of this policy, you ended up with central banks whose toolkit no longer really worked and you had the whole globe on the same system. All these guys went to the same schools. They all read the same books. They all went and begged the Nobel group for their prize in economic. They're all, like, they all thought this is being unfair.

But, you know, they all more or less had the same paradigm or the same kind of mental model in terms of how to think about monetary policy. right. And so all of that drew us into this, or drew us into this point where we had the longest economic cycle in the U.S. and the longest bull market up until the pandemic hit. And for the preceding two years, every central banker in the world was crying out for politicians to start spending money because they said, listen, our tools, they're never going to say they don't work because that would spark a panic. They kept saying, our tools don't work as well as we would like them to. you have to start spending money. But politicians couldn't really spend money because everyone was kind of stuck in this quasi austerity mindset. All right. Pandemic hit, and that was the most remarkable

catalyst imaginable to just get politicians to say throw out all those old rules, everything that we've been preaching because we now have this global pandemic and we need to save the world and we need to do that with huge fiscal spending. Not, I don't know what I would have done if I were in that spot, but I probably wouldn't have been hiking rates and, you know, cutting budgets. So it's, I think the, the actions were rational, right? But what that did is that, that shifted us from a world of this monolithic central bank policy. So I would call that policy homogeneity. So the whole world was driven by a group of people making decisions that had the same mental model, more or less. And it shipped us in this world where the central bankers don't control what governments spent.

Politicians decide that. And so if you look at it, if we grabbed a group of 50 politicians from across the world and 50 central bankers, other than their accents, the central bankers would be almost indistinguishable. Probably the same age. They went to the same schools or, you know, the equivalent in their countries, et cetera. You took the 50 politicians or 100, be wildly different, okay? Even in the U.S., like Donald Trump. fiscal policy is different from Joe Biden's. Okay. If it had been, if it had been Bernie Sanders instead of

Joe Biden, it would also be different. The point is that that policy becomes very heterogeneous when you shift away from a group of central bankers to control everything to a group of politicians across the world interacting with their own political systems interacting with their central banks. So that change alone would be the biggest, we'll use yours, David, paradigm shift instead of quantum. That would be the biggest paradigm shift that we have seen since, certainly since the late 70s into Volker in the 1980s. Okay. Okay. Can you break down why?

So I get, so there's no contrarians among central bankers. They're all doing the exact same thing, right? But politicians, they have all of these contrarian ideas. But why is this move from sort of monetary policy money printing, let's call it, to fiscal policy money printing? Why is this such a quantum change and such a departure from what we've seen? over the past 30 years. Isn't it both still kind of money printing dollar supply go up?

It's a really good question. And here is the simple answer to that is that maybe a multi-part answer. The simple answer is that the paradigm that we were in was one where there was a lot of money printing. But there was a lot of money printing. There was a lot of debt accumulation. But the velocity of that money. money that was being created, as more money was being created, the velocity was declining. And so what happened was you ended up with a lot of liquidity in the system that wasn't actually

moving through the system very fast. Where it was finding a home was at asset prices. And so that policy wasn't really lifting real economic growth. So you saw it, in spite of all that QE, you saw inflation become very low and stable. Economic growth became, became very modest and relatively stable. And asset prices were the things, financial asset prices were the things that were going up. What happens when you say, actually, we're going to start spending money is that shifts the whole equation. Because you go, instead of just a bunch of, you know, a bunch of 65-year-old center bankers saying, we're just going to print more money and buy more bonds.

And then a bunch of 65-year-old baby boomers go, well, you just pay. more for my bonds than I thought they were worth. And now they don't own those bonds anymore, I'm going to go buy some stocks. All that's happening with a bunch of 65-year-old people, right? All of a sudden you go, no, here's what we're going to do now. We're going to keep doing all that bond buying, all that money printing, but we're going to have the largest economy in the world, the U.S. economy, borrow 15 percent of GDP for two years running, and we're going to start spending that money. We're going to give it to people. We're not just giving it to the 65-year-old people who have an equity portfolio that represent the top 1% of wealth in the country. We're giving it to everyone.

Okay. And so that, that, we haven't even begun to see the consequences of that change. Well, sorry, we've just only now started to see the consequences of how dramatic a shift that is. That's something that was just inconceivable, even a couple of years ago. I mean, just completely inconceivable that we would do something like that. By the way, we had, we had expected a move, toward this fiscal monetary coordination. If you'd ask me, and we were positioned for it, which was great for our investors, if you'd ask me, what are the probability pre-pandemic of seeing two years of 15% budget deficits out of the U.S., fully funded by the Fed? I would have said in the absence of a world war, a 1% probability.

Wow. That's what's happening. Yeah, and that's what's happening. Okay, okay, okay. So let's talk about this, this, I guess, paradigm shift because I like the point that you made earlier. I mean, we can get out of the habit. Sometimes crypto and other people have the habit of kind of moralizing these things, right? Maybe the morphine drip has some moralizing connotation.

Like, yeah, don't keep giving the patient morphine, that sort of thing. But I think your broader point as an investor is just like, hey, this is just cycles. This is the flywheel. If you were a individual in that system, what decisions would you have made? Probably the same decisions. And now we have this massive wealth inequality. And, you know, in the U.S., people are like, hey, you know, the 1% got their cut of this thing through asset price increase over the past 10 years. Where's my cut, right?

Where's universal basic income, for instance? Where's the distribution? How can we get minimum wage increase? And so a portion of that is now going to labor. So, and you understand why the cycle plays this way, right? Like if you're individual in the wheelie, probably make some of these same decisions. But let's talk as investors. So what are the implications of this?

Is this basically what you're saying, maybe we don't know all the implications, but is one of the things that you're saying, we're about to see massive CPI consumer price index type inflation over the next 10 years? Or what are the sorts of shifts that we should expect given this monetary to fiscal policy regime change? So the first thing I would say is that if it were only that regime change or that paradigm shift that we're affecting us, it would be the biggest one that we've seen, certainly in my career, spanning over 30 years. But it's not because everything I just said is happening with the backdrop of blockchain technology. on the cusp of rewiring the global financial system. And spinning out of that project are a variety of assets, cryptocurrencies that, you know, or various tokens that I think represent fundamental change in probably how the whole world operates.

That will take decades to manifest. But in the here and now, it's affecting financial. markets and investment opportunities, et cetera. So the first thing I would say is that you have these enormous potentials for change that are kind of colliding in a super interesting way. And the outcome of that is it's highly uncertain because it's not going to happen in a totally free market. You know, you're seeing like just look at it.

what China's done, right? I mean, you're going to have, you basically have this paradigm shift from monetary fiscal policy that's going to change the way the economy operates. It's going to change inflation. It will lead to higher inflation and much higher inflation volatility. So we've come off of a couple decades where inflation volatility has been extremely low and stable. That will start moving around a lot. That doesn't mean inflation just goes straight up. It could, but I think it's more likely that we see a lot more inflation volatility. But it's going to lead to some really wild moves in markets. We're starting to see that already. It'll lead to things that we haven't, that will be very confusing to people in markets. An example of that will be that, that,

that I think is really interesting, is that gold hasn't participated in this whole move in inflation and yet look at what digital assets have done. They've gone, you know, they've gone bananas, right? So a lot of things will change in markets, but I think to, to, for me as a macro investor, to wrap my arms around something that I know I can't fully understand and anyone who ever claims to is either a megalomaniac or just lying. But what you can try to do is, I think understand what are the biggest, most important things that are happening, and then kind of understand how they interact, and then stay mentally flexible around, well, what are some of the things that those could mean? And then you're supposed to kind of look at markets and say,

well, what are markets telling you some of this stuff means? And then ideally invest alongside those trends as they emerge. Do you know, super interesting to me. So like some of the stuff you said, you know, reflects other macro thinkers like Ray Dalio comes to mind, for instance. And so interesting when I read Ray Dalio. He's like, he gets the diagnosis right. But then the cure, he says, he's like, go buy this, you know, shiny metal object. I know it's more complicated than that, but like he's a big advocate of gold and not yet digital assets, which is somewhat interesting, right, in this kind of scenario. And so it appears to me you're not just betting on this monetary regime change. That's not the only quantum change that you see. You see that. But then you

also see this whole advancing technology. And I think in your quantum change letter, you called this like almost betting on decentralization and decentralized power. And you make the point that some will try to subvert this, like in co-op this, maybe China, but you make the other point that for others that kind of embrace it and open their arms to this, and maybe the West is an example of that, that story is yet to be written. We'll see, I hope so. But for others, you said such a path holds the potential to produce another renaissance. Another renaissance is what you see.

So talk about that in a little more detail. So what is it about this decentralized technology that comes into play in blockchain and crypto that could bring about this second renaissance? And how does an investor position themselves to capitalize on that? Yeah. That sounds like a big, bold statement. But I entirely, I don't think it's an exaggeration at all. I think that the power of these technologies hold the potential to, lead to dystopia or renaissance.

And I think when you look at what China is doing, I think what, look, they're the first ones to develop the CBDC, really. I mean, there are a couple other countries that took it a bit more seriously early on, like Switzerland and Canada. But, you know, the U.S. has been late, right? But if you ask yourself, why did China do that? It's because they looked at that technology is that, oh my God, this is seriously powerful stuff, right?

And so if we could take this and we could impose this on our subjects, which is I think how they think about it, then we get to see every single transaction throughout the economy. I mean, it extends their arm of their control over their population in ways that would have been, unimaginable even a decade ago. And so they saw it. And so you kind of get, you know, they've showed their hand in terms of how they've chosen to implement it. And I'm not saying just because a central bank issues a central bank digital currency that they're doing it because they want to

dominate their citizenry. There are other reasons for, there are other efficiency reasons for doing it. It's just my, the point that I'm making with China is that I think that the reason that the dominant reason that they're doing it is because it gives them unparalleled insight and control over their citizenry. And I think to the extent that they can export that, I think they'll fail at this, by the way, but to the extent that they can export that globally, I think they think it gives them the ability to maybe unseat the US dollar as the global reserve currency. So that's kind of the, the kind of the dark path of these technologies is that in a world, that becomes increasingly digitalized and our lives that become increasingly digitalized,

that these technologies give the state a lot more power potentially. The path toward Renaissance is, I think, consistent with the development of Bitcoin and that technology, which is that, look, there's a way, there's a way using the technologies that we now have and the system, the cloud that connects 7.9 billion people on the planet, if you take firewalls and everything out, there's a system that allows people for the first time in human history to connect with one another, trust one another, even if they don't like one another, they speak different language. There's a way to have trust between people that is completely decentralized. And if you think, I think that that is the most important thing to think about when you consider an investment thesis for the long haul, forget about trading opportunities.

We have, I think it's hard to understate how important that is because if you just go for a half an hour walk or an hour walk and think about everything that's touched your life, whether it's a company that you've shopped at or worked at or a church. or a synagogue or any kind of religion that you've been part of, or the government system that controls your town, your country, the international networks of the UN or IMF. There literally is, I would challenge you to think of anything that isn't material in your life that has, that, you know, even your family structure. Like, there's nothing that isn't centralized in some way in terms of kind of control and power. And it's like the sky is blue and that's just the way the world works, right? But what just happened is for the first time in human history, at scale, something just popped up that said, actually, it doesn't have to work that way.

Really? It doesn't have to work that way. Now, it's natural that that realization is going to take decades to manifest fully. But, and you guys talked to a lot more of these people than I do, and you guys probably are these people, but you probably look at it. Well, I know you are because I, I I listened to your piece on Eith and the Metaverse. Like, we are moving to a world, which is, which is, will become more or less fully digitalized. And I don't know. Like, what's the, what's the place for the traditional nation state in that world? The answer is, I have no idea.

All I'm saying is that these technologies, for the first time in a real way, open up the possibility that we can ask that question and deliver a solution. Okay. So that's like big, big picture. Where we are in 50 years, I think we'll look back at this and we'll say, we'll say that this was as important as the invention of a computer, maybe more in terms of how society is structured and operates. But in the more immediate term, that kind of recognition that this is that important and its implementation in society and kind of how does, I'm more focused on how it takes over Wall Street and the financial system. And I want to play a part in that. And we're building out of firm to have a very positive impact on leading to much more efficient financial system, inclusive opportunities for people, all those good things. Right. But what these technologies do is they connect people and they slash the middlemen out. So when you talk about or when I talk about a Renaissance, it's like, what did the Renaissance do?

Okay. And someone who's a rena who teaches a PhD program at Harvard would probably argue with me about this and that's fine. But the Renaissance, you know, we had just had the dark ages and you built up this kind of culture where wealthy patrons would give promising artists money to kind of do whatever the hell they wanted to do. And some of them wrote books and some of them painted beautiful pictures, et cetera. And some of them thought about all kinds of new. scientific innovations. And that was incredible because you just started funding people, right? We now have systems that have taken out the art dealer, they've taken out the music company. They've connected literally 7.9 billion people around the planet have the potential, no matter what country they're in, to do something and connect to capital and get funded, to do something that they're most passionate about, and their aptitude is highest to do, without having to get a work permit and do this and do that. I don't know what that. that leads to, but I'll tell you, if it doesn't get regulated away, I think you would be short,

kind of human innovation, short, almost the human condition. You would be, you would be short. To bet against that, I think it's a terrible bet to make. But I don't know exactly what that will lead to. I think we're seeing glimpses of it in the NFT market. But that's like literally just scratching the surface. Oh my God. We couldn't agree more with that. Obviously, it's like, do you want to be on the other side? Do you want to short the Renaissance? Do you want to short human ingenuity? Like, bad move, especially when we're moving to the digital era.

By the way, have you listened to our podcast? This is with a PhD professor, Josh Rosenthal. It's called Crypto Renaissance. Okay. No, I haven't. One of our favorite podcasts. Really? Awesome.

You got to send it to you after the show. It's like, I can't wait. Anyway, you'll love it. But let's move on. I think David's got another question. Yeah. I mean, as Ryan said, we are completely in line. with this whole Renaissance future that we think crypto brings.

And in this future that we think inevitably comes, and we encourage all bankless listeners to undergo this revolution, then have this revolution happen to you. But there's a lot of people in this world where they are not going to undergo this revolution, and in fact, change really, really scares them. And on theme with, I think, a lot of other things that we've seen in 2020 and 2021,

the world just seems to be overall extremely polarized. the difference between the 1% and the 99% is huge. The difference between the left and the right is huge. The difference between CBDCs and true cryptocurrencies is massive. The difference between generations is also massive. So there's a lot of people out there that this whole Renaissance thing, which we think is extremely optimistic and bullish on humanity, actually causes a lot of the incumbencies of the world to miss out on this future.

So, Eric, can you talk about the obstacles that you see ahead of us for all of these people, of the world that really are not incentivized to see this renaissance occur? Yeah. For starters, I encourage everyone at our firm, and I encourage our clients. And I encourage you guys, and you probably do look at it this way. But I encourage you to think about the resistance as the opportunity. So if, so we just did a financing round. recently, and the investors in it included Coinbase, Goldman Sachs, Liberty Mutual Insurance.

So kind of like we do with all of our business, we're looking to bring the smartest, best people, and thoughtful firms together to help us hopefully lead this institutionalization of these assets. And so it's natural that we're going to get some of the kind of ones who have put a lot of work into this space. but they may not be ready to fully embrace it because of regulations or whatever. They may prefer to do it with a thoughtful partner that they trust. But if they could all do it right now, or they're all comfortable doing it right now, the three of us, I mean, I love you guys, but you probably wouldn't want to talk to me because I would have no business position in this space, right? Because the big incumbents would have capitalized on that opportunity.

Coinbase wouldn't exist if the legacy financial institutions were willing to take the risk that those guys took and wasn't even that long ago. And look at the value that they've created. Their market caps are $65 billion right now, right? And I think it's going to go much, you know, my guess is, my guess is they're just beginning. Because, and they have such a head start over the legacy group. So I wouldn't get hung up with how are the legacy firms going to, you know, why aren't they joining or why aren't, it's not joining? Why aren't they embracing opportunities in this space? In some cases, they can't because the regulatory environment doesn't really allow them to.

In other cases, maybe they could, but the risk reward just isn't high enough relative to what their perceived opportunity is. And I think they just misjudge that. But it doesn't matter because we actually, we really are a better country and a better economy to just have creative destruction define the future because it's inevitable that the legacy players that have structured the tax policy, they've structured by their lobbyists, you know, certain regulatory moats around their businesses and protections. It's natural that they don't really want, having invested so much in that, they're very few. people who are willing to just kind of tear down what they've built because there's a new opportunity. So this whole process, just a very natural process, I think it's phenomenal. It's exciting. But I wouldn't, like, there's no lost sleep over, why aren't these guys getting involved? I think what happens is the company is not getting involved will lead to much more innovative people.

Look, I'm 55 years old. I mean, you guys are, I don't know, you're a lot younger than I am. and you guys are probably, you probably talking to people who are younger than you are, and there's something so powerful for society to have really young people who aren't as jaded as guys like me, and have great fresh ideas, be the ones to deploy capital, and they're going to waste a lot of it,

and that's fine. There's an abundance of capital in the world right now, and they're not enough good ideas and are not enough people who can execute. And so all these changes are going to happen, And then the other thing is there are all these older investors who are scared of these assets. And that's probably why gold is not going anywhere because all the old people own it. And the young people are going, why would you ever want to own gold?

Why, if we're moving to a digital world, why wouldn't you, you know, why wouldn't you own a native digital asset that it just doesn't make any sense why you would own gold? And so there'll be a lot of confusing things that happen in this world. And, you know, that's what's unfolding now that I see. You know, one of these dividing areas that you mentioned in one of your recent, I think, weekly letters is the young versus the old, the generational stresses. In fact, you called this one of the many lines that divide or fractured world, you called this the darkest is the separation of young versus old. I'm wondering if you could talk about that from a macro perspective, because I know you look at the macro in these kind of generational changes. Do you feel like the current system that we have favors, let's say, the older generation, let's say baby boomers at the expense of the young. And what does that mean? And is crypto kind of a result of some of that pushback and some restoration of the balance? Can you talk about that?

Yeah. So there are a lot of lines that divide society. There's rich, poor, big ones are rich versus poor, young versus old, educated versus non-educated. And they're intersections of some of those lines too. But if you think about what, yeah, and you guys have done a lot of work on what is a nation state. What does it even mean? But if you think about the macro level, what do different economic philosophies try to do?

And what they try to, whether that's free market capitalism, whether it's socialism, whether it's socialism, whether it's communism, whether it's communism. and there'll be others. Like China is attempting something. It's kind of a hybrid, I think. But if you look at what do they try to do? They try to create the greatest possible, in their pure sense, they try to create the greatest possible prosperity society-wide. And then they try to figure out how to distribute the spoils of that economic output

in a way that is sufficiently fair to create the incentive structures, to kind of prevent an upheaval and create the incentive structure. structures that propel the system forward. And so if that's in their purest sense, what they're trying to do. And they each have different answers for that, right? And there were plenty of people that thought communism would do a better job than free market capitalism. And I think that they were kind of wrong. But we probably have become overly confident about the ability of free market capitalism just be the winning solution.

There's probably some balance, like anything. Anyhow, if you think about what societies are supposed to do, they're trying to find those optimal points. But then when you go into practice, there obviously are all, then we have a lot of humans who, you know, some of whom are greedy and some of whom are scared and some whom are, you know, have different drivers that motivate them. And so you end up with with flawed versions of those systems. and oftentimes they trend towards a lot of corruption, right, without good check and balance. And so I think in the case of the U.S., we quite clearly have a system where there's a lot of inequality between rich and poor. And it's not that any individual has necessarily been corrupt, but when you have a lot of wealthy people that are protecting their interests and they think, that they're protecting their industry and they have their lobbyists and they do all these things.

In aggregate, it's just, unless you kind of rebalance that system, money tends to just go to the winners and unless you rebalance it. And then I think what happened with the old versus young in this is, you know, we had the greatest, and by the way, it's unfair, my parents are baby boomers. It's like, I feel badly saying this. I know, I hear you. I hear it. The individuals.

I just say, we love individual baby boomers or parents are baby boomers. But as a group, is a group, yeah. So, look, their parents fought the war. They were the greatest generation. I think they came back and they had a certain set of values and then they did whatever they did. And then their kids grew up and kind of embraced more, you know, they learned how to protest through the Vietnam War. They, you know, they had a very different life experience. But they really learned when they were young, they really learned how to advocate for things.

They didn't, by the way, they weren't really a revolutionary youth. They didn't have the technology. And the incumbents looked at them as a joke, I think. They looked at them like, okay, great. These guys are out at concerts. They're smoking weed. They're protesting the war. But like, they're not overthrowing anything.

Okay. They're just making a lot of noise and we got to deal with it. Okay. So fast forward, a few decades, they got tired of protesting that very. stuff, but they were really good at organizing and protesting, and they started advocating for themselves, which is why if you look at a macro level at kind of how much society spends on old people now, relative to children and education, et cetera, and you kind of went back 30, 40 years, it's totally distorted, even if adjusting for different sizes of population. So the old, the baby boomers

advocated brilliantly for themselves and they're, you know, more or less, relative largesse in retirement. relative to the young people. And so now we have this rich, poor divide. We've got the, the young, old divide. And what's so, this is just another one of these paradigm shifts. What we have now, actually, ironically, is we have the youth that is revolutionary. And it's through blockchain technology. So unlike, unlike, go, go read a Time magazine article from 1970s or, you know, 60s or early 80s or something, about these people. They had no real power. Now look at people,

look at some of the multi-billionaire guys who are in their 20s and 30s right now who are saying, actually, yeah, the protocol that I'm building could take down the entire financial system. They actually have the technology. They've got compute power, which is going parabolic. They've got the entire infrastructure.

They have the programmability in a capital-light business to do this. And they have the intent, and they have the capital. And they have like all the young people are rightly saying, you know what? Because the older people have kind of screwed us, because they own all the assets, we own nothing. I can't even believe we have the opportunity to go invest in this whole thing that's going to topple that whole, you know, kind of quasi-corrupt edifice that was built to not favor our interest, but favor all these old people. Like, we're just not doing it.

And so what's absolutely incredible to me is when you think about how systems, it's almost like I've always looked at the world as a superorganism in a way. And so we have this huge imbalance created between rich and poor, old and young, et cetera. And now all of a sudden this new technology, it almost like just magically appears that can provide the lever to rebalance that system. And so I really think that that is what is being played out here. Now, China is obviously terrified of that. But I think what's so encouraging and incredible about the U.S., and we've just seen it recently, which to me is why these asset prices are going crazy now, is the U.S. has said, you know what, Gensler working with, because of course Gensler has, you know, he didn't do what he did with

this Bitcoin ETF just in isolation. He's talking to Yellen and they've, you know, this is a whole government approach. And they're like, okay, you know what? We're not going to take the China approach. We're not going to stifle innovation. We're going to let the market decide. And I think the market is going to decide and it's going to be this is a revolution. Like now we have actual revolutionary conditions.

I don't mean in a way that disrupts society and destroys it. I mean, like very positive disruption. This is the Renaissance theme again. But, you know, that's how I see it playing out. Eric, a quote that I recently heard you say on a different podcast is that, that the Fed is making the bet that they can unburden the economy without losing people's faith in the currency. And this was in regard to like money printing, quantitative easing. We can print money because we need to.

And also they've made this bet in the past. And it's actually worked out. It's worked out for a number of decades that they make the bet where they can print money and people won't lose faith in the currency. Yet now, what's different about these choices being made now is we have crypto. We have an alternative, a place to exit, and a way to express our loss of faith in the system. And as we have this generational divide where the Federal Reserve's monetary policy kind of just almost exclusively favors the older generations, we have this younger generational strife and frustration about a lack of inclusion and a lack of like viable investment opportunities in the legacy system. And then just like you said, almost at the perfect point in history, crypto shows up as this vehicle that's outside of the system that the older generations don't understand. That is literally a system built on the fact that you don't have to trust it.

You don't need to deposit faith because it's a trustless based system. And it's something that is digitally native, right, for this younger generation to be able to comprehend way quicker than their parents. So my question to you is, does the mere existence of this opportunity make the bet that the Federal Reserve is making that people won't lose faith in the currency simply a bad bet? The short answer is there's always a risk that people lose faith in Fiat. and that has been a risk that's existed throughout the history of mankind. And even gold-back currencies, you know, that just, it's like, why do people, there's always a risk that people abandoned faith in gold. There's no necessary reason that people had faith in gold, but that didn't, you know. It's faith all the way down.

Yeah, like that didn't happen, right? But that more or less didn't happen. I think it might be, it might happen, by the way, that people abandon faith. and gold. And you're kind of seeing a bit of that right now. It doesn't mean it goes to zero. It just means that it might be really uninteresting for a long period of time, even in a world of expanding amounts of fiat. But look, there's there's that risk to the dollar. You know, earlier in my career, I don't know. Early in my career, I was probably more apt to just look at the dollar as something that people could just lose faith in.

and abandoned. And then the, but kind of the more you learn about how the world operates and how, how the world looks and how, you know, how systems work and what the alternatives are, there really aren't very good alternatives. Now, the, the kind of Bitcoin maximalist would say, no, dude, you don't get it. Because what happens is everyone just gets out of the dollar and everyone gets into Bitcoin and Bitcoin goes to, you know, $10 million, or, or, like, whatever. Whatever the number is.

Like, come up with a number, right? Because in that case, it's not really about Bitcoin. It's about, well, how many dollars have you created? And so, and if you create enough dollars, then Bitcoin could go to any number of dollars, but dollars aren't worth as much. All of those things could happen. But I think what, I think what's happening that is, this is the 55-year-old to me, as opposed to 25-year-old.

What's happening is that the government, the government wisely, looked at this situation and said, okay, we can't ever let that happen. And so what do you do if you decide that you can't let that happen? What do you do? You go, okay, we get to tax Bitcoin. And once the government goes, all right, if this thing is either going to be here to stay or we're going to shut it down, okay? If you decide to shut it down, there are huge risk because you actually can't shut it down. All you can do is make it illegal. If you make it illegal, it might be the case that that was a really bad decision for your entire economy because, let's say that that technology represented some new innovation and the U.S. shut it down,

but Europe didn't shut it down, or U.S. made it illegal, rather. Europe didn't. And then all the European financial companies went on to just do all of these great innovative things and the U.S. was left behind. And then the U.S. has to turn around three years later and go, that was a really dumb decision. Governments hate having to admit they made dumb decisions. So you don't want to do that. Okay. What you want to do is you want to say, okay, let's just imagine that it's here to stay. All right, how do we rest control from it in a way where we don't lose control of senior age and the dollar? Because that would be very bad thing for the U.S. And so the answer actually is really simple, and we're seeing it play out in real time.

The first thing you do is you say, we want to understand who owns what. And once you understand who owns what, then you go, okay, now that we know what you have, we actually know what your capital gain is on that asset that you own, and we can choose to tax it at whatever we want. No one who invest in crypto right now would want to hear this, but I'll just make the, I'll just make, not because of any insight, but if the government at some point in the future said, you know, we're going to tax digital assets at 80% capital gains, they can do that because governments can do whatever they want to do.

Okay, so the 25-year-old in me would have said, yeah, but the government, you know, then everyone will start breaking the law and people won't tell the government what they have. I don't think that will happen. The government has done a very smart thing in that they've pursued a regulatory path that before long will allow them to know where, certainly we're every American, but probably more or less everyone in the world. They'll probably more or less figure out who owns what. And then if they do debase the dollar and the dollar does collapse, well, guess what? Politicians have this huge pool of capital gain that they can tax.

And so that that's where we are. I think that that's a healthy balance. So where that leaves us, it leaves us with a digital asset ecosystem that provides a sanity check on government policy, which I think is super healthy for a dynamic political system. In other words, if the government becomes reckless in terms of its monetary and fiscal policy, you're going to see it with digital asset prices appreciating significantly. And people go, wait a second, what are you doing with my money? And that will help create, I think, more sensible policy. But if at the end of the day, the government really messes up and the dollar were to fall a long way and digital assets went crazy,

they're just going to claw back a bunch of that through taxation. This is an incredibly reasonable take, and I'm glad you articulated it this way, because I don't think I've heard it explain this way. But it's like, I think what you're saying, Eric, is like the horses already left the barn, right? You know, there's all these thoughts in the early days that the government will never lose its senior, so it'll never let Bitcoin be a thing. It'll shut it down. Well, it hasn't. Horses already left the barn. It's not even going to pursue that policy.

At least the U.S. government has. Now that China has gone and pursued it, by the way, makes the U.S. even less likely, probably, to pursue. that policy because they get all the miners in the U.S., they get a competitive advantage, but they still have the, I guess, lever of taxation. So they can always still tax their citizens. Then, you know, you get a capital gain on crypto, you know, 10x. Cool. The government gets a piece of that.

So thank you very much, right? That's what you're saying. And so there's really no big threat from your perspective of, you know, regulators or the big bad U.S. government coming and squashing the... entire industry. You think that threat is overplayed. They're not going to do that. Is that the case? Yeah. Well, I think that I think what just happened is that they decided to not do that for Bitcoin. And I think that extends to Eath. I think for the regulatory wrestling match is going to be years in the making. And every incumbent industry that's threatened by these technologies, trust me, is going to be

rolling out their, you know, lobbyists try to make sure that their business isn't, you know, isn't completely destroyed by these technologies. So it's not that they're, the regulatory issues are not fully settled, but what I think what we just saw the government do, and remember, this is a Biden, this is a Biden SEC chair. It's not, you know, like no one, it's not like Biden can throw Gensler under the bus and say he was a rogue agent. This was a, this was a, I don't have, I don't have, I don't have, I don't have specific inside information. I'm just looking at this as a macro investor who pays attention. Given the level of scrutiny around a Bitcoin ETF, the fact that they just approved one tells you that the government, in a holistic way, just said, we might, not love the, we might not love Bitcoin. We might not like it. We might even hate it, but we are not at the point where we think the U.S. government and our financial system and our political system should be in the business of regulating interesting new technologies out of existence. We are not in

that business and we're going to let the market figure it out. And that doesn't mean we're never going to hear from them again. It just means that it means that that's what they said. And that's a really, really big thing. So I think people underestimate how important that is. I think it's just, it's seismic. Now, by the way, I expected that is the end game. So I'm not sitting here going, oh my God, I thought that was going to happen and now it's not. But it's one thing to have a strong view and an informed view that this is what would happen. And it's another thing for that event to play out. That event has just played out. I think that's super interesting. So the implications of that are basically the government is saying, you're saying this is much

more coordinated than what we see of like, you know, the SEC saying, okay, Bitcoin ETF. You're saying, look, the entire administration, everybody in the government power, we're kind of in on it, right? It's Treasury talking to SEC talking to FinC, and they're all saying, okay, you can have your Bitcoin people, here it is. And so now maybe they'll have a different perspective on like privacy chains. Of course, right? Absolutely. Because taxation is a concern. Or maybe they'll have a different perspective on, like, privacy chains. Of course. Right? Absolutely. Because taxation is a concern. or maybe they'll have a different perspective on something like USDC or a tether or stablecoin, right? Because, you know, that gets into some other areas. But when we're talking about these, the biggest crypto assets, the ones that matter,

the ones that are the base layer for everything else, the bitcoins and ethers of the world, right? That's gone. That horse has left the barn. Now, maybe they'll invest in like blockchain analytics companies, right? In fact, there's all of these contracts with the IRS and blockchain analytics so they can trace and see, you know, how much assets their citizens actually hold, but that's on the kind of the taxation path. Yeah, I think all of that is a really interesting take, Eric, and feels like an informed observer. Because so often in crypto, we get regulatory fud probably every two weeks, okay?

And there's like headlines in our crypto media saying, so-and-so, evil, you know, government official is going to like kill crypto. And like, when you zoom out and you take this position on it, like, this is just temporary noise and fud. and we really don't have to worry about that in the short run. Arbitrum is an Ethereum scaling solution that's going to completely change how we use DeFi and NFTs. And now it's live and has over 100 projects deployed. Gas fees on Ethereum L1 suck. Too many people want to use Ethereum and it doesn't have enough capacity for all of us.

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I might say young, dumb, and broke, okay? Because that's, you know, it's a popular song, I guess. but like what are the advantages of being young, dumb, and broke, do you think? Right? Versus the establishment cats. Because it's like, I mean, young people, maybe they don't know a lot about finance. They don't have these preconceived notions. They also like don't have a lot of power and they don't have a lot of money.

And you actually couch these things as an advantage. Why is that an advantage in your mind? For starters, I don't think it's ever good to be dumb. Just be clear. But I think if you use dumb, if you use dumb as a... No preconceived notions, let's say, of how the world works. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, the best early trade in my career, actually,

was when I was in London as a prop trader working with hold of his eye. That would have been... I would have been 28. So I was young, I was dumb and I was dumb on a lot of dimensions actually. But I, and I wasn't entirely broke, but I mean, more or less. But I was, I was, I had the advantage when I was trading against a lot of older guys when it came to this thing called the ERM, which was the exchange rate mechanism, which was, it was a mechanism that, that, was an agreement between European countries to keep their currencies toggled to one another through this exchange rate mechanism in very narrow ranges. And I saw all kinds of imbalances that were being built up.

And I mean, honestly, I didn't really know what I was talking about, but I was an econ major and I did read. And I remember I went up to our chief economist. I had lunch with him and he served all this sushi. And I was like, wow, it's how these guys, this is how they roll. and I walked him through the unsustainability of Italy's finances. And I said, I'm just looking at this. To me, these guys are going to go broke in six months. And he used to work at the IMF.

I'm expecting him to say, oh, that's not possible. He's like, actually, it's a fair point. And so I ran down on the desk, and I just started putting all these trades on. And the old guys, none of them could conceive that this rate mechanism, could ever break because you had central banks on both sides of it. And it was very, it was one of these systems that just converged everything into these tight ranges. And as it did, it created all the older guys who just saw the invincibility of it would make

bigger and bigger bets for narrower and narrower spreads and or small and smaller profits effectively. And it created a highly explosive situation if the underlying economies fell out of balance. Right. And so I was just dumb enough to actually be able to see that that was a real possibility. And so, and I was young. And I had, I really had nothing to lose. And so, you know, I had my job to lose. And at the time, I just, I don't want to say I didn't care. I just, but I cared less about, say, when I walk into work every day right now, I care about all of my clients. I'm their fiduciary. I care about. I care about. everyone who works here. I care about my family. There's so many other considerations. I'm thinking about what's in the best interest of the U.S. When I was 20 years old, trust me, I didn't think about anything. So now, the thing is, a healthy society needs a lot of guys like me right now at 55, but it also, if you're going to have a vibrant economic system, particularly

when technology is enabling the potential for so much innovation, And what does innovation mean? Innovation leads to higher productivity work, which everyone's society should want to be able, in a sense, to work jobs that are less strenuous and maybe for less amount of time and yet have all the creature comforts and food and shelter that they want. So all these things are amazing for society, but you kind of need to have, you know, the 28-year-old young, dumb and broke guy who just walks in and says, well, this is stupid. I can't believe you guys don't see that it's so stupid.

Let me actually do something about it, right? And I'm not going to say that I wasn't the only one who participated in breaking that system. And it wasn't even that I broke it. It was a system that was on its last legs. And so George Soros became very famous for making a billion dollars when that system broke in a day. And he wasn't 28 years old. He was older. But it takes an ecosystem of people.

who, you know, who can afford to make mistakes and not have it destroy the rest of their lives. Like, to me, when I think about mistakes that I could make at our firm right now, and trust me, we're willing to take a lot of risk, right? We've talked about some of the risks that we've taken. It's not that we're not risk takers. It's just that it's just a little bit more measured and thoughtful about how we approach things, right? But you need to have that whole kind of, you need to have that whole ecosystem if you're going to have a really vibrant economy. And so I think that if I made huge mistakes running this firm right now, would society give me the chance to start another firm like this?

It probably wouldn't, realistically, right? When I'm 28, I didn't even think about that. So you need, you know, you need those characteristics. Now, the last thing I will say about that is that in relation to the piece that I wrote, what makes that interesting for markets right now is because you have one of the big tensions in society is that you have the baby boomers that we've already talked about how they, in many respects, have rig the system or, you know, nudge the system to favor their interest. By the way, they're the ones that own all the assets.

And even amongst baby boomers, they're still wealth and equality, right? But they're the ones that own all the assets. and the younger people don't nothing. And this isn't just a normal state of affairs. This is historically, we're talking about huge dispersion between these groups relative to what a healthy society or relative to long-term averages in this country. So what happens is the old people, what they want, they just want to stay rich. And so they are tending to not want to take risks with that money. And so they're owning bonds.

but the young people are saying, you know what, we are done with you guys. We do want universal basic income. You guys screwed up the planet. We want green energy. We want to remake everything. And I know that it's Biden leading that and he's a million years old. But it's the young people in his party that are kind of pushing those policies. So the youth is fighting against the old people.

So the old people own all these bonds and now inflation is going up and they're becoming less wealthy. This is a disaster. So if you're old, you're going, I want to. own bonds because it's going to pay me my coupon and I can stay wealthy. What you're terrified of is when someone goes, actually, no, if you own bonds, you're going to start becoming less wealthy year by year because inflation is going to eat away. So you're going to have to go take risk. You've got to take risk. So what does that mean? If you take risk, it means that you might buy something and it might fall 50% in value. So you don't want to do that. And that's, that is this

dynamic that's happening in markets right now that is, that's going to create a lot of opportunity, by the way. But when you look at what's happening in the digital asset markets, the young people are saying, I'm not even playing your game. If you bought all that gold after 08 old guy, because you were worried about inflation, because you were expecting me to work my butt off for the next 10 or 15 years so that I would pay an even higher price for a gold, guess what? I'm not doing it. I'm buying Bitcoin. So you can own your gold and you can figure out who you're going to sell it to. You want to sell it to some people in India getting married, good luck, or some Chinese, like, good luck, but I'm not buying that. And so that, we're seeing some of those tensions in in markets right now.

And how those, I mean, it's, it really is. This is a terrible, terrible market environment for older people, for that reason. And the young people like, look, even if I buy a bunch of crypto and or I invest in this project or I build this company and it fails, like 28, who cares? You know what I mean? They're literally not even thinking about it. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful. Eric, I feel like you're nailing it completely, right? So you made this statement in your post there. As elderly gold owners ride in portfolio pain, confused why the price of yellow metal is falling with inflation rising, are young people look to the digital future buying Bitcoin, Ether, Salana, NFTs. That's exactly what's happening. And just to put some color on that, because I didn't actually know this. You were talking about how much pain the older demographic is with bonds, basically, when they're not in full risk assets, when they're not in stock. So U.S. inflation over the past year was 5.4%, you said. So older people who own the risk-free, 10-year treasury notes to secure their retirement, they lost 11.1%, 11.2% here actually. They're losing money, right, by not investing in crypto, essentially, or at least having a portfolio with these

risk-on assets like stocks. That is some of the generational pain that we're talking about here. and I guess the opportunity from being young, dumb, and broke. The other thing I'll say is, like, there's fractals of this also, Eric, that play out even in crypto. And one of these things David and I have been exploring is like this whole more recent trend. When I say recent, it's like three to six months of new defy 2.0 protocols, right? And these defy2.0 protocols, right, some people are calling Zoomify because the kids who are building it are like teenagers. They're 18. They're 19.

They're 20. Okay. And the old... And they weren't around to buy Bitcoin or either when it was cheap, right? And so they are the new fractal of the new people that need to take risk in this bill. Yeah. So like the older D5 people, like, you know, maybe not so much David and I because we're trying to understand all the perspectives here. But like, we are kind of the baby boomers of decentralized finance because there's this new cohort that's come into the space and they're questioning everything.

And they're like, yeah, we like what you guys built. And that's all great. And it's less risky. and it's all safe, but like, we're doing this other thing over here, right? And so it's very funny how these things play out in fractals, and they just keep repeating. You know, we don't have too much time left, Eric. This has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you about these things. You just want to tie a few more things off because I think throughout this conversation,

you've really made the case for digital assets, in particular, like Bitcoin and Eath. And I want to get into maybe the entire thesis of your firm on this on both Bitcoin and Eith. And like, I guess maybe you come to a conclusion on it. So much of what we've been talking about with the monetary policy change, the, you know, technological change that crypto and Bitcoin brings is sort of a new way to think about money. And you wrote this in your case for digital assets. Money is an illusion, perhaps the greatest, the world's greatest mass delusion. You say, money is not real. It never has been.

It never will be. It is our collective faith in the meaning of money that gives us. it value. I want to talk about that because that is a it's not contrarian in crypto circles, right? But it's still got to be institutional contrarian, right? Like not a lot of people have given much thought into what money actually is. So tell us, how did you come to this conclusion? What's been your thought process, this idea that money is an illusion, mass, mass, the world's greatest mass delusion, and what the nature of money actually is? Money, I've studied money my whole career.

I've studied market history. I've studied manias. And one of the great things that trading does that is a little unique amongst professions is it just, man, man, it just forces you to just have to confront your mistakes and your errors or you die. and there are a lot of other industries where people can probably persist with making mistakes for, you know, perhaps way too long. And it's almost, you know, so over that period of time, I think I've just, I've had to confront this fact that central banks can just kind of keep doing what they're doing and it kind of works. and there are no rule. There's no, like, there's no notion of what's fair, unfair in markets. And you kind of, you just, you get forced to have to look at, you have to, you get,

you're forced to look at all these different issues like markets and manias and money and, you know, what do they all mean? How do they all fit together? You're just kind of forced to just keep hammering your head against the wall and just looking at it from all different angles. And what what you ultimately conclude, and it really is a conclusion, which is why I wrote it is. I mean, money, there is no such thing as money. There is a, there is this notion that we have of what money means. And it's a little bit like the sky is blue. We just, you know, it goes back to some stuff we were talking about earlier where, you know,

we assume that the world functions based on centralized power. And we assume that money is, money means something. And it's so, it's so central to just what we think about throughout our lives because we use it all the time that we kind of can't possibly fathom that it isn't real. And that gives the government enormous power over us because they can then play with something that we misunderstand. And if you start on, you know, if you look at, if you look at what governments do with Fiat through that lens, a lot of things start making sense that might not have made sense in markets if you didn't see it through that lens. So that's kind of how, maybe that was a little obtuse, but that's kind of how you end up getting there. And you come to see, it's like,

obviously money is useful. You have to pay taxes with your money. So there's, you know, there's certain things that the government can, the government forces you to have to make money because you have to pay taxes in it, right? So there, you know, there are reasons that you have to have to have to work for it. But in terms of what it really means, it doesn't, doesn't, like, how could something mean a whole lot if the government could just create $7 trillion of new money? I mean, like, what does it mean? Right.

And then, and that's what's so interesting about the case for digital assets, because I tell you, we've talked a lot about the technology today, but we haven't really talked about just owning assets. Like, how do you invest now, right? How do you do, what do you do, if you believe in some version of the, of what we've all talked about today? So then what do you do with that, right? You can go out and you can create a company and build a new protocol and you can do that.

You could build an asset management company. I'm doing that. You could build infrastructure in this, you know, you could build a chain analysis kind of kind of. There are a lot of things you could do. You could build, right? You can also just buy some of these assets. And so when you start looking at these assets, just take Bitcoin. It's just, it's unlike anything that I have ever seen in my career.

So it has no, it has no tangible value, but it has limited supply. And what you, what you come to see is like something that has no tangible value, but limited supply that's credible, it could become invaluable. And that doesn't really make sense in traditional investment world. People go, that makes no sense. Because if I buy a piece of dirt and I put a building on it, then I have rents and da-da-da-da-da. It's like, yeah, that's true. I mean, that's true.

But when you look at most investments and then you look at something like Bitcoin, it's so utterly foreign. And why is it so foreign? It's like because it actually has limited supply. So every other thing that I've ever invested in, other than fine art, I don't really own, I own art, but not fine art. Like, I don't own the Mona Lisa. There's only one Mona Lisa in the world, right?

And so that could be as valuable as people choose it to be, right? Because there's only one of them in the world. But there are a lot of dollars in the world, and they can just make more of them. So, you know, like, what is that value really worth? But there are also, there are a lot of really nice apartments in New York City. And if the price goes up, they're going to make more of them. And there's a lot of farmland in the world. If the price goes up, they'll level another forest in the Amazon.

And, you know, everything in the world has a supply demand and a supply, a supply, a supply function relative to price. Gold does. Everything does. Bitcoin, no matter what the price does, if it goes up or down, they're not like, we know how much is going to be made. And so that creates, that actually forces you to then, if you think about Bitcoin in money terms, it forces you to kind of look at Fiat for what it is. And it's like, well, that actually, I mean, Fiat is a real illusion. Bitcoin is an illusion. And Bitcoin forces you to have to record, have to admit that it has no real value, but for, like, it's pure. It's like, okay, well, this is what we're going to, we are assigning a value to it, and it means nothing. Like,

there is no tangible value other than this network effect of what we agree on. And so it's a really cool thing in that way, because we don't really ask those questions of dollars or euros or yen or R&B, even though those are all fictitious. But we were forced to ask those in digital. And I think older people looking at that and they're going, I reject that. And younger people looking at it and I think they're saying, wait a second, you guys make money out of thin air. And we have this thing that we all kind of think is pretty incredible and there is a limited supply of it. So maybe this is actually more real than that. And so for younger people anyway, I think that's the that's the thesis for it.

And then more savvy, older people are coming around to that. And that's what will drive the value higher. That's the red pill, my friend. That's the red pill I was talking about. All right, all right. That entire thing. That's what I meant. Yeah.

Eric, one thing I really appreciate about this conversation and how you think is everything is very pragmatic. Nothing is too crazy, too out there. And the crypto world definitely falls victim to people that think in too much of a crazy terms. And so I want to put one of my mind. most pragmatic takes. As somebody who's known to be a little bit pie in the sky,

I want to give you my most pragmatic take as to how this future comes. And there's a line that I like called, that goes, society progresses one grave at a time, which is a little bit dark. But basically, it's more of just like, hey, like the future that we're envisioning, it'll come, especially when everyone that doesn't believe in it

passes on and leaving behind everyone that does believe in it. Could you reflect on that perspective as to how this future actually arrives. Well, I don't disagree with what you just said. And it is grim, but it's true. But that's, I don't know. I mean, hopefully we all have good lives. And when we're old, when we're old, we'll just go, right?

So there's nothing wrong with that. And so, yeah, like, I think there's a certain progression to life. And it's great to see younger people. I have four kids. I just want to see them all do so much better and more interesting. things in their lives than I do. And so when I see young people, you know, young, dumb and broke people, like I was talking about my 28-year-old self, I think it's amazing. And I think that there are new ideas, even if I don't agree with all of them, they're going to lead to something better.

So I think that this, you know, kind of this new future that is coming. Number one, I think it's inevitable. But I think that the sooner it comes, the better. I am. I think it's in the U.S. national interest to bring this forward and to be the leader in the world in this whole new, you know, digital innovation. And so I think it will come by, and hopefully we'll play our, you know, small, humble part in educating and then working with government and regulators to, you know, create a firm. stable, but always evolving infrastructure upon which all this innovation can be built. And I'll probably focus a lot more on what happens in the financial services area. But I think getting that foundation right, the thing is finance is so integral to the way society operates, is if you can get, you can kind of get, get the right foundation for the financial world, all sorts of other things will be built around it

on top of it with greater endorsement by political systems and all the parts of government, and it'll be more widely adopted by a broader group of people. So I think, like, it will happen because the, it's not a total revolution where the old system just crumbles and the new system takes over. It's this, it's going to be this transition period. And I think it will, it makes sense to me that there will be crossover players. I would view us as a crossover player, right? We're not a huge firm or a multi-billion dollar firm,

but we're not the big legacy financial institutions. And we'll kind of help bring in large pools of capital to this space to make all sorts of investments and bridge legacy players. I think a lot of the weaker ones will fail in the coming 10 or 15 years. And so there'll be a lot of dead companies. But there'll be legacy companies that transition and become more efficient and better. So I think that will happen. It's not some crazy revolution, but I think it will be a time of enormous change. And then if we get it right, I think we will have a renaissance that comes out of this.

I think we're seeing the early signs of that already. But for me, it's a very optimistic path. That said, any transition period seems really bumpy. And for people who resist change, which is almost 100% of people. I mean, I probably do too. But I probably do too. But I I'm at least know that humans all resist change. So I kind of try to see that in myself and just say, okay, I got to blow through that because that's my job. And I have to help. Yeah.

And so anyway, but I think when so much changes upon us, most people are going to really struggle with that, even if it's leading us to a much better place. And I think that that's what's going on. Well, Eric, through the course of this conversation, which has absolutely been a blast, I think you've served as the bridge from Greenwich. Thank you for teaching us about that, teaching me. to crypto. I got it right by the end of this podcast. And so we appreciate this. I want to end with this question because we love asking macro guys about predictions. You guys are famous for your

fantastic predictions. Give us a prediction in terms of where we're headed. And, you know, choose your own prediction. You want to do the price of ETH, Bitcoin, end of the year, or in a couple years. Do you think that we're going to have another cycle, like a 2017 cycle and then things are going to bubble up and we'll have a blow off the top or do you think we'll be in a super cycle or just give us some prediction that you feel, you know, reasonably strongly about making right now? I'm a longer term. And by the way, I haven't shied away from day trading over the course of my career. But at this stage, I'm a longer term investor, investor in macro. And I think that I have, yeah, I've competitive advantage in that space. So that's kind of what I stick to.

I think I'll leave you two things. One is that I think the mark, when it comes to Bitcoin, because I think your listeners are really interested in that, I think Bitcoin, people currently look at Bitcoin as digital gold. And I think that it's helpful for people to have a mental model or a framework to think about anything brand new, because otherwise they're just lost. And I think it's a reasonable mental model to have. And they say, well, Bitcoin goes to $575,000. It'll be equal to gold. That just assumes that no one sells their gold, by the way. But anyway, I think that eventually Bitcoin will go, will be way way more valuable than gold.

And that as we approach that level or maybe surpass whatever that gold crossover level is, people will begin to start seeing that it wasn't the right framework. But I think for the time being, it's fine because it's a price that's way far away. But I think we'll end up seeing that gold is an inert metal. It hasn't changed in, I don't know, in however many billions of years. And Bitcoin will evolve over the next couple of years. So I think that's one thing, which makes me, you know, really positive on this whole space. The second thing that I will tell you is that I have studied financial manias over my career. And what I see from the macro inputs, from the technological change and from, to use David's term, the paradigm shift that we see, the inputs that I see are unlike things that I've seen historically.

I think we could, I think we could legitimately have the largest kind of speculative boom in human history. And I know that, you know, that plays out over the coming decade. And I think that a lot of it will be based on technological developments that are incredibly valuable. And a lot of it will be garbage because that's just the nature of things. But I think it's, I think we're in, we're in a period like that. And so the important thing to consider when if you believe that you're in a period like that is that you need to be very open-minded about what prices and all sorts of things could do. And I think we're seeing signs of that like in NFTs.

You start seeing things that most people can't comprehend. And I think those tend to be the things I paid most attention to because I think they're reflecting some underlying change in the way markets operate in the world. maybe how humans operate and some of these tensions, maybe how they're playing out. So those are the two things. I'm very attuned to that. I think we could be in the early stages of just, yeah, remarkable moves.

There you go, folks. That's great. Maybe that's not specific. That's not e-fits, certain amount, but, you know. Love it. Guys, Eric Peters, Bitcoin bigger than gold, the largest speculative mania, possibly in human history, get prepared for that. You are prepared if you're listening to Bankless.

Eric, thanks so much for joining us. This has been an absolute blast. We've really appreciated your time. Awesome. You guys, thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to be on this. This is fun. All right.

Action items for you, bankless listeners. We referenced a few reading materials and notes for you. Read Eric Peters weekend notes. The one is called Young and Broke. You can read. We'll include a link in the show notes. Also, the world belongs to those who let go.

Another fantastic weekend note read. You can also read the case for quantum change and the case for digital assets that Eric has published on the One River website as well. We'll include links in the show notes. And if you have not already become a bankless premium member, this is your reminder to do that. It's $22 a month. What do we give for that? A market opportunity report every Monday.

Access to the inner circle, Discord, where we can level up as a group. You get the podcast debrief. So right after this, David and I are getting on a show. We're doing a debrief of our discussion with Eric. you get access to that. Discounts, NFTs, and more. You can sign up for that in the show notes on the bankless website as well. Newsletter.banklesshq.com slash subscribe.

We'll get you there. Risks and disclaimers, of course. Bitcoin is risky. ETH is risky. All of crypto is risky. So is the traditional world. You can't get away from risk, folks. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west.

This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.