BTC Sessions - NEW REPORT Reveals Best Bitcoin + Gold Allocation – 2026 Survival Strategy

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

A new financial report just dropped — and it could be the key to surviving 2026.Bitwise just broke down the ideal allocation between Bitcoin and Gold to protect your wealth against inflation, currency risk, and global uncertainty.📉 As the system teeters and central banks get desperate, knowing how much Bitcoin vs. gold you should hold might be the most important move you make.👉 Join BTC Sessions as we break down this game-changing report and what it means for your 2026 investment strategy.FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS:https://x.com/SNewmanPodcasthttps://x.com/sebbunneyhttps://x.com/BeccaAmileeFOLLOW 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/bfiDBVABUNDANT MINES:https://qrco.de/bgYKPBAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCp#btc #bitcoin #crypto

Some brand new research from Bitwise just dropped. And if it's even half right, it may have a significant change on how people think about hard money, save havens, and where capital rushes when the world starts to wobble. I won't spoil the details yet, but the implications are interesting to state the least. Because right as this data is landing, Bitcoin seems to be waking up again. after a 2025 that seemingly promised a bull run but delivered maybe a little bit of the opposite, at the very least a crab market. The start of 2026 has Bitcoin ripping upwards again, up roughly 10% on the year, given we're two weeks in, that's not bad, forcing everyone to ask whether we're witnessing the early signs

of a reversal or the setup for one last painful fakeout. And all of this is happening against one of the most chaotic global backtrue. so we've seen in quite some time. Iran's currency with the backdrop of their protests is in absolute freefall. So far gone that some exchanges online literally show a conversion value of zero because the software can't display numbers that small

and it's a rounding error. Venezuela, of course, caught between geopolitical power plays and resource seizures that could reshape entire regions. And everywhere you look, currency debasement and political instability are driving people towards whatever they believe will actually protect their wealth, whether that's Bitcoin, gold, or other things. So what does this new Bitwise research really mean?

What does it say? Is Bitcoin gearing up to break old assumptions or is it about to test everyone's conviction one more time? We've got an awesome lineup to dive into all of this and much, much more. We've got Becca from over at Anchor Watch. We've got Sean Newman of the Sean Newman podcast. and we've got Seb Bunny, the author of the hidden cost of money. So lock it in, drop a like on the video, and stay tuned. This is going to be an awesome episode.

I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your bullish session. All right, let's welcome to the stage, Mr. Seb Bunny, Mr. Sean Newman, and Becca, our favorite over at Anchor Watch. Everybody, how are you guys doing this evening? Hey, Ben, happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.

Thanks for having me else. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Cheers, Seb. So, yeah, we are going to dive into this. Now, I want to tee off the conversation. Before we get into your guys' reasons for being bullish, but I wanted to kind of pepper in what I was talking about here. I'll share this article here, but I'll just read.

I took a couple quick notes on what it says. and so if we get each other off to the side there. Yeah, so a few things. So this bit-wise comparison, basically, they're comparing, regardless of whether the people in the panel are Bitcoin only or lean towards precious metals or a mixture of both. The concept, first, for those watching that don't know what a sharp ratio is, it's kind of like a measure of volatility versus gains. So more like was the stress of the time you spent in the market worth the return? So yeah, the return versus how the ride felt. So a higher number is a good reward for the

volatility. A lower number is you took a lot of hits. It was volatile and you didn't get much return in exchange for that. So the baseline that they used was the classic kind of 60-40 retirement portfolio and they looked back over the past decade. And so in their article, they said it scored about a 0.24, lots of bumps, not as much reward, although you did do just fine. Then they said, what if 15% of your whole portfolio you put to the side and just held gold and the score jumped to 0.44? So kind of pretty much double.

So gold kind of smoothed out the ride. It made the returns feel more justified and you had a better time throughout it. Now, the interesting part was then they went back and said, what if over the same decade instead of taking 15% and having it only in gold, you split it in half and went gold and Bitcoin together. And the sharp ratio shot up to 0.68. So that's nearly triple the traditional 6040 portfolio. So what they found is gold steadied the downturned.

So you weren't getting washed out every time. Bitcoin gave you a friggin rocket ship to the upside when things were going well. So you had kind of the best of both worlds. So their big picture takeaway was it isn't gold versus Bitcoin. They said they're both scarce sovereign assets. They both exist as protection from the debasement trade, the failing Fiat system. But they're currently kind of playing different roles. And again, a lot of freedom-minded people get this intuitively.

The quote here that I found interesting, often the question of gold versus Bitcoin is framed as either or, as the data historically shows, the best answer is both. And so what I wanted to tee up for you guys is, and I'll kind of go around the room here, but where do you stand? Are you heavy Bitcoin? Are you heavy precious metals? Do you think that like the 50-50 that they're talking about is reasonable? What would be your preference? And then how do you see this playing out this year? Given what happened with precious metals in the past year versus Bitcoin,

Bitcoin having a disappointing 2025 and gold and silver just getting blown up the top of the charts here. How do you see that continuing into 2026? and then just even ideologically and in terms of like the sovereignty play, where do you stand for that? So, you know, what do you think this next year holds and why do you lean towards one or the other? I'll start with Seb first. What do you think of this whole report and how are you looking at this next year? You know, I would say, and maybe this is a little technical, but when you're digging into kind of these ratios, the sharp ratio and such. What I've always found really interesting is that the sharp ratio

doesn't differentiate between upside volatility and downside volatility. And so when you actually do dig into are there other metrics that are maybe more accurate, you can look at, say, the Sortino ratio and it removes upside volatility and looks at downside volatility. And I'm sure Bitcoin would absolutely amp up any potential ratio when you're, removing that upside volatility because Bitcoin's actually negatively affected by its upside volatility when you're looking at sharp ratio. And so to me, I find sometimes we get stuck in these metrics and we're using outdated metrics and the sharp ratio is used across the whole financial sector, but it's usually trying to, how do we minimize volatility? And volatility isn't necessarily

bad, especially if it's upside volatility and this thing is absolutely ripping. But I think that the second question that you had kind of around kind of Bitcoin. Bitcoin, gold, what does kind of the future look like? How am I thinking about in my own portfolio? It's a tough one because I think both Bitcoiners and gold bugs, I think we're all on the same team. How do we just build a world where we have money at its base that is sound and allows us to show up more authentically and preserve our purchasing power?

But I think the challenge, to be honest, that I think I face with gold is that first, because it's tangible, it means that a bank run is a lot harder. People have to physically go to the bank. They have to go take out their gold. Where are they going to store that gold? They've now got to figure out, do I got to go buy a safe? If you've got large amounts of savings, it can be incredibly challenging, especially if you want to move that gold overseas. So we end up putting so much trust in a lot of these third parties to be able to look after our gold, these custodians. And so ultimately, I lean a lot more heavily towards Bitcoin, because ultimately, I think as we start to see a breakdown of trust in society, we're starting to see a lot

with this geopolitical tension going on, I think Bitcoin is an amazing opportunity simply because if all of a sudden we do start to see a breakdown of the financial system, a breakdown of the banking system, people are going to try and withdraw those assets. And with Bitcoin, it's a lot easier to do that to figure out which banks don't actually have the Bitcoin in reserve, which banks are fractionalized, which banks have been taking advantage to their customers. With gold, I think it's a lot harder to do that. So I lean towards Bitcoin as my reserve of choice or my savings vehicle of choice.

All right. All right. Sean, I'm going to go to you next then. Why? Because you know I'm going to have a different answer than pro-Bitcoin the entire way? As Seb said, we're on the same team. And it's not like you're not a no-coiner. Like you're also, you know, you're also thinking that Bitcoin is a positive thing.

But I want to get your take on it as well. I love how I get framed as the gold bug. I think if you listen to my show that I just bring on a lot of different people. I bring on Bitcoiners. I bring on gold bugs for sure. And I see I'm just kind of like an outsider, if you would, Ben, in the sense that up until five years ago, I hadn't given it much thought, if any, if I'm being honest. And I started listening to both sides. I'm like, both of these make extreme sense.

So when it says have both, I'm like, I'm very much on that team. I think both sides make a ton of sense. there's something to be said about physically holding something in your hand. I come from the farm and, you know, it's like there's just something about gold, silver, lead, a few other things that I got a ton of time for. But, you know, like, you know this as well as anyone. It was only a few years ago. I was sitting there talking to so many bitcoinsers.

And I was just trying to figure it out. Like I was trying to wrap my head around. I'm like, what the heck is this? And, yeah, I own Bitcoin too. And I think if you don't own Bitcoin a day, get over the little mental hurdles you're sitting on because it's just a hurdle. The same can be said right now about people who don't own any gold or silver unless they're all into Bitcoin or something. That could be the case. But like people who haven't given any of this, any thought, there's probably some small little mental hurdle of like, I don't know, do I want to put my money into that?

And yeah, both have strong cases in my opinion. I'm firmly in the camp of both. And I have a lot of time for what people say on both sides of the aisle because I think you're both in the same team. I think you both want the same thing. And that's why I bring both voices on the show. That's why at the Cornerstone Forum, which you've been a part of, Ben, I got Bitcoin, I got gold, you know. And usually I have somebody there talking about guns and different things like that. I come from the farming background.

And there's something to be said about that too. I don't mind that. Bitcoin, gold, and lead is, is. Well, Dave Bradley, the first live show I ever did, Cornerstone Forum, that is, folks. And Seb and Becca wouldn't know this, but I had gold, Bitcoin, and lead. I had a military guy at Dave Bradley. And forgive me, I think it was Tom Luongo, who was talking gold back then. And we had the debate.

What would you rather hold? And that was the debate back then. That's great. Dave's always fun on a panel. Actually, he's going to be joining me in a few weeks on the show. too. But yeah, no, I like what you're saying. And I think that, again, this is a common thing, like the tangible nature of gold tends to be a hurdle for, especially for those that are gold that are gold bugs that stay away from Bitcoin. That's a major sticking point that takes time to

kind of navigate. And that, you know, I mean, I'm definitely, I don't worry when people say that they have both. I'm just glad that they have Bitcoin. It's funny. I see similarities in both, like the first time I ever bought any silver. I had like this tension in me like, oh, I'm really doing this. And then you get over and you buy something. You're like, oh, that wasn't, that wasn't so bad. And I remember it was, I think, Adam who walked me through buying my first Bitcoin. And like, I had my entire bank account shut down for trying to buy some. And I was like, what is going on? Like, why can't I just buy a little bit of Bitcoin? I think it was like 50 bucks.

I was like, really, we're going to lose our minds over this. And yet, once I finally got through it and Adam walked me through it, it's like, oh, this is, I'm not saying it's super easy. But on the things I've done in life, it's pretty easy. And once you get through that first hurdle of buying, it becomes way easier. And I see that, I felt that with precious metals. And I certainly felt that with Bitcoin. And I can see some hesitation on both sides of the aisle if you've never done either. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Now, Becca, I want to toss it to you as well. want to get your thoughts on what Bitwise had to say here. And what do you see playing out maybe in the coming year compared to last? You said that it was the sharp was calculated on the last 10 years, right? Yeah, it was a decade. So I mean, I do wonder what those numbers would look like if you change the time horizon to five years, right? I mean, same thing as we've looked at how Bitcoin's Kager has changed through the years. I will say, I think that the takeaway saying that were in the age of both. For the first time, I would say anecdotally, that's what I observe in my Bitcoin-owning friends as well. As, you know, three to eight years ago, which is when I got in,

nobody talked about owning gold. In this past year, plenty of people have talked about owning gold. And it was, I mean, there's physical gold and then there's GLD. I'm actually curious what gold bugs think of GLD. But I will say in terms of the physical, it was made a lot more accessible, right? This year, Costco was selling it and a lot of people, I think, got engaged and got involved for the first time. So in terms of how it goes forward, I do think a lot of people have changed their thinking, younger people have changed their thinking about metals in the last year or so. And so I think, you know, you might continue to see more of a mix between their asset classes. I mean, personally, I have a little bit of all of the above, but I definitely,

for long term, I'm hard assets, right? So Bitcoin can put some metals and real estate, I think, ultimately are where I try to put my own wealth and for long term thinking, but I've got some equities and things that I a little more active on, things like that. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I will say the only precious metals that I own are, I used to work at an OTC desk like doing Bitcoin like years ago. And as people would come in and I'd help them out, some of them were also gold bugs. And there's this one guy he, he kept on coming in and I'd spend like hours with him just teach him. of stuff and he would give me tips as like the silver, silver coins.

He'd come in with the silver coin all the time. So I got a little collection of those. But other than that, the only precious metal that I own is my Maynex necklace. Good one. I treasure it. With the way that a lot of retail has come in for the first time in the last year, it does make me wonder if it's getting a little topy for most asset classes that doesn't tend to be a great sign if suddenly retail has discovered something, usually

institutional money is a couple of steps ahead. So, yeah. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I definitely, there hasn't been, I feel like retail's been asleep on Bitcoin for quite some time. Yeah. I mean, I think, because the meme coin thing, the alt season never really materialized. It wasn't like, I don't think that was dragging huge volume away from Bitcoin. I do think the prediction markets did. I think prediction markets took a lot of volume from retail who otherwise would have been participating.

Yeah, that's fair. I think Bitcoin right now is not the, you know, with all the nihilism, especially Gen Z, like you're not able to afford homes and stuff like that. It's to the point where it's like a lot of people, their mindset has gone to, The only way I'm ever going to, you know, be able to do a lot of the stuff that I want to do is if I hit like the lottery. And so it's like it becomes a gambling mindset.

And Bitcoin is no longer the gambling thing, right? Like they like, it goes up like however much. But unless I'm 100xing my money, then why even try? Like that's a mindset of. Yeah. At this point, Bitcoin is particularly un-nihylistic, right? You know, it's about savings technology and first principles and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, I'm glad that you guys could weigh in on that, but the title of the show is, why are we bullish? And I want to find out why you guys are currently excited, whether it be directly Bitcoin-related or whether it being tangential to Bitcoin. And so I'm going to start with Seb. And Sam, I'm going to tee up with the same question. Everybody gets. Why are you bullish? That's a good question.

I haven't heard that one before. I would say, like, I'm bullish because I think Bitcoin is about to outgrow the halving cycle story that's ultimately in many ways kind of kept it a bit of a trading asset. And it's about to be really step into, I think, what it really is, which is purely a monetary network, a sound monetary network. And kind of expanding on this idea, I think a lot of us kind of get caught up. in price targets and where's it going in this four-year cycle. And ultimately, I'm bullish because the story is changing. And as we know, like value is subjective. Money really is a collective

belief. It's a collective narrative. And price is downstream of narrative. And so for most of its life, Bitcoin's dominant narrative has been this four-year cycle. So we have the halving, then we have this rally, then we have this crash, and then it repeats. And so to me, this story is trained many people to trade Bitcoin and not necessarily understand it. And so where we are right now, I have a feeling that 2026 is going to break that four-year cycle. And what it will do, I think it's going to have a lot of people reflecting on what is this thing that I was trading or what is this thing that I'm holding. And I think people are going to start really questioning really what Bitcoin means to them.

And obviously, as us as Bitcoiners, Sean is an up-and-coming bitcoiner, I think that we We recognize what Bitcoin is, but a lot of people don't. And so having it break these predictive cycles where people are kind of trading these cycles, I think is going to help solidify and highlight that Bitcoin is maturing and it's growing up and it's leaning into this monetary asset, which we've been talking about for quite some time. But I'm curious to hear you guys' perspective. I love that. And I think it would be one of the most bullish things for me.

I mean, we kind of already broke most narratives this past, you know, assuming that the cycle, the four-year cycle was, I mean, it kind of was a thing for a period of time. But, you know, this past cycle has been full of examples of things that have never happened before. So one, the first thing was the bear market, everybody assumed we can't go below the previous all-time high from the last market. And we did because the FTX blow out, like that huge exchange went tits up and liquidations everywhere. And so we did have like a drop below the previous all-time high. And then the next thing was when the issuance gets cut at the halving, typically we don't see a new all-time high before then it comes later. And this was the first time that before the halving, there was a new all-time high. we went to 70 something.

And then now in a supposed what historically would be the year after the having, it's usually off to the races, we finished the year down like 5%. I mean, we did hit new all-time highs during the year, but we finished the year down 5% in a year that's supposed to be the bull run. And so like it would just be the cherry on top for supposed like bare market year to a historical, you know, typical bear market year would be up. I would love to see like marginal new highs where it's just like a steady grindup because then in Seb, I think it begins to better reflect your narrative of people are looking at

this thing differently. So I'm curious, Sean, I want to ask you, I'm not sure how long you've been, you've been kind of in and around the Bitcoiners and how. how long Dave Bradley has been talking your ear off about Bitcoin. But have you seen some of these dynamics, some of these ups and downs and these crashes? What have you been around for and what have you noticed? Well, it's funny because he just texts me, not Dave Bradley. The first guy who started talking about Bitcoin was Vance Crow.

And he's a podcaster out of St. Louis. And he tried convincing me years ago, get into this. Get into this. And I was like, I can't even figure out what this is. So what I do on my show is I just started bringing people on. And, you know, Steve Barber was another guy right in my city that I was driving by all the time. And I had no idea what he was doing. And so I interviewed him.

And he was another guy going, you should just get into this. And so it was funny back then. It was, I don't know, like, was it 30,000 American roughly? And then it dropped down to 10. And everybody was saying it's done. It's toast. And I was new to it, right? So I was watching this.

I'm like, what is going on? on. Like the Bitcoiners don't seem to be worried about it one bit. Like the hardcores, they're like, yeah, life's going to go on. But the people who just gotten into are selling off everything, they were losing their minds. And I was kind of sitting there like, I still don't know what's going on. I was talking to Vance. And then of course, ran into Dave Bradley and then a whole cast of Bitcoiners. And so, you know, I just look at it and it depends what you're trying to do with your money. If you're trying to make something day to day, that's a lot different than if you're looking at the next year or the next decade on where it's going. And to me,

Bitcoin, when you look at, you know, where we're heading in the future, I just don't see anything but up for it. So I don't know why people wouldn't get involved with it. Obviously, you don't have to sell your house and put it all into Bitcoin, but, you know, whatever your financial restraints allow you to do. But if you get it involved in it right now, I only see benefit in the future. I don't see any negative unless, you know, I don't know, like a meteor hits the earth or, you know, you go down some of those doomsday holes. Certainly we're all in the different world then. But if the world keeps going the way it's going,

I only see positives for Bitcoin long term. We can get into the week-by-week stuff. But I'm a long-term thinker. And to me, Bitcoin makes sense. It's funny you say you don't need to sell your house and put it all into Bitcoin. I was hanging out with Dave Bradley four days ago, and he literally said verbatim,

you should sell your house and put it all into Bitcoin. So, you know, different strokes for different folks. Becca, I want to go to you as well and get your thoughts on what Seb had to say here. Yeah, I mean, if Seb is right, I'll be super bullish. So I've always, even over the last year, I've always been pretty firm on the four-year cycle. You know, people would debate whether it was from the having or it was from presidential election or, like, Like what kind of drove the cycle?

I'm less worried. I'm just saying on a chart, there certainly was a four-year cycle. And so I've always believed that you, that the data, followed the data, believe the data until the pattern breaks. And then you have to change your models once the pattern is break. I actually look at the last six months or so a little differently than how you framed it up. in that I think we had an all-time high, like right on schedule, like right on schedule. Yes, like first high was before the having, that's different. But we did hit a four-year all-time high right on schedule.

So I think I agree with Seb in that 2026 is the year that tells us if the cycle is broken or not. Because in my opinion, to say it's truly broken, I would still say as of now we're still in one, it was a weird bad one. It was just a really unimpressive all-time high if in fact that's the cycle, but it hasn't been disproven yet. We haven't, you know, we haven't tanked yet. So I certainly hope we don't. And I do think it is the kind of natural maturation. I guess. And I think a leveling of the volatility is to be expected with institutional buyers who have

different behaviors. So ultimately, you know, patterns and things are people's repeated behaviors at mass. And in fact, who the people are has changed pretty significantly over the last year. Do you think that the general consensus around what Bitcoin is and what it's for? is shifting? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think a lot of people are much more,

are becoming much more comfortable with it as a store of value. You know, our laws and how gains are calculated, I think influences behavior. And I feel like in the last year, people have almost stopped kind of trying to fight that battle and said, okay, fine, stable coins maybe, we'll come in and play that transactional role. Ultimately, Bitcoin needs to be and is an excellent store of value over time. So I do see more comfort with that. Interesting. Seb, I don't know if you want to tag on anything to the

responses from myself, Sean or Becca before we round out of this topic and move into the next, but I'll let you have the final word here. You know, like I wholeheartedly agree, Becca, where I'm bullish because I have a feeling that 2026 will break the cycle. But again, there's no certainty in anything. And I think that probabilistically I lean towards saying it will. But at the moment, to your point, I think there's still indicators depending on how you look at it, that we could be in a bit of a four-year cycle. And I'm curious. I'm excited because even just the way that 2026 is setting up and what's happening globally on a global political level, I think that it's going to shake things up. And to your point as well, I think when we even look at the four-year cycle,

it's not even necessarily clear what is causing the four-year cycle. Is it that we have this halving cycle that is playing around with supply and demand dynamics? Is it the business cycle, ISM, things like that? Is it the presidential cycle? Is it all of these things? It's multifactoral? And so I think sometimes as individuals, we want the story to be black and white and it isn't necessarily black and white. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Well, we are going to shift gears here. We're going to, in a moment, move to our next panelist. Sean, I have a feeling you're going to get me amped up with your topic as a fellow L. Burton. Let's see how I do, yeah. I think it'll be good. And I have a nice way to, because I, again,

I think it's, well, it may not focus specifically on Bitcoin. Bitcoin, I think plays a big role here. And I'll kind of inject that after you have your play. But we're going to be back in one minute here. We're going to give a quick shout to the sponsors. Everybody that's here, thank you for being here. Make sure you drop a like on the video. And if you're new here, make sure you subscribe. We'll see you guys in just one sec. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the US. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys

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tee it up for you as the token newest bitcoiner in the room. You know, I think you're going to be chatting about something that I'm very, very keen to chat about, even if it's not directly Bitcoin related. I'll put in my two cents as to why it actually is. But, Sean, take it away. Why are you currently so bullish? Well, so for those of your audience who don't know what I do, you know, I do a weekly podcast or daily almost five days a week. And I, you know, before I got into politics or anything like that, I was focused on.

on what my previous career was. I was a hockey player. So I was interviewing athletes from across Canada and elsewhere. And then COVID hit. And, you know, you kind of go, I'm sitting there. I'm like, what the heck is going on, right? And that's led me into a whole bunch of different realms, including conversations like this and certainly precious metals and the like.

But one of the first avenues I turned to was politics, because I thought, well, just get rid of the leader and we'll just move on with life, right? And certainly I've been here in Alberta. I've been one of the, probably one of the most, I don't know, energetic voices on that side. I've interviewed a lot of people, including the current premier of Alberta, Daniel Smith. And so, you know, what happens is everybody's waiting for Justin Trudeau to get voted out, right? Like, everybody can see it coming. And then, you know, he takes his long walk in the park type thing.

And Carney comes in. And everybody kind of has this, whoa, what's going on? Trump starts doing his thing, elbows up. and pretty soon we got liberal minority government in Canada again. And if I was sitting there the week before and I'm like, if that happens, Alberta separation is going to the moon. Right. Like people are going to be, they were frustrated back in 2019. This is on a whole new level.

And that's exactly what we saw was a ton of new people. They were talking about how many people signed up for the Alberta Prosperity Project at like $5,000 an hour. And on that went. And so then new steps were made to watch. walked us toward a referendum on independence. And, you know, that takes time. And so, you know, they were talking about it. They all, it's going to be here in 2025. But, you know, as you talk to more political analysts and people who pay attention to stuff, you're like, that's probably not realistic. Like just full stop. It's probably going to take more time. So what's interesting about

2026 is, you know, they got the question through. So right now they're having signatures for a petition that would push for a referendum. The day after Carney was elected, Daniel Smith came out, lowered the citizen-led referendum down to 177,000. Instead of it having to be in 87 ridings, which Alberta has, it can come from, you know, a healthy majority of the rural population, which I assume is going to be signing that thing pretty hard. And so, you know, you start the new year, it comes out, and all the videos are coming out now of like thousands of people showing up to sign this thing.

And, you know, does that mean all of a sudden we get a referendum six months down the road and the vote goes 82% to leave? No, I have no idea. But what you're seeing is the consequences of Eastern Canada voting back in Kearney, the West was upset before. They're extremely upset now. We got a hole, but I don't need to tell your audience,

I assume, of all the things going on in Canada, they just make you scratch your head, like, what is going on? And so Alberta's talking right now, and they do that by moving their feet and going to places and standing out in the cold. I mean, we're reprieved right now.

I think it's like plus six. outside. I'm pretty excited about that. And that'll only last a couple days. But you know, you're just seeing it. There's town halls happening and there will be more. There's been a delay on getting canvassers approved by Alberta, elections

Alberta, sorry. And so once those canvassers are all approved, then, you know, you're going to see more and more of this in the next 120 days. There's 120 days to get 177,000 signatures. It's probably a little less than that, Ben, because 120 days lands on May 6.

second, which is a Saturday, which means elections, Alberta is an open. So let's just pull it back a few days and you got 100, 105 days left to get 177,000 signatures. And you're seeing videos starting to pop up everywhere around Alberta of people showing up and not showing up in a hundred here and 100 there. It's, you know, it's a five, six hour wait to sign a petition, right? Like that's, that's an interesting thing for a guy like me to watch and I assume other Albertans as well. Yeah, yeah. It's, I'm, I'm very excited about what I've seen. And, and I wasn't convinced that, I, I wasn't initially convinced of, of how close this is of coming to fruition until I started to see some of the more recent stuff happening. And so, again, those, those not in and around Alberta that don't exactly know what's going on. it's it's been very interesting there's so at the day after uh carney got elected and carney is was the financial advisor to justin trudeau for the past decade so people wanted trudeau out because his

his budget was so horrible uh and then they get rid of them and then they hire his economic advisor to uh basically uh steer the ship um who is also a two-time central banker so he was bank of england and the Bank of California. Nothing to worry about there, folks. Just don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain. And then, so the day that he got elected was the day that Daniel Smith reduced the thresholds required to trigger a referendum vote. And so it was very clearly, to me, seemed very clear that that was in direct response to that.

I would agree. Yeah, yeah, I think so. And so now there was just footage the other day, funny enough, there was a, a small community center that was just overflowed with people out, out the door, down the block to listen to a talk and to sign the petition. That community hall was actually the same community hall that I went to for like middle school dances. So I'm looking and I'm thinking like that's, you know, that's at venue, that's an interesting. And I thought it was just going to be some small little thing. And, you know, maybe like a couple hundred people would show up. And it had news

coverage of like people down down the block like waiting hours to get in there to sign this thing and to listen to the talk and so yeah i find it very interesting now in terms of here's where i'm going to inject some of the bitcoin related stuff so the lady that was speaking there her name's eva she's the person who actually cross-examined uh justin trudeau when it came to the emergencies act when they started started shutting down bank accounts and all that She's a regular attendee to the Bitcoin sap market that we host here in Calgary every couple times a year that Seb has been to many, many times. And, Sean, I think, did you get to one yet or not yet? I was supposed to.

It's a long story. I am going to make it, Ben, I promise. Okay, okay. We'll have you there. We'll have you learn how to use Bitcoin, not just as a savings technology, but also as a sovereign money. but Eva's been there and she's she's regularly come she's so wonderful and I'm so glad to always have her there so she plays into she works with Jeff Rath who's who's again the big name in kind of the Alberta's sovereignty separation space but then this was an interesting tweet that came out

from another Albertan and I I'm curious Sean if you've had them on the show but I'll read the tweet first and then and then get people's thoughts on this. And so this, and once it pops up here, there we go, David Parker, he tweeted, it will be useless to create the Republic of Alberta if we continue to use government money. The new nation of Alberta must have sound money. That means a currency backed by reality, not by government promises. A possible basket could be oil, gold, silver and Bitcoin. And I actually quite like this idea. Alberta is very, you know, oil rich. I think that, you know, gold and silver, like, I don't think you're going to be able to sell the idea of a just like a pure Bitcoin currency play to Alberta. But I think a waiting with some

Bitcoin and it could be incredible. So, Sean, first I'll give you a word on. this on your thoughts of that idea should a referendum and a separation take place. But then I want to get thoughts from Seth and Becca on the idea of a basket of stuff like this backing a currency. So Sean, you first. Well, first, David Parker, yes, has been on the show, although it has been a few months, if not a little longer than that. I've had different conversations because you know, when you get into the independence movement, the first thing, a lot of people go to as a currency and whether they switch over to the U.S. dollar, create Alberta dollar. You can imagine the conversation.

And I've had, you met him at last year's Cornerstone, Ben. I had Martin Armstrong and Brett Olin from BVCU on talking about exactly that. And Martin positioned it as lower your tax across the board and institute the rule of law. And you'll have an influx. He basically said don't peg one thing as in oil, gold. I'd be curious on Bitcoiners thought on not pegging it directly to Bitcoin because maybe there's some thoughts there. He even said don't switch directly to a foreign currency because then you're governed by what Donald Trump or whoever walks in does. And so I thought that was a pretty sound argument.

So creating a basket of the most of things that are sound in Bitcoin, oil, precious metals makes a ton of sense to me. I don't want to be dictated to by a government that just continues to print and print and print. But I'd be curious what Bitcoiners think because maybe maybe you're like, you know, just peg it to Bitcoin and watch it skyrocket. And 10 years will all be laughing. Curious everyone else's thoughts, to be honest. Yeah. Becca, I'll toss it to you first and then we'll get Stub's thoughts. I was wondering how you were going to turn it to Bitcoin. Because as a proud American, I was like, I don't know anything about Alberta separating.

I mean, look, I'm delighted by anyone considering a backed currency at all. So, I mean, the fact that it's a basket of these harder assets, I would say is very positive. Now, I mean, it would be fascinating if you guys pull it off and it would kind of be, I mean, Is there another backed Fiat currency right now? I don't think so. Right? So, I mean, like, it really would be fascinating because we'd get to kind of retest, retest, I guess, sound principles and money and see what it changes.

Because I imagine it would change some things, maybe in how the government functions and how elections go. So, no, I think it's really cool. I think this is very interesting. and the fact that it's a basket actually makes good sense to me. Seb, I want to go to you and my secondary question to you

is when will you be defecting to the free state of Alberta? Answering that question first. Honestly, I've actually had some big conversations with Dave Bradley about this and the idea of just like, do I wait until I get clarity around if there is

a vote, let's say they meet the threshold And then from my understanding, we have, and Sean, you may be able to, like, step in with this, if I'm a misunderstanding, or you can add more clarity to it. From when Quebec tried to separate in the 90s, there's a bit of a path forward in what that might look like. And from my understanding, what needs to happen is there needs to be what's called a clear majority. But what is this clear majority of Albertans that is? I don't know if you have anything to add there. Well, I don't know. I would throw it back at the whole audience and say, is 51% a clear majority? In the United States of America where they just elected Donald Trump, they would probably say, yes, that is a clear majority. I find the clear majority an odd thing because you should just say it's 51%. If 51% decide to go, that's a clear majority. Clear majority leaves it vague enough, which I find the Canadian government loves to do, leave things vague for interpretation. So it needs to be a clear question and it needs to have a clear majority.

and you go, okay, well, they can argue that it's not a clear question. They can argue that it's not a clear majority. But I think Albertans, just like Quebecers, you know, if they get 51%, I don't know if there's any telling them they can't go. Certainly there will be roadblocks put in place. You say if they hit the threshold, I don't think I have any doubt right now that there will be the threshold will be hit, Seb. I'm pretty confident they're going to hit the signature requirement.

Once you get to a referendum and it goes out to the entire voting population of Alberta, that's a bigger question. That to me is going to be an interesting thing to watch. But getting there, I think the steps that have been made over the last, a little less than a year, to be honest, you know, when you think about when the election was, you know, end of April of 2025 till now, that's less than a year where you've got a whole bunch of things. running and I think there will be little to stop getting the 177,000 signatures. And then it just becomes, do you hit a clear majority? And then there will be interpretation put on that. And was it a clear question? There will be interpretation put on that.

And I can see the process bleeding out for quite some time, whether you can get 51%. The numbers right now, the last number I think I saw was 38% support independence or separation. Is that number factual correct? You know, it's it's upwards of 30% I haven't seen much underneath that. So I don't know. It's it looks very interesting, intriguing and a story that I've certainly been following now for some time. Ben, I don't I don't know or Seb if that answered it. Well, I think like more than anything like I would love to see if there was a vote and I'm talking about refer to them, not just the 177,000. If there was a vote, I'm sure they wouldn't necessarily just go

and shut down the Alberta and B.C. border and just say, nope, this is now Alberta. There'll probably be some period, whether it's one year, two year, five year, from when I did look previously, other historical examples, I can't speak to them off the top of my mind. There have been a few, I think like Czechoslovakia and such. There was a time period. And so if that vote happened, I would be moving to Alberta the next day. And I would absolutely love to move to Alberta. At the moment, the biggest challenge is, if that vote does happen and it doesn't reach a clear majority,

is Canada where I want to live is the challenge, because I just think Canada's on a bit of a challenging trajectory right now. But going back to, I think, the question around what does this basket look like? Is Bitcoin in the basket, gold in the basket, what currency should it be? There's a couple thoughts. And I think the first part is I'm very proud. Alberta separating. And this isn't coming from like a deeply researched place. I don't live in Alberta, but I'm very pro Alberta separating. And there's a part of me that feels like if Alberta is to separate, what is the simplest path forward? And I think the moment you're talking about separation and currencies, I think it starts to get a lot more convoluted. And so I think it will put up barriers for people that aren't necessarily fully on board for them to say no and vote against it. And so in my mind, I'm kind of of the opinion. What is the simplest path for Alberta separating? Is it just to stick with the Canadian dollar for the meantime?

Is it to move to a US dollar and be dollarized? I'm not sure. But down the line, I lean towards how do we have more of a free market? How do we have a system where, yes, it may be, let's take El Salvador, where it's somewhat dollarized because there's stability in the dollar trade is a lot more effective, but it's not forced upon people. And we start to see a bit more of a free market at play where hopefully Bitcoin can rise up. People are choosing to use Bitcoin.

because what people are probably familiar with that listen to this podcast is when there's legal tender laws, you get Gresham's law, which is bad money drives out good because merchants have to accept the bad money. But when you have a free market, you get Thier's law, which is good money drives out bad, because ultimately a merchant, if they don't want to accept Canadian dollars because they're seeing it deteriorate, they're just not going to accept it. And so I think we start to see the opposite take place where the good money starts to rise up in society. So I tend to be how do we minimize any legislation or legal attempt to put a money in place and how do we allow the free market to kind of thrive but i'm curious to hear people's perspectives i'd like to see a uh

um a removal of cap gains on not only bitcoin but also precious metals and so if you know if somebody decides like oh i'm going to accept i'm going to accept silver or whatever they can they can do that and they don't have to do all this additional accounting. I love to just see kind of like free competition for what money is best and just wash that play out over time and people can kind of decide. And maybe there is a state currency, but it's kind of free and open. If people want to accept American dollars, they can accept American dollars. If there's an Alberta dollar, if people want to use Bitcoin. But there's not, there's not a price to pay when you do. It's just what currency is best. And said to your point

of what's the law the opposite of Gresham's law how do you say it is the air's law t h i e r s i think it is okay so so what i've done in terms of uh because i i feel that i want to accept the better money i don't want to deal with dollars in any form whether it be the u.s dollar or the canadian moose shekel i don't care i don't want either of them but uh and just the the pain of having to deal with the banks and all that crap and the delays. And I want the money to land and instantly be there. And so when it comes to my company, we actually, we've been playing on an experiment. So what I did initially was a lot of people will give a discount if you pay in Bitcoin, but I did the opposite approach. I hate dollars. And so the best way to communicate

that I don't want the dollars is to charge a premium when you go to pay me in dollars. And so you anchor the price, even though it's priced in dollars, and I priced in U.S. I don't use the Canadian dollar at all. But I price things in dollars. And then when people get to checkout, they're like, oh, fuck me. I got to pay 15% to pay in dollars. Because that's, to me, that's what makes sense because I don't want it. And what we ended up seeing is a 50-50 split of Bitcoin payments versus dollar payments.

We just started testing a discount for Bitcoin. The first week, you know what we saw? Zero Bitcoin payments. So I think Fiat Premium is the way to go. Now, I got to check on like the latest numbers because we've had another week in there. But that first week was very telling. Nobody gives a shit about saving a little bit. The trigger is when people perceive themselves as losing something that they already thought they had.

It's pain avoidance. People go long ways to pain avoidance. And so I think Fiat premium was the way to go. And if this next week, next couple weeks, looks like it did the first week, we're switching back and it's Fiat premium all the way. So anyways, Becca, I don't know if there's anything that you wanted to add in there after hearing that. I mean, no, this is your guys territory, territory in general. I mean, it would be interesting. So our company, Anchor Watch currently actually still only accepts dollars.

But when we soon accept Bitcoin, I'm kind of interested to run a similar test. That's very, very interesting. I'm not going to lie, Ben. I'm like, I'm going to start. Dave's been on me about this for two years about accepting Bitcoin for the Cornerstone Forum. And I'm like, listening. I'm like, I'm implementing that next go around so people can expect that. Yeah.

So, I mean, with insurance, our insurance premiums have to go through Lloyds of London. And so there were reasons that we couldn't. But with this year, allowing uninsured custody services, it's a different ballgame. So looking forward to adding that in for sure. There you go. Now, speaking of Anchor Watch, we're going to find out why Becca so down bullish in a moment. Sean, I'm going to put a bow on the topic, but I'll give you the final word. Anything else you want to kind of finish up on your topic with?

Well, I go, everybody smiles when we bring up Bitcoin doing well, and everybody was smiling at the chance to really test sound money if Alberta were to go its own way. And I think that's why I'm bullish on it. I just, I don't have all the greatest ideas. Obviously, I'm going to see what all of Albertans think throughout the year. I just think, you know, there's been a lot of things pushed over the last five years, and it's culminating to me in 2026, at least for Alberta. I'm just interested to see what happens with it.

And, yeah, to me, when everybody's smiling, it seems like it's an interesting thing happening here in Alberta. And Alberta seems to be that place over and over again and in Canada that really pushes some issues. And I think for the betterment of where we're heading. So I'm just looking forward to, you know, following along with it and interviewing some people along with it. And I don't know, I find it funny. Bitcoin, everybody smiles over to separation. You know, that's funny.

Even the American's smiling. It's, it's cool. Revolution. Yeah, dude. I think Bitcoin are just like, like stirring the pot. Chaos. I'm like, that sounds exciting. Exactly.

Exactly. So we're going to, Becca, we're going to shift gears in a sec. We're going to give one last shout out to our sponsors. We'll be back in one minute. People that are tuned in. Thanks for being here. Drop a like on the video. If you're enjoying the combo.

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If you're looking to make use of your capital, don't sell 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, we are back in. And Becca, I am heading to you. Same question everybody this evening got. Why are you bullish? I think just 2026 structurally has an incredibly firm footing. When you think about even just compared to a couple of years ago, it has never been easier to buy or to own Bitcoin.

There are more custody models. There's more exchanges. Legacy players are starting to offer exchanges. Businesses aren't being debanked. Individuals aren't being debanked. Individuals can transfer funds from their bank to their exchanges. The custody models that have kind of expanded over the last couple of years provide a variety of ways to store Bitcoin with, you know, across the spectrum of maintaining sovereignty and control to getting professional help. I think that's very important to get a broader swath of participants.

The ETFs, obviously, are a way to get price access. I think I read maybe just today or yesterday that of the start to the new year and the end of last year, the about 80% of the increase in Bitcoin price was happening during trading hours. So that's a reversal from previous. So I mean, obviously it's a great easy way to get exposure. And then even outside of the United States where in some countries people still have problems. There are Bitcoin treasury companies that can start to give them some exposure to Bitcoin. And I think super importantly for next year, in 2025, rather, what we saw was an explosion of borrowing against Bitcoin, right?

A ton of providers started doing that. And maybe like the huge OGs were selling last year. They were taking some gains. But I think a lot of those mid-sized holders who very well might be OGs, but. don't have yacht size quantities, they're not so ready to actually liquidate. So we saw a huge increase in lending, borrowing and lending options, you know, both with stable coins and dollars. And I think that gives people a lot of flexibility.

I think we're going to see an increase in that. Last year was very stable coin heavy. I think because it's kind of a fast track to turning on that product. I would expect that we're going to see more Bitcoin dollar. products come to the market this year. There's protections from wrench attacks, there's insurance, there's, you know, it has just, it really has never been easier or safer to be a Bitcoin owner. And if we end up having a very positive 2026 in terms of price, we don't see a major drawdown. I think that really nice structural foundation with some surprise price activity,

can lead to a really exciting 26-27. That's awesome. Now, Becca, I'm curious. Yeah. Now, given what you're working on at Anchor Watch and, you know, giving both, you know, insurance-related options, but having kind of like your multi-sig option where, you know, there's multiple keys and you can tailor it however you want.

And, you know, you've got this incredible security. You've got the option of insurance. We've got all of these things. Do you think the presence of options like what you've built will, do you think that the tendency of just defaulting to a custodian or a Bitcoin bank of sorts? Do you think it puts the pressure on them? Do you think that it moves the needle of complacency? In terms of custody. So, yeah, I think we will absolutely see banks move into that space.

I mean, we can call it pressure or we can call it that they can look and see an opportunity, ultimately. But, you know, Bitcoin is not a huge market, but it's obviously a growing one. The owners of Bitcoin are powerful clients to have that I think bankers would like to have using their services. And so by providing very secure Bitcoin custody options, I think it does help them into this space. Now, in the space, multiple custodians recently have gotten banking license. So it's a little bit of a race, right?

Of the crypto-native, if you will, bankers kind of entering that space, but from crypto, from Bitcoin, over to Tradify banking. And then at the same time, you have trad-5 banks, traditional banks, starting to offer Bitcoin custody. So, and when they do so, you know, they're doing a mix of build and buy. So I think it's pretty exciting because I think traditional companies are starting to hire those that have that kind of technical ability. And so I think we will continue to see all different behaviors. So for example, Anchor Watch is working hopefully that we will provide the custody infrastructure for them to offer custody services to their own clients.

So that would be a case where a bank is saying, look, we're not quite ready to hire and build. We don't have that knowledge, but we know that we want to be in this game. And so, you know, we've built an amazingly secure platform that is excellent for that use case. But yeah, I think it's pretty obvious, right? Even from the traditional exchange houses. Like who just announced that they, was it Van Neck? Somebody, one of the exchanges, the major exchanges, traditional, announced recently that they were starting to allow. Was that, was it, was it, I know that Van Neck, they said that they weren't going to be doing ETFs and then they're like, oh, crap, we missed out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've definitely had some about face. So I mean, I think the pressure is there. And it's just wise to not ignore the Bitcoin or cohort. So yeah, yeah. Morgan Stanley as well, they did like they were doing their, there was like the discussion around not allowing Bitcoin, and any company that has Bitcoin and its balance sheet to be part of an index.

And then they did an about face on that and said, no, we're not going to do that. Also, we're launching Bitcoin ETF. Right. I mean, you know, and I think there's obviously just social pressure, you know, from their, from their banking and exchange peers. There is also decreased risk, brand risk to themselves because of those structural things that I'm talking about. It, there really wasn't, I would say, adequate security in place for a Tradfai novice player to kind of get in that business. They didn't understand that it was not accepted institutionally, so it was still Wild West. So there was a lot of brand risk if they chose to offer it.

And pretty much all of that has flipped in the last year or two, which is great. I like the dynamic you're discussing the kind of like the chicken and the egg type thing. Do the bitcoiners become bankers or do the bankers become bitcoins? and we are seeing a bit of both. But parallel to that is do the energy companies become minors or do the miners become energy companies? And we're also seeing a bit of both on that front. So it's interesting to watch the dynamics play out.

Yeah, and hyperscalers too. Yeah, exactly. I want to get Seb's thoughts. But first, I want to go to Sean because I want to ask you in terms of what you see from your perspective, in terms of hurdles, either from yourself or from other people that are maybe new in the Bitcoin realm when it comes to dealing with Bitcoin, like security and like knowing what to do, or do you just leave it with somebody else?

Like, how do you grapple with that just in relation to obviously Becca talking about it becoming easier and more tools being available for everyone? Where are you at? What would you like to see? what was good, what's bad, you know, give me your thoughts. Well, I just agree with her. I agree with you, Becca. Like, I think it is becoming easier.

On the everyday person, though, I still don't hear enough people talking about it. And I'm, you know, when I come into circles like this, I'm like, I'm on a bullet train and I'm just holding on folks. I'm just trying to keep up with the Bitcoiners because I'm like, I'm, you know, I've been talking to lots of brilliant people. that would sit in this circle and offer lots of insight into the Bitcoin world. But to the everyday person, they're still wrestling with it. And one of the things they wrestle with is, you know, the price of Bitcoin. They're like, ah, I missed it. It doesn't matter.

And I'm like, no, no, I wouldn't put that in your mind. I just start getting involved, start learning how to use it, start learning how to buy it and all the different things. One of the other things here in Canada, I can't speak to the United States. but you know like the deep banking thing is still you know I had my my go around about two years ago trying to buy Bitcoin and having everything shut down and having to talk to like every person in the bank to get my account back and then Evichipiak you mentioned her cross-examining Trudeau she that's one of the things that got her removed from her bank was she became too risky for the bank and it was a Bitcoin transaction right trying to get Bitcoin so here in Canada there's a few more hurdles that are probably problematic that are probably drug. I would love to see every bank just acknowledge that it's okay. You want to buy some Bitcoin?

Great. And so I think that's a huge hurdle here in Canada specifically. We have lovely, you know, like one of the title sponsors of the Cornerstone Forum is BVCU, Brett Oland. I know you know him, Ben. And they've made buying Bitcoin for Albertans extremely accessible. And when it becomes really easy to use and there's no. not all these hurdles. I think you're going to see more of a mass adoption from just the everyday

person. But the further you go from Alberta, and I'd be curious, Seb's thoughts, maybe it's different in BC. It seems like there's more and more issues with trying to get involved with it, and that's more a banking issue and different things like that that make it a little bit problematic to get into. So I hope that it just becomes easier. And as it's easier to get into, there will be more and more people. And I think just to the early, or not the early, the people who are late to adopt, although Bitcoin is really new in a sense of time, I think they have to get over this hurdle of, you know, like, I missed it. And it's like, I don't think you've missed anything. I think you just need to start buying and getting involved in it and start using it,

everything you guys have been saying. So I think those two things are things that stick out to me. Yeah. A side note, before I go to Seb here, I would love to see Brett and Bow Valley Credit Union have their back end be Anchor Watch. I think that would be super badass and would probably get a good amount of attention, especially with the backdrop of a potentially sovereign Alberta. So I'm just going to throw that. You're going to seed that little bit of information there and we'll just kind of continue on. I'm going to go to you and yeah, kind of get your thoughts on what Becca said. Yeah, and I think first, kind of to that point you're saying, Sean, I think we still have a lot of friction purchasing Bitcoin. And Canada and the US arguably are some of the easier countries. Like I speak to my mom living in the UK. The UK is unbelievably hard.

Like a lot of the main banks just won't allow it altogether. And I think, and don't quote me on this, I think they put in some form of legislation around. something like 10,000 pounds a month is the maximum purchase. So it's like you can only like eke into it depending on how much you're putting into it. And so it puts I think a lot of people, if someone is already unsure about Bitcoin, they haven't done their research, they're new to it. And all of a sudden they're trying to purchase Bitcoin and their bank is just like, oh, this could be a scam. I think it creates a lot of fear and that alone is it creates a lot of friction for people getting into Bitcoin. But I think, Becca, to your points, what I find really

fascinating is, and I should preface this with, I'm always for self-custody. Understand Bitcoin, take self-custody, own your Bitcoin outright, be a self-sovereign individual. That said, I also recognize that many different people from many different backgrounds enter into the Bitcoin space, and I would rather have someone own Bitcoin in some traditional product than no Bitcoin at all. And what I find really interesting is the trajectory or the direction at which many of these products are going, to give an example, the ETFs when they came out were cash redemption. So the problem is if you bought Bitcoin, you bought $10,000 with a Bitcoin and an ETF, and then you wanted to, you know what, I understand Bitcoin now. I want to actually transfer this into physical Bitcoin, spot Bitcoin. Well, the problem is you're to sell the ETF and that creates a potential capital gain.

and then go and purchase Bitcoin. Well, what we're starting to see is many of these ETF transition over to in-kind redemption as opposed to cash redemption. And so people are able to move out of these traditional products and stay in Bitcoin without triggering a tax event. And so to me, what I've found really fascinating about this is the fact that it looks like the system,

the traditional financial system, is actually playing ball with us. They're actually kind of supporting Bitcoiners. They're not locking you into these traditional financial products. Now, I understand from a high level at the moment for in kind of redemption, I think the limits are pretty high. So you can't just go and move 500 bucks. I think it's quite high, but I think those numbers will come down. And ultimately, the reason why I like this is just because I think more products, just give people more optionality. And not only that, but I think here in

Canada, one of the challenges is if I hold Bitcoin and I want to go get a mortgage, they don't recognize my Bitcoin held in self-custody. And so if someone needs to be able to hold Bitcoin and wants to at least have exposure to Bitcoin, and they want to be able to use that as a potential backing or an asset collateral, a lot of these more traditional financial products are recognized. And so I think there's more optionality.

That said, I always lean towards self-custody and I do not own the ETFs. But I find it really interesting. Side note, Seb, you were talking about how difficult it is in the UK to buy, Bitcoin. When people tell me not to do something, I feel like it comes as a challenge. So I feel like, okay, how do I get around me with BS and navigate it? Just so you know, there's tools out there. And yeah, not all of them can be used everywhere, but we'll see if you can understand what I'm

laying down here. Many of them can be used in various places now. So, so, so, So you can kind of take the leading letters there and go with it. But anyways, we'll continue on from there. I'm very interested to kind of see how things progress in the coming year. Because this past year in particular, past couple years, have been heavy back into the traditional financial system. like all the conferences, the events, it's like, you know, I love Bitcoin, buy my equity. Like, it's, it's, that's pretty much what it's, we've been bashed over the head with. That seems, maybe not entirely, but that seems to be at least partly swinging back the other way.

I see like, yeah, I hope so. Yeah, I get, I got, I get a vibe of like people are tired of like the next treasury company and the next thing. I mean, there was a spicy interview the other day with Taylor that a lot of the Bick corners watched, but nonetheless, there are questions that people have. Like, is it still a viable thing? Like, why should people care about these things? And more importantly, why should people bother putting any of their money into these things instead of just owning the asset itself?

And this draws parallels with, you know, precious metals too. Like when, you know, when you get a hardened gold bug, they're going to tell you, like, you own your physical gold. You own your physical silver. They understand that a gold ETF is not the same thing as an ounce of golds in your hand. And so I'm wondering with, you know, I'm, I ascribe to the idea of the fourth turning and, you know, that what we're seeing right now is kind of, is kind of like the dissolution of our, of trust in a lot of our existing institutions that will be kind of hollowed out and changed or replaced. But I wonder in navigating the, the lack of trust in our existing systems, do we just, do we, what do we move to? And so, I mean, Becca, I know that you're

trying to build things that can be that don't have to involve nearly as much trust or like have a much more difficult time being being rug pulled is that conversation a difficult one to have with the average person like to understand that something digital can't be rug pulled on the go so the customers that come to us i would say they do already have a an understanding understanding of self-custody, which is why they are interested in us. So I would say it's so far our customers over the last year have been a mix of people who were in probably like single-sig. Self-custody was the most common people who maybe hadn't quite gotten around to moving over to multi-sig. They were still pretty uncomfortable.

They're very uncomfortable about inheritance and how they would. do that. And then I would say kind of the other cohorts was still on exchanges. They knew that wasn't right. Like they wanted to mature from there, but not quite ready for unassisted self-custody. And so ultimately we have, you know, we had a unique challenge with our product, with Trident and using minisccript because we were the first ones in a very public way. I think Leanna beat us on the calendar, but in a very public way to really get out there and be talking about miniscript and talking about these more advanced ways to distribute keys and risk. And so we had a lot of iterating on visuals and how we actually introduce new technology to people's vernacular.

And I think they're coming along. I don't think once you get past the most basic aspects of self-custody, it's not hard, but you do have to pay attention and to listen and to learn. And I would say when we end up talking to people about this bridge, and that is really what I consider it. You know, what we built, what we designed with our use of manuscript really is a bridge between pure self-custody and a custodian. So we set it up so you still maintain many of the benefits of true self-custody, where you are the only person that holds your keys, with some of the benefits, many of the benefits, professional custodian. And, you know, we've combined those together and really brought the best of both parts. And then we plug the holes

where there's still a little bit of risk with insurance. So we have figured out our talk track to communicate to a very big idea to people. But it took some time. It took some time. People definitely need to get comfortable with new technology and they want to hear about it and they want to see it battle tested a little bit. But we're making a lot of progress with that. Other companies are building on the same tech beyond just the first few of us that have been building on it for years. Others are coming out. More hardware wallets are support. So yeah, I think this idea of it is not purely your cold card or leaving on Coinbase. That's no longer the actual choice that people have.

They have much more sophisticated and safe options without giving up a lot of the sovereignty and self-custody benefits that they used to have to give up. Sure. Sean, I'm going to lay this out for you in a of kind of because I always I always want people to kind of get some of the cool shit that's being built. So I'm going to make an analogy for you. Imagine imagine like a physical vault full of gold that has multiple keyholes. And there's say, I don't know, however many keys that you want, but there's multiple keys. and you need a minimum number of keys in order to open the vault.

Okay, so kind of like the nuclear codes, you turn both of them at the same time. You can get the gold out. You can take those gold because everything, those keys, because everything's digital, you could have them be kind of anywhere on the planet simultaneously. So any person holding one key can't take the gold because they only have one key.

But you can also set it up so that it decays over time. So in terms of inheritance, you could have a family member that has one key that does nothing right now, but then at a certain point in time, all of a sudden, that key alone will unlock their inheritance. So it's just like you can tailor it however the hell you want, and you can always bump forward.

You know, Ben, I feel like there's a podcast coming with Becca. She doesn't even know it yet where we have to drill this down to like the simplest sense. And she's going to like, this is so simple. But I'm like, I'm sure everybody on this. Very simple.

Everybody on this channel is getting everything she just said. And I'm like, and I'm sure Ben's sitting there watching my face going, some of this, Sean does not get. And that's okay, folks. No,

you were not doing very comfortably. You want a dumb down version? I'll have Becca on the show and I'll ask the dumbest questions possible. Let's go. To really, because like that analogy is great. And I understand most of what you're talking about. But I think there's,

you know, people are wrestling with the technology. everything you just said went flying over their head like holy crap what is what if i just want to buy some bitcoin what are you at and uh i'm probably one of the people that come to him and be like you know i'm kind of nervous if you know this and that and you're like uh-huh uh-huh and i'm sure there's a a whole bunch of questions that i have sitting here but you know it's not my show it's it's ben and i'm just like i'll keep storing those somewhere so i can ask them at a later date it's all good that's all good um everybody i am conscious of time uh i'm going to begin rounding out but what i like to

do at the end here is just get any quick final thoughts from any of the conversations that we had today, anything that you want to kind of reiterate or something that you forgot to touch on, or whatever. And also, if you want to point people towards something that you're currently working on, something you think is important, whatever it may be. So, Seb, I'm going to go to you first. Any final thoughts on anything we spoke about today? And where do you want to point people towards? Hmm. You know, like more than anything, I think that if we go, go all the way back to kind of our first little section of this conversation and we're just talking around kind of like sound money gold silver bitcoin there's a book that i read years ago called thinking and

bets by a lady called annie duke and she was kind of a professional poker player and she really just drilled in this idea that because she was a professional poker player she was always thinking in probabilities and i think sometimes we become so uh one-sided black and white it's either gold or it's bitcoin and in reality it's what we discussed at the start like we're all on the same team it's just like How do we have a monetary system that just supports us? And I think that there's no certainty in life. So I'm absolutely all for Bitcoin, gold, silver. How do we just move towards a world where ultimately humanity can thrive?

And we actually can stop talking about money and focus on what matters more, which is family and community and challenging ourselves and our careers. Because we're so fixated on money today. But anyway, as always, Ben, I appreciate you and I appreciate the value bring to the community. We're so lucky to have you on side. and if people want to find me, you can just find me at Seb Bunny or my book, the heading cost of money. But it's been awesome chatting with you, Sean and Becker. Awesome. Awesome. Sean, I'll toss it to you. Same thing. Any final thoughts and anything you want

to point people towards? Well, first off, it's been great to meet Seb and Becca. Obviously, Ben, we know each other and I appreciate you having me on the show. Probably the thing I'd point people to is you've been a part of it. You spoke at it last year. The next iteration of the Cornerstone Forum happens here in Calgary, March 28th. And, you know, there's a lot of what we discussed here today around sound money is a portion of it. And certainly, I'm excited about it. And I would love more people to come to it.

You know, this year we have the Premier of Alberta speaking at it. And I think that's going to be very interesting to have a world leader come in and talk on the stage. But, you know, there's a lot of conversations that happen in the crowd and certainly on stage around what we've discussed here and sound money, but also the geopolitical side. And I'm always a proponent of, if we're going to move forward, how do we get there? And I'm excited about one of the roundtables I'm putting together. And that's the importance of allowing discussion to happen because then you can envision a

future you want to kind of go towards. And if we don't, if we shut down all discussion, it's pretty hard to envision where you want to go or a better future. Sitting here and being around, honestly, a positive roundtable that feels like 2026 seems pretty dang hopeful from this conversation. I just appreciate

you hopping on and allowing me to hop on, sorry. And too much of my host role there coming out. And if I was point something, you know, Calgary March 28th, there's going to be some very interesting discussions happening. It's a one day event. And I think, you know, I always

try and bring in Bitcoin into that discussion because, you know, I go back to what Seb said about to, you know, just like the balance and we're all on the same team. I think there's a lot to be learned from the Bitcoin community as the gold community. And I point back to Chuck Prodnick and the lead community as well. There's just, there's a lot of people that want the best for humanity. And I think there's lots of things to be learned from all of them. Awesome. I love it. And I'll fully vouch for the Cornerstone Forum. Fantastic event. Had a blast their last time. Thanks for having. me talk. I got to chat Bitcoin in front of everybody and kind of make the case for it.

And also had a great time on the panel with Tom Luongo and Brett Oland. And yeah, it was a lot of fun. So thank you for that. Becca. Well, it was first off before Becca, it was my pleasure. You did a wonderful job. I just want to say that. You do a wonderful job on your show as well, Ben. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Becca, I'll toss it to you again. Any final thoughts you may have and anything you want to point people toward. I'm really happy to be here with you guys. It was a fun discussion. I'll be a little self-serving

and just direct people over to anchorwatch.com. Next week, we are launching a number of new products. We have got new ways for you to custody. We've removed friction. We're supporting cold card. We've got kidnap and ransom insurance. We've got multi-institutional custody. You can choose your insurance level from zero up to 100.

percent coverage, lots of changes and improvements that were really excited about getting out over the next few weeks as we kind of open those up for grand opening of them, if you will. And I am doing my first kind of travel after months and months of medical stuff, and I'm going to be down at the Plan B forum in El Salvador at the end of the month. So I'll be talking about inheritance, which is, you know, it's important to everybody who owns Bitcoin. So a really important topic and looking forward to to be back out there with Bitcoiners. Hell yeah. I'm stoked to see you on the road again, Becca.

Thank you. Awesome. Awesome. Everybody, thank you guys so much. Fantastic conversation today. Everybody watching, please do drop a like in a video. But more importantly, check out everything they referred you to and check them out in the show notes. We've got links to them so you can follow along with everything they're doing.

And the last thing I'll say is it's great to talk about current events and all the geopolitical stuff that happens and the price and all that. It's fun. But without learning the tools, you're missing out on what makes Bitcoin so special. So I always play a clip at the end of the show that encourages you to head over to a learn page that I've created that takes you through step-by-step video tutorials on just about every skill that you could. want to learn and more. So do check it out. Go head over and just begin your journey one step at a time. And if you can get through that page and six months to a year, one video at a time, you will be way ahead of your average Bitcoin. There's only nine videos there too. So you would be absolutely crushing it. Anyways, with that, thank you guys so much. Seb, Sean, Becca. It was a lovely

evening. Thank you guys so much and everybody else. This was your weekly bullish session. We'll see you guys. Thanks guys. 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 slash learn for free step-by-step tutorials that guys, 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 the ultimate fast track, scroll to the bottom and check out Bitcoin Mentor.io for premium one-on-one experience with my team of Bitcoin experts to ensure you get it right the first time. Don't wait, secure your Bitcoin future

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