TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #561: The American Renaissance with Matt Cole

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Marty sits down with Matt Cole from Strive to discuss the tidal shift in America driven by bitcoin. Matt on Twitter: https://x.com/colemacro Strive: https://strive.com/ 0:00 - Intro 0:36 - ESG/DEI disaster isn’t quite over yet 13:52 - Unchained & Coinkite 16:12 - Matt’s background and framing bitcoin for pensions 25:04 - Career risk of missing bitcoin 28:52 - Moving the Overton window and helping clients with bitcoin 33:12 - Zaprite & SOTE 34:45 - Making the most of bitcoin 43:07 - How using bitcoin changes your understanding 48:48 - AI machine payments, regulations and altcoins 56:34 - Trump admin stepping out of America’s way 1:03:21 - America has centuries left 1:13:33 - Wrapup Shoutout to our sponsors: Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Coinkite https://coinkite.com/ Zaprite https://zaprite.com/tftc Salt of the Earth https://drinksote.com/tftc Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/

You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, 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. The Bitcoin is ESG argument.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but I helped start an off-grid flare gas mitigation Bitcoin mining company, Great American Mining. And so we were on oil and gas well pads upstream in the Bakken, mitigating flare gas in North Dakota. and that i mean i went on a multi multi-year brigade against esg because that's what i think i realized at great american mining is like no matter how hard you try to convince people like hey we're mitigating flare gas we're being extremely efficient with the energy the goalpost just always moved but you can make the argument that bitcoin is the most esg uh friendly asset in the world if you want to open source code anybody who saves it is going to see their purchasing power increase over time

the energy intersection really forces you to be as efficient as possible and we tried to run with those narratives for a while but people were always like oh not good enough yeah it really exposes the esg for what it is right which is a political movement that this asset g governance You can't find a better asset with regards to governance than Bitcoin. S, democratizing access to being able to opt out from financial systems from corrupt governments. You can't find a better system than that. The ability to utilize energy that's literally just being pushed out as emissions, right? I mean, and that actually capturing that energy and using it to mine Bitcoin is a great example,

but yet Bitcoin is anti-ESG. And then you look at Tesla as another example. the number one manufacturer of electric cars in the world, and has a lower ESG score than Philip Morris. And you just say, how are these things possible, right? And it's only possible if it's this government engineered social credit scoring type sort of issue to push an agenda. Otherwise, Bitcoin would be very high on pro ESG, Tesla would be. And from a general perspective, then I think a lot of people would have a lot less problems with ESG because it would just be looking at does something actually do help with regards to ES or G,

I still think it would personally be against a lot of capitalist principles, but at least it would have a first principle stance to evaluating investments on those metrics, which it fails on every single one of those. Yeah. Do you think ESG is officially dead? No, and I say that because I think it's dying, but it's not dead. And I say that because I worked at CalPERS, the largest pension fund in America for 16 years. They are doubling, tripling down on ESG as we

speak. Now, what's happened has really been amazing in the sense that I think the Overton window of a movement against ESG, against DEI is exploding. And you're saying, you know, we are going to win. We're going to win. ESG is dying, right? But it's not dead. And I think that's because of how systemic it got in corporate america with these large pools of capital like a calpers or a blackrock or a state shooter or vanguard i mean they voted in thousands of proposals and the largest companies in america over the last several years it's really been a 14 year movement of a house of cards it's collapsing but i think my biggest worry of why it doesn't die is if we declare victory before it's actually dead and i think this is where

things like doge and this incoming administration and this movement can actually kill it but dying not dead i agree don't count your chickens before they hatch we got to make sure it's uh it's laying on the ground without a without a pulse before we officially label it dead but i mean whether it's the fact that the it is a political movement not really let's dive into that. It's a political movement that really hasn't manifested in returns that outpace benchmarks. Is that a correct assumption? Have these ESG funds actually performed? So the funds have performed horribly, but it was never about the returns. And this gets back to the origins of Strive, where we literally just launched index funds, like an S&P 500 type fund, right? That

says, we're going to own the same stocks as a BlackRock fund, but we're going to vote differently because what you were seeing was the corruption of this push into corporate America. You saw it in this debanking issue that the Bitcoin community has known about for a long time, but I think the general public just said, wait, what? Joe Rogan's like, I did not know about that people that were in crypto or name your industry or political opponents were being debanked. And you say, well, why were they debanked? Why were people on social media being censored? All these different things. It was the government working behind the closed door, right, to push corporations. But then on top of it, you have the largest shareholders of basically every

company in America, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, teaming up with the likes of CalPERS, also saying, we want you to integrate politicized ESG pressures into corporate America. That's a a handful of cards that you really can't work around if you're a large company. And especially if you're a managerial CEO, which is another issue that we have in America, right? Where most CEOs in America are not the founders. And some founders fail, but founders have oftentimes different energy. You got to be a little crazy to start a company, right? And see it through to be a major company. So they're more likely to stand against the grain. I think you saw Brian Armstrong strong stand against the grain in the George Floyd protests, right? I think he's been a great

example. I think he could even do more, right? But then you saw so many other CEOs that were very quick to bend the knee and then get in their incentive comp packages a direct tie to implementing ESG or DEI. I don't know if you're aware of this, but this year, 75% of CEOs in the S&P 500 had part of their incentive comp tied to ESG or DEI measures. And so, I mean, just thinking about general economic theory, right? Incentives drive behavior, drive results. And the incentives are implement ESG or DEI in this country. I was not aware of that.

And so, in terms of unlocking the compensation for hitting those metrics, is it different from board to board? or is there some sort of ESG index, DEI index that is across the industry that is handed to the boards and they say, all right, you get to this point and you'll get this comp? It's generally pretty vague, and it's vague by design. They're not going to publish the exact metrics that they hit, but I'll give you probably what I think of as the worst example

of ESG incentive compensation. And it was in 2022, and it was Southwest Airlines. and you've been in Texas for a few years, but I don't know if you remember when basically every plane that Southwest had got grounded in 2022. What do you think happens when you ground your planes? You admit less, right?

But from a stockholder perspective, Southwest had a horrible year that year. What do you think happened to the incentive comp with regards to ESG for their CEO? Why not? he got a 1.5x on on his bonus you would think that they would say you failed right because but and they but they actually gave him the highest score possible and i think this talks about a lot of the grift that you see in in corporate america and and the question is is why

and i think it comes down to just simply showing simple metrics of we admitted we admitted less the guy hit his goal and and not actually caring about shareholder returns right and that's what we should care about with this country driving better performance better better results better excellence as a product and a service and and esg fails on that well not only better shareholder i mean in this particular example better shareholder returns which inarguably like that grounding led to less shareholder value because it destroyed a bunch of potential revenue and probably a lot refunds had to be given but then like and customer suffers too like how many people were were traveling that day to go visit a loved one who was on their deathbed or in the hospital or

had something important to do and just because the ceo wanted to hit his esg comp metric um did they board or ground the planes and i don't think the ceo or southwest intentionally grounded the points right yeah the bigger issue is your planes were grounded and you didn't punish the ceo for a massive failure of your organization. And, and, and that's a, that's a failure that we see throughout this country is that the actual accountability to driving better performance is not there. And if it's not there, what are corporations do? They're much more likely to lean further into ESG or DEI to then, you know, change the goalpost and say, well, look at what we're doing over here. We're actually doing so much good. And, and then it's hard to actually

punish them or hold them accountable yeah another another example i've written about in the last year that is just mind-boggling the fact and that's the other thing like the push to cater towards the esg dei political movement is destroying brands that are over century boeing being one of them i think it's a combination of dei and the overextension of the managerial class into that company, particularly where they replaced all of the engineers that built that company over a century with McKinsey consultants who were really just focused on the stock price. And so instead of reinvesting in research and development on how to build quality aircraft and combustion systems, they simply bought back their stock to increase the stock price by

destroying the denominator. Stock buybacks and then DEI hires, which obviously over time, and over time, I think for me was even quicker than expected, exposed really how difficult it is to run an excellent organization. I think this is one of the things that the McKinsey people get wrong is that they think that you can easily just replace person A with person B and increase some sort of diversity metric and still achieve the same results, that it's actually the company or the government that's driving your success, not actually hiring the best team to do a job. And in a sense, any team, sports team, you need diversity. But that diversity is just not on the metrics of race or sex. It likely is in America because we're a very diverse country, but that's

likely the end product not not the goal right if you if you have a a basketball team you need a point guard a shooting guard a small a small forward a power forward a center that's that's that's diversity in height it's diversity in skill set but it doesn't have to be diversity in in skin color and and a company is is really no different you need different types of people across the organization that likely have very different skill sets and that's the metric that you should measure on, but instead we've focused on these other metrics at the expense of great American companies. And I think my optimism is that this stuff is dying and it's being kicked out and it's not popular in this country. And I think this gets into the managerial class problem

that you talked about. And there was a survey that was done a couple of years ago that asked managers in this country and then everyday Americans. And they said, they asked the same question. Should corporations play a role in, in the societal civil issues of the day? And two thirds of managers said yes. One third said no. Two thirds of everyday Americans said no. Only one third said yes. So this is this disconnect between the managerial class that thinks they have this role in society that they don't actually have. And I think that's starting to get weeded out in a major way yeah and i mean very optimistic right now it seems like things are very clearly headed in the right direction you mentioned doge we've got the trump administration with

vivek and elon leading doge and then it does seem like this time around trump is motivated to put people within his administration that can actually enact systemic change that that gets a lot of this waste and this grift out of the federal government. Sup freaks, this rip was brought to you by our good friends at Unchained. We've got a special event for you, an online event. Bitcoin is hitting its stride with massive ETF inflows, major geopolitical changes, increasing corporate adoption, and a proposed US strategic reserve. 2025 is shaping up to be a defining year. I think it's pretty safe to say that if you've been paying attention, you probably should be. Here's a real question you need to be asking yourself are you ready is your bitcoin house in order if you're

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underfunded or unfunded liabilities as they attempt to ensure that people can retire and actually receive a pension check in the mail or in their bank account every month and actually be able to cover the liabilities that they've accrued over the last many decades. Yeah this This actually is such a personal thing that you said to me because my why for my career was trying to help fix the underfunded pension crisis in this country. As you know, I spent 16 years at CalPERS and started my career there because my parents, my grandparents, my uncles all had their pensions tied to CalPERS. And I graduated literally in the middle of the great financial crisis when the funded ratios of CalPERS and every other pension in this country plummeted. And right now they're 70, 80% funded, but yet they're paying out 100% to the current retirees, which if you do the math, if you're paying out of a system that's 70, 80% funded 100% to certain people, then the people on the back end are actually less than 70, 80% funded. And, and my, you know, napkin math says that they're under 50% funded for our generations.

And so it's, it's a massive problem and, and it gets to what do we invest in? And, and you look at pensions in America, pensions in Europe, and I guess at least the good thing in America is that we're much more allocated to risky assets and less debt than Europe, which is like all debt, but we have a, a global debt crisis, right? Everybody knows we have this, this global fiat debt crisis. And it's, it's, it's something that the Bitcoin community obviously cares about a ton. I'm part of that community as well. And, and it's really what actually initially drew me into, into Bitcoin is I'm, I'm sitting at CalPERS and I was managing about $70 billion of their, of their portfolio, all fixed income assets

and, you know, generating a yield of three and a half percent. Right. And you're sitting here, okay, like we have to earn 7% for the overall pension and I'm making three and a half. How do we actually make this math work? It just, it just doesn't work. And then you say, okay, well, what's the data say? And you say, what's, what data are we looking at? Almost all the data for all pensions in America of historical returns started about 1980. What's interesting about that is 1980 was the start of a 40 year bull run and fixed income assets, right? So if you think about what, what the bias that's going to put into an asset allocation model will be is that it's going to overweight owning fixed income assets, right? Where when fixed income assets are at, you know,

even though now they're at four or 5%, 6% yields, they were at zero. But the assumption that there's going to be a price appreciation in bonds and a yield is a faulty assumption, right? So it leads to an over-allocation to bonds. And it really starts to be one of the core pieces that leads to my belief that both institutions, individuals should have a core allocation to Bitcoin as an asset because what you need to own to earn the return that you need to retire securely

in the future is likely different than what it was for the last 40 years. Yeah, and we were talking about this before. we sat down to record but we've experienced this at 1031 talking to a bunch of pensions these are large titanic size ships that move very slowly and you have layers of management and investment committee that decisions need to get pushed through not only decisions but pitches calls follow-ups and sit-downs uh and it's historically i mean this is well known they move very slow and so i guess the point of bringing this up is how can we in your mind could urgency be engendered

in pension funds specifically to to act on this because that's one thing i was telling you about andrew hones and battery finance that's something andrew and i um have talked about um uh over over the last years is one worry is that particularly this bull market if things get crazy we go into six figures who knows a hundred thousand two hundred thousand and then um the pensions decide all right we need to move and then it takes another six to nine months and they begin allocating if bitcoin follows its four-year historical cycles like they could top like the the blow off top of a bull market and then experience two years of um of pain and then get sort of dismayed by the industry and so it's like how do we position bitcoin in a way that

pensions understand this is a long-term view you need exposure and there may be some volatility on the way it it comes down to the need for them to actually understand and believe in the asset class Because most people that invest in Bitcoin, whether it's an institution or an individual, they're going to go underwater at some point. I did almost every person I know that that has allocated to Bitcoin as a long term holding. It's going to get washed at some point. Right. And and then if you don't actually understand and believe in the long term fundamentals of the asset, then you're going to you're going to either stop allocating or sell sell the bottom. And that's when you get a dissatisfied investor. Right.

So I think it's hard. One thing that I've noticed about institutions and pensions as a whole is there tends to be this, they're very consensus oriented. And there's not a lot of incentives to go outside of the consensus unless you just really care about trying to fix the problem and you don't care as much about your career. And this is true whether you're a portfolio manager at a pension or you're an economist or whatever. So I think you need to lean into a couple of cases, a couple of people that allocate to a Bitcoin solution. And, you know, it's going to be one or two and maybe we can get a couple of them in early. But it's a challenging problem because over the investment staff, you also have a board, right, that sets the investment policy statement for a pension. And these people are just not incentivized to be game changers.

And so my expectation is that you'll probably start to see a few pensions. I think you're going to start to see maybe more adoption at the government level. And hopefully, like for Strive, we launched a wealth management offering. And a core part of that is recommending a core allocation to Bitcoin for our clients. And I think for a national wealth manager, there's not very many, if any, that are actually doing that. Like the wire houses, like the JP Morgans, the Morgan Stanleys of the world. I think two of them still will not even let their clients allocate to Bitcoin, right? Vanguard will not let you even allocate to a Bitcoin ETF, even if your client wants to.

The other ones are more in the realm of if your client approaches you, okay, you can talk about it. But it's really a CYA type sort of an industry. And my hope is that the incoming administration will relax the liabilities for these people in this industry to actually say what they're doing behind the scenes. Because to me, that's the biggest problem. If you talk to many people that work at a pension, they own Bitcoin.

like the problem is not in my view that there's that these people are like ah like bitcoin's a scam they probably own bitcoin and they probably own all sorts of other coins out the spectrum but yet they're worried about their professional job and so they'll do something different behind the scenes than in front of the scenes and that was similar to you know in the early days of strive where behind the scenes people say dei is crazy esg is crazy and they publicly be like we're gonna increase diversity on this metric by 50 and you say well why are you doing that It was like, cause I want a job. I want to have a security for my family.

Same thing's happening in Bitcoin. And I think eventually that, that dam breaks. Yeah. That's the, um, and it's probably just cause I've, I've never lived within the pension world, but we've been saying this, um, a lot to potential investors at 1031 is like the career risk. I think particularly with this administration, if a Bitcoin strategic reserve bill or executive order um gets through like we're we're reaching the point where the career risk has completely

flipped and that's just trying to articulate that to to managers is um yes the career risk up to this point has been cya like it's a little too risky we have the cover to stay out of it because of the volatility and all the shenanigans around the industry whether that's ftx lcs block fi like there's plenty of examples to point to it's like oh we made the good decision to stay up and now we're entering the territory where um if you have nation-state adoption individual state adoption copycats the micro strategy being you see large corporations begin to incorporate a bitcoin treasury strategy um you're going to get to the point where um the people the people's money you're managing at some point are going to point to you like how do how do we miss bitcoin

And it's the best performing asset of our lifetimes. And we've been on the sidelines for well over a decade and hopefully not two decades. But you definitely see that happening with some people. Yeah, institutions or financial advisors, definitely. And I know a lot of financial advisors personally feel this. But if I had someone managing my money and they had my money invested with a large asset manager that literally helped force in ESG and DEI to every corporation in America. and then they completely missed Bitcoin from zero to $100,000, maybe beyond, it is a career risk at this point if you're not actually at least doing the work.

And I say this because I think this industry, I know a lot of good people, but a lot of people that are very lazy and they still haven't even done the work. And so they're just like, oh, like now I can invest, you know, Bitcoin, but I'm afraid because now it's $100,000 and I'm going to top ticket in the careers. I do think, agree with you that the ultimate career risk is if you're lazy and you, and you miss it. And, and this, this to me is, this is a multi-decade holding at a minimum. This is, this is a long-term holding. And, and most people are always so concerned and myself too. Like when, when I first bought Bitcoin years ago, it was like, okay, like what's my, what's my sell price?

right and and and then as you start to understand the asset more it's more of i just want exposure to this asset class and i sleep well when i have exposure the proper amount of exposure for myself to this asset class and i think until you you get that and it's why i still think we're we're early which is crazy to say with bitcoin at at a hundred thousand dollars but but in this industry i still think we're early because people are still so focused on what's the top this cycle is the top 150k or 200k or 500k can it go to a million like we could lay out scenarios probably where any of those those tops are are possible but but regardless it's about this the long-term dynamics in the world in america and owning an asset that is both a return enhancer and a risk diversifier

versus all these different risks, right? Like, I think the Trump administration is massively bullish for Bitcoin, but I think I would have still been bullish on Bitcoin. I would have been less bullish on America, but I'd still been bullish on Bitcoin if Kamala would have won. Like, Bitcoin was going to win,

but just the path that it's going would be different under different circumstances. Yeah, that's why I'm incredibly impressed, number one, too, with the leadership that strive has shown over the years whether it was a couple years ago when we had vivek on the show to talk about the anti-esg perspective that strive was taking and saying no this is not the way that companies need to operate there is another way that is pro-america pro-meritocracy pro-capitalism at the end of the day and now leading on bitcoin as well with the wealth

management offering that you offered and being just public on it i got from preparation for this interview i was watching a bunch of your appearances on fox business and fox news talking about what you guys are doing at strive and why bitcoin is important and whether the long-time bitcoiner likes it or not it's very important for um companies like strive with that particular stature and your experience at calipers to be able to interface with these people believe that the career risk is having exposure to bitcoin and i think slowly but surely um strive being on the tip of the spear just giving that that institutional capital more comfortability with like oh maybe these bitcoiners aren't crazy being able to interface so i mean you particularly with your

experience at calipers i think has to be a massive benefit for the industry bitcoin industry overall My hope is that we help open the Overton window here, right? Where just like we did with ESG or DEI, where 2022, when I joined Strive as part of the day one team with Vivek before I was CEO. And the thought at the time was, we're going to be called racist. Name your negative thing that people are going to say about you, right?

We're going to be, we're climate deniers, whatever. And then you look at this group of people and it's like, okay, like well you know a bunch of us drive teslas and you know a lot of us were into bitcoin like it's just like okay like i'm in a very diverse group of people both you know male female skin color diversity name name it i mean obviously our founder is is vivek ramaswamy right this is like okay like i feel comfortable like i'm cool going down with this ship if that's what if i'm gonna get canceled and called a racist i believe in meritocracy i believe in capitalism and and the same is true with Bitcoin. This has been something that I've been passionate about now since early

2017. I wish it was early 2013 or whatever, right? But we all have our own journeys. But once you understand Bitcoin as an asset class, you realize, like we said, there's career risk to not being bold about what you believe. And my feeling is that, at least with Strive, if we're ever doing something different behind closed doors and what we're doing publicly there there's a problem and so if we would have launched a wealth management offering and we weren't open that we believe that bitcoin is is a core should be a core holding in the portfolios then behind the scenes we're doing something very different than what we're doing for our clients and and i think how you win is it's through authenticity right and and and as we do that and as strive has success and i'm sure there's

going to be other wealth managers that are going to be doing this as well i think that's where then the pressure starts to get on these late adopters some of these behemoth financial institutions that are going to be very slow right okay like we'll offer if you call us well now there's competition and and with esg and dei what that did is it's it's it's helped lead to the collapse of that industry and i think it'll ultimately lead to something similar in in bitcoin and you know we can you know debate the a bunch of things with regards to bitcoin i mean like i'm i'm a true bitcoin believer not your keys not your coins but then man i i know a lot of older people that man as like if i give you your your keys like you're gonna lose your keys maybe maybe for you that's

that's not that's not the best right that you might need some actual professional help in in managing Bitcoin as part of a core holding? Is that the optimal way from like a core Bitcoin believers? Probably not. But is it the optimal way for that individual person with where they are? Maybe. And that's where we come in. This rip was also brought to you by good friends at Zapparite. If you're a Bitcoiner and run a business or an independent contractor, you should be accepting Bitcoin as payment. If not you, then who? If we believe that fiat is systemically fragile and is a risk the rails that that currency runs on are risk as well you need to begin accepting bitcoin as soon as possible invest in the future of your business create a redundant

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they're doing like we're there's many different flavors 1031 where um venture like there's ways get exposure via us we were describing battery finance other credit funds like build asset management which are basically providing dollars to unchains lending desks to to get a credit return on that um and obviously you have spot bitcoin which you can acquire like how would you incorporate bitcoin into a portfolio at the pension level to get exposure to it i think it should be all of the above and and there was there was a saying at calipers that actually agreed with which was if you only have one percent of your portfolio allocated to something then it's a hobby not an investment right because even even if it goes well if you're if you're rebalancing like

let's say you put one percent of your portfolio in bitcoin you did nothing on on the venture side nothing on the debt side and and and bitcoin doubles and then you rebalance okay like you just added 100 basis points of alpha to your fund, that might be good to help a CIO make his bonus target for the year, but is actually fixing a underfunded pension crisis where pensions are 20 to 30% plus, sometimes more underfunded. You actually need a core allocation. And I think that core allocation falls in the realm of, I think 5% is a recent, is a decent place to start. I know 3% is a pretty commonly thrown out number. I think five is a number for an asset class when you actually look at all the different macro risks that we have from the debt crisis to

sticky inflation, to geopolitical crises, to government overreach, all these different risks. And you keep going down the list that exist that are long-term risk factors, the ai revolution i think all these things in different ways are bullish for for bitcoin and and so if you're thinking about a five percent allocation i think some of it should be owning bitcoin directly some of it should be investing in the ecosystem through venture funds i think some of it should be should be in debt instruments and and and and likely and and i think this kind of gets into the like bitcoin versus other crypto and and for me like like bitcoin is the true asset class and then i think in in other blockchain i think i think there's probably still a space in

in the venture place for for pensions to get involved maybe less in the owning coins but but in actually in the ecosystem and um and i think that's how i would approach it if i was an institution yeah yeah like and it that's the beauty beauty of the the nascency of the bitcoin industry too because that's part of our thesis at 1031 is if you believe in bitcoin as this asset that's going to increase in adoption that would preclude that there's going to need to be infrastructure that facilitates that adoption so you need exchanges you need custody you need financial services you need literal physical infrastructure for the mining layer um and it all feeds into each other so if you get a little spot you get a little venture exposure like the

venture exposure we would argue is going to help your spot exposure because it's going to invest in companies that make it easier for people to adopt and incorporate bitcoin into what they're doing then on the credit like the credit side too i'm very happy you mentioned the the um i guess we could call complacency that exists on the fixed income side of allocations due to the fact that people grew up in this 40-year bond bull market and um the returns that are being provided in private credit like if you're going to get high returns you need to go pretty far out on on the risk curve where bitcoin um if you look at unchained lending desks like it's providing pretty good returns from a credit perspective because i would argue it's an extremely mispriced

credit product however if you look at the actual product how the bitcoin's custodied in a multi-sig escrow account um the fact that bitcoin is the collateral for the loan and it can be liquidated 24 7 365 if a borrower comes under um some some stress and it needs to be liquidated like compared to other credit products like it is i would be much less risky but it's providing a higher return as well um and so like all those factors like spot um it is helped by the venture exposure which makes it easier and then credit like you just have this nascent industry that people don't really understand so there's this mispricing this arbitrage that exists the people can be taking advantage of over the next decade two decades whatever it might be yeah totally agree

and i think the the incoming administration likely changing many of the a lot of the regulatory environment around bitcoin and crypto i think will also ultimately help some of those yields come in but but it is mispriced but then but then you see how the sec has treated anyone in this industry through you know regulation by enforcement right and and and to me that actually creates some legitimacy in in why the yields behave the way they do and i think that that ultimately will change and i do think it's it's mispriced at this point and people that are at the forefront of allocating assets like that are at least understanding them right and i think that's probably the bigger problem is i don't think most people take the time to actually understand

the risk how they work how the liquidation process would would behave in a liquidation event right Like you're talking about an industry in traditional finance that, you know, is nine to five, right? And they don't fully understand or comprehend the beauty of a 24-7 market. They view 24-7 market as like a risk, right? And I view it as a risk that the market, the general market just closes up for the evenings and the weekends when stuff happens, right? And I think that's what the crypto community and this gets into like really any technological innovation that that increases time and learning. Like, I don't know if you if you play poker, but I grew up a poker player, helped put myself through college playing poker, online poker back in the day. Right. And made more money playing poker than internships. Right.

but the interesting thing about online poker was that online poker you were playing multiple tables so you'd be playing i was playing like six some crazy people playing like 20 tables at a time i wasn't that crazy right but then also each table you're getting four to five x the hands per hour that a live table would have right so you're really like about 100 x in your experience versus versus the traditional poker players and i and so the online players ate the lunch of the the live poker players. I think in crypto, you see the same thing, 24-7 markets, bull markets, recessions, like recessions in quotes, right? But like bull markets, bear markets, like crazy. And you compare that to traditional markets where the average

finance professional might see, if there's a seven-year business cycle, they might see five, six recessions in their life cycle, where in crypto markets, you know, a 30% drop, that's just another month, right? And so you start to develop this skill set and you eat the lunch of the traditional people. And so then you realize 24-7 is not something to be scared about. It's actually, it's a beauty in an efficient market, right? But I still think that traditional finance people have a ways to go to learn that lesson. And that creates this mispricing of credit spreads and bitcoin instruments do you think there's a misunderstanding of how long it takes to actually grasp this like in your in your mind like if somebody decided at one of these institutions

like all right there's maybe they're there i need to take the time to sit down and understand what is there like how like how how long do you think it should take the average individual to go from zero to having somewhat of a a firm understanding what what we have in front of us depends on how humble they are and i say that because i've met so many people in this industry that think they understand bitcoin they've never even made a wallet right they've never even done a transaction right and and so and this is this is broader than than just bitcoin this is investing one-on-one or or running your own company like like you actually understand how the product or or the, the asset works, right? Are you, are you in the weeds or are you theorizing how you think

it works? Right. And the more you're moving towards theorizing, the more you get to what I, what I view is this, you know, managerial class structure that thinks they know, but they don't know. And I really do have a lot of worry that, that that's, that's where most people lie. But if they actually said, okay, like I'm going to go make a wallet, I'm going to go use it. I'm going to go transact and do all the crazy things that a lot of the Bitcoiners have done, right? Transact on, you know, on a whatever back in the day on BitMEX or a decentralized exchange or, you know, moving, sending money to someone, trying to go buy a coffee with Bitcoin, right? Like seeing how these things work, that gets you comfortable in the system. And if you don't actually do those

things, I don't, I don't think people ever get comfortable. I think one of my big aha moments was the first time i recovered a wallet from a seed phrase i think it was just back in 2015 i was in saint john i was uh it was probably like 23 or 24 at the time and i didn't realize how expensive saint john was and i went down there and spent uh blew through my checking account i was like oh crap i need some money and uh luckily probably not smartly but luckily it traveling with a seed phrase that i'd back up to an electrum wallet and i went to my dad's laptop downloaded electrum recovered from seed sent the bitcoin from his laptop to my coinbase account and liquidated the bitcoin within an hour it was like holy crap like i have money i can continue

spending money down here and that for me like taking that small piece of paper with 12 words recovering the wallet sending it to coinbase and having cash within an hour was insane to me how many people in the finance industry that think they know bitcoin have actually even used a seed phrase or maybe they've they've written it down but have never even updated their trezor or ledger or whatever right i mean i mean even for me like like the first time i updated i updated a ledger and then i had to use my seed phrase to to restore it i mean and talk about a heart attack or or sending a transaction and being like oh like did i did i copy paste the wrong wallet or did i miss miss a word and waiting for like these are all just

things that you have to understand the technology and we have those moments of stress but then when it works it's like holy crap this is magic yeah exactly right and and and and it is magic and and And so that's where, again, it all comes back to, it's not hard. It just takes a humility and it takes admitting you were wrong, right? Where so many people in this industry, like financial leaders, right? Bitcoin's a scam. It's only used by terrorists or money launderers, right? Like all these different claims that are made.

And then what I see is like a problem for, you know concern for me for the bitcoin industry is is the wall streetization of of bitcoin of like okay like we're never going to teach people about bitcoin we're going to claim it's you know a scam it's used by terrorists money launderers and then we're going to control your bitcoin for you and we're going to move it into the safe asset and you're never going to understand it you'll have exposure to it but um to me that that's that's that's a worry that i have about bitcoin i actually think that the education of the Bitcoin community, still getting people out there and understanding the asset classes is very important. Venture investing in the solutions of an ecosystem

of Bitcoin is, is extremely important, right? Because otherwise, I think you get, you know, Bitcoin, you know, trademark signal, which is like Bitcoin in terms of like the price returns of bitcoin right but actually nothing that the technology could offer um and and i think that to me is where you know it's not surprising coming from someone at strive but like like we do not trust blackrock like we saw what they did through etfs to corporate america i think with regards to the digitization of a bitcoin and etf form i think i i don't i don't think that these are these are true fans and believers of the the actual satoshi white paper foundational beliefs of why bitcoin exists but um i think it comes back to what you know what you guys and others

are doing in this industry and really building out a vibrant ecosystem and i think if we do that we win and like you said we will win but but uh there's a lot of work to be done yeah no actually this is actually brings up a good topic like the intersection of bitcoin and ai i think could be a catalyst for or a forcing function to force people to interact with bitcoin the right way because particularly ai agents actually um get to a point of maturity where they're being incorporated into many different aspects of people's lives and these agents need to interact with each other and you send them out to complete a task that um that includes spending money like they're not you're not going to give an ai agent your credit card information like you're going to give them

uh via the lightning network you can literally at the http level incorporate like bitcoin payments and wallets with these agents i'm getting in the weeds here but you can literally give them a bitcoin wallet with spending conditions and an allowance um or budget and say all right i need you to go book this flight for me you have i have to be go from this place to this place on these dates and here's what i'm willing to spend here's your balance in bitcoin like go go get it done and i think that's one thing that like drew bansal the founder co-founder of unchained has really been on the tip of and i think that's one of the most interesting things as we transition into this intersection of ai leaving its nation stage and bitcoin similarly maturing

they're going to intersect and i think we'll find that like the ai agents are actually like probably outnumber human users of bitcoin at some point in the next two decades totally to me what what would really unlock that would be removing the capital gains tax from bitcoin if you can if we can actually achieve that as a country i think that unlocks bitcoin as as payment uh i think please please extremely extremely important i'm hopeful it happens i have no inside information of it happening but but i think if it does then you move from i just say savers because maybe for myself like i'm still in this mindset that i don't want to spend my bitcoin but at a certain point i do i do agree with you that ai will be will be using cryptocurrencies

hopefully bitcoin to transact um my worries would be that if regulation becomes too lax that we go through a cycle or two where there's confusion of which cryptocurrencies actually have value and kind of this like bubbling condition because because ultimately like like i'm a hardcore Bitcoiner like you, but I like the question, like, how am I, how would I be wrong? I think, I think how we're wrong in the short term would be this relaxation, relaxing of regulations. I mean, right now you have Ripple going through the moon, right? And, and, and you said, okay, like, like how, why, like normie friends that are not crypto native, do they then buy Ripple at $2, $3 thinking it's going to go to $97,000. They don't even understand

market cap and they just see price, right? This happens, right? And then ultimately that creates a bubble condition, which I think represents a risk to this industry. But ultimately I agree with you. I think it goes to Bitcoin and Bitcoin used in AI. I hope the path to get there is less painful than more painful yeah i mean if history uh is any uh is any um indication of where things will be it's going to be the path of most pain unfortunately but hopefully that's what i think i i joke i say that somewhat in jest because i do have that belief in my mind but i also think the market has learned over the first 16 years I got in in 2013, you had the first initial altcoin.

They were called altcoins back then, like the new entrance into the space. Don't even understand what altcoin is. It's out of the nomenclature. Now it's cryptocurrency. Chitcoin is more predominant than altcoins at this point. But I think there's been enough of this fervor of every asset around Bitcoin over 15 years that a lot of people certainly not all as is evident by the number of xrp army texts i've gotten in the last week like are you buying ripple um i do think particularly like with

um bigger money that we see this with conversations um with potential lps at 1031 as there is beginning to be this clear demarcation between bitcoin and everything else and people that care about the preservation of their wealth over the long term are gravitating towards Bitcoin specifically. And I think if you just look at the numbers of Bitcoin's market cap versus the next 10 biggest altcoins, it's more than double. And those next 10 altcoins have cycled throughout time. And I think what's most important here, whether we like to admit it or not,

is the big capital understanding this. And I do think the larger pools of capital are beginning to recognize this delineation between Bitcoin and broader crypto. Yeah, I agree with that. And to me, that in a weird way is one of the good things to me about this cycle being somewhat like the cycle of like Bitcoin and meme coins is that no real money is going to look at meme coins and think that there's actually underlying value, right? Where in the past you have all these altcoins that have, you know, big visions of what they're going to do. And I think that's probably more confusing to larger pools of capital. This one is obvious. And ultimately, I mean, we are in a cycle right now where how many meme coins are there with multi-billion dollar market caps?

It's crazy and it's going to end in tears. and and it's most people i know that are into bitcoin you know obviously we all have friends that are invested in the the ripple army texting you and and the only friends that i know absent one that have made money in in crypto are the ones that bought bitcoin and held and then you have all these other people that'll buy the the tops of name your random cycle right uh mudang or whatever they're buying these days, right? And it always ends in tears. And it ends in tears because it's more about greed

versus understanding the underlying fundamentals of an investment. But I do agree with you that getting long-term pools of capital, whether it's nation states, whether it's pensions, whether it's wealth managers, right? Like if a wealth manager actually understands Bitcoin

and allocates, it's significantly different than just someone that doesn't understand it buying it because they're more likely to sell. Like when we put it in our clients' portfolios, it also comes with, hey, you need to understand the volatility of this asset, right? This asset is extremely volatile. That said, look what it does in your overall portfolio. It can enhance the return, lower the risk, and it might drop 50%. It might drop 80%. We don't know. Or it might be a super cycle. Like your guess is as good as mine but if you believe these underlying issues in this economy and this asset's going to go up and this is a this is a a long-term holding and you can't say that with

almost any other crypto asset yeah woo dang it's the uh it's the currency of the future even doge doge doge is uh it's funny that elon is hooked on the doge it makes sense considering uh uh the jokester side of uh elon he definitely likes to lean into the meme but If people understood the inflation rate of Doge, they probably wouldn't be as excited as they think they should be because Elon is, quote-unquote, supporting it. But we'll see. I mean, taking a step back and just really leaning into this new administration

and what seems to be, again, a tectonic shift towards optimism, growth, and deregulation to allow the American economy to flourish. like what do you what is your your hope for the this administration hopefully um other administrations that come after that in terms of what the american economy can do uh within the next one two decades because as you mentioned 36 trillion dollars in debt um a lot of underfunded pensions out there uh inflation obviously has ravaged the economy over the last few years It's been pretty tough going in recent years, particularly. Do you view this incoming administration and the posturing of

we're going to unleash the American economy as something that's definitely going to happen? And if so, what do you think we can do over the next decade? I'm extremely optimistic right now. And I say that from myself. I've been fairly pessimistic about the future of America for about a decade now, at least. And, you know, because of the debt crisis, because of COVID what, what the government tried to do to American citizens and this constant gas

lighting of something that's, you know, conspiracy theory and then it shows to be true like time and time again, most recent one being Biden's not going to pardon his son. Like, like, frankly like like i can look i think it's like i don't really care that biden pardoned his son what i care about was that the american people just got gaslit and he said he wasn't and if you if you said that he was going to pardon his son then you were a conspiracy theorist and then he does and and it's it's it's it's that that movement time and time again but we went from a nation that was, that is hooked on basically subsidization, right? Subsidies for corporations, subsidies for

American people. And my hope is that we can move that to a nation around deregulation to your point. And if we can do that, I think our brightest days are ahead of us. And I look at this as ultimately this is a competition. It's a global competition, right? And we're in America. We want america to win and right now we're at the precipice of an ai revolution that is going to unlock the need for crypto right to help fund you know to be used as a mechanism within ai and if we can properly deregulate then i think america can easily be the winner of the ai revolution and And like other technological advancements, this is going to happen at an exponential rate, right? And this is why I think Elon got so involved in this specific election.

Because if you believe that the next five years or 10 years or 15 years are going to set the stage for the next 100 plus because of the technological advancement that's happening right now and because of the debt crisis that our nation and the globe faces, then this election was probably the most important election in several hundred years right and so it going right was extremely important and then if you come in and and if and if the and if favek and elon can go fire a bunch of people well that sounds horrible for those people but it's actually it's actually not because you know when i was at calpers i can tell you you could fire 80 percent of the people at CalPERS and you wouldn't even miss a beat. And it's not even because they're like bad people. Like some of these people are my friends, right? And there's people and they come into their career and they want to help make a difference. And then when you work for

the government, you basically can't get fired. You have tenure without it being called tenure, right? And so certain people don't work out for whatever reason, wrong skillset or don't get along with the manager and in the private sector those people are fired or they're laid off and then they go find what their actual purpose is in life to make to make a living right and the government they get put in the corner right and those people in the corner they they get give they get given a job that probably takes two three hours a week right so basically zero productivity from these people and you say well why don't they leave and they don't leave because they have families they have a secure job and they're afraid. They're like, well, if I leave my secure job, my pension,

even though it's underfunded, right, what am I going to do? They need that decision made for them, right? They've been handed this subsidy that they can't walk away from. If it gets ripped away, that's going to be painful, but that's ultimately substantially better for our government in a clear way. You know, these people are going to have a tough, short period of time, but they're ultimately going to have to figure out how to be a productive member of our society. And when they integrate back in as a productive member of this society that's going to unleash more productivity deregulating in the ai revolution will also unleash productivity it's gonna firing a bunch of people is going to lower the spend so if we can lower the spend increase productivity in a major way

which i think we can and i would already say at least versus europe america was already positioned better than Europe. As much as I would rail on ESG or DEI, America's still, even with those things, better off than what's going on in Europe, right? We can compound these progressions, right? Because just like stock returns compound, so does productivity and moving forward and innovation. And so I'm actually extremely bullish on what we can do in America and being a leader in ai in bitcoin and and ultimately in in making our government run more efficiently it's going to be a lot of work but i think we have a chance to really set ourselves up for a great you know next couple hundred years to come i do as well and not only is that compound internally within the

u.s economy but we've seen i think this election i don't think this i just know anecdotally from talking to people in the UK and Europe more broadly is that it has been inspirational to a lot of people over there who were looking at America and the direction we were going in and thinking it was somewhat of a lost cause, but seeing the turnout of this particular election and essentially the American people giving the Trump administration a mandate, a clear mandate saying, we don't like the direction this is going in. We want to go in this direction. And now it seems like everything is primed to actually go execute that dream like that's inspirational to other countries we've seen other examples of this in recent years whether it's argentina

el salvador um this sort of shift towards free market economics and liberation of individuals and the economies they operate within is it's beginning to have compounding effects that hopefully i mean i completely agree europe is in a terrible position right now but we have a lot of european listeners out there i care for them i want them to experience a world in which they're able to increase the quality of life and do things in the world and be productive and i think what we're doing what other smaller nations are doing if we can all execute on the mandate if we can execute on the mandate that's been given here and then argentina continues to succeed el salvador continues to succeed in this age of social media and information being distilled almost

instantaneously that i think just for overall human productivity globally it's going to be massive as well yeah i i totally agree and although i'm a kind of america first person i i i love visiting europe and i do think that they will learn from america because even in argentina you look at malay comes in and it's like it's going to be great depression he's going to come in and close all these things down and then actually the economy thrives right and and same thing's going to happen in the u.s i i have no doubt that i mean maybe worst case scenario there's a little bit of short-term pain in it in a transition but i don't think it's going to be that painful at all and and ultimately then as america starts thriving hopefully europe can see

that as, as, as, as a guide to, to unlock themselves and ultimately unlock productivity across, across the globe. And I do think that that, that will happen, right? Because right now there's this pointing of, oh, like Trump's going to come in, look at this, our RFK is going to, going to be in charge of, of food safety. What's, what's that going to, what's that going to mean? You know, he's, and, and, and then he's going to come in and he's going to make some changes and and we'll be better off for it and then and then you know we'll get gaslit again of well of course of course that was that was going to be good but uh and and and then you know hopefully uh many more countries around the globe introduce you know more friendly policies for for growth

for innovation or or bitcoin but i do think that that the u.s needs to lead this and and we'll believe this i think we i think we are going to lead it and it's it's i forget who i was talking about this with but like the idea of the american spirit and i was listening to the um rogan mark andreessen episode yesterday um took the time i was at the gym listening to it and i think that is one of the interesting parts of the conversation where joe asked the question like how long will the quote-unquote american empire last if you look throughout history empires have a certain lifespan and u.s is brushing up on 250 years since we declared our independence and people can squint and be like oh maybe it's this empire dying but there is something unique and inherent

in the american spirit that i think prevents an overall collapse from from happening and again going back to the election i think that was a clear indication indication that the american spirit is still there's something innate in the fabric of being an american that has this this strive for lack of a better term towards freedom and just being able to get shit done and and it makes actually sense right this nation of people from all over the globe that left wherever they want because they care about freedom and liberty would actually care about freedom and liberty Right. And that to me is is is why I do agree with you that I do think that America has another at least another cycle of dominance left behind it. But but I think it's the risk in it becomes this cycle of weak men create bad times, bad times, create strong men, strong men, create weak men, weak men, create bad times.

like where are we at right now right in in that cycle and i think you started to see this cycle of of weak men or weak people right and and this election to me showed that that we still actually have strong men strong people in this society that care about it in in a major way and are willing to sacrifice themselves or their future for the greater good and and you know you look at at trump like like billionaire the vague billionaire elon billionaire these guys could all be doing whatever the heck that they want to do right go having fun be on a yacht but yet they're actually doing stuff that i could i can tell you just economically this is not good for any of them to get involved in politics it's not i know it gets it gets pitched as oh like well look at how

elon's going to benefit from this or that you're way better off to not economically to not get involved in politics but when you actually care about this country the future the world then getting involved in trying to make a difference really matters right and and it matters you know even like for the bitcoin community right if you care about bitcoin you could buy it put it in a wallet and then you just go about your day and you hope it succeeds or you could go help build the future right like and and and y'all are investing in in companies and founders that actually care about building the future and ultimately that's how america wins that's how bitcoin wins right we need more people that are willing to take a stand for what they're convicted

in and you know it's it's i think i think that that's becoming cool again in this nation and i hope that you know if there's a bunch of people that are that work for the federal government that happen to be fans of your pod and they're about to be fired i don't know but but my message to them would be find your passion and just go live it out and we could actually you go from sitting in a corner it's going to be scary but to actually being a productive member of the society and if we do that that's how we create a flourishing bitcoin economy that's how we keep america american you know dominance up in in this nation in this world be be leaders of the globe we do that by by being crazy like founders are crazy right you you have to be crazy to to say i'm going to do that but

but that's that's the american energy and i think we can harness and i think by harnessing that uh we can we can really make a difference in the next several years and to me the the biggest learning than that for me just being at strive when when we started strive i was like okay like i think esg and dei are going to be the death of capitalism did i actually think we would that that it would be dying two years later no i i didn't i i i had i had something i used to say that the rise of esg and dei took 14 years if we succeed it's going to take 14 years to unwind i think it's actually happening substantially faster than that and and it's happening because because of a movement of people that care about this stuff and and and so you know it's it's it's

really fueled a lot of optimism so many people big trees fall hard in the uh the uh as it pertains to like bitcoin in its position in america's future i think that is actually another um sort of undertone that highlights what you're just describing that there is still strong man and Whether people were cognizant about this or not, America, from the perspective of individual Americans, is better positioned than any country in the world to take advantage of Bitcoin. Over the first 15 years of Bitcoin's life, 16 years now,

Americans per capita accumulated the most Bitcoin, started the most businesses. Despite everything that was going on politically and regulatorily, regulatorily like that american spirit like really i think shines through in the bitcoin industry because despite all that people are like we know this is good we're going to go after it we're going to accumulate it build businesses around it and i can only imagine what's going to happen in the next 16 years when people are able to work without the overbearing weight of regulations government and people calling us criminals and drug dealers whatever it may be

We've gotten this far despite all that, and if all of that gets laid to waste and we're able to run in clear seas, it's going to be gangbusters for not only the Bitcoin industry in America, but America overall. The amount of wealth that is going to accumulate within the pockets of American citizens is going to be incredibly beneficial for the overall quality of the economy and productivity overall. overall overall word of the day yeah no i completely agree with you yeah matt this has been fascinating i'm happy you could you matt you emailed me two days ago you're like i'm up in dallas i'll drive down to austin we were going to do this remotely it's so much better in person it's so much better i just moved to dallas about a month ago and i can't remember when we scheduled this but it was before i think i even knew i was going to be moving to dallas and so as it's getting closer it's like let's let's do this in person it's it's way better and uh glad i made

the trip well thank you for making the trip where can we find out more about strive twitter at strive funds strive.com all right matt cole everybody it was a great conversation peace and love