What Bitcoin Did - TRUMP, INSTITUTIONS & BITCOIN DOMINANCE w/ Alex Thorn

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Alex Thorn is the Head of Research at Galaxy Digital. In this episode, we discuss the growing institutional adoption of Bitcoin, the role of the U.S. government, whether a strategic Bitcoin reserve is on the table and Trump's Policies on Bitcoin. We a also get into the end of Operation Choke Point 2.0, Bitcoin’s current cycle, the role of ETFs, and why Bitcoin not crypto. MASSIVE THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN: https://www.iren.com/ RIVER: https://river.com/wbd CASA: https://casa.io/ LEDGER: https://www.ledger.com/

There is a widespread global malaise, particularly among millennials and younger, about the state of the economy, a fear that the future won't be better. Decades of wealth inequality and crony capitalism and dysfunctional governments have really disillusioned younger people about their future. And in that spot, like, a lot of people are willing to gamble rather than learn about the saving technology that is Bitcoin. How does everything go in? I don't know, man. It's been a wild a couple months. Not just in Bitcoin land, but in America, the land of the free. America is interesting right now.

It is. Things are happening. Oh, they are. They are happening. And, you know, I think, look, regardless of what you may and we not think about the Trump administration, I do think it's healthy to have some disruption every once in a while. You know, I feel like. Totally. There's a way you can argue, and I certainly believe in on a lot of issues, that basically the same cohort of people has been in charge of the United States government, like basically all the ways back to George H.W. Bush, you know, sort of the same basic foreign policy, the same like monetary policy, the same, you know, financial regulation with some event-driven changes, but again, mostly the same group sort of driving things. And so personally, I like a little disruption. I know that that does mean.

Some things might get broken along the way. Hopefully not too many. And hopefully, if they do get broken and they shouldn't be broken, they get fixed after. But yeah, I'm quite, I'm liking it. It's good to see the pendulum start shifting back the other way, I think. It was getting pretty weird out there. Yeah, exactly. But we're recording now, Alex.

We have the second best rapper in Bitcoin here. Thank you for joining me. Who's the first best? Razel Khan. Oh. That's true. The crocodile of Wall Street. Very talented individual.

You know, also I have to shout out our friend, Captain Youth, also a very, probably my favorite rapper in Bitcoin. El Captain Youth. Well, you'll always be my favorite for that rap on stage at Cheat Code last year. Thank you. You're coming back? Yeah, I'm coming back to Bedford. I'm excited. It's going to be great.

We had a lot of fun last year. That was a great time. I know it's going to be good again. It's going to be good. We've got a lot planned. But I kind of interrupt you flow then. We're talking about Trump. No, no, it's all good.

What do you think of the first three, four weeks of his president? Have you been disappointed that things haven't gone the way that Bitcoin has kind of hoped it would? No, I haven't been disappointed. And one thing broadly, I think, about his presidency so far, not just in Bitcoin and crypto policy is how fast they're moving. I think it's almost like a, you know, shock and awe campaign. I think that's making it really hard for his opposition to mobilize. I think it's obviously part of a calculated strategy, right? Like, he's talking about finding fraud in the U.S. AID, the, um, and, and that was a huge like controversy, like pausing all aid. It was all over the front page. And then it was like, bam, meeting with Netanyahu talking

about new policy towards Gaza. Then it's like, you know, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Like all this stuff that like would have been weeks of headlines, he's compressed into only three weeks so far, has been a, I think clearly part of a strategy of just like pushing everything all at once. I think, I mean, look, on crypto, look, he he gave a full and unconditional pardon to Ross Ulbricht on the first full day of his presidency. I think he had actually only pledged to give clemency to Ross Ulbricht during the campaign. So those even more than he had pledged, right? Clemency says, you've served your time. You can get out of jail now. Full and unconditional pardon means basically like your crime and conviction is wiped away, right? So, and he did that on day one. He did

the executive order, they set up the working group. They said they're going to investigate the stockpile. There's a whole bunch of more stuff on legislation they want to advance and stuff emanating already out of the SEC. So I think they've done a lot already. I think, you know, markets in general, but in particular crypto and also specifically Bitcoin markets are very impatient, right? It's less so among the bitcorners, but them too and us two, but also broad cryptos like

to the moon, when moon, right? Like, and I think, you know, unless like, you know, President Trump had said, we will establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve and buy a bunch of Bitcoin. The market was going to sell off on that EO, and it did a little bit. I think similarly, like David Sachs gave this press conference on the, on the Capitol in the Senate with the key committee chairs. in the House and Senate. And big run up from like 94 to 102K Bitcoin into that and then a sell off after it.

Right. And it's like actually if you listen, it's an extremely bullish and even historic press conference given in Congress. And yet market was disappointed at that moment. And I think it's like unless David Sachs had, you know, again, said he was going to buy a bunch of Bitcoin unless Trump had taken. the oath of office with his hand on the Satoshi's white paper, like, markets are always trying to price in an advance. And so it's, almost no matter if he, I think if you take a step back and look at what they've already done, there's no way to be anything but bullish. But, you know, markets get ahead of themselves. I'm curious on your take on David Sachs,

because I've not quite figured out what I think of him just yet. Because with his VC firm, they've invested in some really good Bitcoin companies. Like they invest in River, like I think they invest in Bitcoin. There's like there's quite a decent list. But then at the same time, I know he has big exposure to multi-coin capital. And is he just, is he a shit-coin or is, like, is he going to try and push shitcoins into this strategic reserve? That's a good question. I mean, I think in terms of the strategic reserve, if you read that language, it says, explore the potential creation of a national digital asset stockpile, potentially comprised of coins seized by the government. Again, there's a lot of potentially doing a lot of work in that statement. It also says to establish criteria to determine what, if anything, should be held strategically. You know, I think it's pretty hard to argue that a lot of assets beyond Bitcoin would meet any reasonable criteria that that group may set. And again, remember, the group is not random or industry crypto people. It's the Secretary of the Treasury, the Attorney General, the Homeland Security Advisor, the SEC and CFTC chairs, right?

Like, it's the Commerce Secretary, right? And so I think I'd be surprised if the government strategically holds any long list of assets. But even if they did, you know, after they, the EO came out, I printed one version. It's not the definitive list, but a list of the digital assets that the U.S. government currently holds. And sure, there's a long tail there, but like 95 plus percent of it is Bitcoin, right? So even if they held everything that they have, you know, the $1 million dollars. of sand tokens or whatever it is, right? Like it would still be almost exclusively Bitcoin, right?

So I don't know. There's a lot of time for that to happen. And I think there was an interesting thing when David Sacks did give that press conference. And the last question, the one that at Capitol Hill with the two senators and the two House members that chair the House ag and finance committees and the Senate banking and ag committees, which are the key committees for regulation for financial services overall, he made a point. The very last question from the reporter was, what about the strategic reserve? Might it go in the sovereign wealth fund that had just been announced at the time?

And he said, well, in regards to the sovereign wealth fund, you're going to have to talk to Treasury Secretary Howard, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik about that. But our group has been tasked with evaluating the feasibility of the creation of a Bitcoin reserve or a digital asset stockpile. And then he went on CNBC like an hour later and said the exact same thing, Bitcoin Reserve. or a digital asset stockpile. The EO doesn't say Bitcoin Reserve. It says national digital asset stockpile, right? To me, Bitcoin Reserve is a subset in this lingo. Like, I know that we think stockpile means hoddling the coins you have,

no matter what those coins are. Reserve means something more, right? And that by saying digital assets and not Bitcoin stockpile, then maybe everything's on the table. And I think that is true semantically, based on the language the government is using, this sort of like neutral language, but by saying Bitcoin Reserve or stockpile, digital asset stockpile in both the press conference and on CNBC, he knows what he's doing. He's making a specific distinction there.

It doesn't mean that you might not have more assets, but it does mean that he is very well aware that the concept of a Bitcoin Reserve is a separate concept from a digital asset stockpile, right? And he was making very clear to say that. So I think the odds are very high. high that at a minimum the U.S. government ends up hoddling a fair amount of Bitcoin, whether or not a bigger question is, do they buy it or do something like what Cynthia Loomis wants to do, Senator Cynthia Loomis from Wyoming? Or do they only hold the Bitcoin and get rid of everything else? Those are up in the air still, but I would bet money that the U.S. government formally is holding Bitcoin by the end of this year. And I would say to your

talking about David Sachs, though, like, I agree. I mean, Lightning Labs, River. He's been a long craft venture has been a long time investor in bitcoin companies mostly bitcoin companies when it comes to their venture stuff yes i think he did make a big salana bag it's hard to you know blame a guy who makes a lot of money on something uh for liking it i think um but i don't think he looks to be taking this quite seriously i think if you watch him speak i've been very impressed with his ability to um absorb and portray the seriousness of a of a presidential appointment like this so i think they're just going to they're going to establish some kind of criteria and then they're going to run stuff through it. Okay, I've got a few questions on that.

But first of all, do we know how much Bitcoin the U.S. actually has right now? Because I know there was like rumors that Biden was selling a load off at the end of his presidency. Yeah, I mean, I think the best argument's about $20 billion, the best assessment. I think that's a lot. It's a lot. I think one of the piles, I don't want to say stock, but one of the piles of Bitcoin that people thought maybe the government was selling was this individual. X Silk Road coins, but they haven't moved. So it is possible that if it was already held at Coinbase and now they do use Coinbase, I think through an RFP that had been done, they probably also had been using Coinbase.

But for a long time, I think the Marshall is also self-custodied. I think if Coinbase already has the coins in custody, it is theoretically possible that Coinbase could extend credit to the government and let them sell without the coins moving on chain. But I mean, this is, I mean, I'm looking at it's 198K of BTC at a minimum. Like that's, well, assuming this tagging is right. There could be more that's not identified or that they've never said, right? But that's currently worth, you know, $18.9 billion. And so like, maybe Coinbase could offer, you know, billion. I'm making this up, but a couple billion of credit. I mean, someone's got to sell coins. If it's not those coins, Coinbase got to come up

of coins to sell and then eventually, pretty soon eventually, say, hey, you've got to actually settle with us and send us the coins. theoretically, maybe if it was all the coins, then Coinbase could simply re-ledger from their custody to themselves. It's possible, but I think more likely they haven't sold at this point. I thought when those rumors were flying around in December and early January that maybe the Biden administration was rushing to sell them before they left office, I don't think that happened, is my personal guess.

It is hard to know when stuff is behind like a like a, a, like a, a. centralized exchange wall, right? But I don't think they've sold it. And back to the start of this conversation, is that including Razl Khan's coins? Yes, that is including the Bitfinex coins. So if you take those out, like, it comes down to like only like 30 or 50,000 Bitcoin. I have to check. It might be 120k BTC. Yeah, I think that's what we're starting. The Bitfinex is owed. So, okay, call it, call it, you know, 80,000 Bitcoin. Yeah, there was a ruling or sorry, there was a filing made by the U.S. Marshals in court, like in October or November, where they were beginning the formal claims process for those coins, where the government said they think they're not aware of any

legitimate claim holder to those coins other than IFINX, which is the parent company of Bitfinex. So you have to assume the government, somebody comes in and steals your watch, Danny, and then they find it. Usually they give the watch back. They don't like sell the watch and give you what they think the value of the watch is. So presumably they will return those coins. which is also interesting because, of course, that's Tether. We're talking about the parent company of Tether. So that will be interesting. But yes, you have to assume in my book that those coins are not eligible to be part of the stockpile.

Yeah, that makes it. Tether just keep winning at the moment. But going back, you were talking about the sovereign wealth fund there. What I took from that was that you think there's going to be a separate Bitcoin, stockpile reserve, whatever. Do you think they're also likely to have Bitcoin in the sovereign wealth fund if that gets started? You know, when President Trump signed the executive order in the Oval Office to create the sovereign wealth fund, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was on one side and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik was on the other. And it's ostensibly going to be operated or determined by both of them.

But then David Sachs didn't say, hey, you're going to have to check with the incoming Treasury, you know, the Treasury Secretary and the Commerce Secretary. He just said the Commerce Secretary might not, I might be reading too much. much into this, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was sort of accidental in the sense that actually, while it's certainly going to involve both of them, maybe it really is Lutnik's thing. The Treasury Secretary has got plenty of other stuff to worry about, right? So, and if it is, I think the odds go up significantly that it also separately holds Bitcoin. If the government's going to build effectively a hedge fund portfolio with assets that for some purpose to whatever the, I'm not sure exactly, I think they have to decide what.

the purpose of it would even be. Maybe, for example, maybe it's a dividend yielding fund or like an income generating strategy versus a growth strategy. I don't know. But the math is pretty simple that even a small allocation to Bitcoin can improve the sharp ratio of and sortino ratios of almost any portfolio. You know, you have to redo the math depending on what the mix is. But I mean, everyone knows Bitcoin has been, you know, 50% cagger asset for like 15 years.

Right. So and if you go and look at the things that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik has said about Bitcoin, he is quite bullish, right? The Treasury Secretary said, look, I love it. The kids love it. Get some interested in markets. I'm for it. That's pretty much what he's said publicly about it. Howard Lutnik has said a lot more explicitly that he loves Bitcoin, that he and the other partners at Cantor own, quote, shed loads of Bitcoin. and that he expect, you know, they own hundreds of millions of dollars worth. He said on Pomp's podcast, but he expects it to be worth billions of dollars. So I think if the sovereign wealth fund is managed by the Commerce Secretary, I think it's very likely even just for portfolio diversification reasons that it has some. What Bitcoin did is brought to you by our lead sponsor and Massive Legends, Iron,

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Open an account for yourself or your business at river.com forward slash wbd, which is rivir.com forward slash wbd. So can we get into a bit of speculation here of how this is actually going to be set up? So let's start with the sovereign wealth fund. Where will the money come from for the sovereign wealth fund? So the Treasury Secretary has said that in general, and as it relates to sovereign wealth fund, the government may try to start monetizing the asset side of its balance. So you think about things the government owns. Well, it certainly owns land and owns a bunch of land, right?

I'm not really in favor of selling off like national parks to fund a sovereign wealth fund, but it owns a ton of land. It owns a ton, not a ton, like hundreds of tons, maybe hundreds of thousands of tons of gold, right? Which is currently valued at some absurdly low number by statute, which Cynthia Lewis's bill says, revalue it and then sell some of it to buy Bitcoin with. Others have Zoltan POSAR, you know, formerly of Credit Suisse, wrote a note just recently, revalue it also separately for some portion of the net gain to fund, you know, other activities could do that. You also have Fannie and Freddie, the two mortgage lenders that were nationalized effectively

during the great financial crisis. Many people have looked at whether or not the government and thought about whether or not the government should take them public again. they could monetize those assets and take some of the proceeds and put it there. So you don't have to necessarily pass a new spending bill to fund that or, frankly, a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. There are assets that are sitting around basically either massively undervalued in the case of gold or simply not monetized, right, just being held as properties of the U.S.

government or assets of the government that could be used to fund some kind of fund. You know, sovereign wealth funds is a good question because, like, typically sovereign wealth funds are had by countries with significant imbalances, trade imbalances, right? So where they have significantly more exports than imports and they use some of that surplus to fund, to diversify out of those exports by buying other assets or like incredibly oil-rich nations, which often, by the way, are also net exporters of that energy. we're we don't have trade surplus we have a significant trade deficit we also have a massive amount of debt and we have a budget deficit so passing new spending for this doesn't seem like necessarily the best idea but there are other options and just going back a little bit why is the gold not price correctly at the moment it's by statute I think you might think about this you might not want it to free float on the market because what if it goes down

down a bunch. Now, all of a sudden, the government has less money. I mean, right now, it's kind of like, it's kind of like that accounting, the gap accounting for intangible assets, like that, you know, micro strategy and others have dealt with for these, for Bitcoin and other things where like you actually have to market to its low water point. You can never mark it up, but you can mark it down. That isn't why it does it, but it has a similar effect in that, um, you, you can never realize the gains. I don't know. I don't know why it has been like that for like 30 or 50 years. Um, and, and frankly, I would be cautious in revaluing it.

I'm not the guy for this at all, but I would wonder if that has like follow on a market impacts that should be studied. You know, if we just like raise it from whatever it is like $47 an ounce or something like $3,000, like you just do that in a stroke of a pen. I mean, it shouldn't actually affect the market value, the market cap of gold because presumably they're,

the U.S. government stores of gold are counted in the above ground circulating supply that people use, you know, those numbers, those estimates from like the World Gold Council, presumably that's included. You're not changing the supply of gold. You're just saying, well, you know, ours is worth $800 billion more than we said it was, it turns out. So I'm not sure. I don't know why it happened like that. It does seem on its face to be very stupid. And so, you know, I know others have noticed this too. Michael Saylor has also suggested, or he suggested dumping the gold and buying Bitcoin with it, demonetizing the your enemy's

network he said or the traditional legacy network and capitalizing the network of the future is what he said to me and I mean okay that's that's taking a step further but Cynthia Loomis has also proposed revaluing it right like like I said Zoltan Posar just proposed revaluing it so it's it's an idea people are talking about can we talk a bit about say that because he's had meetings with I don't know if it's with Trump directly or the Trump administration um but he's obviously fighting on the Bitcoin side of things, but he's also, the Trump administration's also been very close with Brad Garlinghouse, who can go fuck himself? Who do you think they're paying attention to? And do you

think the fact that these like shit corners are in the ear of the people in the administration is a big issue? Well, for Saylor, I mean, he's definitely been around. He was at the inauguration, right? He was at the crypto ball. He's posted photos with, I think, both Eric and Don Jr. I think he's smart and knows, you know, that they like Bitcoin and that he likes Bitcoin and politics of, you know, the art of the possible and it's about networking and relationships. I mean, look, you know, it's not just the ripple. I mean, the president has sold NFTs. He sold multiple times, multiple collections of NFTs. He sold ordinal NFTs. He has, he or his, when I say he, I believe what I mean is the Trump organization. Yeah, I think he has very little to do with this.

I also think he doesn't have that much to do with it, but he has World Liberty Financial, the D5 protocol and then, or application. And now also Trump, official Trump coin and official Melania coin, you know, Solana meme coins, you know, he's speed running the, the crypto process. He likes Bitcoin. When he came to Pub Key, he said, Thomas was like, I, you know, thank you for signing some stuff, like some autographing some posters and stuff. And Thomas was like, Mr. President, when you're done, we have some gifts for you. And he's like, he's like, great. He's like, I want Bitcoin, right? But he did call them crypto burgers until Mike Germano shouted out from off camera.

They're Bitcoin burgers. So look, I think, I don't know, we, it's still early, right? There's no external facing advisory council yet. I think there are likely to be non-Bitcoin maxis on that council. that's a reality. I think I don't know who those will be. All we have so far is this working group, which is exclusively like cabinet and senior government officials. I personally don't think it matters so long as his policies are supportive for Bitcoin and not certainly not in opposition.

Just like we don't want government like picking and choosing winners and losers between Bitcoin and other assets and traditional assets. I also don't think it matters that much. Like, I mean, ETHBTC is down 50% since the SEC announced they were going to approve the Ethereum ETFs. So, I mean, did it matter? Like, I think Bitcoin can win in the marketplace alone. It doesn't need what we want. I mean, in fact, I would prefer that. I don't want to be a person who's lobbying the government to be like, my coin is better.

You should hurt their coin. I just don't care, really. I sort of think, like, let people do what they want. It's like Saylor said. He said, a trader's going to trade, hater's going to hate, short, long is got to be long. Everybody can do their thing. That's fine, right? Like, to me, I just don't really care if, like, Ripple or other assets that people, Bitcoiners don't like are not persecuted. Like, let's have them. There's an unlimited supply of altcoins and supply is only growing. Something like 50,000 pump dot fund coins are launched on Solana like every day still, right? It's an insane number. the altcoin complex is one today of an excessive and inflating supply. Like there's no doubt about that. That's a huge dynamic for why Bitcoin dominance is at the levels that it is in what is ostensibly a broad crypto bull market.

Like there's almost no precedent for that. And part of the reason is all the supply. So I don't think Bitcoiners need worry about like I don't think if, you know, even if Ripple is included in a strategic stockpile, like it's not going to be. close to the size of the Bitcoin. Like I just, it doesn't matter too much to me. I don't think it's that big of a deal. And I think Bitcoiners should focus on evangelizing,

continuing to evangelize the benefits and fundamental properties of Bitcoin. And they feel free to do that, you know, at the expense of alternative of other cryptos. Like, that's fine. That's what the market is for. But I don't think we need the government to be, you know, picking and choosing necessarily. Yeah, that makes sense.

Were you at Puppy when Trump went in? I wasn't, unfortunately. I was in Singapore at that time. I was very upset, very upset. I want to know if he hung around now to chat. All the videos. I've seen all the non, you know, the like B-roll footage. It was only there for about 20 minutes.

Friends of mine were there, of course. And I was told it was pretty surreal experience. You know, the president doesn't drink. He famously doesn't drink alcohol, like at all. I think he might have said he's never had a drop. So, and maybe that was one reason. All the camera shots were from the bar facing alcohol. out so that it wouldn't be like him in front of a giant pile of booze.

I think if you look through Trump photos, you're not going to actually see a single one where he's like next to a bottle of alcohol, which is interesting also because it's like, now, pub key's more than a bar. But, you know, I just, yeah, I mean, it must have been surreal. I've seen him all. Frank Corvo was there. It has some great B-roll footage that's just like of the atmosphere.

I wasn't there. Gosh, it's a regret of mine. I'm upset that you brought that up, Danny. That must be like the only night you've not been. at Pubkey in the last two years. Yeah, I am. I'm known to be a regular. That's true.

I think you have the record for being kicked out of Pubkey. Is that still correct? That is not true, Danny. One time I was cut off, but that was a Christian guy from Brains's fault. I just happened to be standing next to him, all right? Well, I mean, what are you going to do? You go to a bar enough times.

Like, sometimes there's some mishap, all right? They just always seem to be around. you, Alex. But let's talk about the executive order, because there's a few ways that this could happen. BPI have obviously pushed for, in their executive order bill, it was to dip into the exchange stabilization fund. The other option is that this may end up going through Congress. What do you think the most likely outcome of this is at the moment? I think they will probably recommend a stockpile. And I think it's, certainly if it's single asset, it's most likely going to be Bitcoin. I think it could be multi-asset. Like I said, though, if you go down the list, there's really

not, I mean, you got $18.9 billion of Bitcoin and a couple hundred million of Eath, and after that it is like nothing, right? It's a couple. The next like three biggest holdings are all various stable coins. I think the stockpile is quite likely. I don't, I don't think that they will use the exchange stabilization fund at the Treasury for this at all, is my guess. If they do more, I think Congress, it'll be something, you know, along lines of what Senator Cynthia Loomis has proposed. That seems like a better outcome to me anyway, because obviously the issue with an executive order is the next president can come in and change it, whereas if this goes through Congress,

it's much more robust. Yeah, and if the president does do that, if he creates a stockpile or buys it in some way, without congressional support approval legislation, then, yeah, he will have also set the precedent that the president can order the messing around with these assets, investing them in certain ways. if you have a totally different person, they could change the entire fund to ESG linked funds or assets, right? Like, just so, yeah, I mean, you always want, if you can, something more durable, like, not just legislation, ideally bipartisan legislation, no matter what the issue is, right? I mean, social security, like, is people from both parties, obviously, Americans of all types, love social security and they don't want to get rid of it.

So no one will touch it. They used to call the third rail of American politics, like in the subway, because if you touched it, it would, kill you, right? And so theoretically, any issue that you want to have long-term durability as government policy, you want it to be a third rail of American politics. And the only way to do that is by legislation and ideally like bipartisan legislation. What do you think the sort of the average American on the street is going to think for this? Because obviously this is a huge topic within Bitcoin. We care about this. I'm not even American and I care about this. But when the U.S. government or if the U.S. government,

goes out and is spending money on Bitcoin instead of on its people. Do you think there's going to be big pushback for that? Or do you think people are just oblivious to it? No, there could be pushback. I think any time Congress spends money, there's pushback from various factions and sometimes many factions. I think it's not very common that all of America pushes back on something that Congress passes because usually in that spot Congress doesn't pass it. I think all spending has plenty of criticism. So whether it's for this or anything else, I mean, look, if Congress votes for it, it's going to be because the politics makes sense. So, you know, if you get two-thirds of Congress voting for a Bitcoin reserve, which, by the way,

I don't think is likely. But if you did, it would probably reflect the fact that that was politically, you know, possible. Yeah, fair enough. One thing that I've been really surprised about over the last however many months since Nashville, really, is to see Bitcoin is cheerleading the state quite so hard. Like, to me, Bitcoin is always about separating money in state. And I understand that you can't stop anyone buying Bitcoin. And nation-state adoption was always inevitable at some point.

But have you been surprised to see quite so much cheerleading from Bitcoin is on this? Yes and no. I think, you know, the way it absolutely is a self-sovereign technology that still is, even with ETS. We had a similar conversation about this. You and I&P after the ETS were approved. Yeah. Similar question. like, should we be cheering on BlackRock?

And I think my answer then, which is different, it's a government is still different than BlackRock, to be clear. The U.S. government is a different ballgame. But what I said then was like, so long as the ability and right to self-custody is maintained and accessible, then, you know, Bitcoin's not a proof of stake system. Sure, maybe the largest holders, like in their ability to do fork choice selection stuff could give very large holders. an outsized voice in a debate about the future of Bitcoin that is possible,

but that the real answer was to, you know, orange pill black rock and make sure that they're our biggest advocate rather than push them out. And I haven't seen any real risk of the ETFs in any real way yet show any sign of being a threat to Bitcoin. Government is different. It is materially different, right? It has the power of the purse. It has so can print unlimited amounts of money and allocate. Well, I mean, Congress, even if you take the printing out can allocate so much money that we owe $37 trillion, $37,000. It also has, you know, the power of coercion, right?

It has military and law enforcement. It is different. I mean, I'm not surprised, and I, and at least for now, I don't think it's bad. I do think if it becomes bad, then we have to be very vocal, not even just vocal to become activists, like on any topic. I still personally believe that government can do things that are good. It does bad a lot of times. And even when it tries to do good, it often fails to do so or it lies about doing good or right. Like there's plenty of risk in government.

I mean, I sort of hail from the Ron Paul school of libertarianism. I mean, I've moderated a bit as I've gotten older. But, you know, I think you had a president who campaigned to do things for the people that supported him, many of whom were Bikorners. Bitcoiners have an agenda, and so far he's been working on that agenda, I think, pretty well. So, like, you can either put your head in the sand and say that voting doesn't matter, or you can, you know, get out there and play the game that's on the field. And right now the game that's on the field is what to do with these policies.

And advocacy seems to be working. And are there risks to that? There sure are. But, you know, history is written by those who show up. And showing up right now is having an impact. So that's sort of the way I look at it. Yeah, I think I agree with that. The thing you said there that I think is interesting, though,

is the kind of power of coercion. Because I'm absolutely not an ossifier. Like, I think there's good changes that could come to Bitcoin and possibly should come to Bitcoin. But if we get to the point where we're looking at forking Bitcoin to bring covenants in or OpFol or whatever it might be, Lola Leaks raised a good point in this, that that then becomes like a national security issue for the United States.

And seeing what they would do in that moment is something that I would be nervous and interested to watch. Yeah, I mean, I look, there's a long way to go, I think, until that happens. I think it's certainly something to keep in mind. But, you know, Bitcoin's 14% of gold's market cap today. It's not a threat to the dollar. It's not close to a threat to being a threat to the dollar. So, you know, it's to me it's a right now. It doesn't mean it won't ever be more than this.

But right now, that's a fun intellectual conversation that's not pragmatical. pragmatic or irrelevant. Like so that's a podcaster's question, I think, Danny, more than a realistic question. I don't think anyone of the government is. I know we are. Yeah, okay, so fine. Let's take it then. I mean, I don't think it's a risk now.

I do think, I mean, look, if Bitcoin were to challenge government or the dollar, would they use the power of force to stop it? They might. I think they might. I think that's why, you know, things like in kind redemptions, right to self-custody, like doing, you know, proof of keys day. Like, that's why Bitcoin should promote self-custody. We promote self-custody, right?

Like, I talk about it all the time. Well, you know, I think, and by the way, and sometimes when centralized exchanges or custodians talk about self-custody and promote it, like it might be seen as lip service. And maybe it is, right? Maybe it is. But we're all out here now advocating for the right to self-custy. That was in the executive order as part of a national priority.

Yeah, that was one of the coolest parts in that executive order. I think. That and the right to write and deploy software, right? Like there's a reason why those are in there. And it's not because we sat back and let Trump and his team do whatever they thought about crypto. It's because many people are behind the scenes pushing for those things. So my point is like even and a lot of those people include people that work at centralized crypto places, right? So again, like I think so much of that question comes down to maintaining the ability to self custody. Sure, if they spring the. military on Bitcoin holders right at the moment when no one's self-custoditing, that's a problem. That's why you should be self-custaining. If you can, I self-custody my own Bitcoin. Like, it's not, there's pros and cons, and I get that a lot of people may not be able to, like, but you should learn. And we should also push for better materials, better education. One thing I love about the Bikki from Cash App, right, is that might be the single, simplest self-custody hardware wallet I've ever seen, one that was one of the first that was

like maybe we can get, you know, you know, Danny's grandma to self-custody now instead of using Coinbase or my grandma or him ever, right? I think I want more of that. And to me, like, you know, you can never think about like executive order 60102, right, on gold. Like, dude, they didn't seize everyone's gold. They didn't go house to house and kick the door down. They could have done it a little bit. Maybe that would have scared enough people that more would have brought their gold into the bank to turn in. But let's be real. They didn't get all the gold. You're not even close, right? So like, and that's because a lot of people had gold jewelry or gold in their house or gold coins and it was like not feasible to actually do, let alone the fact that Americans are heavily armed, right? So I do think self custody is the key here is the check. And so no matter how far down we go the path of institutionalization or nationalization or national strategic reserve creation, people should be learning how to self custody their own keys and doing it. Yeah, Americans are heavily armed and Bitcoiners are probably even more heavily armed.

So I think that's fair. And to your point on the Bitkey, I think the Bitcoin is brilliant. There's obviously like tradeoffs with that in terms of privacy and things like that. But it's an amazing product. And it's very cool to see someone bring such clean UX to Bitcoin because that's been the thing that's always missing. The last thing I want to talk about on the Trump side is choke point 2.0. That seems to have ended. How closely we've been following that?

Oh, very closely. really since, you know, even before the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, I think in, you know, on January 3rd, ironic, intentional date, I'm not sure, January 3rd, 2023, the Fed OCC and FDIC put out this first joint statement. So that was only like two and a half months, two months, less than two months actually, after the collapse of FTX. And it's possible that that's what precipitated it. It's also possible they were planning on writing it or wanting to do it anyway. That set the tone said that like that basically it said crypto asset activities at banks were risky from all three major national regulators of banks. So I've been following it since then and it accelerated and we know of we know I know of many of our friends, prospects, clients, counterparties that had banking access issues again for cash accounts. Not like we there are no banks in the U.S. really except for like BN.Y Mellon and Anchorage, which has a an OCC now. national banking charter that actually would hold Bitcoin. So when we talk about it, we're talking about like, you know, Danny's what Bitcoin did, startup or, you know, media company doesn't,

doesn't, doesn't, isn't able to pay its employees in cash because they're like, oh, oh, no problem. Open a business checking account. Oh, wait, your business is related to Bitcoin. Like, you can't have a cash account for your, it's a normal business. It just happens to do Bitcoin. Well, what Bitcoin did in its previous iteration, we had our bank account closed because we received payment from a Bitcoin company in FIA, but just because they had, they were a Bitcoin company, we had out of account closed in the UK. And that's the thing. It wasn't even just, we're not even just talking Bitcoin exchanges. We're not even saying wires in and out that are affecting deposits and withdrawals of Fiat to and from exchanges.

We're talking about like payroll accounts, right? Like basic vendor fiat payment accounts. We know this happened in mass. I saw Jay Powell was speaking before Congress today, the day we're recording on February 11th and admitted basically that it had occurred. obviously we've seen all these documents come out from the FDIC as a result of this History Associates versus FDIC Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that also they're called pause letters that really show a coordinated effort to dissuade banks. Things like the FDIC saying, hey, you want to do that thing, that Bitcoin thing? Like, if you do, you have to answer this ludicrous number of questions. And then they would answer them.

And then they say, okay, well, actually, we're going to have the local New York FDIC person come on site for a special examination. And then you would see the next correspondence would be the bank saying, you know what, don't worry, we're not going to do it. And they'd be like, okay, cool, the examinations canceled. So it's like the oversight was directly tied to the fact that they were doing that. And that oversight is pressure. It's direct pressure.

They say, hey, dude, you got to go through the ringer and answer all these questions. And we're going to crawl up your, you know, behind in your offices, go over every single thing you've ever touched, ask you a million questions, make it super hard for you. Oh, wait, you're not going to do it? All right, cool, you're not. Like, that's a very clear message that you shouldn't go anywhere near this. And it's, it's, look, I mean, President Trump even said that one of the things that made him like Bitcoin was the Canadian truckers, right? Which, remember they had protested, the mandatory vaccinations.

They said, we're not going to truck goods across Canada if we're all forced to do it. And then not just those protesters truckers, but also random grandmas who donated $50 of them. had their bank accounts closed in Canada. I think most Americans, again, regardless of what the issue is, it's true also if you're, I don't know, like of a disfavored racial group or sexual orientation in a, you know, a fascist country or an authoritarian regime, you might also be debanked or surveilled or arrested or whatever. And nobody wants, you know, lawful human activity, lawful business activity to mean that you

can't touch money, all right? I mean, money is digital today. The vast majority of money is not in paper notes, right? Whether it's, whether it's Fiat and your PayPal or your Apple Pay or your, or just an ACH, or that's what we call in the U.S. or like a bank transfer, like, or if it's Bitcoin, like the vast majority of money is digital. And so I think it definitely did happen. I just make this point because there was a lot of gas lighting done, not just by the banking

regulators, but also by their defenders in Congress, you know, Democrat comment. commentators who claim that, no, you're just a scam-laden industry Bitcoin. Like, that's why you were denied. If you weren't denied, actually, you weren't denied, but if you were, it's because you were bad. And that's okay. Well, I don't believe any of that's true. I don't think the evidence shows that that's true. I think there was a coordinated effort to choke off the banking crypto and Bitcoin's access from the banking system. And it sounds like that's not going to happen anymore. We've already seen the new acting chair of the FDIC say that they're going to relook at all of that. In fact, they've said they're going to relook at their entire approach to banks doing stuff

related to crypto. The Fed chair, like I said, is effectively admitted that they did that and said they're going to look into that. Cynthia Loomis had held up this thing in the oversight pamphlet from the Fed that obviously discouraged people from doing it, J. Pell, so they're going to take that out. So there's movement in favor. If there wasn't a real problem, then there wouldn't be this, there would be a need for this movement.

So I'm not saying that banks shouldn't be able to determine who they can bank. Like I don't want to make, I don't want to make having a bank account a human right. Like, I mean, there's risk related to business and businesses and potentially their regulators should be able to impact that. But you shouldn't be able to take a legal industry that is politically disfavored and just kick the whole thing off. And that looks like what had happened. That's why it's called Operation Chokepoint 2.0 because the original

one was called by the government operation choke point. And it was also... That was to do with gambling, wasn't it? Gambling, payday lending, gun, gun manufacturers.

Again, we have a second amendment in America protects the ownership of guns. But if you make one, you can't have a bank account. Like, we're talking about like Smith & Wesson. Like we're talking about, again,

totally legal businesses just at the time deemed too risky to allow to, you know, participate in capitalism. So I hate it and I think it might be over. Well, that's good. To me, that's one of the most bullish things that's come out of this.

Because like, The U.S. buying Bitcoin, however they do it, is great for number go up. But just leave us alone is like that that's the best thing to come out of this to me. Yeah. And I do think risky to your point, to Lelita's point, I do think like government getting involved in Bitcoin does have risks. And but the other thing is I don't think Bitcoin needs it. Like Bitcoin has been objectively winning for 16 years without governments buying it, without frankly institutions buying it. There's no need for it. So I'm fine. I'm kind of fine if it happens because I don't think it's that big of a risk. But I also, I caution, it's one reason why I always come out on the conservative

side of this in terms of likelihood or need is because I also don't think the market should be getting so excited about this. Like I said, a historic press conference of David Sachs, but because he didn't announce a giant like Bitcoin subsidy to Bitcoin holders, like we're supposed to believe it's bearish all of a sudden. Dude, Bitcoin's 96K, like right now. Like, it's crazy. All right? We don't need it. So I just. I don't want Bitcoin, bitcoins, I counsel traders and investors. Like, don't this, it shouldn't be a sell-the-news when they announce a Bitcoin a potential for a digital asset stockpile.

That's kind of what we were, and to be clear, President Trump never said Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. I've not found one clip where he ever said that. In Nashville, he said, I'm going to, the government should do something Bitcoiners have always known, never sell your Bitcoin. That's why, as the last part of my plan, I'm going to announce the intent to create a national, a strategic national Bitcoin stockpile, right? This idea, and I love David Bailey a lot, by the way, but he kind of has incepted this idea into the market, which is fine. And if it

happens, it's good. But I worry that the market gets over its skis. And then it ends up disappointed for something that may never have been likely in the first place, but also more importantly, that Bitcoin doesn't need. Yeah, I totally agree with that. A hundred percent. This episode is brought to you by CASA. For those of you out there who want to protect your I want to tell you about CASA, the leading Bitcoin self-custody solution. If you're serious by protecting your Bitcoin, then you need a rock-solid security plan, and CASA gives you just that. With their multi-signiture security and key management services,

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Ledger makes it simple to keep your assets protected. If you want to find out more, visit ledger.com and secure your Bitcoin today. That is LEDGER.com. I said the last question on that, but I actually want to talk a little bit about the SEC and the CFTC before we move on. So Gary Gensler's obviously out.

We've got Paul Atkins coming in, who I don't really know too much about. I don't know if you have any insight there. But another question I would have on that before you go is, do you think it's likely that Bitcoin ends up being regulated by the CFTC, not the SEC? That's a great question. I'm going to say I hope not. I don't know if it's likely.

I do know that what they call the market structure bill and reforms, which is you've got the primary two legislative packages are about stable coins, legalizing, formalizing, bringing them on shore officially, and market structure, which is what is and isn't a security and versus commodity, and if one is one or the other or neither, which of the SEC or CFTC may or may not regulate them. You know, in the UK, they have the financial conduct authority. It's one financial regulator that does everything.

The U.S. has this bifurcated financial regulatory setup. And it's not just the two regulatory bodies, but also two sets of congressional committees that oversee each. So the Agriculture Committee in the House and the Senate oversees the CFTC because it's commodities and futures trading commission. A lot of commodities are, you know, farms. farm stuff, corn, oranges. Yeah, exactly. Whereas the SEC oversees securities and their markets. So it's not just that they're separate and that, yeah, probably some digital assets are

securities and some definitely are commodities. And so it makes sense that both might have a claim on jurisdiction, but also the constituent oversight committees have their own jurisdictional turf battles, right? Like, the Ag committee doesn't want to say they're all securities because then it doesn't get to oversee this giant portfolio of new interesting stuff. So there's like intercommittee and then bicameral intercameral between the House and Senate. Like it seems a silly situation. Even Hester Perth was asked on Bloomberg TV today like if she would ever support like the combining to make it one. And she smartly was like, you know, like we'll just like work with whatever Congress does.

Congress has set it up this way. She's amazing, by the way. She's the best. And I was going to simp for her in a second to have got a quote for everything she wrote that I think is really great. But Real quick, the reason I said it, I hope it doesn't oversee commodities. The CFTC already oversees futures markets. It's called the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. It's not called the Commodities Spot and Futures Trading Commission. You can't oversee spot commodity markets. Like where when Apple stock trades in the New York Stock Exchange, right?

So when you surveil it and oversee how it actually trades, there is one venue. You may be able to buy it elsewhere, but you're basically, it's always ultimately going back through the primary exchange, which they can sit on top of as a regulator. That's not true for commodities. Like, where does gold? Where's the primary trading floor for gold, Danny? Do you know? I don't know.

Nobody does. What about oil? Right? I mean, people are buying and trading gold in futures ways, but they're buying it at pawn shops. They're buying it at stores on the street in India. Like, they're buying it worldwide. Oil is controlled spot oil. It's largely controlled by a literal cartel, right?

That wouldn't be okay. securities markets. But again, there's no way to stop it. The commodities are consumable. They're physical things, right? You can't stop me from selling you a gold watch. How are you going to regulate that? Right. So, and that's why part of the reason, that's part of the reason why the CFDC doesn't regulate any spot markets. So in my, look, and they are already regulate Bitcoin futures markets on the CME and on the CBO. So it's like, my issue is that like, you can't actually regulate spot commodity markets. It simply doesn't work. work. There's always going to be foreign Bitcoin exchanges that you can't oversee. So even if you

tried to or did, now you'd be kind of disadvantaging American Bitcoin exchanges. Well, what the heck? Like, River's got to be got to get a CFT spot Bitcoin license, even though like whatever BitStamp doesn't need one offshore. Like it's, you know what I mean? It's not how commodities work. That might end up how it happens. And if it does happen, I hope that members of Congress will take that into consideration that like, wait a second, this would be the first spot market, the CFTC overseas. And let's be cautious about that. Just real quick on Hester, Hester Perce, Commissioner Perth. She wrote a great piece. If people are understood, most of this relates to ex-Bitcoin crypto, because even under Gensler, the SEC made pretty clear that

only about Bitcoin that Bitcoin wasn't a security. There are some issues, mostly related to the ETFs and like custody rule and some stuff where Bitcoin is also affected that are still SEC jurisdiction stuff. But if you're interested in broadly in what the SEC may do in crypto, including Bitcoin, but in crypto markets mostly, she wrote a great statement, it's called, so not a speech, but a written statement called The Journey Begins. Sort of she said it's her view, it's not the SEC's view, but she is the in charge of the SEC's crypto task force.

And it's this great sort of roadmap for what issues she expects the SEC to work on. Now, she doesn't say where they're going to land on all of them, but it's this great sort of cataloging of the things the SEC might be thinking about working on. But she also has this great statement when she's talking about, you know, sort of her view of how regulation should work in America. She said, this is from last week, February 4th, she posted this on the SEC website, said, in this country, people generally have a right to make decisions for themselves. But the counterpart to that wonderful American liberty is the equally wonderful American

expectation that people must, italics, must decide for themselves, not look to mama government to tell them what to do or not to do, nor to bail them out when they do something that turns out badly. I mean, that is one of the most libertarian free market visions for government's involvement in markets I've ever heard. And I love it.

I love it. Yeah, that's incredible. What's your take on Paul Atkins, the guy coming in to head up the SEC? Well, both current SEC commissioners that were appointed by Republicans, Mark Ueda and Hester Perst previously worked for him. He's also a former SEC commissioner. And look, I mean, he, since for years, he built up a great financial regulatory compliance

consulting firm called Potomac advisors that many financial companies and crypto firms have used as an advisor. So we think that he'll be quite good, I think, in general. And, you know, if he wasn't going to be good, you wouldn't see Mark Ua, and Hester Purse moving already, right? They clearly, like, know, either know what he wants or have talked to him, right? It's not, you wouldn't, like, do a bunch of stuff and then have, he probably won't be confirmed until, you know, March or April.

I think, but both, I think Gary Gensler was confirmed, like, in, sometime in April of 2021. And same thing with Jay Clayton in 2017 was until about April, you know, got to do, like, Secretary of Defense, Treasury Secretary, some of these really fast, because, like, that's really, really important. SEC can function with an acting chair. There's not that much Senate floor time, so you prioritize? I don't think you would see them start acting already like they have without Paul

Atkins in the seat if they didn't know that he was sort of in the same of the same mind as them. So you're quite bullish on him. Yeah, I mean, I have to admit, I was actually bullish originally on Gary Kensler. I don't want to compare them. I think everyone was. Yeah, because he taught the course at MIT and he said, at the time that 99% of cryptos were commodities. He later literally would say the opposite as chair.

I mean, so I don't think the same thing's going to happen, but I feel that is an important disclaimer. Many people thought that he would be very good for crypto because of how knowledgeable he was of it and because of some of his actual prior statements. But yes, I think we think Paul Atkins is going to be a very good chair. All right. Let's get into markets. So maybe just a really broad oversight.

to start with. What have you made of this cycle so far? Because one of my favorite things to track is like this cycle compared to 2017 and they seem very similar. And I think whereas last cycle was kind of derivatives driven in a lot of ways, 2017 was obviously very spot driven. And I think now with ETFs, this market is behaving quite similarly. But what's your take on that? Well, on your point specifically, I think, look, 2017 was, I think, comprised of a lot of people who basically heard the word Bitcoin for the first time, a ton of people, right? And there were different market dynamics, like at the time, most trading pairs were Bitcoin denominated. Like, stable coins had no supply at all in 17, you know, tiny, tiny amount of tether.

I mean, like, less than, I forget, less than $100 million of tether. Yeah, everything was tied to Bitcoin. Yeah, and most of the, like, trading pairs themselves traded against BTC. Then you had ETH make its run because of the ICO boom, which you had to buy. They were denominated in ETH. one of the things I say outside of Bitcoin, which has its own story, rightly so, and is owned for its own reasons.

And as an asset, by the way, is deeply and widely held at this point, as digital gold if nothing else. But other tokens, typically, it's not so much that like, the Eth price goes up because people are using Ethereum. It's mostly because people want to buy things on Ethereum

that are to nominate in ETH, right? So like the 2021 run, I personally think a large amount of Ethereum's like performance that time was because of NFTs because Jimmy Fallon was holding up a board ape NFT. And if you wanted to buy one of those things, you had to go and buy ETH, right? Similarly, in 17, if you wanted to do those ICOs, you had to go and buy ETH or actually you had to buy Bitcoin, then trade it for ETH and then use the ETH to buy the ICO. Very common, right?

This time, there's not a lot of stuff on ETH that normal people want to buy, right? unfortunately in my view, but for better or worse, last 24 and still kind of now in Q1 of 25, other than Bitcoin, the other hot sector was meme coins. And that was mostly on Solana. And it's not because Solana got a lot of usage. So a lot of trading fees are low. It's not like the network revenue is what's driving the value, right? It's not that fees are high because a lot of people think, oh, if L1 fees are high,

that'll accrue to the token. No, it's because the meme coins are denominated in Seoul. So if you want to buy $1,000 of Trump coin, you have to buy, for the most part, a thousand dollars of soul, right? And that's where the demand in my mind has been coming from. So in some ways, it is similar. Like if you have Bitcoin as its thing. And there are, by the way, I think most humans that are in markets at all have heard about Bitcoin this time. Yeah.

But if we think about the institutions that are coming in, it's kind of like they heard about it for the first time because they finally have an ETF or something they could touch. And that's a little similar to 2017. And similarly, like the meme coins being denominated in this L1 asset driving value for that L1 asset is kind of similar to the ICO era in 2017 and 2017 driving demand for ETH. So I see a parallel. I don't know if that's a parallel you were saying. I would say Bitcoin dominance did get high sort of at the tail end of that 2017 bull run. You can see that spike. But I do think in a lot of ways the cycle is different, though.

in particular because of Bitcoin's like dominance so early in the cycle. I think that's one thing that makes a difference. I don't know if there is a cycle separately. I think now with the volatility's way down, like on longer time frames, still plenty volatile, to be clear, Bitcoin. I think the ETFs provide sort of much more resilience on dips and possibly a little bit more resistance on moves higher, although I think if you look, the best data we have shows that the ETF buyers are mostly hoddling.

Like, it's not a lot of like really fast money. Yeah, there's been very few like net outflow days. Yeah. I mean, not that many. Even on giant, I think one of the biggest was that like early August when the Japan yen carry trade sort of unwound. There have been big days, but like, you know, not like over time. I mean, it's not like, if you look at like a rolling average, it's almost positive the

entire time, right? Like, so I think the institutionalization alters it materially for Bitcoin. I think, like I mentioned this at the beginning, that like the ETHBTC ratio is down 50% since the Ethereum ETFs launched. I think there were some people that thought, well, if Ethereum got an ETF just like Bitcoin did, then it would have similar performance, like that the, maybe the institutions or individuals who bought the ETFs would buy a market cap weighted amount of the ETS. Well, I say, look, I'm 100% Bitcoin because I'm only touched with the ETFs and that's the only one there is. But once there's ETH, then I'll be like 6040 or 7030 Bitcoin ETH. That has not happened, right?

And I think there's actually different reasons for that. It's not necessarily because ETH itself isn't appealing, but it's because Bitcoin really has distinguish itself as separate from this rest of this blockchain economy as its own asset, a whole separate thing, right? And there's good reasons to own it. And those good reasons don't really, aren't really related. There might also be good reasons for investors to own other things, but they're not related to the, they're not in competition with the Bitcoin reasons.

And if you look in mainstream society, like what value has X Bitcoin crypto really delivered? And I'll give me, I think there's two things basically so far that have some version of product market fit. Obviously stable coins, I think are widely used. There's over $200 billion worth of them. And just separately, like, I'm not on a full Bitcoin standard. I do have to pay bills and stuff in dollars still. And I've sent even domestic wires, domestic ones, where the money just disappears for like 14 hours.

And you just hope it arrives, right? A stable coin transfer is significantly better than that. But even regardless of whether you think it is, I think the market has clearly shown that it values this as a payments upgrade for dollars. And the other one I would say is defy. Now, I think defy, you know, sort of, I'm going to say blue chip defy. I think my Bitcoin magazine friends might be mad at me for saying that. But there are like, you know, swaps. There are lending facilities that have consistently worked without major issues for years now.

The main issue I have there and why they're not at the top of the list is that they, there aren't really that many good assets in there. It's mostly just these other cryptos. And in some cases, like really, really useless cryptos, right? like meme coins are in there, right? I think if you got better assets on blockchains, then the applications of defy could be quite useful to society, right? Like if you could get like, you know, Apple stock or something or like,

and you're starting to see it a little bit. Again, stable coins being one example, but there's also like US treasuries are Franklin Templeton and BlackRock, both have money market funds on chain. So I think to take it back to it, I think it's sort of like crypto is in its show me market, right? For years, it's been saying, oh, man, like the boots on our neck. If only we could have the ability to do more stuff, we would bring all public blockchains

broadly would bring all this value to the world. It's kind of like the dog that barks at the car and then it finally catches the car and it doesn't know what to do. It can't drive the car, can it? Now it's got to drive the car. And I think there's a real risk that, especially over the next six to 12 months, that when given the chance, crypto might fail to deliver anything useful, right? Bitcoin, again, outside of this.

So I think that really, and then you got competition between Solana and Eth and Solana were to flip Eth. Do you know how bearish that would be for everything outside of Bitcoin? I'd be like, wait a second. It really isn't Bitcoin and Eith. It's Bitcoin. And then whatever else they're doing over there. So I think there's some aspect to that. And I think that is contributing to Bitcoin outperformance that they're so, you know, now that the boots are,

what are you going to do in crypto? You're going to say, oh, man, like, we haven't been able to, like, show you how great we're going to be. Like, because you've been oppressing us. And then we're like, okay, well, free reign now. Have it. Yeah, now have that it. And we're like, oh, actually, we need more time.

You know? It's really stupid. And I'm not putting the nail in these other things. I think your audience will know and I hope it comes across that I really love Bitcoin. And I think there's other interesting stuff in crypto, but, you know, I personally really only own Bitcoin. And there's a reason for that. But my point is, is like, crypto has to deliver now. I think Bitcoin has delivered it.

There's some dispute and debate about what it is, is a medium of exchange? Do we care that it's in institutional portfolios and maybe on government balance sheets? Maybe it shouldn't be like we talked about. Maybe it should be only self-custodied, right? Maybe whatever. But like people fundamentally understand Bitcoin so much better than they do the rest of crypto. And crypto has made so many big promises about decentralizing this or that. And it's true.

Some of it hasn't ever been. I was saying putting stocks on the blockchain. A lot of people think that's a dumb idea. That's fine. The fact is no one's really been able to try. And I think they're going to be able to try to some extent. So now it's like put up or shut up. Yeah.

And I think that might be proved to be a bad idea. That's what I'm saying. Or at least in the near, at least in like I say six, 12 months, you know, let's, you know, I'll give everybody a little bit of time. But I mean, yeah, now they got to now they got to now the dog's got to learn how to drive the car. And what if it can't? And I think it's pretty high likelihood that it won't in the near term. And so you'll continue to see Bitcoin outperform and, and, and, and sort of, maybe dominance go even higher.

I mean, I don't see any reason. I had thought maybe with all the regulatory pivot that we expected and that it still looks like is coming, I had argued that like it, you know, before the election, that it might be uniquely more net beneficial to Ethereum at all because, again, after all, Bitcoin was already a commodity. So changing what is and isn't a security or relaxing or widening the definition would mostly help other stuff more. And that that should theoretically make the ETH-BTC ratio.

finally find a bottom and go higher, haven't seen that yet, haven't seen that yet. Now I'm attributing the fact that we haven't seen it yet to people are like, well, wait a sec. Sure, maybe Eath is helped, but like, why do I need it? Yeah. Do I even need that thing? They've got to deliver applications people really want to use. And even more than that, to my point, they have to, I think they need assets that people want to buy that are denominated in those coins. And we don't have many of them. So one of the other interesting dynamics in the market at the moment that that I've not quite got my head around is, we'll get on to institutions because that's interesting. But with retail, how big an issue do you think the unit bias in Bitcoin is?

Because that's something that I have kind of attributed the mean coin thing to. It's that like when you go and you look at Bitcoin, it's $100,000. Most people just think too expensive, I can't do that. Instead, I'll just be a nihilist and go and punt on mean coins. Yeah, I do think it matters. I also think it's not just the unit buy. It is, it does matter. I think people, they want to get rich quick.

And I think, you know, we saw this with Dave Portnoy. What a good example. You saw it. Portnoy, I mean, the guy fumbled his Bitcoin bag that Marty helped him get. Actually, lost the hard word wallet. Then bought it again and was mad that he bought it at 40 instead of 30 or 60 instead of 50, whatever it was. Obviously, if he'd huddled, he'd be up huge still.

But he didn't. I think he sold for a loss when it was going down, like during around FtX, like he said. Then he's literally got Sailor in his head. house explaining it to him on his live stream, not like two, three months ago. Mm-hmm. Right. And he's rich. So the unit buy a should master as much.

Right. He could just like, but he's a gambler, but he's a gambler, right? He likes to day trade. I mean, bar stools, very gambling a line. But yes, he's rich. He doesn't need to like 100 bag to set up his life. I think this is a great example, though. It's not just that if you don't have enough money to buy one Bitcoin.

It's also this idea that like, look, I attribute. even the meme coin frenzy to this. There is a widespread global malaise, particularly among millennials and younger, about the state of the economy, a fear that parents have, that even I have as a parent, although younger, not, not, but my parents had for me and that I have for my kids that the future won't be better than it was, right? That they won't grow up better off than we did. There are people, I think decades of wealth inequality and crony capitalism and, you know, dysfunctional governments have really disillusioned younger people about their future. And in that spot, like, a lot of people are willing to gamble rather than learn about the saving technology

that is Bitcoin. Or maybe they even have a little Bitcoin, but they just can't help themselves. There's this social media amplifies. There's all these people that post these doctored photos of their P&L or they post all these predictions of every possible outcome and then just delete the ones that were wrong. Like, I think there's this widespread view that everybody's making money, right? There was that headline in 2017. Everybody's getting hilariously rich and you're not. And it was where they first had that Bitcoin sweater. I have that sweater. And I, that's not true. Not everyone is getting hilariously rich. Like a lot of people are losing all of their money in that altcoin casino. But I think it, it emanates from this much darker, almost societal level malaise about the future.

And that is sad. And that's one thing I love so much about the Bitcoin community is trying really hard to educate, not just that like the all that all coins are a casino and that it is effectively, you know, a lot of it is effectively penny stock gambling. Sure, that's true. But also the power of freeing yourself from, you know, this burden to invest and make a lot of money. And instead adopting a much lower time preference, saving in something that can't be debased.

I love this part of Bitcoin culture. and I think it's super important because it is it is clashing against this truly like violently gambling addicted culture that is I mean gambling people spend so much money on literal like government run lotteries and like your odds are it's like you have a better odds of hitting a bid X like solo mining block than you do it like winning a lottery but yet people still do it so but this is why it's hilarious when people go oh you just held bitcoin from 2017 that's so easy or so lucky. People who think

holding Bitcoin is easier just tripping. They really are. I mean, it's gotten easy now, but I had to go through multiple psychotic bear markets. And dude, Haudel talks, American Haudill talks about this so well. Like, I mean, dude, it's not easy. Like, it's literally, I had to listen to like

a thousand hours of Danny and Pete. I'm sorry. This is an obsession, though, right? And took years of dedication and confidence building. And you had to, you know how I know if it drops from 100 to 50 that I'm not going to sell? Because I watch it drop from like 69 to 20 because I watch a drop from 20 to 3. Right.

Because I watch it drop from 1,200 to 250. Right. Like that's. And, and and by the way, like a lot of people sell those bottoms on the for it. It takes, it takes losing money a lot to. So it is a gauntlet that you have to run through. And so it is not easy. And it's, you know, did people call you, Danny, when we were hitting 100K?

like normally friends from your past life to talk to you about it? Or have they already given up on that? Some, but I think less so this cycle than ever before, which is really, and again, I think I put that down to unit bias and people just thinking I missed the boat now. But I think the calls I've had this time have been probably like 50% of the calls I would have had last time. Yeah, I wonder if it is unit bias. It's possible.

I think people always think they've missed it. I mean, I thought I missed it. Yeah. So if you're listening, I really don't think you missed it. I don't think Black Rock and everything. everybody is getting into it. They don't think there's like only a 30% gain left in it. I mean, nor do I.

It's only 14% of gold and it's significantly better asset than gold, even for what gold is used for, I think, in my opinion, and in many opinion. But the other reason I think is like, dude, my like high school buddies called me five years ago, even seven years ago to ask about it. And I told them to buy and they either did or they didn't. Like they, they, they don't even bother asking me any. more. They already know they screwed up. They should have listened to me like in 2017. I was telling everybody I knew in 2017. And, you know, so I think like, and by the way, now they probably do think

they've missed it again, right? But I'm like, guys, it was, Bitcoin was 16.5 just two years ago. Like, January 2020, 3, Bitcoin opened the year at 16.5K. So like, honestly, it'll probably, we're going to be complaining in a year and a half. We're going to be on this part. I'm not predicting that timeline, but very likely that there's going to be headlines like Bitcoin crashes to like 140K, right? We already had them a couple weeks ago. I got a question from a reporter. They were like, hey, do you have any color? Like, why is Bitcoin crashing to 97K? And I was like, okay, it is my job to color for that and I do. But just think about that. Just say that to yourself out. Look at the mirror. Bitcoin's crashing this 97K. Just say it. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. And same thing. In five years,

we're like, oh, no, Bitcoin's crashing a 200k or whatever. Like, yeah. I'm just saying like it's a fixed scarce assets. So like they never stopped printing. Even if nobody else adopted it, it's going to, like it should go up. Like just like gold like over a long enough time frame like should go up. And Bitcoin is much scarcer than gold. Last thing I want to close out on is the institution side.

Particularly on corporations buying Bitcoin. Because one of the things that I'm both really bullish on and kind of medium term bearish on, I think would be very funny to play out is companies trying to copy the microstratory playbook who don't have a sailor in that company. Yeah.

I think this year does, I'm sure we're going to see lots of copycats, although we've said that for a long time. We've not really seen them yet. So I'd be interesting on your take on that. But particularly what happens next bear market is I think a lot of these companies that follow that playbook are going to end up capitulating. But give me your kind of overarching view on that. Well, we have seen a couple copycats like Metaplanet and similar scientific.

Yeah. And there's a couple in the all coin complex doing the same thing, sole strategy. I think I've seen as one that does it, but with Solana. Look, I think there are plenty of good reasons for corporate balance sheet to own Bitcoin. Not the least of which, by the way, is if you have international trade, it's quite a good trade asset. Like, it's global, decentralized. It's like sending gold with wings.

Sure, like a stable coin is potentially also good and will be used for this purpose too, but Bitcoin's got, I mean, depends on where you do business. I mean, you might not be able to send a stable coin to someplace. They might not have a way to convert from the stable to their local currency. Bitcoin is traded in more countries in a decently liquid basis, probably than the dollar. It's basically everywhere. So if you're a global company, you might want to hold some for use. I think if you're thinking about it as a balance sheet management, I mean, the fact is, like I said,

the math is pretty straightforward. Like, it can add positive portfolio value to almost any type of portfolio, right? Like depending on, not all, depends on the point of it. But if you're a growth portfolio, like, you know, if you're 6040 as a company, you know, stocks to bonds or 60, 40 as an individual, math is going to be the same. So I think holding some, I'm quite bullish on over time. I think just if you're a prudent investment manager at this point, you have to consider it. There may be reasons not to do it. To your point about the balance sheet, I don't know what we want to call them the leverage buyers or the like doing the micro,

the strategy. They call micro strategy strategy now doing the strategy strategy. We are seeing more. I think you might see more. I think the risk about a blowup is interesting, like, or not a blowup, like a force capitulation, as you said. I think it depends on how you structure your capital stack, like what the profile of the debt instruments that you have is when, when they're callable, what their duration is. I think one thing that's really interesting that I think Sailor's done quite well at is terming out, you know, the debt that he's issued.

and, you know, most of it is like, you know, I think even still three plus years out when, but, you know, on most, forget the exact change is depending on the price of Bitcoin, but like if you basically, if you bought it like any time and held for three years or sometimes it's three and a half years depending on literally what the price today is, you've been in profit. So there's a, I think there is a strategy to the duration of the bonds that you issue. I think the real risk is that like you end up owing a bunch of, of debt right when your stock price and or Bitcoin are super low. And then you have to sell Bitcoin

to cover. You can't issue enough stock without crashing it, right? There is a risk of that. This is effectively running a hedge fund type strategy. It's sort of like a leveraged, you know, hedge fund. So there is risk. I don't think the risk is particularly more than that. I think some of the vehicles, I think you're right. I think it's possible. some could. I mean, this is probably from a financial product standpoint, the single most defining novel thing in this bull market that we're in is micro strategy and others doing a similar play, right? Tapping public markets through either equity or, you know, debt sales to and using the proceeds to buy Bitcoin for their balance sheet. Like that is probably the defining

characteristic from a financial engineering standpoint of this one, whereas maybe like, you know, Bitcoin earn products was maybe the sort of defining characteristic, you know, yield-bearing Bitcoin products was sort of the defining characteristic that blew up in the last cycle. I don't know that it is inevitable that these will blow up, but it is a novel thing to watch. It is new, and there is a risk. I mean, but I don't think, is there a board confidence risk as well, because obviously Sailor is the dictator, a micro strategy, or strategy. But if we see someone try and copy that playbook who doesn't have the same belief from their board and they lose faith in this trade at the wrong time. Do you think that also offers like a novel risk in this?

Yeah, like shareholder activism, stepping, to changing the strategy. In fact, I think until recently, Sailor controlled the vote on, but I think they disclosed a couple months ago or a month or two ago that technically, actually he's dipped below 50% voting power. So, It is possible. I mean, it is, you could, you could imagine if it's trading. To be clear, I doubt think that will happen at strategy. No, I, I don't either, but I think it, I think the composition of the voting power matters. I mean, I think you could see somebody build up a big position and propose some kind of thing, like, let's get the Bitcoin out of there, right? I mean, I don't think this is the right way to think about these vehicles or at least micro strategy in particular, but some, I know some

do. Some hedge funds basically think of these as closed end funds. And that's why they argue that Not only shouldn't it traded a premium to its underlying net asset value, the value of its Bitcoin, it should maybe trade it at a discount because you can't get the Bitcoin out of there. Similar to the way the gray scale products, you know, traded at a discount. I don't think that's really what they are. They can look similar to that, but also be something entirely different. Yeah, there's a risk. There is a risk.

I think Sailor was in a unique position. I think one of the things I'm most admire about him and am so fascinated by was that he saw, he identified this trade, not just the literal thing that he could do, but that also he and Micro Strategy were uniquely positioned to pull it off. And I think that will go down as one of the most fascinating case studies in financial history. I mean, I think it's truly historic. A hundred percent. People will be talking about no matter how it turns out.

Either, you know, it could blow up and Micro Strategy will go away one day or it could become one of the most valuable companies on the entire planet. And in either case, I mean, micro strategy was the best performing basically equity, even on a risk-adjust basis in the world of any material size in 2024. Yeah. That alone makes it one of the biggest stories in financial history. Yeah. It's pretty incredible what he's done.

All right. Just to close out, you're obviously head of research at Galaxy. Do Galaxy have a kind of forecast of what you expect Bitcoin to do this year, or do you have one personally? Yeah. Well, we published on December 31st, got it out just in time, our crypto predictions for 2025, covering a whole bunch of stuff, plenty of Bitcoin stuff in there. In fact, you know what?

I'll tell you a couple of them, but I'll tell you on the Bitcoin price. I basically said 150K sometime halfway through the year, not that that would peak, but that we would hit it. And then also 185 by the end of the year. So you're bearish. That's what I was about to say. That actually puts me, I did a little table at one point of sort of a bunch of people's. I mean, Samson Mouse had like a million or something. Right.

And I love that. I mean, to be clear, a man can hope. I kind of also in general for these, think it makes sense to be conservative. I would much rather be wrong to the downside than wildly off to the upside. But look, I think that's just reasonable. I think you're going to see it has appreciated faster than the S&P 500 than gold, although not year to date. technically gold even, gold is outperforming Bitcoin January 1st, 25 to present.

But I think some of the other ones, we said that spot Bitcoin ETPs will cross 250 billion in AUM. I think currently they have about 120. So we're calling for a doubling. We said that Bitcoin will be among the top performers on a risk adjusted basis again. I don't have literally every asset in the world, but by our count, it was basically Palantir and micro strategy, number one, then NVIDIA and then Bitcoin. The CIA and Micro Strategy heading that up. Yeah, I mean, basically. And let's not forget, micro strategy is headquartered in Northern Virginia.

We said that, like, top wealth management platform, at least one will recommend a 2% or higher allocation. And still none have, by the way. It's not included in any major model portfolios. I think when that happens, like, that's one of the major reasons I think Bitcoin goes super high is that you get, like, a platform with, like, 20 million accounts, just straight up, like, default recommending, like 1% Bitcoin along with everything else that they do. We said five NASDAQ 100 companies and five nation states will announce they've added Bitcoin to their balance sheets or sovereign wealth funds. Haven't seen that yet. I think actually probably closer on the nation states and

sovereign wealth funds than you are on the they haven't announced yet. But I think. Yeah. There's some very strong rumors from the Gulf states though. There really are. And by the way, it makes a lot of sense. Totally. Those states are sort of like the New Switzerland, right? They're sort of straddling east and west. They're not really aligned. Sure, they, you know, they play ball, but. Yeah, exactly.

Like, you know, obviously like Saudi and the Emirates, like are most, I would say, maybe I'm wrong. It feels like they're mostly aligned with America, but, you know, the Iranians trade in the Emirates. Like, they're not like not allowed there, right? So, yeah, I haven't heard seen any NASDAQ, 100 companies say this yet. So that one actually seems farther off. I think you could easily, especially when we say sovereign wealth funds, which I threw in

there makes it even easier. Like, you know, if like you talked about Norway, like they have like trillions of dollars. Like they bought like point two percent of it in Bitcoin would be like huge. I thought they'd done that. Have they not done it already? I don't think they own spot or ETFs. They do like, I think they own like Bitcoin mining joint ventures and stuff. Maybe they did.

But then they added this wealth tax. I don't know the current status of this. I don't. There's been like an exodus from Norway, right? because they added this crazy tax. And just the last couple, we said, Bitcoin developers will reach, to your point about ossification,

I said they will reach consensus on the next protocol upgrade in 2025. It doesn't mean that it will be even scheduled. It certainly doesn't mean it will happen in 25. I'm not even saying that they will agree on when to do it in 25. I'm saying, I guess it's a little nebulous. It's tough to make this one purely binary,

but they will coalesce around an upgrade. That's interesting. Yeah, some guess is like, opcTV c sFS f sFS uh cat and or like basically maybe like or you know something covenants maybe cat too um i think there's if you follow the bitcoin dev mailing list and stuff there's a decent decent chunk seems to be like c tv now is actually wait a sec maybe jeremy was right um and or it's like the more conservative like one of the better tested sort of covenants ones and then decent amount of support for cat the support for cat's growing is something that's

I don't know enough about, but I need to do a show on that because it seems to be a growing conversation for sure. You do need to do a show on it. It is growing. It's really interesting because it's like a very generalized thing. It just allows you to combine, concatenate like pieces, but it turns out like that power alone lets you do it's so generalized. You can do a lot of different interesting things with it. Yeah. And the fear is like MEV, right? Well, there could be a MEV separately because of programmability it could introduce, but I think the specific op code fear was that, well, what if you just like, it's like a stack overflow. Like you could concatenate like wherever. Right. Like, but I, apparently, I'm not an expert in either,

but apparently that's just has been trivially solved. Like you just can put a limit on the amount of concatenations you can do. Oh, and then more than half of the top 20 publicly traded Bitcoin miners by market cap will announce transitions to or enter partnerships with hyperscalers, AI or high performance computing firms. So, you know, it turns out. out with this AI revolution, all the compute that's needed. Well, they need all this data center. There was one industry that's been buying up data centers all over the world and building them.

It has incredible experience like running, you know, tens or hundreds of megawatts and sometimes gigawatt sized sites. Yes, it's your, yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's your good friends, the Bitcoin miners. But then Deep Sea came along and rugged everyone. Well, it's true. That did scare everyone. I think now people are more realizing that maybe some net future marginal amount of compute might not be needed as much.

But most estimates are like, dude, like the U.S. is so short data centers and probably the whole world that, you know, maybe it's like the long future tale that is somehow curtailed. But also, I'm not going to, don't say Jevin's paradox. Don't say Jevin's paradox. You know, you widen the hunt. More cars go down it. It's not usual that like actually it creates more room. We'll just come up with more reasons to use compute, I think.

100%. I also don't believe that Deep Seek built that model of $5 million or whatever they said they did. No, and there's all that stuff about how they actually had like tons of chips back there. They're kind of, I think the U.S. said they were probing whether or not like they illegally or got chips through Singapore or something. I don't know. I agree. But in any case, that did tell us. And it could be true for ASIC mining manufacturing too, that we are in this era of like chip manufacturer innovation where you

could just see like seemingly out of the blue a step function increase in efficiency that just like radically alters the entire economy like that is possible at some thing about this i mean in the sort of the thing everybody's thinking about and afraid about is artificial general or generalized intelligence a GI right like if if that were found it's like half the economy loses its job in one day basically not literally but so like that that i think is what yeah the black swan of like step function increase in efficiency is I think what the deep seek moment taught me and and it doesn't mean that it was that but it's like it's kind of like when the some the coin telegraph erroneously posted like in October 2023 that the ETFs were approved and

Bitcoin like ripped and then it was like oh wait that's vague and it came back right back down to where it was but it showed everyone wait a second if like removed all down this is what will happen yeah when it's announced it's going to moon right like similar like when like some step function increase in computational power is announced, people are going to freak out. Yeah, for sure. I said last question, but you actually said something in there that made, I've got one more. Gold has obviously had a really good year this year where risk assets have not.

Do you think Bitcoin will continue to trade as a risk asset in the sort of short to medium term? Because obviously like to me and you, I don't think we see Bitcoin as a risk asset, but the broader market does. Yeah, I think it tends to trade. I think when gold revalues, it revalues too. Think about what Paul Tudor Jones said in May 2020, that he thinks gold would have a great year in that inflationary COVID regime, but so would Bitcoin and Bitcoin would be the faster horse. I think gold has actually been kind of playing catch up to Bitcoin, if you think about

it. And sure, Bitcoin is a risk asset. It's thought that way by a lot of people. But if everyone was getting really scared, like Bitcoin's still at like almost 100K, like did it really, oh, it's down 15%. But like Bitcoin's just more volatile, right? They can overshoot, undershoot. Like I think gold has performed really well partially and maybe even largely because of geopolitical tension and questions about fiscal dominance in the U.S. market and whether or not our debt is sustainable. And, you know.

And it's like the known trade when this stuff's happening, right? Yeah. And honestly, like, I think people realize that the inflation is not just the current like CPI, like the growth rate of inflation is relatively, it's coming down, but like it's here to stay. But that, you know, you're not going back, right? Like it's a repricing and you combine that with the, you know, uncertainty around tariffs and something certain like gold feels good and central banks are buying. I think if you, Bitcoin hasn't crossed the chasm. Like the buyer of last resort of gold is significantly larger and more institutional than Bitcoin. still, but Bitcoin's base is growing. So I think it, I actually think it has been trading much more like a hedging and store a value asset than it ever has. It's still not there like gold is and plenty of people want to speculate on it. But again, like, you're not seeing ETF holders sell really. Like most of, if we look, almost all the sales that even between the, the, um, the one on 109K like right before inauguration high and now,

it's sure there's a pocket of people that sold that or when you look at the coins when they moved on chain you know if we get it put our james you know our checkmady on hat on right like it's it's a lot of people still selling from chop solidation from from February to the election of last year right selling coins that hadn't previously moved except for between like 50 and 70k it's like oh you didn't sell at 100 you didn't sell at 105 I guess on the third all time high above 100 you're like all right fine now I'm selling okay right there was a story today that looked like maybe Binance has been selling some down of its proprietary holdings that probably can have caused some of the top.

But again, we're 97, 98K. Like, to me, it's been remarkably resilient. It's tried to go below 90K like three or four times now and has failed. So, like, you know, could it fail again and go lower? It could. But to me, that looks like a pretty decent store of value. Yeah. I saw you took a bet on that.

They won't go below 90K in February. I did. I bet Quinn Thompson, a good friend from Licker Capital. I just saw that he, look, he's a man. He's a macro guy. He's been quite smart over the last year for sure. Like, I mean, he was, you know, basically bearish in May, April and May of last year. And yeah, we mostly went like slightly, we went sideways to down for like six more months.

You know, come like September, October, he got really bullish on Trump winning and was saying that this would be great for Bitcoin. Like, ended up being right about that. Smart guy. I just think that I'm looking at a chart where Bitcoin hasn't been able to crack that 90K. And so like the, you know, the simple. The Occam's razor on it to me is like, what, he's going to be right this time. It failed the last four times. He could.

There's a lot of uncertainty about tariffs and stuff that wasn't there a month ago. But, you know, it's also an easy bet. I mean, we bet a steak dinner. It's like, well, you know, worst case I buy you stick dinner. Yeah, I won't either way. Well, Alex, this has been amazing. Thank you very much for the time. Is there any way you want to send anyone before we close out?

Oh, yeah. I mean, look, just check me out on X.com, a great website, intangible coins. You can read all of our content from Galaxy at galaxy. Galaxy.com slash research and yeah, and just keep listening to what Bitcoin did because the host has really improved over the last year. I agree. Phenomenal, and smarter questions, you know?

Thank you, Alex. And I look forward to seeing you in Bedford. This is going to be a lot of fun. I'll see you there.