BTC Sessions - It’s Over For Powell & Trump PANICKING! Bitcoin BREAKING OUT | Jeff Ross, Jesse Myers, Danny Knowles

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

Jeff Ross, Jesse Myers, and Danny Knowles just broke down the moment the system cracked—and why Powell and Trump might be panicking behind the scenes. With Bitcoin breaking out and legacy finance flailing, the tide is turning fast. This could be the signal that everything is about to change.FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS:https://x.com/Croesus_BTChttps://x.com/DannyKnowlesJeff Ross: npub1hz2lzrrny9l8wvzuwl453u2yuk8laeav8clh5y3tzvjmjkcea39smcfs97FOLLOW BTC SESSIONS on X/Nostr: x.com/[e-mail] private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted.https://bitcoinmentor.io/—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL - BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://qrco.de/bfiDBVAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCpCRYPTOCLOAKShttps://qrco.de/bg5Dvo#btc #bitcoin #crypto

All right. I believe we are live now. Everybody tuning in to the show. Thank you for being here. I did have, as per usual, I did have a little script kind of prepared for the show to kind of, you know, hype everybody up and hooray, the show. But, you know, if you've been looking at the news, you know, there's some crazy things going on. I didn't want to leave the elephant in the room unaddressed. So I did just kind of want to mention the Charlie Kirk News, which, in my opinion, is very sad and very unfortunate. Those unfamiliar with what's going on, Charlie Kirk, political commentator, you know, Turning Point USA, you know, now I believe was involved in kind of the existing administration. in some capacity. He has been shot and killed on a stage in front of what looked like thousands of people.

I believe in Utah at an event on a campus. You know, the footage is horrific. You know, this one has really kind of shaken me up. It's one of those moments that I think is going to be kind of hard to forget on a historical scale. And it's also one of those moments that, you know, I'm, I'm, I prescribe to kind of the idea of the fourth turning. And it's, it's one of those things that I think is just an additional kind of notch that points that that's kind of where we're sitting right now as a society that, you know, people, uh, are very incapable of, of civil discourse. And it's coming to a place of

violence and society kind of tearing itself apart. So it's really unfortunate. I'm really sad for it. I'm also saddened to see some people celebrating the fact. This guy was a family man. He had a wife. He had two young children that are now stuck without a father. And it's super unfortunate. And so again, like I did just want to kind of highlight like, You know, a life was lost here. It's super sad. And, you know, whether you agree with or disagree with somebody's political views, I think that we should keep in mind that everybody at the end of the day is, for the most part, trying to make the better, the world a better place and how they see fit and just disagreeing with somebody is no need to be violent with them. And so it's super sad.

And I gentlemen, again, we kind of, I made sure it was okay to have you guys on for the intro here really briefly. But I don't know if anybody else has anything to add any thoughts before we kind of get into the actual show here. But if you do, feel free to chime in really quick. I'll just throw out quick. I don't actually follow Charlie, but this is obviously terrible. You hate to see anything like this from any side of the aisle. this kind of violence is just horrendous. I'm like you, Ben, where I ascribe to the fourth turning,

I kind of think we're in a tumultuous period right now where people's emotions are flaring and they do horrible things. So, I mean, what else do you say? I'm praying for the family, praying for our nation. This is a tough time. So my condolences to the family. Yeah. Yeah, I don't really have anything novel to say.

This only happened pretty recently. So still kind of processing this. But that picture you pulled up, This stuff hits really different. Like, I'm a relatively new father, and it's just incredibly sad to see. And like the scary thing is it just feels like the world is like just ready to boil over at the moment. And these kind of things are the stuff that starts massive civil unrest. And I just, I don't know, it's incredibly sad to see.

Hopefully this doesn't escalate. But it's, yeah, forth-turning stuff. Yeah, it's rough. Yeah. Yeah, the only thing I would add there, agree with all of that is it's you know it not to not to be you know too ham-fisted here but when things like this happen and i i can't help but think about how disappointing it is that more people don't dig into the root cause of of so much of our societal decay and to me that root cause is the money

uh being broken and um you know the trends that have been set in motion really since like 1971 in particular. And it's a shame, you know, that more people don't yet know about Bitcoin. Hopefully, obviously, we believe that will change. But, you know, in a funny way, you know, this is the source of hope for solving some of those societal decay and increasing vitriol on both sides of the aisle. Yeah. Yeah. When people feel disenfranchised and that their life is going in the wrong direction perpetually and they don't know where to point the finger. Like you said, society falls into disarray and we get instances like this and it's super unfortunate and, you know, it's not the only thing, but it's it's a major factor. And yeah,

so I mean, with that, I'll just say, you know, thinking of Charlie's family, it's super unfortunate. I've watched a handful of his stuff and for the most part I found him to be relatively reasonable and willing to have open discourse with people with completely different ideas than himself. And yeah, I'm longing for the world to go back to a place where we can agree to disagree and move forward together. And I get the feeling that people are tiring of this kind of stuff, but that we are still in that kind of fourth turning phase. There's a lot left to bubble over. I hope not, but it still feels that way.

So with that, gentlemen, we are going to change gears. We, of course, are here for why are we bullish, but I did not want to leave that off to the wayside. Myself and Nathan, tomorrow on the new show, we'll be covering more about that. But we're going to change gears. We'll put up the splash screen here. and we'll dive into why are we bullish now. All right.

So gentlemen, again, this little tricky, tricky kind of changing gears here. But we're going to dive in here. And Jeff, I'm going to tee you up first. And as I said, I did have a little bit of things that I wanted to touch on and maybe kind of tee you into, thus the title and everything that's going on. But a few things I wanted to mention here. before we get rolling. And I just want to pull up a couple notes than I made prior.

So we've just gotten some very interesting data from the BLS in regards to inflation. I'm just going to kind of seed a few things here. But we've got some very interesting stuff in regards to inflation data or lack thereof. we have Trump once again hammering Powell to immediately cut rates. We've got actually CME futures that are pricing in rate cuts, which that drops, that hammer drops in, in what, six days? There's Fed Watch. I'm going to bring up Fed Watch here just so people can see this website, but FedWatch in, what, six days here? Six days.

Wednesday. Yeah, Wednesday. So we've got a Fed meeting then where we may find out more. But the CME futures are, I believe, pricing in around 90% chance of rate cuts and a 10% chance of like 50 basis points. And on top of that, we've got gold has been ripping for a while now. And then we've started to see inklings of Bitcoin moving. I'm looking at my block clock now. You know, we saw 14K earlier today, and we've kind of been on that sideways, like, just incessant 10, 11, 12 back and forth. And, you know, we're starting to see some shifting there. So, Jeff, I'm going to tee up with the same question everybody gets, but having seeded some of that information, why are you bullish? Yeah, well, so, yeah, it's a tough act to follow with this news today,

but let's change gears here. So as you said, Ben, like there, I think there are many reasons, uh, from a macro perspective to be bullish right now. You've touched on several of them. The first is, as you mentioned, I think the, the Fed has officially capitulated. They have capitulated in words and now we just need to see it in deeds on Wednesday. Uh, the betting odds are about a 90% chance of one rate cut, so 25 basis points and about a 10% chance of actually two rate cuts, so 50 basis points.

I think it's pretty much a lock when you see the betting markets kind of putting their money where their mouth is, it's usually right on. And so the betting markets also are saying probably three total rate cuts this year. So by the end of the year, we'll be down about 75 basis points. That's what they're saying right now. That could change if the data changes. So that's one thing. And why is that important? Because now the U.S. is basically the last major holdout as far as central bank easing goes.

Most of the central banks around the world have already started easing. They've been lowering rates for quite a while. So having the U.S. behind that is actually a big booster in general to risk assets. When you have that kind of easing, that's just better for business, better for the economic cycle, and better for Bitcoin ultimately. And by the way, these are all talking points. So I'm really looking forward to hearing what the rest of you guys have to say about this too. But some other things are having bullish. U.S. businesses are doing well, right?

we've been seeing earnings reports. Forward revenues, forward earnings, forward operating margins are all correcting to the, correcting upwards. They're basically shooting higher. And that's really good news. U.S. businesses, at least what I follow more closely, are doing quite well. And it looks like they're going to continue doing well in the future. So we're seeing businesses move in the right direction. There's still a bunch of people online calling for a recession. I certainly don't see that in the to I look at. Maybe, you know, I'm wrong, but I've been saying since 2023 after I got over my 22 depression I was in, because I was pretty convinced we were going to, and I think we should have had a recession, but that's another story. 2023, 2024, 22, 25, no recession, and I still

don't see one coming in the tea leaves that I read. U.S. manufacturing, which has been in a recession, but it's a small part of the U.S. economy. It has been basically contracting since 2022, It's finally starting, I think, to show shoots that it's going to finally recover. Manufacturing new orders recently came out for the most recent month. They jumped from 47.1 to 51.4. That just bodes well. It could go back down again for sure, but that's a good leading indicator that new orders are coming in. So manufacturing should start stepping up.

So I'll just stop there with the macro. And then you also touched on Ben, so I feel like I have to talk about it too. And I talked about this with Danny a few months ago. I really believe we've entered a hard asset era. So I believe that whole concept and I see people mocking it now, which makes me feel even better about it, that whole U.S. exceptionalism concept, people are doubting the benefit of investing in U.S. assets. And so they're focusing more similar to the 1930s, similar to the 1970s, and even similar to the 2000s. There were these huge cyclical or secular time periods where people kind of lost some faith in the U.S. and they started pulling their money out, pulling money out of treasuries, out of the dollar, out of U.S. equities as well, and putting them into things like gold, into emerging markets, into non-U.S. assets.

And I think this is the first time Bitcoin's been around for a period like this. And I think that bodes very well for Bitcoin. So the hardest, soundest assets, I think should do quite well. And I'm actually concerned for the performance of U.S. stocks and especially U.S. bonds. You shouldn't touch those things with a 10-foot pole as far as I'm concerned. So I'm concerned for my fellow U.S. employees that have most of their money or all of their money in a 401k or IRA. That's basically 60-40 U.S. stocks, U.S. bonds. I think from a real rate of return perspective, after you factor out inflation, I think they're in for a world of hurt over the next 10 years.

probably give or take a few years. And it's already started. This actually already started at the end of 2021. And we're like full into this big huge secular trend right now. So I'll stop there. Now, a couple things I just want to pick your brain on. So number one. And actually, I forgot to, I alluded to it when I was tinging you up, but I didn't, I

didn't go any deeper. In regards to the inflation piece, there's currently stated deflation on the PPI and PPI core. They're expecting 0.3% and month over month, but it was negative 0.1%. So that's the one interesting metric. And I also wanted to get your take on this as well, because lumber has been tanking here. And that's, if I'm not mistaken, typically, that, you know, that pertains to things like housing and everything like that, being built and it would seem that that's way off. What's your interpretation of of lumber being way down right now? I think that it's just a reflection of the housing market here in the U.S. The market has

stalled. Home builders have been really suffering. Houses just aren't being built like they need to be built right now. It's everything stalled out, right? The boomers have all the first houses and the second houses and the third houses and they're renting, trying to rent out their second and third houses. And, you know, no hate for the boomers, but that's kind of how it is here in the U.S. And so it's pricing out the millennials, pricing out, Gen Z. Everybody knows this. So as mortgage rates start to come down, I actually expect that that lumber signal, the commodity price falling as much as it has, I think we'll see a turnaround pretty soon. And we're just going to start seeing a recovery and housing as the 30-year mortgage rates come down. I think home builders will start doing better. I think lumber prices will start going up. I actually expect some kind of mild to moderate inflation in the coming months as the economy picks up steam. Interesting. I'll let Jesse and Danny, if you guys have anything. that you want to tag in or mention or ask, feel free. And I see a link down there that I'll pull up in a second. Yeah, one of the super interesting things that I've seen over the last few days is Scott

percent came out and said that the Fed and U.S. monetary policy is like one of the leading causes of inequality. This is something that has Bitcoin as we all completely know. And Ben, I know this is your show, but can I ask Jeff a question here? Because I'd be really curious to know what you think, Jeff, in terms of whether this is going to be if they manage to get Powell out and they bring someone else in. Is it just old boss same as old new boss same as the old boss? I don't think the Fed matters very much, if I'm being honest. I think Lynn's, Lynn Alden's implication that nothing stops this train. She's talking about

this fiscal train with these fiscal deficits. I think we're in a period where the fiscal policies will overrule the Fed's policies. So it doesn't really matter. The Fed has been a scapegoat. I think if, you know, Powell gets replaced and some new Trump appointee gets put in place. He could be the hero or he could be the scapegoat. Anytime there's inflation, they'll get blamed for it. But I honestly think the Fed is almost powerless in this situation. I think that's only going to increase or worsen over the next five to 10 years. I'd love to hear Jesse's take on that.

Yeah. Yeah, I was nodding my head vigorously as you were talking about the sort of structural shift in asset allocations. I agree that bonds, fixed income in particular, is not where you want to be, probably. I know, not financial advice, but, you know, and I think that's what we're seeing, too. So, you know, the link I sent for us to pull up here, great. Yeah, you can, if you click the image, it'll be much bigger. So, yeah, this is, this view is that in the global asset landscape chart that I put that sailor likes to use. I did it, so that was originally from 2023.

Did a 2025 update of the same methodology to determine the numbers for 2025. And it was really interesting seeing the change from 20203 to 2025. And I, you know, calculated that the annualized the Kagers for those. The overall pie was growing at I believe 7 percent, actually 6 percent a year for for the last two years. But then on a relative basis, this was, you know, relative to that 6% growth, this is how each individual asset bucket from my numbers has been performing over the last two years. The takeaway here is that, you know, you see that bonds, fixed income on a relative to other asset classes has been actually shrinking in terms of its overall amount of value. In nominal terms,

it's been growing, but relative to total growth, it's been shrinking. And same in a smaller way for the money bucket. But of course, the two buckets that have been growing rapidly over the last two years are the hard money assets of gold and Bitcoin. And I think, you know, that even though it's a two-year sample that we're looking at here, and my methodology is, you know, probably high air bars, I think it is probably emblematic of what's going on. globally with asset allocations right now and probably will continue given the sort of structural shift that we're seeing and and you know, the sovereign debt burdens and how, you know, true, true inflation, I think, is seven or eight percent. And fixed income, you know,

10 year bonds, US 10 year is like four and a half percent right now. That's actually a slightly dated number. I'm not sure what it is. And so, So if you're holding those, you're actually destroying purchasing power, you know, two and a half percent a year. If the M2 supply growth is actual inflation rate, which is what I think it is the case. And it seems like global capital is waking up to that reality and there's an exodus going on right now from fixed income assets, which are really contracts for future dollars, right? and into hard assets because those are the assets they can't print. Man, Jesse, you make the best charts. Legendary.

Thank you. Thank you. So, I mean, Jeff, if you had to take a wild shot at a dartboard and say how the people in the room here with us are going to be feeling both maybe end of year and early. next year going into 2026. When you look at your tea leaves and when you kind of try to anticipate, like, you know, are we looking at a positive, especially in a Bitcoin sense, you know,

last quarter of the year and first quarter of 2026? You were saying some stuff about, you know, about what you're anticipating. What is your feeling here? So the forward-looking indicators that I follow suggest to me that we're going to have an anomaly here. Similar to how we had an anomaly with the US manufacturing sector, being in a recession basically since 2022

and finally, possibly, hopefully pulling out, this business cycle is all wacky. And so normally, so looking back two, three years ago, I did a bunch of research on the four-year cycles of Bitcoin, which a lot of people kind of did and how uncanny it was that it kept following these. It wasn't actually four years. It was more like three years, 11-month cycles,

but it kept following them. And when I did my work then, that's where I came up with, I think we're going to peak around Halloween of 2025, which is coming up, like six weeks, seven weeks from now, at a price of about 475K. That's basically gone out the window for me because of this whole reset with the economy. It looks to me from my forward-looking indicators. So to your question, Ben, I think we are going to end the year strong, and I think the business cycle will extend into 2026, at least barring any

catastrophe, you know, Black Swan kind of thing. It looks like everything is just starting to ramp up now, And we're finally going to see, at least from a U.S. perspective, the economy is really going to start ramping up. And that actually does affect. There is a correlation between what PMIs are doing in the U.S. and the price of Bitcoin as well. And so I do think this extends far beyond my original date of Halloween of 2025. I think we go beyond the fourth quarter, into the first quarter, possibly into the second quarter. And as of today, I still don't see an end to it. So we could go even beyond the first half of 2026. And it just remains to be seen what the data shows.

But so far, so good. Do you think that on the other side of all that, are we going to see drawdowns akin to the good old bears of the past? Or do you think that maybe things are going to be a little bit more subdued in the future? So from a behavioral economics standpoint, I think that humans will always be emotional. And I think markets will always ebb and flow based on fear and greed. So I do think we're, so to answer your question, will we have this bear market?

Almost certainly yes, but the scope, the size and scope of it depends on how much of a bull market we have. So if this bull market hockey sticks up at the end, like it has traditionally done and goes exponential, say it goes, Bitcoin goes to 500K or 750 or a million or who knows what it goes to. the higher it goes, the more it falls. The more leverage it uses and the more it goes vertical, the more I think it's going to be painful on the other side of that. So those are the kind of things I look for as a fund manager. Like I want to see excessive leverage use.

I want to see shorts getting liquidated day after day after day after day. And at some point, that's going to reverse. And we're going to go back to that leverage long liquidation cascade where it's just as painful or more painful on the way down. I'll try to be throwing out red flags at that point for anybody. But yeah, I'll be watching for that. So the higher it goes, the further it will fall. If we just continue to grind and only barely go up and it just keeps doing what it's been doing for the last year, I don't expect a huge fall from that because there's not a lot of leverage to unwind at that point. Say Fadine said that if we only got a 50 to 60 percent drawdown this time, he'd be doing cartwheels.

Maybe, yeah, we'll see what the bull market gives us. Yeah, yeah, fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, it does, it does feel like it's been quite a grind. I feel like Bitcoiners that came in this cycle, they, you know, it's the, the old man kind of back in my day, you know, we would see, you know, Bitcoin go 20x in a year. Yeah, I mean, it just hasn't been that pronounced. It's just funny now looking on a Twitter feed and we budge like a couple grand, but it's like 2% and it's just like you see the celebration and you're kind of I mean okay but let's go let's go

anyways uh I'll I'll kind of leave it if if Danny or Jesse have any other quick little things that they wanted to shoehorn in here before we find out why Danny is bullish then then feel free if you have anything else for Jeff that you wanted to ask or or anything like that otherwise I can to roll over. I mean, the real question I have around this bull market is where are retail. Like, they don't seem to have shown up yet. And I think, at least in previous cycles, that's probably been the reason for the kind of blow off tops and then the huge crashes. And it's hard to see those happening right now. The way that the market is structured and we have like sailor buying every week, regardless of price, like I don't see the huge crash yet. And I do

wonder if retail instead of coming into Bitcoin are just going into treasury companies at the moment. So I struggle to see us having like similar cycles to the past at the moment, but I'm probably with Jeff. Like as soon as retail shows up, things start getting nutty again, like that you can guarantee you're going to have a fall after that. That's my take. Yeah. So that's where I wonder if the other forces in the market now are just so much bigger that like retail could show up and it still wouldn't precipitate, you know, like a manic print on the chart. right, where you have that sort of spike with it. It's obvious that we're in some sort of euphoric mania.

And I think that's because Bitcoin as an asset has matured every cycle. And that has meant more like Wall Street capital coming into play and other products being built, you know, derivatives, options, these these instruments and ETFs now too, that allow large capital players, institutional capital to dampen out, you know, take out some of the volatility, take out some of the euphoria. And I think we may be living in just like a different structural era now for Bitcoin. And I agree with Jeff. Like if if things get hot here fast, like, you know, in the next month, then maybe we do see a sort of peak at the end of the year. year in the same way that we saw in 2017 and 2021. But if we continue to do what we've been doing for

the last two years, which is, you know, like a plus 25 percent and then consolidate, you know, go sideways for three to nine months and then another plus 25 percent, right? Like we have been digesting the rallies during these consolidation periods. And nothing has gotten overheated because of that. Right. And so I'm, you know, as we get closer to the end of the year, I'm starting to wander. I'm starting to think like it might, I kind of think the tipping point for me is around now of like, if things don't heat up real fast, then I kind of expect we're just in we're just going to keep doing this through the next year. You know, maybe that's half a year or maybe it's all the way through 2026, but it's possible that the, the mania of the past for Bitcoin. can't happen anymore because it's too big of an asset class and it's too embedded in in the

financial landscape and and those retail driven manias are now being you know dominated by institutional capital behaving in institutional ways yeah i do want to add there to um i see people in the chat retail is broke nobody has any cash to pile in like that's and that is a bit of a reality but there's also something that I've been noticing this cycle, and I've had a few people bring it up. But, you know, you've got on the retail side, people now that are so disillusioned, that are, you know, kind of that nihilistic,

I'm never going to own a home, I'm never going to retire, that kind of thing. And they think, you know, and Fiat society has conditioned them to think, in order to get ahead, the only way it's ever going to happen for me is I need to gamble. and previously Bitcoin has been seen as a gamble

but now with kind of how it's behaved and how you know the the sticker shock of a single Bitcoin it's actually being viewed by summon retail as too conservative

they think like if I'm ever going to get ahead I got to throw a thousand bucks at something and it's got a thousand X and then and then I'll have it made kind of thing And they probably in a lot of cases have no disposable income to be putting into this kind of stuff. Or if they do, it's small enough that the mindset of simply, you know, spending less than you earn and saving in a money nobody can print is it's just not present. They've never learned that habit.

And they don't believe that it could work because previously it never has. And in their lifetimes. And so I'm wondering if that dynamic shift, if it's, I mean, it's going to attract an entirely different subset of people. Like, you kind of, if this is the trajectory that we're on where it's just slow, gradual climb, it becomes a game of low time preference. And some people might not have it. They want the adrenaline rush. They want the dopamine hits of those spikes and those drops. So do you think it's a different game now?

That's something I completely agree with. I think it has got to the point where Bitcoin is just not volatile enough for a lot of people, which is a wild thing to say. And I do think, I know we're going to get into this a little bit later, but I do think this is why treasury companies are flying, because people see that as leverage. And to steal Hoddle's quote, like, people think leverage is a fast track to becoming an OG. And I think along the way, a lot of people are going to get burnt with that.

But it's just nuts to think that Bitcoin is now the boring one. And I think this is why you probably see like the crazy meme coin stuff happening, along with the treasury companies and all this stuff. It is just nihilism and a punt at something that can thousand X over just having hard money. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's, it's, um, Gen Z is hell merry. And it's overt this time too.

Like all the meme coin stuff was just like, yeah, there's, there's absolutely no value to this. It is overt gambling. And we're saying that like we're not saying it has a special use case. So get in and try and get out quick and try and, you know, build your retirement. way like that's basically get your payday and get out um so i mean in in one way this was this has been the most honest cycle of all yeah i i agree with that part and um you know it's it's been interesting watching alt coins right like the like i showed up in 2016 and i came through came in through alt coins uh eventually found my way to bitcoin there were a few alt coins before 2016 and you know

that was like light coin. It was going to be silver to Bitcoin's gold, right? And that was like a compelling narrative in the very early days of altcoins. And then you sort of disprove that. And then it became about, oh, world computer, Ethereum, right? Like it's going to do radical things. It hasn't found a use case that has really mattered. And you've sort of seen altcoins have to push themselves out to the margins as, you know, ideas kept being tried. and not having any traction or lasting use case. And then we've been left with just pure memes. That's the only thing that's left for all coins to try to do,

which is very honest because that's what all all coins really are is you're betting on a pure meme narrative and hoping that you catch the trend. And then with regard to Bitcoin tritian companies, Danny's right that, you know, I think, they have attracted some of the more speculative capital. But the big difference here versus prior cycles is, you know, the speculative capital is not chasing altcoins.

It's chasing, you know, the hot Bitcoin treasury company that's using that capital to buy Bitcoin. And it stays within the Bitcoin ecosystem and, you know, that version of digital value. And I think is constructive for Bitcoin on the whole. I do agree that there are, you know, there are a handful of Bitcoin treasury companies that are well run and doing it the right way and have traction and have reached a certain critical mass where I think they're sort of derrisked and are actually like phenomenal investments, especially when compared to traditional equities. But there are a lot of pretenders or, you know, like in the UK, there's like 25 quote unquote Bitcoin treasury companies and the majority of them don't own any Bitcoin still. So, you know, like that's a problem. And if you try to, you know, get in early on one of those, a lot of people have been burned up by that.

And a lot more people will be burned by trying to, you know, catch an early Bitcoin Treasury company. So I agree. And I also think there's, you know, real substance to the ones that are doing it well. Imagine getting rug pulled, except for there was no even, there wasn't even a rug to begin with like Bitcoin treasury company with no Bitcoin. interesting. Gentlemen, I'm going to, I want to see some of the treasury stuff for later on, but we are

going to do a rotation. Before we do, we're going to come back on the other side of things and find out why Danny is so bullish. And it's a reason that's actually kind of near and dear to my heart as well. You've just come back from an exotic place with a fantastic group of people there. We're going to find out about it in a minute, but we're going to give a quick little shout out to our sponsors before we do. So we'll be back in about a minute.

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your Bitcoin, borrow against it. You can head over to debify.com to check them out, or simply scan the QR code on the screen. All right, gentlemen, we are back. in and we're going to do a rotation. Danny, I'm going to toss it down your way. Same question everybody gets. Why are you bullish? Well, I was going to do some macro stuff, but there's no way you can possibly follow Jeff on that. So I kind of wanted to start by talking about one of the concerns I've had about Bitcoin for a little while, which came off the back of a conversation with Thomas from Pubkey. And he said, we're all going to be rich and depressed because the project failed. And that really stuck with me. And I think it kind of happens in one of two ways. It's either

sort of state co-option of Bitcoin or just pure apathy from Bitcoiners. And if Bitcoin's sort of end state is just a store of value that is all KYC on and off ramps and there's no real freedom money aspect to it, like I don't really know if that's winning. It's not winning to me. Like Bitcoin can be a million dollars a coin, but if it's not being used as actual freedom money, then it's just not that interesting to me. And there's a few sort of concerning things around that. Like, when you look at the number of people that hold self-custody Bitcoin, it's shockingly low. Like, it's very hard to get an actual figure on that, but it's probably sort of between maybe one and three million people globally. And so these are things that I've had concerns about

for a long time. And if you'd have asked me to put like a percentage on it that we actually lose all the freedom money aspects of Bitcoin before a trip I did recently, I might have said, like, 70, 80% chance. And so, like, what is Bitcoin winning? Like, I came into Bitcoin in 2016, 2017. Freedom money was the narrative. It wasn't all the financialization side of things. And that's always been super important to me personally.

And I know Bitcoin doesn't care about my feelings, but that is my feelings on this. But I just got back from a trip to Bali. I was there with the HRF crew. And some of the stories that people tell you on those trips is absolutely insane. So I was hanging out with Leopoldo Loe, who, for anyone that doesn't know, was the opposition in Venezuela, spent over a decade in prison, and he's obviously now free.

And like, it would be in his absolute right to just go and live his life and do things with his family. But he's still sort of fighting for Venezuela. And the only way he can do that is with Bitcoin. And so he's using Bitcoin. He can't have a bank account in Venezuela. He can't access the payment rails. Like, Bitcoin is his money of last resort. And so it kind of made me rethink this idea of how many people will use Bitcoin as freedom money and what is a big enough number for it to have actually won.

And I don't know like the exact number, but I do think if anyone, like if that number is not zero, I think that can be called Bitcoin winning. So the thing that I'm super bullish on is the idea of freedom fighters using Bitcoin not just because they can use Bitcoin, but because it is literally their only option. Like we need number go up. Number go up is great. I want to get rich just like the rest of you. But as long as freedom going up is also happening, then that is something I'm super bullish on. And hearing those kind of freedom fighter, grassroots movements using Bitcoin as actual

freedom money is the thing I'm insanely bullish on right now. I love that. And again, it's something that I find super important. And, you know, I've been working along. alongside the HRF for a few years now. And they do incredible work. And you're absolutely right. The stories that you hear of some of these people that have lived under tyrannical regimes.

And one of the first things that dictators do is they shut off your access to banks and your ability to transact because then you can't fund anything you're doing. And there's just, it's littered with examples of that. And I will say that to your bullish point, over the past four, four to five years of attending HRF events as a Bitcoiner and seeing Bitcoiners injected into this very much non-Bitcoin space to present this as a tool in one's tool belt to fight back against that type of oppression at, First, my experience was that it was met with extreme skepticism. And we would have these little workshop rooms. And more or less, all the bitcoins would just kind of propagate there. And you'd do a round of hands. You know, how many people are new to Bitcoin in the room?

Very few. A few hands would go up. It's mostly all Bitcoiners hanging out. Flash forward to this past year at the Oslo Freedom Forum. And we asked the same question. And it was, I'd say, 90% all political activists that have come around and realized, hey, this is actually incredibly useful for what I'm trying to do as a fundraising mechanism, as a way to get money into a country

where we've been banned from the banking system, all that kind of stuff. And furthermore, like the questions, when we started getting human rights defenders in the room in the workshop rooms, a lot of the questions were framed as gotchas, like, This is why it can't work, so I'm going to ask it so everybody can hear it. But as with most people's Bitcoin journey, you know, this can't possibly work. And you start asking questions trying to shoot it down and you realize that you can't. You're not finding, you know, the chinks in the armor that you thought would be there. And yeah, so it's been very, very rewarding watching this.

Now I'm myself and a girl named Ana Chekiewicz, who works for the Anti-Corruption Foundation. She was under Alexei Navalny, who opposed Vladimir Putin and unfortunately passed away in a prison, in a Russian prison. I mean, he was killed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was basically killed in a Russian prison. But, yeah, she worked for him since she was, I think, 18. But now it's myself and her hosting quarterly webinars, teaching human rights defenders, how to use Bitcoin for the first time. And we regularly have a couple hundred people, you know,

attending these webinars, which is amazing. So, Danny, you're absolutely on point. It's, it's one of the most bullish things that you can witness in Bitcoin, in my opinion, is seeing it used in that capacity because it really shows where the rubber meets the road. And, you know, us in the West, we're used to seeing it as a speculative thing or as a mechanism to save the fruits of our labor. But it's also much, much more than that.

And I'm super bullish on Bitcoin as actual money. And I think it makes you kind of ask the question, what is a Bitcoiner? Because these people aren't on Twitter shouting about Treasury companies or having the Nots core debate. They're just out in the field using Bitcoin in the way that, in my opinion, it was completely intended. So like, if it was for me, I would say they're the real Bitcoiners.

They're the people that are fighting oppressive regimes, dictatorship, using Bitcoin because it is their only money of choice. Like, their only money they can choose. It's insane. Like, it was really eye-opening. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's really cool to see it happening. Side note, not nearly as bad as what most of these people that we're talking about have gone through. But obviously, Canada got a little draconian a few years ago and shut down some bank accounts.

and you know myself jeff booth gregg fos bj a dictator and uh and nobody caribou out of ottawa um were involved in raising bitcoin for that and while it wasn't perfect it was the only digital donation mechanism that actually got through to the protesters um and my show and tell for the night A sec here. This isn't operational, but it's not been plugged in for some time. But this is the node in which the trucker protest funds came through. This was my lightning node at the time. And so I just have it as a keepsake up on my shelf as a little cool symbol of like,

hey, this stuff actually works under pressure, which is super cool. That's awesome. Hey, Ben, can I throw a question at you? Oh, sorry, Jesse. Okay, go for it. What percentage of Bitcoin usage do you think has to be true freedom money for this to succeed? Honestly, all that's needed is for people to be able to have their ends met without having to go through on and off ramps. So, like, really, that could be as localized or as large as you want, really.

So, you know, I'm at home. That's kind of a goal that I have. So we started something called the sat market. We hosted a couple times a year. But we just started with the bitcoins and said, okay, you know, we all know this is better money. We're all earning dollars and buying Bitcoin with it. Why don't we cut out one of those steps and have a market a couple times a year and then keep in contact in between markets so that we can actually get as much of the stuff that we need as possible with Bitcoin. So, you know, I've got a guy that. I get my beef from, eggs, chicken. I've got my barber accepts Bitcoin. I've got a personal trainer. There's a whole bunch of tradesmen. My kids like to shove stuff down the toilet, so I've got a plumber. But I've got all these different things, and I pay in Bitcoin. And so I'm eking towards that point where most of the stuff that I really need,

I can get not just jumping through hoops and middlemen to obtain a purchase, but directly from the source with actual Bitcoin. In a large metropolitan city, like Calgary, where I live is 1.3, 1.4 million people. So it's a different ballgame than like Elzante walked down the street and Orange Pill all the merchants. It's like everybody's spread out. So you can't really as easily play the merchant game, but you can create a community. So an answer to your question, I think that it doesn't have, you know, I'd like it to be a lot. But I don't think it has to be a lot to be successful.

I think that you can have a society within a society that is able to thrive as everyone else gets taken for a ride. I think it's possible. I hope that's a good answer. I mean, this is my show now, Ben. Yeah. Jesse, you were going to say something as well. Yeah. It's super interesting.

I guess I sort of represent the other, not the other side of it, but the other belief in the, in the vector of Bitcoin as a Trojan horse, that, you know, that number go up is the best thing to try to advance Bitcoin as freedom go up in the sense that like if we can capture a piece of everybody's portfolio, then, you know, everyone's a Bitcoin advocate. and everyone, you know, and Bitcoin has some staying power or, you know, gets the critical mass that we're already probably at, almost certainly, to be money in the digital age. And if you can get to that, like, level of saturation, then you can cement those freedoms. And I do, it does sort of hinge on, like, I do believe that so that those, you know, freedom money is inherent in the protocol and the gatekeepers won't be able to preclude people from transacting in Bitcoin. And I don't know if that's the case. But my assumption is that that that will be the case. And then it's about trying to induce people to adopt Bitcoin through

a number go up greed in order to ensure freedom money. What I was pointing at here is like, you know, My little bit of show and tell as well. This painting by Alex Schaefer is one of his Burning Bank series. And this is Wells Fargo, a Wells Fargo branch on fire because I hate Wells Fargo because I received a wire from Cracken in 2018 and they terminated my account and then drilled my lockbox without telling me. And at the time, I was keeping sensitive codes there. And, you know, so, you know, Bitcoiners being targeted, persecuted and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, the most important thing that, that Bitcoin can provide, I just, I just, I just happen to be, you know, I, I think the way to, to cement it societally is, through inducing greed and getting people to adopt it because of,

number go up. I think the, like the Trojan horse analogy, I think will probably be right. But this is why I think apathy is like the scariest thing in Bitcoin right now. Like as everyone gets rich, we need to continue to care because there's probably an alternate reality where the Trojan horse went into Troy and actually just got burnt down before they had the big party and everyone got drunk. And I think like as Bitcoin is doing what Ben is doing is perfect. Like we need people paying in Bitcoin using Bitcoin because if it does just become a completely K-YC thing where you can only interact with it through like verified on and off ramps. That's a terrifying scenario. So I think the Trojan Halls thing will be correct, but I do

believe that Bitcoin has need to like remain vigil while this is all happening. Yeah. Yeah, I would, I would echo that. You know, it's, yeah, Bitcoin as a back end to a financial system is, is positive in that it's a lot harder to BS. Like, I mean, that this is why. This is why, why we've seen so many exchanges collapse in the past because you can you can't fake it for a long time when the the money is actually based upon something and people come a calling for their final settlement, which is possible in an expedient manner. So it's really tricky to get around that. And so, you know, what do we see every single cycle? You know, Mount Gawks, while we've matured beyond that. Oh, Quadriga. Well, we've matured beyond that. Oh, FTX. And so it's

just cascading larger and larger rug pulls and catastrophes because not because there's something wrong with Bitcoin as is often presented in the media. It's because Bitcoin points out BS so efficiently that it's hard to pretend like you've got the money when you don't. And I think that's a great thing. But I also agree. What freedom do we gain? if we can't also use it as cash or use it permissionlessly. I think that that needs to be a mainstay. And I think now is the time to really start exploring it. I think it was a little, we were ahead of our time when it got pushed,

2014, 15, 16. I mean, we didn't even have lightning yet. And it was inevitable that on-chain fees would rise over time. And the pain point that we have is we're all witness. witnessing the infrastructure for a global money be built layer by layer. And if you entered early enough, you started on the base layer and then you had to go reteach everybody. Oh, actually, I know I told you about this wallet, but now you've got to jump to lightning.

And like, we're going to see more of that. Like, well, now you know about lightning and channels and all that. But actually, what you're going to be using is some sort of like, federated e-cash or whatever. So we have the pain of not only learning once, but many, many times as the main infrastructure that we use is constantly changing.

And again, as somebody that makes tutorials on this stuff, the first question that I got asked when I started the channel is, aren't you going to run out of stuff to teach? And the answer is the exact opposite. The list of stuff I would like to cover, but we'll never have time to,

is immense. And so, yeah, I mean, it's growing. I hope people do use it as money, though. Jeff, I do want to see if you have any takes in and around Danny, H.R.F, all of the stuff that we're talking right now. Shoot, I have so many things I'd like to say. I'll try to keep it concise. First, Danny, I totally agree with you.

And I think, like, the battle remains for the soul of Bitcoin, right? We can't lose it. And it's like you actually, like you, too, Jesse, your story. I think I came around about the same time as you in 2016 and I was just a crypto DGN. goofball. I sold all of my Bitcoin for a huge portfolio, a diversified portfolio of crypto. You know, light coin, man, I was convinced it was the gold or the silver to Bitcoin's gold, all that kind of nonsense. So anyways, it wasn't actually until 2020, where I finally felt like I got my head around Bitcoin and started teaching about it and like the purpose of it.

2021, I think, was where I first heard Gladstein give an incredible speech. I think at the Bitcoin conference. I think that was 2021. one really moved me. And that was where I turned into a freedom technology. Like this is so much more about making money. Right. And so that's where I kind of started getting passionate about talking about it and talking about the separation of money and state. And, you know, I think about this kind of stuff a lot while I sit here in my office about how fiat currency is the ultimate wealth extracting unit. It's the best way for governments to steal purchasing power that's ever been created. Because it's so sinister and it does it behind the scenes and almost nobody knows that it's happening right through

inflation and and bitcoin is this monster that's been created that literally just sucks the purchasing power back out of fiat and into the bitcoin network and when it comes there it stays there which is awesome and so that's part of what like the bitcoin treasury companies i have very mixed feelings about them one is i think that they're inevitable two is i think they're actually doing a good job at at least initially the first ones are of harvesting Wall Street, harvesting the bond market, harvesting the equities market, pulling that purchasing power out of Wall Street and into the Bitcoin network. And that's good for humanity in general. I'm nervous that during the next bear market and there will be a bear market, that lots of these companies are going to give back a lot of

that purchasing power to Wall Street. And they're going to, you know, and the Bitcoin that they've accumulated and the shareholders who think they have, you know, Bitcoin proxies in their pocket, they're going to lose all of that Bitcoin. So I'll be watching closely to see who does not do a good job of managing their Bitcoin treasuries. But that remains to be seen, obviously. In general, I think it's inevitable and a good thing. What else did I want to say? Just I think that is the point of Bitcoin, though, Danny. And I think that's what we all need to continue to champion is the building of this totally alternate monetary and financial network. And it's right now we're in this weird phase where it's a hybrid phase where they're inextricably linked together. But at some point,

they're going to come apart. And Bitcoin needs to be a standalone money that you can use. Right. And we already know that it's a store of value. I think the medium of exchange phase comes probably next decade in earnest. So I've talked about this before. But I think the 2010s was like the collectible phase. The 2020s right now is the store of value phase. where the world is accepting Bitcoin, that everybody calls it digital gold, right? The next 2030s are probably going to be the medium of exchange phase. And that's where governments are going to stop taxing these little transactions and, you know, all these little things that make it difficult to use as just currency.

I think that will change. And then I think by about the 2040s, we'll be ready for the world's unit of account will actually be Bitcoin. But that's, you know, we're talking 15 to 25 years from now. So I'm excited about the progress. I think it's all basically inevitable. I think it's going to be pretty ugly and tumultuous. in the meantime to see what's going on and to watch it all go through. And one last thing, Jesse, you said you hate Wells Fargo.

I also hate Wells Fargo. But not even for those reasons. When my kids were under 10, I have three kids when they were under 10. Wells Fargo, we used to have accounts for that. And I would encourage my kids if they ever got like birthday money from grandma, put it in the bank, you know, you want to save. This is before like Bitcoin and all that kind of stuff. Before I knew about it.

And Wells Fargo, they would send, they would charge my kids like quarterly fees like five bucks. You know, my kids only have like, what, $13 in their account. They're like, $5 quarterly fee for inactivity. And I would call Wells Fargo every quarter of them, like, what are you doing? Like these are kids accounts. Like, you know, I'm trying to teach my kids to save their money. And you keep charging them these crazy fees. And they're like, oh, we're sorry.

And we'll give you it back. But literally every quarter after quarter after quarter, they did that. And then they did some other stuff too. But that was enough that I bailed on Wells Fargo. and use them for about 15 years. So I'm with you. That painting is awesome. I should get one for my office.

That could be a valuable lesson in and of itself. Well, you had $13, but the bank took five. It would grow up. They would be purchasing that painting, I think. Exactly. Well, Jesse, I do want to get to you in your topic. We've been alluding to it through the episode. So we're going to be touching on your take.

on Bitcoin Treasury companies, all of that. I'm sure you're going to get grilled by Jeff and Danny and myself here. I've got questions as well. I'm curious to hear all your takes and what you're so bullish about. We're going to take a quick little break one last time. If you're watching the show live, please do tap that like button. It helps a ton. But we'll be back in just a moment to hear why Jesse Myers is so damn bullish.

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You can head to coin kite.com and use code BTC sessions for discounts or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away. All right. We are back in and, uh, Jesse, my body is ready. You're going to give you the same question. Why are you bullish? Fill us in. Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm first of all, I'm bullish for the reasons these gentlemen are

bullish. But I guess what I am uniquely bullish about, especially on this panel, it seems, is Bitcoin Treasury companies. I think that, you know, my thesis, having dug into, you know, what strategy is doing and what Metaplanet has succeeded in doing in Japan. is that these entities are going to be the preferred vehicles through which Tradfai capital is going to flow into Bitcoin. And that's the maturation of Bitcoin as an asset.

And these companies are, you know, entrepreneurially creating the products to attract capital into Bitcoin. And, you know, I think the best example of this is what strategy has, has done over the last year, which is creating these preferred equity instruments, which are really designed to appeal to fixed income capital. We talked earlier about if you're holding a 10-year T-bill, you're getting four and a half, five percent. And really any bondholder, risk adjusted is getting mid-single-digit returns. And then here comes strategy that's offering eight to 10 percent a year. You know, it wrapped up in a, a fact, a

effectively a fixed income product offering. And it just happens to be powered by Bitcoin. And that's because Sailor knows, Sailor believes that Bitcoin will continue to grow at a kegir of 30 to 50% a year. And he's happy to pay 10% a year in order to get more capital to buy Bitcoin, knowing it's going to grow way faster than that obligation. And so that little anecdote, that that's a microcosm of what's going on with Bitcoin treasury companies. They are going out into each capital market in the world, building their balance sheets, and then coming up with ways to attract more capital.

I think the end state for, you know, in every capital market will be a leading Bitcoin treasury company with a large enough balance sheet to justify creating preferred equities and then really targeting the fixed income market. particular strategy is now also targeting the money market with their stretch product offering 9% a year, you know, which no money market fund can match. And again, it's powered by Bitcoin. So that's why no Fiat instrument can match it. And strategy will inevitably win market share over time in the money market landscape because of this advantage. And the net of that is that, you know, strategy is hoovering up all that capital, but it's putting it into Bitcoin. And yeah, it sits on the balance sheet of a centralized entity. But I think that's the economic reality of how Bitcoin is going to help accelerate the osmotic flow of capital from Tradfi analog store value buckets on that global asset landscape chart and into Bitcoin.

So Bitcoin treasure companies are effectively capital pumps that are sticking little straws into the, the pools of capital in these analog buckets and, and, you know, trying to siphon that away, trying to pump that capital out of those buckets and into Bitcoin through these entities. And Ben, if you want to pull up that chart there of when I put together a thread three months ago, really a presentation about what I think, could be the scale of what's going on here. And this will make diehard Bitcoiners uncomfortable. But I think it's the possible reality of what we're looking at here that right now, Bitcoin Treasury companies own a very small percentage of total Bitcoin. But if the dynamics that I

described are true and play out over the next 10 to 20 years, we could be looking at a future 20 years from now where Bitcoin treasury companies own as much as half of all the Bitcoin in the world, specifically because they have been the conduits through which lots of fixed income capital from the bond market has flowed into Bitcoin. And Bitcoin treasury companies have been the biggest bidders for Bitcoin. You know, like who is going to be bidding for Bitcoin when Bitcoin's $5 million per coin? I think the biggest bidder in the world, is going to be strategy because they just unlock the next trillion dollars of fixed income capital and they're going to indiscriminately be buying Bitcoin with that capital. I don't know how big,

you know, this sector will end up being, but I think it could end up being half of all Bitcoin. And if that's true and if Bitcoin goes to $13 million per coin as Sailor thinks 20 years from now, then Bitcoin treasure companies could hold $140 trillion worth of Bitcoin. And I think strategy would be half of that, which would mean they would hold $70 trillion of Bitcoin and that would make them the most valuable company in the history of the world by a huge margin. And yeah, this is problematic in many ways for like the purest cypherpong version of Bitcoin. But I also think it's like an economic reality of this is how Bitcoin grows up and eats traditional finance.

This is very interesting. I have many. I'm kind of trying to follow down the line to a logical conclusion here as to where this ends. Right. So my first line of thinking is how long do you think that this model, remains compelling to people, right? Like how many treasury companies can exist and still have the ability

to actually have people lend the money to accumulate Bitcoin? And, you know, does it need to? Because when I'm thinking of just kind of my layman look at the world, for me as an individual, I think, okay, well, it makes sense if I earn money that I spend less than I earn and I save in Bitcoin, that makes a whole lot of sense to me. So it then makes sense to me that inevitably people who own companies that understand Bitcoin would say, geez, we've got,

you know, we're actually a company that earns money. We're not just, you know, we're not just bleeding money all the time. It makes sense for us to hold our treasury in Bitcoin. Where I get a little lost is when a company becomes just straight treasury, the only thing you do is obtain debt to accumulate Bitcoin. And that works as long as dollars will be lent for you to buy the Bitcoin. And Sailor actually famously has said that he believes that the dollar and Bitcoin can live together in harmony. I feel like that tune has kind of changed over time, but he posits that Bitcoin and the dollar will coexist into the future. But in perpetuity lending dollars to buy Bitcoin, at some point I have to imagine that this happens. at such a pace that who's going to take the dollars at that point?

And if that happens, I mean, I feel like the people that did it first are going to be great. But like if you're a company, like you have to have, do you not have to have like an underlying business that accumulates money through your actual business as well? Anyways, it's kind of a mess there. But Jesse, give me some thoughts. Yeah, there's a lot there. So I think first and foremost, like most businesses will only ever use Bitcoin as a treasury asset.

I think right now there's there's an opportunity for, you know, Bitcoin treasury companies who are focused on delivering Bitcoin yield. And that's kind of in my view, the definition of a Bitcoin treasury company. There's an opportunity for them to establish themselves in every capital market in world. In the service, the function that they provide, the way that they, you know, add value to the world, if you can get behind this, right, you may disagree, but they add value by helping to facilitate the flow of capital from, you know, the disequilibrium state that we're in, of, you know, Bitcoin being a tiny little bucket and bonds and equities being giant. You know, in, in equity market,

you're paying 20, 30, 40 PE ratios and in fixed income, you're losing money every year by holding bonds if you account for the true inflation rate. And Bitcoin treasure companies are helping to facilitate the flow of capital to restore equilibrium at a faster rate. And so in my view, there's an opportunity, you know, this is sustainable until Bitcoin fully monetizes, right? Like until it climbs the S curve to its end state of what it will be in the global asset landscape. And I think that's somewhere between 20. My conservative estimates, 20% of global asset value. Saylor has used that same framework of mine and said 50%. So I think it's probably somewhere in between there. And right now we're 0.2% of global asset value.

So, you know, Bitcoin is monetizing. We're in this, I think Jeff nailed it. That's a really cool framework, actually, by the way, Jeff, of sort of decades of and how they line up with the path dependence of monetary properties of collectibles and to store a value and then medium exchange and then unit of account. I love that. That's probably roughly right. I like it. And yeah, we're in that, I think we're entering this exciting part of the S curve where Bitcoin

monetizes rapidly. And that means adds value as a store of value asset that everybody starts to recognize as, you know, digital capital for the digital age. and Bitcoin treasury companies that are in the business of fiat arbitrage. So it's not actually like taking on leverage or taking on debt specifically, but it's about finding ways to deliver Bitcoin yield, meaning growing Bitcoin per share through using capital market tools. And for smart, so for the smarter web company I'm a part of in the UK,

we hope to be and think we're on the right path to be that leader in the UK and hope to grow our balance sheet to a place where we can become the micro strategy of the UK and offer these preferred equity instruments and tap into the fixed income market and hoover up capital there to buy Bitcoin and help facilitate the flow of capital to Bitcoin. And yeah, so I think that's what's going on. I think that's the economic reality. I think it's sustainable so long as Bitcoin is monetizing. And then what are these businesses ultimately? The core competency of a well-run Bitcoin treasure company is to find ways to increase Bitcoin per share over time.

So that kind of ends up in like a Bitcoin bank. At the end of that S-curve, when it has plateaued, you find ways to lend Bitcoin in ways where you receive a greater return. and then you're a Bitcoin bank. And that's where strategies, like you can see where strategy is going there. And I think that, you know, that story will play out in every capital market in the world. Because there has to be like a like a homegrown hero, a champion in that capital market that, you know, lives within the regulatory framework of that capital market and, and is, you know, well positioned to tap into, you know, institutional capital there.

and the fixed income market there. So, yeah, and then again, like, most companies will not do this. And there's not room for a ton of companies focusing on Bitcoin yield. I think it's winner-take-most in every capital market in the world. Strategy is it in the U.S. And then there's going to be some other companies that try and fail. There's going to be some companies that try and achieve a degree of success, I think. you know, any company that's trying to add Bitcoin to its balance sheet for the benefit of its shareholders at this point in time is doing, in my opinion, the best thing they can possibly be doing for shareholders.

Like, you're accumulating the asset that, you know, that we all think is the best asset in the world. Every company should be doing that too. If you're not doing that, you're doing a disservice to your shareholders. But, yeah, then ultimately, I think there's kind of like a winner take most in every capital market. That'll be the go-to for how you take risk with how you grow your Bitcoin ownership. And there's a place for that, in my view, in every portfolio. Maybe it's 0%. Maybe it's 20% or even 50%. It shouldn't be 100%.

People should have cold storage Bitcoin in my view. But there's a, and Sailor got me on this one. This comes from him. But there's a place for risk capital on a Bitcoin standard. and in Bitcoin treasuring companies are the best way, in my view, to get that exposure. I see Danny and Jeff tromping at the bit here. I'm sure you guys have questions. So whoever wants to go first and questions, comments on what Jesse's been saying here.

Well, Jeff will be smarter than me, so I'll go first. But I've got a ton of questions and not many answers. So let me throw some stuff at you. one of the things is like how long does this business model of sort of selling common stock to buy Bitcoin remain interesting. And because I think Saylor really changed the game of the preferreds. And when I talk about treasury companies, I think what strategy are doing is completely separate to what most of these other companies are doing. Like they are innovating at this point. They're by far the biggest.

And I'm not bullish in the sense that I don't own any strategy, but I think they're around for a long time. But what I'm concerned about is like the business model of these other companies, I don't know how sustainable that is. I don't know if the game is already over of just selling common stock to buy Bitcoin. And then the other thing that I'm skeptical on is the idea of they're needing to be one of these in every jurisdiction. Because I understand that places like Japan and China, they'll have capital controls, money can't move out the country very easily. But I'm from the UK, live in Australia. And if I want to expose to any of these things, I can just go and buy strategy.

And so I don't necessarily understand the dynamic of these capital markets needing their own version of strategy. Why would that, why would someone go out and buy a kind of shitty version of strategy just because it has an Australian flag on it? I guess would be like, that's some of my questions. I've got plenty more. So I'll answer that last one first. And then you'll have to remind me the first one by the time I get through that. So there are some structural reasons why lots of capital in any particular capital market can't access. foreign stocks. A lot of institutional capital has mandates that they have to be invested in domestic equities. And that's true in the in the fixed income market as well.

And so, you know, that also, you know, as you're familiar with in the UK, to date, the FCA has not allowed retirement account capital to have access to Bitcoin. And so your options are you can jump through some hoops to get, you know, probably not that hard, but to get access to strategy or I guess to Metaplanet. But if it's, you know, a UK listed company, it's slightly easier to get access to, to get access. to that with your retirement account capital. So there are, so those are some reasons, you know, I think being embedded in the regulatory framework of a jurisdiction makes it easier to have conversations with institutional allocators and say like, you know, we're under,

you know, we're regulated by the FCA as are you. You have mandates to, to invest only in UK companies. This is a good fit, right? And so there's, There's some reasons there why there's a position for, you know, in every capital market in the world. And, you know, take Saylor's words here. You know, he's talked about how they looked into trying to set up shop in Japan and, and it, you know, with some, I guess, subsidiary. And it proved to, I guess evidently, was not worth doing. So, you know, Metaplan had the opportunity to get to scale. before strategy was ever able to enter.

And Saylor welcomes that too, because it's a healthier ecosystem if strategy isn't like the one and only Bitcoin treasury company. And then to your point about just issuing equity, my mental model of how it works for any Bitcoin treasury companies, you have to go through life cycle stages, right? Like you have to get to scale, you have to get to, a scale where you can have an ATM. So that's kind of the first step. The first step is to do private placement, you know, equity raises and grow an investor base. And so that your stock starts

to, you know, have more trading volume, more liquidity. And then you can get to a scale where you can start an ATM, which is what Metaplanet has, you know, relied on for the last year to grow. And it's been their main fuel source. And that's issuing equity into the market, you know, every day or, you know, every week. And that's, again, a different form of equity issuance. But that's what it takes to grow your balance sheet to a point where you have the creditworthiness that makes it possible to launch preferred equities and which are more targeted on the fixed income market. So you kind of have to transition your fuel source from speculations. and then people who are seeking value in equities.

That's, I think, one of the things that's misunderstood about Bitcoin and Treasury companies is you can buy a 20, 30, 40, P.E ratio company. But and, you know, the implication there is like you're paying today for, you know, you're paying a price of 30 years worth of earnings for that stock. But Bitcoin Treasury companies deliver value in a market. my view in a different way, not through the income statement, but through expanding the balance sheet, through increasing Bitcoin per share on the balance sheet. And when you run the numbers on that, when we put out a report about this over the summer with a new metric called P-Bid, if you run the

numbers on how quickly a Bitcoin Treasury company has been able to deliver Bitcoin yield and then compare that against their MNAV, the premium that they trade at versus the Bitcoin on their balance sheet, you know, strategy is delivering value. So like the equivalent PE ratio for them is like 1.5. And for Metaplanet right now, it's like a quarter of a year. And for SmarterWeb, it's a quarter of a year. And so if you expect a continuation of that kind of performance in the same way that you expect a continuation of earnings for traditional equity, then these are the most undervalued equities in the world, a well-run Bitcoin Treasury company. And I do make that distinction of like, you need to have a track record of delivering Bitcoin

per share increases. And there's a lot of pretenders who don't own any Bitcoin who wanted the price pop and are in it for the wrong reasons. And all those things are true. But, you know, among the well-run Bitcoin Treasury companies, they're delivering shareholder value through this different approach. But like at the end of the day, like, that's what a company, wants to do is to have their retained earnings go up through the operations year over year over year. And Bitcoin treasure companies are instead using Fiat arbitrage, using capital market tools to directly inject Bitcoin into their balance sheet at an incredible rate because of the opportunity is so big right now. Because fiat buckets are so big and Bitcoin is still so tiny,

that these things are delivering real value at an incredible speed. And anyway, so that's all to say that for the first couple life cycle stages, the fuel source needs to be issuing equity and delivering Bitcoin per share increases through those efforts so that you can grow to a stage. where you can focus on tapping into a fixed income market as your primary fuel source. I want to allow Jeff to tap in as well, whether it's continuation of what's being said here or if you have your own line of questioning that you had as well. I know, Danny, you had others, but I want to give Jeff a crack at it too. Yeah, holy smokes. I got lots of things I'd love to

talk to Jesse about. But so anyways, first of all, you hit on this, Jesse. This is the trade of the decade, right? I've been saying this for a while, too, and I know people talk about this, the speculative attack or, you know, I like to say speculative arbitrage, if you can buy or excuse me, if you can sell or short or borrow something that's depreciating and buy something that's appreciating, mathematically it's just going to work out. And the bigger that yawning gap, as you see with the dollar and with Bitcoin, the more profitable that's going to be over time. So it's a great strategy in general. I, too, am skeptical that the additional, you know, U.S.-based Bitcoin treasury companies will have the same kind of impact or returns and results

that micro strategy or strategy has had. And a lot of that remains to be seen. Danny had talked about like, or I think, or Ben, one of you guys, or both you guys were saying, like, how long will companies be able to sell common stock, sell shares to buy Bitcoin? And I would say, you know, as a fun matter, this is very common in Wall Street. very, it's a very traditional thing to do for any company, even in the Fiat land. If your shares are overpriced, they'll issue a bunch of shares at that higher price. They'll take that cash, you know, deposit the inflow and use it for whatever. They'll put it on their balance sheet. They'll buy treasuries, whatever. And so obviously for any company, I think this will just be a standard tool

once the novelty of this wears off going forward because every company over the next 10 to 15 years will become a Bitcoin treasury company. Meaning it's clearly the best asset. It's clear that the best way for companies to accrue purchasing power over time, probably at a rate higher than an ROI higher than their other investments they would make as a company. There's not many business lines that can keep up with a Kager of 30 to 50 percent. So I think it will be kind of standard for most companies just to be like, hey, we're overpriced right now for whatever reason we're the meme stock of the day. Let's issue some more shares. Let's take that cash injection. Let's buy some Bitcoin with it and put on our balance sheet. That's actually a very intelligent move to make.

And I think more companies are going to be doing that. I agree with you, Ben, that I think we're in this period. Oh, sorry, Jesse. You got something? Yeah, I was just going to say sort of to, to Danny's point and to your point here, like, how long does this last? I do think that, you know, my mental model is that like this is an industry that's emerging right now.

And that 18 months from now, like, there's going to be a meta planet in every meaningful capital market in the world. And so, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a rush to establish that leadership position to be that met, the meta planet in your capital market. And, and then, you know, from there, these entities grow into sort of strategy like role in their capital markets. But basically, I don't think that, I don't think this is forever. I think this is a very much, it's happening right now now that Metaplanet has proved that it's possible. And two years from now, it'll be in hindsight.

Right. And I do agree, by the way, like this is the Bitcoin proxy that for some people, it's the only way they can get Bitcoin exposure is through these companies. It was sort of like how it was for Bitcoin miners in the last cycle, where if people wanted any kind of Bitcoin exposure, they could buy miners and that was, or they had to buy GBT, which was terrible. Hey, so two other quick things. I know we're running out of time. You mentioned Jesse, too, about how, and I agree, it's really fun to watch Sailor build

out the Bitcoin yield curve, right? So I have two things about that. One, and they're totally unrelated. The first is these new Treasury companies that are coming on board. If they issue preferreds, do you think they're going to, the market will accept anything close to the rates that Sailor is paying? So Sailor is paying, what, 9, 10% or so on his preferreds right now? if a company X, which is the seventh company in the U.S. to be a Bitcoin treasury company, if they want to try this strategy, I'm very skeptical that they'll find enough buyers to make it worth their while. Do you have an opinion on that?

Yeah, I think that's right. I think, you know, these things are expensive to launch. You're basically doing an IPO for each of them. And there's a lot of legal fees involved in all that too. And you need to be credit worthy enough for, to make sense to the party on the other side saying, yeah, I'll give you my dollars and I expect that I will actually collect 10% a year from you indefinitely because you're going to be a going concern, you know, five plus years from now, right? And I don't think that that's possible to establish that kind of credibility and that creditworthiness if you don't have 20,000 plus Bitcoin on the balance sheet. And so that's the real test is like can a Bitcoin Treasury company grow to that balance sheet and have that sort of established creditworthiness. And if you're, you know, if you manage to do that in the U.S., where there already is

strategy and they're offering, you know, 8 to 10%, you're going to have to offer 12, 14%. And then that makes it a lot less attractive to you as a business. So there's a lot more risk inherent. Like, you know, Bitcoin doesn't always grow at 30 to 50% a year. Can you withstand the downturns and doesn't make sense for, investors to place their capital with you and and does it make sense for you know investors in the business to have confidence in what in your ability to execute with that disparity to what you know competitive disadvantage to what strategy is able to offer i have a question that i wanted to tag in here

as well so jesse you're talking about you know bitcoin per bitcoin per share and that kind of being the value proposition and you're investing because you believe that the company will be able to accumulate more Bitcoin. Now, we've seen differing views on the idea of proof of reserves. And I'm curious your take on this and kind of my reasoning being, obviously when Sailor was talking about it, he mentioned. security risk in and around that. That didn't land well with me.

I kind of didn't buy that as a reason at all. Maybe there's something that I was overlooking there. But I mean, obviously, like, you share a Bitcoin address. You can't work backwards and compromise the key or multi-sig or whatever. But I'm curious if part of it may come from if Bitcoin per share is playing into it. and those numbers get reported, what, quarterly? Is that correct? Is that typically what happens?

I don't know. Bitcoin per share? I mean, kind of daily, really. Or sometimes, yeah, maybe it's every month. Is it possible that a reason for not having a proof of reserves and easily auditable addresses could be, if it needs to move for some reason, maybe it might spook the market, or I know there's possibly ways in which companies could retain in general the same exposure to Bitcoin per share that

they may be doing in the back end, some trickery. Or is there a worry of, you know, if for some reason, especially on maybe some of the smaller treasury companies, if there's a reason for some, you know, something happens where they do need to unload some Bitcoin even in a short term. Would that spook customers and get them to sell shares and stuff like that? Do you think that that maybe plays into an unlikelyhood of some companies to do proof of reserves? What's your take on the whole proof of reserves thing? Yeah, it is a super interesting topic. I think that over time, proof of reserves will sort of become a standard.

I think that right now Bitcoin Treasury companies are, for the most part, like focused on establishing themselves. And I think, you know, I'm sympathetic to Saylor's point of view here. Really what he's saying is like, we already do an audit and an audit is the gold standard because it includes proof of liabilities. And, you know, proof of reserves without proof of liabilities doesn't really help you much. Of course, there's the Bitcoin or take of like, well, it's like, then you know that there's no funny business going on. But the audit firm, like, they're staking their reputation, their, their credentials on there's no funny business going on when they attest to something.

I do think, you know, basically I think it comes back to like a Bitcoin treasury company doesn't know if there are risks and needs to be very careful to not take on risks. without knowing about them in advance. So I think there's sort of like a hesitance to go in that direction. But meta planets has established that as part of their identity. And I think as the sector matures, there'll be an increasing pressure to go in that direction. And I think that would be a great thing if best practices

in how you do proof of results, reserves is layered into that. But for the time being, the assurances of a public company with a, with a, you know, big four audit should be sufficient for any investor and the bigger focus. You know, like if we were to do proof of reserves, it would take a lot of time to, you know, test out all the risks. And it would take our eye off of the ball in terms of the thing that matters most, which is how do you find the next slice of capital to deliver Bitcoin yield to shareholders? I will toss it to.

I know, Danny, I think you might have one last thing to toss in here. So I'll throw it over to you. I mean, I've got a thousand things I could ask. But one of the ways I've been- We're just going to have to do another podcast. Yeah, I think we will. Like, one of the ways I've been looking at this is, like, who wins? And I agree with you in the sense that I think this is going to be a,

like a winners take most market. I think there'll be multiple. But I see like a pretty bearish case for any of the smaller treasury companies in the sense that like you're always fighting the gravity to like a 1XMNAV and below. And do you think there's like a scenario here where if you're, if these smaller treasury companies are trading below 1XMNAV, that they're kind of stuck in a doom loop in the sense that the only way out of that is then selling Bitcoin trying to get the share price back above 1XMNAV.

But then what does that actually do to the business? model and just for like context if I go fully left curve people buying bitcoin's cool I like it and this is always going to happen but these are just the questions I have around the whole treasury company market yeah I think you're right I think um we don't talk enough about like buyer beware for an unproven Bitcoin treasury company um if you do get if you end up invested in a company whose flywheel stops or you know never get started they should trade under a 1xmnav because they have costs to operate and if they're not a profitable business you know or if they like you know added infrastructure to to you know make themselves a

bitcoin treasury company and then they're not you know able to do that that that's drag you know the operating costs of the business or drag they're stuck it you should end up under 1xm nav and there's going to be a lot of stories like that. As a Bitcoin treasure company, you have to continue to deliver. Otherwise, you run the risk of the flywheel stopping and you end up in that scenario where you're dead in the water and it gets ugly. And so I think that's going to happen for most Bitcoin treasury companies. Like, as I've said in the UK, like most Bitcoin treasury companies never bought Bitcoin They just said they were going to and they intended to and they hoped for the price pop and for things to happen so that so that they could. And then the market changed on them and they never got the critical mass they needed in terms of investors lined up or whatever.

Right. And now they're kind of dead in the water, I would say, because if you don't get off the ground, you're never going to get off the ground because you don't deserve to get off the ground. Right. You have to execute in order to inspire confidence in your investors. that you're going to continue executing. Well, this has been a great gentleman. I've really enjoyed this. This has been quite a good rip here.

I appreciate you guys getting bullish with me on a Wednesday. I know it was a bit of a somber start to the show. And again, I do want to say, again, to Charlie Kirk's family. Condolences, it's really unfortunate. But I'm glad that we could at least get together and have a good chat regardless. And to everybody watching, if you enjoyed, please follow all these guys. Their info is down below so you can check out what they're up to and where they're showing up. Also, make sure you drop a like on the video if you enjoyed the convo.

And gentlemen, thank you guys so much. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, everybody that's watching, you know, we come on here. We talk about the latest news and fun, bullish things. But it's so important that you go beyond that. actually act and take self-custody and learn the tools. And so at the end of every episode, I play a little clip encouraging you guys to check out a learn page that I set up with basic tutorials on some of the most important skills that you can learn. I encourage you, please do go through, check it out, follow along, and just learn how to get a wallet, how to use hardware.

Some basics like that, you will be leaps and bounds above your average Bitcoin or if you can go ahead and do that. So with that, gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. Have a wonderful evening. And yeah, we'll see you guys soon. Cheers. Thanks, Ben. Thank you, Ben. Hey, you. Yes, you watching the Bitcoin price movements and the latest exciting news. It's awesome to stay informed, but the real power of Bitcoin comes from taking control. Don't just watch. Take action. Head over to btccessions.ca.ca.com. free step-by-step tutorials that guide you through every major skill you need to know, plus full video playlist for deeper dives on any topic you like. And if you're ready for

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