The Wolf Of All Streets - Announcement: New Hampshire Strategic Bitcoin Reserve | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

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Good morning, everybody, and happy Friday. Heading into the weekend here, we've had another day of volatile price action with Bitcoin. We'll get the conversation about that out of the way to sort of start the show. Obviously, trading right now at $92,680, roughly. But just hours ago, it was trading above $95,264. A lot of optimism that there was a reversal underway, how quickly price action can change things. But I think today, it's one of those moments where there's an obvious story as to why we saw a drawdown. And that's obviously, I think think the job numbers that we saw today jobs smashed well okay

first of all i should give the caveat that uh i don't believe job numbers because they revise them down when nobody's looking every single month and uh it's just very hard to uh trust the data but of course jobs beat and unemployment was down 4.2 percent to 4.1% over 200,000 jobs created when it was supposed to be mid-100,000. So you would think that in the real world, that if more people had jobs and unemployment was down, that would be good news, right? But since we live in the stranger things upside down, when jobs are strong and unemployment is down, it means that the Fed is less likely to cut rates, which means stocks go down and interest rates go up. So just a reminder that for rates to go down, you have to basically want people to lose their jobs. So the real world economy and

what's happening in the country versus the stock market itself, there's a major disconnect there. And I think Bitcoin, obviously, right now trading kind of in lockstep with with that news. I mean, Dave, is that is that how you would view what's been happening this morning and sort of the volatility that we've had? I mean, yeah, I mean, we always talk about this. And it's, you know, the Russell is down 2.2%, the Nasdaq is down 2%. People sell what they can sell. They don't sell what they want to sell. Whenever you get days now, 2% for Bitcoin doesn't mean anything.

I mean, we don't care, right? You know, but for equities, a 2% move is significant. And it causes all sorts of trading desk huddles where people say, OK, let's lighten up exposure. Let's do this. Let's do that. Let's make sure we're liquid in case things go bad. There's an institutional memory that people probably don't know here. So let me share a story from the distant past that is relevant. So everybody on Wall Street remembers that Black Monday happened. Right? You know, anyone who knows Black Monday was the crash of 87. The crash of 87 was an

absolute free fall in the market. But the mirror to that was there was a significant down day. There was a bad week before it and the Friday before was bad. So every time you have what looks to be a bad Friday, managers and risk managers throughout, you know, whether it's buy side or sell side wants to lighten up going into the weekend. And so it is the correlation tends to be stronger on Fridays and down moves and it would be otherwise for that reason. So it's not remotely surprising that that being said, we're in the same range we were the last time we talked about it. I mean, you know, I don't know how many

times on this show, I have to be a broken record and say, you know, 92 to 103, or 102 is a range. And until we break that range, you know, just chill. And, you know, if you're a long term investor, if you're a trader, take advantage of it and trade the volatility. And guess what? Traders are having a great freaking week. And investors, if they're not over leveraged, are probably pretty happy. Yeah, I totally agree. And that aligns very well with what I'm thinking here. Andrew, what are you thinking about sort of the price action here and this disconnect? Obviously, I mean, the Fed has continued to has

cut rates up until now at this point, they'll probably pause, but, uh, we have yields flying. Not mortgages shouldn't be at a multi-year high, uh, when the Fed has started their cutting cycle. Yeah, there's some, there's some wonky stuff going on economically. I agree with you on the jobs numbers for the last nearly three years. Every jobs number has been revised lower or worse than the initial number that came out on the tape. So it should be expected that people don't look at those numbers in a meaningful way. At the same time, though, you know, I'm reminded of all of the commentary, all of the spaces, all of the, you know, angst around levels like 58K. You know, we bumped around in the mid-50s for a couple of months, couldn't get above 60. Everybody was frustrated. That was a lot of percentages to go. So we're at the 93-ish level and in the 90s,

and the same frustrations bubble up, and how and why or what and what's next. The same conversations from in the 50s. Oh, by the way, if you've been around long enough, the same conversations happened. Like, why can't we get above 10K? Same conversations happen. Why can't we get above 20K? So these just recycled gnashing of teeth associated with Bitcoin price. But the overall narratives haven't changed. What are we 10 days away from the inauguration of an entirely new political regime that for all intents and purposes, every economic appointee that matters is pro-Bitcoin, is pro-innovation. And that's going to be substantial short-term, mid-term, and long-term. And so, you know, it's the old saying, you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve. And so, you know, all the commentary around where do we go from here in 2025

I think is higher you know forget about the short-term you know machinations on a daily basis those are going to occur and you know we'll get a chorus of folks that are either annoyed by or are reply guy trolls associated with you you know, it's not at 94, like you said, six hours ago, it's now at 92. It's all stupidity because it existed at 58 or 59k or 57k. We're going to go higher in 2025. And I think part of that will be whatever announcement is coming on this show today. These are the kind of announcements that are going to happen more often throughout 2025 and frankly, throughout Trump's term at large. Donish.

Go ahead, Donish. My voice cracked like a teenager there. Go ahead. Audio good? I don't know if I was having trouble getting off the mute too. So it's okay. It just accentuated. Thank you. Thank you for making it as awkward as possible for me. I appreciate that.

That's right. I was going to say what we're seeing is incredibly bullish for Bitcoin right now. It's like crazy bullish for Bitcoin. This is people that know me know that I'm not. The reason why I invested in Bitcoin is a lot less of that like underlying faith, belief, all of that stuff that, you know, like the like Bitcoin and the Lord himself. It's not any of that stuff. It was when Scott sat me down and said, hey, look at the Sharpe ratio. Look at the growth. Nothing works both like this. What is happening in the last 12 months? Sharpe ratio has been rising again. We are uncoupling. And today, the Dow is down six,

or at least looks to be down 600 points. How is Bitcoin doing? We are seeing the uncoupling. This is incredibly important for people to see this. I think you'll be incredibly bullish for Bitcoin. I know Bitcoin sometimes leads the markets, but looking at it as just a risk on asset is completely missing the point. There's something really exciting and important happening. And I think we need to recognize and say, hold on, it is actually acting like a store of value. And if I'm a pension fund, I'm sitting there saying, huh, this is an interesting, different behavior. As far as this, I just had to say that, Scott, just because I think people, when the markets

are going up and Bitcoin is going up, people get really excited. They start acting like, oh, it's just a risk on asset. What is it doing today? Well, the entire market is selling off like it has never has. And the Sharpe ratio is rising in real time. And I think it's incredibly important to see. If you don't see what I see, go look at the charts. I'm not a chartist, but I do understand basic fundamental stuff. And if you go off just first principles, not just anecdotes, but look at the data at large, at a very long timescale, you will see how it does decouple

from the markets. And I think that's incredibly bullish right now. Number two, I have been shouting inflation for months. I think people, everybody here knows I've been really worried about inflation. The problem has never been that we were going to see a collapse in the markets. That was all bullshit. Yes, it was happening outside the US at some level, but the US economy has been running hot. GDP numbers, CPI turning again, turning positive again on a six-month moving average. Now, with jobs coming in higher than expected,

Andrew is right. They had to do downward revisions, but you know, Andrew, weirdly, they have to do one upward revision, which they haven't done in a long time. This last, this one, there was a downward revision from the previous month, but the month before they actually did an upward revision,

which is very unusual for them. And so there is, I think they're going to let it play out because it's not their game anymore. The administrative state's going to say, hey, we're going to let the numbers run out. And my supposition, and again, people that know me know I'm not like a big Trump fan at all, but I think they're setting him up to fail in many ways because he will have very few instruments because we've already seen price rise, inflation peak. Now they started cutting with a 50. If people remember when they did the 50 basis points, I nearly had a meltdown or kind of

did have a meltdown. I was like, what are they doing? This is incredibly dangerous. What are we doing? Because structurally, everything, the biggest structural thing, the two biggest structural things that you cannot mess with easily that take time are employment, real estate. Those two always take longer than people think, unless you have like a pandemic or something like that.

And unemployment hasn't really budged. And now we saw unemployment go down to 4.1% again. This is not made up data. I think they're setting him up to fail. I think this has a lot to do with the tariffs because it does hurt a lot of companies to have to now not import from outside the US. If we see inflation rise back up to 5%, 6%,

the tariffs don't come. He is stuck between a rock and a hard place where he doesn't have monetary policy to help him. Because again, don't listen to the super duper Trumpers. Tariffs are going to be inflationary. Like we have years and decades of experience with that. So I'm not worried about that. We know tariffs are going to be inflationary. The question really becomes, is the dollar rising alongside?

By the way, dollar is not just rising because of the trade deficits and so on. It's literally rising because everybody's expecting the economy to be stronger. Yields are rising. And now the job data continues to come in and unemployment is still unshaken. We are proper screwed right now. The economy is running too hot and we are out of options. And I think it's incredibly worrisome. There is a real risk to us seeing 8%, 9%, 10% inflation again in the next 12 to 24 months.

And I think we need to have a real conversation around it. And the answer is actually Bitcoin. Go ahead, Bill. Hey, good morning. So maybe slightly different perspective. I think that the biggest challenge right now is how to get treasury rates down, knowing that they've got to refinance seven to 10 trillion in the next few months. And clearly lowering Fed rates is not going to accomplish that. It's had the opposite effect. And I don't think it's necessarily purely inflation driven. I think it's partially driven by the fact that no one is going to want to buy the debt when we start to refinance. And I think that the Fed now accepts the fact that the only way they're going to be able to prick the 30 year bubble is via quantitative easing. And so our take is that we're going to start to see, and I thought this was true last week after 300,000 people were displaced in L.A. this week.

I think you're going to basically start to see significant reversal of the Fed's stance on securities purchases where they're going to do an about face on QT to QE relatively quickly. And while I agree with Danish that this is, sorry if I'm saying your name wrong, if this is bullish for Bitcoin, I think it's bullish for Bitcoin because we're going to see COVID-like program of the Fed buying their own product, which in other words means they're going to start buying bonds because it's the only way they're going to be able to get long-term rates down anytime soon. But Bill, wouldn't that be incredibly inflationary? It probably would be, but that concern is about to go out. Well, okay. You're talking about the United States government. We're not talking about sane people. We're talking about people who are willing to make up any number they need to, to support their cause, right? If you believe that these,

that these, you know, nonfarm payroll numbers are true, after what we've seen for the last two years in constant revisions downward, then you're nuts, right? So my take is, is they will say whatever they have to say, do whatever they have to do to get treasury rates quickly down to 3.5%. And by quickly, I mean within 6 to 12 months. And yes, that will be long-term inflationary. But there is no way – you have to pick your poison at this point, right? I have a question. It's not just the payroll data, right?

It's the GDP data. We saw CPI turn as well, even ADP data. I mean, there is with you. But I also think that that is going to be trumped by this idea that if they don't get this, these treasury rates down, that it is basically going to cause, you know, a dramatic, dramatic slump in the stocks? And what does Trump, how does Trump define success? Right? Trump defines success based upon the Dow and the S&P 500. And now probably secondarily Bitcoin because of a lot of Bitcoin at 150 in the first 100 days. Exactly. So so if that doesn't happen, he is going to pull out all the stops and you are going to see him throw the Fed under the bus. Right. Very, very quickly and call for Powell's head on a stake.

And so I think that what you're going to see is the Fed basically saying, OK, fine, target inflation right now because of where treasuries are and home prices and the number of people displaced has to be between three and four percent. And so quantitative easing is the only way to achieve that. Right. Other than starting to convince China and Japan to buy our debt again, which I don't think is going to happen anytime soon. So while we may not like it, while we may fear the inflation and I do right. I mean, I think I think the inflation is inevitable as we weaponize the debt and realize that unless we start to balance our budget, a la Argentina, which I'm hopeful might happen over the next eight years under under like, you know, part two of of Trump Vance, if Vance wins again, which is how long it would take to get to a balanced budget in this country. I think you're going to basically see further weaponization of the debt with an acceptance that real inflation is probably going to have to run closer to 4% in order to get treasury rates down, which is what the public is going to demand,

because they're not going to be willing to accept the short-term pain around 10% treasuries, which is where this could go if they don't start quantitative easing, in my opinion. Dave? Yeah, I think we should all cast our minds back into the distant past of October of 23. I mean, really, it wasn't all that long ago. And we were talking on Macro Monday, Scott, about watching the bond yield as it got closer, the 10-year as it got closer and closer to 5%. And effectively, James and I made the point that they're going to do everything they absolutely possibly can to defend it and not let that happen and try to push yields back down, which they did. And if you look at what risk assets did that are sensitive to liquidity, what they do, they put a lot of liquidity into

the market. What have we been talking about now? Well, now we've been talking about the fact that liquidity globally is actually gone down a little bit, and looks to be turning and moving back up. And all this move in the bond market, you know, today, you know, hitting like 4.4 and three quarters percent, tells me is that liquidity spigot is, you know, they're in the process of opening it and you're going to see more of it because they cannot afford to have the long bond go to that level. I mean, Scott Pescent, for people who haven't watched him, he was very clear that he doesn't like the policy of funding at the short end of the curve and wants to get back to funding at the long end of the curve for some stability well you can't do that in a world where the rates are going higher and it's going to cost him more because the

percentage of the budget deficit that is already interest is too high and so yes i agree with bill completely that that's what's going to happen uh you know that's been the base case that i've been articulating for over a week now and so you know I think that's exactly what you're going to see. That said, we're not going to see anything, you know, it, you know, it's gonna be really hard to see a whole lot on the policy side, until the new team is established. And as much as we all kind of want to see it happen, inauguration is still 10 days away, they still have to start getting, you know, going through the Senate

processes, etc. And so things could get a little squishy over the next couple of weeks as this stuff evolves. Can I add two points to what Dave's saying? So one, we don't know how bad it's going to get if long-term treasuries get to, let's say, 7%, 8% in terms of how many banks have hold to maturity, you know, mark to market policies that are actually insolvent, you know, a la, you know, First Republic, Silicon Valley Bank, who knows, right? I think it could get very, very ugly very quickly. And the Fed will do anything it has to do to avoid that situation. And the second situation it needs to avoid is commercial real estate. I'm not an expert on commercial real estate, but I've seen enough numbers to know that the amount of debt that needs to be reset at significantly higher rates, given where the market is, is a catastrophe in the making.

So those two things combined tell me that the banking system is going to buckle under its own weight significantly if they don't solve this problem. And in the short term, they will consider that a much bigger problem than inflation, regardless of what the public narrative is. And so while I personally am in favor of balanced budgets and, you know, one and a half percent tops inflation, if not one, that's not going to happen the next two to three years, in my opinion, there's just no way. But I think the only thing I will say is that it's incredibly dangerous for Trump to be walking into what's, you know, it's not like they're handing him a catastrophic economy. They're handing him an economy that looks good at the surface, but is awful on the inside.

We've all dated people like that. Everybody asks you what was wrong with her. And you're like, I don't know what to tell you, buddy. She was fucking insane. That's what this market is. It's a broken market that looks good on the outside, but is incredibly broken on the inside. And if you mess that up,

Trump really could be hurting his legacy. So I'm very convinced that they made it hard for him. Yeah. Yeah. But in five years, are we going to look back and only remember the amazing parts about this market and forget about all the terrible parts like the toxic ex-girlfriend? That's inevitably what's going to happen. Not if we're in a depression. Right. So it just depends. I mean, if commercial

real estate really, really explodes because we do have 8% interest rates, I don't think anybody's going to care what inflation was in 2025. Right. I personally think that it's immoral for us to be passing on the pain the way we have for 25 years. And we can talk about our respective opinions on the morality of that. But to a degree, that ship has sailed, right? So we've already decided as a society, this is how we want to do this. We want this to play out by passing on the buck. Fine. Until we basically get our structural house in order and start passing balanced budgets, it's not going to matter. We have to weaponize the debt. There's simply no other way to deal with with, you know, the level of debt we have when no one else wants to buy it. Fred. Because if you go by the four-year cycle theory, which keeps working and keeps happening, it's going to keep working until it doesn't.

So what are the tells or what are the implications in this cycle? And I think Dave brought up the excellent point is we got the high from the election. We're going to get another high from the inauguration. But then he just brought up about the confirmations. That's going to be a battle. Some will be easy, but some of them are going to be very, very difficult. And if you look back at the trends, Trump's first presidency was 100 days on average for confirmations. Biden's was 103. And so this one will probably be a little bit longer. So that takes us into about

April of getting a lot of these people confirmed. You know, that's obviously just averages. But if you look at the schedule for nomination hearings, we've got a few that are set for hearings. But, you know, the SEC commissioner is not on the docket. Doesn't look like that'll be on until even February. And I think when it comes to crypto, that's probably the biggest nominee that the crypto world cares about, because that implicates all of the cases that are going up against the exchanges right now, Binance, Gemini, Coinbase, and then Ripple's not an exchange, but that huge case there. So we've got, you know, if we get the, the nomination done in April, I mean, that lines up perfectly with just the wild blow off top that we're all expecting, you know, at some point in 2025, if the cycles go the way they always have. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. We're having

some classic glitches getting people on stage, but we're working on it at the moment. Danish, did you have another comment there when I was jumping in? No, the only thing I will say is that the four-year cycle is a fascinating sort of general commentary. Because again, the TradFi side of me keeps telling myself there can be no such thing. It makes, if everybody knows there's a four-year cycle, then it gets priced in. But then there is, once you understand the technology, you ask yourself. But there's also a self-fulfilling prophecy that's the flip side of priced in. Yeah, but again, people-

If people believe it, they trade into it. Yeah, but they trade ahead of it. People people don't trade into it, they should be trading ahead of it. And I think that's the part that's confusing. But then you start thinking about the miners who hold a bunch of it. You think like that, that that's where it does make sense. I have to say, call me a skeptic. It just feels like if everybody knows that there's a four year cycle, everybody should buy three years. But you've just basically described all of technical trading, right? I mean, what is a Fibonacci retracement, right? I mean, if you look at it, it's kind of like voodoo magic nonsense, but it seems to become a self-fulfilling

prophecy in every kind of trading cycle for the same reason that a the same reason that, you know, four-year cycle works, right? I don't necessarily get it. Is it behavioral economic voodoo? I have no idea. But traders seem to believe that, you know, if you look at a Fibonacci retracement, you know, it actually works, but nobody can explain why, right? So, you know, what's different about the four-year cycle versus every other tool in the trader's toolbox that seems to become a self-fulfilling prophecy over long periods of time? But Bill, if the four-year cycle is true, then why do people hold? If you should just buy? Because they know it goes higher the next time and they don't want to poorly time it. I mean, we talk about this a lot, Don, but when you take a really deep look at Bitcoin price action, the bulk of the volatility,

especially to the upside, comes in a limited amount of days per year. So you just might miss the entry. And if you've got a low entry, you stick and hold. Also, I mean, I think it's important to remember our four-year cycle that coincides with the halving also coincides with global liquidity cycles, coincides with the election cycle almost exactly right so it's i think it's just a part of a greater story yeah taxes is the short answer yeah so they're honest you don't want to if you sell uh with the intention of holding for a longer before you need it uh you take a huge tax loss on it and you know the yes the cycle so far have been larger than that but as they go especially now i suspect that they're going to be smaller than a lot of the tax burdens that people have

for taking those gains so you know when you take state and local taxes into account so yeah you have to keep that in mind that that's a big deal. I just got here, everybody. Thank you so much for having me on. I just wanted to say that it's very important and very interesting to see that every time when we really start when I say we in our crypto bubble, start talking about inflation and unemployment and FOMC is really when the market is like at a very uncertain stage of crypto. But I also very much agree with you on the fact that if we go through this every single time after the halving year every single time there is this last last day when everybody questions whether this was really the top whether we had a pre you know just a big run after the halving and then and then all this accumulation comes to an end and i do believe that if you look at everything so i i think the numbers today that are coming in

most likely can be also projected because everybody's getting ready for a Trump Trump presidency. And if if if you compare the fact that we are all putting our money in crypto because we believe also, of course, believe in the in the halving cycle and we see the data. But if you think about the fact that we really bet on a Trump presidency. So a lot of people, especially when Trump spoke about crypto and the crypto president and the United States with crypto capital and whatever, everybody got extremely bullish. And I do think that is happening in the traditional markets as well in small companies. So I don't necessarily think that today's not... So I do think it's an overreaction and I do think that a rally is coming, whether it's going to last after the inauguration or we're going to

get a temporary dip. I don't know, but I do think that this is an overreaction on the market today. It's something we were kind of unpacking myself and Nathaniel Whittemore this morning on YouTube. But I think that this is just one of those times kind of having your point that there's just a lot of uncertainty. I mean, we're having a major regime change in a matter of days. We have this situation where the Fed has been cutting and yields are going up. I marketate uncertainty. And I think right now, obviously, that affects every asset, including Bitcoin. But also, Scott, can I just add one more thing?

So to this fact, the reason why it can also be an overreaction is that the dot plot on the last FOMC showed two rate cuts next year. Now, when that comes, people are expecting a potential cut in January that is obviously out of the window. But it doesn't mean that there will be no two cuts this year. And therefore, I do think that the fact that the numbers are worse, sure, but this is expected because of the dot plot. And we've seen it previously. Makes sense. We're having a lot of issues getting people on stage,

seeing people as listeners who are being viewed as speakers. Dennis, listen, I know you have an announcement to make. I'm actually eager to hear it myself. I don't know what it is. And I know that we're trying to get a guest up on stage. I'm going to drop myself, come back onto the show. Dennis, you could run and try to get them on stage because I know that we have a couple of people on stage that other accounts are seeing that I'm not,

who have their hands up. So we're in the glitch. So Dennis, I'm going to leave it to you and go work on this in the background. I'll be right back. Yeah, thanks, Scott. Can everybody else hear me so far? Yep.

Okay, awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to get into this and talk a little bit about this announcement that we have, which will be a double announcement and a little bit of additional educating on behalf of Bitcoin with lawmakers and regulators since the launch of Satoshi Action in June of 2022. We've had quite a bit of incredible progress over that period of time. Our legislation, so we craft model policy essentially at the organization and we go to lawmakers and we say, hey, if you like this bill, if you like Bitcoin as much as we do, then maybe you should introduce this piece of legislation. And we work with those lawmakers to help get that type of legislation across the finish line. We have the lawmaker here in the spaces with us today for the announcement that we're going

to be making, trying to get them up on stage before I see them in the room, but trying to get them up on stage before we move into this stuff. Rep Ammon, you don't happen to be able to speak to you. I can't, you show up as the listener to me, but maybe you, maybe it's glitching and you're actually up on stage. It shows the listener for me, but it's showing you the speaker for him, but obviously we can't hear him. So I'm working on it. If you could go ahead, rep and try to request,

and we'll see if we can get you up that way. Otherwise I'm sending you another invite, but Rep, and try to request, and we'll see if we can get you up that way. Otherwise, I'm sending you another invite. But yeah, we'll figure it out, Dennis. Keep speaking if you can. Yeah, definitely. So for us at Satoshi Action, a lot of people might not be familiar with us. They see the announcements, or as people like to meme me, the announcements of the announcements. But ultimately, when we have something that we say we're going to be announcing, we do deliver real tangible results for the Bitcoin ecosystem. Since we have launched Satoshi Action, we've been able to secure the passage of four historic laws, protecting the rights of Bitcoiners, everything from the right to mine, the right to self-custody, the right to run

nodes, the right to peer-to-peer transactions. We have done all of that at the state level. Four different states have signed our legislation into law. Four different governors and four different legislative bodies have decided that this legislation makes sense and it is a good idea and they want to be a leader on Bitcoin. It looks like we were able to get Rep Ammon up here on stage with us. So I'll drop into that here in just a moment. But we have been working tirelessly to move this type of legislation forward. And I'm really excited to be joined by Rep. Keith Ammon, who's been a long-term friend of mine. We actually, we've known each other probably longer than any other lawmaker in the entire country.

Rep. Ammon is someone that I have gone to visit with and also have even given a Lawmaker of the Year award to because of his work in the space. And he was also the very first lawmaker ever to introduce Satoshi Action model policy. And it's been an absolute honor to work alongside him. Just a little bit about Rep Ammon. He has held several leadership positions, including the Vice Chair of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee. He's been the Assistant Majority Whip and also the Clerk of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee. He's been the assistant majority whip and also the clerk of commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee. He's well known in the Bitcoin and the blockchain ecosystem for his advocacy and technology and education. He also founded the New Hampshire Blockchain Council and has been involved in legislation related to Bitcoin and crypto for some time now. He's an OG

Bitcoiner, someone that goes way, way back. And he was also recently elevated to the position of majority floor leader. So in a moment, I'd love to hear from Representative Keith Ammon, but I would just like to jump in since everybody's been waiting so long. I would just love to jump into the announcement and then we can talk a little bit about the legislation and also share a number of items with the work that Rep. Keith Ammon has done in the past. So I'd like to announce that for the first time in the state's history, a bill has been introduced by Representative Keith Ammon to make a strategic Bitcoin reserve in New Hampshire. But that is not the only announcement. We already know that this bill has received a hearing and will be heard in the New Hampshire

State House as early as next week. And that's also not all. Representative Keith Ammon has also introduced a bill to protect the rights of Bitcoiners, the right to self-custody, the rights to be able to use, buy, sell, trade Bitcoin and digital assets. Representative Keith Ammon, it's an honor to have you here. We've spent so much time together

and I'm excited to be working with you in the 2025 legislative cycle to get this stuff across the finish line. Great to be with you, Dennis. Thanks for the introduction and good to be with everybody. Happy to participate. Yeah, I mean, listen, man, me and you have gone back and forth for some time now. As I mentioned, you're the very first lawmaker ever to introduce Satoshi Action Model Policy. Of course, that first introduction was not one that got across the finish line as a standalone bill, but it did result in the inevitable passage of a study for the state to study the implementation of microgrids. I'm a big believer in microgrids and the ability

for Bitcoin mining to enhance microgrids. But great to have you up here. Would love to have you talk just a little bit about your role in the state and also maybe tell people a little bit about your background in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Okay, just a slight correction that Bill did make it across the finish line. It just it changed form. But it is in law and the Department of Energy in New Hampshire is they're developing rules for micro grids. So there is going to be a framework that comes out of that. Yeah, hi, everybody. My name is Keith Adman. I'm a fifth term state legislator in New Hampshire. New Hampshire has the third largest body of legislators in the English speaking world. So India and Capitol Hill and DC have slightly larger, but we have a 400-member state representative body, and it's a true citizen legislature. There are people from all walks of life, not just attorneys,

and we're all there pretty much on a volunteer basis, and that includes our state senators. Our state senators and our state representatives, we get paid a whopping $100 a year by the Constitution. So that's fixed in the Constitution. And the $100 a year back when it was written into our state Constitution was actually worth quite a bit of money. So it's an easy conversation to have with our legislature that the uh dollar the purchasing power of the dollar has obviously been eroded based on the value of our salaries and by the way we have to pay taxes on that and we have to pay for our own business cards and license plates so we we run our state a little bit differently. Having said that, our state is the number one in a lot of rankings.

So our state ranks number one on many freedom indexes. We have one of the best economies in the country. We have, you know, just an ethos here. Live free or die is our state motto. We have an ethos for freedom in our state. And when it comes to blockchain, the way that it can empower, and Bitcoin especially, the way it can empower people to be sovereign, self-sovereign, is very appealing to a lot of people in New Hampshire.

So as Dennis said, we have some bills in the pipeline. On Wednesday at 10 a.m. You'll be able to watch it on YouTube. We'll have a hearing for what we're calling the SBR bill, but it enables our state treasurer to purchase Bitcoin. And we also have precious metals in there. Right. Do you mind if I ask Rep Hammond, you said it's at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, about how long will that be?

Because that's actually something we could potentially live stream here on this Spaces. Oh, interesting. It will be half an hour. We could really start at 10.15. So maybe we can get the back half of it to start the show. I think that'd be really interesting to watch

because I think it kind of leads to the next question. We see representatives such as yourself in multiple states proposing these. And I think it's hard as the general public to have an idea of what the process actually looks like and what the odds are of them and what the odds are of them actually passing. Right. And I think that probably varies state to state. So do you have like a feeling for I guess the chances that this bill will pass on Wednesday? If that's actually the procedure, would it be on Wednesday? It won't pass on Wednesday. No, it's just the beginning of the process. So the bills have just been introduced in New Hampshire. We get about two weeks to file

legislation that just closed a few weeks ago. And now the bills are ready to be introduced to committee. And that's what's happening. Excuse me on on Wednesday, and in our committee, this is the Commerce Committee in the New Hampshire House. That's where the bill will be introduced. And the way our committee works is we go public hearing, then we have a sub committee work session. So that'll happen a few weeks later. The work session is when the members analyze all the testimony that we receive. Is there a way to make this bill better with an amendment?

And then out of that subcommittee, a recommendation goes to the full committee. And then we have something called an executive session where we vote on the committee's recommendation on the bill. So that's sort of like a three-step process just in committee. And then we have something called an executive session where we vote on the committee's recommendation on the bill. So that's sort of like a three-step process just in committee. And then every bill in New Hampshire gets a vote on the full floor of the house. So there's no, there's no, this bill will get a full vote of the New Hampshire house guarantee. And that'll happen a few weeks after the committee recommendation, a week or two. And then it will go to the Senate. And the whole process starts over again.

And if the Senate agrees, then it goes to the governor for signing. So every legislation doesn't have 100% chance of passing, right? There's always something that can derail it. But at this point, I think we have a pretty good path to victory here. We have the majority leader as a co-sponsor. And we have some other influential members of the House and the Senate are co-sponsors.

So, you know, I put it greater than 50 percent. Dennis, that's better odds than we see in most places, right? By far. Yeah. better odds than we see in most places, right? By far. Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, I would say that we have, on average, a 20 to 25%, sometimes 30% chance of a piece of legislation passing. But, you know, given Rep. Keith Ammons' leadership in the past in the state on all things Bitcoin blockchain, he's well positioned to be able to help put this piece of legislation into a position to be able to be successful.

And then he was also, as I mentioned earlier, was just elevated to the position of majority floor leader. So he, alongside his co-sponsors, are in a good spot. And we're very excited to be working with him. Like, as I mentioned, Rep Keith and myself go back, and we've had a lot of great interactions over the years as Satoshi Action has grown and matured. You know, he was the original lawmaker to introduce microgrid legislation. I went to the state a number of different times to help participate in educating lawmakers there.

There was a commission that, in fact, Rep Keith, I mean, he's put a number of commissions together, including a nuclear commission, which is very exciting for the state as well. But he put a commission together to study cryptocurrency writ large. And I went there to help educate on the benefits of Bitcoin mining. And ultimately, they put a report together. And that report cited Satoshi Action and a number of other advocates that went there to the state to help educate lawmakers. And ultimately called on, it was a report from the governor, called on the state to integrate Bitcoin mining as a piece of energy infrastructure into the state. So a lot of great opportunities and potential for great legislation in the state of New Hampshire.

And I always love Rep. Keith Ammon's view on states. He had a tweet recently saying, make state legislators great again. We at Satoshi Action are big fans of the states. We think the states can be a primary mover for a lot of this type of stuff. You know, we have our hopes and prayers for Washington, D.C. to do something, given all the political potential that we have there with the new administration. But regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C., we will be continuing to fight to prove that these ideas, whether they be the Bitcoin rights or whether they be strategic Bitcoin reserve legislation, are not only ideas that lawmakers want to introduce, but that lawmakers will pass into law.

So, Keith, I would love for you to share, Rep Ammon, I'd love for you to share just a little bit more about your background in Bitcoin. I think people would appreciate just knowing just how long you've been there. And you've seen the changes over the years in the state with a number of different bitcoin and crypto advocates in the state yeah i mean so we have a strong libertarian culture up here in new hampshire and uh libertarians are always interested in how money works um you know personally i i was always interested interested in how money works i was also interested in computer science and cryptography. I read years ago, I read Creature from Jekyll Island when I was in my early 20s. And that sort of laid the foundation in my mind, you know, what would come next. And, you know, early in late 2010, early 2011, there was a group in New Hampshire talking about Bitcoin

before it kind of went mainstream. And so, you know, a lot of my friends have been in was a group in New Hampshire talking about Bitcoin before it kind of went mainstream. And so, you know, a lot of my friends have been in it a long time. And, you know, we went through all these different, different eras in Bitcoin's history. We had the, you know, the 2017 block size wars, there's always factions developing. But Bitcoin has its own nature, it's its own thing and we can have opinions about it but it will just do what it does um you know it's uh it's kind of amazing that way so you know not getting sidetracked on too many other crypto projects there are there is innovation in some other than some of these other projects, but Bitcoin is the thing that Satoshi set in motion

to change civilization, right? And in my view, that's its importance. And so I've been, since 2015 in the New Hampshire legislature, I've been talking about Bitcoin. I think it was like $300 then or something, sponsoring legislation. And years ago, I was a crazy, you know, I guess they thought I was a, you know, you know, using it for nefarious purposes or something.

And, but, you know, as time has progressed, and as especially with the number one thing or a large influence on the legislature is fidelity is one of our largest employers in the state so having fidelity have their own etf i think you can't get more mainstream than that for new hampshire and so through the course of time i've become less crazy, even though I've been sticking to the same message. You see things changing around us. So that's kind of fun. I'll put it up top here in just a minute, too. This isn't a new thing for you either. You've been talking about the state potentially buying Bitcoin or allocating to an ETF for some time now. I think there's a tweet

even as far back as May of last year, where you had brought this stuff up. You know, a lot of people are talking about strategic Bitcoin reserve, more so as of July when the Trump announcement occurred in Nashville. But you know, this is something that you have been focused on even before that announcement became a reality. Yeah pushing, trying to get Bitcoin or digital, you know, digital assets with Bitcoin, especially on the balance sheet of the state, I think is a great first step. I'll put, I don't know where,

can I put something in the chat here? How does that work in Spaces? You can either DM it to me and I can throw it up above or you hit the little, if you're on a specific tweet, you'd hit the icon in the bottom right corner with the arrow pointing up and you can add it to the spaces oh i see i added the one repam of the thread that you made where you said should the state of new hampshire investigate allocating a small percentage

of of its reserves on atf so if that's the one you were thinking of that's the one i put up top yeah there's another one i wrote an article that i think covers it's like, I'll send it to the host here. So that's a pretty good one. That's sort of my broad opinion on where the state should go. And it went out to a large media outlet in the state. So got some good feedback on that. And lots of lots of regular folks, voters across the state are very interested in this. So I've been getting a lot of people reaching out to me, connecting with me. And I think we have some good grassroots support here. Yeah, it's great to hear. I mean, I remember when I was there in 2023, like it was even just that short period ago, there just wasn't this level

of excitement or interest in it. But you've been there diligently educating lawmakers, your colleagues on the issue of Bitcoin. I also wanted to say as well that it is so critical that folks follow along with your story. So if you're wanting to follow along with Rep. Ammon and to support the effort to make a strategic Bitcoin reserve in his state, please make sure you give him a follow and support his work. And when he's putting good stuff out there, make sure that you're helping people get visibility on it. This is politics, right? As people see him gaining the ability to get his voice out there and he's gaining traction on social media, that also does help him. So please make sure to give him a follow. It's important that we also follow a lot of other people in the space that are doing the great work of moving these things forward. I see Samuel

Coleman from Switzerland, a lawmaker that's in here that we've had some great conversations with. I also see my good friend Andreas from Chile down below. We've had some great work there as well. You know, you got to really follow along with these people. And one of my goals has been to, you know, the lawmakers and the advocates out there, you know, I have the privilege of having a larger social media account. So one of my goals is always to make sure and highlight those others that are in the space that are doing great work. So please do make sure that you follow Rep Ammon and follow along with the work that he's doing.

But also, Rep Ammon, we brought it up in the very beginning. It's not just the strategic Bitcoin reserve bill that we're going to be working on in 2025. We also have the potential chance to work on Bitcoin rights in the state, also dubbed blockchain basics as sort of its header name. Talk a little bit about that type of legislation and its chances of potentially getting passed into law as well. Yeah, so we're calling it the blockchain basics law in its House Bill 302. That has not been released yet. That bill is waiting for a hearing date. So this bill combines multiple things.

So we had the Governor's Commission on cryptocurrency. There's some recommendations that have not been implemented still from that final report. One of them is the fact that our court system doesn't have a way to, it doesn't have expertise. So we're standing up a blockchain docket in the court system, similar to how Delaware has their expertise is in corporation law. So we're standing up some expertise in our state court system, in the judiciary. And that's a result from last year we passed a Dow legal personhood bill. So our secretary of state currently is standing up a registry for Dow's.

And that's a bill that we got passed last year. So we're trying to get our state regulators, you know, blockchain friendly as much as possible. And I think we're making some progress there. Let's see if I have the right notes here. One second. There's a novel thing in this legislation where this is something maybe no one's heard before. Let me just go over basically what we're doing. So we have the

dispute docket. We have rights related to digital assets. It ensures an individual can use digital assets without excessive government or regulations to protect self-custody. Zoning protections for asset mining that can't be discriminatory zoning prevents individuals from being compelled to disclose their private keys unless absolutely necessary. And then here's an innovative one. Our state has a background in having very good trust laws. So one, this is a novel idea to create this idea

of a blockchain based trust. So that'll be something that I think no other state has tried and then protections for operating blockchain networks. And if you're providing staking, it's not going to require a money transmitter license and some other things. So that's a pretty comprehensive bill that we're trying to get through. I think parts of it will get across the finish line

and some might go to study commission, but we should get pieces of it across. Yeah, that's a great thing about working with you. And of course, this is possible in other states, and we do utilize it that way. But it seems in New Hampshire, it's a very effective tool where you can kind of almost like downgrade the bill to a study and at least get that across the finish line. So that's something that we're always trying to pursue with lawmakers. I think I actually discovered the power of that, not only with our policy director, Eric Peterson, who's been instrumental in getting studies

together at the state level for us to be able to study the purchase of Bitcoin via ETFs for pensions and for treasuries. But also, I think, Rep Ammon, I'm not sure if you're open to questions. I'm sure some people might have questions with regards to what's going on in the state there's a number of different speakers on the stage that's a pretty friendly friendly audience if you're open to it i'm sure there will be some folks that might be yeah i'm open to a couple of questions sure so if anybody has any questions would love to love to have you chime in to ask keith a potential question around what's going on in the state i know bill that you've been doing some trust stuff in as well. So we'd love to hear from you on that issue.

Bill, are you there? Yeah, absolutely. So look, I mean, the combination of you know, on the corporate side, the micro strategy playbook with family offices and January is kind of the month for family office events, which I spend most of my time doing. The interest in kind of setting up, and I'm using air quotes here, kind of personal or corporate Bitcoin reserves is higher than it's ever been. I would say the interest was like really not even there this time, the last cycle, or even this time last year. And now the inbound interest that we see on,

how do I basically set up either the family, the corporate or the entity kind of Bitcoin reserve and I actually don't want to sell, I want to borrow against those assets in the future for, you know, kind of a lifestyle model is something that we just haven't seen before and is now kind of a, not only a regular discussion, but probably the most common refrain within that group or two groups, I would say, both corporate as well as high net worth and family offices. And I suspect it's going to make its way down the income pyramid in the coming months if

we see the kind of price appreciation that obviously many of us expect. If you have Bitcoin at $150K, clearly anybody who's been holding for a while or even new buyers who are putting money in are going to basically look at that as kind of a quasi bank account that they can draw down against on an ongoing basis. And, you know, this is something that, like I said, we've been spending a tremendous amount of time on to kind of get this right to allow clients to retain title to assets. That's one of the keys here, right? I mean, we've talked about this, you know, and I know, I know, Scott, your personal woes with this issue around retaining title to assets when you're setting up these kind of strategic reserves. And, you know, now I think in this kind of next generation of service providers, we have the

right models in place where entities can set up Bitcoin reserves, retain title to their assets, borrow against those assets when they need to, but know that they're actually their assets and they're not lending them to any third party or taking counterparty risk to any third party to set this up. I don't know if anybody has questions or wants to dig into any of that. Happy to go further. Hi, I actually have a question to Keith, if it's possible to ask as well. Yeah, go ahead.

Sure. So first of all, thank you so much for your work. I've been following also the announcements and everything that's happening. Yeah, go ahead. allocated is like the percentage wise so this is question number one and the second question i you've been talking before about the you know the energy and like the like actually all the efforts that can actually improve the grid and the statewide energy plan but what i've seen in the comment section when i was like reviewing this so the biggest the biggest concern of regular people who don't understand the depths of what we're talking about here is that Bitcoin mining is energy intensive. And they are saying that integrating it can be actually increasing the energy cost for regular citizens. So is there some kind of research paper or something where you attack those questions that can help you to distribute, to spread the news that it's actually already taken care of?

Yeah, I think Dennis, Dennis, don't you have a report that you can reference? So basically the short version is Bitcoin mining uses electrons that aren't valuable at that moment in time, right? When there's a low, low demand and high supply. So Bitcoin is like a bottomless battery that can turn that electric energy into economic potential. And what that does is incentivizes building out more generation over time. And that benefits the grid. When you have more supply supply the prices go down right so that's the short version of how bitcoin mining improves the grid yeah certainly yeah yeah

definitely um thank you rep am and there's certainly benefits for bitcoin mining for the grid but also there's a very uh special ability for Bitcoin mining to particularly be helpful for clean energy. For instance, if you're a big fan of wind and solar, you must be a big fan of Bitcoin mining because wind and solar deal with massive amounts of energy curtailment, which essentially means that they produce more energy than is actually purchased. Some renewable energy providers curtail up to 40% of their potential generation, which is a huge amount of waste. If you go track California, CAISO, California's ISO, they alone curtail or are on track to curtail more energy than the bottom 36 nations use combined. So it's an incredible amount of power that's going to waste. And the way that Bitcoin mining plays a role here is that Bitcoin mining can be placed virtually anywhere on the planet, as long as there's energy and some sort of connectivity. And given the advent of Starlink, there's virtual connectivity anywhere on the

planet. So you can put a Bitcoin mine right next to the wind farm or the solar farm and monetize 100% of the excess generation that is occurring from those sites. So if you again, so if you are very pro wind and solar, then you should be really just sort of obsessed with Bitcoin mining as a tool to advance that type of clean energy resource. So we have a startup,

small modular reactor company in New Hampshire. It's called StarCube, S-T-A-R-C-U-B-E dot tech is their website. And I was talking to one of their executives last night at a function, and they're talking to Bitcoin miners because advanced nuclear and Bitcoin mining go together like peanut butter and jelly.

They can incentivize each other and actually make the project viable from the beginning. So the miners can be the first consumers and justify the building out of an SMR. So I think we're gonna see, and high compute data centers, high performance data centers are another piece of that. So here's an advanced nuclear startup

talking to bitcoin miners uh and excited about the potential for cooperation with that so you know imagine a future where we have smrs you know that power our towns and cities bitcoin mining can jump start that whole build out and that's kind of an amazing thing yeah yeah big fan of nuclear i mean you put a whole nuclear commission together there in the state as well i mean in theory you can literally place generation anywhere in the world now because of bitcoin mining because there is the potential to have demand anywhere in the world because bitcoin mining can be located at any site uh doesn't matter where it gives the opportunity to build generation anywhere. In the past, you used to have to sort of build generation in tandem with demand.

And that creates a lot of problems, especially for parts of the world where, you know, your rural parts of the country, rural parts of the state, potentially. I know in the North country, as you like to refer to it in New Hampshire, there's a ton of energy problems up in the North and lack of jobs. And so the ability to potentially create, use Bitcoin mining to incentivize the growth of nuclear in the North and lack of jobs. And so the ability to potentially create, use Bitcoin mining to incentivize the growth of nuclear in the North is huge. Maybe talk a little bit about rural revitalization

and how important that is to state lawmakers across the country. Yeah, so in many states, there's a concentration of population around major cities. And then there's the rest of the state, right? And few, few less infrastructure there. So there's a potential.

Our state, our population is near the south third of the state, so the northern two-thirds. There's a lot of retirees on fancy homes on the lake. But there are towns that used to have manufacturing and that have sort of, you know, struggled to have productive work for their members, right? So for their citizens. And so, you know, mining data centers,

just having an abundance of energy would create more opportunities for potentially, you know, manufacturers or energy-hungry businesses to come and provide jobs in those places so you know that's an interesting thing i was on a call just before the spaces with microsoft they're interested in uh ai and uh and new nuclear development And they're looking at New Hampshire potentially as a place to think about building it out. So that would benefit Bitcoin money if that happened. Yeah, definitely. Well, Rep Ammon, I know you're a very busy guy. You have a lot of work to get to

in the state. And I'm very much looking forward to working with you and getting resources up there to the state so that we can have a successful hearing on Wednesday. For those that might have been tuned in a little late, we announced that there's going to be a strategic Bitcoin reserve bill in the state of New Hampshire, along with also a Bitcoin rights bill. And we'll be working with Rep. Keith Ammons to be able to get this type of legislation across the finish line. That strategic Bitcoin reserve bill, which is mentioned, and also I put a tweet out about it, is going to have a hearing on Wednesday. We get a lot of questions from folks like, oh, introductions are great. We want to see progress. I 100% agree with you. We at Satoshi Action deeply care about making legislative progress. We're not here just to do messaging bills or signaling bills that show that we're interested in this stuff. We actually work to get it across the finish line.

That's why me and our policy director, Eric Peterson, have always sat down and said we want to make sure we pursue legislation that is achievable and that we can get across the finish line. Rep Ammon mentioned that this bill has roughly a 50% chance of passing into law, given the amount of support that they have there in the state. So we are totally looking forward to it. I mean, I'm excited to travel back to the state and to work in the state, given it was the very first state that we ever worked on any type of legislation with. So it's an honor to be working with you again. We'd love to give you the opportunity to close out this announcement with any potential comments that you might have. Yeah, thank you, Dennis, for all the work that you've done. And thanks everybody for listening and all the work that you do, I'm sure, in this space. I did want to get a plug in. This is kind

of like a novel, you mentioned about messaging. This is a messaging bill, but there's potential it could pass. So this would be a constitutional amendment for the New Hampshire state constitution, and it would, it would enshrine the right to compute. And so that, uh, you know, that it's a right of individuals to freely access computational resources and that no law regulation should impose any discriminatory rates or limitations that would unreasonably burden this right. And what's kind of fun about it is we have a Supreme Court justice retired who is now

a state representative. And I ran this idea by him and he signed on as a co-sponsor. So we have a former state Supreme Court justice as a co-sponsor of this new right that I don't think any other state has tried. And I think this would definitely overlap with the Bitcoin community that we have a right to access computation. It's part of our expression and freedom of thought. So I just want to get that plug in. That'll be coming soon. Awesome.

Dennis, thank you for asking me to host this. I think this is a great announcement. Rep, I appreciate your work. And I love seeing this happening at the state level and especially from people who've been here longer than myself. You're obviously a knowledgeable OG in the space who's been working relentlessly. And so I imagine there has to be a bit of vindication

and a breath of fresh air here to see these bills getting the respect they deserve and actually getting a serious look. And as you said, a better than 50 percent chance of passing. So thank you so much for your relentless work. Thank you for that. Yeah. Make sure you follow Rep Bam. And I'll say it one last time. If you want to follow along with this work we'll be supporting them as well but um uh thank you so much and scott it's been it's it's i really appreciate you letting us come here to do the announcement um it's always an honor to be a part of this these spaces that you put together you put some great content together you know you deserve a lot of credit for your dedication to getting great content out there and helping people to have visibility on what's going on in the space and just the number of speakers that

you get in here that i mean even the ones that are in the room right now, Bill, Simon, Dave, you know, I've spoken alongside a lot of you guys for some time now, and you just, you put together just an incredible cast of folks to come in and provide real, real, real great insight and knowledge on the space. So thank you for the work that you do to do that. I know it's, it's, it's sort of a thankless job. I appreciate it, Des. Yeah.

I mean, listen, we have a, you know, we have, we have the luck to have this sort of daily platform and the idea is breaking and covering and unpacking the news with the best minds. And so when you can bring us a news story like this, it's, it's mutually beneficial. So I really do appreciate it. This is great. It's funny, you know, Rep Ammon mentioned before, obviously this is kind of a Bitcoin only conversation in this regard. But he hits it at, yeah, there are other chains that are doing some pretty impressive things. And we happen to also have John Mullet here. And I don't want to let this conversation end without me talking to him about what's happening.

Because I invite him up because there is a huge news story. The first story was that President Donald Trump confirmed with Hussein Sajwani of DEMAC, if you guys don't know, it's one of the largest developers in the United Arab Emirates, specifically in Dubai, to invest $20 billion in developed

state-of-the-art data centers across the US. We know data centers can be used for many things, including Bitcoin mining. And then, John, I don't know how you guys have these announcements constantly, but then Mantra, which is John's the head of the project, secured a $1 billion tokenization deal with DEMAC amid Sejuani's $20 billion U.S. data center ambitions backed by Trump. This was not a widely reported story. I saw it and I had to have you on. I happen to know Alisa Sejuani from DEMAC,

who's very big in Web3. awesome dude that's been in this space for a very long time we have a very close mutual friend uh shant and so this was like one of those things where so many things came together that i had to have you up to ask what's going on because rwa clearly is going to be the narrative i think of this cycle or at least one of the few outside of you know bitcoin reserves and all these and it seems that you guys are continuing to really push this thanks so much great to be here good to be back um it was kind of funny the news that came out uh with uh hussein um and the 20 million dollar uh investment into data centers in the us was completely not planned for our announcement. This happened to kind of work out

in alignment also due to the fact that we're actually actively exploring the same asset classes with the family, with the mock. So that was really a bit fortuitous, but better to be lucky than good. Irrespective, this has been something that we've been working on

for a very, very long time with the mock and the team over there. So we're excited to get it out into the market and share a little bit more about what we're actually doing. So for those who don't know about mantra, we're one of the leading real world asset protocols and the largest real world asset layer one specifically geared for facilitating tokenized assets coming on chain in a safe, simple and compliant manner. Big focus on the Middle East and Asia. And we have very strong connections in the region.

And these are the reasons why we're able to bring big deals from the creme de la creme of institutional backers to the market. And really excited that we're able to actually start putting things on chain now that the mainnet went live last year. I literally remember last cycle sitting with Ali on a Zoom call and going, they had like a metaverse division

and we went into the metaverse to tour the apartments that you could like rent or buy from the back they've been on top of this for a very very long time absolutely you know the the family um is you know always pushing the edges of innovation um we work very closely with with all the children um but particularly with amira the daughter, she's a force to be reckoned with. Uh, my wife saw the, uh, the houses they were building on that Island. And she was like, maybe we should go to Dubai. Yeah. Well, um, keep your, keep a lookout for, for, for, um,

the Mali Islands. Cause we're, uh, maybe there's a little bit of a alpha in that one, uh, with, with how it pertains to mantra, but, um. But they're doing some really interesting stuff, building some really, really high quality real estate over in Dubai and the UAE. They're a massive, massive conglomerate. And it's good to see that they're also expanding into other kind of real estate sectors, data centers, hospitality, and obviously being kind of masters of commercial and resi real estate over there, which is one of the hottest markets. But super excited that we're able to kind of finally start talking about this. I think on previous spaces that I came on here, we did talk about the idea that just tokenizing SPVs is kind of what I call faux tokenization. So we're excited that we're kind of pushing the boundaries of innovation at a more regulatory level, you know, in that market. So pretty, you know,

pretty excited that we're finally able to talk about it. So what does this actually look like? I mean, we talk about this every time that you come on, but like, what are you actually tokenizing on their behalf? I mean, they do real estate development, I think hospitality, obviously data centers. What's the benefit here generally of tokenization for an organization like them? And so what's the service you really provide? Sure. So, you know, we come as a protocol. We help support the kind of the technical implementation of bringing their real world assets on chain. Every asset class and even sub-asset class within real estate is actually slightly different. So as it pertains to residential real estate assets that mock properties has, whether it's off-plan or post-fab, we're able to effectively tokenize

both the equity as well as the financing of these type of instruments. So you can be able to participate as an investor, earn yield, or you can participate and actually own the property with a smaller barrier to entry to potentially buying one of those villas on the world islands out in the sea in Dubai. property with a smaller barrier to entry to potentially buying one of those villas on

the world islands out in the sea in Dubai. So that's just one example. Obviously when it comes to data centers, these are like yield bearing assets and that's kind of perfect for a tokenized product. So these are some of the areas that we're looking at to bring asset classes that in many instances have been limited to either the region where they're being created in. This brings access to a more global audience. And obviously, with the father being in Mar-a-Lago with President Trump just a few days ago, I think now the whole world knows the Damlak name.

And, you know, again, better to be lucky than good. But we couldn't be happier that the timing just worked out this way. So how does this sort of align with the longer term vision? I mean, you've always talked about working primarily in Asia and United Arab Emirates, obviously, and that they're leading. But is this sort of a showcase for what you guys can do with other organizations, sovereigns? I mean, it seems like this is something that will be useful literally everywhere if it's proven in this.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we are really focused on bringing, you know, billions and billions of dollars of assets on chain. And to do that, you need to work with the big boys. That means large institutional players, sovereign capital, sovereign wealth funds, these type of things. So given the relationships in the UAE, we're able to help support a lot of these initiatives. But at the same time, I think, given the, honestly, just the attractiveness of the UAE as a crypto hub right now, a lot of people are looking to that market as one of the more

progressive regulatory frameworks for how you can operate crypto businesses and VASPs. But at the same time, there's just a lot of capital there. There's a really positive outlook on what the space will look like there. So internationally, you're seeing a lot of people, talent, capital coming in, looking for opportunities. But at the same time, there's also a limited amount of opportunities locally. We're probably one of the bigger local players, at least on a pure crypto basis. So people are looking outward as well. And I think that's why this connection between the US and the UAE has been struck. I think the

timing is no coincidence. Hussein even said so himself. So I think with a little bit of the thawing of the kind of, I guess, anti-crypto rhetoric that we've seen under the Biden administration. It's no surprise that these things are happening now. And, you know, Mantra has quite global ambitions. You know, our goal is to bring a minimum of $100 billion of TVL and assets on chain by the end of 2026. And obviously, with partners like Demac, we're well underway. What will be the value in theory of this then with Demac? If your goal is 100, how far will this in the next two years with their assets, how far will that likely move you ballpark? It's a good question. I mean, we've signed for a minimum of 1 billion. So I would say that, honestly and frankly speaking,

that's probably on the smaller side compared to where we can go. Given some of the projects that we're working on with them and others, the opportunity with our real-world assets is, frankly, immense. And it really does dwarf in nature just the idea of know, the idea of some of, you know, even just like looking at TVL on DeFi Lama, you know, even some of the biggest chains only have, you know, one, two, three, four billion of TVL. And, you know, we have only launched, you know, three or four months ago. And, you know, we already have a multi, multi-billion dollar pipeline of real world assets coming on chain, including this deal, including, you know including the deal we announced with Mag Group, which was a $500 million transaction, which can go up to three.

So there's a lot of feedstock and we're hungry. That was the last time you were on was Mag Group. That's exactly. Emirates Financial Tower. Yeah, I mean, they're another absolutely huge it's like you have every single one of them you know you run around there's four there's four names on every one of the buildings and they're like sectors it's there's more coming trust me yeah so i mean is there anything you can talk about in that regard? Or is it, I'm assuming that's all under wraps for now?

Well, I mean, you did mention one of the projects that we're working on earlier. So expect some stuff around that coming sooner than later. You're killing me on that one because my wife literally stalks her Instagram for those houses. Maybe I'll end up in Dubai. How much time are you spending in Dubai these days?

Pretty significant amount, to be honest. I'll actually be flying out there on Sunday. I'm based in Hong Kong for everyone listening. The team is primarily between Hong Kong and Dubai, but we have a fairly distributed team. We have people in Australia, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas, et cetera. But primarily Hong Kong and Dubai.

I'm probably there, I mean, at least two times a month, maybe, you know, 30 to 40% of the time. So a lot. Yeah. Sorry, I got personal. It's not the summer. Yeah. It's a little more good. Slightly warm there. Just a little bit.

So obviously you have the chain and you're tokenizing all these assets and bringing them on to sort of drive the RWA space. But you also have your own token, OM. That's correct. And so I think, Worth, for those who haven't heard sort of us speak here before, but we are building out different value accrual mechanisms, more so than just being the gas token for a layer one. These can, a number of different areas that we're exploring, but these could be considered in mint and burn fees for tokenized assets, other different type of ways that you can actually stake the token and then earn some sort of real-world asset-backed yield. So these are a number of different initiatives that we're exploring on ways to drive value

to the OM token. And right now, aside from just bringing all these assets on-chain, we need to make them composable, we need to make them programmable, and we need to make them liquid. So building an ADapteca system, supporting that, focusing on a couple of the core like DeFi primitives is really important to actually

make some functionality with these autobays that you can do interesting use cases. One particularly that's quite relevant for the Mac and for real estate is the idea of being able to actually collateralize and borrow against your real estate portfolio on chain of being able to actually, you know, collateralize and borrow against your real estate portfolio on chain in a semi permissionless manner or even

permissionless manner. So this is something that we're actively looking at. And I think this will probably be one of the cooler use cases for, you know, particularly like multi jurisdictional real estate portfolios, because you can basically make sure that if you have the real legal backing codified into the token with the proper governmental bodies, you know, verifying that this token actually represents the real thing rather than just, you know, some sort of SPV that you can get rugged on. It really does make a game changer. And this is something that all our investors in

our community is super excited about. Yeah. So I guess I'll ask you a bigger pie in the sky question to sort of wrap it up. I know everybody listening, we appreciate you guys being here for 30 minutes over time. What's the real end game? Give me the most ambitious vision that you could have for five years down the road for, I guess, the RWA space, but you as a chain as well. I mean, you kind of mentioned, obviously, the attractiveness of being able to collateralize these assets, use them to earn yield, all doing that on chain, frictionless, without the sort of third parties, really the promise of crypto in the first place, right? But does this eat that entire industry?

You know, what is the end game? I don't necessarily think it eats the industry. I think it just becomes the new version of finance, to be honest. And I think where we see this, I'm not saying it's going to happen in five years. I mean, there's still a long, long, long way to go, frankly. A lot of this stuff is still clunky a lot of it's not super functional but we are trying to build out the infrastructure um as well as the kind of liquidity layer for

actually bringing you know real world assets to have um liquid markets behind them to be able to actually do interesting things with them this isn't the first time that people have talked about tokenized assets as an interesting ethical class i mean this has been around for for years now um and there are challenges i mean there's still technical considerations uh obviously there's regulatory ones most of these assets are highly regulated in nature um so i think if you're a real world asset project that doesn't take a regulatory or compliance mind and focus um you're probably just chasing a narrative and really not focusing on what really matters on doing this stuff the right way. So that obviously is supported by

the fact that we're working very closely with all the relevant regulatory bodies, government agencies in the places that we're operating actively. And I think when you do this on a case-by-case basis, it does really start building up a very strong competitive advantage in moat. Because as I say, pretty regularly, you can fork a code, but you can't fork a license. Love that, John. Any other final thoughts before I let you go? Well, appreciate you having us on. Hopefully, once we tokenize some of those island properties, we'll have to have you come visit as well. Yeah, I can stay in the garage or something. I've seen the prices. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And Dennis, thank you again for bringing up Hammond.

And to all of our other guests uh dave you're still here great uh for the amazing conversation before that um really love doing this show every day of the week it keeps me accountable and on top of everything that's happening in the space and it's nice to have this platform to be able to break the news hope you guys all have an amazing uh weekend and we will see you back on monday thank you everyone have a great weekend bye