The Wolf Of All Streets - Huge Bitcoin Announcement Live | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

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Good morning, everyone. We're launching a little bit early today. It's 9.59. Obviously, we usually start the show, Crypto Town Hall, every day at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. But if you check above the tweet I just pinned, Senator Cynthia Lummis on her Send Lummis account, she has two, said, big things are coming with eyeballs. And the B is a Bitcoin. And it says, stay tuned for 10 a.m. We'll be kind of getting people up on stage here. We do not have guests that were prepared for a 10 o'clock start. But just to give a little bit of background for people who don't know who Senator Cynthia Lummis is, she's arguably the most pro-Bitcoin senator in the United States Senate, a senator from Wyoming. She has been a Bitcoiner for a very long time.

Her son actually convinced her to buy Bitcoin many, many years ago. She was the one who proposed half of the Lummis-Gillibrand bill, which I guess is about two years ago now, really sparking the idea that we could get bipartisan legislation on crypto in general, she's definitely a Bitcoiner first. But most importantly, still as we wait here, I'm going to see what kind of announcement we get. But most importantly, for anyone who was watching Bitcoin Nashville when Trump famously gave his speech, people were conjecturing that he would announce the initiative for a strategic Bitcoin reserve in the United States. He came short in that speech of actually saying that he would do it.

But she immediately rushed out on stage holding a bill that she had filed on the Senate floor for a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And this was much bigger than the idea of simply holding the Bitcoin that was already owned or held by the United States government, proposing to buy millions of Bitcoin percentage of the supply over a number of years, really the most aggressive and positive version we could ever imagine of a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And now, obviously, we've been waiting for potentially an executive order from Trump mentioning this.

But she has been the senator long supporting our industry and has been spearheading this. I'm glad, Dennis, you're here. Do you have any you have any intel? I know you know her on what this might be. Yeah, so I think it's smart to assume that there could be a variety of different big Bitcoin announcements here. Obviously, the executive order being the biggest possible announcement. But there's other ways that she could be making announcements here, including the reintroduction of her legislation. She's going to be needing to reintroduce her legislation in the new Congress. And also, there's an opportunity for her to potentially pick up co-sponsors here. So I know that finding a co-sponsor for this legislation has been critical for her and

her team. I sat down with Senator Lamas in Washington, D.C. We were together for roughly an hour. We sat together for a 45-minute interview. And then on the bookends, five minutes, 10 minutes on the front and the beginning, We had a quite an opportunity to talk- and share our viewpoints on the importance of a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And also talk about the importance of the work happening at the federal

level and the state level so I my opinion- I would say that you know clearly the idea of a strategic Bitcoin reserve executive order here. Is the most exciting potential announcement that could take place- but there are a variety

of other announcements that could take place. I think the most obvious one being the reintroduction of the legislation or a co-sponsor for that legislation as well. Yeah, that would be, I mean, listen, big things are coming with the Bitcoin B logo is out of character for her, right? I mean, she's not exactly like the type to go fully hyperbolic and tease announcements of announcements. So you have to imagine that this is, whatever it is, it's significant, because she would understand that anything that was like a small announcement after tweeting something like that would be a letdown. I mean, if you look, which is crazy, charts always seem to align with the market. But Bitcoin basically pumped from 101,000,

sub 102, certainly, to over 105 in 35, 40 minutes, clearly on this announcement. And so there's an expectation here that this is going to be something really, really meaningful. Awesome. Our team is amazing, by the way, in getting guests and doing this. She knows better than to tease something like that, and then it's a nothing burger. My assumption, knowing her as well and having dealt with her, is that she understands what's doing. There is this expectation that something big is coming, regardless of her tweet. Everybody's been holding their breath daily, waiting for some sort of executive order or mention that could be a catalyst for the next

move here. We have Ron Hammond here. Our team, guys, amazing getting this panel up here so quickly. All credit to the team. He's the Senior Director of Government Relations and Institutional Engagement at Blockchain Association. That means this dude's lobbying his ass off for us. So, Ron, do you have any intel on what this might be, what this might look like? I'm going to wait and see what the official announcement is. I mean, there's been a couple of things that their staff has been teasing for a little bit here in D.C. So we'll wait and see. My first inclination was more of the executive orders. I know she's been the center has been in touch, obviously, with Bo Hines and David Sachs over there, as well as the rest of the Trump team. So I'm hearing rumors that we'll get the EO. It could be this.

But I guess we'll see, hopefully momentarily, because that was quite the tease of the last second. Quite the tease at a very specific time. Do you know if we know that 10 a.m. specific time 10 a.m do you know if we know that's 10 a.m eastern or 10 a.m wyoming time it'd be uh eastern they're in dc okay cool thanks my first thought brian was damn it i mean we have to talk for two hours about nothing uh until it actually happens so i mean the kind of i think seer in my opinion anything short of an executive order would be a disappointment is that is that a fair assessment or what do you guys think uh dan you're giving me the hundred do you think so yeah as you say she knows what she's

doing this is not her first rodeo um something this big at this level yeah she also doesn't have form for doing this it's not like she she constantly does this right so i i agree and i agree the previous speaker i think this is the eo related that's based on absolutely nothing just my cup field but that's what i think is yeah i mean steve go ahead can you guys hear steve i can't i don't know if it's a glitch. I can't hear him. No, can't hear him. Okay, Steve, your mic's not working, so I'm going to knock you down. We'll invite you to close your app, come back in, and we'll invite you back up.

Brian, yeah, you obviously were agreeing with me. Anything short of an executive order here would probably be a letdown on an announcement like this. Yeah. I mean, from a price standpoint, where are we at? Like $106,000 or so, $105,000, $103,000. I think that if you got anything but an executive order, you're going to see it dip. If you get an executive order, it's definitely going higher, I think. Can you imagine if we got the executive order and it went down? Wouldn't that be the funniest scenario for a Bitcoin price action and the most unpredictable slash predictable thing that could possibly go down? That would be hilarious. Go ahead, Ron.

All right. One thing I will flag, and this could be related to the timing here. So the Senate Bank Committee is having their first kind of organizational hearing. It's kind of just the kickstart to the next two years for the Congress. And this is, at least in some way, she's the major announcement that she is going to be leading that first digital assets subcommittee. So that could be partly in tide here. She might be saying other things of like what the priorities are for her subcommittee or

what legislation she wants to focus on. So that could also be one thing as well in the realm of possible options here, because that's going on right now. Yeah, definitely possible. It feels let down-y. Go ahead, Dennis. Yeah, so you can hear me now, right? Yeah, Steve, go ahead then, Dennis.

Go ahead, Steve, we hear you. Yeah, I was just going to say, I wouldn't necessarily expect a strategic Bitcoin reserve. I think it's going to be a strategic crypto reserve. If you look at what's been happening with the Freedom DeFi organization and what they've been buying and everybody says, well, no, that's separate. But it's still relevant. It's very heavy on ETH. It's wrapped Bitcoin. It's Tron. It's Ave. One of the largest investors is Justin Sun, who also about the same time that Loomis posted big things are coming, Justin Sun also said big things are coming.

So, yeah, I would expect a very different type of vehicle than what everybody's expecting. You know, even if it's legislation that's getting pushed forward, you know, I would, you know, reading the tea leaves, I would expect it to be a broader crypto fund that invests in things that a lot of the Bitcoin maxis aren't going to like. I'm actually defaulting now in my brain to it not being an executive order. I think that it's going to be what Ron said. If they're, Ron, if they're actually meeting right now for the first time, this is going

to be like, you know, we got the SEC announcement that they're having a committee on crypto chaired by Perth. I bet it's going to be like um you know we got the sec announcement that they're having a committee on crypto chaired by purse i bet it's gonna be something like that that's my guess is like a committee of some sort yeah i think we were you know the folks in dc we know this takes uh time to do a lot of these things you know when some folks in the on twitter or in the markets were freaking out that on day one something didn't happen we were trying to warn folks for a while like hey like day one can mean day one it can can mean day 100. It could be week one. So these things do take time. And a lot of these announcements are going to be big relativity for DC, like, again, creation of the digital assets subcommittee in the Senate. That's huge. That's where a lot

of legislation originates in crypto. And we've never had that in the Senate. So that's a big, big thing. And having said that, that's huge. But like, that's what's going to happen. That's what's going to happen. That's what's going to happen. I would put my money on the fact now that it's going to be digital assets subcommittee announced. She's going to be chairing it. And that means everybody will speculate that the first order of business will be an SBR. Right. That makes sense. Go ahead, Dennis.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's completely rational to assume that it's not the biggest possible announcement that we could receive here. I am also just going to say going into the odds of what this EO would look like if it were to be in the executive order. I'm really curious to see what type of language they use. Obviously, we've heard a lot of talk about the difference between a strategic reserve stockpile and a strategic reserve, a Bitcoin strategic reserve and a Bitcoin strategic stockpile, and that those two different things are, people have sort of coalesced around what they mean. Some people are saying that they believe a stockpile to be something where the president is going to be continuing to hold the Bitcoin that we currently have versus a reserve where there would be holding, but also buying and continuing to add Bitcoin to that reserve. So at Satoshi Action, we've been really curious to see how this sort of unfolds.

We've been paying very, very close attention to this and actually communicating with a variety of people in Washington, D.C. to sort of share our opinion on where we think it should go directionally. Personally, I believe that it is more likely that if we were to see an executive order, that it would go the stockpile route, just given that that is the promise that Trump made. And it's the words that he used in Nashville when he made the promise. He never promised to buy Bitcoin. He only promised to keep 100% of the Bitcoin that the US government currently holds. Those are his words. It's a direct quote. And so I would love to hear what other people are thinking,

maybe even Ron, if he's heard of what's going on in D.C. given his position there. Ron, I just missed you. I saw you while I was at PGP breakfast. I saw you on the TV screen, but I missed you in person. Yeah, I'm back down in Miami. I got to do a couple of events like you're speaking down at a conference here today as well.

So it got me all over. But yeah, back on the EO for the Reserve, again, I'm hearing a lot more of that on the rumor side. But again, to your point, a lot of people are confusing that with the government actually going out and actually buying Bitcoin. That largely, in most circles, requires legislation, an act of Congress. And so that's where Lummis' bill comes into play. But if it's just like an executive order, we can see more of a stockpile, or maybe they're

going to make a sovereign wealth fund or something to that extent. But it does seem like from all sources of indication, there's going to be something related to that. But we try to warn folks in the market here, it is very, very likely not the case that they're going to be able to go out and buy millions and billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. That doesn't seem to be relevant. How big of a, you know, so there's a lot of nuance there. So if they announce an executive order right now, I think we all agree, like that says

strategic Bitcoin reserve. If that's the news, it would be flying. We're going to see things absolutely fly. And that would be kind of the best case scenario. But if we're seeing, you know, Lummis basically forming a committee and announcement of that, we know that it remains a priority. Doesn't that mean that the priority would most likely be her version of it, which is actually buying and not just stockpiling what exists? And I guess then the next part of that is what's going to exist if Bitfinex gets ownership

of the tokens that were there in the first place and those Bitcoin end up back in Bitfinex's hands, which is about 100,000 of the sub 200,000 left. Well, we don't know how many are left because we don't know if they've sold the SOPR and Bitcoin or not. So yeah, I spent a lot of time in D.C. with the Lummis team just now, and I was texting with some of them. So I will say that there's – yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see what happens. But I'm excited for the announcement to come out and looking forward to supporting the sort of end result here. I don't know what the... Yeah, I think we have

sort of an announcement because Bitcoin.com, I'm not quite sure, but this is coming from Fox Reporter. I'm going to try to pin it while we're also talking. Is Fox Reporter sent it to vote at 10 a.m. on Senator Lummis

as Digital Asset Committee Chair? That's what I'm seeing. So kind of, I don't know how deep that goes it's a pretty big announcement for her certainly um but uh that's not exactly an executive order the price of bitcoins back down to pretty much where it was before she tweeted yeah i i gave her a little too much credit for uh something that would be a huge announcement man wow that dumped it right back to 200 500. and listen i don't know if that even is but that seems like that would be her

announcement watch for 10 a.m i think guys could see i thought i pinned it we're having trouble getting something up into the nest but let me see hopefully it worked that time yeah there you can see i will say you know i will say that this is a huge move, to be honest, to have this new digital asset subcommittee in the Senate, to be able to have her leading it, given that she is the most, the biggest champion for Bitcoin. You know, I said this when I sat down with her, I said, you know, you are the biggest champion for Bitcoin. You've put your neck out on the line for Bitcoin when it wasn't popular. You know, she was the one who said, thank God for Bitcoin on the Senate floor. And this is years before there was a lot of momentum, even with the Trump administration,

the incoming Trump administration or the incoming Trump campaign around Bitcoin. So having her be in this position is going to be huge, huge, huge, huge for us to be able to advance critical Bitcoin and digital asset legislation in the Senate, where it is traditionally very, very, very hard to get senators to pay attention to these things. Oftentimes when I go around the Senate and I talk to people about what's going on in the House, where they have all of these great pieces of legislation going on because they have a digital asset subcommittee in the House and they have a lot of legislation moving

over there, they oftentimes have no idea what's even going on and they've hardly even know what's going on with Bitcoin, despite all of the efforts that people have made to educate lawmakers in the Senate. So I think that this is going to be something that is really, really instrumental in helping to move and grease the tracks, so to speak, in the Senate, where not only have they had, we have had a hard time maintaining the education on what is happening with legislation, specifically, not saying they don't understand or haven't heard about Bitcoin, but specifically with legislation, it's been difficult to educate senators on that. But it will also, I believe, force more lawmakers to pay a lot more attention to that legislation and give it a much better opportunity to make it through the Senate, where it is so hard to move legislation,

especially given the threshold that you have to meet comparatively to the House. Right. So huge news, but didn't warrant the basically move in price that we saw in anticipation of it, hence why it immediately drops right back down. It's interesting. MIKE GREEN I could agree with that. MIKE GREEN It's fundamentally big, but in a moment when literally the crypto world has for three days been holding their breath and waiting for Trump to say the word Bitcoin or crypto is kind of a letdown as we I guess we thought it would be. Ran, do you see

the announcement? I mean, I saw the announcement about the announcement and then I was kind of disappointed. Like it's big news for Cynthia Loomis. It's not big news for Bitcoin or not. I mean, everyone's waiting for news around the strategic reserve and this is about her getting a new job. Yeah, but she is the one who's proposing it, right? So it does mean that the potentially best version of the strategic reserve will be definitely on the docket. So I guess there's that.

Yeah, but I mean, you're looking at the silver lining. I think we were all expecting it to be a strategic reserve that was brought on by an executive order, because that's like, but because, because that would be like a direct way to get it through. You know, if we're going to go the longer route, then look, if we're going to go the longer route, then it's, then it's the, the, the probability we'll probably land up getting it, but the road to getting it is going to be paved with hurdles. And I'm not averse to that because I think as long as they don't say no strategic reserve

along the way, or it doesn't look like at any point in time, the strategic reserve is going to get vetoed at any point along the way, that's fine. I think what the crypto market was hoping for based on announcements and announcements about announcements is that we were looking for a strategic reserve based on an executive order. And I think that that's now slowly, slowly, slowly disappearing. The hope of a strategic reserve that is created out of an executive order is probably, I don't know, I'm not saying it's not going to happen. I'm just saying every passing day that goes by just makes the probabilities less and less

and less. And as a result, I think that the market is going to start pricing in the fact that this may actually take a long time. Tell you what, I think that doesn't really matter. Because even if there was a strategic reserve that was proposed, I don't see the US right now, given where they're at and all the obligations that they have and all the spending that they need to do just to fix infrastructure and stuff like that, I don't see them allocating any more money to buying Bitcoin. I just see them potentially holding all the Bitcoin that they've got. So I think we dodged the bullet. I think the Department of Justice hasn't started selling the, I don't know if it's

the Department of Justice or the Marshall, I don't know who it is, but they haven't started selling the Bitcoin that they applied to sell. And so I just think that whether you call it a strategic reserve or whether no one just sells the Bitcoin, I think we're in status quo for now. Wouldn't we require what's happening today in order to have an actual strategic reserve that actually purchases Bitcoin or other crypto? Well, people think it can happen by executive order and not necessarily by yes, but yes, eventually. I think the strategic reserve, the buying strategic reserve would never happen by executive order.

I think the executive order would say we're establishing a strategic reserve, but I can't see Trump saying we're establishing a strategic reserve and we're going to buy 5% of the Bitcoin supply. I don't think that the executive order would have said that. I think it would have said- Hey, Bailey. Yeah, we've got- David, I know you've only got a minute uh and you were dming me in the background uh so i could try to uh seem smart about what was likely coming uh give us give us a breakdown yeah no i mean uh just joining for a second to

to give an alternative take uh because i i feel like there's a lot of cynicism of this announcement. Lummis being the chair of the digital assets subcommittee is huge for us. That means that she has the ability to hold hearings. It means that she has the ability to drive the agenda of what is being prioritized in the Senate. And so as it relates to digital assets. And so it's massive that she has this role and it has way bigger benefits to us than just like, you know, giving momentum to the SBR. But there's a laundry list of things that we want to achieve. And she's going to be in a position to facilitate the conversation and drive the narrative. So and then in terms of like the SBR specifically, the SBR is going to happen.

And like I anticipate it being done in the first hundred days. Where in that hundred days? I don't know, but I think it's extremely likely that it happens. There are two different flavors of the SBR. One is executive order. One is legislative. We will pursue both of them.

And then on the executive order side, they have the discretion of, I mean, like they could easily have an acquisition program that would, you know, that could potentially be in the tens of billions of dollars. But it does have limitations on how much it could be. And it's not some unbelievable sum. I mean, it's like a micro strategy, but it's not like the scale that the government could do. We need legislation to do a large scale, 1 million Bitcoins, 2 million bitcoins purchasing program so um but these are these are uh sorry these are uh things that can be done concurrently so like it's not like you know we pick one or the other it's like we we do the the fast and

and then we do the the legislative next dave um just question if i were to ask you probabilities that you think a strategic reserve will purchase bitcoin when i say purchase bitcoin not just hold the remaining government bitcoin but actually purchase new bitcoin in 2025 what would you what would you put the probabilities that? I would say purchase new Bitcoin. I'd put the probability. It's a dynamic situation. So like as the price of Bitcoin goes up, I feel like what we can get also expands.

But I would put the odds right now at like probably 25% that we buy Bitcoin. I would say it's about 10. I'd put the odds of us holding the Bitcoin we already have by executive order at like – 100. 90. Not 100. 90. 90%. on is like uh i don't think the u.s um just you know setting a policy to hold their bitcoin um is like underwhelming in any regard like the game theory of that it's never been about buying

frankly listen i think it would be amazing but it's always been about the meaning behind the declaration of what the asset is and that's going to be held. I don't think David, that's what I've always thought. Like whether it's one Bitcoin or a million Bitcoin, every government in the world has to follow suit. But I think that's already in play. I think that's already in play. Like I think, I think when I say it's in play, I think the game theory is in play that people are anticipating the probability that there is going to be a strategic reserve.

Trump's going to hold a call with the president of El Salvador at 3.30. That just broke just now. Yeah. So I think that the probability that there is going to be an announcement around strategic reserve in 2025 is very high. And i think the markets factored that it's just a case of we thought or the crypto market was pricing by executive order no the the markets have not factored this in they like this is not this is not priced in to the um it's not priced in so like i think the market's pretty skeptical it's going to happen.

And I think they're way more skeptical than they, than they should be. And yeah. And I, yeah, I'll just leave it at that. I mean, also you can price in theory that it will happen really quickly,

Steve, but David, I don't think you can price in like the actual buying on a scarce asset. If all the central banks feel forced to do so, Steve. But David, I don't think you can price in the actual buying on a scarce asset if all the central banks feel forced to do so. They're going to have to buy it or mine it or do something. So I don't think if they all start buying it once, you can possibly price it. Scott, I'm going to argue that that's a long time away. And the reason I'm going to argue that it's a long time away is because there's so many policies that have to change in so many different countries. You heard when Powell spoke the other day and he said the fed can't even hold bitcoin like it's not it's like in terms of the legislation right now they can't even hold it even if i want to

it's it's that it's not true like most of these countries have the same setup that the united states has where they've confiscated bitcoin from criminal activities and had to liquidate them they're already set up to some degree to hold digital assets and to sell them. And dude, I know for a fact, because I've been part of the conversations, that there are many different nations that are evaluating this right now. And they're trying to determine whether Donald Trump just made a frivolous campaign promise to win votes and he's not going to follow through or if he is going to fall through and so um you know i think uh the game theory of this kicks in right away and if trump signs an eo i think china has an executive order or like china china has their own strategic bitcoin reserve

uh within 24 hours like like david this will move really quick. I don't know if you got to go. But if you don't, you you hinted the other day, obviously, there was this, I think, unwarranted disappointment that Bitcoin wasn't mentioned in the inauguration speech, or that like, we didn't get an executive order on day one. I mean, I would argue that Trump freed Ross, and there's a lot of executive orders coming. But you tweeted something to the effect of, you know, there's 200 of them. You know, for a fact that there's going to be crypto related executive orders coming. Everyone chill. Right. I mean, that's the gist. I don't think I said I know for a fact because I haven't read them, the EO myself.

So, I mean, like I'm just sharing what I was told by someone who would know. But I saw a list of of EOs and by topics. And, you know, I I fully expect there to be in the next several days. You know, I don't know what pace they're grinding through these EOs at, but like very, very soon there will be dedicated crypto Bitcoin EOs. And like, yeah, like, yeah. So the Ross Ulbricht item is kind of completely separate from those. It is, but I think it just tips the hat that he's serious about some of the promises. And that was something that I know that you were very passionate about and had to do it but that bitcoiners really wanted to see because that one was a kind of a specifically day one kind of promise right yeah yeah yeah no i mean and

uh i think uh i think it's super bullish for the sbr because it just shows that he's like super serious about promises made promises kept and as soon as he announced it i got blown up by a bunch of people from the organization saying promises made promises kept so i mean like this is like whether they want her to be and um uh yeah yeah i i uh you know i think the the the bigger takeaway from this announcement or you know the the people's excitement about this being a Bitcoin Reserve announcement from Lummis is like, look how much excitement there is around this topic. There is a ton of momentum behind this idea and it's just a matter of time of getting this done legislatively. And we really should start rallying the campaign to push this you know in congress like asap because like

they're like this is a completely parallel track to the eo ron yeah um to david's point here so this is kind of like i guess the next phase of like the policy attention here so like i remember like four years ago when i was still working, or I guess like five years ago when I was working on Capitol Hill, when it was like Lummis, I think at the time, and then my old boss, Warren Davidson, would tweet something pro-crypto, the entire Twitter would go crazy and the markets would react, even though it was just a positive tweet because people misinterpreted it as that this law for regulation of stablecoins or market structure is going to happen today.

So we just saw a little bit of that as well. But here's the upside that Lummis now is what she says on Twitter matters because she's the one who gets to decide, David's point, what bills get hearings, what hearings matter, what bills advance, what bills die. So what she says, especially on Twitter, since she's very much running her own show here, it does matter. So that's going to be really important, what she says and what dictates moving forward through Congress.

And to the reserve point, I think the one thing we got to focus on and the markets compared to D.C. is that there is a faction of more Republican-leaning or right-leaning groups that are against the SBR as the one that London's proposed, where the government actually goes and buys it. So there's not full cohesion, you would say, especially on the Republican side, on this view. And that's probably why we haven't seen as much of a push in the House at this stage. That will likely change, but just flagging that there are other groups that are not all gun-hoping. Who do you think are the biggest detractors?

I mean, Cato did a pretty deep dive into it. You know, they had a couple of folks on that front here. But Cato does have a lot of folks in Congress who listen to them on the conservative side. So, like, that's one of the more outspoken groups here. I mean, at BA, we have a lot of folks who are for the SBR. We have some folks in companies who are not as excited or don't really care. So, like, we're kind of in this split situation. But that's, yeah, just saying from my perspective, it's kind of a, it's not as cohesive as maybe Twitter makes it seem sometimes. And there are a lot of problems in the industry.

One of the problems in the industry, you know, having just recently been sitting down with a lot of the different groups is that, you know, this is a Bitcoin strategic reserve. And even though most crypto folks have Bitcoin, like a lot of folks now are trying to make a play to be included in the strategic reserve. Not only are we seeing that happen at the federal level, I won't name names at the risk of pissing certain people off, but we certainly have had some activity at the state level where we have had certain crypto companies, I will call them, I would hardly call them a decentralized protocol, but certain crypto companies have approached lawmakers that we're working with to have their crypto included into the efforts to be able to build a strategic reserve at the state level. And then I also wanted to go back to the whole momentum building that was mentioned earlier,

that price certainly will be one component. But also, the state's passing strategic Bitcoin reserve legislation into law at the state level is going to be massive for driving momentum for a variety of reasons. But people often say, oh, you know, other countries, let's wait till other countries are the ones that are going to be doing this, and that's going to drive momentum. But people forget that the states, you know, Texas, for example, is the eighth largest economy in the world. California is the fifth largest economy in the world. It's having one of these states move forward on a strategic Bitcoin reserve is going to be as big, if not bigger than another

nation state adopting a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And we're already seeing it take place. For those of you that don't know, there's already 11 states now that have strategic Bitcoin reserve legislation at the state level. And there's going to be more. And once they start buying Bitcoin, that is going to be a massive game changer for our momentum at the federal level. And there's going to be more. And once they start buying Bitcoin, that is going to be a massive game changer for our momentum at the federal level. When I sat down with Senator Lummis, she numerous times mentioned how important it is to work at the state level.

In fact, she used to be a state lawmaker. So she really understands the value of using the states as what she calls it as a laboratory of democracy or an incubator for good ideas like strategic Bitcoin reserve legislation. I mean, yeah, I'm still, I think this is great. I think the progress is amazing. I think that, I think all, not all, but I think a large portion of Twitter or crypto was hoping and was expecting there to be a strategic reserve by executive order. And I think we're just going the long way around. I don't think it makes any difference because I don't think the US was going

to buy any new Bitcoin this year. It was just a case of the principle of putting it into play. And I think as long as there's no hurdles along the way or significant hurdles along the way, I think it's still safe. And one caveat I'd add to that is that, know if if trump does the eo uh in the first 100 days uh and the community rallies around um this idea there's going to be a lot of momentum behind the the legislation and so you know if trump if trump does an eo you're going to get right right away almost half the senate is going to be on board with this. I agree. The odds of the US buying Bitcoin this year via the Bitcoin Act, I would increase the odds once an EO happens. I'd increase the odds as the price of Bitcoin goes up.

A month from now, the odds could be 50-50 that we get something done this year. It just depends on how much political momentum we can but i mean like i understand it from a logical point of view i understand it from an investment point of view i just don't understand it from a u.s so so so socioeconomic point of view how with all the spend that is required and with potentially all the people that are going to be laid off from federal, from government roles by Doge and stuff like that, how the government will justify instead of infrastructure projects and stuff like that, taking money when you're, you know, the US has got a massive deficit, which is growing and growing and growing. How are you going to justify? I know we can justify it because Bitcoin is a solution to all the problems. But how do you justify to the man in the street that the government's investing in Bitcoin?

I think the framing is that this is a approach to solve the U.S.'s debt crisis. And so, like, from that perspective, there's a long term financial benefit to the country. There's a national security benefit to the country. There's a national security benefit to the country. There is a geopolitical interest for the country. So I think that there's a lot of valid reasons why to do it beyond just number go up is good for the US. So yeah, I think... And to continue on just like the value.

Really quickly. David clearly covered the value of the strategic reserve at the federal level. But at the state level, states have lost a massive part of their purchasing power. The dollar has lost 25% of its purchasing power since 2018. We ran the numbers and the empirical data shows that if states would have held even a very, very small amount, even 3% of Bitcoin on their balance sheet, they could have protected the purchasing power of the dollars that they have. I mean, states don't have an unlimited money printer. They don't have the unlimited budgets that exist in Washington, D.C. So by having a strategic reserve, they can majorly protect themselves from the downside risk that occurs when Washington, D.C. decides to print more money.

Just really quickly, I pinned it above, but we have Dan obviously announced this earlier, Trump to hold call with President El Salvador at 3.30 p.m. And then says Trump to sign executive order at 2.30 p.m. I'm seeing all over Twitter people saying that that's an announcement. They do want to sign a Bitcoin reserve executive order. That is not how that reads to me.30 p.m., I'm seeing all over Twitter people saying that that's an announcement. They're going to sign a Bitcoin Reserve executive order. That is not how that reads to me. Come on. Just tell you.

I'm just telling you guys. I don't think he's talking to us at all about Bitcoin. Come on. I don't think he's talking to us. Right. I'm just saying that's how they're reading it. Stupid. Yeah.

Dude, guys, guys, we got to get to the point where do you remember when like every time Gary Ginzer would go do an interview? The first question he'd be asked is like when Bitcoin ETF and he like to the point where he was like annoyed by it. Like we need to make it so that every single time a politician says they have some like legislative news or Trump says he's not assigned an executive order. Everyone starts saying, you know, is it the strategic Bitcoin reserve? And we're constantly reminding him that this is the thing that people want to see happen. I'm telling you, it has a major, major impact and effect. All right, I'm bouncing out of here.

Ciao. See you guys. Thanks, David. Appreciate it, man. Go ahead, Simon. I know you said that. That's Dan, yeah. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. You said that the call won't be about Bitcoin.

I'm fairly sure that it will come up on the call. And one of the criticisms of Trump has always been that he doesn't really have an idea of his own. He's just like the last person in his ear. So, you know, I would assume, I think it's fairly likely that McKinney will mention Bitcoin. And that will like put the idea in Trump's head again. And then he'll go, oh, yeah, like he'll remember that Bitcoin exists and then go and speak about it, I guess. So I wouldn't be surprised. The 230 executive order, maybe not.

But I think I would be surprised if McKay doesn't mention Bitcoin. And then, you know, if he says to Trump that we have way more of it than you have, that's the sort of thing that would get under his skin and make him go and sign the order. I don't know. They don't though.

I think the United States still has more than El Salvador, right? Unless the Bitfinex coins get sent back and they've already sold the Silk Road. Go ahead, Simon. Sorry, I know you're waiting. Yeah, I was just going to say the El Salvador is way more likely to be discussing immigration and mass deportation. Exactly.

And M13 and that type of stuff and, you know, planning any kind of strategy around deportations. But just in terms of framing, Cynthia Lummis has already kind of shown how she's framed it to deal with the objection of wasted resources. Because this isn't like QE, where the Fed is, you know, printing digital dollars in order to acquire government debt, which is inflationary by nature. It's talking about reframing the strategic reserves. So currently there are gold reserves and swapping some gold reserves to hedge with Bitcoin reserves and using some engineering would actually strengthen the dollar, but not be inflationary and not change the supply. So it's just the communications. Obviously, there's lots of nuance that people don't understand

in these things. But, you know, almost like the Nixon shock in 71, he had to really dumb down the statement to try and reframe the fact that the US was defaulting and make it sound like it's good for America. So it just requires a bit of creativity in helping people understand that this is good for the dollar. I want to ask you guys something on a slightly different topic. I had a little bit of a brainwave in the last 24 hours. I think everybody in crypto is waiting for old season, right? Or a lot of people in crypto is waiting for old season, right? Or a lot of people in crypto are waiting for old season, right?

Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. Thank you, Scott, for putting the word together. Looking forward to the next one. See you guys soon. Awesome. Thanks. I have a few questions. Number one, do you define old season the same way that I define old season? And to me, alt season is when

altcoins as a collective outperform Bitcoin. Yes, I agree with that. It would be a major drop in Bitcoin dominance. Okay. So then let's just work with that out what it means mathematically. It means that on a relative basis, more money must flow into altcoins and into Bitcoin. So as an example, Bitcoin has a $2 trillion market cap. ETH has a $300 billion market cap. So you'd say that if any, so there's a six to one difference, right? So you'd say that for every billion dollars that flows into Bitcoin, more than $150 million needs to flow into ETH, right?

So on a relative basis, more money needs to flow into altcoins and into Bitcoin. Does that make sense? Makes sense. No, because you could flow money out of Bitcoin too. Just because you top one up doesn't mean... On a net basis. Conceptually, yes. Okay.

Now, if the inflows into Bitcoin are coming from the fixed income world, microstrategy, and the ETFs, which is absolutely, absolutely huge, right? In other words, we've never had this situation in crypto where the mismatch in terms of the ability of money to flow into the market was so mismatched in Bitcoin's favor, right? So we've never been in a situation where you've got fixed income, which is being allocated through Saylor. You've got ETF money, which is being allocated through the ETF, right? So question is whether or not we can actually theoretically even see a real alt even. Because I don't mathematically, if I just look at the inflows in the last couple of months, right? Say let's bought $29 billion worth of Bitcoin, of which he bought 20 in the last couple of months, right? In order for altcoins to match that, you would need on a relative basis, given that Bitcoin dominance is now 58% or whatever else,

you would need the flows into altcoins to match something like $50 billion. So you'd need, because it's more or less equal, you're taking the flows from the ETF plus the flows from a seller plus, plus, plus, you'd need $50, $60, $70 billion to flow into altcoins in the same time period. I don't see a world in this kind of environment where on a relative basis, altcoins can get more money than Bitcoin. And so I'm starting to question, I'm not saying altcoins won't go up. Altcoins will go up and they'll go up a lot. But I don't see a world where we get another altcoin run in 2025 because I just don't see how we possibly get enough ETFs and inflow abilities into altcoins that can on a relative basis outpace Bitcoin. I just don't see it.

Trump needs to have more children and mint some more memes. But even if you take that meme, I actually looked at Total 3, and Total 3 stayed exactly the same. That was also, yeah, that was obviously money coming from other altcoins into Trump. That was a bunch of crypto native gamblers who saw the new shiny thing and just exited one thing to go into another. Although, do we know that when a brand new token like that is launched, it's actually factored for in Total 3?

Well, I mean, you can just see where the money is coming from. Total 3 actually went slightly down. And you can just see where the money is coming from. It's moving from one place to another. That's it. That's right. We didn't increase the market cap of crypto. In fact, you could see it.

If you look at the bubbles, that there was one green bubble and there was every other bubble around it was red. Yeah. It's like one bubble sucked up. And down bad. Like, yeah, yeah you know 15 20 drop yeah so do we know how much of it was like you know card payments or anything from new people 180 so we know moonshot did 180 000 um 187 400 new users and in of volume, now the problem with volume is it's also people selling,

they did $750 million. So almost a billion dollars in volume on Trump. Significant, but a fraction of what was being done, right? Interesting. So you need basically Bitcoin ETFs for people to start selling and diversifying into other ETFs as more of them get launched.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I don't see a world in 2025 where there is a way for the for the pipes to turn on so that altcoins get more than Bitcoin? It's the ultimate attention economy. Like there is no, if Bitcoin is getting the attention because of institutional players like BlackRock or additional ETFs or whatever the mechanism is, even like a top four or five tokens, there's just no room.

There's no breathing room or oxygen for altcoins. And there's no net new capital that flows in from all these poor retail investors. You know, nobody in America has any money, right? We talk about this all the time.

So like there's just no net new money. I agree, but we didn't have the ETFs in MicroStrategy buying billions necessarily trickling down in past cycles and we ended up with alt season. So I think we're under it. I think we're- But you had COVID stimulus.

Yeah, I know, but I think we're, well, we're gonna get stimulus. But I think we're, well, we're good. We're going to get stimulus. But I think I, I, I under, I think we're underestimating how much new money can flow into this space with even one small catalyst. I mean, last time, literally people forget that NBA Top Shot effectively was a catalyst to launch NFTs and all this new money came in for a bunch of people that had never even heard of Bitcoin kind of through the side door. And there were millions of people who literally lined up for centralized exchanges and couldn't get accounts for three months simply because they wanted access to Doge, which you couldn't buy on a DEX. The difference being now that you can just launch

a Doge competitor in five seconds and buy it without a exchange account. But I, you know, I think that it's a net positive, whether that money can directly flow or not, that there's a ton of money that will likely come into this space as it becomes more mainstream again for this cycle. Also, like I have my doubts on the Trump token. And I've been saying this for days, just because moonshot got accounts doesn't mean they're new people, right? I think there was a lot of people I was, and I said, I told this story that day, I was sitting with someone like at a dinner and he was like, I want to buy this Trump thing. And he was, he's even pretty crypto native, has Solana, but he didn't have access to it on his phone and just signed up for Moonshot and like bought something. He's a guy who's obviously not a new entrant to the space. Steve, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to talk a little bit about the ETFs because, by the way, almost everything that you and Ran have said, I agree with. There isn't a whole lot of new retail money coming into the space. It's all gone, right? So it's just people

moving money around. And I don't see a whole lot more coming in in 2025. You know, those of us have been around since, you know, 2013. I've seen multiple cycles here. We are, you know, 2013, 2017, 2021. We're 2025. We'll likely see a top here, but not a lot of new money coming in from retail. Where the new money is coming in is actually into the ETS via institutional investors as well as... But that money won't be... More allocations into... Some of them made initial allocations last year. Some of them are making higher allocations this year. So they already have a pot of money.

They're just reallocating it, you know, away from other risk assets and into Bitcoin and what other ETFs might come into the market this year. Most of the time, it's going to be into Bitcoin, though, right? Because a lot of them have analyzed Bitcoin. They understand it. They finally have an ETF, one year track record, higher allocations or initial allocations. But we will see new money coming in from the institutional financial advisor side into the new ETFs that come along, as long as they're legitimate. I don't see a lot going into Trump ETF, but potentially into things like, you know, Sol or XRP or Litecoin if they get launched this year. But yeah, we are at the top of the cycle.

And if you want to talk about strategic Bitcoin reserves, I've got more to say on that. I think the one thing that you left out there is that if you look at the number of tokens that, if you look at the previous cycle, the number of tokens that we had, like 20,000 or 30,000 tokens when we finished the cycle. Today, there's 20,000 or 30,000 tokens when we finished the cycle. Today, there's 20,000 or 30,000 tokens that can launch a day on Pump Fund, and each one of them starts

to drain even albeit minimal liquidity. I mean, if I look at the Pump Fund stats, Pump Fund's launched 6 million new tokens this year. 6 million. And that's just Pump Fund. That doesn't take virtual into account and all the pump fund competitors and all that kind of stuff. So you've got the same kind of retail attention, but you've got a million times the number of tokens. The math just doesn't work. I know, but at the same time, you did have this moment where XRP, Algorand, HBAR, these dinosaurs with meaningful market cap pulled pulled 5 to 7 X's in a matter of weeks. Yeah, but that's not I mean, alt season is when

alt season is when all the tokens go up, or the majority of the tokens go up, right? Yeah, listen, there's too many tokens for that, but I think maybe if you siphon it down to like 200 meaningful tokens, I don't even know how you define that that we can

see that kind of action but yes it's been very uh obviously it's been very segmented you know but like yes six million pump fund tokens but like not a single person can name you know a fraction of a percent of those because it's just people trying to pull something off right so i think you still, like, we should see value accrue to things with meaningful market caps that are not complete jokes at some point. Yeah, so you've got to back the winners.

This is really a cycle where you have to back the winners. Yeah, that's right. I don't think you can literally throw a dart at anything and wait this time, which you could in the past, you know. I do agree. Matthew? Is there any concern or any thoughts on the total number of capital that could be pulled from AI agents in this space? Maybe they're better traders than us,

and they're just going to take all the retail money, or they're going to suck liquidity out and keep it or do other things with it. I just wonder if that's going to be a potential blocker or a potential bump in the road here. When we look at like where this capital goes, you're going to have all these agents out there that get, you know, like you said, there's millions of them out there and they're going to trade all the time or they're going to have their own ecosystems and people are going to put money in there or whatever the case is, and they're going to act totally autonomously and they could hold tokens. They could buy stuff in different ways. Like, I just wonder if anybody's concerned about ai aggregating all this capital i think it's great i think that crypto is

a usability problem a user interface problem and the less that we can deal with actual crypto and actual crypto protocols the better let the ai agents do it in a real world we should tell the ai agent go and find me the best returns from my USDC, park the money there, and keep me updated on my daily returns. And that's pretty much all we should be doing. All the bridging across networks and the yield farming and everything else should actually be done by AI. I don't see any reason why humans should get involved in a process where it's so open and prone to human error. Yeah, I think that AI will become your RIA. Sorry, Matthew, I didn't mean to say that you're going to get replaced.

But, you know, it should be managing your portfolio and rebalancing, you know, in a tax-efficient way, depending on your jurisdiction and kind of just managing it for you. I'll say it, like, I keep coming back to this, but people thinking that, like, AI is going to do this for you in perpetuity or in some in some way, AI is going to be very PVP in the sense that like if everybody uses AI, AI agents and go put them to go do something that is completely different than an autonomous AI agent that has created its own company that doesn't employ people that sucks the liquidity out of the system has its own

balance sheet and can do whatever it wants with it. That is completely different. And that is going to be continuing and proliferating. And you're going to see agents employ people. All these things are coming. And I'm not talking about us dictating where AI goes. I'm talking about AI agents autonomously doing these things on their own. Yeah, by the way, I totally agree with you on the trading side. I know that everybody is going to have an AI agent that's going to go actively into the market and aggressively trade and that's still a zero-sum game right someone's ai agent has to lose to somebody else's ai agent but i think from a larger perspective the ai can do better analysis maybe on your overall portfolio in a slow and more meaningful way or as a tool for someone who you know understands that that. Yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah, go ahead, Ren. Gaurav, go ahead. I talked to you now. Gaurav, in some public forum, we talk about AI every single day now. Yeah, yeah. It seems like we talk more on Twitter spaces, I mean, X spaces, than we talk

personally. So it's good we're bonding. So two things. One, all this idea of AI taking over and trading, I always use my favorite example, which is OpenAI, the company that is a leader in AI is building the best models,

not limited to language, but also research. And if they are the best and they still don't have the most algorithmically strong bot that can go in and dominate the stock trading markets and the most liquid markets, where there are already successful algorithmic traders, then we really have to take a step back and think if the trading and profit-making world really would be solved with the current state of AI.

And then once we are sensibly thinking about it, probably project a timeline on how far that is. So that's a practical, I would say, idea I want to shoot to people here, right? And if I was to comment on that idea with my, I mean, let's say, loud mouth, I would say that's not anywhere near. And like you said, Scott, it will still be a zero-sum game where somebody has to lose. So it will still be this art of speculation on who is actively building their models to beat others while there is no limit to human intelligence. Someone will outbeat others,

and the market remains the same, speculated end of the day. So that's not going anywhere. I think we're good where we are currently and it's going to be the same place for a long time. Now, I'm literally walking off a meeting here in Davos with America's largest mortgage and finance manager, the owner of that company. And the reason they're big enough is because they have a machine learning

and neural net model only to evaluate meaningful insights. And guess what? How it sounds like a... Oops, sorry. Can you hear me now? Hello? Yeah, it's a little better. Yeah, you lost signal for a minute.

Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm saying, I mean, did you hear the example I made with one of the largest mortgage management company of the US? We heard you were meeting him and then we didn't hear.

Yeah. So I'm saying they have implemented AI and have developed core machine learning models, which has made them this big. But still, guess what they use it for? They only use it for active communication and customer support, right? They are still not using it to trade because that's still not possible, even in the most simplistic trading activity of mortgage management and rebalancing. So I think let's take a pause on this utopian idea of trading bots taking over and employing humans.

I think we are still far away from that. And I'm sorry to be straightforward contrary to the honorable opinion. I don't mean to interrupt, but we do have the official announcement from Senator Lummis about 10 minutes ago. We somehow missed it. Honored to chair the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets. You can see it pinned above. So that was officially the announcement.

The vote was 10. She obviously won. Anyone who wants to revisit why that is so important can listen, obviously, to the beginning of the conversation. I just wanted to make sure before we continue talking about AI that we did actually break the news that we were breaking officially, even though we had it earlier as speculation and we knew the vote was happening. I think that vote was a foregone conclusion, so I think we had it pretty much nailed there. Gaurav, did I interrupt you or were you finished there with your thoughts? Almost done with that part of the utopian idea of AI taking over and employing humans. I don't want to work for AI.

It's going to happen. It's going to happen. It's not utopian at all. They've already created their own companies. They've already created their own balance sheets. It's not at all a far stretch to say, hey, we need a customer success person because we don't know how to talk to people.

So it would be really great if we could have a customer success agent on our side. It's not you. Didn't an AI yesterday deliver pizza to someone, get a pizza delivered and isn't part of that employing humans to deliver the pizza? Yeah, cool. delivered and didn't isn't isn't part of that employing humans to deliver the pizza yeah cool i mean i was talking about rebalance i mean trading on your behalf and going to the markets and trading against human traders making more profits and you know shifting the game towards ai uh driven profits than than human driven companies i do not want to end up as a pizza delivery guy for our AI overlords personally. And just say that that is not the future that I'm looking for here, even if my AI pays for it. Yeah. And if you're getting to that, look, I mean, if that's the level of discussion, then I would say, you know, don't you see games using and blockchains employing humans? I mean, if that's the level of discussion, then I would say, you know, don't you see games using and blockchains employing humans?

I mean, there are bounty programs across the entire game file of the last, you know, bull run, bull season, where millions and millions of humans were only trying to play a stupid, shitty game with zero UX to make that like half a dollar or a half a cent worth of incentive. And then that happened with the stepin of humans employed to run. Guarov's always the voice of reason. Always like the pop of the balloon. Every time, bro. Thank you, brother. I actually want to hold that repetition at the cost of being called an asshole. No, no, I think it's great.

I think it's great. Sometimes we need to get, specifically in crypto crypto we need to come back down to us like you know i'm just watching twitter right now and you have the whole of twitter you know trump is speaking to the president of el salvador at like 3 30 or something and everyone just thinks that they're only going to talk about bitcoin i'm almost willing to bet that they don't even talk about Bitcoin at all. Yeah, I mean, I think you and Simon summed that up well. I think, yeah, immigration is probably a bigger issue there. Yeah.

Yeah, bro. I want to talk to you about cartels and stuff like that. Also, just tell me about Bitcoin again, just like a… Can I get some of those volcano bonds? Can we launch a volcano? Yeah, remember those Bitcoin you bought while you were sitting on the toilet the other day and you announced it? What do you think? Yeah.

Simon, go ahead. Yeah, if you're done with that topic, I just wanted to bring up something. I'm not sure if everyone's noticed, but there's been a new wave of FUD that is trying to scare new people to Bitcoin around. Can people stop saying that there's a cap of 21 million Bitcoin is like the new FUD. I just wanted to put that to bed that what they're referring to is that when BlackRock has to give full disclosure, they obviously have to talk about every type of risk. So one of those risks is that the entire consensus of the Bitcoin community, including users, miners and node operators, if they all decide that they would like to hard fork Bitcoin and increase the cap to above 21 million, which is a probability of absolutely zero, because that would be the one thing that would make everybody sell their Bitcoin,

then there is not a cap of 21 million. But just because BlackRock owns Bitcoin through the ETF in custody that belongs to somebody else legally, and if you think that they're trying to acquire 95% of all the Bitcoin and persuade the vast majority of Bitcoin to come out of self-custody, even then it's not proof of stake. So then they'd have to simultaneously acquire all the mining companies in America. And even then, if they acquired 100% of all the mining companies, it's still only approximately 40% of the hash power. So they then have to co-opt all of the mining pools and simultaneously get all the node operators

and persuade them to not do a user-activated support. And by the way, and then after they do all of that, they crash the asset they've been hoarding to zero because nobody gives a shit anymore. So, yeah, I think it's pretty unlikely. And Simon, it's funny. I just want to say because they made BlackRock a few maybe a month ago, a month and a half ago, made this incredible three minute video on what is Bitcoin. It was like, excellent, excellent.

But then people freaked out because in the small print on the disclaimer, it said that. Yeah, exactly. So look, Bitcoin is capped at 21 million and there's no one player that can change that. It would have to be absolutely universal consensus because it's built into the design of Bitcoin, which is why it's so different and why it's not proof of stake and why it didn't pivot know pivot for the esg narrative

and why no matter what anyone wants if they want something like that to get consensus is impossible yeah dareth you joined late any uh thoughts on everything uh we're discussing here yeah sorry um i'm very late i've been been running around Davos for the World Economic Forum this week. So it's been pretty crazy. Are they discussing increasing the Bitcoin cap to $42 million? No, they're not. Yeah, we should catch up. I've been covering the World Economic Forum and I had a press pass. So I managed to actually sit in on crypto at a Crossroads panel that was discussing inside the World Economic Forum. Brian Armstrong was there, Anthony Scaramucci, Jennifer Johnson from Franklin Templeton and South Africa's Reserve Bank governor. They went through a long sort of conversation about, you you know like the positive changes in the us with

trump's presidency and they didn't mention uh anything about bitcoin so they opened up the the floor to two questions and i managed to you know pose a question to the panel about the potential of a bitcoin strategic reserve and if trump's meme coin had sort of undermined undermined that and brian armstrong you know was really great to actually say that you know he's pretty confident that uh senator lameth will will get this across the line and you know we've we've seen uh the news today that's just come out on that but but really interesting just on the the 21 million cap and people not really understanding bitcoin um south africa's reserve bank governor um um replied after my question and basically said i don't see the merits of a of a

bitcoin strategic reserve and you know if you're gonna hold bitcoin well you know like why wait that was you it was me it was my beef reserve um yeah the beef reserve so um yeah i mean my question sparked that whole debate um at where you can go and check it out on my timeline um the video went viral it's nearly 500 000 views i think mario um retweeted it uh earlier this week as well but yeah i mean my question uh i i was really happy to actually get the chance to get the world economic forum talking about bitcoin again because i think the biggest problem we've had over the years is that institutions like that will speak about blockchain and they'll speak about all the, you know, like

CBDCs. And I mean, stable coins are great for our industry, but anything that you don't have control of or they don't have control of, they don't want to speak about. And Bitcoin was one of those things. So to finally get a chance to get the World Economic Forum talking about Bitcoin, I think was a massive win for the industry. And I want to take my hat off to Brian Armstrong for, you know, like basically telling the South African Reserve Bank governor like, hey, listen, you know, like government should consider a Bitcoin reserve because it's provably finite. It's, you know, very divisible.

It's very, very, you know, like it's very easy to transfer it across space and time. And, you know, it's digital gold. And if the U.S. does go ahead and pass as a Bitcoin strategic reserve, everyone's going to follow suit. Every nation state is going to have to do that. And in the following day, I was inside the forum and South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, held a very short press conference at the end of his stay. And I attended this press conference and I got to ask him at the end, you know, I actually asked him if he would consider launching a Ramaphosa meme coin. But more importantly, I asked him if South Africa would consider a Bitcoin strategic reserve if the US cast it. And he basically said, look, everyone has to pay attention to cryptocurrencies now with

everything that's happening. And no, he's not launching a Ramaphosa meme coin. But it's been a hugely interesting week being here in Davos and actually getting a chance to get Bitcoin being spoken about at this, you know, this forum. I mean, I don't care much for the World Economic Forum, I think, you know, and they they only care about a globalist agenda but we need more people in our industry to get up and start talking about the things that matter and you know that's that's bitcoin like well larry thinks they're right i mean larry thinks they're saying we're going to tokenize all stocks and bonds precisely you know and i mean uh like you know if blackrock is doing what they're, they have to start talking about this stuff inside the World Economic Forum and other institutions.

It's not just a BlackRock. It's not a Ponzi scheme. You know, Bitcoin is decentralized money and people want these things. So it's been, yeah, it's been a really interesting week. And I'm pretty hopeful. My major takeaway is that there's really a lot of positive sentiment from a lot of these United States crypto-related businesses, Coinbase. Franklin Templeton, from a TradFi perspective, are pretty excited about it. Jennifer Johnson said some really great stuff on stage. Scaramucci, Mooch, as always, is pretty bullish on everything.

And he really had some great stuff to say inside the forum as well. So I think, I don't know, I just think like 2025 is finally the year. I think we've arrived at a point where everyone's going to start talking about Bitcoin. And it's not just this fringe idea anymore. It's part and parcel of everything. And I'm crossing my fingers that we do get a Bitcoin strategic reserve.

And this whole industry just explodes from there it's uh it's really exciting and how many um times did you hear the joke about the beef reserve being proof steak in cold storage yeah it was so good it was really um honestly i thought it was pretty crazy there was a lot of um south african publications that ran the story. And like my tweet alone, the amount of people that were just like, I can't believe the governor doesn't understand what it is. And also just making fun of him and the beef reserve. I mean, look, South Africa's got fantastic bull tongs. So we're already good at preserving our beef.

Gareth and I guess Gaurav, you're on the ground there too. The two of you, without pushing the agenda on your part, Gareth, and obviously the one panel kind of about crypto specifically, how much would you say you're actually hearing about it without asking the question? You know, in passing passing conversations other panels or leaders bringing it up unprompted yeah i'll tell you go for it garab i think the there are two two aspects of it uh i think i'll go with the one sample uh that anthony told me so i was like anthony skirmish he was with me yesterday for four hours and the day before that. And one of the things he said as a friend was, Gaurav, it seems like in my 18 years of attending Davos, this is when I've got the most popular.

And then his CEO, I mean, SkyBridge CEO, his friend and colleague kept telling me that this time for us, we're always late by an hour to wherever we want to go because people are stopping everywhere to take pictures. And there's a tweet on my Twitter line, on my timeline from yesterday, where we were just walking from one place to another. And literally the economy minister of UAE, a minister of economy, called him out. And I mean, of course, they're friends. And we took pictures and we had a good long on the street.

And by the time they were like, okay, yeah, thank you. Scott posted it, reposted it. So, you know, they were like an assembly of people and everybody knew about Bitcoin and all of that. So that's the first plot on how crypto and crypto related people are becoming extremely popular. The second thing is when people ask me, you know, what's happening in crypto and why is VEF, what is VEF doing?

What is the popularity of crypto? I keep telling him, yes, crypto has been in Davos, but this was the first ever, ever, ever official crypto discussion panel in web. Now, Ripple chief sitting on the stage and CoinDesk people sitting on the stage, those were not crypto discussions.

This was a crypto discussion like they discussed bitcoin that's just crypto that discuss intricacies uh supplies very very crypto native discussion and i think that is the of crypto over to you today