TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #454: An Onramp To The New Custody Standard with Onramp & BitGo

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Marty sits down with Michael Tanguma and Jesse Meyers from Onramp as well as Mitch Kochman from BitGo to discuss their new partnership. Michael on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MTanguma Jesse on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Croesus_BTC Mitch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mitch_kochman Onramp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/ BitGo: https://www.bitgo.com/ 0:00 - Intro 5:04 - How’s The Last Trade going? 10:06 - OnRamp/BitGo partnership 23:35 - The importance of multi-institution 29:18 - What convinces key agents? 36:53 - The next stage of Bitcoin’s adoption 40:36 - Trillion Dollar Wallets and other fun ideas 45:03 - Bitcoin is for everyone 49:11 - State attacks and multi-jurisdiction 1:01:43 - Adoption, education, ETFs 1:19:05 - Marty backstory 1:22:04 - Mitch backstory and BitGo 1:26:15 - Bitcoin is the spirit of revolution 1:28:56 - Wrapping Shoutout to our sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠River⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bitcoin Talent Co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TFTC Merch is Available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shop Now⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the TFTC Movement: Main ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Clips ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Marty Bent: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠

What's up freaks, this is your boy Marty here to introduce this rip of TFTC. This rip was brought to you by our good friends at River. River is a company that's doing it the right way. They build their own infrastructure, they build their own wallets, they're getting their own MTLs, and they've got customer support. You can call River if you have a question, okay? and they've got a new onboarding plan. So if you go to river.com slash TFTC,

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three multi-sig wallet where you hold two keys unchained holds one you always have control of your bitcoin since you have the two keys unchained there to collaborative collaboratively sign with you if you need them to be the second in the two or three multi-sig they also have their lending desk which is built on this two or three multi-sig primitive uh and you put bitcoin up as collateral and a two or three multi-sig escrow you hold one key you don't control the bitcoin but you have visibility into the wallet so that you know your bitcoin is not being re-hypothecated they also have their ira product which allows you to hold two keys in the two or three multi-sig quorum unchained being the other key and you can actually transition your ira into bitcoin hold your own

keys it's a beautiful thing they've streamlined that process made it a lot easier within the last month they've got a lot of things on the roadmap they're about to go gangbusters on the product rollouts from what i understand so stay tuned for that uh you can also buy bitcoin on unchained via their trading desk you buy bitcoin go straight to your two or three multi-sig volt uh so they're doing it the right way they're really innovating i think they're one of the best companies in the space if you are interested in any of these products go to unchained.com consultation set Set up a consultation. Tell them that TFTC sent you.

Just learn about it. You don't have to ape into their products, but I think you should learn about them. So set up a consultation. They have a concierge onboarding team that'll walk you through everything they're working on. Unchained.com slash consultation. This report was also brought to you

by our good friends at Bitcoin Talent Co. It is a recruiting firm built by Bitcoiners for Bitcoiners. So if you're a company in the space looking to hire the best talent, go to Bitcoin Talent Co. and get set up with them. understand bitcoin at the protocol level they understand lightning they understand mining they have the ability to find what you need and they come from a very strong background in recruiting andy led the recruiting team at uber taking them from i believe 100 to 10 000 employees he knows

what he's doing he knows how to do this he knows how to understand your processes they also just launched their flex program so if you don't need full-time employees if you're being hyper are cognizant of your burn rate and how you're allocating capital in these tough economic times, their Flex product allows you to tap into a network of workers who can work on contract and can do quick spreads for you, whether it's design, development, marketing, anything that you may need. So go to bitcointalent.co, tell them that TFTC sent you. If you're a company looking to hire full-time employees, if you're looking for some contract work uh get set up with them and alternatively if you're talent out there looking to get into

the bitcoin industry hit them up get your profile out there and get your your name in the mix to come join the industry building out the bitcoin standard enjoy this rip you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean that's part of the bull case for bitcoin if you're not paying attention you probably should be probably should be let them loose oh we're loose we're loose a bunch of loose geese right now

gentlemen pod two for the afternoon another on-ramp announcement on tftc welcome back gentlemen thank you thanks for having us again it's weird saying welcome back since we do a show once a week together now it's true and we've been talking for two hours already today yes but you're the full captain now i am the full captain and uh since this is my show in my domain i do want to get some critical feedback how do you guys think the last trade is going oh that's a fun topic uh i think it's going really well i think that i mean we have several thousand people listening to our shows every week and i think that speaks to the fact that people are interested in the business side, the finance side of Bitcoin. And hopefully we're

scratching that itch for people. It's been interesting. I didn't know how to think about it other than I just came from the core principle that I think we all have really cool conversations behind the scenes about business and Bitcoin and over dinners and drinks. And I thought other people would want to have those conversations or come on and talk about their side of the business that most people don't get to hear from um the the biggest shock has been that everybody that i know that's tangentially like related to industry listens so somebody's listening uh so that's and they've said good things so that's been pretty cool yeah long time listener first time caller uh but i i was i i genuinely do learn something or learn i get like those couple you know sound

bites or tidbits that i i do you know makes me rethink um or you know have a different perspective it sort of builds you know the ideology uh you know a little step deeper so thank you guys it's helpful that's awesome there's our listener right there our one and only listener now i must say it's been fun for me being able to scratch that particular itch within bitcoin business focus macro focused obviously i do that from time to time here on tftc rabbit hole recaps much more uh technically focused and so it has been fun we've been doing this since what may june six months yeah almost six months in yeah i've learned something new i think that one of the coolest parts i think where people appreciate and we're probably gonna have to go back and

listen to certain ones like on the trust is like the mcclintocks and gavin furies it's like only if you've been around long enough you know these guys are out there and they're just like at the top of their game in the traditional world and then they found bitcoin and now they're just like merging it together and it's just it's awesome to see and then awesome to partner because then it just helps you from a professional sense leapfrog because having those like experts are huge in this industry specifically legal like you don't have a good lawyer in this space you're kind of you know going way off the you know wrong path or against the current yeah that might be that might be the the thing we've stumbled into with with the last trade is that like we've been able

to bring in professionals who are at the top of their game who have found bitcoin and have gone deep on bitcoin and are just kind of they're doing their thing in the bitcoin world and these are voices that you don't hear from a ton normally on on your typical bitcoin podcasts and so talking about like revocable and irrevocable trust setups and you know why they're important for bitcoiners to be thinking about now rather than five years from now that's a topic that you know isn't really out there enough and so you know being able to to bring in an expert on that mcclintock and and and make a whole show about it i think is has been valuable to our listeners yeah and it's been fun to see who brings out of the woodwork the people that reach out and say hi i listen to your pod

it's pretty crazy i mean i've experienced that throughout the years with tftc and rhr but i think the last trade has expanded that universe to an even wider audience um which is cool to see yeah and you're doing a great job hosting it marty so thank you uh that was going to be my next question are you guys thinking about replacing me at any point soon if you leave it logan yeah maybe if we can get logan instead of you logan it's actually it's funny if marty i don't know what we would do uh part of going into this like you know we there's strategic reasons business reasons and all that um i mean i was like well the commitment but it really like has been fun because you take all the pressure off like you're a master at managing the

conversations and we just get to come in and like talk about stuff uh but it's been like almost cathartic like to just go and just to have a conversation about bitcoin every week um so yeah it's been fun you've done a good job we'll keep you around all right good to know good to know i'm gonna tell my wife one job secured one of the many we're not here to talk about the last trade we're here to talk about the big announcement obviously here with michael and jesse from on ramp we've also got mitch koshman from bitco with us you guys have been working on something pretty big behind the scenes uh this is the announcement episode for that which is coming out alongside a bunch of pr and i'm sure a bunch of other events that are happening in vegas next

week and for months to come what have you guys been working on yeah we we have been i'll start it off and michael you can jump in whenever and we can just tag team it here um we have been working on a suite of products centered around multi-institution custody so at onramp we've been focused on for the last year, building out a best-in-class solution for multi-institution custody. And we are now in a new era, we believe at OnRamp, we're in a new era of Bitcoin custody because to date there's been self-custody and third-party custody, and they each have their pros and cons. With self-custody, you can have outstanding security, but there are certain technical challenges and operational challenges involved in maintaining that security and setup.

With third-party custody, you're trusting an institution unilaterally. They control your coins. And we've seen with FTX and Prime Trust and Fortress Trust and the whole long line of prior failures that sometimes that trust is misplaced, because sometimes they're re-hypothecating your Bitcoin, or they haven't actually set up security with best practices and get hacked. So there are risks there. And now with multi-institution custody, it leverages the excellent security of, of multi-sig. Uh, and instead of having a multi-sig arrangement where you hold all or all of, or the majority of the keys, um, it's institutions holding the keys on your behalf as a, as a client and on-ramp coordinates that and has partnered with the best,

Bitcoin custody companies in the world, BitGo being one of them, and our infrastructure partner as well, in order to have a multi-institution custody setup where keys are held by OnRamp, BitGo, CoinCover, or Kingdom Trust as the third. And two of three of those keys are needed in order to control the assets in the client's vault and the client is the only one with

the authority to request a transaction and each of those institutions that ends up signing that transaction has to verify with the end client through their specific processes that this is a valid transfer request. And so now that opens up a whole new world of products that are all based on multi-institution custody because in the spring, at the start of this year, we launched a simple spot Bitcoin fund that used this multi-institution custody model for how we were custodying the Bitcoin. And we found that there were a lot of there was a lot of interest, a lot of demand for other types of Bitcoin products, specifically custody.

So for people who already have Bitcoin, whether that's individuals or institutions or corporate treasuries that are looking for perhaps a better form of custody or to diversify their how they're holding their coins, multi-institution custody is attractive to them. And now we have a product that meets those needs and is designed specifically for that use case. In addition to that, we also have a private wealth offering and have figured out how to meet the needs of RIAs in terms of providing a Bitcoin turnkey asset management platform that incorporates the on-ramp way, the on-ramp approach to how we're managing Bitcoin assets

and also focusing on Bitcoin only, specifically. And yeah, so that's the set of products that we have announced today, or yesterday. we're here to talk about them yeah i think um i think maybe there's a there's a few things i think uh where it relates to bit go and mitch and there's a lot of incredible um things that have just been happening behind the scenes and we had mitch on um the last trade and so the order is going to get a little clunky but we're recording and launching on ramp uh in these new products on thursday morning and the last trade will come friday so if you're interested in learning more that'll be there um but to jesse's point and we kind of glossy over this because it's really

not from a bitcoin standpoint but it's really like foundational and part of the market structure is just a pooled asset vehicle which is effectively what we first started uh in the spot bitcoin trust um you know even ahead of this blackrock etf and similar model grantor trust um with a couple key things that we felt were necessary and that the market we've had a lot of inbound requests for it is effectively, you know, a Bitcoin only asset management firm for a lot, for a number of reasons that this audience knows why is important. Um, but then also the custody model, uh, you know, not being a single, having a single point of failure, and then also allowing for delivery of the BTC. And so we have that fund, um, we launched, we had a lot of demand internationally and along

with domestically for, you know, the fund products, international fund custody, but then also just additional private wealth services to really help from a core Bitcoin way of like, how do you get access to private deals, to inheritance planning, revocable trust, and all the things we've grown over our network and can help play quarterback for somebody that's holding substantial wealth. Along with what Jesse alluded to is the RIA offering to basically be a partner. And it's really interesting because these things existed. There's a lot of firms out there that help and provide uh like the the industry parlance is tamp or turnkey asset management program but what we're doing we're taking the on-ramp approach is one offering bitcoin only to

offering it with the best uh qualified custody and insurance with bitco and execution but then three really marrying and what we found um as part of our core like offering it's not a product but it's ultimately turned into is our research and content arm which is really led by jesse Brian Cabelas, Jackson Contributes, and then the terminal that we recently launched to help asset allocators really look at and just understand what the hell is happening here in Bitcoin and why it's tied to foundational fundamentals. And so we're pulling all that together to offer this multi-institutional approach from the ground up. But what really is exciting, and we could probably throw it to Mitch after sharing this, is that when we were

working with BitGo, the initial approach, and that we did, and this is part of BitGo's course services and best-in-class tooling, is they participate in holding a key and then open up their platform for others to do similar models to this if they want, or they can set up an exchange and manage their keys in certain ways with really good tooling. How do you manage the whole process? But BitGo saw what we were doing and really leaned into the fact that what if we created this model, but every institution had their own onboarding and authentication process before ever signing and going into that deep cold storage to move the funds. And so that was always our core vision. But the reality is you need partners to make it part of the reality because the requires operational, like not only chops best in class, but then it just has to be like infrastructure set up for that. And so that's where I think most excited is this underpinning is foundational for all financial products we'll offer. We're starting with these three core, but then ultimately we see this stemming, but

it's this idea that we onboard an individual and then we get them onboarded through their unique process to on-ramp and BitGo's partnership to get them onboarded with BitGo and the wallets are built and we can help with execution or we can hand that off depending if you already have BTC and then you get to decide based on your jurisdiction if you want your recovery agent, your backup agent to be in the US or outside of the US. But then at the end of the day, anytime you want to move, withdraw, or participate in your asset, in your custody, it requires you to come to OnRamp. And then it would require you also to go to BitGo and go through their best-in-class authentication and trust processes before assets would ever even start to, you know, the movement of assets would begin. And so that's where we're really excited.

And maybe I'll let Mitch jump in to kind of share a little bit of that. I'll first highlight a little bit more of what you were talking about at the end there of like, it's important for us to try to get across to the market, like what this solves for of the rehypothecation scenario of FTX having paper Bitcoin and people ending up with a zero because they thought they had Bitcoin on FTX. and it was double counted for and not there. That is not possible if when Bitcoin is deposited into an on-chain vault that is controlled by two of three institutions and each institution needs the authorization from the end client in order to move those funds,

to sign for those funds, then the end client ends up controlling that. And so you cannot lend out that Bitcoin and re-hypothecate it like FTX did in that scenario. So you've protected against one of the big problems that we've seen with Bitcoin custodians over the last decade by having this setup that puts the power back in the end user's control. And ultimately, it's about making sure that client assets

are sitting in an on-chain vault until the client tells multiple institutions that that money moved. And until then, it's going to sit there in an on-chain vault. At BitGo, we've been in the industry for 10 plus years. We've had some great Bitcoiners work on our Bitcoin wallet from Jameson Lopp to Brandon Black. And ultimately, we made the decision that it's great being able to secure the assets that we do with our hot wallets and our cold storage.

But we wanted to open up our wallets and let companies like OnRamp build great products and services really based with our wallets and our key signing technology as the foundation. So when we're talking about us signing a transaction, what does that entail? Once user has confirmed with OnRamp and OnRamp has signed a transaction, OnRamp then goes and tells us, BitGo, we have a half signed transaction here. What we're doing is we're accepting a partially signed Bitcoin transaction, a PSPT. We've invested pretty heavily in our Bitcoin wallets to be able to do that. We're accepting that half signed transaction and then the way that key is held, you've

We've got an arm guard in front of a bank-grade vault where then once your admin policies have been adhered to, once we get that notification from OnRamp to go sign the transaction, we then video verify end user, end customer of OnRamp. Once we get that confirmation, we go into the vault, that key that we are holding in sharded multiple times. Different people have access to two different shards. Once each of those shards gets signed, keys are reconstituted, Bitcoin will make the signature and transaction will get broadcasted out through our Bitcoin nodes and onto the blockchain. So it's a pretty intensive process, but the process that assets that are worth the amount

that you know we all you know envision and you know believe they will be um and we treat them you know with the the standard and care that uh that they demand yeah it's a pretty involved process but i think it's important to dig into why it's important to have these layers of involvement both from the on-ramp verification to the signing of your part of the psbt to then handing it over to bitco and having them go through their process to complete the transaction and broadcast it to the network what type of benefits does this provide the end user that you guys are targeting i think from a layman perspective we can go into the nuance it's basically like the three whatever the person's best three companies let's

pretend gold uh coinbase is the the standard right michael saylor holds his bitcoin there you effectively get three coin bases there's processes behind every authentication before keys are ever signed and moved. And so ultimately, like I always think about your audience, Marty, and a lot of folks that are holding keys and doing a lot of things that would never use something like this, where I always think about this is this is the product for my mother-in-law or the friend that has not been able to get into space because they've been concerned with, well, what if they go under? What if they rug me? What if they re-hypothecate the collateral? And all of these things that we're talking about from redundancies to fault tolerance or how we thought about building

up this business so we can get the trade-offs of both sides of, okay, I'm not ready to take self custody. I'm not ready to learn every, learn the different aspects of it, but I'm also not ready to trust a single custodian. Is there a better way that I can get material allocation without feeling like what's happened? Basically, we keep saying the past 12 months, it's really the past 15 years. You can go all the way back to Gox, Kojiga, all the different exit scams. People inherently understand there's something wrong with a central entity holding the asset. It's just like, well, what is the solution? And we feel like we're onto something with being able to solve for this.

Yeah. And to spell that out, there's two types of people. There's people who understand and have done their homework and are technical enough to be confident with a self-custody setup. And if that's you, awesome. And if you're listening to this, frankly, that's probably you. You have the chops, you've done the homework, and you can handle your own self-custody. And that's fantastic security.

But for a lot of people, the barrier to entry for self-custody is daunting and you can screw it up. And it also can you can be deterred from taking on on a Bitcoin allocation because you hear about, you know, how you have to have multiple hardware wallets set up and they're supposed to talk to each other in some weird way. And it sounds like a bunch of homework. It sounds like a major technical project to dig into. And so you just put it off and you decide, you know what, maybe Bitcoin's not for me. And I think that's most people. That's most people who don't have Bitcoin today, certainly. And as a result of that, you know, a lot of people haven't taken a dive into Bitcoin and gone in allocation. So, you know, there's people who are capable of self-custody and great.

if that's you, fantastic. And then there's the people who default to a third-party custodian, whether that's leaving their coins on Coinbase, whether they think, you know what, GBTC is the right thing for me. But that also includes a huge group that just decides, you know what, I'm not capable of self-custody and these other custodians like FTX scare me. And so as a result, I'm just not going to touch Bitcoin. And I think that our solution, the on-ramp multi-institution custody model provides the ease for investors, whether that's individuals or institutions, the ease of third-party custody, but the security of a best-in-class multi-sig self-custody approach. And that's specifically because in the on-ramp multi-institution custody

model, on-ramp and none of the entities involved have unilateral control over your coins. And so ultimately you retain control. And that solves for the Achilles heel of the third-party custodian model where you know because they can be rehypothecated because they sit in a specific entities control they can be hacked and you can lose your funds as the end user this model solves for that so it opens up Bitcoin allocations to a huge group of people individuals and and institutions who have to date not been willing or able to take on Bitcoin as an asset because they are unprepared for self-custody and they find third-party custody unpalatable. And so from the end user's

perspective, I think it's pretty obvious that this is an optimal custody solution in terms of trade-offs, you're distributing risk, key risk among multiple institutions. If one goes down, you're not shit out of luck the other two can move your bitcoin you can reset up the multi-seat quorum with another key agent i think another question which we didn't touch on on the last trade and probably is important to touch on here going to the other side of that market like the key agents what gives them confidence to participate in this type of quorum there's probably many out there who fancy themselves as very good security engineers and they've created a robust custody solution in-house, what would make them confident that they should enter into a multi-institution

quorum like this? I'll throw that to you, Mitch. I think if you're a Bitcoiner or someone who's paying attention to this industry, I don't know how you can look at multi-institution custody and not think that this is the future of custody. Ultimately, at BitGo, we made the decision to support this stuff because, you know, our CEO, Mike Belshi, was the person who pioneered using, you know, multisig for Bitcoin wallets. And, you know, the sort of applauding and, you know, enabling, you know, innovation using multisig, you know, how could we not help lift these companies up and support them? And, you know, if we fundamentally think that, this could be the future of custody. And I personally do believe so. How do we not support

that model? That's a model that we absolutely need to make sure that BitGo is also a part of. I think it's important to us that as this gets built out, BitGo has been doing this for 10 years. We are very, very good at keeping keys safe. We have not had a security incident over the course of our lifetime. Ensuring that safety and that, you know, all, you know, that decade of work goes into, you know, these models. And, you know, they're done as securely as possible to ensure that, you know, we get this right the first time. I think that was important to us. Ultimately, you know, while we're all companies, while trying to make money, I think doing, you know, bringing trust to digital assets is, you know, is what we, you know, from a company, you know,

value standpoint, that's number one. And I think, you know, we're adhering to that ethos with what we're doing here. And, you know, if this is the future, you know, let's make sure that's done securely. Yeah. And there's this real recognition that this opens up a large pool of capital. Like I can't help because I'm, you know, I've been listening to this pod, TFTC for five, six years and put my, my like freak hat on and be like, man, this is, doesn't sound right. Like I can hold my keys. And I think that while it's true, there's a, there's a case for, you know, the price appreciating and being a little worried about that. Let's put that one aside. Um, and to just think through from like an institutional allocator or somebody that's high net worth that is just

generally used to a world, their worldview is that if I buy something, it doesn't go away. It doesn't go to zero. It's not going to, if it, somebody hacks my account cause I'm a boomer and they get in it just gets reversed you know i just press a button and then i call them and they reverse the charge and we we just have been building and been in this space jesse's been running a fund he's been writing for for close to half a decade uh i've been building in the space for close to half a decade and working and in seeing all these conversations you start to realize there's like pattern recognition in this um conversations in individuals heads as they look at it uh as this at this asset and so we we put this together we believe it to be right and what

what's needed unlock capital but something happened like close to a month or two months ago um where we had been working based on what the market want you know the feedback on other vehicles because that's ultimately what we're doing is we built an asset management platform with a trusted brand we're aiming to build trust in the industry by providing content and research and advisory services to the market and then it's built on the foundation of a better form of custody to reduce counterparty risk. And so while we were looking at that, and then it's like, well, what are the vehicles that can unlock large pools of capital that has historically not come in and then are looking to come in, but pause because of all the FTX things that happen and

that will be ready, but they need to feel comfortable with it. And so we started and we found, you know, again, the fund aspect, because some people just need security exposure versus spot for a number of reasons we can talk about if we need to. And then there's spot Bitcoin and spot bitcoin could be for an individual as long as well as other exchanges who we brought on a few clients that we can talk about as well and then uh on the you know wealth side whether it's a private wealth individual or somebody that's an ria that needs exposure all this where that ties in is uh we had a large pension intermediary that i feel comfortable in talking about because he came on the last trade um clinton cameron cartwright and this individual and his boss are uh very

knowledgeable in traditional finance they're asset managers they've been in this in this in the the financial industry for i think close to 30 plus years they were part of the o8 crisis they uh looked very deeply at you know first principles thinking of what's going on and they were gold guys they found bitcoin and so they're very educated and they're in a position where they're talking to pensions but they're looking for a counterparty that they can in good faith go to And again, not sharing anything that wasn't already said on a pod. I would really encourage if any of this is interesting to listen to that podcast. I think it was like three episodes ago on the last trade, but it was just awesome because

he didn't, we hadn't announced these products. We were just working on them with the vision that this is what the market wanted. And he reached out because he actually happened to be a freak and the algorithm on YouTube put the last trade in front of him. And so we got on and he starts talking about the last trade and loving the content. but then went into what he's looking for and he can't work with anybody because of all the tenants and pillars that we're focused on when it comes to Bitcoin only and just understanding that like his core, this is like, how can you work with somebody if they don't fully understand

why Bitcoin is the asset? Because then that just signals other misunderstandings. And if you're ultimately going to be a fiduciary, how comfortable can you be in parking your capital? And then the other aspect is obviously the counterparty risk. So these are pensions. This is large swaths of capital into the tunes of multiples of billions of dollars. If this go, you know, whoever takes on their capital. So that's, that's big. But then last is in-kind delivery. And again, from a very first principles, it's not that he wants the Bitcoin. It's that he understands that at a time of need, like a GFC, you're going to want the Bitcoin. You're going to want to prove that your counterparty has it. And he's just thinking, why wouldn't you be able to take it? You can take my

money in you know you can take my btc and why can't you give it back out and so he came to us basically with a problem not a not a solution he said this is what i'm looking for and we're like yeah i mean this is this is our core foundation of how we're thinking about it and so anyway that was a long way of basically saying that's where i'm really excited we're really excited about this is because we've just had this vision of the future of what we've been doing and building in this space and it's been fun to see organically people come and reach out looking at that same vision, which is an educated person. And so I think as the market gets more and more educated, as we've seen, these products start to make more and more sense because the old world of doing

things clearly doesn't work as we've seen the past, you know, again, 12 months or 15 years of this like central entities holding all the assets and just trusting them to like be whole when you need your Bitcoin. Yeah. I, I, yeah, I think Michael's right here that, uh, this may sound like a crazy new um half-baked idea uh to to some people listening but the more you think about it the more time you spend in it thinking about how this unlocks huge pools of capital that have previously found bitcoin inaccessible or you know not willing to go there um you know it starts you start to realize that this is this is how bitcoin goes through the next phase of the adoption curve you know it's we've we've bootstrapped from nothing to a 500 billion dollar asset

to match gold would be a 12 trillion dollar asset obviously we all know that there's a lot of potential beyond uh just matching gold and um so you know anyway you cut it we're early on in that adoption curve and that means the bulk of the adoption curve is still ahead and all those adopters are still ahead. How do we cross the chasm from the very technical people who are capable of setting up their own multi-sig and listening to TFTC as a result of being very technical early freaks? How do you go from those folks to the mainstream, to the institutional capital allocators, the investment committees, where they've got seven people sitting on an investment committee, they can't touch Bitcoin because, one, they don't want to be in GBTC.

And two, if they're going to do self-custody, who's going to hold the keys? You got seven people. Who's going to set it up? That's some of the problems that are out there that for Bitcoin to continue to mature as an asset have to be solved. And they're solved by making security and ease come together. And that's what multi-institution custody is able to do. And it's possible because of, Marty, to your question earlier of like, are key agent partners and infrastructure partner, BitGo, recognizing that this is this is an important new wave of how Bitcoin custody can and will be done and leaning into that. And so we owe a big thanks to Mitch and his team at BitGo for recognizing they're steeped in

10 years of learning about Bitcoin custody and multi-sig from the very beginning and realize that this is an important new chapter in in how bitcoin custody can be done for some people and it's not the right solution for everybody but i think increasingly it will become a bigger and bigger part of how people who you know capital that has yet to come into bitcoin finds its way into bitcoin and specifically finds its way into into the right ways of holding bitcoin the ways you know the the type of um you know like our fund where you can take in kind redemptions instead of like the BlackRock ETF where certain people can take in-kind redemptions

and that can always change or GBTC where nobody can take in-kind redemptions. And so we're excited about what this unlocks for the market, for the capital allocation landscape and really, really appreciative of Mitch and all of his work and his team's work for helping make it possible. I appreciate it. I mentioned it on the last trade, but I think we have an asset here that it was a, you know, blog I read by you guys that the risk is not just the asset price going to zero, but fundamental loss of the asset, you know, private keys being lost and, you know, your balance goes to zero, even if, you know, Bitcoin is appreciating in value.

And in order to onboard these people who are on the sidelines, you need to build for that risk and to reduce that counterparty risk. Our CEO, Mike Belshi, at Pacific Bitcoin a couple weeks ago said, right now we're built for securing billions and billion-dollar wallets. And, you know, in the next market cycle, in the next few market cycles, we need to be ready for, you know, trillion dollar wallets. And there's work that needs to be done to, you know, to get there. And personally, I believe that multi-institution custody and what we can do here is fundamentally better from a counterparty risk perspective and will help unlock the capital that ultimately gets us to, you know, trillion dollar wallets. So I thank you guys for, uh, for setting the foundation to, uh, to go make that a reality. I like this meme, trillion dollar wallets. It just sounds good.

Meme it into reality here. There's a, there's a theme that, uh, you said meme theme. We were talking about the, the early, the early part of the pod. I think one of the things that makes, um, last trade really special is, um, bringing different ideas that haven't really been talked about. And there's this quote, I knew it was somewhere. I looked it up. It's, um, so the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, uh, when ideas have

sex with each other, who said that it's, uh, there's different flavors of this, right? It's Matt Ridley. Um, but I just remember that was like one of the more like kind of prolific or get, get people's engines humming. But I've always thought like there's lots of things like me and Jesse have different styles and that's different ideas. There's BitGo and Belchi being a technologist and then also using the core, but then understanding Bitcoin, which are two different ideas. But one that I think is really misunderstood or not really quantified and it's such a huge opportunity for anybody listening is while funds and asset management and all this stuff isn't sexy, it's literally been around for thousands of years or at least like asset management and banking and all those things and then funds for however long. but the problem is that all these people that have come in are like crypto people so they don't get it and so they just they either sell you a bunch of things that aren't bitcoin and you can go to

websites and see solana dex top 10 metaverse down 80 and they have the goal to like still sell you it and like they've raised hundreds of millions of dollars and they have a bitcoin fund but that gets a little percentage whatever and then they can't really educate you properly even if they wanted to or even if they understood because when the market turns against them they don't there's nobody there to like say hey like let's walk through what's happening it wasn't bitcoin it was ftx because they put them in ftx they put them in solana so that's just a problem in itself that most of the crypto people that understand funds and traditional finance ended up in crypto and then the other side of this and this is the shout out to our good friend odell and the freaks it's

like fuck those people like i want nothing to do with that i don't want anybody holding my keys i don't want to eat it which is perfectly fine the problem is that like that's not how all the money is going to come in if we just ready that or get don't develop the products and solutions and this is the the sex of ideas of like we record mired in that and marty's one of them and like we you go through these progressions either get left behind or not left behind but you either just like stay in certain camps or you continue to like grow with the trajectory of these things and i won't lump marty there but i feel like jesse and i would anchor to that of like you know mitch talked about He was an early Casa client on the previous pod.

And that's part of the pattern recognition and understanding of how hard this was. And does it have to be hard for his mother and other people to get exposure to this asset? So I think that's ultimately what we're doing here is taking the fundamental understanding of Bitcoin, how we think it will scale, reducing counterparty risk, but then taking the traditional world of asset management and the vehicles that are needed from an international perspective or domestic US perspective and marrying them together to provide the products that don't blow up and people get burned. yeah no i mean the whole meme like bitcoin's not for everyone has never really set well with me i really like to anchor to as long as you have the optionality and we're sufficiently distributed at the node level the hash rate level and the key level that all will be fine people it's an open source protocol people have different preferences they have different levels of risk tolerance they're going to interact with bitcoin in different ways whether we like it or not and again

And since it's an open source protocol, any of this is possible. You just have to accept that as fact. And going back to Bitcoin isn't for everyone meme, it's never sat well with me because I do think if we have the best money that's ever been created in human history, we should try to get it into as many hands as possible despite the limitations at the protocol level, despite the limitations of the infrastructure at any given point in time.

our north star should be trying to get it into as many hands as possible and creating unique solutions like multi-institution custody gets us closer to that and then obviously we still have limitations at the protocol level and second layers that we need to figure out but i'm confident over time as we reach those limits people will find creative ways maybe they'll uh have ideas having sex or something like that and they'll figure out how to scale this at the tech level as well yeah you know bitcoin is for everyone it's just maybe not the purest form of bitcoin bitcoin is for everyone it just depends on when you get into it and what kind of tooling exists at that point in time um you know as as things keep getting better in how

how, you know, user facing apps and products are set up, it gets easier and easier to interact with Bitcoin in some capacity, right? Like you can have exposure to Bitcoin without ever really using on chain. And then it becomes a purist question of like, is that truly using Bitcoin? Does that mean you're a Bitcoiner? And, you know, it's a valid point that, like, you can have a definition of being a Bitcoiner that does not include that. I think that's totally valid. But you can still have access. People who are not, quote unquote, purist Bitcoiners can still have access to Bitcoin and use it in some capacity.

And I think that trend will continue to evolve. and frankly it's it's part of how this asset wins um you know it's it's by penetrating the adoption curve that um you know this thing becomes the de facto money for the world and then you know the the future version of the world that we all hope for flows from that um and so i think adoption through better tools and products and easier to use tools and products is how we get to that end state of, you know, Bitcoin as a unit of account

that everything's priced in Bitcoin because Bitcoin is the savings vehicle for everyone. So, you know, this is part of that journey. I think Bitcoin is not for everyone today, but we need to build the world that Bitcoin can be for everybody when they need it to be. And it's up to us to build the products and services

that are there for people when they're ready to go make that leap. And whether it's self-custody or multi-institution custody or really whatever we haven't even thought of yet, we've got to make this easier for people. and you know until it is you know we're not going to reach that point of hyper bitcoinization that you know ultimately you know we're all hoping for and you know excited for yeah i can hear many of the freaks clamoring right now the biggest risk if we're putting

our adversarial thinking caps on and really trying to poke holes in this is yes you may have multi-institutional multi-institution custody key risk is distributed amongst those institutions but at the end of the day the state comes it goes to those institutions and says hey you can't move this bitcoin out you guys are going to have to abide by that mandate um which gets into the whole idea of multi multi-jurisdictional multi-institution multi-sig custody so with that in mind too i mean how uh and michael i know you've thought through this like how do you approach that and steel man that argument yeah i mean this is my favorite topic because it's um it's my favorite topic along the bitcoin side because or just in general one because there's

no i'm convinced after like thinking about this and we've onboarded a lot of folks in the custody and talked through it that there's no perfect solution to bitcoin there's just like perfect trade-offs and those are different for every individual uh and and it's like whole concept there is like like custody and is always moving for an individual just based on whether what's the allocation size the price the risk factors and all these things so there's never like the right form of custody can always change um there's a few different ways to answer like one is if there's something jurisdictionally happening and you're already working with institution you're probably you know already been rugged um because that single institution has failed you i think

there's a another understanding that's important about self-custody is the thing that keeps everybody honest um so this ability to have a valve that you can take delivery whether it's to test the system or to to take it um there's jurisdictional keys that will ultimately happen coin covers a partner they sit in the uk they're incredible there will be others but i where i where i think this is like the less maybe pc or like where this all goes and it's kind of been something that's fascinating and we need to um i need personally to read more about it is like this whole free banking uh concept and there's free banking and i guess it can mean a lot of things i ultimately think it means like trust and and um confidence which we're ultimately trying

to build here and on ramp i think we're doing a pretty good start from the feedback we've gotten but it's ultimately that like people fulfill their obligations and what are their obligations in a future state and one of them might be that they're going to sign no matter what and that's why it's valuable and so i think that's where this all ends up is when it all comes down to incentives and if your incentive is to do it and we talked about it on uh the last trade and we've talked to investors about this about you know it's a common thing that's come up historically since you know been in this industry of like what about nation state you know adoption it's like yeah well yeah that's a problem but that's also why we're based here in texas because take

Texas has a certain stance on property rights. And I've actually had institutions reach out after that. It's like, hey, can you send me some of the material to explain a little bit more about the property rights? Because one of the things we cited was just, you know, Kyle Bass and pulling the billion plus and gold bullion for UTEMCO down from New York to the first sovereign state bullion depository in North America here in North Austin. And so ultimately, I think that's where it all ends up. It ends up as jurisdictions, trusted, and then ultimately counterparties that sit in those jurisdictions that are just known to fulfill the obligations and the ones that don't they're the same ones that end up getting rugged and don't fulfill the obligation whether it's because

they're you know insolvent didn't deliver and that's how the market determines who are the counterparties bitco has been around for 10 plus years because they continue to sign they continue to do things and there's other institutions like that and so i think that's the long like term answer is the the firm that sets themselves up from the game theory and always fulfills will be the longstanding firm. And that's also why it's important to only hold one key. Yeah, and to add on to that, Marty, of like sort of addressing the hypothetical directly of,

so, you know, in that scenario, let's say you've got your three institutional key holders and let's say they all happen to be in the same state or something like that. And state or federal regulators come and say, um give us you know give us those those keys now um that's that's you know a risk right like that that's a risk with the current like third-party custody setup where a single institution holds all the keys and so that that's a risk right now um if you were to be if you had all your

key holding entities in the same jurisdiction um that's a risk with multi-institution custody however it does require coordination across time right like that that action has to happen on the same day effectively and that makes it harder right like that requires a greater coordination for law enforcement um or regulators or you know whatever agency is acting here um so that right there is like an order of magnitude harder just to make sure that you've got all that happening at the same time you know all your ducks in a row in terms of your paperwork and and you you act at the same on the same moment in time right like like a raid happening in three different locations at the exact same time that that's harder than sending a letter saying hey

we're your regulator send us your assets uh to a to a singular third-party custodian um and then And of course, when we add in that jurisdictional layer, it becomes an order of magnitude harder beyond that. So, you know, a hundred times harder than a third party custodian holding all the assets. Because now you have to coordinate across time and across jurisdictions, meaning you have to have an action at the same hour of the same day by multiple different authorities acting in several different jurisdictions. And so you can see how it's still possible, but it's so much harder to execute that kind

of action by the state or by federal governments than it is with a single custodian holding the keys to all the Bitcoin where all it takes is a letter from a regulator saying, hey, we need that, give it to us, and they have to comply. Yeah, I think that's actually, it reminds me, it's not apples to apples, but of the block size subsidy debate or like that we need inflation or tail emission in the sense of, again, not apples to apples, but it's very similar in sense like engineering around something that we haven't seen. not to say that it can't happen. What we've seen more of is exchanges, again, go down, be insolvent, all the things we know. So you want, to Jesse's point, a step function increase in security to prevent that. And that's where you have the keys outside and not a single institution holding all of them. But it's the same concept of like, if you get too cute or too

complex, complexity is the enemy of security. And if you do too much crazy stuff with your multi-sig setup, that's how funds get lost. And so I do think there's a natural balance. And there, again is no perfect solution there's just perfect trade-offs and i think this like form this model is form fit for that and then ultimately will increase as you think about and mitch can talk to some of the work they're doing you know with time locks when that's really built out i still think it's early i think a lot of that stuff is like multi-sig in 2018 and 19 personally but then i think uh the quorum size and the participation from the the the entities and a lot of things will will um develop over time but when you think about what is the natural spot and i think

logan had pulled it up earlier of that reducing friction and counterparty risk while increasing security and that's where we really like this model at least for the for the foundation to start on ramp i just really to piggyback here because i i mostly agree with with both of you guys, and also we get this question a lot at BitGo, is primarily the market's shown us that the biggest issue that we have to secure against is the loss of funds. We have not seen on great scale nation states seizing assets from citizens with Bitcoin. Obviously, in history, it has happened. But I think first and foremost, protecting against those security concerns is the priority. I think you guys have the right mindset to focus. Ultimately, this is phase one.

I can absolutely see phase two, three, splitting between jurisdictions and building out this product and watching it evolve. But, you know, as, you know, obviously, you know, Bitcoiner, but I've got libertarian ideals and I'm cautious about this stuff as well. And I think if, you know, obviously custody is a spectrum. And if you're, if this is concern number one for you, then, you know, self-custody probably is the route for you. If you want, you know, you don't want the concerns of self-custody, then, you know, you look at the, you know, the range of capacity options as being one of them but ultimately like at least my you know individual opinion here is I don't think we're anywhere close to you know the U.S government seizing

this stuff overnight I think you know government and particularly the U.S government you know tends to operate a bit slowly um you know you see that you know with you know anything from regulation in this country to um you know liquidation of assets and things like that like it's slow it's purposeful for a reason um you know it's it's to make sure like their decisions matter it's they're careful about it and i don't necessarily think you know you're gonna have you know two hours to go withdraw your bitcoin uh you know and move it offline if there ever was some sort of issue i think we're gonna have some you know some time to prep for that reality. I mean, look at the, you know, what's going on with the ETF right now.

We all are of the mindset that, you know, approval's coming soon. You know, everyone's looking at those January dates. You know, we're going to get to it when, you know, when the infrastructure's right. And, you know, it's not going to be a light switch event. So that's sort of, you know, at least from an individual perspective, whoa, you know, what I think about that issue and that is a nod to self-custody right it's just like the fact that you can take delivery and it sits outside of the system always is that like question if i am going to push draconian measures on a society or constituents like well that is always your last you know ditch effort and you have to be prepared for it i think what's more likely is you get a

government-backed atf that locks all the bitcoin that uh that that might be a more likely version of any kind of, you know, what we're talking about here with the confiscation or request to not sign or any of the things that are associated with like attacking Bitcoin. I think ultimately though, like you mentioned the ETF again, like it's up to us as an industry to go build, you know, the ETF is going to be a great vehicle

for a lot of people. And it's up to us to build the competitor, of why it makes sense to go with a model like multi-institution custody, where you have more control of the assets and explaining why that matters. Because ultimately, if everyone just goes the ETF route, we have digital gold and that's great and price goes up,

but it's not fixing money. It's not really using the asset to what it was designed to be. So, you know, it's on us as an industry to provide those products and provide those options for users to, you know, to hold their Bitcoin in ways, you know, outside of the ETF and, you know, pitch that value prop. Can we go out the box to have a conversation, Logan? I wanted to ask Marty, this is a key thing that comes up and I know everybody gets it. It's like, I'm going to ask Marty directly. Do you think we can out-compete BlackRock? Well, it's funny you ask because I was just about to bring that up.

I do think we can. And building on part of the conversation we had on the last trade, it goes back to how effectively can we market this type of product to the market, to end users, and front run them? And how quickly can we do it? Because I think all of us on this call would agree it's a step function improvement in terms of ways to get exposure to bitcoin compared to an etf where you really just have an iou on bitcoin sitting in coin desks or not coin desks

coin bases uh wallets and you don't really even out yeah you just have like paper exposure at the end of the day it's been the meme on tftc and rhr for years as btc is the etf like if you're going to get exposure get direct exposure that gives you the ability to take custody and we've i said this on the last trade after the lightning summit in july in nashville like i do think there is a strong case to be made that we should caution people away from the etf because yes they may view it as this digital gold asset right now but as we're seeing on the lightning network and other second layer solutions that are coming and what we just launched at tftc with our site with the lightning monetization tools like you are actually going to want to use bitcoin and to do that is

going to demand that you actually have the asset to send you're not going to be sending you're not going to be paying lightning invoices from from a blackrock etf so whether or not we can beat black rock in um stewarding people towards products that'll give them that ability is uh a question yet to be answered whether or not we should is a definite yes um i i i am confident that via a succinct direct communication we can beat black rock at this game i uh i haven't said this a lot i hope i don't get in trouble mitch is i uh i ask it because i in my bones know that i'm not saying honorant beats blackrock but the right solutions do because ultimately it's basically betting on people being educated and getting

educated if everything stops today and all the information and all the writing and all the things everybody's producing and content stop we probably don't but as long as the market continues to get educated and this is again just pattern recognition from before block five was the best example rehypothecation lending the market started to price in what that means is the same way that counterparty risk taking delivery and all of those things start to you know disseminate to the market get across and then you start learning there's other solutions and you see the flow it's just a free market bitcoin's the best money that's ever been created the market is starting to coalesce around that in the same way that when you build better financial products the market will go

And BlackRock probably doesn't get rugged at first. It's going to be these other ETFs that are sitting on maybe a different exchange, took a cut a corner, maybe rehypothecated. The collateral, the part I was going to say about getting in trouble. So I don't think that's the ambitious part. I think the ambitious part was that when we talked with Mitch and BitGo, saw the vision, was excited. In my head, I was like, man, I wonder if these guys are going to compete with BlackRock on the fund. uh because we have ambitions for the fund like the fund is very like people need that exposure they want it they don't want to go buy bitcoin they don't want to set up custody and authentication they just want to click a button it sit there and that's perfectly fine but then they're going to wake up one day and they're going to be like i want the bitcoin to pay marty's paywall or the things that he's building at mash it's like i need it and so building the mechanism from again a first principles standpoint makes sense because it's a better product forget about like being tied the bitcoin ethos just like it's better it can be done there's precedent for this in the ecosystem

in the traditional financial ecosystem with gold and silver amongst other commodities and so is this thought well like if bitcoin sees that then like coinbase right now gbtc 600k if the ultimate winner is there there's probably hundreds of thousands not millions but that's not the flow you get the flow and the custody it's well then where did people take the delivery it's like it's right there with bitco like you just like you can offer a better product so that anyway that was like when i first had this like what if that's like their angle or whatever and then uh i know it wasn't more than likely but it's a very interesting it's a very interesting concept because i really think about gbtc holding 600k btc printing bitcoin somebody's gonna win that

from a better product and the price is only 25 28 000 and they're holding 15 billion plus or whatever what happens when it's 10x from that that's somebody sitting on 150 billion dollars in bitcoin generating fees that's the opportunity for that just like one product okay on the question of like are we going to contend are we going to beat blackrock or you know space for both of us to to play here uh but you know i think you can't work in this industry without, you know, a bit of optimism, you know, can be trying to fix money, you know, without optimism, without a bit of an edge to you. And I think as long as we harness that, as long as, you know, like you said, with the social media and the memes, and as long as that continues, but,

you know, we've got to harness that to keep educating, you know, doing the work that you guys do, you know, with the research, with the terminal, you know, and keep pushing that information out there reaching more ears i think you know ultimately i think the etf is going to be for some people that's great i'm glad to have them on board in in the way that you know we can but you know ultimately i i do you know the optimist in me is you know believes that there will be you know a second path for for for those who actually truly understand the asset and you know want to leverage it to the capabilities that we can it's nice to see that my winner's mentality speech uh was embedded into you mitch i'm a serialist so i just with the the i want to

make sure we win and it's not digital gold it's more than digital though we fix money and that that's that's my mindset um and i think as long as you know we got great people like you guys um you know doing the hard work of helping those people we do win i i didn't say before mitch but you know i think that i think that if bitcoin makes it to digital gold then it is almost certain to win by fixing money like you know i think that path dependence of all it has to do is make it a little bit further and then it's gonna make it to the end um is there so i don't know i i sort of i sort of view in in a lot of my writing and what i try to focus on is like people need to people need to view it as digital gold first like the people who don't yet have any bitcoin and still

think it's monopoly money they just need to come around to this is digital gold in your early and then you know come on into the tent like you know whether that's hopefully it's through a good uh bitcoin vehicle hopefully it's by buying spot bitcoin and holding it in an on-chain vault that'd be ideal if not that hopefully it's through a good spot bitcoin vehicle like the on ramp bitcoin trust and you know that even allows for some people who are going to get in get exposure via uh via blackrock and they're going to start learning about bitcoin and they're going to become bullish like you know that that can be the value proposition of blackrock is uh orange pilling wall street um to the extent that they have not uh what was that marty top of funnel

yeah top of funnel top of funnel blackrock helps um i think the real winners are going to be the people who don't get exposure via etfs um you know so sort of doesn't you're flipping that from the perspective of like which company wins it's which which users win the users who don't go in via an etf are going to be the real winners i think yeah it's why i was gonna say it's why like nobody really uh says this because like every company if they're gonna be successful has to be an education company in this space for the next 10 years like you have to be able to educate to explain all these concepts on like why you don't want an etf right because everything from a pattern recognition from traditional finance is like this is the easiest way to get it

and you got to get ahead of that and figure out the ways to articulate like hey this asset has other properties and you may want to you know take delivery of it or need it because that's what i sorry that's what i reference is the hard work is like you guys are having this conversation every day with new people entering the space like the company's name is on ramp it's to on rep to to bitcoin and you know it's a privilege to enable you guys but but ultimately like you said you're gonna be educating for 10 years that you know that's it's heavy stuff but it's reality and uh unless you know you got to keep throttling that otherwise we're not going to win so you know there's a lot of work to do to go on ramp and onboard everybody to to the industry but you

know i do think we get there yeah i'm six years into educating people on this show and it's uh it's a drag 10 more it's not a drag it's a labor of love but it's uh it's a process showing up being there it's important but it's fun i got 10 more years left to me that's what we got to do yeah it's also insanely insanely rewarding like imagine like we all love this this no matter what we say it's like it's true you talk about the conversations and it's just like having thousands of conversations on like onboarding consultations conversions like helping them move over it's like never gotten tired of it because somebody's eyes are always like glimmer glimmer like what are we doing like we're taking possession like we're taking money you know the

whole thing is just it's like the thing once you find it you just latch on to it because it's kind of what's going to give you the energy to get past all like the bullshit when it when it comes yeah that's a real bitcoin dopamine hit it's not the likes on twitter it's the uh aha moment going off in somebody else's eyes where you're like yeah yeah yeah that's why larry laparte is so amazing because that's just like he's a microcosm of like the the generation that you get to see behind the scenes that see it and there's just something magical about somebody that thinks that they saw everything in their life like it was it and then they see this and it's like oh my god i have another like 30 years i mean the people that have reached out from

tradfi that have like want to dust off their um what did they what do they carry bookcases what What are the briefcases? Briefcases, yeah. Yeah. They want to dust off one of these bad boys. Wow. They want to dust off the briefcase and are sitting there retired and they're just like, look, I know exactly how to position this for all the people that are looking.

It's just been insane. It's really the ultimate signal for us as far as like the talent that's interested in jumping on board. Yeah. A lot of those folks listen to your show, Marty. So they're listening to this right now. Closet freaks. Yeah, the closet freaks who have had a successful traditional professional career and think that Marty might be on to something here.

Yeah. They're all closet Alex Jones fans as well here. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. When the price ran from $10 when it started moving, it was like the first nod my mother-in-law ever was like, maybe he's on to something. That was the most I got.

And then the second one was when she saw the product, she's like you know he might be on to something because i might use it like it's something i would it's something i would use like that's the most you get yeah and that that's part of where this all came from too is like so i was running a crypto fund that you know i started in 2017 as a crypto fund because that's what i believed in at that point in time got my ass handed to me in 2018 had to figure out oh this is not about technology and all the crypto talking points This is just about money. And then I had to learn about money for the first time, even though I have an MBA and I never learned about money. And then you end up as a Bitcoin

maximalist. That's the path that everybody walks. That's the path that I walked. And so my fund became a Bitcoin holding fund. And my investors didn't need me to do that. So I told them, you don't need me to hold Bitcoin. You can take self-custody. A quarter of them did. Three quarters of them didn't they didn't want to deal with it then a lot of them are boomers and they don't want to deal with it they wanted my conviction in their inbox every month um you know telling them why this is still a good thing to include in their portfolio and that's you know that that's the solution that we originally built was for people like that for you know the the types of people like michael's talking about here his his mother-in-law would fall into that sort of general

category of like they they don't want to deal with it they want exposure they want somebody to set it up for them right but they don't want to like wade into bitcoin themselves they're not ready for it yet you know maybe they get ready for it and i think that's one of the funny things about bitcoin is like to do it right you have to learn a ton but when you're just starting you're not going to learn you don't know a ton you you've just begun so how do you get started right how do you can find the right on-ramp into this asset class that allows you to keep learning with a Bitcoin-only educational focus and enables you to take on whatever self-custody choices you want in the future, because you can take in-kind redemptions from our on-ramp Bitcoin trust,

you know, and also helps you grow into this asset by helping you learn about the various idiosyncratic considerations around Bitcoin and all the financial services products that are tied in with that. And also helps you learn about the industry in general. There's a lot to learn. And you just don't know that on day one. There's no way to be prepared to set up self custody right on day one. And so as a result of that, we have a lot of people sitting in GBTC or millions of Bitcoins sitting on Coinbase. And thankfully, those numbers have been decreasing because, frankly, there are enough people stacking sats,

sucking that supply off of the exchanges and putting it into cold storage, which is a fantastic trend that's happening. And hopefully, vehicles like what OnRamp has built enable that to that trend to continue so that we're pulling um pulling supply off of exchanges and putting it into on-chain vaults because that's how it should be done yeah just a double click i like really underscoring that i can't believe you just said double click double click double click on that like really underscoring that um anecdotally like it's known in the industry that

a lot of people coming in are exit liquidity like when the market's flying you you buy and then you're just selling in your burn for the next cycle because you're like what did i do why did i do it and either there's lots of reasons we don't have to go it could be you know the wherever you bought didn't understand it they were selling you something else um but it's ultimately when the price is moving against you is when you need the education the most because we all know that's when i mean that's just standard you know investment 101 right you buy when everybody's selling you sell whatever it's like when the price cuts in half or by you know 75 is ultimately at 16 or 17k with this recent all-time low or the low and uh it was funny because i don't know if you remember

and i maybe won't call out the asmr but a large firm said we don't need they're like smarts like we don't need you guys for the research and advice and all the stuff i think we need you guys to jump in and share stuff when the market's cutting in half that we're not the only one saying like this thing it's like helping our guys on the market goes and if you think about it's very hard for people to do that because e a they either don't understand it or b they're selling people a bunch of other things and so to be able to say oh this is why and it's tied to these things not bitcoin it just goes fundamentally against everything that they're doing and so this is a real core tenant of our value prop is the ability we're seeing it it's almost like turning into a

product it isn't but so many firms exchanges financial institutions are reaching out to us to partner on the education to either get it to their clients hands or figure out to co kind of like market because it just helps in the adoption and ultimately the aum because the more people know about this it's only one way you can start to set a percent and next you know you're on a pod you're running two pods and 10 businesses and you just launched a media company because you're all in times 10 yeah and that's actually one thing i wanted to bring up i mean we mentioned it on the last trade it might be the phrase of uh the show as we mentioned on the last trade but uh like if not you then who like just from all three of you like how crazy does it feel

to be working on these particular products at this particular point in time considering where we were just six years ago like six years ago i mean famously couldn't get a job walking dogs for me personally uh jesse mitch doesn't know that story i didn't know that story six years ago but what's the story oh i was woefully unemployed for about 18 months i tried to jump from finance to tech and got a job as a software sales guys did good at that but i really wanted to work up to the product management level of the tech industry and i decided to quit the software sales job thinking i was easily going to be able to find a product manager job apparently if you've never built anything or led a team in tech it's really hard to get a product management

job. Uh, and so I didn't get one for like 18 months. This is in 2016 to 2017. Uh, I've got a finance background and economics degree. I'm a pretty smart guy. I like to think I've gotten Bitcoin in 2013, uh, was staying up to date on everything that was going on there. And yeah, in 2017, like literally rock bottom, couldn't get a job in the tech industry, uh, had been unemployed for so long that that gap in my resume where people are like, all right, what the fuck wrong with you uh desperately went out to get a dog walking job and i couldn't put uh the french bulldog harness on the fake french bulldog so i did not get the dog walking chair i had to uh amazing image right there to be disqualified because of a mannequin french bulldog

it happened it was rock bottom for me i walked home from dumbo to williamsburg with my head head down low like i have to go tell my wife i couldn't get a dog walking job i started the bent the next week and here we are today yeah wow yeah at that point like if you were to tell 26 yeah 26 year old marty who just failed at putting a harness on a fake dog that we would be here right now working on the things that i'm working on personally whether it's the media the venture side of things i would have been like you're crazy but again the newsletter started it because it was like everybody's texting me emailing me calling me like what's going on with bitcoin the price is going up and i was like all right you can't find information uh to better

understand this i'll go create it for you that's how the newsletter started the amount of awkward thanksgivings and family conversations you had is just probably like insane yeah yeah my in-laws definitely think i'm crazy sorry mitch look i i i'd say you know i i told a little bit about i'm sort of on the last trade my my bitcoin story and i ended up here but you know ultimately 2020 i was in argentina when you know the world was collapsing you know everyone i had to get home but i saw the impact of inflation there and ultimately knew that day that you know i saw the value for bitcoin and wanted to work in this industry it wasn't until 2022 um inspired by the bitcoin conference but like i the work that i get to like you told me

even a year ago like this was the dream of of doing the the work that i do today which is helping these companies push the industry forward and really set up the rails and make new change that will, I believe, materially matter. It's like, I'm so stoked to wake up every Monday morning and go work on this stuff. So, anyone listening that doesn't work in the industry, it's hard. It's hours. You never know who's going to blow up the next day, but ultimately, i wouldn't trade this for the world and um you know encourage uh if you're thinking about it go try to make a leap you try to work for bitco it just has a nod uh bitco has been incredible to work with like i generally mean this um it reminds me of my my days a little bit google but

mainly like as bad as the knock we work gets or got they had the best human capital i'd ever worked with and it makes sense if you think about like it was the hot thing so it was pulling from traditional finance and traditional tech back in 17 and 18 and i just remember us it was real world infrastructure uh similar to like a bitco there's real infrastructure in place that were different than like a sas company or something that's just selling something that's more ephemeral and uh this like culture and passion which i would imagine translates from like a you know bitcoin ethos and the things that pico works on just bred the the engine of the company from crazy days but it was like moving mountains because everybody was aligned and every interaction

i've had with their team from mitch to um peeing on the marketing side across the board so if anybody's looking to break in the space i can't speak highly enough of like their team and also just executing it makes sense why they've been around for you know 10 plus years and are leading the way on a lot of this stuff i i think it you know i appreciate that but like largely you know being in the industry for 10 years is going to attract top talent. We are not Bitcoin only. Personally, my views are, or at least Bitcoin first. I like innovation somewhere else. I'm not going to stop it, but I want to work on money here. But ultimately, we get the privilege of hiring a lot of top talent who are great at what they do. And it's a privilege to get to work with

those people every day and you know you're not going to see that in a sector you know i worked for ibm that's been around for over 100 years you're like it's great it's reliable but you know you're not going to get that those people who are inspired and truly you know struck with the opportunity that they've got because you know it's not groundbreaking you know at the point it's it's mature industries. Um, and unless you're working in something like this, I don't think you've, you get that lightning bolt. Yeah. You get the guy that can't put the collar on the mannequin. It was a blessing in disguise. No, it was a great, I was joking. It was, it was the, it was the greatest blessing in disguise. All this stuff, we all know that it's working and

it's like, everything's path dependent. All the good things and bad things that happen, like let us all this exact spot that we're here everything happens for a reason it's funny though jesse and i came from complete opposite ends he had to get like a reverse mba lobotomy and i had to uh fail at getting a dog job dog walking chair yeah yeah i was in the i was in the ivory tower and and i had to choose to uh leave the ivory tower and then decide that the ivory tower is wrong about everything so that was my journey about the opposite direction but yeah then then here we are marty you and i get to write about um the most fertile like possible landscape of topics uh for intellectual stimulation and and article ideas uh ever because i mean on on the last trade

we were talking about how this is you know this is part of um this is the american revolution this is a spirit of of the american independence movement um but it but it's further it goes back further than that this is like this is martin luther you know satoshi posting the um the white paper october 31st was the equivalent of martin luther pinning up the 95 theses on the on the cathedral door saying um you know the the authority uh has gone too far and we're we the people are taking back our rights in that context in in christianity um and then the you know the declaration of independence is it is the same spirit uh focused on a different area of a different topic. It was patriots asserting the independence to govern themselves and

freedom from autocracy. And then Satoshi posting the white paper is the Declaration of Monetary Independence, which is part of this lineage. It is equivalent in significance, in my mind, to those two prior documents and I think in 100 200 years from now it will be looked back on with the same sort of reverence and so our opportunity in the here and now is to be a part of propagating that message I mean it becomes a little bit of proselytizing but that's the reality of it is that we are we are helping to take the declaration of monetary independence and translate that into a better brighter future built on that ethos and so there's there's nothing more rewarding in that sense and nothing more exciting in terms of being able to write about any topic

yeah hell yeah we're gonna win gentlemen all three of you very excited uh for you all doing what you're doing very pumped for on-ramp where you guys are launching in collaboration with bitco and others we owe you thanks because you uh you saw the vision early in the stuff we were talking about and came on and had us on the first and decided to become an advisor and then you know co-host the last trade and uh i think most people think you're full time uh working with on-ramp uh so no we appreciate you seeing the vision and also just um extending you know there's a credibility you've been in the space for a very long time and you saw that this is something that needed to be in the market and so it goes a long way

in helping us you know get that message out which we think is an important one yeah i truly do believe this needs to exist i was writing about it two years before on-ramp was even an idea so shout out to me um i kid i don't know if that one's true you gotta send me at least a year i'll send you i think i i think i was incepting this in your mind uh as part of that so maybe maybe maybe i'm remembering right now yeah you're definitely remembering you're gonna have to go back and give credit to michael in that post whatever it is you wrote because it's sometimes we get concerned about like marty leaking the alpha there's a lot of alpha that that exists in these uh these walls that when we have these conversations and i sometimes make it

to the bent we got like hey marty put it back in the box it's part of my job here it's part of my job it's uh the alpha is sealed in an airtight container in my mind okay part of part of this launch is we do have to shout out that we will be in vegas for money 2020 with the bitgo team hosting an event monday night so if anybody's around uh that's interested in attending we've just posted some stuff on social but reach out and uh we'll do our best to to get the attendance right yeah i know we said uh as we said on the last trade a lot but the conversations were actually pretty different um so definitely go check out that episode as well gentlemen congratulations uh i'll definitely see you next week for the last trade um have fun in vegas

i'll let you know if i can go send your wife send your family our best uh you got to get home to them and and you know i'll have my wife send your wife a text asking if you can come to hang out with the boys in vegas for a couple days and we'll just talk business nothing nothing else yeah we'll see how that goes over we'll see how that goes over um mitch it's been a pleasure speaking with you for the last three hours now um it's been really fun awesome to be here thank you for some insight into uh into bitco it's uh really cool to see what you guys have built and how you guys are innovating moving forward thanks all right all right jesse i saw you mama no no i well i was gonna i was gonna mention that like i don't know people don't uh people don't realize that bitco is

20 percent of bitcoin transactions i didn't realize that so you know learning about bitco as part of learning about knowing Bitcoin. Yeah. That's what brought me, like, it was that stat and sort of understanding the significance that, you know, we have to the industry is one of the reasons I picked BitGo, so. Yeah, that's a lot of, that's a lot of

touching on the Bitcoin network right there. All right, it's been a pleasure. That's all we got today, freaks. Peace and love. Thank you. Thank you.