The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - Is Bitcoin the Dollar’s Worst Nightmare? (with Fundamentals)

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

FRIENDS AND ENEMIESFundamentals makes a return to the CBP. He is the co-host of Rock-Paper-Bitcoin podcast and just wrapped up a soon to be released booked called "The Handbook of Institutional Bitcoin".As corporate wealth will continue to be diverted towards bitcoin, what does this mean to the USD, the market as a whole, and to bitcoiners?You can find Fundamentals on Twitter at:   / bbrianpaul   and Rock Paper Bitcoin Podcast at   / rockpbpodcast   / https://rss.com/podcasts/rock-paper-b...#bitcoin #btc #investing #USD #financeJoin us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com⁠Discord:   / discord   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetworkThis show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠www.easydns.com⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for 25% off fees FOR LIFE, and start stacking today.🎙️ New to streaming or looking to level up? Check out StreamYard and get $10 discount! 😍 https://streamyard.com/pal/d/65024650...

Friends and enemies welcome to yet another edition of the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. I'm Len the legend and Today I'm gonna be interviewing once again. I just learned it's almost a year to the day that I last talked to Fundamentals he's part of the 40 hours per week crew Which seems to be the topic of the week and I'd like to talk to him about that But he's not just a consumer of content he's a producer as well he is a rock-paper-bitcoin podcast see I'm like me not only do I not reach the 40 hours per week I'm not much of a consumer in the podcasting world so I am somebody you wouldn't strive to be be something better than me that's all I would suggest. But do

run your own node, of course. And Fundamentals 2 is not just doing all that. He's now a author. And we'll be talking about his upcoming book. But before we do, I have a couple of things I've got to check off my list of things to do. And number one, we have sponsor. Number one, EasyDNS. And we use EasyDNS to host our content. And of course, you should too. EasyDNS, what is it? Well, it's not just simply for registering domains. It's not just simply for registering websites

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out of the way. Let's bring in the man of the hour Fundamentals, how are you buddy? Good. What's up, man? Alright. Alright brother. It's impressive. Like it's like really impressive Honestly, how you do these ad reads right before the show like I was sitting here thinking like I would forget everything I want to talk about if I did these reads and you do it every show you do it every episode I think it's just repetition and with easy DNS They've been a sponsor with us for longer than bull Bitcoin and I'm gonna say they've been sponsoring us for about two to three years, you ever yeah, I actually have around three years and

Bull bitcoins around a two-year mark which means that you know It's not too hard to remember if you're just doing it every week, a couple of times a week. And Joey's a real, like he's a pro at this. I'm just like filling in. I can't carry his jock when it comes to doing the ad reads. He's the man. If you want to hear a true professional doing ad read, listen to Joey. He's the guy that does it best. Well, you know what? You're better than you're better than Joey yet. Not very much, but go ahead. Booking me on and coming and interviewing. I'm going to start to feel a certain way at some point. You know what you're better than? You're better than Joey yet. Not very much, but go ahead. Booking me on and coming and interviewing.

I'm gonna start to feel a certain way at some point. Oh yeah, we'll see. You know what, it's awesome to talk to you. I talked to you and like you were mentioning to me, it's been almost a year to the day that we last spoke. And it's good to have you on again. See, good to see boom dust in the chat over there. So got a question for you. It's good to have you on again. See good to see boomdust in the chat over there. So

Got a question for you. You're part of the 40 hours per week crew, correct? I present 40 hours per week How'd you get in shout out? Well, I begged I I don't know did I beg rod Palmer for entry into the crew? I think I just started producing 40 hours per week of podcasts They could have had no choice 40 hours per week of podcasts. They could have had no choice but to let me in. Just because of that, that gives you automatic entry into the club, right? Like you're a card-carrying member. Let's be honest, listening to 40 hours per week, what speed do you do it at? I'm a 1x maxi. Holy shit, and you still get 40 hours plus in? I mean, to be fair, I think a lot of it is my own podcast at this point.

But I was really, I think there's a reason Boomer and I developed a friendship early. Because I think I was probably close to his level of listening to podcasts. Over time, I think I've just meandered towards my own content. And there are a couple of podcasts I still listen to, but not nearly as many as I used to. But One X is like, I believe that the creator did the thing in One X. And I don't like, I feel like I'm going to lose signal if I do anything other than that.

Favorite podcast to listen to aside your own. I got a go. I gotta go with my bugle boys So they're like great top of the list you listen to Rod and crew and yeah, absolutely It's you know for weekly like ongoing weekly. I got the bugle, ungovernable misfits. Those guys are great. One of the ongoing podcasts I like is called the path to Bitcoin. It's like very heady. It's no frills, no music, no ads. Just a smart guy who gets on the mic and starts talking about really intelligent. He makes Bitcoin sound quite intelligent. It's very thought provoking, very cool podcast. And then recently I've been marathoning the reorg with Pierre and bitstein.

I've not listened to that. I'm not even aware of I'm not much of a podcast listener. So you got to clue me in. It's a good one. It's just like if you want to like catch up on like Austrian economics and what they did, you know what they have done in this recent version of what they do is they're reading all these old papers that were written in the 20 they call it the you know, this is Toshi Nakamoto Institute mempool But it's like a bunch of old papers then just to see how they held up right and it's it's pretty cool You following this whole saga that's going on right now with in the Bitcoin land

Like I'm not sure if you are aware which one it's the opera turn drama I think you're a castle of CBP like it's just it's we're nuts over here We are totally knee-deep in this we we want to we want to educate folks. I'm knocking on people's doors I'm asking him. Where do you stand 80 run a node B? Are you a upper term less than 83 byte maxi if if not why so I'm just trying to find out what people's stances are Over here, but for you, I mean have you following this? Does it even bother you at all? Or is it just basically just, I'll tell you what, okay, I'll tell you what I'm bothered by

about this whole thing. You're probably actually closer in age to me than most of the people in big. I turned 47 this year. Yeah, right. I turned 50. And we're very close. So like if you're Gen X and you know, we're not as good at the internet probably as the younger generation. We're also not the consensus of Bitcoin. So like I yield to the fact that I'm not my voice isn't the consensus. Okay. But I think, you know,

everyone's like when I see what like mechanic is doing and I see what like Luke Dash is doing and then I see We had her we had our bit devs yesterday shout out Evan collude is Rob Allen and leading our bit our Philly bit devs yesterday We went through the github thread and The thing I guess I guess the thing I find upsetting, it's not bothersome, it's not a complaint because I don't like complaining to people who can't do anything about it. I don't like those kinds of complaints. Okay, my issue is like on the internet there's no way to really have a productive discussion discussion because only like the most inflammatory comments and like the most

exaggerated speech gets noticed you know like and I find a lot of the discussion points that get discussed are real they seem really childish to me. Like, oh, if you do this, Bitcoin will no longer be money. Without any supporting argument, without an actual explanation about why that is, people just like to say the sky is falling. And that's not to say that the people on that side are necessarily wrong. They're just not making a very good argument, in my opinion, as to why they're right. So if I see one side is basically just using tropes, kind of using internet argumentative tropes, I'm not too impressed by that. And my general sense is, I don't know, I didn't have a problem. I don't have a problem with the operator field.

You know, you can, it's actually, I mean, I didn't realize this until last night, but like it's literally meant to be able to delete it. Like it's not a UTXO that's gonna stay. It's not something that's gonna stay in the mempool forever. You can, you know, can prune it. And I don't have a problem with, I don't have a problem with operator being used that way and people paying for. And I don't have a problem with I don't have a problem with OppoTurn being used that way and people paying for it. I don't have a big problem with it. I

don't think it's like, I don't make this connection to say it's no bitcoins not money anymore. And I know, like a lot of the big part of this argument is like, well, we want Bitcoin to be money, right? And only money. I'm sympathetic to that notion. It's when it becomes an unspendable UTXO and then it's stuck there forever. And then- Like, oh, is the purpose of Bitcoin to be graffiti, to be information, to be-

Yeah, yeah. And I'm very, I actually am very sympathetic to that argument. I don't know if we have the capacity as a community to distinguish whether or not like free speech is like how deep how can you really detangle free speech from money and I don't know the I honestly don't know the answer to this I just a lot of people are acting like they know the answer and like if anything is being done that's not directly related to it being money then

it's wrong and I don't know like I don't I, like, I don't see that. I don't see that as a strong argument. This thing is here, it's open source, and people are going to do what they're going to do with it. And I would like to hear better arguments, I guess is what I'm saying, than what I'm hearing for the next, right? Well, not much has been talked about in terms of like vetting this in terms of having Discussions why it is it just seemed like it came out of left field to me. Maybe it's not maybe the Right and so that's the thing where I seem to have a bit of a problem or a big problem with it Is that there is this change? I mean, I'll change, albeit very small, but it's this change

that is being pushed upon by Bitcoin Core. And Bitcoin Core is where that's the beginning of all nodes. Not is a PR of that. It's a fork. It's a fork of that. So if you look at it, it's directly forked from that. And then it has to make a change now to what it has to do with the op return. But it all stems from Bitcoin core. And without much discussion, I just don't like that they're just pushing

something without discussing with people. Number one. Number two, the unintended consequences. We will probably not know what they are until years in the future. But maybe, just maybe we could hash out what some of these may be. If we just put enough time and effort to think it through, test it, put it on test and just fucking do shit like that. And just let's take things slow. We have one shot at this.

Really one shot. If we fuck this up, if somehow Bitcoin fucks up along the way, people, businesses, governments are not gonna look at Bitcoin the same way. And we can't fuck it up. And what it is right now, my opinion works very well.

Could it be better? Hell yeah. But could be a lot worse. Fucking right. Look at all the shitcoins. So yeah, I agree. So like, it's my point that I would like people to walk away with is that I'm not even judging the action or what they're talking about. I see like a, I see a dysfunctional fire department. And that's what's upsetting me. Like I think that it's like, oh my God, are these guys really going to be able to

come together and put out a real fire when when it really happens? Because we're seeing a, you know, Bitcoin core that side is never good at telling us what they're about to do. I'm remembering the speedy trial thing from maybe two years ago. Yeah, I was taproot. Yeah, well, it was after Taproot. Taproot was Speedy Trial and then there was something else that they wanted to put in and they said, well, it worked for Taproot, so we're going to do Speedy Trial again for, I forgot what it was

supposed to be for. But that was the last time I remember being, they're being such a ruckus. And it's pretty much anytime Bitcoin Core wants to do something, they're pretty bad at communicating, I guess. Yeah, they're computer scientists, right? You know, look, the side that's complaining against them is like in control of like massive influencer class, right? So you do have to take that into account too. So they have their communication and their talking points pretty well. They're just bad right now. Those talking points are really bad, right? But like, you know, they have all the not whatever

ocean and all those there's, there are positive qualities of all of these things. But the, I mean, I want to make an objective point that they have like big podcast influencers that are investors in their company. And you know, so they have an advantage. And they should we should judge them that way. We should judge them like, I say this about says about Jack Mallers a lot have a we should judge these people by the fact that they actually have good communication resources. Right? Bitcoin Core does not they are like, you know, I don't know, I don't know what they do. But every once in a while, they'll just pop out and say, Hey, we're, we're, we're doing this. And everyone, you know, they don't understand. It's kind of like the Fed, right? Like back in the day when everyone would freak out because like around Greenspan saying the word Oh my god, this guy's gonna raise rates by 300 basis points

There was something I think it was Volcker They were saying that it was depending on his mannerisms It was an indication which way the rates are gonna be and so yeah people are looking into like just the minutest of details rates are going to be. And so yeah, people are looking into like just the minutest of details that are people are just displaying like what they're saying, what their actions are and trying to take that and compute it into something that it's going to move the market one way or another. It's fucked up in a way. But it's not a terrible analogy because Bitcoin Core is kind of like the Fed in a certain way. Like we are beholden to their decisions now. They're not beholden to their decisions now.

They're not doing anything to the monetary policy. Ultimately it's the node runners. It doesn't matter if they can do it. That's right. And that's right. I think what frustrates people more is what they won't and don't do. Except we all get together and fight

when they decide they are gonna do something too. And I wanna talk about Jack Malders quickly sure he's getting a lot of flack Is it much? Yeah, so oh today because of he announced the let the lending platform, right? Yeah And there's been a lot of flack today about the 12% and Sheila we talked about it yesterday the CBP We broke this it seems like but either way way what's 12% the interest rate? Yeah, so you when you borrow? So when you do that borrowing that's what it is. So yeah, I'm pretty ignorant on the lending side because I don't so Not only is it 12% is rather high the another sticking point people are saying is

They're using a third party to custodian the Bitcoin. So, and I don't think that's, it's bad in a way. It's always an issue. Well, I'll explain. As soon as you hand off the Bitcoin to somebody else, as soon as you give the keys to somebody else, if they hold it themselves or they give it to somebody else, it's not your keys. It's not your fucking bitcoin at that moment. And so Just if you have an issue with them giving it to somebody else, why would you give it to them in the first place? So there's far better ways you could accumulate money than just borrowing against your bitcoin

um, so but everyone's upset with strike for having a lending platform with a like a like a Loan shark interest rate, basically? It seems like that's the thing, but would anybody consider using this when there's so many other alternatives out there? If you have a hard asset, like a house, for instance, getting a loan from it is going to be far, far less in terms of the and then it's it's not going to be subjected to the same type of volatility. If Bitcoin goes

down quite a bit, you're gonna be forced to fund more of it in order to maintain the loan to value, right? So with your house, let's be honest, take my take. Yeah, I think the market's gonna Yeah, I think the market's going to sort this out, honestly. If you put Bitcoin off for collateral, I believe lenders are going to start competing for those types of loans. And they're going to offer lower and lower rates eventually and

the thing is like you can Actually write chapter in a book about this and it's the only thing that actually is not original to me because Before you go any further name of the book name of the book Bitcoin for institutions. I know it's kind of It is what it is and it's exactly what the book is Let me clarify to that book has three sections. Section one, Bitcoin is for individuals. Section two, individuals run institutions. Section three, institutional Bitcoin.

And look, I have a long career, 30, a 30 year career of being an actuary and creating risk solutions for complicated financial systems. So this book is really an extension of how does Bitcoin work for somebody, if you know me or anything about me, for the last three years that I've been in this space, and how I think about finance. It's very adversarial to traditional finance. It's very critical, very strongly asking do we really need this? Does a world of, is the world of hard money gonna want, really want this? So I've, you know, I think it's pretty thoughtful from that perspective. There are things I work with directly like pensions and annuities and I have a lot of experience and so this is a part of the book and establishing

myself as the expert in those things. Structure credit happens to be something that I couldn't resist writing about because of some of the new solutions that are hitting the market not the strike lending platform but mostly the battery finance idea where you put Bitcoin in its collateral and the lender never calls it for four years. Or there's like the four year window. I believe that, first of all, the basic thesis is that a degenerate posting their Bitcoin for a loan is going to be better credit than anybody in the world who's

posting non-Bitcoin. And so there's this arbitrage opportunity, because the majority of the world doesn't realize this. So the majority of the world operates on this seniority structure of debt, where the most senior debt has the lowest rates and it's viewed as the most likely to be paid back. If you have 10 loans and one of them, one of them will give you your Bitcoin back

if you pay it back, you're gonna basically, you will rub all nine of the other loans to pay off that one loan, right? So what's the most senior loan there? It's the one with Bitcoin. That's the thing that I find really fascinating. And so like the strike lending thing, I could care less about honestly, it's just like, okay, it's a guy who doesn't understand finance, who's has this company that does these things, whatever, right? that does these things, whatever, right? Wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to just, you're taking Mallard's

not understanding finance. Not at the level of, not at the complex level that he's engaged in. So I was actually very, very, very critical of the recent news of the, basically the, I don't want to be disrespectful and call it a strategy copycat But it's a we'll call it the second mover of the strategy playbook. You talk about capital Yeah

So second mover strategy playbook You know, this is really complicated stuff financial engineering in Fiat is complicated, but not, you know, like there's a lot of morons who do it well. They're perfectly fine. The big reason for that is you could print money and if one of you, like if you have a big complicated structure like where you have like 50 legs of of and one of them, you know, maybe one of them fails, you can't paper over it and you can look at the thing in

total and it's going to be okay. If you have legs now that are structured in Bitcoin and like they're going to get liquidated because you can't do anything about it, I'm pretty sure the strategy people understand this and what they're doing and I would go out on a limb and say they probably do this well. Right. They probably especially as the first, they're probably fine. This company is probably fine, too. But I was my problem wasn't with Jack Mallers, to be honest. My problem was with Tether and Cantor selecting him to be the CEO. That was a clear message to me that they don't want a real CEO.

Like they want somebody who's just gonna rubber stamp. They're just gonna rubber stamp everything they do. A puppet, so to speak. I mean, I don't like to be disrespectful. I think I just I'll say it. Yes. But they want somebody who's not going to get in their way. Right? And not going to have an executive point of view to say that's a risk we shouldn't sell? Or have we're like, you know, have you really

vetted this? Can you really prove to me that we should take this to market? And that's, that requires somebody who really has a lot of experience. You know, the fact is, again, not being disrespectful to Jack, but has he been involved in a single complicated financial transaction? I don't think so. It's just There was a strange choice to me for this big announcement. That's all It kind of sent the message to me that they want to run this thing themselves and they just need somebody I mean

Hopefully he hopefully it's not nefarious where like they're actually gonna rug people and they're setting him up to take the fall I'm like go to prison. You know, well, boomdust makes a great point. Mollers is a great PR slash marketing guy that he does really well. I find, you know, you put him in front of a camera, you give some talking points and he's able to articulate it in a way that normies could understand it. You know, then he have that, um, an example of peanuts or something like that, or something that it was just just he was able to show off Moving bitcoin it was just it just worked out well and fuck. I can't remember exactly what it was

But he seems to be able to speak the same language normies normies do so he's good in that regard So no doubt no doubt. So like, you know, i'm not criticizing It's like those things aren't a problem See like but his, him running a company that is designed to do complicated financial engineering and him having like kind of no experience and no real sense of that, of that world. And you know, that's, I don't know,

that's just something I'd say I call out, I'm calling out a risk. Now I have a very general view of these types of companies to begin with that is suspicious and adversarial. And I think we all should because where I come from, which is the insurance industry, people seem to forget that insurance industry had a lot to do with the financial crisis. Now, why is that? Because they had a regulatory arbitrage. So I always stop me

if I say anything that's familiar or rhyming with this situation. But they were buying up mortgage-backed securities, which were considered to be of high quality, and in 2004 and 2005 they definitely were. And they were desperate for that yield, and it helped them with their capital requirements. And they became a beast with an unlimited appetite for it. And so more and more manufacturers came to fill this need, but there were only so many AAA loans they can put in packages. So over time, they had to fill them with, they had to actually manufacture bad loans just so they can put them in these packages. Like the tail really did end up wagging the dog. This is a beast that needs to be fed. You know, that was only a $3 trillion

loss. I say only because the financial crisis was $20 trillion loss value, but that was the thing that took the mountain down, right? That was the thing. Fast forward to today, the insurance, the insurance industry has identified a quote unquote regulatory arbitrage. They're too, they're too stupid to like actually figure out how to buy Bitcoin. I say that, I know people want to defend them and say the laws and the regulations. I mean, anyone, honestly, a motivated company can figure this out. A motivated company could buy Bitcoin and figure out later how to deal with it. They can get permitted practices from their regulators.

There's so much coddling of institutions. This is a big problem I have. One of the reasons I wrote the book is I feel like people are just coddling. They coddle them like, oh, it's so understandable that they won't do the obvious thing. So now they get exploited by strategy. And then there's going to be many more parties that come in to try to feed this beast, selling them essentially Rube Goldberg Bitcoin exposure. It's extremely, extremely indirect. And it only exists because of their adherence to rules that really it's not like the rules

don't say they should do this. There just aren't any rules for how to deal with Bitcoin in their space. And so they'll always do what's easy. So they've identified a quote unquote regulatory arbitrage that allows them to get better returns. And they're going to Hoover this up until, you know, until whoever is providing this demand cries uncle and says we can't do this anymore. And so what's at that point, there's going to be the price shock, we're going to forget about strategy, by the way, by that point, by that point, strategy will be gone with all their Bitcoin, right?

They will have done like, because they'll be remembered as the one that did it fine. I do believe that they like I do believe that they're probably fine. Like, they're very accountable, you know, they actually do seem smart. Just, you know, putting that out there. And one respect, though, I'm gonna argue with they don't is that they don't hold their own keys. And that's a good thing. But as Fiat, and I understand this as this is a Fiat game. Okay, like this financial engineering is a fiat game, but you don't want to get caught with your pants down on certain legs of your structure that blow up your whole structure

because you didn't realize that you couldn't paper over it because it's actually going to liquidate Bitcoin. That's the thing I'm guessing strategy understands all of that. But the longer this happens and the more entrants that come into this space, it feels like the solutions are going to get worse and worse and worse. And it's just going to get more. Before you know it, it's subprime mortgages in AAA mortgage-backed securities all over again. And there's gonna be a lot of lobbying going on. We're trying to put in newer modifying regulations as well because let's be honest,

if people wanna get involved and if there's some things preventing them, like you were saying there's ways around certain things, but still having a politician in your back pocket because of donations and lobbying, it could go a very long way as well. So that's another thing they could they could

So the question is how cynical are we like are we that am I so cynical? that um That strategy would actually block efforts to define bitcoin being held in in capital because their product is the thing that You know is that is demanded because of the lack of this clarity. Am I so cynical to suggest that? I mean, we should be that cynical just to think about it. I don't think we should necessarily believe our worst instincts, but I think it's useful to mention, just to mention it, but you know, I want what I would like to do what I would like to see happen is

You know general account managers and insurance companies to be motivated to just figure out how to bypass all this shit and Either either either get something simple like the ETF or get real Bitcoin or So having an appetite for the real thing, right? It's like we want them to actually crave real sushi, not just these California rolls. It's like the big fat American is just creating an industry for seed oils as opposed to if we actually taught them to taste real food Maybe you know

Maybe we avoid another financial crisis There's one pending whenever it comes up these are cyclical events and We had one just five years ago, but that was a forced event They wasn't it didn't happen on its own It was talking about the financial crisis. We're talking about closing due to Colton to kovat kovat Well there what the but the financial piece of it did happen on its own and there was like explain So, I mean everybody in Bitcoin podcast the 40 hour per week podcast people know about the repo with the you know, the repo going no bid September of 2019

And it's almost done again now, right if you look at it, but so they there was a mass I remember February of 2020 before Before the big day which was I want to say the 21st or the 22nd, like the day the markets all crashed. I remember driving into work and there was going to be just a massive across the board corporate bond downgrade, like absolutely across the board. And then basically the Fed stepped in and said, well, we will backstop this with an infinite amount of capital. These things were not COVID related, right? This was gonna happen anyway.

COVID just made us all forget that this took place. I just happened to be at a job where I live and die by financial markets. And so I remember this very clearly. But like, I'm not saying they did COVID to make us forget this. No, I think that's too much. I'm not not saying it. Yeah, nor would I even suggest it.

Because of all the players involved and all the pieces you have to move on the board, I don't know if they have the ability to control to that manner. So it almost reminds me of a story. I'm going to go on into the weeds here. You're old enough to remember when Coke changed their formula in the 80s and they went to new Coke. And then they reverted back to the old Coke Classic and everybody was buying up Coke at a higher rate than they were before they made a change. And they asked the CEO, did you do this on purpose? He says, we're not smart enough to do this.

We're not dumb enough to do this. So, yeah, I mean, having lived through that, you know, it was, I mean, I was a kid, but I still knew how dumb it was. You know, like every, we all knew how to stupid this, like, we didn't know going to new Coke was going to be stupid. We just knew after the fact that when it didn't know going to New Coke was going to be stupid. We just knew after the fact that when it didn't work, like why they do that. I'm still waiting for Crystal Pepsi to come back.

And the only reason why is because of the commercials. If you I don't know if you remember where it was Van Halen's. What was the song? It was one Van Halen song. They played over and over again. And I loved it right now I don't remember this but that was probably a little later later on. That was like probably 2000s or late night No, it's like 92 91 93 something like that. So I remember this pretty clear. Anyways, let's go back to your book I'm curious. Did you self publish it Or did you find a publisher for this? I'm self publishing it with the help of consensus. So consensus network, they did like Knute's found homes books, who I considered my role model for pretty much all of this. Like if I can get my book to look like Knute's books, and to feel and

have to Yeah, that so I was really happy when they agreed to help me, basically help me self-publish. Canute was one of the first people we ever interviewed, by the way. Really, is that right? Yeah, he's like really one of my, you know how certain, you could be adversarial to like every like well-known person in the space.

He's such a nice dude. There's some reason I can never, I can never like stay or even be that mad at him. He's not nice. I find him so valuable. I do this, but this isn't about his books, it's about my book.

Yeah, so what inspired you to do it? My book's gonna be like the NHL 94 books. There are- Without the weight, but. Why did I do it? Yeah. Yeah, good question. I've been so after my I've had a long I had a long career, almost 30 years. You know, Matt, really trying to help companies and industries sidestep existential failure and I was part of pension failures. step existential failure and I was part of pension failures, life insurance. I've seen all these systems fail and I've seen all of it in my career and I was like lucky to get shit can for my job last year almost at this time. That's why I remember like I remember

two year to the day because it's almost the exact time that I lost my job too. And so I just have been getting so disappointed and frustrated thinking about like the conversation in the public conversation we have about institutional Bitcoin is put it on your balance sheet. You know, go Facebook, go put it on your balance sheet You know go Facebook go put it on your balance sheet or go somebody Go somebody put it in their pension plan, right? And I wrote an essay like two years ago called huddling is a human action and it was really about how No one's ever gonna hold no company is ever gonna hold Bitcoin Like they're never gonna do it like human beings can do it because we can be unreasonable We can tell people look, I know you don't like what I'm doing, but I don't care and you know

Companies that are governed have a very hard time. They have to be very reasonable rational and governable and I had an experience getting my kids school to accept Bitcoin, which I eventually did my kid's school to accept Bitcoin, which I eventually did. I don't even know how you approach this subject. What was the, this is a great story. I don't know if you have time for it, but like I will say that I had this, I had this a little bit of a war and like a love hate relationship with the school's Dean. And it's not,

I kept seeing him about problems that I was having. So like in 2022, the communications around COVID were driving, were making me very angry. Like they were like giving statistics and it was bothering me. So I started at some point as a parent who had unvaccinated children in school and I was paying like a severe price, not like intentionally it's just that they would hide behind border health regulations and I was starting to really lose patience and so where do you live like what neck of the woods are you in? I live in Pennsylvania. Perfect okay. Outside of

Philly. I was starting getting so frustrated that I really started getting aggressive with the school and the employees. And so he actually asked me just to come in. He's like, dude, he's like, let me admit to you something. Like my kids aren't vaccinated either. I'm like with you, but like you're killing everybody. You are killing the school. He was like, dude, you've got to stop and rein it in.

And eventually he called me, he called me back like three months later. He was like, I saw you had a book the last time you were here. You had a Mises, it was human action. I brought it, I was just reading it while I was waiting, you know? And he goes, I've been like, I've been like trying to do, you know, figure out Bitcoin. He tells me this. And I really want to buy it for the school. And this is like 2022. We're talking now we're in like June, July 2022. Idea was that it was down, right?

Down the 30s. Anyway, so we get we talk. I'm like, yeah, I'm totally I'll totally help you make this app. Long story short, he eventually got a board board approval. It was a committee, finance committee approval to buy Bitcoin and he started doing it and then started accepting Bitcoin as donations. And at some point in the board, not the committee that approved it, but the whole board, like

figured out that he was buying Bitcoin. Not a small amount either. They had a conniption and like shut the whole thing down. And it really upset me. I have to say like I like I've been like, you ever watch Breaking Bad, you know, and the I'm aware of it. I haven't watched it.

Well, in the end, I'm not gonna spoil the end, but in the second to last episode, the main character, he's like in the, he's in the mountains of like New Hampshire, and freezing log cabin hiding, but plotting, like plotting how he's gonna come back and solve this problem. And like, that's how I felt about this board.

Like, I wanna get every single one of them hold them personally accountable for being idiots. And bottom line, lo and behold, is this really affected this affected how I would view institutions because I even though this is just a school board, it's very representative. I mean, there's no group of people in the normie world that's going to allow somebody to just buy Bitcoin for them. And like, okay, maybe they do. But like, after two X's, are they going to let you keep it? What if if they're going to let you keep it if at five X's and the whole time they're going to say, well, what if it goes down? There's just no good way. You have to have somebody who can just jam it down their throat, right? So my view was that institutions were never gonna do this, okay? And I was getting like, you know, pretty dismayed, I'd say about it.

You know, I'm here in this space, I have the experience I have. And then I just woke up and said, what if I have the experience I have, and then I just woke up and said, what if I'm the difference? I have been through a lot. I was like a pioneer of liability driven investments, believe it or not. I have as far as gone kind of history in matters of risk, where I've witnessed and been part

of things that were pretty significant. And this could be my role. And that's what I said to myself. And I said, I'm either going to go back to traditional finance work, or I'm going to take this. I'm going to try to do this. I'm going to try to actually get, what if a willing company really does want to do it?

And then who's going to? It's not like I'm looking out in the space and seeing, oh, there's anyone that I even trust talking to that company. So I basically decided I'm going to write this book. I'm going to establish myself. So I'm going to put, it's like my proof of work. My whole life story is going to like, my, here's what I can do.

Here's what I know. Here's how I think. And yeah. And so now it's done it's very close to it's like being published at the moment and Hopefully hoping it leads to the opportunity to actually make this difference in company and When is it coming out yet? When's the expected date that you have anticipated it coming out? In a cut they told me four weeks from like the time it was pencils down so that's

Probably about three weeks from now So very close. We're very close and I will I'm going to I'm really digital copies. I'm basically gonna just I'm going to I'm really digital copies. I'm basically gonna just You know, it's gonna be like a trivial lightning transaction. Like it's gonna be almost almost free. Basically, you can inscribe it I don't think so We forever linked with every Bitcoin note at that moment, but I appreciate you not doing that let's not but I mean, yeah. Well, once again, the point of the book isn't, it's not even like, I want people to read it, but I really want, um, I, I foresee, I first like, um, a not great

situation where Bitcoin is going to be like the DEI ESG of business in the next five years Like you already start to see at You know what you call? what Activist investors right you see their activist investor or a board member You got some guy with you know, who's got Bitcoin some guy like us, you know Bitcoin up his ass and is like, he knows he has enough power To at least okay. So it could be a Jenna driven in a way in a positive way. That's gonna

Yeah, I'm saying like it's going to be but it's going to be unwillingly pressured onto executive boards That's what I mean. Like, you know, they're gonna Executive boards didn't want ESG either, right? But then at some point they capitulated. I mean, I think I witnessed them laughing at this shit for years and years and years. You know, I've seen like social investing.

I've seen all this stuff that companies ignored and laughed at. I was really surprised when ESG and DEI actually happened. I was like, oh my God, they must really have figured out how to harness power because this was laughed at forever. But it was unwilling and it was foisted. And at some point, these executives were too, they were too afraid not to do it. And all I'm saying is that's the position I think they're going to find themselves in with Bitcoin potentially, where it's obviously, I think, a better outcome. But it may not be a better outcome if an executive team does it kicking and screaming. So a big premise of the book is, the reason the first section of the book is called Bitcoin is for Individuals, is that I need people to understand where Bitcoin gets its value from.

And I will say it's at least my strong belief it gets its value from individuals seeing value in it, not institutions. To me, no value of Bitcoin comes from institutional demand. They're buying it, but their wants and desires don't really drive the value of it. It's what people can do with it. It's the freedom it gives people, the power it gives people. And I believe individuals will always outbid institutions for Bitcoin. And they'll always value it higher because they've, you know, look at, um, look at strategy, look at Michael Saylor, right? He has a good understanding of one feature of Bitcoin, right? And I wrote a lot about it in the book, savings.

He nailed it. He nailed savings. But if you think that's all Bitcoin is, you are, um, you know, you're not seeing it as valuably as me. Sure. You're not seeing as valuably as a lot of people. Protection against debasement. They're looking at it, I guess, in the lens. But Bitcoin is much more than that.

Correct. And so if you want to limit your view to that, then that's fine. But I guess my original overarching point is that If you actually are not connected to what gives Bitcoin value and you're not connected to the individual You might have you may wreck your whole industry, right? You'll join the ranks of the FTX's and Of the world you're gonna just join the ranks of all those kind of Celsius's Who just thought they had a good thing that the market wanted but had no of the world. You're going to just join the ranks of all of those kinds of Celsiuses who

just thought they had a good thing that the market wanted, but had no, you know, I mean, even Celsius like tapped a little bit into people's fears of holding their own keys, right? But like they weren't, you know, I think it's really important to know what the golden goose is, which is why it like Michael, the example of sailor is that he didn't offer savings to anybody but he yet to give credit where to do he really articulated the savings case really clearly and it's like I think it resonated very deeply with people right so I know so I give him credit for identifying this thing called savings. Not that he was the first to do it, but he's probably the best.

He's probably the best and most impactful at explaining why Bitcoin is such a perfect savings vehicle. I mean, look, he really did put his ass on the line. He humiliated himself, really, by saying, I have a savings problem and it has to be Bitcoin like there's nothing else that's going to solve this problem so I got to give it to him for that I don't believe he is I don't believe what he's doing now is connected to individuals value in Bitcoin anymore I think he's doing something else and is it bad I don't know is it good no but is it bad? I don't know. Is it good? No, but is it bad?

I think about Bitcoin though, like the token itself the coin You could do what you want with it. You could buy it. You could sell it. You could burn it You can do whatever fuck and that's perfectly fine There's there's no I have no issues with anybody doing anything what they have with it Like I'm gonna call them out if they do something stupid, but really it's up to them. If they wanna buy it and do something that they have every opportunity,

if they wanna trade their time and effort to purchase it and do something stupid, all the more power to them. They're dumb as fuck, but you know. That's right. And we, anybody is allowed. And you know, people are gonna be surprised, I think by my explanation

of what BlackRock is doing here. In fact, the last year, I started talking about this to you last year when I was on, and I got a big groan. Got a big groan from you. But because I've been developing this conversation for the last two and a half years about BlackRock and what they're doing. And I think BlackRock is actually solving a very basic problem for themselves. And they're going to be good little boys until they do it. I believe that. I don't think they're not here to make a little extra money. Larry Fink didn't humiliate himself either. These guys humiliated themselves. You think people forgot that Larry Fink didn't humiliate himself either. These guys humiliated themselves. Do you think people forgot that Larry Fink spent the last eight years saying Bitcoin is only for criminals? He really did a heel turn. He didn't do it just to make a couple bucks. Okay. I cover pretty deeply what I think he's doing.

pretty pretty deeply what I think he's doing. Why do you want to give just a yes so you don't have to give too much because you want to make the book guys no it's fine or give away as much as you want I don't give a fuck yeah well let me yeah let me try to let me try to do in a couple bullets okay well do what you want you remember the 2020 do you remember the 2022 pension bailout in the UK yes yeah. Yeah. So BlackRock was the primary investment manager in that for the clients that got bailed out. And my theory is that they'd probably been looking at Bitcoin. They knew enough about it, but weren't going to do much with it. But I believe that was the moment

that kicked off, that tipped them over the edge. So if you rewind the tape and say, what if all those UK pensions instead of having all those bonds, what if it was Bitcoin instead? Okay, here's a couple of things that definitely so you do have gains and they do borrow off the gains which is what they did they had bond gains and they were borrowing off of them and When the guilt shot up in September of 22, it basically caught you know, it caused It's just a giant margin call and BlackRock had to sell everything in the sofa cushions to keep their clients from getting liquidated. So first thing to know is that had it been Bitcoin and not bonds, they do not get a call from the, any government telling them to stop what they're doing. Okay. Right.

There's no government to call. It's just, okay, who cares if they crush the price of Bitcoin doing this? They just, you know, it just happens. Whereas, you know, getting a call from the Bank of England, that was not a good day for BlackRock, right? To be told to stop their operations and that there's going to be a bailout. The other thing is that it would have been easier to hedge their client borrowing, right? They could look liquidity manage. I'm doing air quotes. Yeah. To liquidity manage

the borrowing. If you have the ETF, which they now invented, if you have that, then if the price of Bitcoin starts going down, right, you actually have a perfect hedge to cover it. Whereas you have all these bonds and you've, you know, price of bonds goes down. Yeah, you might have some hedges, but they're not good. They're far from good. And, you know, like there's no historical equivalent for what happened in 2022. There's like really no historical equivalent for rates just shooting up 500 basis points in such a short time. So like if you're doing any like liquidity management planning, you'd have been like,

well, I'm worried, I'm worried about liquidity for a week. So I'm going to like protect myself against maybe a 50 basis point change, right? You're not going to, you know, there was like 130 basis points in a day on the UK guilt, something like that, right? So there's no way possibly to prepare for an event like that. I believe that BlackRock had this sort of come to Jesus where they were already kind of like, I think they were a little bit into Bitcoin, like they saw, they probably knew that it had no counterparty risk and like it was much less risky than bonds. But the lack of a country I think is a big, big, big feature and I believe what they want to do now is kick out, basically kick bonds out of

their model portfolios and replace them with Bitcoin and I think it's gonna take a long time and I think they're going to I Believe they're gonna behave themselves until they accomplish this mission think of the people you're gonna have to Convince never mind trying to squat strong arm But just even have them see it eye to eye that this is the way to go People that grew up live and breathe this bond market and have them say no We're not gonna we're not gonna go ahead with this We're gonna go with something else. That's 20 22 pulled it was like a complete

It's like the bond market rug to everybody and no one's talking about it, right? It's 2022 is abysmal. So your risk-free asset had like a 60% loss drawdown, you know for long bonds You know your risk risk free asset for, you know, your Lehman AG had like a 20% loss. That's like, so if you're gonna like say Bitcoin can't be a risk free asset, because it is drawdowns. That's the argument you're hanging on to. I mean, the fact is, well, objectively, Bitcoin is no counterparty risk. Right? And no debasement risk. there's no counterparty risk. Right. And no debasement risk. Bitcoin's horrors is the counterparty risk, I would argue, but that's a different topic. But I mean, if Saylor was worried about his savings, the flip side of that was Larry Fink thinking about bonds as just an absolute loser. Like I'm the biggest bond, basically the biggest bond buyer in the world. And I'm losing, like I'm losing, I'm looking at a big time loser every single time and this is bad, but that

was, you know, it's like all of these other things had to come together for him to, you know, he made, to make an existential case because you're saying, yeah, how do you convince all these people? Well, how do you convince all these people that like Black Rock's going to go away? I mean, I'm sure we'd all love to see that honestly, but like, you know, we're not the ones, we're not the ones they have to convince, right? If you're going to convince your board, it's easy to convince your board. Like, if this is existential, this

is needed for BlackRock to survive the next 20 years. And that's what a, frankly, what a visionary and a board are supposed to do, right? That's not what the board of my school did. They did the opposite. I love the fact that you're still burning from that and then I see that I like I think I'm actually that like a good portion of the energy I have is just from it. It's a it's a very powerful emotion to

tap into. And to settle a vendetta. I love it. I'm like Ron Hexdahl. What did he he do aside from slash a few guys? Oh, you remember when he went after chris chelios. I remember he went after a few guys. He I think he broke uh, glenn anderson's ankle in One game and he he was a real hothead but still scored a goal. That's right He was very good with handling the puck And by the way, he had a phenomenal playoff and this is going way back in 1987 the kind of first cons might winter to be on a losing team he had just a

Incredible run for the Flyers had to get some hockey and you have to yeah. I mean there's playoff time right now I'm not sure I'm not really following at all. I know the Leafs played yesterday I don't even have a clue if they won or lost I'm so far out of with modern sports. I don't give a fuck about it to be honest, but I want to talk about the ETF still and the ETF that BlackRock now manages and they offer this almost a year and a half ago, a year and a quarter ago give or take. So when they did this, do you believe this offering is a result of their coming to jesus moment? Or is that offering just because others were offering as well and they just wanted to provide You know if they're offering it we have to provide a similar service so we don't fall further behind No, no, no, nobody was allowed to offer it right?

But when it but what I think basically hey, guess what you're all getting? Because I want it. So he drove that. I believe so. Yeah, I believe so. And so there's a good three pages in the book that outlines all of the attempts and all the failed attempts.

And I mean, like Grayscale wasn't literally litigating with the SEC at the time for, you know, like the arbitrary and capricious ruling. They didn't, you know, the SEC and capricious ruling. The SEC just was not allowing it. And the fact that it's in, I said something like, it's like, well, the equivalent of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Barry Bond basically went into the batter's box

and decided that ETF was happening. I just want to double back something. Boomer mentions in the chat the German bond almost blew up about a month ago. I totally forgot about that. That's right. It's a memory hold. Yeah. Any comments on that or any insight you

give on that or is just this is just par for the course. what's just expected to happen these days? I mean I do think we're gonna see European rates you know go like explode at some point. We are really like I you know I think we've sort of defeated them in the monetary war. I think that the US keeping rates high as long as we have and we'll probably do it again tomorrow. Do you think they're gonna keep, there's gonna be no cut tomorrow? That's your prediction or? Yeah, that's my prediction. I mean, I don't really hang my hat too much on my ability to predict these things. I just don't, I still don't think we're in a rush to lower rates.

Nothing is blowing up here as much as they, the media is trying to make it look like it is the reality is there is no you know there's not enough carnage to you know things aren't that things just aren't that bad who's driving that decision is it the federal reserve or the white house it seems to be it seems to have been Jerome Powell this whole time. It seems that he really got this posture when Janet Yellen was the Treasury Secretary, that he was just like, not on my watch, bitch. You're not ruining this currency on my watch. I don't want to make him sound like a hero or anything.

I think he did have that view and certainly I mean look it's raising rates 500 basis points in in such a short time isn't exactly a heroic act but keeping them at the level that they've been at for the last three years is pretty impressive I have to say. Yeah considering just about every other central bank out there has been lowering as you're mentioning that because everyone's Riving in pain like people have to realize how painful it is you know, essentially what he does is take is takes a magic wand and slashes the value of your bond portfolio in half

And leaves it there and so um and leaves it there. And so, you know, I find it amazing that Bitcoiners don't, like how many Bitcoiners don't understand that rates are high right now? When they look at these charts and they say, oh, this cycle, this is, we broke the cycle theory. Like, no, dude, rates are high.

There's no liquidity. And it's actually pretty remarkable. I'd never talked about Bitcoin price or anything like that, but I have to say it's like one of the more remarkable things that I'm really bullish about is that we were able to get back to the all-time high in these difficult conditions. That's it. I never, that doesn't compute with me because I tend not to follow the central banks in terms of their rates and rates cuts all that much. But you're 100% right. We got to 108K or whatever the fuck it was

in an environment where the federal reserve didn't cut. Yeah. That's the most bullish thing I hang my hat on right now, is that we slog through the mud. And really the hardest monetary conditions Bitcoin has ever seen. And most people alive, it's the hardest monetary conditions we've seen. Not that it's the highest rates, because, you know, I grew up with double digits rates, but

it's much harder monetary conditions right now, because relative to what we got used to. And like I said, relative to anything that's been seen in Bitcoin's life, you know, you have, And like I said, relative to anything that's been seen in Bitcoin's life, you know, you have, you know, to me it's remarkable. It's like when people are like, oh my God, where's the moon? Like, dude, this is it right now. Like we are doing this. We were doing this in the hardest footing possible. I really, I really am bullish about it. Another thing to consider when we got to $100,K, maybe this is something else we have to also take

into consideration is what was the value of the dollar when we hit 108K versus say in 2022, 2021 when we got to 69K. It's a huge difference when you do compare the two numbers, but still the dollar was a little bit more valuable back then than it was. I agree. I still don't like it as a I don't like that argument. Like I don't like the I never like the argument that it's not a real all-time high because I'm like because what it took to get you know what it took to get back to this all-time high was far more. We had to go through absolute hell not just with the monetary stuff But just even internally like maybe not externally

But tangentially we were talking about what you mentioned Celsius going tits up block fi Terra Luna Voyager I'm probably missing a few as a result and all this shit just created this Negative viewpoint on Bitcoin and Bitcoin just because it was adjacent to all this stuff people were selling people who then weren't buying because they looked at it in a negative light and just With that still where we were able just to climb back up without liquidity, but I mean it because look the You know next to nothing matters more than liquidity frankly when it comes to What drives the Bitcoin price?

Right, and so it's like any other asset. Yeah I will especially any other asset that is dwarfed in market cap by the SP Right. So the S&P is like 45 trillion market cap, you know Bitcoin is what 1.7 trillion or something like that's nothing. So when the S&P went down by 20% in the last couple of months or whatever it was, you do the math on that. It's like it's five Bitcoins market cap that goes away. We should have gotten trounced. There should have been so much selling to cover the bigger losses in the portfolios. And again, I'm super impressed that that didn't happen. Well, guys like Sailor out there was, and everybody else too, but Sailor,

in particular, 500,000 Bitcoin or so that they scooped up in the past four years. When people say, well, why isn't the price going up when the government announces that they're buying Bitcoin? The liquidity isn't there. When they lower rates, forget about it. No one's ready for that. Any thoughts on gold? Because gold had a heck of a run for the past few months and hit numerical all-time high.

I think it's cool. I think it's cool that gold's having its day. I actually think it. I'm OK with it's cool that gold's having its day. I actually think it, you know, I'm okay with like gold doing some of the hard work for us. So like if gold is gonna do some damage to fiat currencies, I think we should embrace that. I mean, we all know gold has like no value really, right?

I don't think that. In a world where Bitcoin exists, I mean, I don't know, understand what what use gold hat really has, you know, the people that are able to store it will make the claim there's value. That's fine. And that's fine for people are in a position. Yes. And I have, you know, that's fine for them. But like, so if gold is going to do some of the dirty work for us, I'm all for that. Yeah. Right. You know, why it shouldn't be Bitcoin, the only one holding the gun Fiat, right? Yeah. Let's go do some of that. Let's go do some of the dirty work and let them take the you know, keep underestimating Bitcoin while we lay in the cut and wait for our day. So after all this being said, after we talked about Bitcoin, you're are you going to up your 40 hours per week? Are you going to take it up a notch to get to 50? I think 40 is good. I don't even know how to do 40.

Like that's, that's a quite a feat given all the other it's more of a lifestyle It's more of a way of life you shoot for you know, it's kind of like you know I've made hitter Bitcoin meetup last night and we ever we have it at a Chinese restaurant and It's like you'll be on like telegram all month long and everyone's like, oh see oils are terrible But like everyone eats general test chicken. I like it. Nobody is avoiding seed oils at their Bitcoin meetup, even though they're like, they're all identities based on avoiding

it. You know, 40 hours a week is a goal. And you know, if you the more podcasts you listen to the better person you become. Put that way. That's a good way to end it. You know what people out there that are listening to this, I got to give you credit because I'm not much of a podcast listener. I just I for whatever reason, I just don't do it. I produce it. But I just can't bring myself to listen to a lot of shows, which is too bad, because there's a lot of good ones out there, including your own, by the way, fundamentals.

I have four podcasts, by the way. Name them all. So we got the flagship rock, paper, Bitcoin. And then I have motivating the math, which I do with Gary Krause. And that is a, you know, we're trying to make, we're really trying to push also 40 hours of math homework. Math has, I have a really strong view about math as physical fitness, almost like, well, as a certain type of fitness, like akin to physical fitness. And I think it's important for people to level up. So we do that.

And then I have a podcast called Back on the Chain. It ended as a band, FISH, and it's connections. They're connections to Bitcoin. Boom, that's what's mentioning this. Yeah, okay. And then finally, once a month, I have what's called the Sound Coffee Podcast with Shoutout Otis Bittmeyer, Master Roaster. And I love his being so much,

I wanted to do a podcast with him and establish, like his, I wanted to establish his existence, like in cyberspace, his coffee shop in cyberspace. So the Sound Coffee podcast is just, you could imagine he and I at his coffee shop having a conversation about coffee. Those conversations I find are the best when you're just shooting the shit

and there's no real agenda in it. It's just the conversation flows where it goes. And I love those types of conversations the best, kind of like we had today. Yeah, and it's all about the conversation. It really is. I mean, we are discovering, it's the only way to really discover what is going on

You know, we have to talk it out and not like with not with tweets. No when boom does when Nick's podcast When will you admit that you were wrong about the Knicks losing in the last round? I Don't even know that they won this series They well they won that first series against the Pistons and then they did the impossible by winning last night game one against the Celtics Okay, I didn't realize even the Celtics have a good team. I have no I have no fucking glue They want to championship last year. They yeah, right for whatever it's worth. I love it. But the NBA I could do a basketball podcast I just don't I don't find it relevant to Bitcoin. So like if I thought that it was important like I just don't, I don't find it relevant to Bitcoin. So like if I thought that it was important,

like believe it or not, all four of these podcasts, I find there are Bitcoiners that I think resonate with it and find it important. And there's some reason why I'm doing it that maybe I don't even understand it yet, but that we'll find out in the conversation. We've been at this for over an hour. That's how it hour. My apologies.

My apologies. It's how it goes with me. No, no, because I was hoping to keep you in for about 45 minutes to an hour because that's so much I booked in your calendar and I try to respect that. If you don't rein me in, dude, I do for podcasts. Like if you don't rein me in, man, I'm going to run wild. Any final words before you wrap up this one? Thank you once again. I always enjoy talking to you. My pleasure and you're always welcome back

to come on our show anytime there's a new development or if you just want to chat. So with that ladies and gents, I hope you enjoyed the show. Fundamentals appreciate you taking