The Wolf Of All Streets - Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Approved! Summit Today | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

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Friday, everybody, welcome to Crypto Town Hall, every weekday, 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, exclusively here on X. Today is a historic day. I think it's fair to say that this is one of the biggest events that we've had in the history of Bitcoin and the crypto space, the approval by executive order of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, not only a strategic Bitcoin reserve, but also a digital asset stockpile, giving us the clarity that we were looking for on how these assets will be treated and divided. We will obviously dig into the nuance of what is stated in the executive order.

And I guess we can also have a conversation whether we should be excited about government being involved in Bitcoin in the first place, but assuming that we accept that government is going to be a part of Bitcoin and that all institutions will eventually be a part of Bitcoin, this is basically the dream

scenario that we were looking for delivered. We're getting a strategic Bitcoin reserve by executive order. Of course, we would love to see legislation. As many projected, the first launch of the Bitcoin that will become the strategic reserve will be what's already held by the government that's been taken by seizures from Silk Road and potentially Bipfinex, although that is likely to be eventually returned. Many people were upset with this executive order, which blows my mind that our industry is full of such whiny entitled children. Bitcoin obviously sold off, went went down about six thousand dollars in the first thirty to forty five minutes after this announcement because people apparently were upset that the. Executive order did not commit to buying more Bitcoin for the strategic reserve which have you been listening to the show nobody expected. But it did specifically a say that we would get an

audit on what they can hold, and B, more importantly, that Bascent and Lutnick at Treasury and Commerce respectively could find budget-neutral ways to acquire more Bitcoin. Of course, Michael Saylor immediately responded saying, I have a whole lot of budget-neutral ways that we can acquire Bitcoin for the United States government. People were embarrassed on this, saying we're not going to buy Bitcoin, but sent literally on CNBC this morning with Joe Swock talking about the importance of finding ways to acquire more Bitcoin. So those are bad takes for people saying it won't be bought. I would say that if you're a huge XRP fan or Cardano fan or Solana fan, and we're expecting those to be a part of a strategic reserve.

I could see why you would be disappointed because the government holds very little of those and the digital asset stockpile is more mechanics than a commitment to those assets and the United States will not be buying more. That's the very, very quick rundown here. But I think it's notable that we debated what this would look like. People were depressed. It's not going to be just Bitcoin. It's not going to include shitcoins. They would say, we're not going to buy. There's no commitment to all these things. And what we ended up with was an executive order that listened to basically every side of the industry

that gave most of them what they would have wanted and intended and gave us a strictly Bitcoin reserve. I don't see how you can take this as a negative, but miserable people, miserable takes. Let's jump to the panel. Whoever would like to jump in with their first takes on the strategic reserve, please give them to me and for a go ahead. Hey, good morning guys. Um, yeah, no, I think, I think long-term, like I'm still very bullish on Bitcoin. I would say the market had clearly priced in, uh, more optimism or more aggressive strategy, which is why it sold off. I would say though, that Bitcoin over NQ shows, uh, Bitcoin has been

performing quite well, just in the short-term timeframes. But I think that an important point is that so long as the US continues to run twin deficits, it's all kind of moot. So even if we had decided, hey, we're gonna print a trillion dollars and use that to buy Bitcoin, which was kind of the hyper bullish opinion or outlook.

But no Bitcoiner would want, by the way. Yeah. True Bitcoiner. Of course. It's printing money to buy Bitcoin, yeah. Go ahead. Of course, but for number go up, right? And so that even in that hyper bullish kind of scenario, here's the thing, because we run a twin deficit,

that Bitcoin would flow out. A lot of people have touched on the sovereign wealth fund and we're a twin deficit nation, but I want to touch on the international trade angle, which is because all it would take, say we have a trillion dollars of Bitcoin now. We printed the money, bought the Bitcoin. Well, China runs a surplus against us. Malaysia, you pick any of the dozens of countries that runs a trade surplus against the US, all they would have to do is say, okay, cool, great. We actually really like Bitcoin. We're not taking dollars anymore. We want your Bitcoin instead. Bitcoin would flow out of the country.

This is how it used to work with gold. Countries that ran these really big trade surpluses, gold would flow into their country. They were net producers in the global context. They produced more value for the world than they consumed. What happened? Gold would gradually flow in and accumulate and their currency would strengthen until eventually it gets too strong where their stuff isn't competitive anymore. They stop selling as much stuff.

Maybe start to run a slight deficit. Gold starts to flow out of their country. The problem here is that the global system is broken. The dollar is fundamentally grossly overvalued on a fundamentals basis because of this kind of dollar complex that we've built. And until we address kind of some of these release valves that should be operating to correct trade imbalances and disparities and all that. Until we do that, we could print a trillion dollars by Bitcoin all we want.

That'll just by nature of running a twin deficit, it's only a matter of time before that basically flows out of the country. Ryan. Ryan, are you able to lift your mic? Ryan can't speak. Go ahead, Jason. Are you able to lift your mic? Ryan can't speak, go ahead, Jason. Hey, man. So I am one of those,

not necessarily the pessimistic people, but I find the geopolitical implications of this absolutely fascinating. A lot of what Infra said resonates really strongly, but the other point here that I think is interesting is it makes Bitcoin now a viable target and tool in a proxy war, a proxy economic war, which I find really interesting. Because between China, Russia, and Kazakhstan, about 44% of all of the hash power for the

Bitcoin network is combined into those three occasionally aligned powers. And that's an interesting thing because it makes the possibility for 51% attack of the network not entirely insanely improbable. You just have to knock a bunch of stuff offline and then bring up some more hash power and you could nuke a reserve, which I find fascinating and terrifying at the same time. My mic was not working there for a second either. I couldn't see the actual hands up besides Ryan whose hand went down.

Dave, I think you had your hand up. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, look, I'd love to have a more in-depth conversation with Infra on this topic. But effectively, what he was describing was the world before 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window. And finding economists who, other than the Austrian school, which I'm going to guess Infra and I both belong to, that doesn't think that closing the gold window

and allowing the dollar to be manipulated in a way to be able to create prosperity and outlaw recessions in the business cycle, et cetera, is very hard. The way the global economy started with petrodollars in the 70s, but has evolved to today is is we have other than I would have said other than Germany although it looks like they're gonna join the party other than Germany all governments with debt to GDPs of over a hundred percent and they keep in mind people talk about Paul Volcker which was you know after Nixon you know closed the

gold window and they talk about his financial you know, after Nixon, you know, closed the gold window, and they talk about his financial, you know, cure for the economy to, you know, slow it down to decrease inflation or break inflationary expectations. Keep in mind, our budget deficit to GDP was 34%, not 134%. So, we're in a situation which is rather different. And the economy and the FX rates are clearly with everything in fiat world in competitive devaluation mode. Every once in a while you get there. And these tariff wars that we're not talking about

today, but we're talking about the strategic reserve, are all part of the same complex. The one point here, which is the most important point, I made it this morning on our show, Scott, and I'll make it again now, is Bitcoin is still an infant asset or more likely an option because it's not a store of value yet. It's too volatile for a store of value. A store of value at the gold level would imply a price of over 10 times the price that it's at today. And if you ask yourself the question, do investors who believe that it will ultimately win have a higher probability today than they did yesterday at this time on thinking they would win, the

answer is yes. So what you're seeing in the trading of Bitcoin, and we saw it last night with the idiotic dump and forced liquidations of people, are people reacting to the technicals in the chart, but not considering the fact that more investors are being stirred to saying, wait a minute, this is a 10X bet that I can make that it's going to be okay, and it's a higher probability. To me, markets are irrational in the short term, but rarely irrational forever. And I think that this is an opportunity

that people need to take and understand. And I do believe that that's why we're trading the way we're trading today, but it's very important to understand that you can make all these assertions about government buying Bitcoin being the death of it. Well, not really. Not if they're owners of it in the sense of they own the asset.

The issue is, do we want governments actually running the nodes and mining and being able to do a 51% attack? That to me is the thing that seems very unlikely and that this is not going to increase the likelihood of that. We do have some guests guys, I know Gareth, Joe, some of you guys were invited. We have a full panel but we'll work on getting you up there, up here for you guys in the audience who I know are waiting. Ryan, is your mic working? I saw you raise your hand again. Yep, got it, sorry about that. Yeah, this is an interesting one. So many people had their hopes

up that this was going to be this massive buy. Government was going to come in with billions, if not trillions of dollars. And then Trump comes out and says, oh, Solana and XRP and Cardano. And the reality is when you actually read the executive order, it's just saying, Hey, everything that we have anywhere in government, we want to pull it into one place so we can actually see what we have. And then at that point, there's a ton of exceptions in the executive order on when they can sell the Bitcoin and when they can sell the altcoins. So it's not like we're just going to accumulate everything into the treasury and hold it. It's like there's a lot of exceptions on when they can sell it. And then this whole idea of

budget neutral acquisition, well, in my opinion, that just means we take it. It's like, oh, we're going to get Bitcoin without it costing us anything. So that's, you know, a lot of different ways they can do that. without it costing us anything. So that's a lot of different ways they can do that. When it comes to the mining side of things, I find it really fascinating where they could say, oh, we want all the Bitcoin minted here in America. Well, why? Well, typically when things are minted or made in America,

it's the government gets some type of a portion of that. So is there going to be a mining tax? Is there going to be a reason why they want all the Bitcoin into America other than just the revenue from the tax of the income? There's a lot of questions I have on how they think they're going to acquire Bitcoin other than just taking it from people. Zach? and just taking it from people. Zach. I think this is really quite close to best case scenario for what could have happened.

I mean, I understand the market was pricing in something differently, but this was an executive order, right? And there's only so much you can do by executive order. It recognizes in the text, the properties of Bitcoin that make it valuable. They talk about the supply cap and the security. They talk about it as a strategic asset. It references the nation-state level race to acquire Bitcoin and the game theory around that. It separates Bitcoin from

altcoins, which are treated differently. The actual text of the EO directs, right? It forces the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department to develop strategies to buy more Bitcoin. Theoretically, I've argued before that there is a legal ability by executive order maybe to do some buying through the Exchange Stabilization Fund, but that would have been contested in court even if they went with that. But really, I don't know what else you possibly could have done by executive order that would have been better than this and more legitimizing of Bitcoin. So I don't know.

I think this is like a historic achievement for Bitcoin. So I totally agree, especially if you zoom out and think back a few months or a year or 18 months before we even had spot ETFs, how unimaginable this situation was to be bearish on it or upset. It just slowly blows my mind. By the way, the next step is every Bitcoin or crypto oriented policy person in DC is going to start educating the treasury and commerce departments on budget neutral ways to buy Bitcoin like that's starting today. I don't know. The idea that the price went down on

this announcement blows my mind. Yeah, I saw you had your hand up before you managed to get on stage. Yeah, I think it was just a waving emoji, not a hand up, but how's it's going? Hello, everyone. Good to be here again. We just had a space on the Coin Telegraph account a little bit earlier and had a great chat with Dennis, Dennis Porte and Pierre Richard, who was with Riot for a long time. And I think the biggest takeaway for me was Trump making good on his promise at Bitcoin Nashville

and saying, hey, we already have this 200,000 Bitcoin or so that we've seized and we're gonna take that and we're gonna make that part of our Bitcoin reserves. So he's made good on one promise. And for me, the other big takeaway is this is the start of that game theory, right? I remember Scott, like when we were talking about this, I think in November last year, we were kind of saying that, you know, if the US does come through with some executive order or the establishment of a Bitcoin Act, then every

other nation state has to follow suit. Now we've got a very clear statement, right? The US government is saying, hey, we're holding Bitcoin through law enforcement over the years. A lot of this Bitcoin comes from the Bitfinex hack and of course, the takedown of Silk Road. So that's where a lot of this Bitcoin comes from. But the US government is clearly saying to everyone else, we understand what Bitcoin is, we understand the value proposition, we understand that it's hard money, we have this Bitcoin and we're not going to sell it, we're going to hold it because it has value.

And for me, this is just the start of the game now. Like if the biggest nation, you know, the superpower of the world is saying to everyone else, guys, we know what Bitcoin is, we know it's valuable and we're holding on to what we've got. And at some stage, we're looking at a budget neutral way of acquiring more of it. Then every other nation state now has to do something about it. And I mean, I asked the South African president at the World Economic Forum earlier this year if they would consider doing the same thing, establishing a Bitcoin reserve, if the United States were to do that.

He said, listen, our people are looking into that. The statement has been made. I think that every other nation state now that has considerable reserves in precious assets and minerals and all those kind of things are going to have to look really hard at Bitcoin now. And if they haven't done their homework already, they also catch up. So for me, honestly, this is a watershed moment. It's an exciting time to be in the industry. And I can't wait to see what happens at the White House today as well at the crypto summit. to be in the industry and I can't wait to see what happens at the White House today as well at the crypto summit.

Iago. Yeah, so from my perspective, this is just another example of the fact that in crypto, prices never respond to fundamentals and frequently go exactly the opposite of fundamentals. It's as funny today as it's ever been. It's a really phenomenal thing that has happened. I do want to point out a few things which are, I think, worth realizing. So the United States so-called 200,000 BTC is not 200,000 BTC. Gareth actually sort of hinted at this. Around 64,000 of that does belong to Bitfinex. Bitfinex. I think it's 94,000. Well, yeah. So the numbers change. There's going to be, which is one of the reasons that the EO is an actual audit. But in any event, it doesn't look like the US has more than about 112,000 BTC.

In comparison to countries like the UK, which has 61,000 BTC, the country of Ukraine, which is 46,000 BTC, El Salvador, this tiny little country with 6,000 BTC. So one question... Wait, and the most importantly, sorry, I'll go not to interrupt, but China has almost 200,000, like 190 something. So that was, that was our own game to come to, right? So if the United States, especially under a president like Trump, sees that it's only got, you know, a little bit more than twice a tiny, insignificant island like the UK, that's already a strong motivator.

And then it's got less than China. Oh my God. That's time to press the panic buy button. In addition to that, there's a lot of countries which have large but undisclosed or as yet undisclosed amounts of BTC. And this process has been accelerating over the course of the last year and in particular over the course of the last year, and in particular over the course of the last months, since it looked like Trump was going to get elected and after Nashville. Primarily we're talking about Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and then rumors of some other Gulf countries. And so there's already this process which is happening. But the bigger story from my perspective is that this has legitimized BTC as the first true new asset class of the digital age.

And that is going to have massive repercussions for decades. We're talking about for the first time the birth of an entirely new asset classes. Asset classes have valuations in the tens of billions. The real target now is that, and it's just a question of time, is when does Bitcoin flip in gold? Gold is a $20 trillion asset. That would be a more than 10x climb from here. And then the second part of it is the very, very clear distinction that has been made

between Bitcoin and everything else. And I was actually writing an investor letter this morning, so I'll just pull out some choice quotes. I think there were basically four key points made in the executive order. The first point is that the United States government will not sell Bitcoin, so BTC deposits and strategic reserves shall not be sold. The second is that the US government will seek to purchase more BTC, and that's the quote, shall develop strategies for acquiring additional growing BTC. And then on the flip side, and know, coming to the question of Sol and XRP and ADA and

all of the rest, it explicitly says the USG will not seek to purchase other crypto assets, shall not acquire additional stock-file assets, and that these additional assets can be sold, so digital assets other than BTC can be sold, possibly for additional BTC as a revenue neutral mechanism. Here, distinction from the largest economy in the world and one which has effectively been sanctioning this asset class for the last five or six years. It's a watershed moment. This is, you know, you get to see a moment like this once every few generations,

and we're very lucky to see it ourselves. So lost connection there for a minute. That's what I was able to catch the rest of that. We're having a glitch, by the way, on spaces for the guests who are trying to get off and on. It's kicking some people off and inviting others, and we for the guests who are trying to get off and on. It's kicking some people off and inviting others. We can't really see who is or is not on stage.

Gary, I see you're up here. Your brother was just up here too. I was looking at two cardones. No, was he? Well, he was up here for a second, man. And then I think he just disappeared. I'd be interested to see what he thinks about all this since he studied it so long. He's working hard. interested to see what he thinks about all this since he studied it so long.

He's working hard. I gotta tell you, I think I am so glad this is all getting ready to be done and we can move on to like the real world. I really do not like governments involved in any kind of commerce. Now that they're involved, I will say I am incredibly impressed at how mature the government's response to this was. They have been plagued with special interest groups. I think they've been plagued with a lot of skepticism from us thinking that, you know, this was gonna turn into a shit show.

If you're a McKinsey, a consultant, if you just get away from your own bags and look at this, this was as professional of a response. It's extremely consistent with what he said in Nashville. I was like eyeball to eyeball with him. So he's lived up to what he said he was gonna do. I suspect a good 50% of the crypto community will be disappointed.

And I can only say that, like, I think it was extremely naive to ever think that some paper that can be created by a U.S. firm is going to be put on the reserve. I'm very impressed with what he said so far. And the, you know, the neutral basis to be able to, And the neutral basis to be able to, that's a strong indicator. Hey, we may look at arbitraging some of the other assets on our balance sheet. That may include some of the other crypto. Not to be negative on anybody, but I own some Solana. So I've got to sit here and go well now what Solana's role Moving forward am I buying something that's gonna have a true utility

Because before I was betting on You know, maybe I've got call it like 20 Bitcoin and then I've got you know one position relative to those 20 units in Solana. I have to look at this now and say, is this worth the risk for Gary Cardone to have 1 20th of his allocation to Solana when I can't really explain what Solana, what role Solana is gonna play in the new world. I think they will play some role,

but I can't actually explain it. I can't identify the addressable size of the market. I can't address how much traction they can get and keep. So I don't think this is going to be positive for the alts, which I actually think is very healthy, quite frankly, because we have too many things here that are just not they're not businesses, man. They're literally lottery tickets. Probably you've got better odds with the lottery tickets. So I'm excited.

I think it's awesome. Does not surprise me that we can buy 88,000 today. Um, I have plowed into this thing pretty heavily recently again, and I plan on doing anything in the eighties, I think, is going to be spectacularly smart, look smart, in six months to a year. So we will see. Congrats to everyone. And if you are disappointed, you're holding alts.

You know, I've learned over time, the sooner I can make a decision and agree that I have made a mistake and cut that decision, the sooner I get back on the horse and start going in the right direction. I don't get married to my ego in these decisions. This is just business, dude. It's just business and I got to pick the right horse to take me to the journey. Thank you guys very much. Gary, so long as Digital Vegas, man.

You know, you can own a me to the journey. So thank you guys very much. Yeah, but Gary Salana's digital Vegas, man. You know, you can own a piece of the casino. Yeah, Vegas. I hear Vegas is nearly empty right now. OK, digital Macau. Vegas was packed last time I was there, but point being, you know, if you believe that humans are going to gamble and speculate, then that that might be your justification

for owning the casino of Solana. I'm not saying that Solana is only purpose, by the way. I get you, man. Dave? Yeah, I was just typing a response to your Digital Vegas comment. I mean, look, the largest product on Wall Street, the largest new product on Wall Street are single-day options, and they have product on Wall Street are single day options, and they have a frighteningly high percentage

of the options market, which itself has a frighteningly large percentage of the overall investing market for most of the brokerages out there. So what Solana is vying to be, and whether they will get it or not is a different story, but what they are vying to be isn't Digital Vegas, but the digital Wall Street casino, which

is a multi, multi trillion dollar wallet. And it goes way beyond just US equities and options, but there's also, there's so many things in the world of DeFi and so many verticals, whether you're talking interest rate swaps or securities lending, et cetera, et cetera, and it's global. So that's years from now, right? But when you wanna understand what the potential is, that's what the potential is.

Now, quite frankly, the reason Ethereum, despite no metric really justifying it, still has the market cap that it does is because people understand that the total TAM for all of these tokens is dramatically larger. I think that to bring it back to the topic of the day, the way that they did this by making it Bitcoin for a strategic reserve and a stockpile, which will be further clarified

over time of other tokens, I think it's really a question, which is I think totally correct, and everyone knows that's the way I've been looking at it as well. But I do think that when you're talking, Gary, about total addressable markets, you need to look in the future. You don't have to wait a decade

for these things to happen, but we do need to wait at least for the policy of how regulation is going to incentivize building for real utility. And that's going to be the back half of the year. I mean, you know, Atkins at the SEC and Contenz at the CFTC haven't even been confirmed yet, much less have a chance to start addressing their policies and talk about how they're going to cooperate. So a lot of these things are going to take a lot longer.

But you know, yeah, you're right. The hot money idea that the government was going to be buying Solana and XRP. Yeah, okay, that was always a pipe. That was never gonna happen. But I don't happen. I'm laughing by the way. Sorry. I don't see anything in this, which was which would it.

This actually exceeded my expectations. We'll leave it that way. I'm with that. Me too. 100% I'm laughing by the way. I just pinned a tweet in the nest. Obviously, we have the crypto summit at the White House today. We've litigated the guest list repeatedly here. Today, we've litigated the guest list repeatedly here. I'm reading this tweet above, and I'm literally not sure which side of good or bad this is on. No capital gains tax exemptions

expected at White House crypto summit. That could literally either read that we're getting no capital gains in an exemption or that there will be no capital gains tax exemption. So I'm not sure if this means we're getting a capital gains tax exemption or that there will be no capital gains tax exemption. So I'm not sure if this means we're getting a capital gains tax exemption or not. But clearly this is the main topic of the summit today now that we've been preempted by Trump, I think, on the news about the SPR. Go ahead, Gareth. Yeah, I was just going to piggyback off what Gary said because I think

he made such a good point. I was having a chat with my dad the other night about this, about the whole Bitcoin versus crypto reserve, and he was pretty much, he's not even invested in Bitcoin or any cryptocurrencies, but he was like, surely there just needs to be a clear definition about what classifies as what. And I think that's what this all comes down to. You need to understand the fundamental value proposition of Bitcoin and why it's

both digital gold and electronic money and understand that all the other altcoins are essentially utility tokens of different blockchain protocols that have different use cases. It doesn't mean that they're useless. The people that have built all these protocols and these technologies are great technologists, and they're all interested in making things work. And I interviewed Toli, who's the co-founder of Solana a couple of years ago, and he broke down the essential,

the value proposition for Solana. And he worked at Qualcomm for a really long time, and that is the basis for how Solana works, right? And the use case for Solana is a high throughput, high speed blockchain and it was supposed to be a tool for high frequency trading and those type of use cases on blockchain. Understand what it is that you're investing in, and then you can forget about all the hype and everything else. And like for me, the main thing is, you know, obviously the price of Bitcoin will always determine how much you're willing to buy of it.

But if you understand what the use case is, and you have a very low time preference, like safety and talks about in the Bitcoin standard, you understand that you're investing in something that is both goldolved and electronic money and it's not something that you're aware of until it can be. Yeah, you're breaking up, buddy. Yes, sorry, you've got a bad connection. I think you're in the car, but go ahead, Ryan and then AJ. Yeah, two things. Like one, I hope the former point about no capital gains on Bitcoin. I hope it's not the latter, which means a lot of people in Puerto Rico will be coming back to the mainland. But that's right, which means I need to get my house ready.

Uh, now the second point I thought Gary touched on was really, really good. Uh, the executive order does clearly say that, um, that's strategic. Uh, stockpile can be used to acquire Bitcoin. Um, which means that you have the government, if they get into a race with China or whoever else to acquire more and more Bitcoin, then it could be at the risk of taking these other networks because they're basically liquidating all these other coins in order to claw more Bitcoin. I find it a really interesting scenario, especially given the propensity of Trump and this administration to constantly compare ourselves to China. So if China does have a large amount of Bitcoin, then I see this as a very real possibility of Solana, Carvano, XRP,

or whatever else being liquidated just to keep up. XRP or whatever else being liquidated just to keep up. I think you called on me, Scott. I don't know what's been going on. My phone. Yeah. Let's see next jump right in. Thank you. Jump right in.

Thank you. Good morning. Um, well, overall I'm still extremely bullish. I know everyone was expecting, um, I don't know what they were expecting, but definitely not go down, um, but it's going to just take time. A lot of things like stuff like this takes time. I mean, he's in there doing all kinds of crazy stuff, trying to pass. Actually, he's not even trying to pass things that he's just signing executive orders.

And then when it comes to this stockpile and that executive order, it has to be budget neutral. I mean, can't that be reallocated funds from from he thinks hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars of wasted spending? I don't think he has to I don't think he wants to tank another US crypto token that's not Bitcoin to buy more Bitcoin. So I don't see it that way. I more see it as he just wants American crypto companies to rise and

Actually if Bitcoin still sits at around this price for a long time that gives us more opportunity to have an old season So we can buy more Bitcoin after that. So so overall for me, I just think we need more time I think we're all in the rush honestly for price to go up But I am NOT because I want to accumulate more Bitcoin So so I'm okay with it sitting around here for a while. And I'm OK with having all season happen. And I'm OK with Trump taking this time and doing it right. They can I just think it should just be noted. Can I just bounce in here?

Yeah, people are talking about Trump. One of the things I noticed and I think other people notice, I don't think Trump's interested in this subject at all If you look at the way he had hey, do you believe in this it was Howard? I guess I can't remember He's like I promise this he's not interested in this dude there and the truth is he shouldn't be I'm so excited We have a 37 year old cabinet that's pushing this. He's asking the team, hey, do you guys believe in this? Good, we'll do it. But he should be

focused on peace and war. I think it's cool that Trump's not really that engaged here, and it shouldn't be. Let the committee do it. Do you all agree with that? I think we're giving 100% that one person can do this and it's not 100%. He should be. Yeah, he should be. He should be outsourcing things that he doesn't understand or is not passionate about to smarter people than himself who are. And that's what he's doing across the government right now, whether you agree with those people or not, everybody can have their

political opinion, at least that's what he's trying. Right? I mean, and we ended up with a Bitcoin in every position, even the non-financial ones. But Scott, if you don't mind, he did say he wants the US to be the crypto capital of the world though. So he is going to- Yes, the political talking points. Listen, I'm not disagreeing with you. I do think that he wants that because it would be politically popular, because of raising money and because his advisors are saying that. Gary, I was sitting there with you in Nashville.

Obviously, listen, anyone who listened to that speech, you were super excited that he was talking about Bitcoin and that he was headlining and he was there. But when you heard him make the quips and realize that they're fire Gary Gensler, Oh, you guys really like that. Let me close the speech with like, have fun playing with your Bitcoin and crypto and stuff. You know, it's very clear, like he understands it's politically popular, that's something that he needs to do and is important to other people in the administration. But I agree with Gary. Like, he's got much bigger fish to fry than Bitcoin. He should. Go ahead, Joe. By the way, that is the perfect leader. A guy that if he trusts his team and he doesn't stick

his nose into this, it is the perfect leader. It's actually the most mature thing I have seen happen to Bitcoin and the whole crypto industry since I have been here. I was stunned at how mature the decision was last night. Really, I just want to say before I jump to Joe, you and I now have known each other a couple of years, three years, maybe something like that. And I remember our first conversation ever. And you were kind of new to Bitcoin, but definitely got it. And you kept telling me that the institutions were coming. It was going to end up being the adults in the room, the governments and the suits. And I obviously agreed with that.

But you really, really nailed exactly where this was going and how it was going to go there a very long time ago, even when you were relatively new to the industry. Well, every now and then I get lucky. You know what I mean, boss. Go ahead, Joe. Okay, thanks Scott for having me up. First off, I agree with a lot of what's been said. I wanna emphasize one thing that I think

is the most important takeaway from what we got yesterday. Number one, if you go back to when the original digital asset EO came down, they called it the digital asset stockpile, right? They specifically refrain from using strategic Bitcoin reserve in the original one. Now we finally got one that says strategic reserve and that has profound importance. Regardless of the inter crypto battles about which assets valuable and which is important. When you label

something as a strategic asset that is necessary for reserves that has not just domestic implications but international ones. For example, okay, if you look at the IMF charter, the articles of agreement specifically define certain

reserve assets. There's foreign currencies, there's special drawing rights, gold, certain fixed income instruments. They are defined and understood on the IMF as reserve assets. Now the United States has veto power over this. The United States can also petition, based on its internal policy, the reclassification of certain other assets under SDRs and Elseworth to be reserve assets. Why is that important? Well, because if you believe like I do that the

emerging markets are perhaps the most interesting place where things like Bitcoin can really catch fire, places like El Salvador, which by the way, the IMF was putting pressure on El Salvador to adapt and modify its Bitcoin strategy here. That has huge implications now they have the cover from the United States saying that this is a strategic reserve asset we're holding it for strategic

reserve purposes and that can potentially lead to IMF change which can help this catch fire throughout the emerging markets in a really big way. So you know that that's a massive deal- the fact that it's called the strategic reserve as opposed

to just a digital asset stock problem in the government stockpiles all sorts of things right. But just the labeling just the messaging of that. I don't think the market is really gotten the secondary tertiary impacts of that. And

occasionally- occasionally the market just you know short term it's just a lot of noise right it's reality responding reality responding to macro things. It's responding to the fact that the S&P has really been struggling. Don't take the fact that, you know, there's some short term noise in the price because a lot of pajama traders thought that the US was going to buy a million Bitcoin overnight. As being some indication that this is not insanely bullish from a geopolitical arms race standpoint with respect to reserves assets.

So anyway, thanks for having me up. Sorry, I'm here as a speaker now. I got booted for some reason as co-host. Welcome to Spaces. But Jakob, go ahead if you guys can hear me. Yeah, so one of the key things that people have been mentioning and sort of citing as a bearish indicator is like we don't know what budget neutral means. How can you buy something if it's like

going to have a budgetary? Yes, we do. We know what budget neutral means. It's defined in the federal code. For sure, man. It's absolutely defined in the federal code. We know exactly what it means. Sure. I would not say, this is a chapter that I've been seeing. So I think it was purposeful. There were two very choice choices of words. One was the fact, and this has been pointed out by others, that it was called a strategic reserve, equilating it to the strategic reserve of gold. The second thing is the US does have a strategic reserve of gold, and it has a government mandated price. The price of gold right now, according to the US government, is variable, but $35 to $42 per ounce. The actual value of gold is between $1,800 and $2,000

per troy ounce. The US government is 261 million troy ounces. And one of the primary plans that has been floated over the last few months repeatedly is the repricing of the US gold reserves to market price. So that would be the repricing of 261 million ounces to 1,800 or more dollars per ounce. 2,800, just to be clear. Sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. So that would be an increase of over half a trillion dollars. So there has been consistent talk about doing this to open up the ability for the Trump administration to have more flexibility in its budget and specifically with regards to its ability to acquire additional BTC. So that's well over $500 billion in potential dry powder.

The implications are twofold. One is the ability to purchase significantly more BTC. But even more important is that gold is primarily valued on the basis of its use as a reserve asset globally. By making Bitcoin an equivalent reserve asset, you would expect Bitcoin to begin to see its value come to that of gold or exceeding that of gold due to its additional you know the fact that it can be transported effectively instantaneously between countries which is something that you cannot do with gold and so I Cannot emphasize this point enough gold is the primary target here. It's a 20 trillion dollar asset

which is ten times the size of Bitcoin. And it's very, very difficult to see a scenario here where Bitcoin does not see its price begin to rise in line with it as the market absorbs the impact of this information. Oh, if you guys can hear me, Mike, I can't hear you, Scott. Okay, no, go ahead. You know, it's interesting to listen to that gentleman talk about the goal scenario. And this is not meant offensively, but it's so boring now. You know, it's like, well, of course we're going after goal.

It's going to go after the mag seven. It's going to. This is we're here. The news only got better yesterday. It got confirmed. I don't think it got better. Just got confirmed. And I think a lot of the noise that we've suffered, this industry suffered about some of this meme coins and stuff, this is really clear definition now. There's the top end casino, which is called Bitcoin, and then there's everything else is down the strip. I love your gambling analogies,

but I think the most important point is, I think this takes Bitcoin out of being considered like the Vegas casino and more like the Wall Street casino, which sounds like a small thing, but it isn't because there are tens of trillions of dollars controlled by pension funds that still consider that Bitcoin investments to the extent they do them and they're very small are alternative investments. Whereas BlackRock may have been the first, but expect all the pension fund consultants now to have the air cover to start thinking about whether Bitcoin belongs in model portfolios. That amount of money flow is dramatically larger than anything we're talking about that

the federal government is going to actively buy. I don't think they're going to be taking gold out of Fort Knox to buy Bitcoin, although who knows if it's even there. I mean, I hope it's there for all of our sakes, but there's a lot of cross-currency here. The most important one is the signal to the world that Bitcoin is a strategic investable asset. And the market is getting that completely wrong today but I'm not surprised first reactions to these things that are more subtle of course are often wrong I mean right now you just have people selling because they were hoping for more okay whatever but I think there are plenty of willing buyers not very far below this or even at these levels so we'll see what

happens. Dave just to clarify by repricing the gold that adds additional value to the Treasury, it does not require them to actually sell even a single ounce of gold in order to realize that value. They can just in their books, say we're revaluing gold to its market price, we now have discovered another half trillion dollars. Yeah, yeah, I go I I'm not much money. I'm not I'm not sure I care, but I think you're right I made the point this morning to somebody who basically said oh, this means the governor will never be buying it

It's like anyone who knows anything about Washington knows there's all sorts of sophistry when it comes to the words and in quotes pay for So they use pay for as kind of a verb to say, how you can justify certain things in budgets. That might very well be a pay for. Others we've talked about could be, tying research for energy sources to, or grants towards people building new energy plants to being able to use some of it.

They're gonna be doing a lot with the electric grid, in Bitcoin mining, you know I could easily see ways for the government to acquire Bitcoin by helping and doing things there otherwise already doing To actually start building that reserve But the most important point here is whatever they do if they were going to buy Bitcoin in the open market There is no effing way they're going to it and they felt they had the legal authority to do so they're not going to announce it first no way because the price would run away from them and they don't want that

can you all hear me yet is this working it's working now but thank goodness so itchy yeah thank you. Dennis, I saw you requested jumped up on stage. Obviously, we kind of briefly yesterday discussed Texas, right? In context of all of this, but it's not just at the national level that we're seeing progress. Yeah, that's absolutely right. We are seeing quite a bit of progress at the state level and we will probably see even more because of this type of news. Lawmakers across the country are trying to make the decision if they want to be the first to create a strategic

Bitcoin reserve at the state level. And you have to imagine that news like this, the White House and President Trump coming out and creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve certainly bolsters the ability and decisionmaking process for many of these lawmakers. I mean, we just recently saw Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick put out a press release saying that he wanted to endorse President Trump's move to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. This was, of course, just maybe hours before he actually created the reserve. And then he also said he wanted to join in leading towards that digital future in the state of Texas. And for those that don't know, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick

has historically actually been sort of skeptical around things like Bitcoin mining, but has certainly changed his or turned over a leaf, I should say, with regards to this technology. Now publicly endorsing the strategic Bitcoin reserve policy in the state of Texas, and also making it a priority bill, which means that he is going to be forcibly pushing for it to get across the finish line. We just saw it pass 25 to five in the Texas Senate. We're also waiting today.

Today is the last day. If we will see, we'll get some news out of Utah. Utah is a state that we have spent a lot of time in working with. A lot of the model policies surrounding strategic Bitcoin reserve tech at the state level came from the state of Utah. that we have spent a lot of time in working with. A lot of the model policies surrounding strategic Bitcoin Reserve Tech at the state level came from the state of Utah. We worked with the task force there for over a year to help them and encourage them to add Bitcoin to their gold and silver portfolio process. And that has been so far pretty successful. But we had some last minute, I would

say, hurdles that we had to overcome in the state of Utah. So we will be seeing shortly if not, whether or not today, if Utah is able to get across the finish line. But many other states are also well positioned, Oklahoma, Iowa, North Carolina, in particular, the speaker has a single bill that he is running, the Speaker of the House of North Carolina, and it is a strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill. Awesome work being done in North Carolina. Big shout out to Dan Spoehler if he's in the room. He's been doing great work to get that state across finish lines. Hey, Dennis, can I ask you a question? Absolutely.

So the Texas mechanism, as we understood it, I don't know, I haven't kept up with it to see if that's the one that got the 25 to 5 vote. That's the mechanism that says they're not buying it, but they're going to allow people to pay taxes in Bitcoin. Is that correct? So that was the original bill. The original bill was only donations and taxes, but after, you know, I believe they saw the momentum

that was taking place at the state level where other states were saying that they were going to enable the state treasurer to be able to purchase Bitcoin. I believe that's when Texas rewrote the bill and included parts of the legislation and the model that we've seen in other states. So that bill will allow Texas to buy Bitcoin and digital assets over a certain market cap threshold. And of course, that market cap threshold is so high that today only

Bitcoin currently qualifies to be able to be purchased within the reserve. Cool. And it's just for clarity, it's the comp troller that would be the one I believe overseeing this in the state of Texas. And Dennis, it has to be that the Texas approving this, the odds of that has to go up with this last night, right? Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

But you have to imagine the odds are already high, right? I mean, 25 to five in the Senate is a massive victory. It's a primarily Republican Congress, and we know that Abbott would likely sign, right, Dennis? Yeah, I think you're projecting all of that correctly. I believe that Governor Abbott has been historically more supportive of this technology than even his lieutenant. I will say the lieutenant governor, many people are saying he plans to run for governor very soon. So there's likely going to be a switch over. But yes,

Governor Abbott has been supportive of the technology when given the opportunity for sort of a I would say, a low threshold. Yes, there was an opportunity for him to shut down SB 1751 in the past, which was an anti Bitcoin mining bill in the state. He didn't weigh in on that bill to stop it from happening. Ultimately, many groups on the past, which was an anti-Bitcoin mining bill in the state. He didn't weigh in on that bill to stop it from happening. Ultimately, many groups on the ground, including ours and others from Texas and a group from Abbott's agency, were able to kill that bill, but it was done just by pure advocacy and grinding it out, trying to get the process to be halted. Many people thought he would weigh in because he was so supportive of Bitcoin mining in

the past. But so my views of Governor Abbott is that if it's politically popular and it's not going to get in the way of his other priorities, then it's going to be a very easy yes for him. I'm not saying he wouldn't weigh in and even if it wasn't politically unpopular, but in the situation where President Trump is creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve and the Lieutenant Governor is supporting it, I would believe pretty firmly that the Governor of Texas would sign that bill into law.

You were cutting out for me, but it could have been on my end. What's the mechanics here with the executive order? Obviously establishing the strategic Bitcoin reserve with relation to Lumis's bill. So how much legislation I guess is needed in this context or if we're not buying is the legislation not really needed? So, I mean, as you saw in the executive order, they're exploring budget neutral methods to

be able to purchase Bitcoin. I believe that could include working on using the funds that are currently in the ESF. I think people have also talked about special drawing rights. Additionally, I believe that there's a potential here for us to sell other altcoins and purchase Bitcoin, which is an idea that we floated internally as a Satoshi action for some time. I do believe that there's a possibility for them to be able to purchase Bitcoin without actually going through the traditional appropriations process, because they would not have to find new monies to do that. They could just essentially transition money from other funds to be able

to buy Bitcoin and those funds. Didn't Ludnick also float the idea of utilizing punch from tariffs? He said that this week, I don't know, that was kind of preempted all this actual information that we got. But he did say that I was just curious if we, you know, if Lumis needs to get this across the finish line now, or are we basically good to go? I would say that this certainly provides a lot of political support for the Lumis concept. I think certainly regardless of whether, you know, the EO sort of whether it was weaker than this or stronger than this, at the end of the day, it's an executive order. And if you live by an executive order, you'll die by an executive order. And so if we want

to see the strategic Bitcoin reserve policy be cemented into law and be protected for many years to come to stand the test of time, we're going to need to be supportive of Senator Lamas Bitcoin Act, which will create a strategic Bitcoin reserve and establish it and codify it into law. That's the answer. That's the real answer is that if we don't, you know, when the winds of politics change and you inevitably get a Democratic president at some point or another Republican president doesn't believe in this executive orders can just be undone. So we need it to be in law.

That's exactly correct. So a lot still to do here in that regard to protect it now that it's done. But still, man, so incredible. I mean, listen, you have to have just been like so excited yesterday. Yeah, I mean, it's an exciting moment for all of us. And it's a historical moment that will be talked about for centuries to come, but we need to make sure that we protect this win. It's not, it is a big win. It is a huge win and it will lean to, I believe,

other states ultimately passing this into law. At least the odds of it happening is much, much higher now. But at the end of the day, if we wanna make sure that people talk about what President Trump has done as of yesterday, we're going to need to make sure that we codify that into law. If it's not codified into law, I don't think we're going to be talking about it for centuries to come.

I mean, I know. What are we? Day 45, day 47, 50. That's crazy. OK. And people were like, this won't even happen within the first 100 days. Big win for everyone.

Really guys, big win. I agree. I mean, I know we're kind of at time here, but anybody have any particular expectations now that we already have this executive order as regards to what will happen at the summit today? And I did see that President Trump is actually going to speak on crypto at the summit

around 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time today, if you guys didn't catch that. But any specific expectations here? Guess not. Me either. I think alt's get hurt and Bitcoin is going to continue to just kind of go up. I don't see this thing getting sold off or. Beautiful.

Guys, I got to run. I would love to keep this conversation going all day. Everybody in the audience, sorry for the glitching. It happens here on Spaces. We'll be back on Monday for sure with another issue of CryptoTunnel. I think I'm literally glitching as we're talking about this. Have a great day, everyone. Bye. Thank you.