The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - Phil Bak on Culture, Narratives and Going All In on What Matters | The CBP (Bitcoin Podcast)The CBP (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES This week we welcome Phil Bak to the show for the first time. Phil is the CEO of Armada ETFs, served as the CEO (and founder) of Exponential ETFs, CIO at Signal Advisors and Managing Director at the NYSE. Phil is the host of The Phil Bak Podcast and writes on Substack as well.   Join 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.com ⁠Discord:   / discord   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This 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 $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

Friends and enemies, welcome back. Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. Doing a back-to-back here. What a week the podcast is at, okay? Let's back up a little bit. We did two interviews last week. We're doing two interviews this week. We've had some bangers.

I'm going to pull up the schedule here. It's unbelievable the stuff we've been able to talk about on this show in the last two weeks and the people we've been able to talk to. We had Francis here last week on wednesday outstanding show you guys love talking to him he's a guy who gets philosophical he's a guy who gets cosmic and he's got so much to say about bitcoin and the economy and just like culture you know he turned me on to isaiah's job years ago outstanding conversation then thursday we had mark ripito legend like absolute legend. Okay. Great interview

that was. He's fantastic. Tons to say about fitness and where commercial gyms are trying to scam people basically. And you know, he's, he lives by this principle, you know, keep it simple, stupid. He may not articulate it that way, but if you want to get bigger and stronger, what do you have to do? Eat more, sleep more, add weight to the bar, and basically shut the fuck up. Otherwise, stop talking to people about training and fitness who are smaller than you, and don't worry about everything else along the way. Yesterday, the mayor of Vancouver comes on the show. Like I said during the interview,

we don't talk to politicians. We don't want to. We've had many offers many times from many different politicians of many levels, national, municipal, provincial, whatever. We declined, and we talked to Ken Sim yesterday and the guy comes on and says, most politicians are dipshits among other great things.

A guy who's taking his political career and viewing it basically as a passion project. He wants to make the city in which he resides and which his children reside better, even if it means doing the unpopular thing. And then tonight we got Phil Bach. I was just talking to Phil before we went live. Phil's got a storied financial background.

NYSE, he's the CEO of Almeda, ETFs, like you name it. He's been everywhere, done everything. But he's also a guy with a lot of thoughts on other things. And you know this if you read his sub stack, you follow him on Twitter. I've talked about it for a few weeks now since we booked the interview. I think you're really going to enjoy this one too.

So strap in. First, as always, the sponsors. EasyDNS. What can I say? You guys know. Mark is the man when it comes to registrar domains. He is the friendly neighborhood registrar, as he likes to say. We've been using them for a long time we've done both a url domain port where we bought it uh from

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Len usually does this read. So I think it's like $20 or $21. Give him your phone number. Give him some info and start. Man, he can't beat it. We love those guys. And we hope that you will as well. Here's Phil Bach. We're adding Phil to a stable of, I think, high quality bald guests. We had Kevin Muir on not long ago. He was fantastic. Chris Irons, obviously QTR, another great bald guest. And now Phil Bach, you know,

we're completing the trilogy here. What's going on? I said to Phil for the show, I like his setup. He's like very, he's like almost like loungy vibes over there. It's solid. What's going on,

man. Well, I can't believe you had Chris irons on and I didn't know about it. He's the best. He is the best ball, man. But I hope you talk to him about him doing more of his own podcast. Cause he's been a little slow. He's the best. He is the best ball man. But I hope you talk to him about him doing more of his own podcast because he's been a little slow. He's been slacking off in that regard, and I miss it.

Do you think he's – I wonder. You and me are sharing a drink tonight. Against my better judgment, I don't have any whiskey, but I did pour myself a glass of red wine. So I'm breaking my dry January streak for you. He's doing dry – he's in like his third month or second month, I think. And so I wonder if he's just like, finally, I have energy to do something besides bitch and moan on the internet.

Now, I love it when he blacks out for an hour at a time and just does the show. And I told him that. And I think he understands that people like that. But maybe now he's like, yeah, I might run or, you know,

go on a date or something. Nobody rants better than him. So I don't know if you heard his state of the union where he does solo for like an hour. It just, I mean, he's the best. I love me. He's, he's funny as hell. So he's fantastic. He's, he's a guy who's I think a bit of a Renaissance man. You know, I might use the same term to describe you. You've got this, you know, I don't often go on LinkedIn to see people's like, you know, sort of chops before a show, but I only know about some of the stuff you've done. And I don't know,

maybe you pay for premium. You can see like Joey creeping your profile every 20 minutes here. There's a long history of stuff. And I've, it's not every day I get to talk to someone who's worked at the stock exchange, New York stock Exchange. Some of these Armada ETFs, CivX, you founded a company. Tell me, who are you? Where did you come from? What have you been doing? Because Phil, I got to be honest, some of the guests we've had are unfamiliar to my listeners and then my listeners cling and ask to get guys back. I feel like you're going to head down that road. So you may as well tell people who you are now in preparation for your second appearance sometime down the line.

I'm just a humble motherfucker with a big ass dick. I hate to debunk. I admit a legend in my own mind, but apparently in yours too. So that's nice. It's nice to be validated. You know, I had a career in ETFs, you know, a corporate career. Did a few things with a couple of startups with a company called Ridex that got bought by Guggenheim. Eventually, I ended up getting bought by Invesco.

I spent a long time at the New York Stock Exchange working on the ETF market structure. It's all just dumb luck. It happened to be in the right place at the right time where this vehicle, this ETF vehicle, got obviously incredibly popular. But, you know, the big thing that happened was back, man, so long ago, 2016 already. I needed a drink on that, yeah, a whole lifetime ago. I had a brain tumor, non-cancerous brain tumor, but had it removed. And, you know, that whole process was, you know, of course it was frightening, but when you're young, you have this like, you know, that whole process was, you know, it was, of course it was frightening, but when you're young, you have this, like, you know, this feeling of invincibility. You don't think about like, you just, you have all the time in the world, like whatever you're doing your thing. Right. And a lot of people who go through, you know, some sort of, you know, serious illness

or life change like that kind of have this epiphany, which I did as well, which is actually, Hey, surprise, surprise. There is a finite amount of time and all those things that you want to do, all those things that it thinks, Oh yeah, I think I could do that. I think I could write a book. I think I could climb Mount Everest. I think I could do all these things like, dude, like you got to just fucking get off, you know, get up and do it or else it's never going to happen. And that's what I did. And, and so I started my first company then 2016,

I left the exchange in a, in a blaze of glory with an email that, you know, I signed off so long, suckers. And it's a true story. And I started my first company, which was an ETF startup. And since then, I've done a couple other startups. Armada is my, I guess, my third, depending on what you count. Some of them kind of die in the vine before they get going. One was moderately successful.

One was a total failure. The one now, the jury's still out, but we think we have some pretty cool things that we're working on. So it's been a lot of up and down. I wouldn't say that I'm like this, like however you said it before. But I think the one thing is from that moment on in 2016, from that point on, I have kind of resolved to be unafraid to try things. And if they fail, they fail. And if they fail publicly, they fail publicly. I'll try a podcast.

I'll do a sub stack. I'll tweet if I have a thought. I'll put it out there. And, you know, not to hold myself back and to, you know, self-regulate. Like so many people today are so afraid to just put their own name up and share their own opinions and views and how they see things. And, you know, I just decided I wasn't going to do that. You know, life is too short and there are things that we got to do. So, you know, if I've tried a lot of different things, it's because, you know, this,

this, you know, I've removed, like the tumor has kind of removed from me this fear of failure. And I think that's served me quite well. And it's advice that I would certainly pass on to others. I think that's really well said. And the fear of failure is something that is paralyzing for people now more than ever, whether it's trying to pick up a chick at a bar or starting a podcast, the number of cameras and tweets and posts about all your shortcomings and all your tomfoolery, I think it's a real headwind for people to go out and take that risk. Now, you mentioned your podcast. I wasn't going to, but I like your show. And I don't know why you stopped doing it. I listened to a bunch of episodes. We have some guests in common. We've

had Mike Green on as well as a few others that you had on. And I always thought that even the episodes I didn't love, I learned from. And the episodes I loved, I passed along and shared and I really took pride in them. So tell me why, first of all, maybe like what was the impetus to start a podcast? A guy like you could presumably do many other things. And then why stop? I mean, you were on a roll there some of those guests are great like i think you had ben hunt would you have him five times or something ben hunt's like yeah my favorite i could go back to him yep yep and i had chris or

quat the raven i had him on too and that was a great show um i i appreciate that thank you i wouldn't say it's dead i might bring it back there are so many hours in the day and as you know like i mean i don't need to tell you like know, this looks like we're just having a conversation and, and, and, you know, there's not a lot of time, but in reality, I'm sure you did a lot of research. There's a lot of promotion that goes on after the fact. There's a, there's a lot that goes into it. And there's just, you know, just in the order of priorities, you know, I wasn't monetizing it. I wasn't, I never planned to monetize it. It was, it was always like a, you know, like a passion project, something I could do for fun. One of the things I found early on when I started, it's like if I wanted to talk to

somebody that I didn't know, I mean, I had Cliff Asness on, right? If I called Cliff and said, hey, at the time I didn't know him, now I do. But if I said, hey, Cliff, I'd like to have an hour of your time. I want to pick your brain about smart beta investing, right? He'd be like, fuck off, I'm busy, you know, go away. But if I call him up and say, hey, you know, I'd like to have you on my podcast to talk about smart beta, he's like, oh, yeah, I got time for that, right? You'd be like, fuck off. I'm busy. Go away. But if I call them up and say, hey, I'd like to have you on my podcast to talk about smart betas. It's like, oh yeah, I got time for that. So when I started, it was almost a hack. It was almost like, hey,

this is a way that I can get people, people that I admired, that I was curious about, I can get them to give me their time and attention and get to know them and ask them questions and learn and build a relationship and all those things. And it really started, the truth is it really started before that with my partner at my first startup, Exponential ETFs. We did it as like an Exponential ETF podcast, which ended up turning into what we call the ETF experiences, the first version of the podcast. And the first version I said, you know what? There's so many one-on-one interview podcasts. I don't want to do another one. We don't need, the world doesn't need another interview podcast.

I want to do, there was a show with Colin Quinn, a tough crowd with Colin Quinn. I don't know if you saw it. This is like 15, 20 years ago. And it was just Colin Quinn, who was this comedian and a bunch of comedian friends that would sit around and just smash each other. They would just like make fun of each other. And they would talk about whatever topics and whatever's going on. But they were pretty hardcore. They were going after each other, funny guys.

I said, I want to do the tough crowd of Colin Quinn for finance. Like just a bunch of cool people sitting around having a fun conversation. That was the thing. And the first few had like four guests, five guests. It just didn't work. It didn't work for two reasons.

One is everyone was always talking over each other. So nobody had any discipline on that. The second thing is just logistically, the scheduling of it was a nightmare. If I'm trying to get like, you know, you and Balchunas and QTR and all these people together, it just, it was too hard to schedule. So we ended up doing the one-on-one interviews

and it really took off at that point. The one-on-one interviews turned out, look, actually we can get a little deeper. We can get, you know, really, you know, behind the curtain. We can really talk about more important things. If I have an hour with somebody to really understand them and get to know them. So it was fun. I love it. I might bring it back. I I'd like to bring it back. It's, you know, it's just a question of timing. How do you know, how do you know what kind of person to bring on

your podcast? I know who I look for when I look for guests. And most of the time, it's not just about being Bitcoin adjacent or people I agree with. In fact, when we had Mike on, it was in a stream of episodes where we were bringing on Bitcoin bears, one after another, after another, give me the bear case. And when I was looking for guests, it was people I thought were articulate, people I thought I respected, and hopefully people that could squat 225. Now, Mike met that pretty easily, I think. Doomberg, and hopefully people that could squat 225. Now, Mike met that pretty easily, I think. Doomberg, I don't know. He sounds a little thin.

But I think that those guys, when I think about those guys, that's the kind of guy I want on. You fit that bill in a lot of ways. And I think about Chris Irons, for example, another guy who's not afraid to voice his or her opinion and does so in a way that's not only convincing, but very clear, not beating around bushes, not dancing on, you know, sort of the fence and not taking a side. I want to know what your take is on that. How did, how were you picking guests? I think this is, this is nice. You know, I like talking to other people who have a show because I,

I deal with this all the time and no one else understands the struggle. Certainly not my wife, by the way, who I try to talk to about this. And I think it's tuned me out, probably started tuning me out like a year and a half ago, but yeah. You know, you can't, this like you mentioned, you can't model after, Hey, I want to have guests like Chris Irons. Like, cause I mean, he's a unicorn. He's a freak. There's nobody that's that smart and that funny and that non-pretentious all in one. Like there's nobody else. He's, he's like, you know, so you can't be like, Oh, I want guys like, yeah, there are people that are maybe a little bit like that in some ways but you're not going to get someone who's that entertaining and that's smart and that

like willing to just call bullshit like that's like a very rare combination when i started looking for were uh storytellers people that had do you have a story that i could you know spend a half at like yeah there's a beginning and an end but but i was looking for people that had a long form story that i can get it there's one guy advanced bars a friend of mine who had a story that I could spend a half at. Like, yeah, there's a beginning and an end. But I was looking for people that had a long form story that I can get in. There's one guy, Vance Barks, a friend of mine who had a story about he was a he was like a hedge fund wholesaler. He's working in sales and finance and just had this moment and he quit his job. And he ended up riding a Harley cross country for a year, grew his hair out and a beard. And his father had left him, died. His father had left him this Harley. And he like took,

like he had this incredible story. And I started looking for those kinds of things. They were hard to find though. So not all the shows were like that, but I was looking for like longer form, you know, stories that I could really sink my teeth into and give the audience. It was, you know, it became, sometimes there are people that call me, you know, usually those would be hit or miss. A lot of people were trying to sell something and I try to avoid that. But sometimes, you know, usually those would be hit or miss. A lot of people were, you know, trying to sell something and I try to avoid that, but sometimes, you know,

sometimes you get conned and you have someone on. But then there, there are people like, you know, like a Ben Hunter, people that you just, or Mike Green, like, Hey, I just know I can throw anything at him and I'm going to get something really interesting back. And, you know, so, but, but again, those are just, it's hard to, you know, it's hard to find those people. I mean, Twitter is great for finding those kinds of people. But again, I started looking for people that are not as well known on Twitter just to like, hey, there's so many people that have stories to tell that nobody knows. You know, so that would be my thing when people would ask me if they can come on. I said, all right, well, what's the story you want to tell?

So, oh, you know, they started like giving me like a resume. Like, oh, I started, you know, working at Ferris Stearns. And it's like, no, no, no, but what's the story, you know, you've got an hour to tell people a story, right? What's the story that you want to tell? And if they had something good, then I would, I would go with it. Well, the natural next question is what's your story? My story. You know, that's good.

I'm actually not prepared to answer that, but, but I would say, you know, that what I told you before about that big, you know, life change following the, the tumor, you know, was really a part of it. I went through a state for a while, you know, I try to write on sub stack and I, I did, I can't write that often. I need to like wait till I have something that like I have to say. And it comes like, I barf it out on the keyboard in like 10 minutes and I post it,

but it's like been like building up for, for a month or two. And I just, I can't write like, like, you know, some people could write more frequently. I write once a month on average or so and i i want to write more often but i just can't well you know uh where's it going i'm saying that um uh i lost my train of thought even on this about your story and you're saying the tumor you know so i went through a period of time where i was gonna i was gonna write a book it's like well what's the book i want to write what's What's the story that I want to tell? If I'm going to do 300 pages on one topic, what's the thing? And I decided, I settled on the book title, which I still have, which I still, in my mind, one day I'm going to write it, even though, of course, I never will. But

the book title is Unhireable, right? How I made myself unhireable from a court. And that's the only way that you can really do startups or really put yourself out there is if you say, you know what, I don't care if, you know, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to put out a tweet, it's going to offend, I'm going to say something critical of ESG investing. And, you know, I know that, you know, the Goldman Sachs HR people one day are going to dig it up and I'm not going to get that director position. You have to just say, fuck it. I'm willing to become unhirable. I'm willing to put myself. And that is what kind of frees you, you know, that like untethers you from all these like, you know, corporate like prisons that like, you know, people can't see.

You're preaching to the converted here in such a big way. That would be the story. Unhirable. You know, how I went from being, you know, just another person that nobody knew to being completely unhirable. I'm having a lot more fun this way. It is more fun, man. And like, I ideal, I won't talk about where I work. I'll tell you after. But, you know, I deal with that thinking a lot, especially as the show has grown. You know, I don't think I've ever said this on the air,

but like this program now between audio and video probably has a million downloads, a million views, whatever. And, you know, the more it grows, the more I think it's important when we get on the screen or get on the interviews or when I do appearances on other shows, that I really say things that are valuable and don't mince words. And, you know, I don't know, you have a couple of kids, I think. And, you know, I just had my first little while ago.

And I find that the gloves, for me anyway, they're really starting to come off when I sit here in this chair. And I think that when you talk about what is the story you want to tell and what is the sort of important thing that needs to be discussed, now I think it's like, what are we expecting from the last 10 years of just shitty ideas being floated at basically every fucking level of government, every fucking country, every school? I live in Canada, and here we are experiencing just unbelievably bad policies one after another, whether it's carbon tax, whether it's just unfettered, unlimited, low quality immigration controls, whether it's, you know, things like there's some schools here that want to stop doing standardized testing to

measure progress. It's starting to really show it's facing the results and it's facing the broader societal impacts. And so like, you know, when I think about what is the most important thing to say, I think the most important thing to say for me now is you have to be honest about how much of a mistake was made over the last 10 years. Don't be afraid to say that things that might not get you invited back to a dinner party. Don't be afraid to say that you prefer Trump over Harris or you prefer Pierre over Trudeau or whatever. Things that were almost unthinkable, certainly unspeakable in some respects five years ago. Because if you don't say it now, then you're going to go through another five years and those decisions are going to compound and the culture is going to get significantly worse.

You know, what is the important thing for you these days? What do you say is the thing that you just will not, you know, what is the hill you will die on no matter what? The ability that, and I don't know the powers that be have had to make certain things taboo or unspeakable is frightening. I think, you know, the peak of it was COVID, right? You know, not being able to say, you know, certainly when the vaccine came out and I got vaccinated immediately and, and, you know, I would have advocated, nobody was asking me, but if anyone did, I would have said, yeah, it looks like this is the smart thing to do. I was wrong. You know, the science now is pretty conclusive and the fact that they made it so socially unacceptable to say so, and people are taking this thing and, you know,

mortality rates are increasing. So people are taking this thing and mortality rates are increasing. So people are literally dying again. We can't trace the mortality. The deaths aren't linked to it. There's an explosion in heart attacks and blood clots and all these things. There's no data that ties it directly to the vaccine. So we can't say for sure. Or at least we're not armed to fight back. Again, to, and I'm not a virologist and I'm not a, you know, like, who am I to get online and tell people, oh, don't be, right. But the way that it was made to be socially unacceptable, right, you're not a part of, you know, decent society to have an opinion on a medication, right? Which is like, it's frightening. And, you know, look, there was a poll that came out, a Rasmussen poll at the height of COVID,

but post-vaccine where 25% of Americans, of people in America said that if you, people who are unvaccinated should be put in like, you know, internment camps or some sort of, you know, separated from their families, 25%. And of course it was more higher, you know, it was higher on the left and right, but it was still high on the right. Like, you know, this isn't just a doubt. This is, you know, and, and, you know, people have, you know, they were, they were afraid, they're afraid of you're

killing grandma. And I'm worried I'm going out in my double mask, you know, you know, the hole in the mask is, is, you know, 40 times larger than the molecule, whatever. You know, they were afraid. But more than that, they were afraid. They were socially conditioned, socially conditioned that there is acceptable speech and unacceptable speech. And, you know, we're finally starting to see that break, I think. So that's good. You know, I think, you know, we're recording this now.

It's January 22nd, just yesterday, right? You had this thing where, you know, Musk is on stage at the inauguration. You go, send out my heart. And they're all saying, oh, you know, he did a hell Hitler. This is the most ridiculous thing. And everyone's just completely like, like, I mean, you know, and again, you know, I'm taking the temperature from people online. This isn't a real people. So it's hard to say you're always, we're all getting a very distorted view of things. But if,

if that is at all somewhat representative of how people feel, 99 out of 100 are saying, you guys are fucking nuts. This is like, you guys are absolutely insane. So I think that spell is breaking. You know, it took a while, right? And it took, you know, in large part, someone like Donald Trump, who's willing to say, oh, you know, immigrants are eating the cats or, you know, saying things that are just so beyond that, you know, that socially acceptable thing. But it breaks that, right? You know, they talk about the glass, it breaks a glass ceiling,

right? What is acceptable to say and what's not to say? And this guy who sounds like your drunk uncle that's saying mostly common sense things, but very inarticulately sometimes or very insensitively sometimes, but still directionally,ulately sometimes or very insensitively sometimes, but still directionally, you know, usually kind of right. Like the, he was the one that like, he's not like, you know, like out of all these people, why was Donald Trump, the guy that like, you know, he's not like the best at governance. He's not smart. I mean, he is smart, but he's not smart in the ways that people convey their intelligence. Right. He doesn't speak in in, you know, in academic speak and all that. But he was the one with either the lack of self-awareness that either is like, you know, just kind of fell into it or, you know, calculatingly,

the one that was able to break through this like, you know, prison of what is socially acceptable and not the same to think. And and thank God for it. I think we're all a whole lot luckier for it because now we're a little more free than we were a couple of years ago. And hopefully soon we'll be completely free to say things that, again, people of good hearts, of pure minds, of pure intentions, I'm not talking about people with ill will that are trying, but truth seekers, truth seekers, right. Truth seekers that sometimes maybe, you know, have dark thoughts or, or, or, you know, say things that are, that are uncomfortable truths should be allowed to explore those uncomfortable truths.

And, you know, I think we're, we're, you know, we're getting back to that. I had Musk also, you know, Musk buying Twitter was also a very, very significant event, I think in the history of the world. And I think it'll be looked back at. Yeah. I think the Twitter thing is huge. You know, it sounds like you and me are sort of the same school of thought here. I'll phrase it a different way than you did. I think about my experience at dinner parties five years ago. Actually, no, we can go all the way back to 2016. I was a big Trump guy in 2016. Not for the same reasons I am now, because I'm a different person than I am now. I have different priorities and different things are important to me as a Canadian.

You know, I think Canadians, by the way, this idea that we're up in arms, of course, that's only, um, an analogy because we actually cannot ever be up in arms thanks to our laws, but we are up in arms as this, uh, commentary about the 51st state ramps up. We have been the 51st state for a long time. 95% of the people live within an hour of the border because it's like, you know, we're all just putting our hands near the fire, trying to stay warm. The fire is the United States. And you know, you guys, like I say all the time, Phil, America's like the Knicks, you know, I'm not a Knick fan,

but I know that the NBA is better when the Knicks are good and relevant and competent. And that's really how the global order looks to me as well. I can't have like the Amari Stoudemire Knicks. I need like the Ewing Starks Knicks. And I'm getting it now with Trump more than I have in the past. It's good for us. But back to my dinner party thing. When I think about how dinner parties were for me five or six years ago or eight years ago or whatever, I was in a zone alone. I would say something and everyone would look down the table at me with this bizarre look then in 2020, you had kind of this really severe pushback, really severe censorship. And everybody, people who I thought were otherwise bright folks showed me that they didn't understand how to do sort of primary research on things and absorbed and accepted and amplified the messages about censorship. Now, this year, during this election cycle for you guys,

or last year, I guess, at this point, you really saw, I think, for the first time, people who are liberal say, we need a new playbook if we're going to beat this guy because no one believes us anymore, including us. We don't believe that everything he says is Nazi adjacent. We don't believe that everything he says is against blacks, against gays, against Jews, against Hispanics,

against whatever. We just don't believe it. And it seems to me like there's now sort of two streams of reality in my day-to-day life both at work and personally um one where it's the sort of terminally looking at the tv news enjoyer who you know thinks about what maddow says and what scarborough says and is like, yeah, to your point, he gave the salute or whatever. And then there's the people who just go on Twitter and say, yeah, I saw the clip. I looked at the full video. It's not really what everyone is saying. And the problem I think that I have in my day-to-day life, maybe you have the same problem. I am sure people are having this problem besides you and me. There's no way to break that

wall. That wall is not at all porous. This sort of TV enjoyer, news enjoyer versus the online Twitter guy. And I think a lot of people are having a lot of trouble going from one camp to the other. Certainly, I think that the move from the news side to the Twitter side is almost impossible. The friction you experience there, both in your social circles and also just internally going from this guy on TV who I trusted for a decade, this channel I trusted for a decade, now to Twitter and some anon, right? It's a huge jump. And I don't know what the fix is for that, but I think we're kind of heading in that

direction. The Overton window, like you're kind of saying, is switching now, is moving. But we're just not there yet. And I don't know how we're going to get there. And it's important that we get there because a lot of those people on the news side are the seniors, the people who are revered as the storytellers, people passing on knowledge to people who are respected in their families, respected in their communities, respected in their churches, synagogues, mosques, whatever. And like the fact of the matter is they're getting it wrong and we can't afford for them to get it wrong for 30 straight years. And we're on year 10 here. So like, what, what do we do to bring these people into the fold? Because they haven't accepted the messaging yet. They don't seem keen on accepting it now. What, like, how do we fix it? Should I care to fix it? What is the thinking here? I think you're looking at it as you're right and they're wrong. There are people who are getting bad news from people with whatever agendas that are trying to tell them something.

And there's a lot of corruption on that side and a lot of dishonesty on that side, which I agree with. And then there are people that are, you know, kind of doing second order thinking and more research and, you know, real truth seekers. And they're right. I don't think it's as simple as they're wrong and they're right. I think what we have is we have a society where we used to have an accepted, you know, middle and accepted, you know, and there were people on the fringes, but you had, you know, the cop or the fireman that was a Republican that lived next door to the school teacher who was a Democrat. The two of them would they would see each other in the morning and they would say hello and they would shake hands. They would read the same newspaper. Right. And they would have the same. They're coming from the same starting point. Right. And you might veer to the right or veer to the left or have a different set. But they had the same, you know, that everyone would gather together and they would have the same starting point, right?

And, you know, people would have disagreements. There would be, you know, culture wars on little things would pop up here or there, you know, gay marriage or whatever. But now we've got entirely different realities and entirely different worlds that people are living in. Right. There's one where you got, you know, women who think that they're going to be wearing, you know, what's that show with the handmaidens, The Handmaid's Tale. But it's not funny. They really think it. They really believe that there are oppressed. And there's, you know, this coming age of oppression. And, you know, Trump is going to usher in this, you know, you know, whatever, that a lot of fear and there are people, you know, and, and I, I just,

I don't think that we should be so conceited to think that we're right. And we're always going to be right because we can just as easily be misled by the view of the world that we're being presented to. Like, like, you know, what, what's happened, I think over the last 10 years, he kind of referred to this What's happened, I think, over the last 10 years, you kind of refer to this a little bit, but what's happened is we used to be in America and Canada, like when I was a kid, when I grew up, most people went to church. Most people went to church or synagogue or something that had some form of religion. Now, I don't know anybody that goes to church regularly.

Academia was respected. It was respected. Now they've beclogged themselves. I'm not saying they deserve respect, but they're not respected. Politicians are, you know, I think they've always been scumbags, but they've been revealed as such, right? The media trust is, you know, never been lower, right? And there used to be these institutions and these, you know, these parts of society that people, everyone would accept that were, you know, honorable and truthful and had our best intentions in mind. And, you know, the middle, the centrist positions were the default. And you could be a little bit on the extreme one side or the other, but there was a center. Right. And now we don't have it. We don't have there's no trust in the institutions.

There's no trust in there's no there's no you know, I mean, what religion gives you for better or worse, what religion gives you is an objective set of permanent morality and permanent rules about what is and what is not outside the bounds. So you're not saying like, hey, you know, I've decided that that, you know, I want to be inclusive to gay people, which obviously everyone should be. And then you decide, well, you know what, the next step, I want to be inclusive to trans people, which of course everyone should be. And the next step, you've got women in California that are saying their four-year-olds should go undergo permanent gender surgery, which is complete madness, right? But things always go too far in whatever direction. And what religion gives you is it gives you that like stable, like unmoving, like permanent morality, right? And again, you can go off of that

or you can try different sects or different versions of it, but you have at least this base. You're tethered to some objective morality. And with government institutions and academia and all these things, we've lost all of that. So we are now, as a people, we're completely untethered. Everyone's floating around like a balloon

trying to latch onto something as like, this is my truth. This is my ethos. This is what I believe. And I think that it's very dangerous for people like you and me who, you know, we consider ourselves thinking people and, you know, we're the truth seekers and we're right. And all these other people are, you know, they're all like completely in a stupor and they're being brainwashed by matter or whatever.

But we know what's really going on. I think we are just as susceptible as they are to becoming ourselves misled and brainwashed. We don't know. I know the world around me and I'm so certain that the truth that I see is the truth, but it might not be right. I might be, you know, operating on a completely, you know, fake set of reality too. Okay. This is good. We're, we are doing the cosmic thing that you wanted to do. So the religion, the religion as a tether is interesting. I hadn't considered that I was raised Roman Catholic and I don't consider myself to be religious the same way I do that. I can, you know, the same way that I might consider myself to be spiritual. I think about some of these things some of the time, and I think it's a product of age

and maturity more than anything else. This admission that the things you thought you knew, you almost certainly don't. And the things that you don't know are very important, it turns out, in the grand scheme. And so when I think about that tether, I think you're right. I think there's a really good, a really good middle ground or a really solid middle ground, an important one in modern society, especially as we are subjected to these technologies that are almost intended to drag us off center. They're almost intended to knock us off balance because someone who's off balance engages more is upset and angry and happy and thrilled

more consumes more is more impulsive and responsive to the things that you know modern societies demand of them both on the cultural side and on the economic side and this lack of religion is for sure contributing to these things is it fair to say then that uh you know as a we become a secular society for sure over the last you know 30 40 years is is there value to reintroducing religion in the in the way that maybe both of us were raised around it or is there like a new religion that needs to take place what's replaced it you know in the meantime i think what's replaced it is basically this, this consumption impulse. It feels like to me, everything I do now is based on, can someone get an ad in front of me,

whether it's me driving or me on my phone or me watching TV or me walking my dog, like, or listening to a podcast. I mean, I do ads at the beginning of the show. Everything is based on consumption. And I think it feels like that's a new religion. And so the center now is really, can we get this guy to be a solid, you know, repeat consumer, uh, in a way that before maybe we just wanted to go to church and give an envelope. Yeah. I, I, I mean, I, I don't know, look, I myself, I'm not religious. I grew up religious and I'm not religious. So, you know, it's not, I'm not trying to like prophesize and say, oh, you know, everyone needs to find God and get into church or get into a synagogue. I'm not saying that. But but the happiest people that I know are religious.

It just so happens. And the most and the best people, the best people that I know are religious people. Now, that not in all cases, of course, on both sides are some great people who aren't, but I mean, you know, take that for what it's worth. And, and, um, you know, it's not just religion. It's the family unit. Right. I believe very strongly in family. I myself, I'm happier. I got, you know, remarried him in an amazing, you know, relationship marriage and, and, and happy makes me happy. Um, you know, it feels like for people on audio's looking at something off the camera.

I'm guessing it's his wife, but I don't know. We're going to find out sometime here. But there are all these studies showing people are getting married later. They're getting married less frequently. They're having less kids. They're spending less time with friends. Spending less time with friends. And these are the things that life is know, this is what life is for,

right? These are the moments that we live for, right? And we're losing it. We're losing so many things that are so critical. And, you know, I'm starting to come to this idea that technology is like the anti-spirituality, you know? It's like, there's no, I'm addicted to Twitter. I'm on Twitter all the time. I'm reading it and getting all upset about something, you know, different things. I read, you know, read about baseball, read about the Detroit Lions. I read about, you know, comedians. I read about finance all the time. Get sucked into politics. I try to get myself out of it. I get sucked back in. I love Twitter. I'm a little ADD and there's some brilliant people on there, funny people. Oh, here's an idea. Here's an idea. Here's an idea. But it doesn't make me happy. I don't feel happy. I feel happy after I spend take my kids somewhere and come back and spend a day with them.

Then I feel happy. I don't feel happy when I put down my phone after scrolling for an hour. Right. And it's like we're losing, you know, so much so much connectivity of people. You know, you know, when I feel happy, they together with a couple, a couple of old friends for lunch, right. Or over beers, right. That's, you know, you feel it, you feel in your soul, right. Have a few laughs, right. That's, that's what we're here for. And, um, you know, by every metric we're, we're doing less of that as people, there's less community, there's less connections. And, um, so I don't know. I mean, I mean, it all connects, right? This is all like, you know,

everyone can feel that there's a very, there's a lot of dissatisfaction out there. There's a lot of angst, you know, and there's a lot of, not a lot of fulfillment, you know. I mean, it's everywhere. It's in markets. It's in markets.

I can show it to you in the way that, you know, the Trump coin trades versus the way a mid-cap value stock will trade and i can draw a direct line to that you know people talk about the financial nihilism and all that it's true it's there it's there i'd rather you know buy an out of the money call option on a coin and you know probably lose a thousand dollars but maybe i make a hundred thousand dollars. And I'd rather do that than grind away at, at, at, uh, you know, uh, 1% alpha over what the market gives me because I just don't give a fuck. Right. Like, like there, there's no middle class. I, you know, people are, they're graduating from college with, you know, so much student debt and, and, you know, the cost of living is spiking and it's just harder and harder. And I can't even, I can't even pay off my house. I can't even pay off my student loans until I've been working for 20 years. So what's even the point if I'm going to

level up, right? It used to be, we had the American dream, right? I'm from Canada. I don't know if you guys talk about it. Yeah, listen, we're looking at your dream, not our own. You know, it used to be like, look, I know that if I do the things I'm supposed to do, I'd study hard, right? All my friends are going out in high school. I'm staying in. I'm going to study for the SATs. I'm going to go to college. I'm going to do a serious major. I'm not going to major in poetry, which I love. I'm going to major in pre-med or finance or whatever. I'm going to get the job. I'm going to say the right thing. I'm going to shine my shoes. I'm going to show off. I'm going to work hard for 20 years. I'm going to get a gold watch. I'm going to get a defined benefit or retirement plan, and I'm going to have a nice

life. I can retire and I know. And that is not true anymore. Right. I don't know. And now I do all the right things. I go to school. I don't know if I'm going to have the job. If I have the job, I don't know if I'm going to be able to catch up. Right. I don't know if I'm going to be able to buy these assets that have been overbidden. You know, I can't save money. Right. You can't save money now with the money printing what it is. So I have to put the money in the casino, right? So now I'm buying overpriced stocks, hoping for a return after the boomers have bid it up all the way.

Like there's nowhere to go, right? You're just, you know, chasing momentum. I mean, it's very hopeless. You can see the hopelessness in the markets too, if you look at it that way. And I think it all connects, you know, it all connects. And, and again, I don't, you know, this isn't like doom and gloom, you know, the pendulum swings back, like we were talking about, about, you know, free speech and, you know, being able to say things that previously were socially unacceptable, the pendulum swings back and the pendulum will swing back and things are, you know,

are going to self-correct. You know, we as humans have an ability to self-correct over time and we tend to. But, you know, we're definitely going through some things that are, I think, very hard to articulate, but that everyone can sense and feel. And, you know, it just, it impacts every part of our lives. I love this idea that you just, you know, mentioned about the 1% alpha grind. I think about when you say that, you say it in terms of markets, but when you think about the things that are most meaningful in your life, again, I'm a new father, so this is really fresh and in front of me now in a major way. It feels to me like raising children is 1% alpha type stuff. You know, like it is a slow 20 year, 30 year grind where you're trying to give all the best knowledge you can, trying to avoid all your

worst impulses along the way and try not to laugh too much when your kid does something, you know, damn well, you would have done too. And try and tell them that you wouldn't have done it. You know what I mean? Like I know my father and I, especially over the last 10 or so years, you know, the relationship changes as you get older. And I hear from him all the time that there's things that, you know, he's tried to tell me when I was 17 and 22 and 24. And just like, I just didn't get the message. And he struggled with it, not only because I didn't get the message, but because he knew that he wouldn't get the message either. And that's really a 1% alpha type engagement with your child or with your wife or whatever. There's ups and downs and it's never

just straight up and to the right. And I think you're right about that. I wonder, I haven't asked you about Bitcoin. I think this is a good time to do it because you mentioned financial nihilism. I think a lot of people in TradFi, not that you're one of these guys who thinks this, but I think a lot of people look at Bitcoin and think this is a sign that hope has eroded for a huge swath of people. I think there's other signs that are more obvious. One big one for me that is almost never discussed in terms of the admission that the American dream, Canadian dream, whatever is out of reach. One of them is fractional shares.

And people don't talk about this in this regard, but the idea that you have to fractionalize a $200 stock because people can't afford it. I can only buy $2 at a time, $5 at a time, whatever. The idea that that exists is not something that's like for the people, by the people. We put in this request that Wealthsimple or Questrade or TD or whatever, and they finally listened to us. We can buy fractional shares now. No, man. The problem is that they want those flows to continue and you are fucking broke. And the only way that you'll give them the money is if you can give it to them a toonie at a time. Toonie, by the way, for the American listeners. I don't know. I think that's cynical. I think that's cynical. It might be cynical it might be cynical phil but like what other what other rationale is

there if everyone had 200 tell it yeah i'll tell you on that one but then we'll get back to bitcoin but but i'm an advisor with with 3 000 i've got i'm gonna talk about 3 000 accounts i want to do a rebalance i want to whack this position back to three percent or you know ran up to three and a half percent the fractional shares will help me, especially for the smaller accounts, get a more precise allocation. But, I mean, there is a lot of that, too. And there is a lot, I mean, you know, kind of started with Berkshire, which, you know, they refused to split. And then, you know, it got to that point where you needed the fractional shares. What is Berkshire A worth right now?

Is it like 50, 60 grand? What is it worth? It's worth quite a bit. Yeah, more than I can afford. Yeah. Bitcoin is so interesting and it's taken up so much of the zeitgeist. And I think it's good. I think it's been really a driver of the conversation.

For me personally, and I probably see this differently than you and probably different in most of your audience, but I separate it to two things. There's the philosophy of Bitcoin and there's the trade of Bitcoin. The philosophy, when you talk about like decentralization, you know, fixed supply, you know, we're going to take the money back from the central bankers and give it back to people. I mean, those are things that I don't see how you could be against if you're a thinking person. I mean, those are things that are so critical. And, you know, I'm an Austrian school economist and the Bitcoin crowd has done such a good job of, you know, I mean, these things, nobody talked about these things 10 years ago. And, you know, they've become, I think it's critically important. And, you know, the idea that Bitcoin will become, you know, a currency, it was like so far fetched to me.

It was so great. And it's like, it's still a little far, but it's getting there. It's getting a little closer. And just the progress that people have made by being steadfast and like not wavering and, you know, it's been incredible. The trade of Bitcoin is very different. The trade of Bitcoin to me is more of a short term thing. Like you've got to fix supply. So what's the demand going to be? Right. And can you speculate on, you know, short term demand?

You know, Bitcoin is worth a dollar. It's worth a trillion dollars. There's no tether to any value. And it's about narratives and flows and demand. And that's a trade. So to me, that's more of a, you could be a trend follower, you try to project, you say, oh, if we hit a liquidity crunch, it might be the first thing to go from portfolios, it might not. You know, certainly the Bitcoin crowd has proven super resilient. And, you know, like, you know, there are people that will not sell for the rest of their lives. There's a lot, I know a lot of those people. So, you know, that gives you a floor. But, you know, to me, it's like the trade, when I think about trades, I think about, you know, look, I think about everything

I do in finance. And, you know, I've been able for a lot of about trades, I think about, you know, look, I think about everything I do in finance and, you know, I've been able for a lot of my career, I've been able to, um, um, to, uh, not give into the impulses of selling people shit that would make me a lot of money, but lose them a lot of money. And I, you know, I've been able to kind of keep the high ground, at least in my life and keep, you know, stay on my high horse that I'm anything I'm selling. I would sell to my mother. I would sell to a widow or orphan I believe in. And I'm doing it for the right reason.

And I think there's a lot of people in crypto that that do not think that way. Right. That that are, you know, trying to kind of grab grab a payday for themselves and want other people to buy their bags. And there's a lot of purists. And it's like, you've got like almost this barbell approach of people that are like in it forever for the right reasons, because they believe in the economic theory of it, which I do too. And then there are people that are in it to make a quick buck and to try to get babysitters to part with their money to buy their bags. I mean, like, I mean, you know, literally the lowest common denominator. And it's, it's really a shame that the people who are the purists have had their reputation so badly tarnished by, I mean, not just, not just those low level Trump, but even like, hi, you know, I mean, you talk about Sandbag Refreiter, you know, Michael Saylor, I put

in that group too. And I know that might be controversial, but I do. Oh my, listen, Phil, I actually am not a big sailor fan myself. I think that he's he's I don't want to say that he's a con man, but certainly there is something going on with the messaging. And, you know, as someone who does a podcast, you can appreciate this. I hear that guy shows all the time. He's the only guy talking. It's a monologue that he's obviously used a platform to share. It's a message he wants to get out there. And the message is never that there is risk in Bitcoin. The message is always, there's no risk. We need to buy 10 trillion as a nation and demonetize gold.

I don't like that kind of messaging at all, at all. Yeah, you know, so again, to bring it back to QTR, because he's just one of my favorite people in the world, you know, he was very anti-Bitcoin for a long time, real gold bug, and he kind of turned. And, you know, I was talking to him about it and thinking about it, and like, that was right around the time, like it was just before the Black've been told, the whole point is to be outside the financial system. And now I got all these people cheering on, you know, cheering on Larry Fink, you know, talking about the Fed or the Treasury rather buying Bitcoin as a reserve. And it's like, you know, you got in the ETF space is like a game of hungry hippos. Everyone's trying to like grab like, you know, some sort of market share and monetize it themselves. You know, Ben Hunt is talking about the Bitcoin TM. And you see Wall Street trying to, you know, package it and label it and, you know, sell it on.

They live on two and ten, Phil, you know. It's not it's not what it was. Right. It's not what it was. And look, the asset never changed. Right. The asset is an asset. It's just a code. Right. But it's you know, it's every good idea is going to get perverted. I mean, look, when I was a freshman in college, I thought I was a big hippie. And I go to San Francisco, and I see a gap on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, right? Like, every good thing eventually becomes, in a capitalist society, either monetized or otherwise perverted.

And that doesn't mean that Bitcoin has, but it is certainly at risk of such. And I think the Bitcoin crowd, I think would be a lot better served calling out the likes of BlackRock trying to monetize Bitcoin than they were being so happy that BlackRock was buying their bags and pushing the price up temporarily. I watched, I think it's your pin tweet, the message you had for the SEC on basically the push. I'll use my own words. I won't use yours. I think it was the idea that speculative assets are being pushed on the public in a way that we've never seen before. And meanwhile, reputable, sort of by design, reputable advisors and lettered professionals are forced to mince their words and add disclaimers and you know have fine print on everything they say produce rights

you know uh record and you know you made a good point in that clip about you know fart coin and it's it's true you know when i think about bitcoin and I think about the Larry Finks and the recent, I say recent, it's about a year ago now, I guess, the ETF adoption and approval and all these things. A lot of people still look at that space and they think, like you said, about SBF, about Farcoin, these meme coins, Hoctua coin and and countless, truly innumerable scams at this point. We're talking in the hundreds of thousands of tokens that have been spun up, code copied, and rug pulled. Just incredible amounts of wealth gained and lost on stuff that never had any intrinsic value by any measure. We can disagree or agree, I think, in a sort of broader finance space. This happens all the time about the intrinsic value of Bitcoin, but no one disagrees on the intrinsic value of Hawk2A coin

or Fartcoin or Dogecoin, all these things. And I wonder, you know, when we look back on this craze and we look back on the Trump administration, that's a quote-unquote friendly group toward crypto, friendly group toward Bitcoin. As a Bitcoiner and the rest of the Bitcoin sort of his inauguration, to the tune of, I think, the numbers, it's in the tens of billions now that he's either holding or has sold. Was this good for Bitcoin or not? Was this good for the group of people who, as you mentioned, had a consistent and hard fought struggle to go from magic internet money to at least, you know, the least generous interpretation is quasi legitimate financial asset now. Like we fucking Peter Pan this thing, Phil, okay? Like we imagined the buffet until the food fucking showed

up. You know, like we did that. And do we really want to say that down the road yeah we supported trump and we hope for the strategic bitcoin reserve very hot topic in bitcoin at the cost of all this other shit just going bananas for four years everyone issuing a token everyone getting rich i don't know that we will but i'd be curious you know like as someone who's it sounds like an outside observer where do you come down all this like is this something that you think is good for bitcoin doesn't sound like it and it doesn't sound like uh a lot of your peers have that feeling either yeah i mean i don't know look i'm not like uh you know i was reading an article by vicky wong in wall street journal about you know the trump uh meme coin you know that came out and how crypto is is you know, they're trying,

people are not like saying they don't want to bash Trump and everything for everything he's doing and done for them. But, you know, they definitely want distance from it. And I could see why. I don't know, man. I mean, look, you know, Bitcoin survived Mt. Gox. It survived, you know, FTX. It survived so many things. I don't know. I mean, it's it's it's definitely look, people who are in traditional finance are going to lump, you know, Melania coin and Haku a coin and all these things are going to lump it all in together with Bitcoin. And people who are Bitcoin purists are going to say, you know, look, we got nothing to do with that, you know. But but that's that's that's always how it is. Look, you go to we were talking about football before. I'm a big Detroit Lions fan. There were players at

the Detroit Lions stadium that were harassing the wives of one of the Minnesota Viking games at the game. There's always people that are going to represent you and what you're doing poorly, and it's going to happen in an asset class where you're not even signing a contract. Anyone could say, I could say I'm a Bitcoiner and now I'm a Bitcoiner. And then I could say, hey, you know, I love Keynesian economics. I love Ben Bernanke. You know, it's like, oh, Bitcoin people. I mean, you know, there's no like consensus.

There's a bunch of individuals who have their own opinion, their own thing. And people are going to do different things and they're going to scam each other. And they're going to, you know, they're going to do all the things that people do. They're going to get greedy. They're going to rug pull.

They're going to do all these things. There's nothing that like Bitcoin, you know, ink can do about it, right? I mean, it's, you know, this is just human nature. This is what's going to rug pull, they're going to do all these things. There's nothing that like Bitcoin Inc can do about it. This is just human nature, this is what's going to be. I think what the people who do have an audience and a megaphone within that community, I think what they would, in my humble opinion, which is worth very little,

but in my humble, what they would be best sure of doing is distance themselves from this idea that you need the US government to buy a Bitcoin reserve. I mean, that is like the antithesis of what it's about, or that you need to put it into an ETF and put it with the DTC and through the SEC and on those traditional guardrails and sell it. That is, I mean, the whole point is to be outside the system and to be among peer you know, peer-to-peer transactions. So, you know, that's just my opinion. But, you know, I don't know. I mean, what do you think?

Do you think Bitcoin is outside money? Well, is it used as such? Yeah, I mean, I think so. I said this on the show the other night that I'm trying to get a bathroom redone. And one of the things that's going to happen, I think, as a sort of natural driver of this thing becoming legitimate outside money and usable as money is that the Bitcoiners are all going to suddenly have 500 grand in Bitcoin and their wives are going to want bathrooms redone. I'm going through that right now.

I know we just moved last year. My wife wants a bathroom redone. I don't want to take it against my house. I don't want to use my TFSA, like my 401k equivalent. And so I'm going to try and pay in Bitcoin. And someone somewhere will say like, yeah, I'll take your $20,000 in Bitcoin for your bathroom. And that's it. But if you thought Bitcoin was going to double in value over the next year, why would you pay in Bitcoin and not in Bitcoin? I totally agree. This is the, there's a name for this in Austrian economics, that good money is held and bad

money is spent. I forget what it is now, but it doesn't matter. I think you're right. And I think that there's a lot of Bitcoiners who... I've been in Bitcoin a long time. And so I'm not worried about spending a little bit of Bitcoin to push this thing forward. Because introducing someone who's a skilled tradesman to the idea of hard money through a bathroom reno, I think that's worth dropping 20,000 in Bitcoin on. But to your point, yeah, there are a lot of people who would agree with you. And actually, I do think the same thing.

Like, you know, if it's worth a dollar, it's worth a million dollars. And for all the things the sailor gets wrong, he's right. It's either going to zero or there's no ceiling on this thing. And so, yeah, will I regret it or have to, again, pour another glass of red wine in 20 years about the $20,000 bathroom that's now worth a small island? Maybe. I don't know.

But at some point, it's the job of the graybeards that are around in Bitcoin who are willing to be public, who are willing to spend it to do that and push this thing forward. Because once you have ETFs, once you have governments, once you have banks, once you have all these things, the dominoes are falling in our favor now. And so what responsibility do I have as a Bitcoiner? I think the responsibility that I have is to make it something that's prominent in my community. And what better way to do it? It's a trade. You don't have any responsibility. You don't have any responsibility. It's a trade. You don't have any responsibility.

You don't have any responsibility. I think I do a little bit, though. If you buy a muni bond or if you buy a mid-cap stock, you don't have any responsibility to the mid-cap community or the muni bond community. No, certainly not. No, your responsibility is to buy it when it's time to buy it and to sell it when it's time to sell it and to trade your account the way you are. You know, you don't take that burden. That's not your burden. and to sell it when it's time to sell it and to trade your account the way you are. You know, you don't take that burden. That's not your burden.

I think it's at least a little bit, the thinking and the attitude, the hive mind in Bitcoin is a little bit different. And there's things I like about it and things I don't like about it. But this thing I like. I like the idea that I can go somewhere and say to the bartender, the waitress, the whoever, I'm willing to double your tip if you take it in Bitcoin. If you can figure out the Bitcoin wall thing, I'll double the tip. If you can figure out the Bitcoin wall thing, I'll pay you for the bathroom. And there's something to that because the intrinsic properties of Bitcoin as an asset, I think, are superior to cash.

I mean, that's a low bar. I think there's a lot of things that are superior to cash, and I don't think there's much doubt about that in Bitcoin or TradFi. But it's the hump of something like custody, the hump of something like wallets and all these things that are difficult. There's no solid UI on a phone, for example, for someone who's never dealt with Bitcoin before to deal with it for the first time. You know this. I think a lot of people know this. And Bitcoiners who deny this, they're not being realistic about what the average person, and sometimes we're talking about the bottom quintile. We want to involve everyone in this economy, in this movement, then we have to do it in a way that makes sense. And I think

the tradespeople is a good one to do, or a good start. And there's others as well. But as far as responsibility, yeah, I feel like there is a little bit in Bitcoin. The Munibond community is not as, you know, it's not as, you know, rabid as the Bitcoin community. I think we would agree on that. I mean, look, you know, look, let's say this about Bitcoiners, right? They as the Bitcoin community. I think we would agree on that. I mean, look, you know, look, let's say this about Bitcoiners, right? They are the cool people.

There's no one else in finance that you want to have a drink with besides the Bitcoiners, right? And they're fun. Imagine how boring markets would have been over the last few years if we didn't have the Bitcoiners. Imagine how boring it would have been. I mean, we're talking,

oh, you know, the way I calculate EBITDA. I mean, it's the worst. It's the worst. It's the worst. It's so boring. And, you know, the way I calculate EBITDA, I mean, it's the worst. It's the worst. I'm so bored. And, you know, Bitcoiners came in with their, you know, pit-that suits and throwing the tables over and having a good time. And it's been fun. It's been a blessing.

I really enjoy, you know, the content and the people. And like I said, you know, I think I'm very aligned philosophically. But I'm very, you know, I'm a little bit of a pearl collector when it comes to the trade. I don't think people should be over-allocated. I think a lot of people are kind of blindly, oh, you know, Saylor says go to a million or whoever. I have a huge agree here. And that's it. That's how I see it.

I think you're right. You've been a great first-time guest. I'm going to ask you one more question since I have two sips of this wine left. I've been doing this with guests recently, and I don't tell them to do it before. But again, since I am a new father, you have a small stable of children now. You could probably raise a barn i think it sounds like so uh what advice would you give to new parents who are raising their kids in i think what are truly unprecedented times i'll give a bit of background i went to teacher's college years ago never ended up becoming a teacher um for

reasons that i think are they're obvious to anybody who watches this show, but I think even after an hour with you, they're probably obvious to you too. I worry about the institutions that you mentioned earlier have lost trust, rightfully so, have lost legitimacy, rightfully so, and handing children off to them. I worry about things that were guarantees years ago. Again, things that you mentioned, like a university education leading to a good job, a good career, and a nice life. And I wonder, for a guy like you who seems to have his ear to the pavement, what advice would you give new fathers? A lot of Bitcoiners feel, by the way, $100,000 Bitcoin means you can get a girlfriend for the first time. So these guys are all on the same path, buddy. We got to give them advice. What would you tell them? Just meet them where they

are. Each one's different. I've got three kids. They're completely, each one is completely different than the other two. They're all amazing in their own ways. They're, you know, different passions, different things. And, you know, like you talked about earlier, you said how, you know, your father would tell you things or give you advice and you kind of weren't ready to hear it. And you're going to have a lot of that, right? There's a lot of things you're trying to, you know, tell them some big moments, some deep thing and explain. And, you know, they're not ready, you know, or to hear it and you're gonna have a lot of that right there's a lot of things you're trying to you know tell them some big moments some deep thing and explain and you know they're not ready you know or they hear it maybe sometimes they hear it they go back and they they kind of

replay it and it means something but you know you don't control that you don't control who they are some are going to be a pain in the ass some are going to be wonderful some are going to be somewhere in between you know even the pants in the ass are fun too you know they have their moments but um you know you have a vision in your head for what you want them to be. And that's, it's just not, you know, they are who they are. They're going to be who they are. And they're going to be ready to hear lessons from you and learn from you when they're ready, which is probably going to be a long time. So just enjoy the ride. Don't take it too serious. They're fun, have fun. And, uh, you know, they, they, they're lucky they got a good dad.

Hey, I appreciate that. Tell people where they can find out more about you and tell them where you will soon be releasing yet another episode of your podcast as well, as you promised earlier. The best place probably Substack, it's Phil Bach or Bachstack, B-A-K. On Substack, Twitter is Philbach1.

And again, that's B-A-K for the last name. Companies, Armada ETFs. We've got a couple of ETFs that in the real estate sector, we're doing some more stuff to bring private real estate, bring some more liquidity to private real estate. Yeah, this is fun, man. I appreciate this. Anytime. I'm happy to come back. Outstanding.

Thanks for listening, everyone. Take care.