We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC126: Redeeming GBTC w/ David Bailey (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

David Bailey and Preston Pysh get into an in-depth conversation about the GBTC Bitcoin Trust and all of the issues it's had over the past year and a half. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Int...ro 01:29 - What backs Bitcoin? 10:27 - CBDCs and what happens next. 13:14 - FedNow and what happens after it's launch. 18:43 - The actual impact of picking winners and losers for decades on end. 20:14 - The Skull of Satoshi. 29:43 - What it's like building a Bitcoin media company as an entrepreneur. 29:43 - Growing the Bitcoin Conference. 45:32 - GBTC and the campaign for shareholders to redeem the Bitcoin in the trust. Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. Redeem GBTC Website. David Bailey's Twitter. The Bitcoin Miami Conference. NEW TO THE SHOW? Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts.  SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: River Toyota Range Rover Daloopa The Bitcoin Way American Express Found Vacasa Onramp Facet SimpleMining Public Fundrise USPS AT&T Shopify Fundrise Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On today's show, I have Bitcoin OG, CEO, and owner of Bitcoin magazine, Mr. David Bailey. During the show, we cover a lot of ground, and in the middle of the discussion, David and I get into an in-depth conversation about the GBT Bitcoin Trust and all of the issues it's had over the past year and a half. David understands it better than anyone I've ever interviewed, so if you're interested in the internet, in understanding everything that's gone wrong, you won't want to miss that part of the interview. We also talk about how David grew this massive Bitcoin conference from small to huge, bringing in tens of thousands of people and household names.
Starting point is 00:00:45 And in general, this was just a really fun conversation. And I learned a ton because David is extremely smart and very articulate in the way he describes things. So with that, sit back and enjoy this chat with the very thoughtful Mr. David Bailey. You're listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. Hey everyone, welcome to the show. I'm very excited about this. This is long overdue.
Starting point is 00:01:27 I'm here with David Bailey. David, thanks for making time to come on the show. Preston, thanks for having me on. I just want to start with a tweet that you recently put out there because I really like this and I think it's pertinent, and the Bitcoin politics piece where everybody's got an opinion and some are really misinformed. You posted, you said, what backs Bitcoin? Trust in this idea of capitalism.
Starting point is 00:01:50 You said, what backs Fiat? Trust in politicians. Which one are you betting on? And I love this. Go ahead and explain what you're getting at. Yeah, well, it was actually, I was retweeting someone else where they asked what backs TCIP. and, you know, the underlying message of that is like the value of TCPIP is really the value of the network of people that you're able to communicate, interact with, etc. And it's really in the same way that's what makes Bitcoin valuable.
Starting point is 00:02:17 Bitcoin's value comes from the 50 million plus economic actors that use it to engage in commerce and trade and economic activity. And that's what backs it. And if you take a long-term perspective on why is this something, you know, that I should buy in on is because what governs it, value and what governs its how it works is free market individual actors acting of their own volition in a truly capitalistic sense. That's how currency and money should work. But money as it exists today has been bastardized to such a degree that money is really about control. And it's really about rather than trusting the free market, you're trusting that a set of politicians or a set of academics selected by politicians are going to make decisions that are better than the free market
Starting point is 00:03:09 is going to make them. And I feel like when you boil it all down, that's just in essence, like are you long free markets or are you long essentially controlled economies? And I feel like that's a debate that's already been resolved. So, uh, yeah, I'm betting on capitalism. What about you? Absolutely. 100%. My frustration with like this past event, with the Silicon Valley Bank and just everything that the Fed stepped in and did, it just dupes people from actually digging in and actually having a consequence to the actions of these fractional reserve systems. So, like, there was, I couldn't even imagine the amount of money that should have been burned up in all of these collapses. And I don't want to see people be harmed,
Starting point is 00:03:57 but at the same time, they're masking the reality of how fragile and how broke this fractional Reserve system is by coming in and backstopping things and then you're manipulating the cost of capital. So, like, how do you see it manifesting that people will actually ask those questions of like why they should trust this system that doesn't have any counterparty risk versus the legacy system that always just gets bailed out and they, and people that are using that legacy system don't even know how fragile it is or how manipulated it is because they keep backstopping it. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you that it's sad. when bad things happen to people.
Starting point is 00:04:34 But, you know, there is no action that the government can do that is in any way saving people. It's just distributing the cost of what happened to other people. They're choosing who bears the cost and who doesn't. And so, you know, in the case of Silicon Valley Bank, it should have been the depositors of the bank that bore the cost, which sucks for the depositors. But instead, it's going to be socialized across all Americans that are going to bear the cost. And then, you know, the Silicon Valley Bank deposits, they're going to get some benefit put on them that they get their deposits out.
Starting point is 00:05:03 In terms of, you know, how does this like kind of come to fruition? I think what happens is one system thrives and one system decays. And over time, the difference between the thriving system and the decaying system becomes overwhelmingly obvious to anyone who can pay attention at all. And right, it's already obvious to some people. But like as the difference, the divergence grows stronger, it becomes even more obvious. And so a good maybe example of this is like, the United States versus the Soviet Union.
Starting point is 00:05:34 And the United States, not that the United States was some shining, you know, a city on the hill of capitalism, but relative to what was the essentially controlled currency that the USSR used, much more free market. And you saw one society decay and you saw one society relatively thrived. And, you know, I feel like if the USSR had ruled the world, it would have lasted a lot longer because there wouldn't have been that alternative. like I guess the Tina, the Tina effect.
Starting point is 00:06:03 Like there has to be an alternative to compare your reality against. And so Bitcoin is just going to keep moving along, growing over time. The people who are a part of the Bitcoin economy are going to be insulated from different bank runs that happen, financial calamities that happen, that will constantly require more and more reaction from regulators, which will require more and more socialization of cost across all the users of that system. and the Bitcoin system will see the good actors thrive and grow and benefit greatly from being a part of Bitcoin. The people who hold Bitcoin will thrive. Their net worth will grow. Their purchasing power will grow.
Starting point is 00:06:39 And people will look at the two options. They'll say, okay, well, you know, the U.S. dollar may still be around, but I'm going to choose into this better system where I see people thriving. And I think that that's a long process and then a sudden process. And I don't know where we are exactly in the time horizon of that adoption. but, you know, it's kind of like these bank runs. It's like the banks bleed deposits slowly. People start seeing the writing on the wall of what's happening. You know, I don't know if you saw the news report that like the month or two before Silicon Valley Bank failed.
Starting point is 00:07:09 There was like a massive amount of insider loans that were approved. I did see. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, it's like people, the writing was on the wall. And then everything accelerates as there becomes this social awareness that the writing on the wall. And, you know, and I think in large part, like, and this was already kind of implicit, but I think Silicon Valley Bank and signature credit have made it semi-explicit.
Starting point is 00:07:35 All deposits of all banks in the United States are guaranteed. And so ultimately, all deposits of all banks in the world are guaranteed, because if you, if you can have international banks fail, those international banks can bring down your domestic banks. So, you know, since they're all tied together, okay, now, like implicitly, that all the banks, you know, are too big to fail. And once you're at that point, it's like, okay, now we've nationalized the global banking system. Okay, well, what is a rational actor doing in that scenario? They seek out risk. Like, okay, my downside is protected. Like, I benefit from taking on excessive risk, having excessive returns. And if things go sideways, you know,
Starting point is 00:08:17 passing the butt on to the rest of society, banks will over time trend towards making riskier and riskier decisions under that pretext. and the problems and the costs that society is going to have to bear is just going to grow proportionately. And that doesn't even include the dislocations to what would be a fully functioning free market that we would have in the world, an economy that if capital was deployed as the free market actually needed it, would flow much differently in a way that would maybe create more growth and more value for society. We're not going to see that. So that's the opportunity cost side of it.
Starting point is 00:08:51 But then the behavior that we're going to incentivize is risk-taking on a, grander and grander level to such a point in that eventually there will come a calamity that it won't be possible to fail your way out of. And I mean, I feel like that's really when you have a run on the reserve currency, when you have a run on trust, the trust in the system itself, rather than just the trust in a bank, but truly the trust in the dollar, trust in the United States government, like that's impossible to recover from. Like you may be able to use an army to force people to, you know, begrudgingly comply with
Starting point is 00:09:24 something, but, you know, trust is something that takes a long time to earn and is quickly, you know, it's quickly lost. It seems like when, as they've been using QE for the past decade plus, that your typical common person doesn't even understand that they're grossly manipulating markets through that type of tool. When we went through COVID 2020 and they started writing checks to everybody and people could spend it however, whenever, as long as they wanted to because it's money, or it's currency that doesn't have a coupon, like, term limit to it. I think you'll probably
Starting point is 00:10:00 know where I'm going with this question, by the way that I'm phrasing that. As all these people got those checks, they were able to go out and spend willy-nilly on whatever they wanted, and we saw the prices of everything start to really shoot up because of the tool that they were using, which was a form of UBI. As we go through the next crisis, whatever it is, however it manifests itself, a lot of people were saying that it's going to be commercial real estate, combined with like regional banks, they're going to have to do more UBI-like activities in order to stimulate the money that doesn't trickle down through QE or yield curve control or whatever, which is the tool of choice for them because people don't understand it. So I guess when we're
Starting point is 00:10:39 talking about acceleration is the CBDC, the thing that really starts to accelerate people's understanding of the power of Bitcoin that's been pretty much lost on them for all these years because they really just don't understand how the markets are being manipulated because with the CBDC, they're actually able to control the duration of money. And I think that that's going to be important for them to kind of try to control the order of all of this. You know, I have a hard time predicting what's going to happen with CBDCs because I'm still of the mindset that I think they're going to struggle to ever get them deployed into the market and get people to actually use them. I don't really think that there's a use case for CBDC
Starting point is 00:11:22 from the perspective of the end user. And, you know, I think that a lot of the excitement that central banks have, well, okay, of course there's the totalitarian excitement of like, hey, we can have monetary policy tools that we currently don't have. But it's like, they look at stable coins and they think that that's somehow like a validation of the idea that people want some stable digital currency. But in reality, the use case for stable coins is actually regulatory arbitrage. Like, stable coins are just a wrapper on a bank account. And so, you know, they pay no interest. They have no FDIC insurance. So they're really an inferior bank account. So why would anyone ever hold a stable coin? Well, they hold a stable coin because they can't
Starting point is 00:12:02 touch a bank account for whatever reason. Maybe there's currency controls. Maybe there is, they don't want to have the tax authorities tipped off. Maybe they want to buy unrestricted securities overseas. there's a whole list of reasons. But none of them come down to, oh, wow, the technology is just so great on stable coins that I'm willing to give up what my bank can do in order to hold this IOU. That's just money sitting in a bank account somewhere else. So I think, you know, at the end of the day, those are all use cases that I don't see any CBDC being like, unless they're saying, hey, we're going to waive the restrictions that we applied
Starting point is 00:12:37 and put on bank accounts in the first place, which we can just do. like who's getting, why is someone going to be using CBDCs? You know, they would really need to keep you from using a bank account to force the adoption of it. And you've seen so many nations now, like people still think these CBDCs are just like purely in beta mode. But, you know, this stuff has been around for a while. I mean, China started working on CBDCs in like 2017, 2016, Nigeria's, I mean, there's lots of nations that have rolled them out. Like, you can't find one where they've been successful at all. Like, it typically ends in them trying to ban Bitcoin and trying to force people to use CBDC that it still doesn't
Starting point is 00:13:12 work. So I don't know. It's hard for me to predict what is a practical policy outcome, a monetary policy for CBDCs if they can never solve the problem of how do they get the end user to have trust in the system. Yeah. And it almost seems, especially here in the US, like they just can't find a contractor or somebody to actually stand it up in a technical way that is trustworthy. They just seem to be so far behind the power curve and the execution of it. You know, they're launching like Fed now. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:45 Like, let's see what happens with Fed now. I think they'll find that they're going to suffer from all the same problems that, you know, every API-based banks suffers from. I think like there's a reason why this problem hasn't already been solved and just centralizing it at the Federal Reserve, which I don't know how many people work at the Federal Reserve. But I think that that's just like doom for failure. Kalin's done a good job of talking about the need for higher capital requirements at the banks whenever they speed up the settlement and have APIs that can settle over the weekend.
Starting point is 00:14:19 Like all of a sudden, if you were a bank that was sitting on $10 billion, you might need $30 billion now in order to have enough capital to handle the speed at which the settlement will happen under this new system. It just seems like it's a fed wire that's just faster and it's just going to require them to hold more more cash on hand, which I don't think helps them control. Does that help them control the amount of money supply or make it, make it harder, right? I feel like actually the slowness of the payment system we have is a feature, not a bug. Yeah. From their perspective. So it's like, yeah, I don't, I'm just kind of a wait and see on how that plays out. I do agree with your opinion on in terms of like where financial calamity is coming from.
Starting point is 00:15:05 Like, you know, that there's a fairly straightforward cause and effect of like, okay, the, the government injected a lot of liquidity into the banks and certain people's bank accounts. Okay, you can go through the list of people that benefited disproportionately during that time period. So you mentioned UBI for individuals, which was the unemployment checks. There was the PPP program, which pumped a ton of money into small businesses, medium-sized businesses, there was massive underwriting of junk bonds, of corporate debt that was done as well during that time. And when they dropped the interest rates to zero, junk bonds, like just the trash of trash companies were able to finance their debt, lock in multi-year debt offerings at
Starting point is 00:15:51 extremely low rates. And, you know, when everyone that was flushed with cash in their bank account, Everyone wanted to buy real estate. So you had a massive pump in crypto, tech, real estate. Those were the things that most outperformed, let's say, of all assets. Okay, so what banks are under stress right now? The banks that banked tech companies. Okay, the banks that banked crypto companies, the banks that banked real estate companies, I'm willing to bet you that where we see the next banks that are distressed are going to be
Starting point is 00:16:23 merchant banks, that bank, the companies are having to refinance. they're done. You're going to have, I mean, you just basically have to see where the cash came in. Then the banks had to do something with the cash. So they had to deploy it into, you know, held to maturity securities. They had to loan it out. They had to do something. So like I'm Silicon Valley Bank. My customers are tech companies. Now they're flooded with venture investment. They're flooded with cash from, you know, going public or whatever. And now I'm holding their cash. I'm having deployed in some way. And then now like I'm on the front lines of the change an interest rate policy of those investments that we made as a bank going underwater,
Starting point is 00:17:00 as well as my customers that were flushed with cash when I made these investments, now burning cash, and now I'm having to pay out those customers. So, like, I think you can just, like, basically map out 2020 of who did well. And you can, you can correlate that to 2023, who's going to do poorly. And the sequence of who's going to do poorly. And this is a multi-year process that's playing out. Like, I mean, there's some pretty good graphs out there in terms of just like,
Starting point is 00:17:31 what is the net interest margin for these financial institutions? Like, fundamentally, they have deposits that can leave at any time. I mean, that's the point of a deposit. And, you know, they have assets on their balance sheet that, you know, have some sort of maturity timeline to them. So until they can get the interest that they're earning on their balance sheet in aggregate it to match what they need to pay out to their depositors, which is variable in real time,
Starting point is 00:17:59 to whatever the Fed does, they're going to be losing deposits if they can't make the interest rate the same, or they're going to be burning money paying the depositors more money than they have. So they have to basically choose one of two outcomes. And like the amount of time it's going to take for their assets that earn an average interest rate that matches the current Fed funds rate is like four years from now. So they're just going to be bleeding deposits month over month over month, for years. And, you know, we're only one and a half years into this process already, and they're
Starting point is 00:18:29 already bank failures. So there's just, the math, like, kind of speaks for itself. There's no way to balance these two, these two issues. And you're going to have not just bank failures at the regional banks, you're going to have bank failures at the, at the big banks, too. I mean, this is really, it's, the fundamental issue is deposit it, to higher earning treasuries or money market accounts, et cetera. Yes. And until there's equalization in the rates, it's not about the bank runs. The bank runs are just a byproduct of the underlying depositor flight that had been
Starting point is 00:19:02 going on for months and months and months and months. They want higher rates, but they don't want people to withdraw and put them into those types of vehicles. So it's like you can't have it both ways. It's crazy. Yeah. And that gets back to the crux of the issue of like, okay, they're having to take winners and losers.
Starting point is 00:19:18 Yeah. But they want everyone to be a winner and no one to be a loser. Well, it doesn't work like that. If I give you a money printer machine and then you're having to pick winners and losers, but you decide to bail out all the participants in the system. Okay, well, like, someone has to bear the cost of the day. So, yeah, I don't know how they fix it. And if they cut rates really quickly, they have another issue on their hands because now
Starting point is 00:19:41 there's all these banks that in order to survive have switched their loan portfolio from fixed rate in securities that they're holding to variable rate securities. so they could improve their net interest margin position. So, like, great, variable rate. That makes sense when the rates are rising. But if you cut rates really quickly, they should have actually been buying fixed rate at that time. So now they got, like, the basically inverse problem.
Starting point is 00:20:05 And so it's now like which banks benefit and which banks get hurt. And it's really like the pace at which they're making the changes, which is unpredictable and difficult for banks to plan for. So it's like the banks are caught in a hard place. It's a tough situation. I honestly don't. It's difficult to see what the third and fourth order effects of all these changes are because it starts cascading really quickly into the more broad economy, into multiple different sectors. It's much bigger than just tech and crypto.
Starting point is 00:20:34 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Amazing rundown, David. And I completely agree with your point. Your point about them having to switch over from fixed to variable at the most inopportune time is a really important. important point and very smart comment. I want to talk to you about the skull of Satoshi. I love the response that you have on this. And hey, you know what? Come on down to the conference in Miami here in May. And let's have a real conversation and not some propaganda, you know, pictures and whatnot. So tell us about what this thing is for people that don't even know what it is. tell them what it is and then tell them what your response was. So Skull of Satoshi is an art piece that was commissioned by Greenpeace, which is an environmentalist group that took a massive bribe, Chris Larson of Ripple.
Starting point is 00:21:32 And so they got a very talented artist to make something that they thought was going to be like, I guess, a dig at the Bitcoin community. And all things are good for Bitcoin. So the community embraced it, loves it, and wants to co-opt it. did co-opt it. And yeah, so we try to get the school to come to the conference. We've been in talks with the artist, a cool guy. He's been, he's starting his orange pool process now. He's gone to Greenpeace to try to get Greenpeace to agree to come and do a debate, bring the school. You know, Greenpeace overall, so some inside baseball, Greenpeace overall was pretty thrilled with the result
Starting point is 00:22:15 because Greenpeace as like the larger environmental organization, they only care about like the environment. Like that's their macro goal. Yeah. You know, Chris Larson's just a donor that they're like shilling for that like specific change the code, you know, thing to get $5 million. But like at the end of the day, that does not matter to them. And so when they saw this thing going viral, they're like, you know,
Starting point is 00:22:38 raised awareness about Greenpeace massively on social. This is the biggest thing we've done on social in a long time. So they were actually like kind of excited about the response. But we have been unable and the artist has been unable to get them to engage with us directly about coming to the debate. So what we thought would be kind of cool would be like we do a debate. We have some truly impartial judges. And we also throw up like two QR codes like for both debates. Oh, that'd be awesome.
Starting point is 00:23:08 Like whichever QR code raises the most funds. Yeah. Like, that's the people's choice of who won. And, you know, if they win, all the funds go to the charity of their choice. And if we win, all the funds go to the charity of our choice. And then it's like, okay, like, there's some skin in the game. There's some economic value. Oh, my Lord.
Starting point is 00:23:26 To rig the vote. You can go on there and put $5 million at the vote. But anyway, so we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every
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Starting point is 00:27:48 well, no, because I mean, it really forces, hey, we want to engage, we want to have a conversation.
Starting point is 00:27:53 Let's sit down and let's talk about the facts around the matter. Let's throw out some stats and like, hey, let's do this. And when it comes to that moment,
Starting point is 00:28:02 they cower and hide in the darkness, right? Maybe there's a chance. They'd be decimated. Yeah. They would get, be honest. I mean, they would get that amazing. Asking the community, like, who would be our chosen champions?
Starting point is 00:28:13 Like, we had so many people reach out. And it's like, we could put together like the Avengers Bitcoiners that like each have a specialty at a different silo of like, you know, Bitcoin's energy consumption and how it works and why it's good for the environment. It would be like an NFL team, you know, playing against like a peewee, you know, flag football team. But anyway, we want to see it happen. And yeah, that's, The point of the conference is like, how do we create a shilling point for the entire industry where we can like focus our attention to get the real world to engage with us? So get the real world to see Bitcoin's about, to get the real world to see what Bitcoin culture is about,
Starting point is 00:28:57 to create a platform for companies that companies, countries that like want to, let's say there's a marketing benefit or a PR benefit to them. about engaging Bitcoin. We want to give them a platform and be like, okay, this is why you need to make the leap. It's not just the technology you're benefiting from. It's also the story you get to tell the world. And, you know, it's hard to get that kind of buy-in
Starting point is 00:29:21 unless you can create a platform big enough that the juice is worth to squeeze for them. So that's where we want to turn it. We want it to be, you know, where the biggest announcements, the biggest developments in the Bitcoin world are announced and showcased and debated and challenged. and that those kind of conversations drive the energy over the course of the year.
Starting point is 00:29:43 That's our goal. That's our vision. You know, David, I took my wife with me last year to the conference. We had an absolute blast. It was the first conference she had ever gone to with me. I've always just kind of gone by my. She's like, you go do your thing. I'm staying at the house.
Starting point is 00:29:57 I was like, come down, it's in South Beach. It's a blast. We can go out and, you know, go to some awesome restaurants and just have a good time together. And so she came and she was just like, this is massive. This is unreal. And I don't, I think the numbers were like 30,000 last year, right? 26,000. 46, my God.
Starting point is 00:30:16 26. 26. Okay, okay, 26,000. So, David, I guess where I'm going with the talking about the conferences, for me as an entrepreneur, I look at this. I'm just saying when you grow something from the ground up and then you see how massive this is, I mean, you got shell coming in, you got 20. 26,000 people coming to this conference. I want to say Serena Williams was at the one last year. Some of these, like, unbelievable athletes.
Starting point is 00:30:45 Like, this is insane. And you grew it literally from nothing to this. Walk us, walk us through this process as an entrepreneur. Like, what are some of your thoughts on? This is crazy. Yeah. Well, so I will say, you know, every mistake you can make in your entrepreneurial journey I've made. sadly I've made some many of them multiple times so like it has been a decade plus long journey
Starting point is 00:31:13 to to build the requisite worldview and experiences to kind of get us to launching the Bitcoin conference but we made the decision in 2018 that we were going to go Bitcoin only and like you know when we got into Bitcoin there was only Bitcoin and then came blockchain and crypto and all this stuff and so it was just kind of a natural progressive progression of our space, like, these things are all children of Bitcoin. And then before you know it, you're doing more stuff that's not Bitcoin related than you're doing Bitcoin. And so that was, that was, you know, I would say, very perspective shaping part of our journey as a company. But in 2018, we decided to go Bitcoin only, divest everything we had that wasn't Bitcoin. And, you know, our, our kind of
Starting point is 00:31:57 belief was like, okay, Bitcoin is the only legit thing here. And it's humanity's best chance at escaping the invisible prison that we've been placed in. And so we need to give it everything we have to have victory with Bitcoin. It deserves that. And so, you know, that means like, okay, Bitcoin needs to have a conference. It needs to have a dedicated media publication. Somebody needs to be covering news about it. Like, there are things that the ecosystem, the community, the industry,
Starting point is 00:32:31 users need to help accelerate adoption, interconnectivity, new companies getting started. None of these things existed at the time. The Bitcoin community was fractured. They had just gone through the block wars. People hated each other. And so we decided we needed to make a Bitcoin-only conference. And what Bitcoin only meant to us was Nakamoto consensus.
Starting point is 00:32:52 So no hard forks. You know, it's just like, but we're not going to be like relitigating the past. People were too obsessed with scaling, scaling, scaling, scaling, scaling. It's like, okay, scaling wars are over. It's been determined. Nakamoto consists of what went out. BTC is Bitcoin. Let's just go.
Starting point is 00:33:08 And people thought it was an insane idea. Thought it wouldn't work. Thought no one would back it. Thought crypto was the future. Thought it was economic suicide for us to do this. But we just, we forged ahead. And the first conference was in 2019. We had 2,000 people.
Starting point is 00:33:23 And it was an amazing event. And a lot of great companies came together at that event. I think Swan got started at that conference. Zabidi got started at that conference. A lot of new people joined core from that conference. It was people had not been to a Bitcoin conference before. And, you know, our vision for that event was like Bitcoin 2013, which was kind of what got me really sucked deep down the rabbit hole of the Bitcoin conference
Starting point is 00:33:47 and it hadn't happened since. So 2020 comes along. We were going to have like a 4,000 person event, but we had to cancel it because of COVID. And immediately our focus was like, okay, we have to do this conference. when's the earliest we can do it. So there was a whole trial and tribulation we had to go through to actually put on a conference in 2021. And we were the first conference back from COVID in the world to happen.
Starting point is 00:34:14 Like, people don't know that. But like our event was the first. And the only reason we were able to do it was because the Bitcoin community is fearless. And we were able to say stuff like, if you're afraid of dying, don't come to the conference. like, you know, if the American Revolution wasn't canceled over yellow fever, we're not canceling the conference over, over, you know, COVID. And you were in Florida. Well, we had to move to Florida to do.
Starting point is 00:34:40 Oh, oh, okay. Oh, okay. We negotiated with, we went to basically start going to cities and saying, who's willing to partner with us so we can do this event. And Mayor Suarez and DeSantis forged the path for us to be, to do it. And people like, no one's going to come to this. You're insane. You're killing people.
Starting point is 00:34:57 I mean, we had so many people try to stop us. It was like insane. And we're like, nothing is going to stop us. This conference must happen. And it was insane. I mean, it was 13,000 people. Yeah. I was there. It was amazing. It was amazing. And so it was just more validation that having a mission of driving a business and having that be the driving purpose for your team, the driving purpose for what you do, like that authenticity gets rewarded by who your true community is. And it doesn't matter what the media says. It doesn't matter what a politician says. A movement is authentic to the movement. So we did that. That was an awesome event. And then we did 2022 again in Miami. And that was 26,000 people. So we went from four years in effectively
Starting point is 00:35:47 three unique events, a 2,000 person conference to a 26,000 person event that was the biggest finance conference in the world. Not just Bitcoin or crypto, but all finance. And I mean, it was an insane roller coaster of growing our team, figuring it out. We got scammed by so many things. I mean, it's been just a roller coaster. So this year, 2023, this is going to be like our first bear market conference. Yeah. Since the cycle started. So like, you know, there's, there's pressure on us from that perspective. We're expecting, like, we planned on a 50% reduction in attendees. So, like, I think that's basically where we're going to be. That would be like 13,000 people.
Starting point is 00:36:28 But the attention, the attendees, it's a derivative of the price. Like, the price definitely dampers all of these things. So I also think that when you're focused on like the bull market side, there's so much glam. There's so much speed, speed, speed, speed, speed, speed, that the things are the most valuable things don't get enough attention. And the things that are less valuable, but more fun, get too much attention. So this is a bare market conference.
Starting point is 00:36:55 It's a conference for builders. So like, you know, instead of lobster, we're eating like mayonnaise sandwiches. Like, instead of staying other words, Carlton or sleeping in the tent city. But it is going to be a fantastic conference. And it's focused on the most interesting things happening in Bitcoin, the most interesting projects being built in Bitcoin. We have really a souped up open source stage that we've given a lot of passes to the open source developers to get them engaged and involved and give them a platform.
Starting point is 00:37:20 we have an entire part of the conference that's focused on what has happened over the past 24 months as an industry and what changes need to happen to our industry going forward as a reflection upon a lot of mistakes that were made, a lot of things that were allowed to happen that shouldn't have been allowed to happen. What's going to happen with the GBTC trust? You know, what's going to happen with the restructuring of the dozen bankruptcy estates that are out there representing millions of people? some of the kind of issues of our day, let's say, and try to stress out what the future looks like and what needs to happen.
Starting point is 00:37:54 And then we have our main stage where we're bringing in a lot of awesome announcements. We have some really big ones planned. We have some big ones in the works that we're hoping materialized. Like the best, juiciest stuff, it comes in in like the last, you know, 50 days or so. But we have a couple presidents that are going to be there. So, like, it's dope. I mean, it's...
Starting point is 00:38:15 Wow. It's very cool to get to see, like, what happens behind the scenes because the public only gets to see like 10%. It's like an iceberg. So like for everything that gets announced on stage, there's nine other deals that were being worked. We're trying to make it happen. And nobles happened, but it didn't get quite there. And so, yeah, I mean, there's just so much exciting stuff going on with Bitcoin. And it's interesting to see, like, those who have the stomach to go through the price decline.
Starting point is 00:38:44 Yeah. And those that don't, which I understand the people that don't. Like, that's part of the journey of building conviction is like watching the volatility from afar and realizing, oh, I can survive that too. But it definitely, you know, there's definitely a lot of bodies along the way. So I'm very appreciative of our corporate sponsors that are, you know, sticking up to the maybe some plaque that they're getting from different parts of the mainstream world and participating. I'm very bullish on energy companies in general, getting involved in Bitcoin. I think that's going to be a very big trend of the next cycle is household names having divisions focused on that in the same way that Intel has a division now focused on A6.
Starting point is 00:39:28 And yeah, I'm excited to see some of the more controversial discussions too. I mean, we have Casey Rotamor just giving a keynote on ordinals and we're going to have a debate around ordinals. Are they technology? Are they graffiti? but we as like an event, we try to be a platform for people to unite under common ideas. And, you know, people have many different worldviews, Bitcoiners, but there are things that unite us. And so we try to be a platform for as many ideas as possible and let people share their perspective,
Starting point is 00:40:02 battle it out, let the good ideas thrive, let the bad ideas die. And we try not to be editor-in-chief of what is and isn't Bitcoin. Our editorial standard is like if it happens on Bitcoin, if it touches Bitcoin mainnet, it's Bitcoin. Okay. Whether something is valuable or should be done or whatever, that's for the community to suss out for themselves. Yes. But like, you know, if it's on Bitcoin, it's, it's relevant, it's topical, and it can be a part
Starting point is 00:40:26 of the conference. If you're a company that has a Bitcoin product and you're there to only talk about your Bitcoin product, you can be a part of the conference. If you don't have a Bitcoin product, you can't be a part of the conference. So that's an objective standard. We make mistakes, but it's like, that's the, The point of the event is how do we accelerate hyperbiquinization? How do we bring people together?
Starting point is 00:40:43 So I think we're doing our best to stay aligned to that North Star. Love it. And I'm really looking forward to the conference here in May. Your wife got spoiled for last year's event. So I don't know. Maybe like, hey, wait until, you know, the halving conference to come by. I don't want her to like be like, oh, there was a huge rock concert here last year. Where's that?
Starting point is 00:41:06 It's like, ah. No, you know what she loves? she just loved being there in South Beach, just trying out the different foods and just running into various people that I've talked about in the house that she's never like met in real life. And so it was just, it was fun to be able to, like I hung out with Jeff Booth a lot. She got to meet Jeff's wife and in person. And so, you know, stuff like that is just what, what it's all about and really just to kind of enjoy the company while you're down there. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:41:34 Hey, you've been talking. Hey, it's about meeting your next founder. It's about co-founder. It's about meeting your next investor. It's about coming up with the next idea to improve Bitcoin. It's about learning how Bitcoin works so that you can evangelize it to others. It's really a unique pilgrimage for Bitcoiners. That's a good word for it.
Starting point is 00:41:55 It's just getting started. I mean, our vision for this event is something where 100 years from now, it will be Christmas Mass. It will be, you know, a journey to Mecca. And we're going to bring it to every comment. And, you know, we're going to orange kill the world. I mean, that's the... I love it.
Starting point is 00:42:11 I love it. Hey, you've been very outspoken on the GBTC, Barry, DCG. I think the comments you're making are so important to kind of cover here. Walk us through GBTC, just so people understand. I think most people listening to the show understand it. But then talk to us about, like, some of your gripes and concerns. I know you've got a campaign redeemed GBTC campaign that you've started. So talk to us a little bit about this.
Starting point is 00:42:44 Okay. So there's a lot to this. So I'm going to like, and I was describing it from the start to someone the other day. And it was like, wow, this takes a really long time to walk through. So we're going to go with like the most consolidated version. But basically, GBTC is a trust that you can buy in your retirement account that holds Bitcoin in it. And it's run by a company called Grayscale, which is owned by a company called DCG, which is
Starting point is 00:43:06 run by a guy named Barry Silver. And they operate other trust, too, for Ethereum and other cryptos, but the Bitcoin one is the biggest. In fact, the trust is the biggest single holdings of Bitcoin in the world. So it has about 620, 630,000 Bitcoins in it, which represents about 3.something percent, 3.3% of the world's Bitcoin supply. So that's like what it is. What's going on with it is that this vehicle that is a trust, that the, that the
Starting point is 00:43:36 the bitcoins are parked in has shares of the trust that you can buy and sell in your retirement account, you can trade to other users, just like a stock and a company. And they marketed and sold this product. The reason you want to buy it is because the shares should reflect the value of the Bitcoin sitting in the trust. And so that way, it's like a proxy for Bitcoin that you can get in your retirement account. Well, great. Long list of reasons. We can get into the most important ones, the value of those shares relative to the amount of Bitcoin sitting in the trust has not performed well. In fact, as recently as a month ago, it was trading at a 45% discount to the actual value of the Bitcoin in the trust. So you bought this thing thinking, hey, I'm buying one Bitcoin
Starting point is 00:44:22 and I'm buying one Bitcoin worth of Bitcoin in my retirement account. And then you check back in a year later. And now you're, you only have half of Bitcoin. in your retirement account. What happened? And so that's the, that's the current situation. There's about a million people that own this trust. Across all the trust, it's even more. And collectively, they're down about, well, because the price of Bitcoin's gone up, I don't know the exact number, but let's just call roughly $12 billion in value. So in terms of the scale of losses that have been realized, those losses are greater than than FTX and Alameda.
Starting point is 00:45:02 And the number of users affected is on a similar scale. But actually, the collateral damage is much worse because what also went down with gray scale was Genesis, the lending desk of Barry. And Genesis took in deposits from users. It's basically a bank. And it had,
Starting point is 00:45:18 let's call it, another million users that deposited its money there. And it went bankrupted during this process as well and lost all of those users, their deposits. So really the collateral damage is more like maybe 2 million people. And the reason that these two things are tied together is because Genesis took in deposits from all these users promising a fixed rate of return.
Starting point is 00:45:40 There's some parallels to maybe some things happening in life here, but a fixed rate of return, hey, we're super safe. Come give us your Bitcoin or your USD and we're going to pay you 8% completely safe. These are completely collateralized loans that we're making. You know, trust us. People said, okay, they take the money that they're deposit. gave them, they give the money to effectively Ponzi schemes. So Alameda, Three Arrows, Voyager, Babel, Celsius, Lockfi, every company you've heard of that's gone bankrupt in 2022, they were giving massive loans
Starting point is 00:46:18 to on the condition that they use those loans to deposit, to basically buy Bitcoin from them, to deposit into the Grayscale Trust. So they used depositors money at Genesis to subsidize sketchy-ass Ponzi-Sheem institutions that they didn't really do any, you know, risk controls on or credit quality checks, obviously, so that those institutions would then put money in a different vehicle that Barry owned Grayscale. And once the Bitcoin goes into the trust,
Starting point is 00:46:53 the way they've structured the trust is such that the Bitcoin can never leave. So at the end of the day, Genesis depositors money ended up in Grayscale's trust. Genesis is bankrupt and those users aren't getting paid back. And Grayscale is trading at a massive discount to value because they pumped so much, so many shares out to these institutions that dumped them, thinking that they'd be able to dump them on a retail for a profit. And now we're in a bad situation where a lot of people are hurt, but Barry still has control of 630,000 Bitcoins
Starting point is 00:47:29 that he's sucking 2% out of per year and putting in his pocket. When, you know, in reality, what he did was criminal and he needs to go to jail. And the Bitcoin that is in the trust needs to be returned to the shareholders so that they can realize the value of the investment that they were sold.
Starting point is 00:47:49 That's really the only equitable way to go forward. And they're claiming that they're going to turn the trust into an ETF. You know, first off, I'm very skeptical that that happens, given all the other circumstances around this case. Second off, I've been told that even if they did get SEC approval for an ETF, they would not convert to an ETF intentionally for several years. Because if they convert into an ETF and people were able to remove their money, their
Starting point is 00:48:16 AUM would drop massively. And the fees that they would have to charge would drop massively. And so they might lose 80. 75% of their fee income that they're generating from the trust if they actually became an ETF. So Barry needs that money because that's the only way he's going to keep DCG, his parent company, from going bankrupt. So this whole SEC lawsuit is just, it's just a cover story so they can delay making any changes to the trust, allowing anyone to take their Bitcoin out or reducing the fees while he sucks the money out from the trust and puts it into the DCG's
Starting point is 00:48:53 pocket. Ultimately, like, he's not going to be successful in doing this. There are a lot of people trying to stop this. And like, let me shill real quick. RedeemGBTc.com. If you are a shareholder of Grayscale, please go to redeemgbtc.com, sign up for updates. Let us know how many shares you own. But there are a dozen plus organizations, companies, institutions,
Starting point is 00:49:20 that are driving forward a campaign to get the trust redeemed. the fees reduced. And there are many different tactics and strategies that are being deployed. You know, our campaign redeemed GPTC has now well over 3,000 shareholders that have signed up representing over 30% of all the shares of Grayscale, which is at $8 billion bucks or whatever right now. And our role is coordinating all these different efforts with the relevant shareholders that are needed to be included. And we're going to have some news on this front soon. I was hoping we'd be able to go into detail on it today. There are some class action lawsuits that are coming that we're going to need to have people sign on to in order to
Starting point is 00:50:05 hit certain thresholds that are required. I can't share more detail about it yet, but I highly recommend people sign up for redeem gbtc.com if they would like to redeem their shares at some point in time in the future and see the discount go away. And if I'm a creditor at Genesis and I have a restructuring plan that I'm looking at that's been presented by DCG about what Genesis should look like in the future, I highly recommend that you reject that restructuring plan. You put forward a new restructuring plan in which you put DCG into bankruptcy and you take control of DCG. That's how you're going to maximize the value that you get returned. There are three parties involved in the situation. Genesis, gray scale, DCG. Okay. There's only one thing of value at the whole, the whole
Starting point is 00:50:52 situation of real value, gray scale. Okay, there's a deal to be had to redeem gray scale and distribute part of the cash during that redemption to the other parties involved, Genesis and DCG. If they don't reject Barry's restructuring plan, the money from that transaction, that settlement that's going to occur at some point in time in the future is going to flow to Barry. And so maybe Barry collect a billion and a half dollars and he turns around and pays out the Genesis creditors, 500 million of it so he can make good on his debt coming up in a few weeks. But he shouldn't get to keep the other billion. So, you know, I'm of the mindset that Genesis creditors and Grayscale shareholders should
Starting point is 00:51:32 be working together. We should be sending Barry Silverton into bankruptcy. And we should be working on a deal between these two parties so that any value that can be captured through a redemption process of the Grayscale trust can go to the victims of Genesis, not to the perpetrator of the crimes. So that's a concise version of what went out. I can go in a lot more detail about some of the things that were done, crimes that were committed, unethical behavior, tactics, people's legal approaches that they're taking to bust the trust.
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Starting point is 00:55:30 I've read about it on the fringes. I've seen the posts. I've seen your posts. And I mean, the whole thing just smells like rotten fish, like when I'm looking at it. But I could never piece together how it all fits together in such a. simple way that you just described it. I want to footstomp the redeem GBT link. We're going to have this in the show notes.
Starting point is 00:55:55 If you're listening to this and you hold GBT, it's probably in your best interest to click on to open the show notes right now, click on the link, go there, have it open in your web browser. If you don't have time to fill it out right now, open it up in your web browser so that you can go back to it. But we're going to have a link in the show notes for what David just talked about. It's 10 seconds to sign up. Yes.
Starting point is 00:56:15 And, you know, there is a great. lawsuit. You can find it on the Redeemed GPDC site, just recently filed by Alameda, the bankruptcy estate of Alameda against Grayscale, where they go into detail on violations of the trust documents, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, very well articulated case by arguably the best law firm in the country. And, you know, there's some stunning, some stunning items in there. But one of the actions that they're taking is they want to claw back ill-gotten fees from Grayscale, which you know, Grayscale has charged the trust almost $2 billion in fees over the past several years. And so if we're able to claw back those fees, which by the language black and white in the trust documents are excessive and bad faith,
Starting point is 00:57:02 that's a direct tangible benefit that could pay out to all of the shareholders beyond just their ability to get redemption. And so it really behooves you to sign up on the website to get to stay up to date on this. you can see just from the clawback of ill-gotten fees, you know, several percent benefit on your GBT position. And that's just that piece. And then you have the redemption piece, which is the discount. Like,
Starting point is 00:57:26 if we're able to make redemptions happen, you can close that discount entirely. So please, please, please sign up. You have nothing to lose. You have a lot to gain. And, you know, frankly, Barry Silbert is a, and the Michael Shana sign are bad actors that are criminals. And that a lot of the pain that's been felt in our industry over the past several years,
Starting point is 00:57:48 they are at the source of. The Alameda, Celsius, you name it, would not have been able to happen without the loans given by Genesis using depositors' money so that Barry could enrich himself at gray scale. The guy's got to go. He's an anchor around our industry. The neck, he funds that are out there. He puts them in trust and he sells them to retirees. The guy's got to go.
Starting point is 00:58:15 When I look at what's happened in the last year and a half, the amount of selling pressure and fierce volatility through all that selling pressure, I kind of feel like we've produced the super hoddler through that painful process. You're a Bitcoin OG. You are around during Mount Gox. Is this akin to Mount Gox? Is the hoddler pressure that's happened over the last year and a half stronger than Mount Gox or like how would you equate this to previous periods?
Starting point is 00:58:47 So I would say like, okay, Mount Gox is what's known from that period. But in 2013 and 2014, exchanges went down like like, I mean, almost every exchange. Yeah, almost every exchange got hacked, exits, gam, whatever. So, you know, while maybe like this go around only, you know, if you say there's 50 million or people that own Bitcoin, you know, maybe 20% of those users have been affected. Like in the early days,
Starting point is 00:59:21 I really don't know anyone who has ever avoided getting hit on at least one exchange that went under and they lost all their Bitcoin under. Like not your keys, not your coin. That came from a very rough period of Bitcoin's history. So I think like in terms of the percentage of people affected, it's probably lower now than it is then. What makes this one more brutal is that at least for the OGs, there's a lot of OGs that felt like they had learned that lesson.
Starting point is 00:59:52 And kept that lesson very, you know, was very well ingrained. And then got allured by the power of borrowing against their Bitcoin, which is a, you know, if you're a hardcore Bitcoiner, you know, and you have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin. Like, you don't want to sell your Bitcoin, but you got all this value. You want to be able to make investments or run a company or buy a house, whatever. And so a lot of OGs borrowed against their Bitcoin thinking that, hey, these are fully collateralized position and I don't really have counterparty risk. You know, I'm working, especially with Genesis as an example, it's the adult in the room. It's the best institution in our space.
Starting point is 01:00:34 And so a lot of OGs got decimated in this cycle. and I mean, people with huge Bitcoin holdings got decimated. And it's, it's been brutal to watch. I mean, I will say, like, I've talked like, you know, the good thing about Bitcoin is that it gives you a good ability to, what's it called, um, recuperate from your losses because you have, you know, promise about the future and you think, okay, I've made it before I can make it again. But dude, some of the best OGs that have just lost their entire stack in a way that I've
Starting point is 01:01:06 never seen before in a way that was much worse than, you know, 2014, 2013. So that's been sad to watch and a good, a good reminder that it doesn't matter how long you've been around in Bitcoin. There's always a new flavors to scams and, you know, not your keys, not your coins. Yeah. That's just the bottom line. Very well said.
Starting point is 01:01:27 Yeah, we covered on this show, we had Zach Prince on from BlockFi. And like the one question that I just could never wrap my head around was you have, you have retail investors that are over collateralized, which means they're. shouldn't be any risk. But you also have institutional investors with sizable positions that are not over-collateralized. And you're commingling the two within your company veil. And so, like, how do you protect the retailers that are over collateralized if these other ones run into issues with their counterparty risk? And they touch the legacy system in a major way. And I talked about the idea with Jason Williams once. And then I also talked about.
Starting point is 01:02:10 about it at the end of one of the podcasts I did with Zach Prince. And it's one of the main reasons why I didn't have any money on any of these things. Because it was just like, if I can't quantify these people that are under collateralized, how do I know the whole thing? It was almost like a CDO. I guess that's how I viewed it as they were doing this. It's like in the 2008 crisis, the consolidated debt obligations is like you just don't know what's in that basket. And if you can't audit it, like, you know, if you're putting funds in here,
Starting point is 01:02:37 it better be a small amount. It's only as good as their weakest counterparty. Yeah. And, you know, it's like, oh, our portfolio is 95% solid. We just got a couple liabilities that are not good. It's like, okay, well, those are liabilities that implode the whole thing. So, yeah, and some of the behavior, like, unchained capital has product where you can borrow against your Bitcoin. But each loan is segregated.
Starting point is 01:03:04 And like the counterparty risk is unique to your specific loan. over collateralized. They haven't had on any of them. So like, there's a, there's an idea there that has substance. Um, and I hate to like throw the baby out with the bathwater when talking about this. But when you are blending the risk, as you were describing, where you have some parties that are that are over collateralized and you have other parties that are much bigger size that are under collateralized dramatically, um,
Starting point is 01:03:32 that, or when you have a collateral that you say makes them over collateralized, but the quality of that collateral is not good. you know it's not good. Yeah. Like that, that's an issue. And that is the footnote detail that brought down every one of these businesses and turned out to be the only detail that mattered.
Starting point is 01:03:50 And at the end of the day, no matter how clean your business was, your yield came from a Ponzi scheme somewhere else. And it was a daisy chain of firms that had, quote, different credit qualities. But at the end of the day, the yield all derived from the Ponzi.
Starting point is 01:04:06 And when that one blew up, It just cascaded to the slightly not as bad Ponzi. The Ponzi slightly not as bad as the one before that. The one slightly not as bad as the one before that. And so we get all the way to the source of the Ponzi, which is DCG, which is the last one to go down and of the biggest scale. And yeah, it's going to leave an impression and imprint on our industry forever. Like just like how Mount Gox is something that still has talked about today.
Starting point is 01:04:37 and is not forgotten. This will not be forgotten 10 years from now. It'll take new flavors where we'll get taught the same lesson. But never again will the lending markets in Bitcoin look and act like they did in this cycle for the better. And that's the power of the free market. And that's the power to go back to the very beginning of our conversation about the cost and who bears the cost and how our cost, who's the winner and who's the loser.
Starting point is 01:05:03 Yes. And, you know, fundamentally, the losers. here are the people who made the wrong decision to trust institutions that lied to them and they didn't do their diligence on. And in the future, they're not going to make the same mistake, at least in the same way again. And that's the behavior that we need ingrained from this. It can't be imagine how catastrophic it would be if there was an entity that came riding in to save the day at Alameda and bailed out FTX and Alameda's Ponzi scheme and bailed out Barry Silbert's Ponzi scheme and allowed them to keep running the show and they didn't have to bear any of the
Starting point is 01:05:40 consequences of the fraud that they ran. That would be you just enable them to run the fraud bigger and bigger and bigger. Amen, David. That's it. And that is the Fiat system that we just described. That's the Fiat system. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oh, we got to end it. I have more questions. I can talk to you all day, man. Let's wrap it up. You can't end it on a better note. than that. That is the Fiat system. We're not bailing anybody out if you make poor decisions. The Bitcoin falls out of your hands. No matter how bad you want to keep holding them, it's going to leave and it's going to find smarter, more risk-adverse people who are making sound decisions, right? That's just what it does. And when you talk about which system do you trust,
Starting point is 01:06:27 when Bitcoin recovers from what just went down and we went through our own OA financial crisis and we handled it in a year and a half time. And only the people who took the risk paid the consequence. And we've built back stronger. Yes. What an indictment of the Fiat system, where it's bailout after bailout and perpetual crisis that can never be cured.
Starting point is 01:06:48 And here we are, the illegitimate currency, and we're able to restructure ourselves and build back like a free market should. Yes. Yes. All right. Preston, thank you for having me on. Thank you so much.
Starting point is 01:07:01 Let's do it again. Dude, thank you so much for making time. We'll have a link in the show notes to the Redeemed GBTC campaign. We're going to have a link to the Miami conference, which I hope to meet. I'm going to be there. David, you'll be there. Hopefully we can meet some of the people listening to the show if they decide to come on down. Is there anything else you want to highlight?
Starting point is 01:07:18 I know you're active on Twitter. Anything else? Yeah, redeem gbtc.com. We got to bust the trust. We have no choice. And you can include that in the title of this podcast, that domain. but thank you for having me on and I hope your listeners
Starting point is 01:07:33 got some value from the conversation and hold your bitcoins. This journey is just beginning. We got a lot more painful lessons to learn in the future. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that.
Starting point is 01:07:44 Cool. All right. Preston. Thank you, chow. See you. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use.
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