TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #634: Proof Of Ownership Without Sacrifice with Sam Abbassi

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Marty sits down with Sam Abbassi to discuss the FHA's new policy allowing Bitcoin and crypto holdings to count toward mortgage net worth requirements when held on regulated exchanges, and how Hoseki's self-custody verification platform offers a better solution that preserves Bitcoin's sovereignty principles. Hoseki: https://www.hoseki.app/ Hoseki on Twitter: https://x.com/hosekiapp Sam Abbassi on Twitter: https://x.com/samabbassi STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/VJ2dABShBz Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: 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 if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Emergency rep late on a Friday. My guest here has a wedding in a little bit. I am braving the storm on the back porch of my father-in-law's beach house right now, but something to talk about. The FHA, Bill Pulte, Bill Pulte came out on Wednesday while Sam and I were both at the

Bitcoin Policy Institute summit and announced that they are essentially taking away the spending provision that Biden put in in 2022, which basically made it so if you want to get a mortgage as a Bitcoiner and have your Bitcoin count towards your net worth, you need to sell that Bitcoin, hold it in a bank account, hold the cash in a bank account for three months, and then the value of that Bitcoin you sold could be recognized towards your net worth and towards your creditworthiness. Bill Pulte came out on Wednesday and said, hey, we're changing this. Bitcoin and crypto holders, your wealth that's held in these assets will be recognized. However, they need to be held on a regulated third-party exchange.

And step in the right direction. Massively beneficial that Bitcoiners don't have to sell their Bitcoin and their assets are being recognized towards their net worth in the banks and mortgage underwriters, but not perfect. Nothing is perfect. And so I thought, let's bring on Sam Abassi, co-founder, CEO of Hoseki, which is working to solve this problem to basically give institutions the ability or individuals the ability to prove that they own Bitcoin while retaining self-custody to institutions. That was a long winded intro so i'll throw it to you sam uh if you have any color to add there thanks for having me on again marty um yeah good not great but you know with government stuff i think it's probably

the best you can ask for it seems like we'll consider bitcoin as an asset but you got to give up your keys so obviously not you know pretty antithetical to how we view the space developing and i think and antithetical to this audience and how they want to hold their assets in the first place but um it shouldn't be understated i mean that's that's a that's a huge development yeah and we were texting back and forth about this last night like i imagine i wrote a newsletter about it yesterday and i'm just running with the assumption that the sort of clause that says you have to hold it on a third party exchange probably stems from a lack of understanding of the technical details of bitcoin by people in a fha and they're probably running through the problem in their head

Like, all right, if somebody goes and they try to claim that they have a certain amount of Bitcoin to count towards their net worth, how do we know that it's actually theirs? Like, are they just showing me their brother's wallet, their mom's wallet? Did they have somebody send it to that wallet before? Like, how do we know it's actually associated with that individual trying to take out this loan? And so I imagine I don't have any inside information, but I'm just running with these assumptions that the tradeoff they made was like, all right, if they have it on an exchange associated with their name, that is a way in which we can confirm that it's actually theirs and they're not trying to dupe the mortgage underwriter. Yeah. And we're getting more information in real time to better assess sort of what the what the idea was and what the inspiration was for this. I mean, more granularly as to why assets have to be held at a custodian. it seems like it's more in line with how traditional finance functions. These are

qualified custodians. There's one publicly listed exchange in the US that you can use. So for them, it just felt a lot more comfortable probably. But it likely has to do with the lack of understanding with some Bitcoin fundamentals, which has sort of been our whole purpose. I mean, we started the company because I couldn't get a mortgage with my self-custodied assets, realizing that they probably just want a statement, something that looks familiar enough or looks legitimate enough to get you through the door. But I think explaining to regulators and legislators the nuances of actually holding your keys and being able to prove that you are the owner is really important. I've always sort of related this to multi-sig

and multi-sig companies. That's a Bitcoin primitive. That's what Bitcoin does at the protocol level. But what you need is you need companies and you need services that are nice wrappers around that that my mom could theoretically be able to use. And so we're doing the same thing with Bitcoin. I think the most commonly known way to do this and the most generally accepted way is by signing and verifying a message. Most Bitcoin users probably haven't done that unless they were around in 2012, 13, 14. But that is a core part of what Bitcoin does. And we've just developed a nice experience around that. So yeah, I mean, again, it's a step in the right direction it's not perfect but still good yeah and so let's let's

dive deeper into like what you guys have built at hoseki for anybody listening to this sam was on the podcast a year year and a half ago uh when we did a full like debrief but i think for anybody who may have listened to that or anybody who hasn't listened to that yet just i mean you briefly described it but i think diving deeper into the details of what you're doing and really leaning into the idea and illuminating the fact that you can get sort of institutional grade assurances while still being able to retain the institutions can get the assurances from individuals holding Bitcoin in self-custody. Yeah.

So, I mean, our whole purpose for existence is to help financialize Bitcoin, build tooling, build a platform that makes that easier, makes that more accessible and ultimately empowers sovereign individuals people that are holding their own keys um so when we did the first podcast it might have been maybe yeah maybe a year and a half or two years ago at this point um it was predominantly sort of an api connection uh plaid like sort of experience and that's what we were selling to banks and the objective for that was to just give you more data points on your customers uh bitcoin and they're interested in more than just bitcoin but like bitcoin holdings um whether self-custodied or in exchanges and a lot of that was education a lot of that is

sort of explaining to them that you can hold this asset in different ways. You can't actually hold them yourself, which is just such a break from how traditional finance works. You know, you don't hold your own soft certificates, you don't have gold bars in your house, but in this case, you can actually hold physical thing itself in your home. And so that's always been a challenge in terms of education. Through a ton of feedback and a lot of iteration, what we realized is Bitcoin needs sort of a platform or a set of tools in order to enable the property rights that are baked in. So the coolest thing about Bitcoin is that it natively enables property rights without a monopoly on violence. It settles and it itself is a traditional system

outside of any other system, be it digital or physical. That's completely unique as it relates to money. It probably is sort of underemphasized, but that's something we recognized early on. Just like developing markets, you have assets and let's say in the global south, you have real estate, but you don't have the frameworks to turn that asset into capital. And you realize that Bitcoin's in the exact same place that global South countries are in today, except we move at a much rapid and a much more accelerated pace. So like the American frontier, being able to claim, like issue a claim, which is what they called it back then, on property that you are using, that you are inhabiting, that you really do practically own is really important in order

to represent them and build credit and debt instruments on top of Bitcoin. So at a very fundamental level, what we do is we allow people that self-custody Bitcoin to prove that they own the UTXOs that they're trying to prove ownership over, whether that's through manually generating a signature or it's through plugging in your treasure, your ledger, or whatever other cold storage device, signing a message. And in which case we never have access to private keys. That's really important point that we always try and emphasize with our retail users is we never touch your private keys we can't touch your private keys we don't want to touch your private keys and we also don't have custody of the asset itself um so all you're doing is is is providing this

data that you have control over over to a counterparty in the in the first iteration it was just a statement so you have a mortgage broker you have someone you have a relationship with that you just need to formalize your bitcoin holdings with um but we've enhanced it significantly where now a counterparty, be it a bank, any other financial institution, OTC trading desk, can request certain information from you. So typically just that you meet a minimum balance threshold. And you on the other end, in a nice CRM DocuSign-like experience, can connect your Bitcoin, prove that you own it, that you have control, and then share that information with whoever the counterparty is. You see all the information that they're requesting, you can

can request you can approve or reject it and you can always revoke access as well um so so that really is what the platform does at a fundamental level yeah and it's incredibly important because this is the way it should be done and i think we all wish that fha was cognizant of seki and the ability to do this out of the gate uh when they when they made the announcement on wednesday but i think it's important really for anybody out there whether you're at fha or just a large institution to really internalize this this concept here and what you guys are building out of a second because it is massive in terms of creating the ability for individuals to store their own wealth protect it but then leverage it as capital as you mentioned being

able to lay claim to the capital that they do truly own. And there's been this disconnection between Bitcoin and the traditional financial system since it launched. And it does feel like we are at this inflection point where it's certainly becoming more and more understood that Bitcoin's here to stay. Not only is it here to stay, it is going to be integrated into our economy. And I think it is important for us as Bitcoiners who care about being able to leverage the properties of Bitcoin to really highlight this. Not only that, highlight the advantages that models like this provide, not only for individuals, but institutions as well, like being able to easily verify that you own to get out of the loan or whatever it may be.

Yeah. And the frustration was wanting to be able to use your Bitcoin or my Bitcoin without having to sell it first off, but also having to move it. So there's obvious like collateralized Bitcoin lending products, but I wanted an experience or I wanted tooling and I wanted the opportunity for sovereign individuals to simply be able to do something without even having to move it. There's a certain stack or a certain amount of your cold storage funds that you probably aren't that comfortable moving, or you would rather not if you had some tooling or some type of credit product that would enable you to do something with it without actually having to move it. So I think this is the first step for sure.

With mortgages specifically, what's so exciting about this is there is three different qualifications for stock portfolios that are required in order to use them in a mortgage agreement. And the main thing is that it has to be considered verified. And so there's three points as to what that actually means. One is ownership, proving that you own it. Two is that it's not pledged elsewhere, which is really important. And then three is liquidity. And what's so exciting is that the platform itself, sort of front running all of this, supports all of that today and will so in perpetuity.

Ownership is done by signed message. There's cross attestation protection. So if someone claims ownership of a certain wallet or a certain amount of Bitcoin, no other person can do so. We have a timeout period. There's things like, you know, refresh signatures. So basically proving that you do continue to have control throughout the duration of whatever the agreement might be. The not pledged elsewhere part is critical. So being able to have like almost a clearinghouse of Bitcoin data, your own Bitcoin information that is being shared with a different counterparty, categorized for whatever the share might be for.

allowing other institutions to see that this is pledged or might be pledged to elsewhere just makes for a much more robust financial system. The liquidity bit is just being able to prove that you can actually sell it. So that's where a little bit of the nuance comes in. Connecting a Coinbase account, for example, and your brokerage account, and also confirming that you own your private keys should basically be sufficient for you to show that you can send those funds to an exchange or elsewhere and be able to sell them immediately if the terms of agreement call for that. Our existing system is built on COBOL. I think trying to monkey patch and rearrange things in a legacy system is probably too late. And what's cool about Bitcoin

is all this stuff is natively part of the system and the controls that you can have are so much better. Just understanding sort of... Well, being able to enable people that have held Bitcoin for a long time and giving them some sort of benefit for that is really the crux of this. But yeah, being able to monitor balances, being notified when something falls below a certain threshold or goes above a certain threshold, and giving the user, the sovereign individual, all that control, we're just really excited. This isn't something we thought would happen this fast, to be honest. So we were sort of building in anticipation of this in a few years.

But I guess with this new admin, it's sort of mandated and ordered, and now they'll have to comply. Yeah, Trump was literally just behind the podium singing the praises of the industry. it's an incredible industry it's gonna we're gonna dominate it we're gonna beat china and so that's what uh that's why i'm very thankful for bitcoin policy institute because that's like the one thing i worry about um as the administration becomes very favorable towards our industry and you consider the large amounts of money surrounding him um some i think we definitely agree are friendly as and others not so friendly really forcing bad ideas on the administration

so the bitcoin policy institute doing things like they did this week with the summit are massively important to getting in front of representatives senators and people within the executive administration to make sure that we're giving them the correct and right and best information but building what you were just describing in terms of let's dig into like pledging funds making sure that funds aren't double pledged or rehypothecated on an individual level, if you will. How do you guys go about that? So we have the data with respect to what wallets or what addresses are being shared with any other counterparty. So those are categorized and we'll have to iterate as well based on what the government needs. But those are categorized

according to what the terms of the sort of, we call it a share request, but basically what the terms of the pledge collateral are. If they're used for collateral that can be called upon later, If they're simply data points for them to assess their customer better. Those are all different parameters that we have that the institution can see on their end that the customer also voluntarily submits. So sort of having this, well, the network effects are critical. So having like this clearinghouse model where you know that certain assets that are being shared with you are already being shared in another location at a very minimum, at a foundational level gives you some better data as to what the funds are being used for in the first place. So I think a lot of this is building from first principles, which frankly,

I mean, just on your point with the BPI, I think what they're doing so well is merit really does pay off. And I think those guys are thinking about, have been thinking about the space from a first principles perspective that does show and carry on in this case to legislators and regulators. And they see that. And I think just sort of staying true to your conviction is really dividends. So yeah, can't be more thankful to the BPI. What's up, freaks? This report of TFTC was brought to you by our good friends at CoinKite. 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.

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that are listening to this episode uh what does giving an individual the ability to preserve self-custody and do all these things what does that open up from like a market perspective and consumer protections perspective well i mean we can speculate but i think if you understand bitcoin's ethos and bitcoin's sort of fundamental principles then um not building something like this and not sort of going in this direction is doing a disservice to the space and i just don't think it'll be something that would possibly play out. I mean, the sovereignty you have with holding your own assets just can't be understated. You know, I remember, I think one of the things that orange-pilled me before I even knew about Bitcoin was trying to get money out of an ATM, hitting my

max, needing to take more money out, calling the bank and being told that the money in my account is mine, but the card that I'm using to withdraw those funds, I don't own. And I just realized at that moment, I don't own my money. There's a million different constraints and hurdles between me and the money that I am supposed to own or supposed to have access to. Self-custody completely turns it on its head. And I think building very basic, frankly, I think in retrospect, things that will be very obvious, tooling that enables you to do things with it, which at the most basic, simplest levels, being able to say, this is mine. And I think this might sound of like vitality but i think the i think the things that you can build on top of this will

sort of um surprise a lot of us i think in a world that's becoming increasingly unstable um not that we want it to go in that direction it simply is i think empowering the individual um and giving them tooling to do that is going to unlock just a whole new sort of set of financial products yeah it's uh and we discussed this when you're on the podcast last but i i think it's support like when you look out at the world and how the flourishing economies are actually able to emerge it all comes back to private property rights the ability to protect your private property and i think to your point about the world getting more chaotic and more uncertain that's something that's under attack is private property rights whether that's via

overt extreme taxation or just simply asset forfeiture. That was more of a risk under the Biden administration, but I think we'd be naive to think that it could not be a risk in the future. And Bitcoin, as a peer-to-peer distributed network that runs on private-public-key cryptography, really sort of cements private property rights for money in the 21st century, which cannot be understand to your point i don't think we have even scratched the surface of the types of systems that we can build on top of that primitive yeah and i think i mean the two main points i emphasize and if anyone from the admin is actually listening or anyone high up like these are two uh key takeaways that i hope people just take away in general um one is bitcoin's audit function which

i really do think is probably one of the most under emphasized um features of of the bitcoin protocol. The fact that any third party can download a server or download something and audit the entire supply of this money is, I mean, it's just completely novel. And also, it's unmatched. I mean, you can't do that with US dollars. There's no USD server. I can just download as Sam. And also, no one knows how many US dollars exist. Euro dollars makes that worse, obviously. But even with gold, no one knows exactly how much gold exists in the world. even just above ground gold. And obviously you're finding gold mines, you know, sort of as time goes on. But that, that function of Bitcoin is so, so important as it relates to like any economy,

but you're talking about a jurisdictionalist global economy and the money that powers it. So, so that point is, is really, really important, which is where the proof of reserves bit comes in. But the other point is the property rights. It's, it's, these property rights are baked in. There, there is no legislative body. There is no regulatory body that has to do anything here. Um, the protocol itself can confirm and you can prove, and you actually have the sovereignty to say that this is my asset. This is what I own. Um, and you don't have the legal hurdles in between. I mean, doing that with, I mean, there's a reason why we have title insurance for homes. Um, that's a difficult problem, even in our current system with probably

the most basic asset that most people do own, which, which is our home. Um, so if you can apply that sort of, if you can find a fix for that problem and do that at the level of money, I, Again, I mean, yeah, I just I just think it's I think it's incredible. Serious about your Bitcoin? Start acting like it. Unchained just launched the Financial Freedom Bundle, a curated pack that includes a premium Bitcoin book, a new hardware wallet guide and access to a private macro event with Tur Demeester. Legend. It's time to take control of your generational wealth. Go to Unchained.com slash TFTC to request yours. That's Unchained.com slash TFTC.

pretty hot package freaks go pick it up there's a bit of a tangent but i'm recalling alex gladstein speech from the summit earlier this week and that's the other thing about this uh i'm sure you've seen the memes too about what fha put out on wednesday it's like it's all crypto is in in encompassing this this sort of new guideline and that worries me because like they just bundle in bitcoin with everything else and it doesn't worry me like and that's the other thing there was a lot of misconceptions people thought it was like you can use bitcoin as collateral for loans which you can using some services like milo and others that already exist but um in terms of like separating bitcoin from crypto i don't want to say it rubbed me the wrong way but it does worry me

that everything's getting lumped together because as we both know and most people listening to this know bitcoin is starkly different from crypto and has a completely different risk profile so in terms of creating a precedent of just like lumping them in together via this it's it's a bit unnerving too and i think we have to continue to do a good job because i think the last few years industry has been really good about drawing a line between bitcoin bitcoin and broader crypto So but like when it comes to things like this, like proving your actual net worth, like I think it's safe to say that net worth proven because you hold Bitcoin versus holding Fartcoin is probably more legitimate and accurate over the long run. I mean, a lot of this, again, is is cultural. We see this in our conversations with banks all the time, like they don't know what Bitcoin is.

And by virtue of that, they also don't know what anything else in the space is either. So for them, we have to, and it's like chewing glass, we have to say crypto and use the term crypto because that's just what they know and understand while still advocating and emphasizing Bitcoin as a completely different thing in the space. So that's always been a challenge. I think it'll continue to be a challenge, not for too long. So I don't really knock Pulte and the FHFA for that too much just because I think they're using language that most other financial institutions also use purely because of a

lack of familiarity, maybe not even education, but just familiarity in the space. But in terms of being worried about it, I mean, you know, Bitcoin is going to prove its merits on its own and it has. And I think over time, that sort of separation is getting stronger and stronger. When we talk to banks, I mean, I'll tell you, no one cares about anything else except for Bitcoin and stables is a close second, but that's really it. So I can't ever, I mean, I really don't imagine mortgages being underwritten with anything but Bitcoin for now. Maybe also stables, but I think that probably would be extensive because they're very conservative. I mean, traditional finance is a very conservative industry. Well, I mean, within a reason it should be conservative,

but at least at a policy level, it's conservative. So I'm not too concerned about you know um things getting muddy too much i think i think over time it'll be it'll be rather obvious if it isn't already yeah and i don't want to be the boy who cried wolf because i've been saying this for like two or three cycles now but i do feel like this is the one where it's it's become abundantly clear that bitcoin is different if you just look at the the the pairs of bitcoin and any other eth btc soul btc whatever it may be it's all going down and the signal is with the pristine collateral asset which is bitcoin and that's what's really exciting about this cycle is like bitcoin is pristine collateral is beginning to be recognized yeah yeah yeah i mean the performance

itself obviously like it's just number go up is really what most people especially outside of the space care about um but you know culture shouldn't be understated either i mean you mentioned the vpi they intentionally called themselves the Bitcoin Policy Institute when they could have picked a bunch of different names that were maybe more encompassing or more friendly or more familiar to the people that they'll be talking to, but they put their stake in the ground. Lucky for us and lucky for the whole space. And if you go to these, I mean, I've set this a lot on different panels, but if you compare, this is now kind of dated. So this is really like 2019 type of 2018 almost type of conference knowledge. But if you go to these different events and you

meet different people, there's a clear difference in how they approach the space. And not to discredit other communities, but, you know, the Bitcoin space is much more serious. I mean, early on, I think that seriousness was more cypherpunk and maybe would have seemed a bit more threatening. But I think at the sort of professional level, which is sort of where we're at and where we're going towards, they are just a lot more, I don't have a better word, but legitimate. Having conversations with Bitcoiners, with serious Bitcoiners who are trying to promote policy and trying to move the needle, as opposed to having conversations with Ripple folks or with folks that are trying to promote DeFi is categorically different. And I think the

culture is really just taking care of itself. Yeah. It's like, we're not in it to make the money. We're in it for the money, which is like literally changing the money. And you see that, And I completely agree. And I guess it's hard to describe to any outsider who hasn't experienced it for themselves. But like this week, when you meet for Bitcoin, you're like, we're thinking 30, 40 years down the line, thinking about our children, the world they're going to live in, where DeFi is thinking about like, all right, what's the next token that's going to launch? And how are we going to make a bag on that and then rug? And it's like, it's completely unserious to the point where it's becoming laughable. It seems like there have been no consistent principles, even if I think Ethereum is the great example of the caricature of a shitcoin that thought it was going to compete with Bitcoin and just completely changed its principles on the go once every other year, it seems.

Whereas Bitcoin has been pretty consistent. and only every 21 million nodes run the network we're going to mine as much we're going to get as much hash rate as we can we're going to preserve sovereignty and we're going to integrate it into the financial system yeah and i mean to your to your point like everything here is long-term um our perspective is long-term we think in decades which is how empires typically think as well um in the ethereum space i mean i think i think the the demographic that's been most amenable to Ethereum's world's computer, world's computing platform narrative have been people that made a lot of money in the dot-com boom. I think that seems like a parallel if that was a good

outcome for you. And I can see why that might be enticing too, because it seems like it's that exact same thing, but a little bit more enhanced, a little bit more complicated than necessarily, but a little bit more enhanced. And I think Bitcoiners see that that's not really the value here. You might be able to do some relatively interesting things on an inferior sort of database with inferior logic. But if you're here to fundamentally change the way money works, or if you recognize that money is fundamentally changing, then the answer is pretty obvious. so yeah i think i think with dc and i've spent more time there now that i care to admit but in dc it's like i think they're starting to see that um the admin has been incredibly helpful as well

and we have you know crypto czar um so that's so that's helping um but yeah the culture for me is the big is the big differentiator yeah and that's i mean and it's i'm very happy to see the dc's waking up and this was discussed and i think we've discussed it before but you mentioned it too like the early years bitcoin very cypherpunk focus very serious ideals and i think those ideals still exist at the base layer of of bitcoin both socially and at the protocol level but as we've seen over the course of years particularly during the biden administration like you may not care about political power but it cares about you and you have to engage under with that understanding in mind and we've done a good job of doing that in the last two years and i think targeting back

to trump's comments that i mentioned earlier i think the administration does realize it's like the opportunity of bitcoin at a true trillion 2.14 trillion dollar market cap and if it really is going to be the next global reserve currency it'll be hundreds of trillions of dollars so the opportunity to really win in this market is on the table if you're thinking at a nation state level and it it makes sense that if you understand that that you would try to make sure that your country is positioned well in terms of the industry being enabled to flourish and again i've said it earlier but i think that's what most bitcoiners particularly those of us with the cypherpunk ideals that the network really grew up on worry about is like it getting cocked by traditional

finance and you've been having conversations with banks that's one thing i'm interested to your perspective on is like who influences who more do the banks influence bitcoin where does bitcoin influence the banks more over the long run or the financial system because i've been running with this mean everybody's saying the financialization of bitcoin i'm saying no it's the bitcoinization of finance which isn't a bad thing yeah yeah yeah exactly i mean i think that's what we're seeing to be honest that from a from a company perspective as a ceo we've been sort of prepping for either outcome because we may have our um assumptions but we're not sure which is is going to play out but i think it is a ladder i think i haven't heard i hadn't heard that term

but that is i think what's happening is a bitcoinization of finance which is so exciting to see um just your point about like nation-state adoption i mean the leapfrog effect is what i'm is what i'm most excited about is you know sort of obviously it's the ones that have the least to lose or just getting destroyed by the existing system that are going to adopt something that's like i mean i guess technically unproven over a long over a longer time um horizon um but you know, if El Salvador genuinely does become the Singapore of the West and if Bhutan becomes like Hong Kong, things shift. And that's just exciting to watch and sort of live through. One thing I'm honestly a little bit apprehensive about and not to be a wet blanket, but just to

be cautious is sort of the apolitical nature of Bitcoin and being too closely aligned with one side or the other. I think that's important because, you know, administrations change, politics itself um there's this there's this phrase that politics is like an orphan child um it's it's it's it sort of goes to the wind and you've got to be careful and you've got to be pretty cognizant of like what you relate yourself to closely too so you know i'm i'm i'm incredibly thankful for now not you know living in fear that my corporate bank account my personal bank account might get closed that's nice um it feels you know less like i'm in the in the soviet union um but at the same time you know i think as bitcoiners we gotta you know it's

a whole uh don't what is it uh don't don't trust verify ethos including the politicians i agree with that uh that last statement but i'd push back like yeah uh i don't know look what's going on in new york city right now like those people will never get bitcoin like overt socialists like i'm talking about zo zo ran uh mom donnie whatever his name is he just won the democratic primary like that's i agree bitcoin's for anyone it's for everyone who wants to use it both sides of the aisle but there are and i i tweeted this out i'm not sure if you saw the um the email that peter teal sent suck uh mark andreessen and a few others in 2020 asking like the millennial question and basically brought the fact like people our age uh you and i uh

most of us uh most of our demo like has student loans can't buy a house delaying family formation many still living with their parents and they have this like um they have this very negative outlook on the future because they can't build capital and they're turning to these socialist ideas which many were forced on us via indoctrination via the schooling system but nevertheless they're like identifying the problem which is wealth gap inflation can't afford anything and a lot of them are moving to the wrong solution so i i think conservatives specifically recognize that obviously socialism isn't isn't the solution but i think we should lean into that recognition because of millennials and now gen z specifically sort of leaning towards socialist

tendencies because they feel like they have no no other way to to make it in the world so they're just going to take things from others to really embrace bitcoin like a tweet i sent out it's like any conservative who really cares about the encroachment of these socialist tendencies across the country should be vehemently incorporating bitcoin into as many verticals as possible yeah of course i mean i would i would i would i would relate that more libertarianism um because bitcoin i think is the application of libertarianism it i don't think there was any practical way to actually be a libertarian or do anything about that until bitcoin came into play so if you're a libertarian and not a bitcoiner you're probably confused um remember

in politics it's all about power i mean money is a function of power what's surprising to me is the lack of left-leaning um left-leaning governments and left-leaning even provincial governments that are looking at Bitcoin or thinking about adopting Bitcoin. I think technically Bukele as a populist, I think he was a little bit more left-leaning with respect to El Salvadorian politics. But if the game is power consolidation, it should work just as well for them as it does for the conservatives. And knowing that conservatives and really just any political party that happens to be in power is looking to control and maintain power as best as they can. And Bitcoin, as an asset that's appreciating in value and will have economic influence

globally, just serves that function. So I don't know. I've been thinking about that, too, the sort of conservative and liberal dynamic and which way it sort of goes into. And I'm not convinced it's either way. I just think at a governmental level, it's about power consolidation. Yeah, no, and I was I didn't get to bring that up. But I think the point I was like being an opportunist as a Bitcoiner, like when you see that one party, like and that's why I think I think having like the Human Rights Foundation and Bitcoin like this, I won't I won't beat around the bush.

I definitely have more conservative values. I've been married since I was 25. I've got children. I care about their education. I don't want the school system transing my kids. like i'm very conservative in that regard and it just seems opportunistic right now to really lean into the conservative side of the aisle who recognizes these problems and we can highlight to them hey bitcoin can help you achieve a lot of the goals that you have and solve a lot of the problems that you have but that's why i love the human rights foundation you go like the other side like the human rights activists which typically associated with the left like hey Bitcoin can empower these individuals, too. That was my favorite track on Wednesday was the hour long track of all the activists explaining how they use Bitcoin in Iran, in Gaza, in Russia, in Ukraine, in Venezuela. You have like all these different sort of problem areas of the world that many people feel very passionate about on both sides of each individual problem.

Bitcoin is just there in the middle for anybody who's subjected to the the the horrors of either an infringing external army or despotic government internally. And so you can like I guess the point I'm trying to make is like Bitcoin so dynamic that you have the ability to sort of like lean into whoever needs it. most at any given point in time. Yeah, exactly. That's what I think is so incredible about its flexibility. And remember, we're looking at this from the perspective of the U.S. political spectrum and it's different globally. I mean, Europe generally is just more left leaning. So that spectrum just looks different. But yeah, I mean, I think the point I'm trying to make here is that I still think it's apolitical. I know in the U.S. it is being embraced by the conservative side of the political aisle more so. And that's a great thing for us. I mean, there's nothing wrong

with that. And I'm happy about that. But because it's jurisdictional, listen, because it really doesn't function any different as it relates to the culture that it's implemented in and the political nuances, whatever that culture might be leaning to at that time period or otherwise, Bitcoin's still going to, blocks are still going to get mined and transactions are still going to process through. And so I just, yeah, just being aware of that fact, I think is something important in sort of this wave of adoption that we're going through and this like zeitgeist and this insane amount of dopamine hits that we're getting just watching this thing happen that's been a big theme of mine on this show and in the newsletter last two months is like

they're hitting you with dopamine matt and i just talked about a rabbit hole recap like the u.s bombs iran's nuclear enrichment facilities last friday that feels like a month ago it feels like that narrative's already beginning to be swept under the rug we had elon saying that trump was on the epstein list like the week before that and there's a number of these dopamine hits that i've forgotten that only happened a month ago and you know i've been telling people just blinders on stay focused keep building uh if you're working a job make sure you're not you're saving more than you're spending saving that in bitcoin just like that's what i i've been intentionally trying to say out of the day-to-day morass of the news cycle because it's just completely distracting

and nothing ever happens well and that's why it's important to think like and i mentioned this earlier like um just geopolitically you know iran china russia these old empires and and the remnants of really do you think in terms of centuries um and they're willing to you know people are sort of expendable in that pursuit as well and that is incredibly austere for people living at whatever time they may be afflicted by those kind of things but for the empire itself it does generate a long lasting culture. And I think in the US, we've got a really short memory. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we're still so young. Iraq was not long ago and we're getting the exact same pitch deck on going to war again in the Middle East. And I haven't

seen any comparison side by side. And I was pretty young when we first went into Iraq. But from what I remember and what I've researched and what I'm seeing now, it's the exact same talking points. And frankly, a lot of it's the exact same people as well promoting this. And we have that short term memory, which I think can be destructive in the short term. But Bitcoiners, and I think it's important to emphasize this, do you think on a longer term perspective, obviously, you've got your day to day stuff, you've got your bills to pay day to day. So you have to make sure those are accounted for and taken care of. But having that decades long, we're individuals, so thinking in centuries is a bit ridiculous unless you're michael saylor but for us thinking in decades i

think is really critical and that will enable our survival um either as sovereign individuals or as a collective culture and hopefully it's the latter yeah weapons of mass destruction back on the table hey i remember that one i remember i was down in south carolina 9-11 happened in a couple years after and i vividly remember being like fourth or fifth grade and like them having like straw polls for like going to war and the school was like beating the war drums like we're going into iraq there was like what like this is insane uh luckily today we have better communications technology to get good messages out there and i do think i think we saw first in syria when obama tried to bomb them um for the chemical weapons stuff that was very hand wavy um social media

people got on social media like fuck this and i think that's happening with iran right hopefully it is happening with iran right now too um but to your point going back to like long-term thinking and um money is power particularly within politics it reminded me of a presentation turd meester gave at bitcoin park austin last year uh during the bitcoin urbanism little event that we had there and it's like it is crazy when you think about it bitcoin continues on this trajectory and i think this is this is manifested in the last two years with the political activists activism that bitcoiners have been engaged in like as bitcoin continues let's say the 50 percent cagger over the next decade i guess i think the stats turn throughout there is like one half of

the 0.1 percent will be bitcoiners in 10 years so that continues and that is a lot of wealth that can be used to affect the change that we want to see in the world yeah that's i mean it's a it's a good thing and a bad thing i think you can get a bit jaded you know especially being in your 30s And having seen what's sort of happened live streamed over the last 10 years, it continues to be. That's a good thing and a bad thing. I mean, you know what? How are Bitcoin is going to be seen in that world? How are Bitcoin is going to be seen in a world where there are generations that never even had the opportunity to look at and own Bitcoin like we did? Granted, this wasn't just by accident. A lot of us suffered and put in the work. But, yeah, that's something I think about quite often is if this does play out to scale, which it is.

what um yeah how does how does the culture change and and how are we perceived in that in that culture and i don't have an answer yet yeah i think we had this discussion over coffee a couple weeks ago the uh the uh that's why like i think what you're doing is so important not only you but others like i completely agree with that that sort of thought experiment like all right what are people like i in terms of like my next 10 years like the push i'm making over the next decade is we need to integrate bitcoin into as many people's lives as possible without having direct exposure so that they experience the benefits of having even like proxy exposure to bitcoin in their pension plans or if it's dual collateralized with real estate like in their

neighborhoods if there's enough bitcoin um sort of dual collateralized buildings and houses in in a neighborhood that helps keep the neighborhood afloat while inflation continues unabashed like that i think that is something that we don't talk about enough and like why tools like hoseki are so important because it just normalizes and makes bitcoin simply another option in the incumbent system like that's i think i won't speak for everybody but that's like personally what i think like the number one goal should be is like if people aren't going to go on cash app on strike on river and like smash by dca with their paychecks like it's incumbent on us to make sure that they have exposure without even knowing it yeah and i know you agree with this but the

idea of sort of building and having my own citadel on an island by myself or with my tiny little community like isn't that enticing what's more enticing is enabling something that can get rid of these forever wars that can get rid of this you know that slavery that we live in um that's exciting and that's the world that i think a lot of us are building towards so yeah we're starting with hey i'm sam i own this bitcoin let me do something with it and um you know i'm obviously speaking in simplistic terms but i think that's the building block for an incredible new world yeah but it's like again it's normalizing like that's why we launched opportunity cost is just like normalized pricing things in bitcoin for people like create that memetic power to get

out there but like simple things like being able to go to plaid and like oh there's a hoseki button what is that like like that oh you can you can connect your haseki via plaid it's becoming completely normal like bitcoin is part of the economy you can go to steak and shake and buy uh buy your burger and and milkshake with with bitcoin like it's it's incredible i'll take that as a win yeah yeah all right so let's bring this back to the core subject of why we're here to talk which is this FHA, FHA, whatever, the acronym, Afflebet Soup Agency for Housing that owns Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. What would you like to see from them moving forward,

just engaging with us and recognizing how can we best equip them with the knowledge to understand that people should not only be able to but can hold Bitcoin in self-custody and verify that they own Bitcoin. Yeah. So we built this from first principles. If we want to see this Bitcoin financial system take place, then this is how it will have to function. So now that FHFA has sort of ordered this and now that it's been approved in a more governmental sense, judicial, not judicial, but in a governmental sense, now it's sort of question and answer time. So what I would love to see is engagement. First of all, understanding from them exactly what the requirements are

at a more nuanced level to really get this underwriting process going. And then two is hearing from us as well as to what this asset can do. Because again, I think the first push with having to move your funds to exchanges in order to qualify for these types of things is probably just low-hanging fruit. And it's the most obvious thing, I think, for a much more mature industry, which is where we're at now. But really taking the time to understand the asymmetric benefits of what Bitcoin can do is critical. So I would just love more engagement from the government. Again, folks from the BPI are doing all the legwork in terms of providing all the educational resources and providing the resources for these questions. But yeah, I'd love engagement.

That's engaged. Bill Pulte, Logan, we're going to clip this. We're going to clip that last part. we're gonna get it going on on twitter noster wherever we're gonna start the conversation bill i know you're a bitcoiner i don't know if you remember he was doing like bitcoin giveaways during covet uh he was a he like retweet this and i'll give one random person like ten hundred a thousand dollars worth of bitcoin he gets it um at least he had exposure to bitcoin but no i think it's uh and again i do want to reiterate it's not perfect but it's a step in the right direction and that is incredibly encouraging to see especially considering what we just went through in the previous administration um for four years and i'm incredibly bullish

uh and let's end it on your thoughts like how how were you thinking about i know we're thinking in decades but in your mind like what is the highest priority in the next year two years three years i mean really just continuing in the direction we're going into i mean it's moving much faster than i anticipated or expected um i'm writing a piece now that hopefully i can sort of put my thoughts together a little bit more um succinctly but um i think understanding where we are what we're trying to accomplish is critical so my perspective where we are is a third world country We are just moving from horses to cars. There's no infrastructure for these cars. There are no gas stations. There's no traffic lights. Roads aren't paved. And we're in that

exact same spot. Now, things are moving quickly. Roads pretty much are getting paved. We're still missing some gas stations. But I would just love to see more Bitcoin financial products, more interesting Bitcoin financial products, hopefully leveraging our platform and really expanding this the capability that it can get to um but yeah the uh or the way you put it the bitcoinization of finance is what i really want this next year to be focused on we're going to make it happen where can anybody listening to this learn more about hoseki what you guys are up to and how they can use it yeah we're at um www.hoseki.app um at hoseki app on x or twitter and at sam abasi um on x or twitter we'll link to all that in the show notes sam i know you've

got an event to attend to tonight. I hope you enjoy your Friday night, and thank you for hopping on quickly this Friday afternoon. I think the timing was perfect for this. Yeah. No, I appreciate the time. Thanks, Marty. Alright. Peace and love, Freaks. Freaks, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you liked it.

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