TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #615: How Bitcoin Can Avert A Pension Crisis with Dom Bei

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Marty sits down with Dom Bei to discuss the state of CalPERS. Campaign site: http://Www.beiforcalpers.com Campaign Twitter: https://x.com/DomforCalPERS Proof of Workforce: http://Www.proofofworkforce.org Dom Bei on Twitter: https://x.com/Beiwatch_1 0:00 - Intro 0:32 - Opportunity Cost app 3:34 - Dom's background 10:36 - Fold & Coinkite 12:13 - How pensions got to this point 19:29 - Impact of failure 28:10 - Unchained 28:38 - CalPERS politicized 33:49 - How pensions should approach bitcoin 42:49 - How to educate 49:37 - Energy/mining 55:55 - Running for the board 1:08:52 - Roswell NM 1:12:33 - C2A Shoutout to our sponsors: Fold https://tftc.io/fold Coinkite https://coinkite.com Unchained https://unchained.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/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ 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. What's up, freaks?

Sitting down with Dom Bay, running for the Board of Trustees of CalPERS. Dom, welcome to the show. Thanks, Marty. And what is up, freaks? How's everyone doing today? I hope everybody's doing well. Vibes are high here. Been vibe coding.

the vibes are high because the vibe coding has been up i vibe coded something last night feeling pretty excited nice what were you working on is it a top secret or uh no i think by the time this episode airs i'll have released it but it's simple very simple product uh a browser extension that allows you to put the price of goods that you may or may not be buying in sats alongside dollars so that you recognize the opportunity cost of purchasing things i like that that's That's, you know, I was working once with a hotel that was looking at doing Bitcoin, like, you know, different Bitcoin stuff, whether it's like putting on the treasury. And one of the things I told them, I was like, you guys should just do a coffee shop where you just have dollar price and sats price just next to each other. It'd be a cool thing, you know, something that we don't see a lot as Bitcoiners, but just to, you know, we all do it.

You get that familiarity where you go like, well, what would this be in sats? And it's easy to look up big things, but not little things. So that's really cool, man. That'll be good. Yeah. And the whole idea is to just have the concept of opportunity costs while you're spending front of mind, while you're shopping on the internet, which I think actually ties in perfectly with what we're here to talk about today with you specifically, is the opportunity costs that exist within pensions that are deploying capital in ways that they have for many decades. and many are missing the Bitcoin boat. Many who haven't spoken to you are missing the Bitcoin boat and you are taking it upon yourself to try to tackle one of the biggest behemoths in the world of pensions and CalPERS

to really drive home this opportunity cost at the pension level. Yeah, for sure. You know, the outgoing chief investment officer of CalPERS, Nicole Musico described the 10-year era of private equity that CalPERS missed as the lost decade. It was the pinnacle of private equity and CalPERS really felt like they didn't have enough capital deployed. And in past conversations, I've talked about knowing what we know about Bitcoin and where it's at and where it's going. Are you going to have similar commentary from pensions around the country in 2035 saying hey we're gonna get into bitcoin now we we had a lost decade where it was

just staring us right in the face and well we didn't really need to do much but learn about it and we missed the boat so now you know let's let's learn about it it'll be time will tell yeah let's jump into how you got to the point where you decided to run for the board of trustees at cowpers let's get into your history uh as a firefighter working with the union and then your advocacy in recent years going out to public pensions particularly those of emergency responders to to get bitcoin within their their pension systems and yeah why you think cowpers is the next big step for you for sure so um i got hired as a firefighter uh just around i'm coming went up on my 16 year anniversary. I got hired as a firefighter in Santa Monica and early in my

career as a firefighter, someone reached out and said, Hey, you know, you're, you're, you're kind of a goofball. You like talking to people. And, and there's this person on the board who does a lot of our political stuff. He's leaving. You should get with him and kind of learn about what he does and go find out. And so I went with him. First thing he did was bring me to this breakfast with a city council member and we were talking history in the city. And I just like, you know, I love that kind of stuff and learning about, you know, the backstories behind whatever's going on and all the moving pieces. And so, uh, I ended up getting on our board, um, for the Santa Monica firefighters and pretty, pretty young doing a lot of the political stuff, ended up becoming the

vice president and then became the president of the firefighters. And what was over a 10 year period of serving as an elected board member for the firefighters. You know, kind of parallel to that and unrelated, I found Bitcoin in 2017, randomly working at a conference, which I forget which conference it was, but I kind of looked back and I think it might have been consensus. I'm not sure. But this was 2017. And I remember my one takeaway from this conference, which may or may not have been consensus. And it was this. The people I spoke to there were equally or greater as convicted as any group or constituency I've ever met in my entire life. that's including firefighters um you know like like any group the conviction was was was unmissable uh and you could tell the people i talked to there they would not be uh convinced otherwise and uh at that time you know there wasn't as much of a division between the different

coins you know like like there was ethereum people there and there was bitcoiners there But there was a definite like someone got a hold of me and was like, hey, Bitcoin is something that like forget all this other stuff. You need to just learn this. And I remember taking that away and kind of got passively involved, wasn't super active in the space, just kind of like, you know, learned about it and grabbed a little bit and, you know, just kind of did that thing. The board took up a lot of my time. And so another thing that happened while I was on the board was I was appointed to a pension advisory committee for the city of Santa Monica, where we had a full presentation from the board and they came and presented to us and different, not the board, it was like different team members. And so I learned a ton about the pension and I've always been a, I was a history major in college. So I love learning about history. And I started really getting into the history of pensions, which is fascinating. We'll save that for another episode for the sake of your viewers. Uh, but, but, um, started doing that. And when I got off the board, um, you know, in addition to

this random incident where I kind of rescued one of the analysts from Swan and like a crazy twist of fate, like coincidence, um, you know, I ended up getting more into Bitcoin and started writing a lot about where's the intersection between workers and wage earners and Bitcoin. And as I dug in, as you know, and your listeners know, the parallels and intersections jump out at you tremendously. And even though I have some financial background from my work, Bitcoin made me dig into the legacy financial structure more than any other medium that I've encountered in my life, including digging even deeper into pensions and writing. One of the first articles I wrote about was about the pension systems and very exploratory, not trying to sell anything,

but like together, like what, what do we have in front of us? What's here. And so, um, got much more involved, ended up helping the Santa Monica firefighters become the first union to hold Bitcoin on the balance sheet in self custody in the nation. Um, and for the listeners, that's not again, unions have their own funds. That's not pension money. That's just money that they get from dues that they hold collectively within their own organization. Following that and what I witnessed and the power of that experience, I started a nonprofit called Proof of Workforce. And since we have helped 10 different unions across the public and private sectors learn about Bitcoin and also learn how to hold Bitcoin on the balance sheet. I spoke with a few of the

board of trustees from the Wisconsin Pension Fund and had them on a show where we explored Bitcoin and kind of just had a very open, candid conversation about it. I like to think that we played a very small but kind of cool, pivotal role in Wisconsin being the first pension in the US to buy the ETF in size. Not the first pension to add Bitcoin to its balance sheet. That I'm pretty sure ends up with Houston, even though there was other pension funds in the Bay Area. And I know Pomp had a fund or something in the East Coast where they ended up investing in a fund by proxy holding Bitcoin. But yeah, I started doing that. And I've never been someone to say that Bitcoin will save pension funds. But I think that Bitcoin poses a lot of questions and forces

us to look at the structure of pensions that could save pension funds. And it's going to take a lot. But I'm a doer. And I saw the opportunity to run for a pension that I'm a part of. And I'm like, hey, I'm not just going to be someone that writes about pensions. I'm going to put my neck on the line and go out there and try to run for the pension board to use whatever little talent I have, but a lot of hard work to try to make a change and make a positive impact to the pension fund. So that's kind of my path in short. Listen, Freaks, I know you're tired of me talking about Fold, but I'm going to beat the drum. I'm going to beat the dead horse. If you're a Bitcoiner living in the United States and you're not using Fold, I'm just

going to ask one question. What are you doing? You're leaving sats on the table. They've got gift cards. They've got their debit card. You can use your credit card. Just connect your credit card to the fold app use the fold out to pay off your credit card and you're going to stack your credit card points and bitcoin as well they even teamed up with crowd health to give their members fold plus membership at no cost don't leave sats on the table go sign up for fold today go to tftc.io slash fold there's nothing to lose except sats that you could have stacked sup freaks this rip of tftc was brought to you by our good friends at coin kite they make the cold card queue my favorite hardware wallet the most secure hardware wallet on the market as you can see it's got the

blackberry form factor full keyboard it's got two secure enclaves you create your private public keys offline the device never has to go online never does go online so you keep your bitcoin secure if you have your bitcoin on exchanges and you're looking to get it off secure it in the best way possible pick up a cold card queue go to coin kite.com find the cold card queue use the code tftc for five percent off if you're a power user of bitcoin like i am if you're running a business on a bitcoin standard if you're just a bitcoiner wants to secure your bitcoin get the most secure hardware wallet on the market go get the cold card queue it's a beautiful thing i know you said that we could do a whole episode on it but i think we should touch on it your

dive into the history of pensions and how they've evolved over the years and how they're structured but i think this is the base setting for for the listeners based off of your understanding like yeah what is the evolution of pensions broadly look like and what problems have amassed over time yeah so this you know random trivia stuff but do you know the first funding mechanism for the first pension off the top of your head no okay i didn't either but but basically the first pension was a naval pension. It was a military pension. The first funding mechanism was confiscated boats and ships and property throughout warfare. Pretty crazy. So, so the first, you know, the first pension funding mechanism was based on theft, hard stop. Like that's just a science.

That's not an opinion or anything like that. But there was incentive, which, you know, bitcoin's taught us a lot about incentives and i'm huge on incentives and that's something that bitcoin has taught me uh better than anything else is like incentives are everything and so you know naval officers and and uh folks at sea and in war had an incentive to you know be better at warfare because they were funding their their future disability pension started very small moved to the first municipal pension over years in new york which was the police pension in new york was the first municipal pension of its kind and that was funded with some interesting things but you know the basic funding structure of like bonds um they they had funding in the beginning

of like confiscated property they had this thing called sunday fines i haven't looked too much into this but there used to be a list of stuff you couldn't do on sunday like probably you know i don't know, gambling, selling stuff. I don't know what the list was, but the police would fine you for doing stuff on Sunday that was on the list. Um, and those would go towards the, towards the pension fund. Um, and I'm laughing cause I'm just imagining being like a cop the morning of work. And you're like, Hey, how's the pension looking like, dude, we're gonna, we're gonna hit some folks up today, uh, and, and drop some fines. But you know, they became more stable and very simplistic in structure at the beginning, which was just have a funding mechanism that was

something like treasury bonds, municipal bonds to fund a modest amount of money for a worker when they retired. Fast forward, right? I'll spare the listener the whole progression of all the things that happened, but there was many pension funds that went bankrupt. And then you have oversight. And then you have different funds used to be overseen by folks that didn't have the best interest, right? Many cycles, these things have played out and then you have regulatory stuff. But if you fast forward, we now have CalPERS, the largest pension in the United States with a 17% allocation to private equity. Some would say very far from where pensions started in their structure, right? Where now pension funds are chasing liabilities and having to

basically be these vehicles that play you know in the in the in the big kids sandbox as far as finance i mean private equity you you know it's it's it's cutthroat and there's no there's no mercy there it's it's it's it's it's profits and um you know pensions have transformed into something uh you know that that's that's definitely quite a ways off from what they started as done you were mentioning before we hit record to the uh the lost decade that calper had calpers had by not allocating the private equity and the outgoing cio mentioned that this was a problem that an opportunity that they didn't take advantage of and i think today as it stands look at the landscape of private equity and they may have gotten into it a little late too because of the

post the dynamics that exist post covid monetary base expansion that's i think private equity venture somebody who runs a venture fund um the whole sector is being looked at with the side eye right now because there's been a ton of capital allocated into early stage companies and later stage companies but the capital hasn't been returned to lps in many cases which is a big problem um for for that sector and so you have pensions making these illiquid investments that right now at least who knows that seems to be changing with the new administration companies going public mergers acquisitions back on the table but you have this sort of liability mismatch and these illiquid investments that puts these pensions in a in a tough spot yeah it's it's you

know a lot of people that are um there's a ton of people out there marty we know that they're foundation for their understanding of Bitcoin is mainstream media. We also know that mainstream media embarked on, without a doubt, a heavily slanted negative campaign on Bitcoin for over a decade. That's just, once again, it's math. Anyone can say, Dom, you just like Bitcoin. I go, then run a story number count on negative headlines versus positive for Bitcoin over the past 10 years, and you sort the math for yourself, and when it comes back 75% to 80% plus negative, then just tell me, I don't know, whatever. But that's a fact. And so, of course, they're conditioned to view Bitcoin as this very risky thing. For those of us that understand

markets, which I'm not claiming to be one of those people, but I'm getting better every day. uh private equity is is a very very you know cutthroat field um and and you can win and do very well and you can also get wrecked and one of the issues that have come up as i've spoken to different retirees and different folks is the ambiguity of of private equity you know i i think about the transparency of bitcoin and the fact that you know you can it's audited uh 24 7 you can see where Bitcoin is and you know what it is and you can see what's happening with the network. Private equity is a fund where they're making a lot of moves and they're balancing the ledger

and they have winners and losers and they're making it all work out. But there is not just a delayed reporting time to public equities, but there's a lot of ambiguity. And so when you think about the history of a pension to just hold some simple municipal bonds to, to pay some, some, you know, money out to workers when they retire to now being in this kind of ambiguous investment realm with what I would describe as severely lacking incentives for an investment team and CIO, you have an interesting dynamic that leads to continued underperformance yeah it's uh it's a shame the and i think you can tie this all back to the

nature of the high velocity trash economy that's been incentivized by the fiat monetary system like these pensions are forced to go out further on the risk curve to produce the returns necessary to pay out the pensioners at the end of the day when they retire and i think as it stands you mentioned calpers is the biggest pension in the united states public pension in the united states i think calpers and the illinois pension are the two that many point to and say these are massive entities number one and they could become massive problems if you just look at how big they are what they're promising in terms of payouts to pensioners and how much money they actually have. There's some shortfalls that exist. So, I think as it relates to CalPERS

specifically, let's just give your high-level state of the union of the state of the pension. Yeah. So, like you mentioned, and it made me think of, the pension issues a lot stemmed from 07, 08. The average funding status for a local and state pension throughout the country, the average funded status was in the low 90s prior to the financial crisis in 08. Afterwards, the average funded status was below 80%. We talk about the origins of a pension. They were not created to play catch up. That's not what the fund was created for. They were created to be these slow moving large funds that earn steady returns, don't take much risk, and are able to keep up and pay the retirements, which is a very sacred thing. People trade 30. As we learn more

about money, some wealth managers will tell you trading your time for money is the worst deal in the world. Find things that earn you money while you sleep. And like, okay, well, most of the people in the world trade their time for money. And a lot of them pay into these systems with the hope that after trading a whole lifetime where they could have done anything and that's on us as workers, we could do anything in this world, but we choose to work and go to work and check in, check out. And hopefully at the end, we could spend those years, whether it's like 55 to 60 without having to work, our backs are a little jammed up and we got ailments and we're injured, but we can spend that time with family, grandkids maybe. And so, right, it's a sacred thing.

shouldn't be risky. The state of things right now is how does the fund catch up? And the biggest thing that I've seen as to why I'm running for the fund is the incentive structure is not made to do that. CalPERS has had four chief investment officers over the last just over five years. That's an insane turnaround. And when you look at the incentives, I think the CIO is paid $700K a year, which for the public sector, wow, that's a nice salary. For managing a $500 billion plus portfolio and having to catch up with massive returns steadily on a year-by-year basis, that's not feasible. Those incentives have to be aligned incredibly well to the long-term performance of the fund. That's something that I really want to focus on if I get on the CalPERS

board is to look at the incentives. How do we attract top level CIOs that I get it. There's going to be something if, you know, if Marty Bent is a top recruit out of his, you know, school and went to one of the best schools and learned about money, there's a good chance you're going to go to BlackRock, Fidelity, one of these big hedge funds or some other fund. But maybe your dad or or your uncle was a firefighter and you go you know what like i just feel called maybe to to do a little something different and i want to go to calpers you're taking a sacrifice we're not going to ever pay you as much as you could make at fidelity or blackrock but if it's if it's my decision we're going to pay you pretty solid to where you can at least like get a house you know

anywhere in the country if you lead calpers to a 10 year plus uh run of positive returns i want you to walk into any private members club and hold your head high if that's your thing. And as you should for doing something that's incredibly difficult and challenging. So the state of the pension fund right now, I think there's some incentives that are broken. The fund is at 75% funded right now. And if you saw the headlines, but throughout this tariff mania, they say that the fund had a $26 billion markdown, which if my math is correct, would bring the fund closer towards the 70% funded number. I'm sure they're going to claw some of that back and they have to before the reporting period on June 30th, 2025. But if not, you're going to have the similar thing

that happens always when a pension comes back underfunded, your cities and your taxpayers are going to have to pay more and fit the bill for that. And that's going to be funds taken away from things like parks, schools, transportation, public safety, stuff like that. And eventually then that triggers folks to get upset and they go, these damn workers, they're making so much. We need them to retire later and we need them to pay into the system more than they are right now because that's the problem. When in reality, the performance of a fund is like 60 to 70% correlated to its ability to pay off its liabilities. And proof in the pudding for that is CalPERS did a pension reform in 2013, where they pushed back the retirement ages and made

people pay more. And guess what? They haven't caught up. So if the problem is that workers are making too much money, which I'm not saying that that doesn't play into the fund, it 100% does. Why didn't the pension reform work in 2013? And in 2025, we sit at a similar place to where we were 12 years prior to the reform. And I'll tell you why. It's because no one's getting to the real heart of the issue, which is why our fund is not performing enough or what it's going to do to play catch up after what happened in the financial crisis. Yeah. That CIO stat is pretty insane that turns insane a turnover rate makes one wonder like is that turnover that high because those individuals don't want to be the one quote unquote holding the bag when things go

bust and yeah i mean that that's even like that is a suitcase cio to the next level right like how do you you don't even start to get into understanding the organization and and all of its different you know nuts and bolts and pieces until what like six months in and and and as you're kind of developing strategies this isn't like you're going to run the the um you know the third grade t-ball snack bar like you're running a major massive organization that gets pulled into all kinds of political issues and and it's complex and maybe maybe marty they leave because you know they have to deal with people trying to get them to divest from oil and gas which happens to be one of the top performers of the fund and they're going, man, I can't win. You want me to pull out

of the one thing that's keeping us funded? Maybe there's some kind of dysfunction in the mechanism of the pension as far as how the board interacts with the investment team, how the CEO interacts with the board and the constituents and the elected officials. But that is a staggering number that cannot be ignored. And for anyone that says like, that alone, forget about the funding status, that there isn't an issue there. That's just crazy. I mean, there's no situation in the world where I can tell you the primary leadership rotates almost every year and there's not a problem there. Nothing. Not a union, not a church, not a school. That is going to make problems. So that is something that has to be addressed without a doubt.

That's unchained.com slash TFTC. So has CalPERS been highly politicized, which is clouding their investment judgment, in your opinion? I think for sure. And I think, you know, to answer that, just Google CalPERS and look at the top stories. You know, you'll see stories about pressure to divest from oil and gas into energy transition. You'll see that CalPERS has committed $100 billion by 2030 to invest in energy transition and sustainable climate investments. You'll see things like CalPERS getting into like Elon Musk's, you know, pay bonuses and different things like that. People upset that, you know, maybe the pension may or may not hold something that has to do with Musk, right?

These are political things for sure. And, uh, there's, yeah, there, there's a decent amount, you know, California is a very political place. So it doesn't surprise me that there's, you know, that it's a politicized pension fund, but that's where the incentives come up. Right. And that's where, if you have a CIO, that's strongly incentivized by fund performance, you should have a board that's strongly incentivized by fund performance. You should have elected officials that are strongly incentivized by fund performance, city leaders, everyone, you have to ask the question in everything, is this going to fulfill our ultimate goal, which is to pay the retirees, keep a healthy workforce

and not hold cities hostage to these unfunded liability payments that they have to make if our fund drops below. You can invest in anything in the world, but if it doesn't pass that litmus test. You do not pass go, you do not collect 200. It could be the most sincere thing in the world and a great cause. Um, and, and that's all great. But like someone once told me, if it doesn't make money today, it may never make money. And, um, you have to really, you know, you can't invest in things because you think we're going to change the world and shape things. And then our investment will make money. That's a very dangerous place to be with, you know, the pension money of the largest uh you know workforce in the nation yeah so i'm looking at the stats here my research

calpers has two million members that are depending on these pensions and so when you think about politicizing a fund with the responsibility making sure that two million people can sustain their lifestyles and just simply subsist in their retirement years it's pretty pretty insane the yeah scale of that it's more than half a percentage point of the american population it's wild here's another stat did you know that cowpers is the largest purchaser of medical insurance behind the united states government no it did not yeah fact so they also have they provide a lot of medical benefits and a lot of people use that system as a mechanism for medical benefits um and kind of interfacing with medicare and all that so yeah it's a it's a huge huge system

And like you said, you know, it's not just it's, you know, we hear the term too big to fail. I mean, I can't imagine a world where, you know, the pension goes bust because that's going to send shockwaves through so many different sectors of the economy. I mean, you're talking global impact of the fund. But we say never. And, you know, that can never happen. Never say never. I'm not a fear monger. I'm not telling people, you know, the, the, the fund's going to collapse and all this stuff. You know, it's more of the subtle things like we talked about, like the rotation of the CIOs, the, the remain being at that underfunded status at like 75% and not seeing that progress. Those are things that are issues and could, you know, could the fund have a bigger

problem? Sure. I mean, we think about pension bailouts. I don't know if you've noticed this, But like pension bailouts ever since COVID and since the Biden administration bailed out a ton of private pensions with billions that, by the way, are continuing to be paid off today. They don't make the news anymore. Even you can look this up. Just look up like look up the fund, the pension guaranteed, the Guaranteer Corporation and the funds that they're paying out. You know, they don't make the news. And CalPERS, in a way, is almost like it's front bailed out, if that makes sense. And so, you can look up Newsom took a lot of money that they got during everything that happened with COVID.

And they used it to pay down the liabilities and infuse money into CalPERS. And still, we sit at 75% today. And if we have bad numbers this June, we'll be below. And so, in a way, it is getting bailed out on a regular basis. We talk about the financial system and debt, and at some point, does it break? Does it crack? I don't know, but there's vulnerabilities there for sure. Yeah, and let's not focus on the negatives.

Let's turn to positives. How do you think Bitcoin could, should, or let's reframe this. How should CalPERS think about approaching Bitcoin? First, I'm like exploratory. Like, what is it? Yeah. And then like how they can begin to implement it into what they're doing. Yeah.

So, you know, in everything I've done, I'm huge on education and Bitcoin is an educational tool. Number one, first and foremost, I think the power of Bitcoin in that capacity is unbelievable to serve as an interesting, new, amazing technology where a worker and wage earner can learn about trading their time for money, how it works, etc. So from a standpoint, let's start not with the board and the people that oversee the pension. Let's start with the participants. I'm a huge advocate of learning about Bitcoin because they will inevitably learn about their pension. They will learn about how money works. They will learn about trading time for wages. They'll learn about inflation.

They'll learn about COLA, cost of living adjustments, and whether it's enough or not, and medical premiums. So, I think CalPERS could be a huge leader in the space in just providing educational materials to their members, right? I think for sure they should have solid research on the books in Bitcoin. And I think when they're looking at it and if they find that it could fit somewhere, I'm also a huge, huge believer in small incremental steps. You know, it's funny. I talked to these organizations. And if you look me up, you know, what do you think I get when I go talk to like a retiree organization? They'll say, Dom, we saw online, you're the crypto guy. And I go, well, first, Bitcoin is very different from crypto. So we have to start there. You know, it is it is its own thing. And, you know, those are very different things. second um look up anything i've ever talked about and the work i've done with unions i've always been a firm believer in you have to educate folks and take very small steps because as we know bitcoin can be volatile over the years especially in short periods of time so i would never some

people would say well you're running for calpers to just add bitcoin to the balance sheet not quite that simple. I wouldn't, you know, I also am fully aware that if I run for this fund, I represent, like you said, Marty, 2 million plus people, you know, they need to be comfortable with it as well, because I can, we know that if a CIO decided to invest in Bitcoin and it had a 30 to 40% drawdown, that CIO is going to get cooked. They're going to, the pitchforks are going to come out. Look what you did. You gambled with these people's money. Even if the CIO says, hey, everyone, wait, wait, wait. This thing long term is undefeated. Just give it time and you're going to be good. Doesn't matter. So, you know, because it's new and because it has a lot of

misinformation, the education has to, you know, it has to proceed or front run any kind of step. And that's education of the participants, education of the staff, you know, the board, investment team, etc. I think that's very important. And again, another thing folks don't realize is as a board member, we don't make actual investments. So when we talk about incentives, if you have a CIO that's incentivized for the fund to do well, they're going to find Bitcoin on their own. They don't need me. They don't need you. They're going to find Bitcoin because the numbers don't lie. And the performance of Bitcoin since its inception doesn't lie. It's a true story. I mean, we see today, right, GDP dropped 0.3% or came back lower than expected.

And what's Bitcoin at like 93 or something. And people probably look at it from the highs. But I mean, I know I was at a conference a while ago, and Bitcoin was like 85, 88. And if someone mentioned that it kind of feels like a bear market. And, you know, you tell us that years ago that Bitcoin is going to kind of feel like boring and a little solemn at 88. And we'd be like, what? Like, you know, like, um, and so, uh, you know, ultimately I think Bitcoin has huge potential as an educational tool for, for participants of a pension. It's a way to engage people. Uh, here's a stat for you not to get off topic, but of those 2 million people, do you know how many voted in the 2021 CalPERS board election? I do not. 10%. So 196,000 voters out of 2 million

voted for their own pension. Now, I bet you last year and coming up this year, those same 2 million are probably very high propensity voters in the general election and voted in the presidential election thinking my life is on the line. I got to figure out, you know, they were stressed at home. Like if I don't get this one right with the president, you know, like, like I just, you know, I'm everyone's torn. I got to nail this. Didn't vote for their own pension fund where decisions will be made that will 1000% determine their future very intimately, you know, regarding the lifeblood of their existence when they retire. Didn't vote. So Bitcoin can be, you know, if my campaign does anything it will be to engage those folks in their pension and learn about it and i

think bitcoin's an interesting tool whether people hate it or like it if they um whatever their opinion it's a it's a good engagement mechanism and it gets people excited um and it has a good brand of resilience and it's just uh interesting things so that's kind of that's my my take as far as Bitcoin and pensions, it's not as simple as like, CalPERS is not going to add Bitcoin and then its problems are over. It saves the world. But it can surely look at it as a tool. And another thing I told the retirees, another fact, look up the top 10 most valuable assets on the planet Earth, and you'll see Bitcoin in the top 10. Hard stop. End of story. You tell me that you're going to be the largest pension and you're not going to have a pro forma report or

research done on one of the top 10 assets on planet earth and you're sitting underfunded at 75 with turnover of like a cio a year i can't even have the conversation if if you know what i mean like i can't have the conversation um surely they're going to do research on the other top 10 why exclude Bitcoin? And we know the answer. It's because mainstream media has driven... They did a hell of a job, Marty. I got to give it to you. Whoever runs mainstream media, if I can hire them to do... If I could hire them for my campaign, whoever did the negative media on Bitcoin, I need to hire them because they did an amazing job. But that's starting to change now, now that you have the etf was a huge thing and um people you know they're starting to come around

being like you know they this the news has told me bitcoin is dead 10 times and i just keep looking and i don't know what's up every two years i look at the chart and it's it's higher than it was when they told me it died yeah exactly it's it's um bitcoin's brand of resilience is cemented now history. That is undebatable. Bitcoin has embraced multiple attacks, calamities, bad actors that have given, you know, Bitcoin a bad name that haven't even touched Bitcoin, mainstream media, all out assault. And Bitcoin's brand is resilience. And that cannot be undone. That is fixed in history because it has a track record and um you know that that doesn't change and so uh what's what's that what's this stat um no no asset that's ever crossed a trillion and market cap has ever like

went to zero i've never i haven't heard that one but that wouldn't shock me at all i don't know if it's true so don't don't quote me on it but i heard someone mention it but it seems to make sense like sure it may fall out of grace with the top 10 or top 20 but once it's kind of crossed that threshold there's always going to be someone that sees bitcoin as an opportunity and a value play because of of its uh you know brand id and resilience yeah no i completely agree i think bitcoin's resilience is stamped in terms of there's no denying it's died a thousand deaths and come back stronger every time and like on that note like i think more and more people are beginning to recognize this and get over the cognitive dissonance that has been embedded in

their their minds via the malware of mainstream media and begin to say hey these guys have been tell me the wrong thing for for many years now and i guess to that point in your experience talking to unions and pensions throughout the years and your focus on education what has been the most effective type of educational engagement is it literal information about bitcoin on a pamphlet is it going and talking to people is it pointing at charts and showing results different flavors for different people i i think the some of the most useful and effective mechanisms i always tell folks this when i talk to different unions that are looking to get their unions to start they they always call and they go i want to i'm going to get my union to make a big allocation

to bitcoin i go hold on it's funny because some people uh who did a hit piece on me the other day um joel silverman the the co-author of easy money with ben mckenzie remember that book yeah the guy from the oc he did a hit piece where he painted my incredibly poor and humble non-profit that has not much money to its name as like this like you know we're going around talking to unions and selling them on this like religious bitcoin and you need to do all and and it's i'll send it to you you'll get a good laugh out of it um uh it was in the nation so i was very proud moment look and find it and put the uh put it on the screen while we're talking about it here yeah but but in reality it's ironic because i talk a lot of unions out of making big buys of

bitcoin right i i they come to me and they say we want to do this big thing and i go hey hey hold on a second like you're going to get yourself into a bad situation you need to really um if you're going to do this learn about it be smart don't don't take unnecessary risk and so when dealing with a board which is you think it's hard enough to convince one person of of like doing anything when you convince a group body that has a large collective of different thoughts and opinions and that that body is a democratic body that can move and sway and have extremists kind to take over the mood or, or maybe people on one side or the other, you really have to thread the needle perfectly and make sure that you involve everyone. And so one of the most effective tools

that I've used is helping people convince, you know, whoever is in position of authority in their organization, you don't need to figure out if Bitcoin is good for you or not. You just need to figure out if it's worth finding out whether it is or not. And I tell groups this all the time. They go, yeah, you know, the president of the union is, I think he's kind of anti-union. And so I don't think he's going to go for this. And I go, you don't need to sell him on Bitcoin. You just need to sell him on the fact that Bitcoin is worth looking into. And from there, the fear melts away because it's scary. And I get it. Folks are, they just want to cruise along and they don't want to get attacked. They worked hard to get in their spots. And so I would say the same

thing is true for a pension. I don't need to convince a pension that Bitcoin is worth adding to the balance sheet. I would only ever convince a pension that it's worth looking into. And what's the harm in that? I mean, if CalPERS did some pro forma thing, are they going to get... At that point, if someone gets attacked for simply learning or looking into something, the problem is on the attacker for sure i mean unless that thing is so atrocious that you're you know you're like um you know this is like uh you know it's it's it's it's the the thing itself is is extremely harmful to people around them right which which bitcoin is not and so um just getting them to look into that's really effective small incremental steps because they they melt away the fear

and just meeting people, you know, it's a little cliche. You hear about meeting people where they're at, but it's so true. You know, if I'm talking to you and you tell me, I don't like Bitcoin because people lose their seed phrase. I could choose to counter that by saying, well, only a small amount of people lose their seed phrase. And actually it doesn't really happen. And it's very uncommon. Or I can say, Marty, you know what? You're right. People do lose their seed phrase. But what if we started with $5 and playing with self-custody and what it felt like? Would you be worried about losing the seed phrase? No, I guess then I wouldn't really care. Okay, great. Now, are you good with that? Yeah, I'm good. But what about there's all

these hackers and I go, well, listen, Bitcoin has never been hacked. Any kind of issue has been through someone's own mistake. But what if we started with $5? Could you get over the fact that sure, Bitcoin might be able to be hacked. Could you engage then? Yes. And then when holding it, they learn, oh my gosh, I can see I would never lose my seed phrase. Or if I did, I'd get into multi-sig or some other joint custodial thing where I had better insurances if I did more. So that's been the most effective couple of tools that I've used. And then the last one is consensus. You can't do these things in the dark. You got to be out in the open and get people involved.

Because if you don't get people involved, you're running the chance of a Bitcoin hitting, you know, a volatile stretch and having some downtime. And then you're not going to be in it for the long run because people are going to attack that. And you also lose on what I think is one of the greatest facets of Bitcoin, which is its ability to educate workers and wage earners on how money works. Why? that's the best part so include everyone and take advantage of what is one of the best things about bitcoin um whether you end up passing some measure and getting involved or if your organization says that's not for us but we learned a lot but it's not for us great yeah and then the individuals maybe the organization doesn't do it but the individual is like you know what i'm going to

do this myself and help themselves out less dependent on the pension on the back end and And I completely agree, not only with meeting people where they are, but the first step should just be convincing them to look into Bitcoin. And your story there reminded me a lot of my days at Great American Mining, where we would do these webinars. We'd send out a message, like, if you're in oil and gas, we're doing a webinar on using Bitcoin mining to eliminate flare gas problems that you may have. and what we found it was a bunch of younger either analysts or middle managers that were joining the call and there were like bitcoiners in these organizations that really understood it and that was a lot of the conversation we we had was with these lower level people in the organization having conversations about how they can broach the conversation with the decision makers on the

investment board or the management team and a lot of it was just like convince them that bitcoin is worth looking into and then like you mentioned it'll do the job after that exactly yeah it's it's interesting not to not to get sidetracked because that's that's spot on you mentioned the the mining side of stuff and i do think there's a very interesting dynamic in california right now in that right um you had a trend a change of the administration and you had this huge public private partnership in energy transition, right? Renewable energy. And like I mentioned earlier, CalPERS committed $100 billion by 2030. Now, they hold some things. There's also some controversies like, oh, you know, you can't list Exxon as part of your climate-friendly investment,

you know, and they go, well, if we're impacting change, then we view it as such. But the big thing is that with the changing administration that seems to now be incentivizing, you know, oil and gas, drill, baby, drill, you have a huge amount of the private sector on that public-private that is pulling away from energy transition. I saw an article that BP was looking to sell or liquidate huge holdings in energy transition, whether that's like investments in solar or wind. that leaves i don't know if you saw this but governor newsom went to sonora mexico and there was an article that came out our new climate partner sonora and i was like okay um i don't know where they were in the list of like you know top top like huge making a huge splash but i'm sure there's some great stuff there but what is california going to do to succeed at its goal of energy transition. And, you know, there's a lot of people in the space in Bitcoin where there

is heavy pursuit of renewable energy as a source. And we know Bitcoin miners will pursue whatever they work off incentives. And that is incredibly cutthroat field. And so if you provide them an energy source that can give them an advantage of, you know, tiny little bit, they will jump on it and set up shop and there's a lot of interesting things there with california as far as what role could bitcoin play as a as an energy partner and whatever i'm not an energy expert so there's a lot of variables and question marks but surely it maybe is worth exploring yeah bitcoin miners the buyer of first and last resort of your energy resources looking to expand generation whether that's wind solar nuclear oil and gas coal even bitcoin miners can be there

as the buyer first resort as you put the generation asset down and wait for the transmission lines to be built out once the transmission lines are built out bitcoin miners can unplug move somewhere else rinse and repeat you look up a couple decades from now you have a pretty robust energy system with a ton of generation that's being utilized to max capacity it's a beautiful thing california think about it imagine the irony of bitcoin ended up being you know a key player in succeeding in energy transition and goals i mean the irony would just be unbelievable ben mckenzie told me it's boiling the ocean so i don't think we should explore it yeah for sure no that's that's that's if that's the case um you always know it's an issue where you're like on all the talk shows

and you have a thesis and then the thesis is wildly wrong and you just disappear you're like all right i'm out um but yeah um no some really interesting stuff there for california and i think we had a little thing we had a little thing in santa monica which was like this like peer-to-peer um little street festival that we did and we had um margo from bpi was there um and uh she was talking to a state senator about the different energy stuff. And they had a good conversation about how there's a little bit different standards or views on, you know, Bitcoin miners versus traditional database operators. And there's just a lot there. And I hope that the state can facilitate a deeper exploration of that. Because if the ultimate goal is just to,

you know, have energy transition and move more into renewables, then it's worth looking into whether bitcoin can help achieve that or not and if the answer is no then fine they looked into it but um better than not succeeding at the goal you're gonna have to get some californian representatives in west texas that would be that would be very interesting to see look at all this wind and solar generation that bitcoin mining has helped produce yeah if they're allowed to step foot in texas you know we gotta we gotta put the we gotta put hopefully there's more by part that's another thing with my race that's huge is like the pension thing is not partisan and so right i'm really hoping to um engage folks because there should be no partisan issues in the pension fund

it affects all cities equally all workers up and down the state and it should not be a politicized thing so but easier said than done agreed and great segue into the topic of how does one actually run for the board of trustees of CalPERS? Yeah. Mechanics. How does this how does this the politics of CalPERS actually work? Yeah. So so to run so the board, the board of administration or I also I call it the board of trustees, even though there is a slight difference between the term, but it's just more understandable. And the Constitution mentions trustees and administration. but the retirement board consists of 13 individuals. Some of them are ex facto. So like the California treasurer, right, may have a spot on there. Some of them are appointed by the

governor or assembly, speaker of the assembly or Senate. And then there's some that are at large for election. So I'm running for one of the spots that's an at large spot. How do I run for it? I'm eligible because I'm an active member of CalPERS myself. I'm a firefighter in the state that's in that system. And so I'm an eligible voter and I'm eligible to run for the spot. You know, I have to get these signatures to be eligible, which I got those. And then I have to run and find a way to communicate and turn out 2 million plus voters that are not part of any district. They're just distributed throughout the entire state. So the answer to how do you do it? It's tough. And these spots are often, you know, gatekeeped by different, you know, larger organizations or unions that have

more members. And so it's incredibly challenging without the support of the big, big unions that can then turn out their members because it's really expensive. I mean, just running 2 million plus voters is the size of like, it's a congressional race easily, if not bigger. But imagine there's no district, a congressional race, at least you have a district where if you hit everyone within the district lines, you hit a voter. I have to literally hit every person in California, you know, in order to reach the 2 million or I have to be really strategic in finding them. So putting together a digital campaign, it's super expensive and it's very hard. And so if I'm unable to raise the money, which I'm working on 24 seven, then I cannot

communicate with the voters. I'm working, I got good endorsements from firefighters across the state. So I'll be, you know, they're really, they've been incredible reaching out saying, we're going to get the word out. We'll get the word out to our local city, our local organizations. So that's a beautiful community that I'm very blessed to be a part of. And, you know, I'm just going to have to run really hard before these ballots come in. August 29th, the two million voters get the ballots. They have a month to vote, either sending it in online or by phone, and then they'll tally the results. And if there's a clear winner, they'll be on the board.

Otherwise, they'll move to a runoff a few months later. So that is the incredible task at hand. While we're talking about it, let's talk about a couple of things on why it matters to the viewer, if I can. You know, I think it matters because it's a big deal. Like we mentioned, there's 2 million plus folks that rely on these retirement funds. I think it's a huge opportunity to educate those folks and get them engaged. Um, when you do not have engagement from your everyday folks, it allows a few loud voices to kind of dominate the political discussion and that can impact, you know, anything in a variety

of ways. So engagement is huge. Um, you know, for Bitcoiners, I think it matters because, um, everyone knows how I feel about Bitcoin and I believe in it personally. Of course, as a board member, I serve 2 million plus workers, and that's going to be my priority. But I'm huge on education. And I think it's a huge opportunity to, you know, have a pillar of education in that area in California, in Sacramento. So I think that will lead to tons of great discussions there. And again, as we saw in the news, California is now the fourth largest economy in the world. So when you talk about, you know, areas that maybe are a little behind and their understanding, that's a huge, huge territory. So I think that matters. And then

there's something that's very interesting where, Marty, your listener in like Nebraska or Oklahoma or Texas or North Dakota might be like, I don't care about CalPERS. Well, a lot of different political folks I've talked to believe that there's a decent possibility that the future of the house could be determined in california in 2026 and for anyone paying attention to the national politics i think we've made a lot of progress in just being recognized as having the right to exist as bitcoiners you know if there was something that the last administration really dropped the ball on they could have simply just said like hey we think that folks that are into Bitcoin, you know, have a, have a, have a valid use case. And, um, we're going to learn more

about that. And that's all at this time. And they would have been like, thank you. Oh my gosh. You know, um, millions of people that hold Bitcoin kind of feel like seen or recognized that didn't happen. Um, but with what's on the, what's on the table for 2026, you know, the Dems are still catching up on Bitcoin and it's still yet to be determined their kind of stance on it. And so I'm going to be engaging with 2 million plus high propensity general election voters throughout the entire state that will likely determine the future of the House of Representatives. Now, sure, they're going to get engaged on party lines, but wouldn't it be great if they also looked into things like where different elected officials stand on the future of money and how

digital cash might play into our system in the future. And that was a key item that could play a role in the election. And I think every Bitcoiner wants to continue to see progress made and have an ability to just engage in something that they feel protects them from the wealth extractors of traditional finance. And so that's a very, very big deal. And so I encourage folks to really pay attention and come on board to this campaign that i'm running because it will be a preface for the midterm elections in 2026 without a doubt we have a huge opportunity to educate workers and wage earners yeah and we've got a great distributed network of memers in the bitcoin space if we got an underdog running for the board of administrators board of trustees of calpers

we should help crowdsource some marketing efforts i think we can do a better job than uh an agency that's that's taking in millions of dollars to do this i think we can do this distributed using social media we've seen the power of memeing bitcoin into the conversation at the national stage and that's one thing i've been passionate about for many years going back to my days at great american mining i became wholly convinced and still am to a very large extent today that states are still going to lead the way here what's happening at the federal level in terms of bitcoin being part of the conversation and the trump administration seriously considering incorporating bitcoin into what they're doing is is all fine and good but as we know as americans

the political gridlock that exists in dc is pretty immense and i think 33 years into my life almost 34 years it's become clear to me don't depend on that much more effective to focus on your local area your local community your local union and build out from there and states are obviously at a lower layer than the federal government and are very high leverage um entities to to convince to consider bitcoin just to consider bitcoin 100 you know when we We have all these state bills out right now. And look, whether they pass or not, I've always said, you know, we Bitcoiners have leapfrogged a ton of stuff. And I give the community all the credit and everyone working their tail off.

I mean, it's unbelievable. But like you said, for local, how does a state put Bitcoin on the balance sheet when not one municipality in that state holds it on the balance sheet? Because what is a state? It's a collective of cities that pay into a larger, right? It's the next level up. And so, you know what I mean? How does a city look into Bitcoin or facilitate Bitcoin as a payment when not one person in their city is using it as a payment?

It doesn't because without the commitment, you know, anytime there's problems, people are gonna go, this is stupid. I'm done. Like, this is dumb or you're an idiot for doing this thing. I'm done. And so the grassroots education and another thing I'm very passionate about, and I know you are as well, the narrative as to why Bitcoin was created. It is, in my opinion, the number one attack vector for Bitcoin is the narrative of why, you know, we all love when Larry Fink's talking about Bitcoin, because the guy runs all the money in the world and he's talking about it and we're like, yes,

but what is he saying when you break it down? He specifically says that Bitcoin is a pristine digital asset and they focus on the asset. You never hear him saying that it's digital cash or a payment network that can facilitate peer-to-peer money. In reality, every Bitcoiner knows the Genesis story that Bitcoin was born from the financial crisis, that in the Genesis block, Chancellor on the brink of a second bailout, there's specific symbolism in Bitcoin as being an instrument where people can just exchange value between each other and hold something that cannot be diluted or extracted as far as what they do. There's never a promise in Bitcoin that Bitcoin was going to go up or be this, but there was a promise that Bitcoin was

going to be a way for you to engage in value peer to peer without having to ask someone, please, mother, may I do this? Or here's the information of what I'm doing. Or I got a slice of pizza with this. So we have to continue to share that story because Bitcoin's simplest features remain their most impressive features and i tell people all the time just hold 10 bucks in self custody for like a couple months see what it feels like because i remember when i did it a little like you know a goofball like me i was walking around like all right i'm like okay hey what how are you doing what do you got like a couple million in the bank that's cool that's cool man hope that goes well you know like like i have it was the first time i had something of

my own of value. And sure, it could go up and go down in a night, but it's mine. And I know the mechanisms and I can engage in the mechanisms and I can choose to run a node with a software update of my choice. And I can look and audit what's going on with Bitcoin and I can get rid of it at any time if I want. I can hold it. That's the most powerful thing. And it's so simple. It's not like this like it's just really simple you hold something that's yours um and it's not cash under your bed but like it's better and and and you know we have to continue to tell that story locally because otherwise that story and the flame that is that story will be extinguished by those that just want to see bitcoin be you know a pristine asset where in reality they want to make

money. They want dollars. Anything Fink is mentioning about Bitcoin is for the end game of making the United States dollar and getting more of that. So we have to share this. We have to educate folks. And it's the most important thing we can do as Bitcoiners today. Yeah. And I'm happy to report to all the freaks out there. We do have our first municipality municipality that has adopted a strategic Bitcoin Reserve I was not expecting it to be this municipality Roswell Roswell New Mexico nice is on the board first snowflake in the eventual Avalanche that leads to all municipalities they actually used funds to purchase it let me let this up to be sure because i know i know fort worth was the first city to mine it yeah

roswell new mexico let's see what it says let's see i'm pretty sure so i hope i didn't dream this last night yeah roswell new mexico now holds bitcoin on its balance sheet mayor pro tem juliana halverson signed off on the city's new bitcoin strategic reserve it's saying here they have three three million two hundred three million fifty thousand three hundred and twenty three sets on the balance sheet as of right now the fair market value of two thousand nine hundred and six dollars it's a step it's a it's a step and then and it's not going to bankrupt the city right 2 900 surely is not going to bankrupt the city and um but they can learn and see you know what it's like what's

happening and they can have growing pains and they can see what the market does and learn about the technology and so that's the hardest step is just getting off zero and um you know uh huge for them and in 10 years from now we'll revisit and see what the benefit was and and to other cities i would say this marty like even if they were to decide that they never did anything after that if bitcoin does change the world like we think it can and it already has and continues to move forward they can say we looked into this thing we didn't just like we weren't asleep we looked into this yeah and i'm just looking into the story in more depth i saw the headline earlier today but this is a great way like it's a great example we have everybody's attention

is like a live on-air breaking news dissection but the way in which this roswell strategic reserve and bitcoin emergency fund emerged um was an anonymous donation by a citizen of roswell new mexico so this document acknowledges the city of roswell new mexico's receipt of 3 million 50,323 satoshis with a fair market value of roughly 2906 at the time of receipt as the first seed donation of hopefully many more to come establishing the city held and managed roswell strategic bitcoin reserve the donation donation was sent on january 3rd of this year anonymously and not hey you know people some some skeptics say bitcoin's a ponzi scheme but i don't know a ponzi scheme where people donate their funds to a city municipality um treasury you know

just because they believe in the thing and the hope that it can i mean like that would be a first we'd have to check the history books but um you know that's pretty that's an amazing tool just someone caring about something so much that they're willing to part ways with real value that person could have just sold that bitcoin and bought you know an old honda accord or something um although you know i don't know what the tariffs honda cores might be going for for hire now you know but but pretty cool that's that's that's an awesome story yeah go go talk to your municipality talk to the mayor that's this is like hey look into bitcoin would you be willing to accept a donation in bitcoin roswell said yes you know what we would we're gonna hold it yeah

oh it's folks have to just get outside and talk to again start start on your block start start with you you know uh uh the bake sale on the block and like teach them just about bitcoin and like we have to start there um because that's how you plant the seeds and um the good news is there's a lot of folks doing that and and um there's starting to be a lot more interest in bitcoin for sure yeah well you're on the tip of the spear dom thank you for doing everything that you've done up to this point and for throwing your hat in the ring for the board of trustees of calpers i think it's very important work sometimes bankless work and i just want to recognize that it is incredible to see what you've done in a very short amount of time

and anybody who's listening who can put forth an effort to help dom his efforts to get on the board trustees at calpers get to work let's get this distributed meme warfare underway for the calpers Board of Trustees. Let's get to the voters. 100%. We need you out there. If I can plug the website just for folks looking to find us, www.bayforcalpers. My last name is B-E-I. So it's bayforcalpers. And on Twitter, you can just look up Dom Bay for CalPERS or on Instagram. And we got a ton of good endorsements rolling in and get involved. Like you said, we need everyone. This is, this is not when the board of a pension board sounds like this little office, you walk into this little place that has a little notepad here, here on the pension board. Okay. And you know, but this is a massive thing and it's huge. And my success in both winning the race, but more importantly, engaging people to understand how pensions work and what this means. that depends on all you listening in getting the word out so anything along those lines

unbelievably huge for us and all the participants and everyone in the country we'll link to all that in the show notes dom keep fighting the good fight and i'm sure i think we should definitely make it a point to catch up between now and the end of august and everybody will get their ballots uh anybody in calpers will get their ballots so we make sure the message continues to get out there. 100%. Hey, thanks for having me on. And thanks for all the work you've done in the space. You know, I've, I've always kept up with your articles and, and you've always been willing to lend, you know, insights or a helping hand. So, uh, very appreciative of that and all the work you're

doing. I appreciate you. It's a group effort. We're going to win. We're going to win. Without a doubt. We are. I mean, we're like we're rolling. We are with that. Peace and love freaks. Freaks, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you liked it. If you did like it, please make sure you subscribe, rate, review the show. It helps us out a lot. And also, if you like these conversations, I've come to realize that many people listen to the podcast.

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