BTC Sessions - Is the Bull Run OVER? Huge Institutional Changes & Hidden Risks | Vijay Boyapati

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Mentor Sessions Ep. 026: Bitcoin's $2M Gold Parity, ETF Surge, MicroStrategy Risks & Network Threats | Vijay BoyapatiIs Bitcoin set for a historic bull market? In this explosive BTC Sessions interview, Vijay Boyapati, author of The Bullish Case for Bitcoin, reveals why ETF approval is fueling massive institutional adoption, potentially ending Bitcoin cycles. He predicts Bitcoin hitting gold parity at $1.5M–$2M within 5–10 years! Vijay dissects MicroStrategy’s financial engineering, NAV premium risks, and treasury companies’ threat to Bitcoin’s decentralization. He warns of quantum computing challenges, advocates for Bitcoin Core ossification, and shares Ron Paul-inspired libertarian insights on Bitcoin as the global reserve currency. For Bitcoiners seeking bull market analysis this episode is a must-watch! Join the Bitcoin revolution, learn why Vijay champions self-custody, and discover how Bitcoin could reshape finance. Like, subscribe, and secure your financial future now!Key Topics:Bitcoin bull market and ETF approvalVijay Boyapati on institutional adoptionGold parity and $1.5M–$2M price predictionMicroStrategy’s financial engineering risksTreasury companies and centralizationQuantum computing threats to BitcoinBitcoin Core ossification debateRon Paul and global reserve currencyChapters:00:00 Intro & Episode Summary01:16 Institutional Adoption02:02 ETF Approval Impact04:13 Gold ETF Comparison & Bull Market05:00 Are Bitcoin Cycles Dead?06:52 Gold Parity Price Prediction10:57 Gold to Bitcoin Shift12:30 Nation States & Bitcoin Reserves13:48 MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin Strategy15:30 Financial Engineering & NAV Premium18:49 Centralization Risks24:27 NAV Discount Dangers36:40 Bitcoin Core Ossification41:50 Quantum Computing ThreatsAbout Vijay Boyapati:Author of The Bullish Case for Bitcoin, Software Engineer & Bitcoin AdvocateX: @real_vijayWebsite: bullishcaseforbitcoin.com😏 "Supported" by @PantiesBitcoin — Gentlemen, Panties for Bitcoin has you covered! A Bitcoiner brand for Bitcoiners, run by a HODLer family. Gift your lady top-quality underwear with BTC—surprise her with style & orange-pill her into the Bitcoin economy! 👉 https://qrco.de/bgEYRO⚡ POWERED by @Sazmining — the easiest way to mine Bitcoin and take control of your financial future. ⛏️You own the rig 🌍 It runs on clean energy 🔐 You get cheap Bitcoin BELOW Exchange Cost Start stacking wild sats today: 👉 https://qrco.de/bg8Jwq 📚 FREE Bitcoin Book Giveaway: New to Bitcoin? Get Magic Internet Money by Jesse Berger FREE! 👉 Click: bitcoinmentororange.com/magic-internet-money 💡BOOK Private Sessions with Bitcoin Mentor: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more. 👉 Visit bitcoinmentor.io Follow Us on X:• BTC Sessions: @BTCsessions• Nathan: @theBTCmentor• Gary: @GaryLeeNYC#Bitcoin #VijayBoyapati #BullMarket #ETFApproval #InstitutionalAdoption #GoldParity #PricePrediction #MicroStrategy #TreasuryCompanies #QuantumComputing #BitcoinCore #BitcoinKnots #Ossification #RonPaul #GlobalReserveCurrency #FinancialEngineering #NAVPremium #Centralization #SelfCustody #BTCSessions #BitcoinPodcast

The world has shifted so dramatically. Just yesterday had a conversation with the head of digital assets of a very, very large financial institution. If I'm hearing you correctly, sir, cycles may be dead at this point. This bull market could be extended. It reminds me a little bit of the approval of the gold ETF in 2004. Gold is in a secular bull market as well. But when it actually reaches parity with gold, and I say when, what will that price be? And so that would get you to a Bitcoin price in the next five to ten years of, you know, ballpark 1.5 million to maybe two million. Micro strategy is significantly below its all-time high.

But the danger here is you get a feedback loop. That could force him to sell his assets and buy the shares of his company. It could actually trigger a market panic. Today we're diving deep with Vijay Boy Party, Software Engineer and author of the bullish case for Bitcoin. We chat about the massive institutional shift that's driving a huge. multi-year bull run, why cycles might be dead, as well as Bitcoin as a superior store of value compared to gold. He also warns that the critical risks of the Bitcoin network, including centralization from treasury companies, quantum computing, and contentious developer changes. VJ, thank you very

much for joining us today as we begin every episode on this podcast. All hail Ron Paul and all blessings be upon him, and this is 90th year. Bitcoin is currently around 120,000, building on the post-having rally we saw earlier in 2025, looking back at your predictions. from the ETF approval era. What's the most surprising development in Bitcoin's institutional adoption this year? And how does this reinforce your bullish case? Well, firstly, thanks for having me.

And thank you for that little hail to Ron Paul. I've never had that happen in a podcast before. And he's a hero of mine, so I really appreciated that. I would say the approval of the ETFs has been, a sea change, incredible sea change in the market. And, you know, you only have to go back. What is it like a year and a half when the environment was completely different. It was not clear that there would be an ETF approval.

The regulatory environment was incredibly hostile. The world has shifted so dramatically in the last year and a half that it's almost hard to imagine what it felt like a year and a half. I mean, we have the entire financial system now embracing Bitcoin. I just yesterday had a conversation with the head of digital assets of a very, very large financial institution. And they are planning a three-year rollout of a digital assets platform built around Bitcoin that is going to expose the very, very large customer base, millions of people to Bitcoin and it's going to start with the basics like spot trading, but then move on to more

complex product offerings. And the ETS really kicked this off. And I think this process of Bitcoin becoming integrated into the traditional financial system is going to take years. I mean, when I was speaking to the head of digital assets at this financial institution, they were talking about this process taking years. I mean, building out infrastructure is not easy. So I think the demand that will come from the infrastructure that is built will not be seen for years. Like, we are seeing some of it flow in through the ETFs, which is great. But the wider product offerings and registered investment advisors getting comfortable and being able to plug into platforms on these traditional financial systems is going to allow for more people to come into Bitcoin.

So this is part of the adoption story, but it is going to take time. And it reminds me a little bit of the approval of the gold ETF in 2004. At the time, you know, there was some interest and then, you know, gold's price started moving up slowly but steadily. But it really triggered, I think it was a five-year, or maybe it was longer than that. It was 2004. seven-year bull market, a steady seven-year ball market in gold. And it would not surprise me in the least for us to see the equivalent with Bitcoin. Now, I'm not saying that there won't be

corrections along the way, but my wider point is that the incorporation of Bitcoin into the traditional financial system and the infrastructure that needs to be built is going to take time. And so I think this ball market could be extended over a pretty long period of time up to, say, 2030 would not surprise me at all. Wow. Okay. I want to unpack that a little bit. Nice bold claim there. So if I'm hearing you correctly, sir, cycles may be dead at this point.

And I did want to touch on that because I know in the book, and I think in the article as well, too, you touched on the idea of the Gardner hype cycle and that the entrance of nation states would be kind of signal the end. Is this also playing into that kind of thesis? Is that what we're seeing at the moment? I should clarify and say, I don't, I'm not going to say there won't be a significant correction along the way. But what I'm saying is that the unlocking of adoption is a process that could take years. And the building, the infrastructure takes a lot of time. I mean, you have to build the software.

You have to get the people, the salespeople. you have to build the risk controls, you have to get, you know, come under regulatory compliance. And as you do this, it becomes easier and easier for people who are on your platform to get access to Bitcoin and for you to actually offer Bitcoin and want to offer Bitcoin. So I think what I'm really saying is like people focused on the ETS being launched as this, you know, seminal event. but really it was just the opening of the floodgates. And, you know, we might get ahead of ourselves over the next five years. Who knows, you know, the price could go up 5x and then we could crash down to like

200,000 or something like that. I'm not ruling that out, but I think it's in the context of a cyclical bull market that will come from Bitcoin being incorporated in the traditional financial system in the same way that gold was kind of incorporated in the traditional financial system when the ETF was launched in 2004. Yeah, I was rereading your article. And it's just, it's so funny how far we've come just in terms of the value of money and gold based upon, you know, fiat dollars and how you cited back then, parody with gold

would be a $300,000 something Bitcoin. And that's just like way out the, way out the room now. Like whatever. Okay. So I guess I do wonder, and we're just speculating here, I guess two separate questions. What will the price actually be? Because we say right now it's like $1.1 million would be parity with gold. But when it actually reaches parity with gold. And I say when, it'll happen. I just don't know when. What will that price be for parity with gold? Because it's not going to be $1.1 million when it actually happens. And what I guess? it's hard to predict because we're talking about the value of the dollar going down as long with Bitcoin going up. But when do you see stabilization happening? Like, when is it, okay, we've moved past the store of value point.

Now it's a medium exchange. Five years, 10 years, 100 years. What do you see? Yeah, it's kind of like Zeno's paradox. Every time we make a big stride towards gold's market capitalization, gold moves up a little bit. And I think that's, I think that. story will continue to play out to. Gold is in a secular bull market as well. And I think that's just because nation states still feel more comfortable accumulating gold. And the reason they want to

accumulate gold is because there's this geopolitical issue now where nations feel less trustful of using US treasuries as their reserve asset. I mean, China has this adversarial position to the US. And Russia, why would Russia? Russia trust us anymore, we seize their treasuries. Like, hell no, we're not going to keep our savings in treasuries. I think these other nations which have an adversarial position to the US now are realizing, it might not be safe to keep the bulk of our reserves. Because the US treasuries are not a politically neutral reserve currency, right? I mean, the US Treasury at its own discretion can cut you off if it wants to. And that's one way for the US to sort of impose its

political will on other nations. It has the benefit of having the reserve currency of the world. And for the most part, a lot of nations are aligned with the US, but there are some that are not and some very powerful ones. And so I think that has really been the story for gold and why gold has been doing so well over the last few years, and I think we'll continue to do well. So it's a great question. When will Bitcoin get parity with gold? To me, when I think about the most obvious bullish case for Bitcoin, it's simply that Bitcoin attains and then surpasses the market capitalization of gold, because Bitcoin is a better store of value than gold. The next phase going from, you know, a deeply established global store of value to the reserve

currency of the world, that story is a little less certain to me. And to me, that's a multi-decade story. But for me, from my perspective, Bitcoin achieving and surpassing the market capitalization of gold, that's a story that I think will happen in the next five to 10 years. I fully expect that to happen. I do expect it to be at a higher price level for gold, though, whether gold is, you know, what is it? It's like $3,500 an ounce or something like that. that with, you know, gold could be $5,000 an ounce. It wouldn't surprise me if it's at $5,000 an ounce and Bitcoin is starting to knock at the door and say, hey, now it's my turn.

And so that would get you to a, you know, Bitcoin price in the next five to 10 years of, you know, ballpark 1.5 million to maybe 2 million. And I guess it makes me wonder, and I'm sorry to jump in, Nathan, it makes me wonder, like as it approaches gold parity, do you envision a bunch of, bunch of people who are gold bugs or even have a little bit of gold's hedge being like, wait a minute, why am I holding on to this piece of metal? Bitcoin's obviously the future. Do you envision like a gold sell-off or will it just continue increasing but just more slowly than Bitcoin? I think it's already happening, Gary. I think, you know, there are a lot of

ultra-high net worth individuals and family offices that had an allocation to gold, which started thinking about Bitcoin. There are now, you know, large endowments like Harvard just bought a fairly sizable position of Bitcoin, maybe not for them. $100 million is a lot for most of us, regular people, but for them, it's a small... I'll never see that much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they are...

And it was larger than their position in, like, a lot of major stocks, like Google and meta. I don't know if they have a position in gold, but this is already happening. Demand is being taken at the margin from gold and put into Bitcoin. I would say the last holdout to nation states and central banks. And that's because they are, you know, a lot more conservative. They've always sort of viewed gold as having this kind of monetary role. I think it will take longer for them to

get comfortable with Bitcoin having that role. But, you know, it might get accelerated just by the fact that the US, the US coming in and saying we will build a strategic Bitcoin reserve will have an impact on a lot of countries around the world. It will send a message that it's okay. It's okay for you as a sovereign nation to have Bitcoin on your balance sheet. So it's just less clear to me that the more obvious story is just institutions and individuals adopting Bitcoin as a much better alternative to gold. And I see that story playing out over the next five to 10 years. And then the next phase, the next 20 to 50 years is Bitcoin, I believe, becoming the global reserve currency. That's very exciting.

I like that it fits within my lifespan, potentially as well, too. So it'll be nice that I get to see that. Yeah, I know, potentially. Come to fruition. Come on, medical advancement. See what happens there. Jumping back for a quick second on the institutional kind of adoption, VJ. I'm curious your thoughts on, it appears, you know, famous last words, it appears to be

a little bit different this time. And it seems to me like the entrance of the treasury companies as well as the institutions and somewhat of nation states is really tamped down on the volatility of Bitcoin. I'm curious if that's kind of your framework as well, too. And would that mean kind of a potentially less bullish case in the short term? term, they're not going to necessarily have that kind of rocket up momentum at some point. And then also to tag onto it, is it, do you have any concerns around it being kind of a centralizing force, meaning that because it's getting much easier for people in these

traditional rails and new infrastructure being built out to come into Bitcoin, that we might lose some of that self-custody ethos? Yeah, that's a great question. I think the thing that's interesting about these treasury companies is that I wondered for a long time why no one else had kind of figured this out. Like Sailor figured it out very early on in 2020. And it started out with him just having a pile of cash, right? And he was like, I've got $500 million burning a hole in my pocket. What the hell do I do with it? And he came up with the idea that, well, there's this asset that's been growing faster than everything. Why didn't I just put this

cash, which is kind of losing value over time? Why don't I put that into Bitcoin? And he did that And in doing so, he can, he transformed micro strategy from this tiny irrelevant company that had been around for 20 years into this behemoth holding company, which is a Bitcoin holding company. Now no one really knows what like what micro strategy business is because it doesn't matter. I never did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, it had an operating business.

It still does have an operating business and had that for 20 years, but no one really cared about it. And now he's gone from, you know, a very small company. I don't know what it was worth in 2020, maybe a couple billion. I mean, it was a small company to being a company worth a hundred billion or more and continuing to grow. What worries me a little bit about these treasury companies is I am very skeptical of the idea that you can financial engineer your way into just, you know, unlimited. amount of Bitcoin without there being a consequence to this. When MicroStrategy first bought Bitcoin, it had an operating business and it was using the money from its operations to buy Bitcoin.

Now the way it's acquiring Bitcoin is mostly financial engineering, which is using the fact that the stock market is giving it a premium to its underlying assets, allows Michael Saylor to sell shares in his company, and then go and buy more Bitcoin. And this gives him the ability to say we have earned a yield on our assets. We're accumulating more Bitcoin per share. But there is nothing fundamental to this idea that there should be a premium to the net asset value. Like that can go down to one or it can go below one and it has gone below one before. And that's really just kind of market sentiment in psychology.

and market sentiment can turn on a dime and especially when you have a company which is hitting the ATM over and over again. Like he's making it clear that like if Bitcoin gets above, he actually specified this on his website. I think it's a 1.5x nav or maybe it's 2x nav. He's like, I'm going to hit the ATM. I am. Let me tell you all market participants, your long micro strategy. I'm going to hit you over the head with another ATM.

Because if you're a shareholder in micro strategy, ATMs don't feel good, right? Like he's issuing more shares, he's diluting you. And you can kind of hold some comfort like, oh, he's accumulating Bitcoin per share. But because there's a premium to NAV, you don't really, that protection of accumulating Bitcoin per share can disappear. If the premium to NAV disappears, then he may not be able to accumulate. more Bitcoin per share to help make up for the fact that the premium has dropped, and so the share price has dropped, and to sort of wrap this in a bow,

like Bitcoin is sitting in an all-time high now. I think we have the price like it's right here, just below an all-time high. Micro Strategy is significantly below its all-time high. And that's not surprising. He has hit the ATM so many times since Micro Strategy. made its all-time high. He has issued so many shares and diluted the equity of micro-strategy so much since they made an all-time higher that it's not surprising that micro-strategy is not near its all-time

high, even though Bitcoin. So I say all of this with the utmost respect for Sailor. He has managed to do something no one else has done, which is accumulate a massive Bitcoin position. And in the future, he may be able to monetize that. position, right? He could become the JP Morgan of the Bitcoin financial system and say, look, I have the most Bitcoin. I am now a Bitcoin bank. I will provide all of these services around Bitcoin, Bitcoin loans, options on Bitcoin, all sorts of things. But Nathan, to get back

to another part of your question, which is, is this bad in terms of centralizing force? Yes, that is another risk that people need to worry about. because the process of monetization is effectively the increasing distribution of a monetary good into a population. That is, more and more people owning Bitcoin means it's more monetized. In the early days, it was a few thousand cypherpunks, right? And then it became a few hundred thousand cypherpunks and libertarians. And then it became like a few hundreds of thousands of early investors and people who are kind of intrepid with their investments. And now we're kind of getting close to the early majority.

And so Bitcoin is being distributed out into the population. That's well and good. But at the same time, you have this counterforce, which is kind of the equivalent of cornering a market, where you have one entity trying to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible. And a similar thing happened with Silver in the 70s where the Hunt brothers tried to corner Bitcoin. And I try to explain to people, there's a difference between the price going up from a cornering and the price going up from increasing adoption. Cornering is the opposite of monetization.

It is the increasing concentration of Bitcoin in one entity. And that is almost demonetizing gold. because you do not want to own a form of money that is controlled by one entity, right? Most shit coins out there are actually like that. They are some entity which owns 90% of the supply and they slowly, like Ethereum was like this, they had an ICO, but most of the supply was locked up in the insiders, the Ethereum Foundation Vitalik, Joe Lubin, a bunch of people, they held a bunch of Bitcoin. That's not good money because you know these people have that.

supply and they can dump on you. So that makes it less monetized. Ideally, no one holds a significant position of Bitcoin. Everyone has some savings in Bitcoin. So Saylor is kind of unwinding monetization in a way. The one counterpoint to that is it's not, it should be understood, it's not Saylor who owns the Bitcoin that is being accumulated by micro strategy. It is the shareholders of micro strategy. So as the number of shares, sorry, as the number of Bitcoin's accumulated by micro strategy grows, if the number of shareholders of micro strategy grows at the same time, then it is not really demonetize it.

It's not a cornering. It's more people getting access to Bitcoin except via micro strategy. However, if the shareholder base of micro strategy doesn't grow, or the vast majority of shares are held by micro strategy, then it is actually dangerous for him to be accumulating. Like, it would be bad for everyone in the Bitcoin ecosystem. If there was only one shareholder of micro strategy and it was Michael Saylor and he accumulated, say, 2 million Bitcoin, that would be really bad. We would say that is a big demonetization event because it's not spreading out into the population.

It's not becoming more money, more money-like. It's becoming less money-like. So I think that's a really important point that you make, and we should keep an eye on it. We should keep an eye on like, what is the shareholder base of micro strategy and how much Bitcoin do they have? I am personally surprised that they got to as many Bitcoins as they have now. When he started this financial engineering, I think he had about maybe 200,000 Bitcoin. And I thought it would become increasingly difficult for him to accumulate more because

the price would go up faster than he could get. get it, but the price didn't go up fast enough and he's managed to get to 600,000 Bitcoin. I would honestly start feeling pretty uncomfortable if micro strategy got to a million Bitcoin. I would think, oh, this is too much in one entity. Imagine mining Bitcoin, cheaper than buying on an exchange with direct payouts hitting your wallet like clockwork. SAS mining makes it real. You own the rig, no gimmicks.

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No, that's a very astute observation. One thing I just want to tease out quick from my own understanding as well, jumping back to the kind of, what is it, Bitcoin per share, kind of premium above nav. for my own understanding, if the premium is gone, it's either just one parody or it's below, how does that process kind of unwind? Is it a matter of kind of shareholders going like, well, you know, I could just go and get the purchase the spot stuff instead, and then there's just a shift over that way? Actually, if it goes below Nav, then there's a greater incentive for people to buy the shares of micro strategy, right?

Because then if the share value of micro strategy is less than the, assets they hold, you buy the shares and you hope they do a distribution or dividend and you get the Bitcoin out. So you're getting the Bitcoin at a discount. But the danger here is you get a feedback loop where the premium to Nav goes below one and then people will say, oh, okay, now I can get the assets out and I can make a profit here by buying the shares and asking sale, pay a dividend, and pay it out. That could force him. He could face shareholder pressure and lawsuits to sell his assets and buy the shares of

his company to move the price up. Because if you're a shareholder of micro strategy, what you want is the price of the shares to go up. And if you can do that by selling Bitcoin and buying your shares, he will face lawsuits from his investors. Now, if the investors in micro strategy are also big. Bitcoiners, then it's less of a problem, right? But he's probably going to get some shareholders that are institutional that don't give a shit about Bitcoin and are going to say, look, I bought

micro strategy at $500 and the assets on your balance sheet are worth $700. Sell those assets, buy the shares and push the share price up because I want to have a profit on the shares that I bought from you. Then if Saylor buckles under that pressure and sells his business, Bitcoin, it could actually trigger a market panic, right? It is a price of Bitcoin goes down. People might say actually the, the, the, the MNAM should be even lower. Like, and it could unwind very quickly. And we've already seen this.

We saw this with GBTC. I don't know if you guys remember the gray scale product, which for a very long time traded at a premium to its net asset value. So premium to the Bitcoin that it held. and then in 2021 and this marked the absolute top of the market, the premium went to zero and then it went negative. It went into a discount. And that's when the market peaked.

And Grayscale faced lawsuits for that. Like, you need to find a way to drive the price up. And they didn't have a good mechanism for selling the Bitcoin and buying the shares because they were just a trust. They weren't an ETF. but eventually they became an ETF and the problem kind of resolved because they were able to do the arbitrage necessary to move the price to the asset value. The only way that that's going to happen with something like micro strategy is if they

sell the assets. This is if the premium becomes a discount. So that worries me a little bit. It worries me that in a bare market, the premium to NAV becomes a discount. He faces shareholder pressure. He's forced to sell Bitcoin. and that drives the discount even deeper. And I think he has come out and publicly said, I'm not going to sell my Bitcoin.

And, you know, I think there's some credibility to that. He's said this to his shareholder base. They know what they're getting with Michael Saylor. I am more worried about the other treasury companies. And actually, I think, who was it? I think it was David Bailey said something like, if we traded the discount, we'll sell our Bitcoin. Like, he gave the opposite perspective, which was like, you know, if I can make the share price go up, I will do that by selling Bitcoin.

And I suspect there are a lot of treasury companies out there that if they face any kind of shareholder pressure, they would buckle immediately. Sorry, guys. I just want to jump in real quick there. Would that mean that micro strategy being included in index funds might actually be a risk to elevating that likelihood of happening? Essentially, if it's people that are passively accumulating the shares and is basically being held by somebody else, that those are less likely to be Bitcoiners and might put that pressure on at some point in time. time? I wouldn't say index funds because they're typically very passive and they don't, they don't get into sort of shareholder activism. But there could be shareholder activists. Like you could see someone like Carl Ican who comes in, buys a big position in micro strategy. And there are people like you who love doing this. Like that shareholder activists who say, hey, this company is trading way below its asset value. Let's just liquidate the whole company.

And that means selling all the assets of the company, buying back the shares. and just walking away the profit. That's just a pure arbitrage play, right? If you see a company that's selling it 50% of the value of its assets, what do you do? Buy all the shares. Buy them immediately. Sell all the assets and then you've doubled your money right away. So I think there is a risk that something like that happens if we get into kind of a bare market.

Interesting, Gary? Yeah, you mentioned at the beginning a little bit earlier that you thought it was interesting him, Michael Saylor was the first one to think to do this, this, what seems almost on its surface to be a perpetual motion machine. So I guess I wonder, and we don't actually know the answer to this, do you think he was the first to think of it or do you think he was the first who thought of it who was actually courageous enough to do it? Hmm. You know, I don't know of any counter examples. I'm sure there are small ones of smaller companies that did do this before Michael Seller, but you're right. He was the first one

to do it, have the courage to do it and do it as a sort of publicly listed security. He had a public company listed in the market. So there's some regulatory oversight and probably risk there of like, can I actually do this? Like he was the first to really go ahead and do it in size and then continue to do it and then, you know, go further out on a limb by starting to do financial engineering and saying, hey, wait a second, I'm micro-stratage is trading in a premium. I can accumulate even more Bitcoin by selling my shares and buying Bitcoin. Like he started doing stuff that no one had anticipated. So I do give him credit.

He's taking advantage of the situation that he's being given and he's doing it masterfully. I don't want to take anything away from him. I just want to point out that the market sentiment can change. And if it changes, then this whole setup that he's got going could disappear very quickly. Of course. And I don't want to take anything away from him either. I listened to the Sailor series a couple of years back with Robert Breedlove. And my takeaway was, oh, my God, I'm a moron.

Like, this man is brilliant. So it made me feel very small by comparison. And yes, he's quite intelligent and has the courage. to do things. And I guess I only ask about the courage thing because it's something that Nathan and I were talking about earlier is it seems only a minority of financial advisors. And we think it's roughly 20 to 40 percent, depending upon the source, would suggest a Bitcoin allocation and a very small one at that. And yet I've heard that on their own, some of these financial advisors are stacking stats in their personal portfolios. So, I mean, what would it take for

maybe not the advisors, but the companies they work for to be a little more courageous and be like, hey, you know, we're recommending a 10% holding, 20%, 50%, 80%. Is there a specific moment that triggers it? Or is it just kind of slowly, all right, well, let's just play it safe and go along with the herd. Yeah, there's a kind of institutional inertia to this kind of thing happening. And I mentioned earlier in the podcast that there's a big financial institution that's going to be building out a digital assets platform around Bitcoin. And one of the things that allowed that to happen was that their former CEO left. And a new CEO came in. And the person who will be

heading up this division in the company said, look, I want to retire. Like, I want to go and do stuff that's interesting to me. And he was so valuable at this company, the new CEO said, hey, we want to keep you around. What can we offer you? What, what, what opportunities would you like to pursue if, you know, you stay at the company? And this person said, I'm fully, I'm all in on Bitcoin. And I want to provide a service that allows people to buy Bitcoin and increase the adoption of Bitcoin. And so this is what's happening inside these financial institutions. It just, it takes time. You need, you need people. to sort of organically understand the importance of Bitcoin and start selling it to their management, the executive team. And then you have attrition over time, right? The people who

were very skeptical of Bitcoin slowly, but surely they disappear. Like they leave or they also get enough pressure from people below them that they need to start thinking about it. I mean, the classic case of this is Jamie Diamond, right? Of course. Like Jamie Diamond and JP Morgan didn't suddenly think. oh, Bitcoin is awesome. We need to start offering products because this is this is going to be the new reserve currency. What happened was a lot of their high net worth clients came to them and said, I want exposure to Bitcoin and you guys are not providing any products or services. And you only have to hear that enough times as the executive of a financial institution to realize we're leaving

money on the table here by not providing these products. So it's kind of a grassroots movement. and it will take a lot of work internally to build out the systems to allow people to service all of their customers. And there are a lot of customers. There are a lot of people living in the traditional financial world who still haven't really thought about Bitcoin as a part of their portfolio, but we'll think about it when these companies say, hey, you know, you should have some Bitcoin in your portfolio. and the registered investment advisors see these financial institutions building platforms to allow people to buy Bitcoin securely inside the traditional financial system,

they will start feeling more comfortable, and they will be saying, hey, you know, you should get 5% of your portfolio in Bitcoin because now Fidelity officer offers it, now JPMorgan offices offers it, and most of the financial institutions offer it, and maybe one day Vanguard will offer it as well. but the thing that's really slowing this down is the institutional inertia and it's greater at some

companies than others and it's just random events that can make one company move faster than another and in this particular case it was the fact that the old CEO left at a place like Vanguard it might take several people leaving before they really get in the game no that's a fair fair assessment gary did you have anything else i want to pivot for a second if i can yeah yeah go ahead and pivot man uh vj i'm very curious for those that might not be aware you actually worked early on in google as well too and you have this fantastic background as a software engineer and so i was no there's no way i wasn't going to pose this question to you i'm curious your your current state from the kind of engineering standpoint of the bitcoin network and the

bitcoin protocol and in particular there is at least some concerns for some people regarding recent changes for example with a bitcoin core 30 that's coming out i'm wondering if you have any thoughts or insight or maybe a unique perspective you can share on it? So I'm of the camp that Bitcoin should ossify in the sense that it should become very, very difficult to make any changes to Bitcoin. And you can kind of think of the ability to change Bitcoin along the spectrum. In the early days, Satoshi actually had a lot of power and he unilaterally made changes and made bug fixes and he put in the block size limit and just did it. He was like, I can do it because like I basically control the network.

Then over time, it became more and more difficult as Satoshi kind of seeded power, then he disappeared. And then you had more of a collaborative process to change Bitcoin. And then by 2017, we had this critical moment with the block size wars where you had a bunch of Bitcoin companies and miners who sort of came together and said, we want to change Bitcoin because it will be better for us. and we want to increase the block size. And the community kind of rallied and said,

no, this is going to drastically change the character of Bitcoin. And it puts way too much control into the hands of like a centralized cabal. And the real danger then is that that centralized cabal becomes the central bank banking unit. I mean, maybe it's not controlled by economists, but it's controlled by developers. But you have the same problem that this central party decides, actually, you know, Bitcoin should have a little bit of inflation. It would be good for Bitcoin to have that. And that was a signal that Bitcoin had dramatically ossified.

It was very, very difficult. And we did have a soft fork. Bitcoin was still backwards compatible, but we didn't have a hard fork, which would have made Bitcoin not backwards compatible with past clients that were running Bitcoin. And that was really important. And then we had one more major change to Bitcoin, which is again, a soft fork, which is the adoption of Taproot. And I think a lot of people after Taproot became very skeptical that Bitcoin should have any changes because it's like, what does this actually address? And it made some things possible that people didn't like the ability to do these kind of NFTs on Bitcoin.

I forgot what they're called, like inscriptions or something like that. Orinals and ruins and all that. Ordinals, that's right, Ordnals. And it was kind of using Bitcoin for a purpose that it wasn't really intended for, which is it's meant for money. It's not meant for making trinkets. And so I am of the view that Bitcoin, I'm actually more extreme than most on this. I think that Bitcoin would have done just as well as it has if we had never put Segwit into Bitcoin.

And so if during the block size wars, we had said, no, not changing Bitcoin at all, and it's remaining as it was before, you know, the adoption of Segwit, we didn't have taproot. I think we would still be fine. I think ultimately the gold standard is, you know, pun intended is gold. And gold cannot be changed. You cannot tinker with gold and change the code, you know, the code of gold to make it similar to copper or silver. where gold is gold and it remains that way. Bitcoin and Bitcoin should aspire to Bitcoin being immutable. Because Bitcoin being immutable gives us trust in the thing that gives Bitcoin its value,

which is we believe it has ultimate scarcity. And we believe that because there's no sort of central power which can change the rules. And I think over time we want to make sure that the developers, they should effectively have no power. like they shouldn't have any power at all. Like we don't want them turning in. Like with Ethereum, the developers are effectively like the central bankers. They get to change Ethereum as they see fit.

So, you know, the specifics of the debate, I don't care that much. But what really bothers me is that Core adopted a change that was contentious. When they should be taking the point of view that we will not make any change to Bitcoin if there's any contention at all. And the only changes that we'll make to Bitcoin are critical bug fixes. Like we're not going to, you don't tinker with something that is worth $2 trillion. It's just absolutely insane to be doing that. And as Bitcoin gets bigger, the more, there is greater risk with tinkering with it.

So, you know, I am of the view that we shouldn't have Bitcoin calls should just focus on critical bug fixes. I will say there's one exception that I think all core developers should focus on for a particular change to Bitcoin or a plan is what do we do with quantum computing? Like if quantum computing breaks Bitcoin, we need a plan for that. And I think that should be the number one focus of the core team. Now, the fact that Core did make this change, I think is really disappointing. But I will say that I do not think not is a good alternative. I don't think people should be running knots. I think it's incredibly dangerous.

It's created basically by one person. There's really no peer review process that developer goes in and makes changes whenever he wants and pushes them out. That is not a healthy development process at all. What I think is we need an alternative to core, which is basically a fork of core, that says we are just going to focus on critical fixes to core, things that are security patches, but we're not going to add any functionality. Bitcoin does not need any more functionality. It has everything it needs to succeed in its mission of becoming the global reserve currency. It has everything it needs right now. And all we are doing by changing Bitcoin is risking people's

faith in that foundational value proposition, which is that the supply is strictly limited. You mentioned, and this is such a topic that gets talked about so much, no actual real answers. I'm not going to make you spend time on it if you don't want to, but you did mention quantum computing. And I've heard that's not really a threat for 5, 10, 15, 20 years or whatever. What timeline do you envision that being any type of threat to Bitcoin? I think, you know, a few years ago, I would have said it's a long way off. Like it's not, it's not going to be a threat for 20, 30 years, if that. Maybe it's just pie in the sky.

But I think the advances that Microsoft made in creating a quantum computer are actually legit. And the thing is even if the ability to break Bitcoin with quantum computing, that is break the encryption that Bitcoin is built around, even if it's five years away or maybe even 10 years away, the market will price it in right now. Like if you knew that there would be a quantum computer that could break Bitcoin addresses where the public key was exposed, you would be skeptical. You would start worrying about holding Bitcoin right now.

So those concerns come into play very, very quickly. And the real, I think the real issue here is not that there's no solution to quantum computing. I think we can replace Bitcoin's current encryption with quantum resistant encryption. The real problem is how do we get consensus around it? Bitcoin is hard to change. It's hard to get a consensus change through, and that's really good.

We should want that, right? So, but how do we get the community to agree on a solution when one part of the solution might be burning a lot of addresses, right? All of Satochi's coins are vulnerable to a quantum computer because the public key has been exposed on all of those addresses. If you have a quantum computer and you have the public key, you can get the private key and then you can spend those, right? So there's like maybe, I don't know, a million, two million coins that are vulnerable. You could say that give people a timeline and say you need to move your coins to a quantum resistant address and you've given two years.

But what if there's a bunch of coins that are sitting there that don't move? You don't know whether those coins are dead or controllable. Like recently there was a sale of 80,000 bitcoins from an address from 2011, right? A lot of people might have thought those coins were dead, but they were not dead. They moved. So I think there will be a lot of contention around this question of like, what is the correct way to solve quantum computing if it, if it, uh, if it, uh, if it arrives.

And I think that's the big risk to Bitcoin. It's not that there are no solutions. It's that what will the community do? And I think there will be a lot of uncertainty around how that plays out. I have, I just want to share, I have some thoughts tonight because it is at least a fun topic to kind of reminisce on it and kind of ponder for a while there.

My current viewpoint on the old coins, if they don't move beforehand, is very much kind of I view almost like gold and treasure hunters and like finding a sunken ship on the bottom of the ocean. where it's like, yeah, it's going to hurt the price a lot in the meantime, but that feels like a, what do you say, like a, it fits that kind of nonaggression principle, kind of property rights. If you found a sunken ship and got the gold off of it, I think that's reasonable. And a lot of coins have been lost. So that's just where I currently am on that. And I want to ask you, and you may not have an answer for me as well, too. But I don't have the technical understanding to really discern what makes it this way, but what makes a potential change quantum resistant? What is it that we have to do in order to kind of get that quantum resistant? It's just a matter of just increasing the entropy involved, or there's something else that I'm not thinking of? Well, it's just making sure that you can't use an address where the public key is exposed. So if you spend a Bitcoin right now from a legacy address, it exposes the public key.

So one thing you should never do, this is kind of, you know, Bitcoin good sort of good health practices is when you spend a Bitcoin, you don't send the change back to the same address. You send it to a new address. If you send it back to the same address, that that address has the public key exposed and then it's not quantum resistant anymore. So you always kind of hop your Bitcoin to the, you buy something and then the rest of the Bitcoin goes to a new address. And the new address doesn't have the public key exposed. So you could change Bitcoin in a way that it's not possible to send the change back to an address where the public keys expose you. So you can make a change like that, for instance. It's more about making it so you just don't allow quantum computers to have anything that they

can use. Interesting. Interesting. That makes sense to me. Gary? Any thoughts? First, I apologize for turning away twice and stepping or taking my camera off because I have two kids at home running around slamming doors. And I assume you've heard that so far on here. I have four kids it, they're not all currently here, but I completely empathize and no problem from my end because I have the same chaos in my house. Exactly. I guess we are getting close to the time you generously a lot of us. And I do want to touch on something you mentioned, how you wanted Bitcoin to be ossified to make it very difficult to change. And as somebody myself and as yourself has been involved in politics knows, as Nathan knows as well. I think that's kind of the idea of kind of a

Minarchist government kind of libertarian Ron Paul thought, you know, the government should be small enough and powerlessness enough that it doesn't really matter if your worst enemy is in charge. They can't really do much wrong with it, which, you know, it sort of applies to government because they're using force. They can use force on you. So you want that. I don't know offhand if that exactly translates to Bitcoin. I'm not technically proficient enough to know whether or not there should be some level of change incorporated over time. But I guess it's not exactly the greatest segue, but on the political end, is it even, you were involved with Ron Paul. You were involved in his campaign a bit. And we see that, you know, we try to do the right thing. We try to make

government work. And it never actually works because it's government. The incentive structures are built in to make it not work. Is it even worth being involved in politics anymore? Or should those of us who want this, you know, this better world for us and our fellow humans just focus on the money and just politics be damned. Yeah, that was kind of my perspective. When I left Google to campaign for Ron Paul, I was very idealistic. I helped raise millions of dollars, brought hundreds of volunteers to New Hampshire to knock on doors and tell people about Ron and hand out constitutions and say, you know, he's the only person who's really standing up for this, which is the law of the land. And what I realized is that there are,

are much more powerful influences in politics. And Ron Paul was excluded from the primary debate in New Hampshire by Fox News. And that really killed his chances. It didn't matter that I raised millions of dollars. Didn't matter that I knocked on thousands of dollars because Fox deciding that they didn't want him to be the winner really decided it. And I learned that there were these very powerful interests in the political process. And so I left to that feeling very dejected and it really shattered my idealism. But then I came across Bitcoin in 2011, and I realized you can change the world through technology.

You can make things inevitable for your political point of view by creating a technology which makes your point of view ascendant. And the internet is an example of this. I mean, the internet's not perfect, but the early, you know, cyphopunk, we're really excited about the idea that you could have free communication on the internet. Again, the internet's not perfect. There are a lot of powerful companies which control much of the flow of information on the internet,

but we have much more flow of information today than we did, say, 30 or 40 years ago, like where the mainstream media controlled the narrative completely. Like, now you can get, you know, different perspectives if you're persistent enough. and companies like Google and YouTube do do a lot of censoring, but if you really want to find a different perspective, you can. And so I think Bitcoin will be similar. Like it'll get incorporated in the traditional financial system. They'll try and control Bitcoin,

but it will make the world a freer place because you have the underlying protocol and you have the underlying ability to send value to anyone, any place on earth without anyone's permission. And that is incredibly disruptive. As much as people in the institution will try and control Bitcoin, that underlying power is so disruptive in the same way that the internet gives you the ability to transmit information across the world.

Eventually information will want to be free and people will find out what they need to find out. And COVID is an example of this. As much as they tried to control the narrative, you know, you had enough people and enough sources where you could be like, oh, something feels kind of fishy about this idea that the vaccine totally prevents you getting COVID and spreading COVID. Wait a second, that's not true. And you can sort of pull on the thread of these narratives that have created and they completely unwind.

And it's because you have access to information. So I kind of went off on a rant there. I don't know if I, I don't know if I, I don't know if I answered you a question. No, no, I think you did. I mean, the fundamental idea is do you make change by trying to be, you know, the loudest with the biggest protest or tried to make the most logical points? Or is it just you move the technology in a way where the change comes in and of itself? I mean, did the Catholic Church break down because, you know, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to, you know, the church door.

Was it because of the printing press? Like, oh, we can all read the Bible now and see your own translation. I think that's a great analogy. technology has much greater ability of changing the world than the political process. The political process kind of is there to give us all the delusion that we have control and that we are empowered. Like, this might be hard for some people to hear, but the whole idea of voting is just to give you a sense that you have some power.

You don't have any power. Your vote does not matter. It doesn't, it's not going to change the outcome of an election, especially, you know, people in states like Washington where it's very obvious what the result is going to be. You're much better off. I'll say another way. You're much more likely to be hit by lightning going to the voting booth than your vote actually doing anything. And so you're better off sitting at home, not voting, because you're reducing the risk of dying from being hit by lightning.

VJ, I tell people almost the exact same thing when I've had this discussion with people over voting, like, well, you know, if you're, going to say this, you'd have right to complain if you don't vote. I'm like, my vote is meaningless in our system in America. First of all, for my vote to make a difference in the presidential election, the state that I'm in New Jersey would have to be the deciding state. It would have to be the state that splits it one way or the other with the electoral college. And my vote would have to be the single deciding vote in that state. And I tell people, the chances of that happening are not even as good as me going to the 7-Eleven, buying a lottery ticket, striking it rich, and then getting struck by lightning on the way back home. Like the math is just insane. It makes no sense. But if it makes you feel

good, if it makes you feel like you're doing a protest vote, I'm going to write, I've written in Ron Paul before just because it's, oh, I'm going to make my little protest. If it's something that makes you feel good about yourself doing, hey, I'm not going to fault anybody for feeling good about themselves. You know, go have fun, have at it. But yes, I say the same thing. Yeah. And so when I think there's a lot of peace that comes from that realization, when you realize that you're not going to affect the political process anyway. You come to terms with that. You think, well, how can I change the world? And I do think Bitcoin is a great vehicle for that because it is really upending a lot of systems, traditional systems, and moving the world to a freer world where people are empowered because they can

control the fruits of their labor and they can transmit the fruits of their labor without anyone's permission. That's very, very powerful if you want a world with more individual freedom. I have one, if you don't mind me, one last quick question on this thread, Nathan. We all want people who we believe are good people to have access to this money to get in earlier because we think they deserve it. I mentioned in a recent podcast. There's a neighbor of mine across the street. He's a really good guy. And he does all the right things. He's genuinely good, nice person. He's helped me and he's just not getting into Bitcoin. And we, you know, we talk about trying to orange pill people. We've all gone down the road of trying to proselytize once we get in everything. If you were to try to convince Ron, Paul, who is a gold bug to buy into Bitcoin and say, Ron, forget about this gold, buy Bitcoin. What, if anything, might you tell him? I would love to sit down with Ron and talk to him about that. I got to see him at the Bitcoin 2021 conference backstage.

I was speaking right after him. And it was like a huge reunion and got to see my hero. I didn't try an orange pill him. I just told him how excited I was to see him again. I think I would talk about why gold was money. And this is just the particular case of Ron Paul. I won't use this generally. Most people don't care about gold.

But I would say, you know, why do you think gold became money? It had the properties that made for good money. And what were those properties? And how does Bitcoin fare along those properties? Bitcoin allows you to do things which you can't do with gold. Like, Ron, imagine, I would give him the example of Ludwig von Mises. the great Austrian economist who fled across Europe just ahead of the Nazis and escaped to America, but did not have a penny to his name when he got to America and had to rebuild his life.

Because it was dangerous carrying his savings, his assets across Europe. You could be searched. You could be stripped. And a lot of Jewish people had all of their assets, their diamonds, the gold in their teeth taken from them, because it's very easy to dispossess something of the savings that they have on their person. But Bitcoin, you can carry your wealth in your head, right? You just need those 12 or 24 words or on a USB drive, whatever it is. And you can cross borders with tens of millions of dollars if you want to. And that creates a lot more freedom in the world.

The ability for people to move with their savings wherever they want, allows people to escape oppressive regimes. And I would explain that to Ron, And I think he would understand that. He'd be sympathetic to that because he's someone who has been a tireless champion for human freedom for the last 60 years. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm a huge fan. I'm fan of yours and of Ron Paul.

So, yeah, Ron, if you're listening, give it a chance. I wouldn't be surprised if he owns Bitcoin, to be honest. I'm sure he's had many supporters over the years offered to buy books of his or, you know, various Ron Paul paraphernalia with. Bitcoin. So he probably has some Bitcoin stuffed away on on under his mattress. Yeah. I know I know that another famous libertarian Walter Block sold a book for Bitcoin way back, I think maybe 2011 or 12. And recently was like asking a friend like, how do I get? He was like, oh, it's worth a lot. He's like, how do I get that Bitcoin? Like, where, where is it? How do I, how do I get it? It is, I will say, I will confess that it is a little disappointing that some of these prominent figures in Austrian economics haven't had more curiosity.

Because I think just from an economic perspective, this is the most interesting question in economics of the last 50 years. Why does Bitcoin have any value at all? It's created out of thin air and most economists did not think that was possible. And why has that value been steadily increasing for 15 years just from the theory of money? monetary theory, that perspective, it should be like the only question you want to look at. And a lot of them just haven't had any interest in it. There have been times in when that has really bugged me. And I thought, guys, come on.

Like, just look into it. Just take that second glance. I completely agree. Because it's almost like, especially from like an Austrian economic standpoint, it's your chance to watch something monetize in real time to actually be a part of it, whereas like the monetization of gold helping long before you were around. So you think they'd have some sort of fascination with it. almost as a case study as it progresses. Speaking of Bitcoin and books, is there anything else for you

maybe on the horizon? Are you planning on doing another one? Or what are you currently working on in terms of projects? I am working on the second edition of the bullish case for Bitcoin. So it was originally an article and a lot of people after I wrote it wanted me to turn it into a book and I was like, ah, I didn't know what extra I would say. And then three years went by and a lot had changed. So by 2021, I was like, I should actually write a book. There's a lot of X stuff. I want to say. And the same thing has happened again. I think the market has changed and the risk profile of Bitcoin is so dramatically different.

You know, we talked about just in the last year and a half things have changed so much. So I think there is, it is time to revisit questions of like nation state adoption, treasury companies, ETFs, and the risks that are now may be more apparent like quantum computing. I think there are a lot of new topics. I mean, it's not going to be completely different. It's going to have a lot of the same stuff. That core story about why money has value will be there just like it was in the first edition. But there will be some new stuff too.

And I want to get that out. Looking forward to you, man. I'll say very much so looking forward to it. And with that, Vijay, where can people go to follow you, Twitter, website, all that fun stuff. We're going to get the book. Yeah. So the book, you can find at bullish case for Bitcoin.com. And you can follow me at Twitter at Real underscore VJ, R-E-A-L-U-I-J-A-Y at Twitter or X. I have a bad habit of calling it Twitter. And I spend most of my time talking about Bitcoin and topics that people who are libertarian would probably be interested in.

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