What Bitcoin Did - 2025: BITCOIN IN REVIEW | HODL & ODELL

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

American HODL & Matt Odell join the show for a review of a year that left most Bitcoin narratives exposed. We unpack why expectations ran ahead of reality, why the super cycle never materialised, and how ETFs, treasury companies, and institutional capital quietly changed how this market actually operates. We get into Bitcoin’s underperformance versus gold and equities, the absence of meaningful retail demand, and how leverage distorted outcomes rather than driving real adoption. We discuss what this means long term. From institutional involvement and shifting power structures, to the breakdown of the four year cycle framework. We also get into custody, incentives, freedom, and whether Bitcoin has to pass through the traditional system before it can meaningfully reshape it. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY SWAN FOLLOW: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny American HODL: https://primal.net/hodl ODELL: https://primal.net/odell

I think this has been a very good year in terms of like fundamental Bitcoin value. It's easier than ever to use Bitcoin in a freedom-oriented way. This is a long-term game. This is a grind. I think the best path and the hardest path is to stay humble and stack stats and not chase easy wins that you think are easy, that you're just going to lose all your money on. States are not really accumulating yet. Institutional players are accumulating. We are going to have to go through this period of sort of co-option.

Who sits at the table of power, right? And there's a small club that has all of the money. They have all of the guns and they make all of the laws. And none of us are in that club. It's going to take some time for us, basically, to get a seat at the table of power and be able to rewrite the rules to enable more freedom. And I think that if you're in Bitcoin, it's a long journey. It's a long bet.

Bitcoin has to enter into the traditional system. If Bitcoin remains as outside capital forever, it never fulfills its mandate. How you do, ma'am? I'm ready. Let's do this. Let's talk about the year that sucks. Yeah, this. Last year when we recorded this.

Nick Carter's right and he's rubbing it in your face, you know? Let's talk about it. Let's get into it. So last year when we recorded this, it was 92K. And I think we all kind of agreed. Matt put some caveats in because Matt always puts caveats in. But we kind of all agreed that this was going to be Supercycle. And the green green.

Oh, I'm sure I said a million. I probably said a million like months. Like, I don't know what I said. What's happened, Hoddle? I recall saying that if it was similar to previous cycles, two million was in play. I think I said that. You said two million in 2025?

No, I didn't make it a call. It wasn't a call. I just said if it was similar to previous cycles, then two million would be in play. Damn. Yeah, it's probably the year where I think everyone was wrong, though. When Matt said that, they liked it. I remember that.

It's like, it's the only year of Bitcoin. I remember where I don't think anyone's got it right. Like normally when years like a turning bearish, there's always someone like last cycle was Dan Held calling Supercycle. But there's always someone who's like right calling the top. And I don't think anyone did that a year out. No, not at all. I think, I mean, I guess my feeling about it has been that we,

the Bitcoin influencer class have become superfluous and that we kind of don't. have the money to pump this thing anymore. I think it was Matt who actually said, like, each bull run is the story of a group of investors coming in and basically deciding they can pump this thing. And there was basically no retail involvement this time around. I mean, if there was, it went into MSTR and treasury companies. And then, you know, people kind of got wrecked before the bubble could even start. Like, if you invested in the majority of treasury companies, you pretty much lost money unless you were doing them as quick flips. There was like a

two week to one month period where you could actually make some money on some of the treasury company things. And then, you know, they just completely collapsed. And I think like, you know, there's this institutional inflow of capital that doesn't seem to stop.

It's very consistent. None of us really understand how the institutional players are thinking about this market. We don't understand what games they play. We're kind of out of our depth. And I think we should just probably just be honest about that.

instead of throwing around cycle words at each other. And more likely than like, you know, we're in a super cycle. It's a this cycle. It's a crab bull. It's a bull. It's a bear crab. It's a, like, shut the fuck up. Like, these are all just, we're kind of dumb. And we don't really know what we're talking about.

And I think that, you know, if you look at the way Bitcoin has been trading and potentially could trade in the future, it might trade more like an Nvidia or something like that where every year we get an all time high, but every year we get a 30 to 40% correction on top of that. Like, that's kind of. have the tech stocks trade. And so that wouldn't surprise me. It also wouldn't surprise me if next year is wildly bearish or wildly bullish. I don't know what's going on.

I just don't know. And so it's like, I think this whole, this whole thing, like the whole, the influencer sphere, the podcast sphere, like the whole, it's, uh, we, it's out of our hands now. Like, we're not really the guys that have control over this market anymore. We used to be or we thought we were at least. It's interesting though, because you say we're not the people that can pump the bags. But like with the ETFs, like we all thought institutional money was actually coming. And yet here we are lower than we were last year.

Like, do you think this might be the wrong two people to ask this question because you're not like markets, macro guys? But like, do you think the option market on top of IBI has had a negative impact on Bitcoin price? Well, I want to, I mean, first of, I want to put some numbers here. Okay. So we're currently at $88,000, right? just let's put a pin in the cycle talk we're currently at 88,000 dollars if this was equivalent to the 2012 cycle we should be at three million dollars right now if this is equivalent to the 2016 cycle we should be at 930,000 dollars if it was equivalent to the 2020 cycle we should be at 326,000

but we're at 88,000 dollars so no matter how you cut it this year was a fucking disappointment a massive disappointment meanwhile the sump be 500 is at all-time highs silver is at all-time highs and gold is at all time highs. I agree with, I agree with, uh, I agree with, uh, I agree with Haudle that most of the existing influencers have become irrelevant. Um, but also like a lot of them just sold out to these fucking treasury companies. They pretty much all joined treasury companies and they all shot the bed. They're all, any retail we had that came into the market went into the treasury

companies instead of going into Bitcoin. And a lot of times they did it with leverage, too. It was like the opposite of stay humble stack stats. And we're starting to, I think we seal, I think that probably was more of an impact than options on Ibit. We just don't have real spot retail demand. Even regular Ibit demand has been actually, that's probably been one of the most bullish fundamentals.

But it feels like it got dwarfed by a lot of the treasury companies. There's just a lot of distractions there. And then the last piece that I would put, out there is if this is what a super cycle looks like, it doesn't feel that super. We didn't even hit a new all-time high in gold this time around yet. I mean, hopefully we do that next year. Maybe in four-year cycles are dead and we hit it next year, but it's just been a massive disappointment. You can't really cut it any other way.

Yeah, I also saw Alex Thorne just tweeted like an hour or two ago saying, if inflation adjusted, we've not even broken 100K. Like, it's definitely been a, well, I mean, can you even really call this year a bull market year? I mean, we hit some all-time highs. We were doing well, but we're going to end the year down, right? So, like, there's the pattern which I was helped, I helped a meme, which is green, green, green, green, red. And of course, once you meme something, it dies, so I killed it, you know, green, green, green, red is now dead. Because we're, unless, you know, something happens in the next few days, like, we're going to end the year on a

red candle. So it's green, green, red TBD. Like, we don't know. Is next year red or is it green or is it whatever? Like, I think again, like, we have sort of brain damage from all these years in Bitcoin. And the game has fundamentally changed in the ETF era. And we're still kind of playing catch up to it. I think that's what's going on. And, uh, you know, we're, we're kind of like, we're doing divination where we're, you know, basically like, we're doing astrology. This is astrology for guys, like, tuning into Bitcoin price talk, you know, like that's what we're doing. That's really what it is. And we need to stop and be sober and rational and reasonable and say, okay, yeah, the

year was bad. It was a bus. It was flat. But really it was bad because of our expectations. You know, we had really high expectations because we thought, oh, there has to be a bull run every four years. And there kind of was. There kind of wasn't.

I don't know. I think looking forward, I think it's more important instead of saying, you know, cycle this, cycle that, that we just look at, you know, how the market is going to trade, who the players are, who's buying Bitcoin. Why are they buying Bitcoin? What are their reasons for owning it? How do they feel about it? Because price is set at the margin. And so these big buyers who come in, they are going to be able to set the price. Hodler set the floor and new buyers set the highs. So, you know, to me, I still don't really understand the new buyers. And it seems like states are not really accumulating yet. Institutional players are accumulating. You still have Black Rock pretty

fundamentally bullish on this thing. I saw Fidelity revise some of their price projections down, but they were like way over bullish. They were like, they were as bullish as we were. They were like two, three million of coin. So anyway, I think the time is to be more, the appropriate thing now at this time is to be more rational and sober and act like adults instead of being like, It's going to billions next year, bro. I mean, I will say, also, we saw, like, Tom Lee was like, he was posting his, like, bullish engagement bait predictions, but then behind the scenes sending out letters to investors being like,

we're going to have a down here next year, which, I mean, is, I think, a bullish fundamental. But I, you know, a lot of this stuff is momentum. And in today's market, particularly on the short-term side, a lot of things we live in like a meme coin world like a meme stock world in a lot of ways with a lot of momentum trading

and if you do look and I'm not someone who pay first of all I'm not a chart guy I'm not a short term trader guy I definitely don't pay attention to the crypto markets like the broader crypto market shit coins whatnot I just focus on Bitcoin long term

long term investments in Bitcoin whether that's the asset or the underlying companies that are building on it. But something feels like it broke on October 10th in the crypto markets. And that's when a bunch of liquidations happened. Like a lot of the shitcoiners got wrecked. And then a lot of the market makers that were cross-shitcoin exposed. Like they held a lot of Bitcoin, but then they also were market makers in Shickcoin land got really hit hard.

And one of the rumors is that Wintermute, which is one of the largest, crypto market makers has basically been liquidating Bitcoin since then, or at least for a while after that happened, right? Today is December 23rd. I don't know, you're going to release this in a little bit, but for like two months, right, they've been like unwinding positions with the only thing they actually had left, which was Bitcoin because like a bunch of shit coins like literally like wick to zero that day. And if you look at a chart, it's a crazy chart. Like I tell people should, This is the one chart this year that is really, really interesting. And that is gold, silver, S&P 500, Bitcoin.

And you can literally see the divergence that happened on October 10th. So who knows? Like maybe that doesn't happen. And we've seen with Bitcoin, like we get the majority of our gains in a very short period of time. And then maybe we, you know, what was the meme, October? We were supposed to have uptober. And we did for like seven days. And instead we just had down tober and down Vember and down December.

And so maybe it would have been different. Maybe it would have looked different if that didn't happen. Yeah. And so wait at me, suing by now. Is that right? Well, that was the other thing. I think that was right. I mean, if you want to be a conspiracy theorist, which I don't prescribe to this

particularly conspiracy. But like CZ got pardoned. and then 10-10 happened. They were like, you get the pardon if you just nuke the market. Just nuke the market. Let us get in cheaper. And then you'll have your pardon. Oh, I kind of like that one.

But now CZ is getting sued. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Anchor Watch. The thing that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical error with my Bitcoin cold storage. And this is where Anchorage comes in. With Anchorage, your Bitcoin is insured with your own A-plus rated Lloyds of London insurance policy and all Bitcoin is held in their time-locked multi-sig volts.

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slash WBD, which is SWAN.com forward slash WBD. You were saying that none of the influences have enough sway right now, but I actually don't know if that's true because like you Hoddle as an influencer, so maybe not. But like the biggest Bitcoin influencer now is Michael Saylor, and he's been buying like a shit ton of Bitcoin all year and not really done very much to the price. Like, I don't. Okay, but go on. Yeah, but that's my point.

First of all, Sailor and then who else? there's not many other people. The ones that remain that are Bitcoin-specific, right? Like, Larry Fink is the largest Bitcoin influence in the world now. But the ones that are Bitcoin-specific told everyone to buy Treasury company. Like, Saylor literally was in Prague and was like, tell your friends and family you need to borrow a million dollars from them and buy Bitcoin with it.

But he kind of was really implying borrow a million dollars and buy MSTR with it. And it's down like 50% since he said that. Yeah. Like that's not a, that's not how you make a foundational, like solid market. It's super tempting for the retail that does show up here. Like, I think everyone's gotten the memo. When I talk to people, you know, I said this last year, but it's true still, which is when I talk to friends, they know about the Bitcoin price without me telling it to them,

which has never happened before in my decade in Bitcoin. So now people are like, they're aware of what Bitcoin is trading at. They're aware that it's a big deal. they believe in Bitcoin. They believe in the story broadly, but they don't think they're going to be a participant in that story. And so if you have all of those things and then you say to yourself, well, I want to get into Bitcoin,

you know, people kind of think that leverage is like a way to cheat the system. And it's like, okay, I'm going to get in with leverage and then I'm going to make up for lost time. And that turns out to be, you know, just the quickest trip to rec city. And the Treasury companies, are really struggling because, you know,

like everything was great when it was like, yeah, bro, premiums on Bitcoin, bro. And you're like, why? And they're like, reasons, me, dude, come on, dude, premiums, dude. And then the premiums go away and like all the guys like Jim Chanos are right and they can just are about the premium super easily. And it's like, we're going to,

we're going to like acquire businesses, man. And shit. And it's, and I don't really, you know, I don't, the treasury companies are not that defensible. without a premium i mean i think that's it just become that's the one call that we got right last year i was listening to the show before we did this to see where we were wrong we were wrong a lot to be honest but um but we did say that we thought the treasury companies like the long tail we're going to get wiped out and basically just the cream of the crop was going to be the only thing that was interesting and actually

stuck around and i think we're seeing that like the acquisitions that are happening now that seems like bad news for most of the companies involved like i think sailor's going to be fine strategy will always be there i think there's probably two or three others but i i think this idea that you can have like a coffee shop that's struggling and buying bitcoin is your like last chance at actually making a company successful that's over you said you said earlier in this rip that no one i i don't know if we can call this a cycle but no one this cycle like successfully called the top or not like hoddle just reminded me like chanos's call was epic like people were giving him so much shit for that call and it was a very simple trade he was like i'm just short microsoft

Microsoft, Microstratagies, MNAB premium. And he held long Bitcoin and went short MSTR. And pretty much nailed the timing. Absolutely nailed the timing very publicly. And got a lot of shit for it. Yeah. And I mean, we're living in a weird bizarro world where Peter Schiff is having an amazing year.

I fucking hate it. We got to give it up to Jim Chanos. If you look at the asset charts, you know, that dude, Charlie Bellello, he always puts it out. Gold is the best performing asset of the year. No, isn't silver? Is silver above gold now?

I checked it only like a month ago. Okay, well, silver's now. Silver had a really hot month. Right. So it's precious metals at the top and Bitcoin at the bottom. And for the entirety of Bitcoin's history, that has never been true before. And so this is just, you know, you kind of got to ask yourself like, okay, is Bitcoin a canary in the coal mine for something larger that's about to, you know, happen at the markets?

Or is Bitcoin a beach ball that's being held underwater? right? Like those are kind of the two questions and nobody has a, nobody has a good answer. But I will say that whenever the Bitcoin price hangs out for a long time like this in a specific range, I tend to think it's going to dumb, you know, I don't think it's going to go up or down. It's going to go hard in one direction. I mean, like, I think it's a simpler answer. I think we're basically living in a global depression right now. Printing Fiat has hidden that. so people think that we're not to a degree, but most people are poor as fuck.

And there's a safe haven trade going on, and that's what gold and silver are benefiting from. People are still treating Bitcoin as a risk off asset, which is fine. Like, I treat it as a safe haven, but specifically, like, if you don't hold Bitcoin in self-custody, I think it's really easy to think of it as a risk off asset, like almost like a tech stock.

And the only thing that's weird about the play right now, or how the market's trading is the big tech companies are also at all-time highs. But that starts to make sense when you realize that I think a lot of people are treating those as risk-risk-off assets. They're thinking of it as a safe haven. Because they have large treasuries, like cash treasuries, they're considered too big to fail, right? Like people think like the U.S. government will not let Envidio fall. Google's a fucking behemoth.

Apple's a fucking behemoth. And they're treating them as safe haven assets themselves. I think they actually might end up being safe haven assets. Like, I don't think the government can let Nvidia fail. Like, I think the government is so reliant on AI working as like a productivity boom to make the economy work that they will probably do everything they can to not allow that stock to fail. But I think what Hoddle said earlier is right. In fact, I think you said this maybe on another show we recorded. It's just the weirdest thing that's happened this year is Bitcoin isn't volatile enough for people, which is why they're going into treasury companies.

that's why they're going into AI stocks that are absolutely pumping. But the thing that I never expected was gold to have more retail fomo than Bitcoin. I would never have guessed that. And I just wonder if we're like, are we missing a narrative in Bitcoin? Because it feels like every cycle, there's some sort of dominant narrative. And this time, it seemed to be like every corporation was going to own Bitcoin. And then a ton of corporations put Bitcoin in the balance sheet and ended up trading at a discount. I think, you know, gold has the unit bias thing going to for it actually because it's a lot easier to wrap your head around owning an ounce of gold than is to wrap your head around owning $100,000 Bitcoin.

And I do think that for retail, the average person looks at, you know, Bitcoin price of $100, $125,000, and they just go, that's great, but that's completely out of my realm of, you know, potentiality here. Like, and they don't realize that you can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin. There's still like a learning curve there. And so that forces, that's one of the forcing functions, you know, that pushes people towards, towards treasuries or towards other things like, you know, gold, for instance. I also think gold is somewhat easier to wrap your mind around. And then, listen, like, there are, you know, I don't even know I want to bring this up.

I'll bring it up. The quantum thing is an actual consideration in the mind of new investors. I agree. Because if there's this boogeyman out there that's like, hey, this thing that, you know, is being sold to his rock solid could potentially be obliterated within, you know, a period of, I don't know, five years time, 10 years time. How investable is it? Should you be investing?

And what is the timeline? Is the timeline three years? Is it five? Is it 10? Is it 20? Is it bullshit? Is the error correction on quantum not real? What's the difference between a short range and long range of tax?

Like these things get confusing. They're confusing for me and I've been in Bitcoin for a long time. So I think, you know, Nick Carter recently came out and talked about quantum. and that's been all over and like, you know, at least now we're not talking about

so we got something new to talk about. So that's been nice, got that going for us. But I do think that he's right, that there is capital that's scared of quantum. I think Nick is being

incredibly alarmist for engagement. But as someone who runs a fund that competes with his, he is correct in that we have heard this from large allocators. Like large allocators are thinking about it and there's not a real answer

because I think, the real answer is it's not a real concern right now and it'll be fine. But that's not satisfying. What they want to see is they want to see some tangible technical option for people that want more quantum resistance. I mean, right now, if you hold Bitcoin and you're doing it under best practices, you're holding self-custy Bitcoin, you're not reusing addresses, you're very well protected from some kind of quantum breakthrough that is purely theoretical right now.

But that's not an easy answer for them. I do think it's, it probably, it's weighing down the market a little bit and it's adding a little bit more uncertainty where we already had, you know, uncertainty, right? And I think the key here, though, with gold is gold is not, I don't think it's a retail-driven rally. Like, I think gold is institutional sovereigns. This is like very, very large allocators. And for them, it's actually easier for them to allocate to gold.

First of all, there's way less career risk. There's already a bunch of different avenues for large allocators to move into golden size. The story is very clean. You know, it's multi-thousand-year asset that has historically been a safe haven. And Bitcoin is, you know, is new. And it's hard to understand. The interesting thing, though, by the way, and I'll just hand up probably first time in my life that have ever felt any kind of gold fomo.

And, you know, it's just great. It's like everything we said is true, but gold and silver are fucking ripping. And I feel sidelined. I feel sidelined to a degree. There's no easy way for smaller people to allocate to gold. Like, I don't even, I was, I joked about this on Robert Little Recap. It's like, well, I need like a BTC sessions video on how to, verify physical gold.

Like I just assume that if I go out and try and buy physical gold in any reasonable size, then it's going, I'm probably going to get a bunch of Chinese fakes. And to me, Bitcoin is way easier to allocate in those like middle ranges, right? Like the 500,000 to $2 million ranges, you can go out and get self-custy Bitcoin on strike and, you know, have it and fully verify. you know, in 30 minutes. By the way, the cheap, easy way to assay gold is you take an impact drill and you just drill into it. But doesn't that hurt the value? I mean, you're destroying some portion of the gold.

Anyway, I decided to, just for it to be clear here, I've decided that I'm not going to allocate the gold at all. And instead, my Bitcoin hedge is just large quantities of ammunition, which is much easier to verify. Whiskey, prescription pills, ammunition, absolutely. I know you've got some gold around your neck right now, O'Dell, but we should talk about the quantum thing. Besides Medax is jewelry. We should talk about the quantum thing because like I may be, I know you kind of get sick of the conversation, Matt, but like from my perspective, it probably will be true in my lifetime. I'm not any way near competent enough to put a kind of timeframe on it, but I would imagine it happens in my lifetime.

And so I think we do need to start having the conversation in a reasonable way, because like you saying that if you hold it in self-custody, you're not reusing addresses, like, you're pretty safe. But that's not really the big threat. The big threat is like, what happens to all the old coins? What does that do to like the price of Bitcoin? So, yeah, there's, yeah, correct. There's two things. So if you're, if you're concerned about quantum is someone stealing your own Bitcoin,

you're going to be fine. We have some of the smartest minds in the world working on more advanced quantum protected schemes, signature schemes for Bitcoin that will be opt-in that people can move to if they want to. In the short to medium term, and that's like five to 20 years, the current hashed addresses on Segwit are probably fine, you know, because you're only subject to an attack at the point of spend. And so, like, you're, like, imagining someone with a theoretical, like, magic computer, basically that is able to, like, attack you within 10 to, 10 minutes to an hour, which is just not going to happen. So then what's the real concern that people have? The real concern

people have and these two things are mixed together is old coins and lost coins and the easy meme way to talk about this is Satoshi's Bitcoin. Satoshi's got a million Bitcoin that's just sitting out there for a quantum attacker. I like this is this is what you sign up for with Bitcoin. This is also what you sign up for with gold. Like if someone steals someone's gold, it doesn't invalidate the gold's value prop. If someone steals someone's Bitcoin, it doesn't invalidate Bitcoin's value prop. We earlier in this year, people were cheering on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which is literally designed to be built on stolen Bitcoin.

And they cheered that on. But if for some reason someone has a massive breakthrough and is able to create a quantum computer that actually fucking works, and they get some Bitcoin, which by the way, they can't dump in size without destroying the value that they created, people lose their fucking mind and start advocating for seizures. that we've never done in Bitcoin's history. Bitcoin has gone 17 plus years without a single seizure and without a single transaction blocked at the protocol level. Like, yes, there's been seizures where people take people's private keys or governments come in and arrest you and put a gun to your head and force you to give them the private keys.

That's unavoidable. That's in the physical realm. But as a digital protocol, as an internet native protocol, we've never had a seizure and we've never had any transaction blocked, which is absolutely phenomenal. People do not appreciate that fact. And so to throw that out and basically preemptively try and steal Bitcoin because you're afraid someone else might steal it is insane to me. And it's a weird obsession that people have.

And I think the cleanest thing to do here, narrative-wise, if the concern is that large allocators are worried about potential market impacts on that hitting the market, is being very loud about the fact that that will not happen. We will not be preemptively stealing people's Bitcoin. Because I'll tell you, there's also the opposite side of the equation. Satoshi could have burned his Bitcoin if he wanted to. Large holders could have burned their Bitcoin, OG holders that are in old legacy addresses that are vulnerable to this theoretical attack, could have burned their Bitcoin if they wanted to. They chose not to. Some of them might not be moving their Bitcoin because of concerns over market impact. this actual movement, this idea of spreading this narrative that we're going to preemptively seize

Satoshi's coins, if Satoshi's actually alive and out there right now, I've fucking moved my Bitcoin. You might actually force the market impact that you're so scared of because of that preemptive fear. Yeah. But when I say this is stuff we should be talking about, this is exactly what I mean. Like, this is the important conversation to have because, like, I think it's also really short-sighted from another way, where it's one of the key values of Bitcoin is property rights and the fact that you can't do anything with anyone else's Bitcoin. And even if there's going to be a portion of the market

that I think we should seize Bitcoin because they think short term it'll be better for the price chart, essentially. But what does that do to the long-term value proposition of Bitcoin if we've proven at once under these extreme circumstances we can steal people's Bitcoin? Like I think people aren't thinking of the second and third order consequence of this. Yeah. There's probably a lot of people who haven't been,

been around for some of the messier times in Bitcoin 2, you know, like where 2017 was a very messy year in Bitcoin. We had a full-on block size war that was raging. There was a lot of uncertainty. There were all these air drops, et cetera. And, you know, Bitcoin survived. And in fact, the price ripped that year. And I think people want easy answers to some of these things and the question, you know, like the idea that we're going to put in a quantum secure encryption scheme before the threat is prevalent and we might make a mistake is in and of itself

just as big a threat as if we don't get there in time. So you put in, you're kind of damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. So you have to be prudent and watch what's going on and then put in these,

you know, schemes at the right time. And then on top of that, you also have, you know, I think it's worth double clicking on what Matt was talking about with the short range versus long range attacks.

Like if you are in like a P2WSH like multi-sig, you know, hash protected, like you're good. You know, quantum is not going to get you. And that's a long range. So that would be a long range attack if they were trying to get, you know,

a hoddled Bitcoin secure, hash protected Bitcoin. But if you are, you know, transacting at the moment of transaction, you might be vulnerable to some sort of quantum actor if one exists. So right now it is still, you know, purely theoretical. And I think that that's really not that big of a concern, right? So you can kind of table it because it's not a big deal. Most people are just hoddling their coins anyway. and it doesn't like destroy the value proposition of Bitcoin.

But if people can get access to your coins, that's obviously a much bigger deal. And then again, you have to dig into quantum how it works. And like there's a lot of talk, you know, I'm not smart enough to understand it, to be honest,

but there's a lot of talk about the error correction principles. And like they haven't really gotten there on the technology side of like being able to error correct the quantum state of these machines. And so that means they're not really useful in production yet. Right. Now there might be a breakthrough any, any moment or in a couple years or whenever, like, that makes that possible. But right now it is still like, it's a theoretical conversation. We're having a theoretical conversation in public.

And I think one of the things we should do, in my opinion, my estimation is to basically, we should have like sort of a state of quantum discourse, you know, every year, quarterly or whatever, where we just sort of update as we go and say, hey, if you're interested in what the Bitcoiners are thinking about quantum, they're thinking this. Because, you know, like, One of the things that Nick Carter was saying is like the devs are not paying attention, you know, whatever. But there was a whole, you know, a conference about this, like talk about this at Presidio Bitcoin where the devs were going over, you know, our highest level devs were going over the quantum

threat, what the potentiality is, like, you know, what can be done? What are the types of schemes? Like Hunter Beast has done an incredible, amazing amount of work on this. Like there's a lot going on and people just don't know about it. And so I think it's really contingent on us to just sort of instead of being, here's the other thing too about, I want to put this out to Bitcoiners. Like, we've memed our way out of a lot of shit. So Bitcoin has no CEO. That's just something you can meme your way out of. If Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, what even is intrinsic value, bro? Like, we can meme our way out of stuff. But if quantum is

real or if it becomes real, it's more like a Bitcoin Y2K moment. And it's not something that you can meme yourself out of. And the story of Y2K, by the way, is not that Y2K was not a big deal. The story was that the people that were in charge of updating the mainframe systems took it as a responsibility and did the work ahead of time to make it so that Y2K ended up being nothing. And that is the same type of thing we will do in Bitcoin when the time comes with the quantum thing. But it's not something you can just meme your way out of. Right. So I think that's like the, you know, the message I'd like to get across to Bitcoiners on Twitter who are just like, oh, it's just fun, bro. Like it could be a real thing in the future. It's just not a real thing,

you know, right now. I was telling the real thing is going to be likely, uh, the first contentious fork we've had since 2017, which will be on seizing Bitcoin. And I just want to reiterate this one more time. If Navy SEALs or Delta Force or whatever found Satoshi and accused him of money laundering for terrorists and took his $1 million Bitcoin at gunpoint and added it to the strategic Bitcoin Reserve, there'd be no conversations around forking out there Bitcoin. But if some math genius working in a secret lab somewhere figures out this insane crypto-breaking computer to attack his Bitcoin, then we're going to do a protocol change to stop the Bitcoin. That makes no fucking sense. It just logically does not flow.

So this goes back to Ethereum's Dow Fork, which is like they came to this crossroads and they made the wrong decision. And this was back in 2017, I think. Or no, even earlier, 2016. they made the wrong decision and they somebody attacked the Dow which had a lot of Ethereum in it and they made the community

decision to roll it back and give those coins back to the Ethereum Foundation and all the other holders but that was the wrong and it created a chain split right and then there was Ethereum Classic and Barry Silver started buying up

all the Ethereum Classic whatever that was the wrong decision they hit that fork in the road and they made the bad path and if Ethereum has done anything for us it's shown us what not to do. So we can learn from their example and just not take the bad path. What if you could lower your tax bill and stack Bitcoin at the same time?

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I used that exact same analogy and you told me it was a dumb take. So, uh, what was my, what was my reasoning for saying it was a dumb take? I don't remember. That was quite a while ago, but I remember you telling me it was a bad day. That was when you forgot to record. You see, you're always just, you're slippery. You're getting out of it. We should talk about Trump though, because this was one area where Matt, when I was listening back, you had a really poor take. You said 90% sure we would have a strategic reserve this year. Yeah, well, we didn't.

We did get one, but it's a shitty one. What's your take on Trump's entire first year? Oh, my God. It's been, it's been wildly disappointing. Just like the Bitcoin market, it's been disappointing, I think. Seems that the focus, I think the big thing that the Trump-based, feels is that the focus has been much more on geopolitical foreign affairs than it has been here at home and people are not really getting what they voted for. And so there's disappointment about

that. And then the Trump admin is doing sort of these performative measures. Like for instance, the deportation numbers are not as high as they should be. And so ICE is doing TikTok edits to the little dark age on X. And it's like, yo, look how like fucking cool we're being while we deport this person, right? It's like nobody actually wants that. That's, uh, I don't know why you're trying to be cool on X instead of governing, right? So, or like, you know, we kind of seems like we have podcasters running the government, man. Like Dan Bongino, like, was on a podcast, you know, saying if he got into the FBI, he would fix it. And then he got into the FBI and he was like, this shit is tough. I'm going back to podcasting. It's like, what the fuck? I don't know, man. Or like,

it's, it's weird. It's like, I'm, watching, you know, Stephen Miller's wife has a podcast and Cash Patel is on there with his girlfriend. Like, why is the FBI director on a podcast with his girlfriend? This is like just weird norm breaking for me. And it's like, what is it accomplishing in the middle of a manhunt for the Brown shooting suspect? He's like doing the podcast. Like, it's very odd what's going on. It's like this, I don't know, the whole Trump admin has been very performative. And obviously I voted for Trump. And, you know, I think it's better than what we would have had with Harris, because with Harris, we would have been completely under the gun, especially as Bitcoin people. And we probably still will be in a future Democrat administration.

So keep your nose clean now. Don't, I mean, like, maybe don't tweet that thing about the Democrat senator you hate. But, yeah, it's been disappointing. Disappointing. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. Like, the funny thing is, though, especially as an outsider, you can't say anything negative about Trump without. like being told you have Trump derangement syndrome. But this year seems like a shit show. Like I don't see that much positive stuff that's come out of his campaign so far. And I agree that

like Harris might have been worse, but it doesn't mean Trump's been good. And Matt, I'm giving you shit about the strategic reserve call. Like I thought the same thing. Obviously, we're never going to know. But do you think now the like first year is nearly up that the kind of idea of good Bitcoin policy is over? Do you think there's still legs in it? Well, first of all, I'm still thinking about the Dow Fork and I just want to apologize to you. I forgive you, Matt. But clearly people's opinions change. I would tell you, when we, when we chatted last, I wasn't thinking about quantum as much.

And now I have to talk about it all the fucking time. So, look, I think on the Trump side, first of all, way better than Harris. Like, it's not even close. Absolutely not even close. Like, we were on the verge of, like, us and our friends and important businesses and Bitcoin throughout the country, like, having the feds, like, raid their houses at gunpoint. Like, it was really, really bad. And we got Ross free. Ross is free.

That's a huge win. I would love to see the samurai developers get pardoned. I think that's another easy, tangible win for the administration on the Bitcoin side. I think, you know, the Trump administration himself and a lot of the people around him are very, very transactional. And it seems like they've been filling up their own coffers rather than filling up the U.S. government's coffers on Bitcoin. I mean, his son literally has his own American Bitcoin company. Trump has Trump Media.

You mentioned the Brown guy, by the way. Like Trump Media is not only stacking Bitcoin, but they're also doing a 50-50 merger with their fusion company right after our top fusion researcher gets fucking murdered in his house. So, you know, maybe it's coat, maybe it's not. But I think there is a play where you see the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve stuff happen after he has like him and his cronies have their bags fully packed um but as hattle said we do technically have a strategic bitcoin reserve it's mostly just not selling bitcoin that we've already

stolen i do not like that the precedent is being set that stolen bitcoin is seeding the reserve and will be used to the reserve i would much rather see a law on the books that says stolen bitcoin has to get burned um i would not advocate for a protocol change to force that though. And that's where we all come back together. But I will say that, look, no matter how you cut it, you know, the last year of Biden versus this year, it's just been way better for Bitcoin. It's been so much better for Bitcoin. I'll say on the policy side, I think, you know, the guys at BPI are doing an incredible job. They only seem to be getting better and better as time goes on. And it's been nice to have our

own think tank of really intelligent, you know, smart, young, ambitious guys who are doing a lot of that legwork in Washington. And I'm very bullish on their team. And, you know, I think there are more policy wins ahead. I know they're working on a lot of stuff. Obviously, it's not so easy to get, you know, things accomplished in Washington. And it's a big effort and it's a fucking, you know, daily grind. You've got to show up and really pound the pavement, talk to people and shake hands and kiss babies. So yeah, I think that we are going to see more wins. It's just, you know, we're going to have to be patient.

I will say on the SBR side, not only did we have technically the SBR get created, but we also had a sovereign wealth fund get created. And the big one was I think we bought like 10% of Intel. The U.S. government did. Now, this is a non-zero call, but not, I'm definitely not confident in this call at all, but I'm just going to point and try and hit the home run. Next year, to stop the bleeding of the Bitcoin market, what if the U.S. government goes out and buys 10, 20 percent of micro strategy at a discount and turns the whole fucking thing

around? That would be, I don't think that's the most far-fetched scenario to play out. out. And actually would probably be way more positive. It would definitely be way more positive than going and stealing people's Bitcoin and putting it in the SBR. If they went and bought 10% of strategy, would that basically just lay the groundwork for them going in and stealing strategy in the future?

And basically like bail out the entire industry by buying micro strategy at a discount. Yeah. I don't think there's any for them to steal coins when they can print currency. You know, like the reason that the strategic reserve is being seated with, you know, stolen Bitcoin or, you know, the investigation, sorry, the proceeds, criminal proceeds from law enforcement investigations is because they thought that that was an easy, clean way that they could win on this and give the Bitcoiners what they promised us while also not stepping on toes in Washington. And to us, we see the negative, you know, long-term downstream consequences of that action. But to them, it was just like, hey, here's an easy win. Give the Bitcoiners this. We already have it.

We already took it from the criminals. Just give it to them and put it in the reserve or whatever. I think that I have said this as a micro strategy shareholder and I still own micro strategy. I've owned it for a while now, like five years now, that I kind of think sometimes to myself when I'm alone that we're just engaged in this project of stacking America's Bitcoin. That's kind of what we're doing as MSTR shareholders. And I do think Matt's call is probably going to age well, that there will be some type of relationship between micro strategy and the U.S. government, similar to the Intel relationship. But my question on that, though, is like, do you have a, like, realistically, be very honest, do you have a fear that the U.S. government steps in and tries to take strategies coins at some point?

I don't think they're going to do it outright like that because it gives up the game of American capitalism. So that would be they're in truly dire straits, and it's a Hail Mary effort at the very end of the game. I think much more likely it's going to be this slow insipid thing, kind of like Matt pointed out, where it's like you take a steak, then you take a slightly larger stake, and then take a slightly larger,

again, all with printed money. And then, you know, that's like getting something for nothing. So why do you need to come in as like jackboot thugs and steal it all in one go when you could just like sort of transgress slowly over time and end up with the entire horde anyway. Yeah, it's an American technology company that's holding their Bitcoin

with multiple American financial companies. That's also, I don't know what the exact MNAV is right now, but it's pretty close to trading at a discount if it's not already trading at a discount. So you can come in. The shareholders would actually be very, I think would be positive after this year for micro strategy. I think shareholders would be ecstatic

if Trump came out and announced that he bought 20% of micro strategy at a slight discount to market price. And I think most people would be happy as opposed to, as as Hattel said, which is like pretty obvious, like, authoritarianism move of just stealing all the Bitcoin. Now, I just want to put this out there once again that, you know, the U.S. U.S. government could also see the SBR by having a secret quantum computer that attacks Satoshi's Bitcoin. And it's interesting, like, I wonder if, and I haven't had these conversations yet, and I plan to have it, because I think this is going to be a very long conversation that happens for a while. But with the proponents of the freezing stuff, if it changes, depending on who seizes it, who steals the Bitcoin? If it's the U.S.

U.S. government and it gets ceded into an SBR, are they cool with it? If it's the Chinese government, are they not cool with it? If it's a startup, do they, our startup's not allowed to take it. It's interesting because it kind of changed, I think it changes people's framing on how they think about it. But yeah, I mean, for all intents and purposes, regardless, regardless if they buy, if they buy, if they buy a stake in MSTR, MSTR Bitcoin is American domiciled Bitcoin that can be taxed. and harvested and taking advantage of regard, you don't have to actually seize it. Right, exactly.

I want to talk a little bit about the samurai devs, O'Dell. This one's right up your alley. Like, so this obviously didn't start under the Trump regime. This was under Biden. But when it went to court, I did expect them to get a more lenient sentence than they got. Like, it was the absolute maximum. I think they were up for.

Do you think there's any chance, like realistic chance of a pardon for them? Well, they were being charged with conspiracy, for money laundering conspiracy, which had up to 25 years, and they were being charged for unlicensed money transmitter business, which is basically not running KIC on like a financial institution, which had a charge of five years. And they pled guilty in a plea deal for the unlicensed money transmitter business to drop the money laundering charge, and then got hit with the max sentencing for that. So they got five years. So they didn't, you know, technically they didn't get the max sentencing.

Now, it's a self-custody wallet. Like FinCend themselves said they are not a money transmitter business. So it's a ridiculous fucking charge to be found guilty of. Now, the counterargument is that they pled to it. Now, Keon and Bill, I have Keon has publicly said that it was basically a coerced plea. Like he was like looking there. They have families. they were afraid they were going to get thrown in jail for 25 years and they they took the deal

I would like to see them pardoned I think it's a travesty I think it's I think it's really bad for America I think it's worse for America than it is for Bitcoin but as an American as someone who builds businesses here as someone who's building a family here like I would like to see that wrong righted but yeah it's I think is important to realize, once again, I'm not a lawyer, but this is a federal court, but it's the New York federal court. This is the same court that went after Trump. This is, you know, in a lot of ways, I think, leftovers of the Biden administration. And Trump has got a bunch of things on this plate for him to like preemptively get involved there. It's like, was never really going to

happen. We also didn't have that much money behind them. You know, like I was involved in raising their fundraising, I think we ended up getting, like, the legal defense ones is like a little over a million dollars. If you're someone like CZ or Justin's son or whatever, you can pay Trump like tens of millions of dollars to guarantee a pardon. We just didn't have that kind of capital behind us. So it needs to be more of a narrative story, I think, to reach him because I think that does work with him. And he has commented on it recently. So hopefully we do see a pardon here. I think I think they deserve one and I think it's good for the country. Wait, I missed that. Did Trump comment on the samurai case?

Yeah, there was a decryptor reporter specifically in the White House that asked him about it. And he didn't seem aware of it, but he said he was going to look into it. I watched the videos that Keone's wife had posted, you know, of him going into prison and, you know, of them having early Christmas dinner, obviously, because he was going to be in federal prison. And those were very difficult to watch. And, you know, I think there's a, like Matt said, like the plea thing. by the way is the norm. It is coerced, but that's why the feds have such a high

win rate is because they coerce everybody. So the feds really don't bring a case against you unless they know they can win it. And the way they win it is by being like, you're going away forever or you can go away for this five year stretch and get back to your life after five years. And like, again, if you have a family

and you're looking at 30 years versus five, the smart play is to take five every time and like it doesn't, you know, make you cool on Twitter, but who gives a shit about being cool on Twitter when you're talking about missing 25 more birthdays of your children, right? And so that's a really rough reality that they're going through. And I think the thing that Matt was talking about, the reason why it's bad for America is because, you know, I'm not a lawyer either, but in America, the law of the land is essentially

that if something is not explicitly illegal, that it is legal to do. And in the case of, you know, coin joint implementations, in my opinion, those were in a legal gray area. They had not been explicitly defined. And so I think it's actually, you know, I think it is a disaster that we're throwing startup investors in jail for doing things in the fintech space that were not strictly illegal, you know. I mean, the government's claim is that they were strictly illegal based on intent, essentially, but that's not my view at all. And I think, like, if you look at the cases of, you know, Ross Ulberg versus Keone Rodriguez, you know, Ross is doing something that's much more explicitly illegal. Totally.

than Keone was. And not that I think it was wrong what he did or morally wrong. I think Ross deserves to be free. But to me, the Samarai case is even cleaner. And I do think that, you know, these are our guys, right? So like, yeah, I mean, there was Flame Wars on Twitter and, you know, were you wasabi or were you Sam, who gives a fuck? We're all Bitcoiners.

These are our guys. We don't leave anybody behind. Let's go get them out of jail, you know, period. We got Ross out. Let's go get them out. Yeah, I think the narrative is going to be really important because, like, the reason Ross's free is like obviously down to a ton of amazing work from like his mom and the libertarian group and then Bitcoiners, but it was also a really strong narrative that resonated with Trump voters.

Like I think we need to make a lot of noise and try and make him care about this topic. But Oda, was it frustrating that this only raised like just over a million dollars when I think the tornado cash guy raised, was it 10 times that amount? Yeah, I mean, look, it was it was super frustrating trying to build support for this stuff behind the scenes and in public, while all the limelight was on name and influencer joining a treasury company board. Like that's literally just to get their piece, right? Like they weren't doing it for the good of Bitcoin.

Let's be honest here. That's fine. They were doing it to get their bread and to reward their family for years of Twitter posting. That's what they were doing. And that was highlighted as being heroic. And people were like, like Bitcoin Twitter became like, like LinkedIn. It was like, I'm joining the board of bullshit treasury company. And then all the posts underneath was like, congrats, congrats, congrats, congrats, congrats, congrats,

congrats. And then meanwhile, like, fundraising or getting any kind of real tangible support for Samurai was, was really floundering. Now, I will say that was very disappointing this year, but the last month or so, it's been really, it's been really cool to see people coming around to, there's been a lot more support than I've expected. So I think on the positive side, it's been, it's, it's been good to see in last month. I will also say it's been broader than Bitcoin. Like, we're seeing it in libertarian circles. We're seeing it, um, just in freedom mind in circles. I mean, Keon got on a, on a television show in the UK. Like, they hate freedom over there. But for some reason, they wanted to support samurai. And like that, that was really cool to see. I want to be clear here on the American side, you know,

there's none of us are lawyers and there's a lot of misunderstanding this doesn't set a legal precedent in America because they pled if they tried to fight it and lost then it would have set a legal precedent so there's there's not a legal precedent we have to be worried here coin join self-custody wallets remain in a legal gray area that's where we are right now but what has happened and I see this all the time, particularly on the OpenSat side, where we're supporting, you know, 350 plus developers in 40 plus countries is there has been a tangible chilling effect on people working on self-custody and privacy-focused software, period. And that makes sense because no one wants to be thrown in jail.

And it's worse than just being thrown in jail. They had like 40 plus federal agents with guns, raid his fucking house. Like, he did just a nonviolent, if he was a criminal, it's a nonviolent crime. And they did like a tactical raid on his house to arrest him, which is insane. Is that chilling effect still there? Because I know after they got arrested, like Wallace Toshi pulled out of the U.S., Phoenix pulled out of the U.S., but they're, I think, both now back now. And obviously, like, Trump gave people some degree of confidence that they could build

this stuff without going to prison. But do you think that's not enough? Is there still that sort of chilling effect happening? Yeah, I mean, I was an investor in Mutiny. I think Matt was as well. And like, mutiny, you know, the day this happened, like, came. down. They were like, you know, we're going to be a privacy-focused AI company now. So, like, they just completely shut down the business and went a different direction because

they were planning to make money on coin joint implementations. So, yeah. I would just say, I will just say, I don't know if that pivot was only because of legal concerns, because if I'm going to make another call, like, I think privacy-focused AI will might become even more of a hot-button issue than privacy-focused financial transactions. But at the time, I'm not sure that was for, you know. Yeah, I think there was a lot of disillusionment. And I'm not going to put words in their mouth.

But like, I think there was just a feeling that it wasn't, you know, trying to, trying to build a business that is focused on freedom usage of Bitcoin is a very hard business to run, period. There's not a huge market for it. Right. Most of, most of the successes we've seen in the industry is financial service. is buy-sell Bitcoin and loans. That's where you see the real business opportunities, right?

Like, strike is absolutely crushing. Companies that are trying to focus on freedom-focused Bitcoin are having a much harder time. And then with the Samurai stuff, it's like if, and then so you either completely fail as a business, or if you somehow find success, Samurai found a lot of success. They were very profitable. Then you get thrown in jail.

It's like you lose in either situation. And on the Phoenix on the Wilder Satoshi side, Because I think that was a bit of an overreaction by non-American-based companies that thought a very easy risk management solution was to just remove themselves from the U.S. market, which I think it could even be argued that that doesn't really help you anyway, because, I mean, they're not doing KYC on users, so Americans could get around it regardless. But those aren't privacy-focused wallets. Like, you don't really get, you're getting no privacy benefits, really, from using wallace.

It's relatively easy to track, particularly in their new configuration. And with Phoenix, like Phoenix sees all your transactions. So if they are hit with a subpoena or something, we don't know if they're complying with them or not to track transactions. So it's a little bit different. If you're looking at people working on join market, which is like a direct one-to-one comparison, you know, it's a coin join implementation that doesn't rely on a centralized server,

but it's completely open source. Like there has been a massive chilling effect on that side. And I think there was a bunch of, there remains a bunch of developers that were more experienced on privacy-focused Bitcoin that I've just stepped away. I'm just going to focus on my family and I'm not going to deal with that.

Yeah, that's not good to see. Like, if you're looking forward, this can be a prediction. We'll see if it was right or wrong. Do you think this gets better or worse? Worse. You think we're going to see more devs thrown in jail? I think that the two things that,

okay, listen, like the days of us saying, you know, hey, they're going to ban Bitcoin. That's over. completely over. They're not going to ban something Larry Fink is all on board with. So what's the reality of the situation? The reality is they want to dox you and they want to tax you. So if you're doing things that prevent the government from doxing and taxing, the doxing is for the taxing, by the way. The taxing is the big thing because they want to take your money from you. If you're doing things that prevent the government from being able to levy their tax against you, you're going to come under the eye of Sauron. is my opinion.

And I don't think that that's going to get any better anytime soon. And I think, in fact, like Matt was alluding to this, the AI world that we're heading into makes privacy a whole shitload worse. So it's only going to get one from here. And I think there's going to be a lot of controversy about anyone who's offering any kind of private AI stuff and quote unquote, what are they doing with it? And we can't track them and we can't control them. I think on the social media side, we've also seen a push towards more KYC and less privacy.

I mean, the UK particularly has kind of been leading the way for that in the Western world. It's absolutely insane that people are being thrown in jail for tweets. So I think it probably gets worse before it gets better. I do think the cat's out of the bag, though. I think it's going to, you know, I think freedom technology will be there for people who want to use it. And it's going to be, it's basically impossible to stop. Now, the one thing on the Bitcoin side that could throw a wrench in all of this, which is non-zero, but not likely, is some kind of near-term Cap gains policy shift. If Bitcoin is not subject to cap gains, and I'm not talking about like, and this is so unlikely because of the bullshit, even the most likely outcome of this is like a $600 to minimum.

miss or something, which is insane. It's like you can't even buy groceries with $600, um, is, is if they remove that aspect, then all of a sudden that incentive, right, that incentive to go after people that want financial privacy gets removed. And I think this is bigger than Bitcoin. Like I think, I mean, I think we should remove cap gains across all asset classes, period. Right? There shouldn't be cap gains on gold either. And, but the reason this is on likely is because in the hyperinflationary environment, cap gains is quite lucrative for the government, right? They print money and then you have fake gains that aren't real gains,

but they're denominated in their bullshit currency, and then they take fucking 20 to 50% of it. And in America, it's across the whole stack, right? Like the local governments take some too. See, the thing that I can know, like I've been asking this question for the entire time I've been doing the podcast, but like, is this future scenario that you're both kind of outlying

Is that Bitcoin winning? I don't know if it is. It's a nest. I've been saying this for years, and I think I'm right on it. I don't think I'm right about the price, but I think I'm right about those, which is that we are going to have to go through this period of sort of co-option or shadow prohibition or, you know, ghettoization, like whatever you want to call it, where Bitcoin enters the traditional system.

and it kind of appears like we're losing freedoms, but we're still maintaining number go up. But those freedoms don't go away. So, like, they're intrinsic to Bitcoin, and really it's just laws on paper that, you know, the problem here, again, is that there's this global cabal that sets the rules. Like, whenever you have a revolution of elites,

it's about rulemaking. Who's allowed to set rules for whom? Who's allowed to change rules? Who sits at the table? power, right? And there's a small club that has all of the money. They have all of the guns and they make all of the laws and none of us are in the club. So it's going to take some time as we march forward, change, you know, progress happens one funeral at a time. It's going to take some time for us, basically, to get a seat at the table of power and be able to rewrite the rules to enable more

freedom. And I think that if you're in Bitcoin, it's a long journey. It's a long bet. And if you think that you're, you know, yeah, like we had a shit year this year. Okay. Who gives a fuck. I'm not I'm not buying gold. I'm not going into tech stocks. I'm still here. I'm going to be here for the foreseeable future. And I will be here during the shadow co-option period. And, you know, there will be an old version of American huddle gray hair who would tell you like, I'm glad I went through it, sun and now we're sitting here with more freedom in, you know, whatever. I think that it's a necessary part of this whole thing because Bitcoin has to enter into the traditional system. in order to continue to succeed.

If Bitcoin remains as outside capital forever, it never fulfills its mandate. Yeah, I mean, this is just Bitcoin growing up. I think, look, the success of any freedom technology, whether that's Bitcoin or something like Tor or message encryption or private AI, the success is always a small subset of users. It's just the ability for anyone to decide to take that path if they're ready to take that path. But the problem is, the core problem is that it requires more personal responsibility.

And people don't want to take personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is more difficult. If you can live your life without taking personal responsibility, then other people deal with your shit for you. And then if it's not that bad, then people are just going to take that path. I think it's important for us to give people the tools and the education available to them so that they can choose that path. But like I said, I think success is like, I've said this in the past on your show, Like, I think success is like zero to five percent of people using this stuff. And I just want to reiterate on the financial privacy aspects specifically and where it relates to Bitcoin is, I think people don't realize this is, it is all downstream of tax policy.

Because tax policy is what is why the, the U.S. government wants to track every financial transaction, where that's income tax, pretty much everything except property taxes and tariffs is why they want to track every transaction. sales tax. Sales tax is the government sitting in between you and the person you're buying something from. And if they can't track every transaction there, then they'd be worried that they're not collecting all of their taxes. So one of the most optimistic things on the financial privacy side that Trump has said was early on. He said he was going to slash taxes across the board. We just haven't seen that. And like that was one of the reasons I was cautiously optimistic about tariff policy is because tariffs are actually a tax policy that does not require financial surveillance on citizens. It just requires financial surveillance at the borders when stuff enters. But we haven't seen that. And unless we see that,

which is still, I think, very unlikely, like, there's going to be a war on financial privacy, period. Even though most people need financial privacy not to avoid, it's not to, it's not to cheat on taxes. like that's not the reason one thing i've been thinking especially after i had marks on from um open secret and i do think that private ai might open people's eyes to privacy um before anything about financial privacy even enters their equation like i think when people see how much data is being stolen from ai and how that can potentially be used against them i think that's going to be like a sliding doors moment you'd think that with a lot of other things um but i the yeah the main the main main use case of AI, regardless of the chat stuff, right? Like, chat GPT is tracking everything you do and

they're going to harvest that data. But like the main use case of AI at scale right now is surveilling people, right? You take all the data that the governments and companies already have and you run it through an LLM and it's great at parsing through that data and giving you actionable insights on that data. I think it's kind of questionable if that's going to to be, you know, what shows people the light. I think maybe, yeah, I think what we see is we see data leaks happen, compromises happen, people realize the need for privacy, but it's a smaller subset that do, right?

The overwhelming majority do not actually, they're the proverbial frog boiling in the pot slowly. Then they don't actually get shocked into moving away from it. Yeah. Matt, I know you've got a hard stop coming up soon-ish. Can we do some? I got 40 minutes. Oh, I thought you had 10 minutes.

Okay, cool. Should we do some predictions for next year? The one I really want from you, Matt, is what year will we hit 250K by conference day? I said 200K by conference day and that was in 2021. Okay, so when will we get that? It was mostly, originally it was mostly to troll the engagement, accounts. We just made fun of Tom Leight. They all do this, right? Samson and his omega candle. They do it every fucking cycle. It works. Yeah, I had enough of it that cycle.

So in all caps, I was saying 200k by conference day. Now, where I will put my hand up is I thought we were going to at least hit 100 K. Like, I think it was like $35,000 during the conference. So I was way to fuck off like hand up. That's on me. But who knows? Maybe we never hit 200k. Maybe gold. Maybe gold becomes the reserve currency of the world. Gold is always the play. I just, I really, look, Hoddle nailed this earlier, which is like,

our freedoms seem to be constantly eroding, particularly in the digital world, but at least we were soothed by number go up. I do not like the scenario where our freedoms are getting constantly eroded and we don't have number go up as well. So I'm hoping, I'm optimistic in hoping,

that we see 200K next year. That would be nice. I'd be down for that. I'm all in on Bitcoin and then some. So that would be ideal, but I don't pretend to have any fucking idea. It doesn't have to be price predictions, but anything you want to put your neck on the line

and claim for 2026. Hoddle? Yeah, a million a coin. Of course. No. So I, you know, sentiment is shit. Sentiment is something worst. I've ever seen it, honestly.

And, you know, I don't think sentiment was this bad during FTX, at least not amongst the Bitcoin faithful. I was at a, I was at a Bitcoin beefsteak, you know, at 15K Bitcoin, right? Like 16K Bitcoin. And this was after the FTX implosion and vibes were high, actually. There was, you know, like people were playing guitar and like it was like a, you know, we were having drinks. Everybody was like, there was like a calm energy of we were going to win. And now there's this energy, even amongst like, oh, G's I know that's like, this is fucked. We should just sell all our shit and just be rich.

Fuck all this, you know? I mean, that's like the, I'm just being honest. And some of the more hardcore guys I know are not thinking, you know, like, so like, you know, I know, I know some people who are really, you know, up there, OGs, big whales. And they're not thinking that. but it's the guys in the middle range who are thinking that. It's like the eight figure guys, not the nine or ten figure guys. And I've never seen that before.

And I think there's just a lot of like fatigue, like Hodler fatigue. And I get it because this year has been just a slog. It's just been really shitty. But again, like with FTX, like every, it's, there's this magical thing that happens when the, you know, the ball drops in New York and there's a new year. and it sort of etches sketches the previous year from your memory, and it's like, boom, we're on to 26. And so with that in mind, I don't know, man,

I just have this instinct where I kind of want to fade everybody and just say that 26 is going to be bullish as fuck. But I said that last year and the year before. So I might as well just stay consistent and be like, I'm bullish. I'm always bullish. I'm a permable. If you ask me what's going on,

that's what you're going to get from me. So, you know, I think the sense makes sense to me. And like when FTX collapsed, like, I think there's two things that play into that. It's one that you're thinking, well, thank fuck, I wasn't on FTX. I didn't have any of these shit coins. But then also, I do think you have that sense of everyone's wrong and we're right and we're going to be proven right. And like, you kind of just dig in at that point. Whereas this year, it's just been boring.

Nothing's really happened with the price. Like it's gone up from the start of last year, sorry, the start of this year to the absolute peak is like 25 grand. It's like that's not a very exciting year in Bitcoin. considering the starting point. Look, I will say gun to my head, I agree with Hoddle. Right? Like, my family's all in Bitcoin. Like, if I didn't think, if I wasn't bullish for next year,

if I thought we were entering, you know, a two-year bear market or whatever, like, I would downsize significantly. I will also say, though, I've never successfully done that ever. So I'm right there with Hoddle that I'm just like always bullish. I think this year with sentiment, right? It's really interesting, right? So I've been, I've been thinking about this too, because it does feel that way, which is crazy, by the way, because we were fucking, we are fucking right. Like, Bitcoin's $88,000. Okay, let's be clear here. And we've been very loud about it for a long fucking time. Like, I've been loud about Bitcoin since, you know, $1,000 or something, like $900. It's a fucking insane run that we're on.

Is one, gold. like gold ripping really pun kicks a lot of us in the nuts and it kicks me in the fucking nuts i mean what hoddle was saying is like like shift being happy on on twitter and stuff while we're in this doldrum it really sucks and silver right like is bitcoin silver to silver silver like that sucks like what the fuck is that um so i think that hurts i think the second piece is you know after 2017, after, so like, so Ethereum was born in, I think, like,

2014, 2015. 2017 was the big Ethereum run. And there was all the ICOs, and a lot of us thought we were crazy. We were sidelined. And like, people were like, buying, you know, $100 million penthouses in Toronto and shit with their Ethereum gains. And then we were right.

Like, everyone got wrecked and we were right about that. And a beautiful Bitcoin only, Bitcoin maximalist culture got born in 2017-ish after the 2017, after B-Cash, after Ethereum MyCOs. And we had a good run. There was like a very strong community there. It was global. We got rich together and we got poor together.

Treasury companies changed that whole ballgame. Different people are getting rich and different people are getting poor at different times with different bags. And you just don't have the camaraderie of getting rich and poor together. Like that was the, to me, that was the final nail in the coffee. of the good times of the Bitcoin-only culture. Like, it's just over. Like, we don't have that anymore.

That's, it was going to end anyway, I think. You know, like everyone says you don't know the good old days until it's behind you. But that was the nail in the coffin. The nail in the coffin was people going leverage long on a stock that was already leveraged long on Bitcoin and everyone doing it to different stocks. And this is not something that was only retail.

Like, people did it in size. Like we saw OGs come in in size and seed a lot of these treasury companies. They got wrecked. All and they're all in different bags, right? Everyone's got different bags. And that's, I think, what we're feeling right now. I think that's 100% right. I've not really heard it summed up like that, but I totally agree with that.

I'll put my neck in line. I think 2026 is going to be like turbo bullish. I think sentiment being shot right now is like a good sign. I think Trump's going to juice the fuck out of markets going into midterms. I think government picking winners, like it's picked AI and data centers, and I think Bitcoin could potentially be one of those winners at the government picks. Do you think we're going to hit an all-time high in gold terms? I don't know what that is.

I don't know what that would pause at. That's all that matters. Do you know what that would be? It's much higher than we're at right now. Yeah, it's a lot higher. I don't know, but I think we'll get significant all-time highs next year. I saw someone posted, and I did not verify it, but it sounds right and it kicked me in the nuts. that gold added 21 million Bitcoin in market cap in the last five days.

In five days, that savage. It's a big gold. The full Bitcoin market cap. Yeah, I don't know if we'll get to like new all-time highs versus gold, but I think it's going to be a good year. But you're going to have to come up with a new meme hurdle. It's kind of bad that we're all bullish, isn't I? Should I go the opposite direction?

I'm bearish as far. This is the most bearish. I got Friedrich Coz and now I'm eating ramen. I'm dying over here. Hey, you need this year's. I'm very bearish what Bitcoin did in like six years. It felt like a bit of a therapy session. All right, guys, anything else you want to talk on before we wrap up?

Let me think. Oh, yeah. Okay. Hoddling gets harder as you go. There's a false perception that hodling gets easier as you go. Bullshit. It gets harder. It gets harder every time.

And the reason why is because, you know, I've said this, the most important meme in Bitcoin is the guy, the one with the guy with the shotgun. in his mouth and it's like Bitcoin hits 1,000 and he's like, yes. And then it's like Bitcoin drops to 10,000. It's like he's worried. And then it's like Bitcoin plummets to just 100,000. He has a shotgun in his mouth, ready to blow his brains out. That is the experience of hoddling. And the reason why it gets harder as you go is because in the beginning, you're actually not losing that much money, you know, in nominal terms. But later on, you're losing a lot. because like if you bought Bitcoin at $200, well, nowadays, the Bitcoin price fluctuates $200, like, fuck every second, right? So like, you're losing your entire initial investment

or gaining your entire initial investment every second. And that will happen for people at $88,000. It doesn't sound like it will, but it will because when Bitcoin's at, you know, whatever, $2.6 million versus $2.7 million are you going to notice? Like, not really. And it's going to do that all day, intraday. And so the thing is, you're going to quit your job. You're going to, you know, become a Bitcoin rich person, you're going to retire, and then you're going to lose, you know, these large sums of money every day. And what you're actually losing is like peace of mind, time with your family, you know, experiences that you could have, things you could do. And so that's the reason why it feels bad emotionally because you're giving up pieces of your life for what? At some

point, you actually have enough money to live a good life, the kind of life that other people envy, in perpetuity forever. You have what they call generational wealth, right? But there are people in Bitcoin who have generational wealth who stick through for longer, and you have to have a bigger why as to what are you sticking around here for. And to me, my why is so that we can attempt,

I don't know if we're going to be able to do it, but attempt to create a better world when all is said and done, a world with more freedom. And that only happens once the number's gone up a lot, we get a seat at the table, and we allow Bitcoin to sort of do its thing from a legal perspective.

And that bet will take my entire life. And so I'm here for that bet. And in the meantime, I have to kind of live a little more, you know, monk-like from time to time and be like, have less attachment to what comes and goes. Like, do you know what I'm saying? Like, have less attachment to things and experiences and whatever and just focus on the small things and be grateful.

Like I think the times like this in Bitcoin, again, this sounds like that. like we're at the bottom of bear market way I'm speaking. But like $8,000. Yeah, I know. Times like this in Bitcoin are time or it's time for gratitude and like sort of look around and take stock of what you have and the relationships you have and what's important to you and spend time with people you love, et cetera.

Again, it really sounds like we're at the bottom of a bear market when I'm speaking this way. But that's how it emotionally feels. So I'm just going to say it like it does. Do you think that's why we saw this like 80K Bitcoin sell from that OG because Hoddling got too hard for him? Did you think you lost his why? Oh, this is another thing.

I don't think people know about this, but a lot of OGs moved to Puerto Rico in 2015, and then those coins got seasoned this year, and they didn't have to pay any cap gains on it. So they fucking divested. Like, that's part of what happened. Interesting. Yeah. If you lived in Puerto Rico for 10 years, your cost basis effectively went down to zero and you didn't have to pay cap gains on it.

Or you got to reset your cost basis at the market buy or the market sell. So I think some of that was these OGs. And I don't want to docks anybody or anything, but I've heard some of these large cells were boating accidents and that the OGs still have a shitload of coins, but they wanted a way to be defensible and say, like, no, this is the reason I'm rich or I'm a billionaire is because I sold all my Bitcoin.

But they still have Bitcoin because how could they not if they've believed in it for this long? So it's crazy to think about, but the people with 80,000 coins might have 200,000 coins. I'd never heard that Puerto Rico take. There you go. Some alpha to close out the show. Odell, anything before we close out?

I mean, I will say those whales that sold above 100K was a pretty good trade, even if they paid cap gains. They're in the black right now. I, and the other piece here, by the way, on the, first of all, we have that every cycle, just the numbers are bigger this year. because everything gets bigger as time goes on. And it's been a narrative forever, like, oh, the original people are selling out. And that's why it's always so hilarious when people say you got lucky holding long term

because most people don't. It's the hardest path. It's always the hardest path. But I think another piece here is like, look, no matter how you cut it, Trump and his family and his friends and whatnot, grifted like crazy on top of Bitcoin and crypto. I mean, Trump coin, that was earlier, if we're going to do a year in review, like, this all started with Trump coin. And they had Melania coin.

And I think it left a really sour taste in people's mouth. And so if Vance doesn't win the next election, there could be a reckoning. And I could see why large holders would want to be, as Hottle said, in a defensible position going into that potential outcome. There could be a whipsaw reaction. That's what we see happen all the time in politics, but particularly in modern politics, just feels like we're whipsawing back and forth over and over again. But look, my analysis has always been very consistent.

I think this is a long-term game. This is a grind. I think the best path and the hardest path is to stay humble and stack stats and not chase easy wins that you think are easy, that you're just going to lose all your money on, which is usually some kind of levers wrapped up in something else. that you don't think is leverage.

You think it's just smart financial planning or something like that. On the positive side, I think this has been a very good year in terms of fundamental Bitcoin value. It's easier than ever to use Bitcoin in a freedom-oriented way. It's easier. You have way more tools available to you. The businesses in the space are starting to really

become real businesses. We're seeing some juggernauts being born, basically. And the one that, you know, that I'm constantly in the trenches with is strike. And it's just been insane watching that company become, go from like a regular, like a small startup to what I expect to be like a fintech juggernaut, you know, mentioned in the same circles as Robin Hood and the big banks and whatnot. But I, look, and the development side, I think development side's strong. We're getting more Bitcoin developers on the open source side.

I think BPI has been very strong. Best policy we've had in America on Bitcoin since we started. So there's a lot of reasons to be positive. Basically, everything except the price. Price, which is good, I think is good, even though the price is the most important metric. So I'm optimistic. I'm costly optimistic.

People should stay humble in stack stats. And don't take your foot off the goes. Let's go. Our year in the view wrapped. We'll definitely do this. I mean, I'll speak to you both before then, but we'll definitely do this next year. And I would take a sizable bet that would be higher than 88K. It's bad that we're all.

I would probably, I wouldn't take the other side of that bet. I'm almost got to fade it. Let's fucking go. Go on, you've got to fade it, hold on. I can't. I'm the most bullish person here, man. All right, well, we're all fucking bullish, then. Let's go.

Thank you, guys. I'll speak to both soon. Cheers.