What Bitcoin Did - Why America Is Winning the Bitcoin Race w/ Sam Wouters

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Sam Wouters is the Director of Marketing at River. In this episode, we discuss why the U.S. is emerging as the dominant force in Bitcoin adoption, how proof-of-reserves has evolved in a post-FTX world, and why retail interest in Bitcoin remains muted despite all-time highs. We also discuss how institutional involvement might be both a blessing and a curse, the psychological barriers stopping new retail entrants, the moral responsibility of Bitcoiners to re-engage no-coiners, and what the next phase of Bitcoin might look like. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN: https://www.iren.com/ RIVER: https://river.com/wbd ANCHORWATCH: https://www.anchorwatch.com/ COINKITE: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/WBD BLOCKWARE: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/wbd Follow: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Sam Wouters: https://x.com/SDWouters

You have two choices. Either you accept that Bitcoin adoption is going to take decades by very gradually getting more people through the door that will have the patience to learn about these things, to go through all of the literature, or you actively go out and do things. You discovered an asset that returns 60% plus per year on average for the past 10 years, and that's not enough for you. That is a very big part of the problem. All of these people that you know that you're getting into Bitcoin and that holds some. Bitcoin and exchanges, they could get rugged and hurt. Vegas is getting the better of me, Sam. It was a very late night last night. Yeah, I can imagine. What did you end up doing?

We just went for dinner with the team because it's nice to hang out in person, especially for me as well, working remotely. Yeah, totally. So it was just a good time with the team, that's all. Didn't make it too late. I had an important podcast episode to record this morning. I clearly didn't show you the same respect. You showed me.

We went to the Pub Key variety show. Nice. was a lot of fun. I love that stuff like creeping into Bitcoin culture. It's just like a bit silly, fun. Like it's not all super serious. Yeah. It was a lot of fun. But we are here as two Europeans to talk about America being the Bitcoin superpower. Yeah, it's pretty funny. So I read the report. I was actually just before we started recording, I was listening to J.D. Vance. And I'm curious if he read the report because there was a couple of things he said, both in calling it the America, the Bitcoin superpower. I don't know if.

Trump said that last year he may have done. But also he quoted a couple of numbers that stood out from your report. He said that 50 million people in the US own Bitcoin. And I don't think that's true. Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing to challenge because I like I partially get where that's coming from. So this number actually like, and we mentioned this in a report as well, it comes from the Nakamoto project.

Yeah. From Troy Cross. And they did a survey of like just like statistically significant, like very wide representation. My general concern with this comes from just like talking to regular people and getting a sense for like, when you say Bitcoin, do they actually think about Bitcoin? Or are they thinking about crypto being Bitcoin? I think the vast majority of people probably are thinking about crypto.

And I think it's a lot of that because sometimes you say to people like, have you ever had Bitcoin or something or done so with Bitcoin? They're like, yeah, I've done stuff. And then when you keep asking, it's like, it kind of comes out that there's like, there's other tokens or currencies or things they've kind of dabbled in at some point and probably still have sitting in some old wallet on Coinbase or whatever. Yeah. And never actually touched anymore.

But in their head, it's like, I've got that Bitcoin thing, even though it's not Bitcoin. Totally. And I was in a cab two days ago. And the cab driver, like we were talking about Bitcoin. He was asking if we were there for the conference. And he was like, which one is Bitcoin again? Exactly. Totally.

It's Bitcoin. It's the one. So I think there's loads of confusion around that. But then also, like, when, like, I would genuinely be surprised if 50 million people in the world own Bitcoin. I think the number is probably far lower. But I guess it also depends on how you define what owning Bitcoin is. So when you did the report, like, how do you, would someone who owned, like, micro strategy technically own Bitcoin? No.

Okay. No. So this is people who own it, either have it on an exchange or self-custody Bitcoin. Pretty much, yeah. Well, like in a lot of cases, even self-custy will be like there's custodial wallets, but at least like, It's not on, or at least like, it's just not on exchange, but it's in a cathodeal wallet. I think the 50 million number, I'm sort of like at a global scale, the one you were questioning there as well.

I would definitely say we're well over that. How'd you think? Yeah, for sure. I mean, we did some analysis two years ago or so, or like, I think it's like one and a half years ago. And back then, the estimated range I came up with was like between like 80 and 130 million people globally. And it's a pretty wide range.

But the reason why those numbers is. And kind of like now it's been refined to like roughly 50 million by estimation in the US, which is really hard to verify because you can't really correct for that like people that think they know what Bitcoin is, but they don't actually know. That's just like impossible to take out. So you kind of have to take the surveys that are out there at face value. And there have been a couple more other than Troy's research there as well that come up with similar numbers.

So there's like there's some kind of bias in there for sure. Yeah. But but on the like the 80 to 130. So what you can already tell is like on chain, there have his. historically been just like through analysis that's been done. There have been like roughly 30 to 35 million ish by last time I checked, it might be 40 at this point, but different entities that have interacted with the blockchain.

Okay. So that gives and there will be some overlap there. Of course. But generally, that's like a decent number to start with her. That's just on chain activity. And if you know based on a bunch of other statistics like River is a Bitcoin exchange or many other Bitcoin exchanges that sometimes publish some numbers, the vast majority of people actually hold their big.

Bitcoin on an exchange. They hold the minority of the Bitcoin owned by individuals, but they do hold them on exchange. So using those, like you can do a variety of extrapolations. You can kind of like look at the user counts that some of the larger exchanges have, like active user counts. And you know like, okay, roughly 60, 70 percent of those have ever done anything with Bitcoin, even if it's just like buying $10 worth. And if you run all those numbers and you kind of crunch it and go through it, then you do

tend to arrive at such a range of like 80 to 130. what does ownership mean that? It's like, okay, yeah, if you have $10 worth of Bitcoin, do you, like, is that like owning or investing in Bitcoin or are you just like kind of playing around and seeing what it is and then forgetting about it? Yeah, and it's hard to, like, there's no way you can draw a line on that. Yeah. With River, like, what percentage of people who use River self-custody Bitcoin?

So, like, it fluctuates a bit over time. I don't like, I don't actively watch that. But from my, like, from my last check, it's like, it's got like the vast majority, like, either hold some on river or they split. So they'll hold some in self-custody. But they also kind of feel like, well, like what if anything happens to me? We have this, like we have an inheritance feature

where if anything were, I think you talked to Alex about it at some point, where if anything were to happen to you, then we can like make sure that it gets to your loved ones that you've assigned it to. And for a lot of people, that's actually a pretty big appeal because their self-custody while it doesn't have anything like that they have to come up with their treasure map as you sometimes on the show. And a lot of people get to be a lot of people pretty nervous about that. So I'd say like my guess would be the bulk actually splits,

but it's also a decent amount that just like trusts us. And there's then also it raises the question like, okay, do you then actually own Bitcoin because you don't have your own keys? And I always find it as an interesting discussion point because a lot of people say, like if you don't have your own keys, you don't have your Bitcoin, which I like I generally agree with. At the same time, it's like, well, people say like, I own property. And it's like, yeah, Yeah, but if the state decides that you no longer own property, then in some countries in the world, like stuff can also happen. Yeah. So it's kind of like, it's not so black and white of you have it or you don't.

It's much more about like understanding like what are the risks that you're taking. And we can like as river, we fully subscribe to like we encourage people to self custody. We're like, you know, like three monthly withdrawals, auto withdrawals, all of that stuff. But we just find that there's a lot of people that actually don't want to do that. They're not ready for the. I have. to take full ownership of my Bitcoin here. There's nobody I can fall back on it if I mess up. It's still just scary to a lot of people.

Yeah. And the technology around it is getting better and everything. But I think like the vast majority of people out there, and I think like maybe Vegas is not the greatest representation out there. But if you like if you just go to a city full of the generates. Yeah, more or less. But if you like, it's kind of like if you if you go to any city in the world or any place and you just talk to people around you, the vast majority of them are just nowhere near

the mind space of like I would like, I would like, like to have full ownership of my money. Yeah. They're like, I want an asset that's going to do well. And I mean, we're seeing this a lot today where people like, they buy shares and companies instead of buying Bitcoin, they buy ETFs instead of Bitcoin. They love the appreciation, but they're hesitant about the actual value of Bitcoin. So they like they want a bird in a cage that's going to do awesome tricks in that cage, but

not like I want the free bird that I can do anything with and that I fully like, that's kind like fully mine. Yeah. I mean totally like not everyone is going to be. using cold card and multi-sig. That can be a North Star for everyone. People should do that. But in reality, it's just not going to happen. And that's been one of the cool things,

not to just keep chilling sponsors. I've got River on the show and I'm about to talk about Ankerwatch. But that's one of the cool things about this maturation of products that are coming to the market. Things like Anquatch are going to give people another option where they do take much more control over their Bitcoin and they have it in an insured way with inheritance. These things are amazing

that is happening. I think it's so fantastic. Just like the optionality of it is great. And this is what we need, I think. And like for us, not to shale our stuff too much either, but I'm thinking like a lot of people don't understand Bitcoin interest on cash, a product that we have because they're like, why wouldn't you just buy Bitcoin? And it's like, it's not for you if that's how you think. It's fine to think that.

It's totally fine. But it's like there are people out there who just feel hesitant about how high the price is. Because when you zoom out and you look at how much the prices run up, you're like, am I buying at the top? If you don't understand, you don't talk to Bitcoiners around you. You're like, am I just buying their bag? like did I get convinced into buying that stuff? Yeah.

And if it's like, well, you don't have to take any risk, you can literally just earn it with cash. Then all of a sudden for a lot of people that we talk to her, it's just like, oh, that's actually really chill. Like my mom would do that. Like currently she's got her cash sitting at a bank account, like just like losing value over time. Yeah.

And if it's still like an FDIC insured bank account essentially and then earning Bitcoin, it's like, oh, that's okay. So it's another option for people that are just like hesitant about like self custody for a person like that is like on a whole other level, they're not even there. They're still at the point like, I don't know if I want to buy Bitcoin or not. I don't know how much I want to buy. I don't know if it's smart to buy now or if I should wait half a year. And what Bitcoiners tend to do is like surround themselves with other Bitcoiners. I mean, we're here with 35,000 other Bitcoiners. Pretty much. But you get

like, sometimes you get into like group thing and you don't realize like how the average person on the street is just thinking about this stuff. They're just like in a very different range. And that's where Alex has like recently, I don't know, a few months ago, was saying some pretty controversial stuff for a Bitcoin to say and say that maybe everyone shouldn't self custody. And like the hard thing is when Bitcoin's history is full of like rugpoles and hacks, like River obviously a very credible business, but like getting people convinced that that's a safe place to store their Bitcoin.

Like I was actually talking about this on the show a couple of days ago. Like my concern with something like River or Strike or these companies that I see as like good Bitcoin companies that I have a lot of faith in, It's like less than 1% that like you are going to do anything bad. The risk is the hack. And so how do you like try and convince people that it's a safe place to keep Bitcoin if they're not ready for self-custody? Yeah.

It's a super interesting question because it's also, it's very sensitive in the sense that like should you convince them? Yeah. Yeah, that might be the wrong word. Yeah, yeah, which is fair. I think like we don't try to market it as like encouraging people to actively come and store their Bitcoin. It's more something we've,

realize that there is a lot of demand for and we're trying to do everything we can to do that right and just like the the proof of reserve side of things is a really big item there that makes like gives people a lot of reassurance and it's been pretty surprising to see that that hasn't been more widely adopted in recent years have a lot of thoughts around that as well but it's like it's it's trying to open up more because the interesting thing you see as well is even when you do proof of reserves, people go like, yeah, but it doesn't cover all the liability. So it's pointless. Like it's just like a charade to try to do people into thinking they're safe.

It's like, don't like good be the enemy of. Exactly. And when you actually like, we did a lot of thinking about this. When you actually think about how hard it is to gain proof of reserves on chain, when people like know like here's the address, this is all the Bitcoin sitting in it. It's like if you were to take like loans to try to cover stuff up, like even like the on chain activity would get sketchy or you're literally trusting the entire

your entire reputation and survivability of your company to some third party that might leak the information at any point and just thank your entire business. Yeah. It's like when you start thinking it through, it's not that it's impossible, but it's a lot harder than a lot of people think to fake that stuff. But even despite that, we're like, okay, like what more can we do to kind of open up and make people feel reassured? So we, a couple months ago, we did our public, we made our financials public as a private

company. Normally seeing you don't really do that as a private company, but we figured like, well, if some people are hesitant about it. the liability side of things. Like, here it is, right? Like, this is our information, like everything you need to see right here. And that also helps people to sort of feel reassured. Like, okay, you're running a financially healthy business

that's conservative about your runway and things and a risk that you take on. So that gives people a lot of reinsurance as well. This episode is brought to you by Anchor Watch. Now, one of the things that keeps us Bitcoiners up at night is an idea of a critical error in your Bitcoin cold storage. And this is where Anchor Watch comes in. With Anchor Watch, you're protected by two things. You have their time locked, multi-sig vault, and you have your own A-plus rated Lloyds of London-backed insurance policy.

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purchased. So click the link in the description or head over to blockware solutions.com. This episode is brought to you by River, the best place for Bitcoiners and businesses to buy Bitcoin. With River, you can set up zero fee recurring buys, making stacking stats effortless. And while you're waiting for the perfect buying opportunity, River lets you earn daily interest on your cash balance paid in Bitcoin, which outperforms most high-yield savings accounts. But what really sets River apart is their dedication to security. You have peace of mind knowing that River has monthly proof of reserves and holds all Bitcoin in multi-sig cold storage.

And with US-based phone support, you'll always have someone on hand ready to help. To find out more about River and to open an account, head over to river.com forward slash WBD and earned to $100 in Bitcoin when you buy. That's river.com forward slash WBD. I think conservatives are a perfect word for River because like you guys haven't been the fastest iterated throughout like the last, I don't know how long it's been running seven, eight years or whatever. Six years.

Six years. But what you've done is just like take careful steps all along the way to make sure you don't end up in an FDX type situation. Which is very cool. But so when on the proof of reserves, a couple weeks ago you moved. the like you move the wallet yeah it was it like 20 000 bitcoin something like that so over two billion dollars why did you move it so we did like uh we like sort of like routinely do uh upgrades to the cold storage infrastructure when it's like you know it can be can be things like oh it's like a

key rotation or something or there's like new technology that we kind of feel like okay this kind of makes sense for us to be doing something with that's more like historically that recently i don't think there have been significant breakthroughs other than like we're now starting to see a lot of stuff with minisccript and whatnot. Yeah. So that could like for example, if we were to ever do something with that, that would also warrant like, okay, we're going to migrate again because you need to have like more multi-sig levels to fall back on then. Yeah. So that's just like a random example. And then like I'm sure you've seen this. I'm sure at River you've been talking about this. Michael Sayler's comments the other day. Right. Yeah. So he came out and said that it was a security risk to do proof of reserves. What's your take on that? I felt it was a bit unfortunate how all of that played out a little bit like you know like a lot of drama comes out with the whole video and everything yeah um personally i got the impression that that like based on the way he was saying it i was like it sounded a bit like oh you're going to publish like a full list of all of the people holding bitcoin and what and it's like like you can you can obfuscate that stuff do you think you misunderstood what proof of reserve that's kind of what i'm not that you misunderstood what it is but like how you can implement it that you can implement it in such a way where you can't where nobody's like as an individual client's privacy is put at risk in any way,

while still making a verifiable. Because in Rivers case, as well, people go like, oh, how do I know? Like if I hold one Bitcoin or River, like, how do I know that you're not just like telling me the same one Bitcoin that you're also showing the 10 other people? So we just use like a unique identifier that you can check against

and all the rows in the file have a different unique identifier. So like there's ways to work around that without giving away the client's information. So that was a part where I wasn't really sure. And like, does he fully understand like how it can be done? I think part of me also wonders like to what extent is he able to do it, working with the custodians that he's working with. And a part of me wonders like, are they just like comfortable with the audits and things

that are doing the financial audits? Like is that just in his eyes enough. Can't speak for him. But there's like things that come to mind for me. Like from our perspective, like we don't have issues with doing proof of reserves. Yeah. Do it every month. We've been doing it since like September last year and we'll continue to do it.

Like I look forward to posting about the September 2050 proof of reserves. You know, like, we're going to do this stuff. It's going to be mold to $2 billion. It's a feature. Who knows? Well, with inflation regardless. Yeah. But like it's just a feature of the blockchain.

And if people like, if they know how much Bitcoin you already own, like you've already like ruined your obsec in a way as a big company or exchange, et cetera, then like, what does it matter? And I think for for a lot of exchanges. is those haven't really been the reasons actually why they haven't done it. It's not. So why do you think they haven't? Because that's something that surprised me. Because obviously you guys were amongst the first doing it.

I think Cracken did proof of it. But a lot of the bigger exchanges aren't doing this. Why do you think that is? Yeah, there's a variety of reasons. I think for my perspective, the biggest reason is just like lack of clear vocal demand from clients. A lot of people have historically been super trusting of exchanges and continue to be like that out of that 50 million people in America, you can imagine like the vast majority is on something like Coinbase and just like has a little bit of Bitcoin and genuinely doesn't care

or it doesn't even know that this is possible. It's a big thing. And it's kind of like there's a split. So you have like the people who in theory should care most about this, kind of like the hardcore Bitcoiners, they actually often self custody. Yeah. So it doesn't really matter. And well, they think it doesn't matter.

But actually it matters a ton. And that's kind of where the issue comes in because they're like, you know, like I've got my Bitcoin and Cold Swords like, what do I care? if these exchanges are running a fractional reserve or something. It's like, well, you should care because, like, how are you onboarding your mom or your friends into Bitcoin that don't want to self-custody yet? Or maybe, like, you've explained them how to do it,

but they're still hesitant to do it. They're like, I'll do it like next week and they don't end up doing it. Like, all of these people that you know that you're getting into Bitcoin and that holds some Bitcoin in exchanges, they could get rugged and hurt. And we can get, like, if big exchanges blow up again, we could still get over-regulation and stuff. So it's actually going to end up harming a lot of people, even if your personal stash doesn't get affected.

So actually, like, sort of like the hardcore bitcoins are those who self-custody, they should care a lot. But they're just like, kind of like, why would I bother to go fight with some exchange that I'm like not really interacting with a whole lot? And my stash feels pretty safe. But we should be advocating for it much more loudly than we are. And that's what I think a lot of people miss. Yeah, I think I would probably be in that camp, though, where I've thought it doesn't really matter to me. because I'm buying Bitcoin, taking it off of exchange straight away. But yeah, that's interesting.

So do you think also we need to see this whole public company issuing loads of debt and buying Bitcoin? Do you think they need to start to improve reserves? I mean, that's a bit harder, I guess, because they're costing at Coinbase or wherever. Yeah, it is harder, and thus they're dependent on it. In a case, like, Coinbase is just like part of the reason is obviously, like, technical complexity of why they don't do it. And people kind of start asking questions, like, okay, how, like, I want it for

this token, I want it for that token, like do it for everything. It's kind of what you see with Cracken. They used to do monthly proof reserves and then they switch to yearly because they realize if you have to do this for all these tokens, it gets really complicated and intense. And they felt like if you do it once a year, that's probably sufficient. So partially it's like technical complexity and with these and all of their clients and things that they have like they need to sort out their full infrastructure on the back end, to have everything properly segregated to be able to service clients like that in such a way.

But it's like it's all possible. Technology exists. We open source our solution as well so that our exchanges can adopt it. So it's possible. But very often it's like stack ranked and everything else that they could possibly be doing. They're like, yeah, you know, all this other stuff makes us money and proof of reserves from their perspective. Like it's not as needed because people like they're just seeing like people are storing billions of dollars worth of tokens on our exchange and cash probably. And it's like why would they put it so high up in the list when they're

the vast majority of people don't ask and don't know about it. Well, that's again, like, down to the incentives of running a Bitcoin-only exchange like River and running, like, their priority is getting the latest meme coin on their platform. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, which is like fucking silly. Yeah. Yeah, no, on like on those like public company side of things, it's like their investors will probably increasingly start asking these questions because they're all like, they're all

racing with each other trying to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible. And at some point, I think especially if the returns are, and there for a while, people start getting nervous about things. Like, also from a perspective of those companies, they want to keep impressing their investors and kind of showing like, we're doing the next thing or we're like giving you more like, what is the metric that are using like Bitcoin yields like whatever per share. I think it's something like that's like they want to keep making that number look better. So then people are going to start getting nervous increasingly about like,

what are you doing with that Bitcoin and like what am I still investing in? So I think they automatically kind of get pushed in that direction. And then what you see is with the ETFs, for example, I think it's bit wise does proof of reserves. They're like, they just realized like, okay, it's going to be a differentiator versus the rest. Totally. They did a lot of things that were smart there because like when they came in, they knew they weren't going to be able to compete with BlackRock and sheer scale. So they implemented. So like they do that and then they share profits with developers.

Developers. Yeah, they go HRF, open sats and brink maybe, which is very cool. But again, like this is all just like Bitcoin matured And just to bring it back to the report, Bitcoin is maturing in America far quicker than anywhere else. And as two salty Europeans, we can talk about this. Like, in terms of scale of Bitcoin held in America, like, where are we at? Like, what percentage is held in America versus the rest of the world? So by estimation, this is obviously really hard to tell because the blockchain doesn't tell you who's the owner and where they're located, generally. But by estimation, it's like roughly 40% of all the Bitcoin in the world is likely owned by people in America.

and companies. I would say, like, I'm not necessarily a salty European in the sense that, like, I mean, I wish Europe would be way better about this stuff. It's a disaster. But at the same time, I'm like, kind of like the angle of the report was like in America, there's a clear advantage here. Let's just, I'm Bitcoin is ultimately for everyone, but let's use that and capitalize on that and create momentum there that kind of like pushes other countries to follow in its footsteps

and start doing more things that are pro-Bitcoin. in a variety of ways. Because it's kind of like, some people will push back and be like, yeah, but, you know, Bitcoin needs to remain decentralized and there's all these other countries and people in the world that would greatly benefit from it. But if we're kind of like, we're not going to push it in America too much because we need everyone else to catch up. Like, that doesn't work.

It's just like, let's push ahead and that'll motivate a lot of people to start doing more. Totally. And it's not like America are just capitalizing on something that's there. And there's other countries that have done this. Like El Salvador obviously had like first mover advantage. Bhutan have done amazing with their Bitcoin mining. The Gulf states are starting to pay attention to this. So it's really just like the lack of, I don't know,

forward-thinking people in like the European nations in Australia. Like they're just, I don't know why it is, but hopefully, like you say, this all happening in America will push this. So in terms of if they have 40%, is there any concerns there in terms of centralization risks from your perspective? I think like the risks are not necessarily geographically. they're much more like kind of like where's the Bitcoin concentrated and like what's the quality of those parties where it is concentrated. Yeah.

Today, fortunately, like we also, we publish some other statistics around it's like roughly like 68% of all the Bitcoin in the world is by estimation again. It's owned by individuals. And like part of that could still be like a chunk of that is actually businesses but they just haven't disclosed it. There's a good portion of that too, obviously. But for the most part, it's like, it's kind of in that range. But then the like the number of individuals within that that own a large chunk of that, like you can all see that when you look at the UDXO set, it's like how much Bitcoin is held on addresses that are kind of like unidentified, not an exchange, not a business.

And that does tell you like there's a certain concentration just like there is with a dollar or any currency in like the hands of a smaller group than the total big group. And I guess like it's much more about like who who are those? holders of vast amounts of Bitcoin and what are their intentions and what are their their goals and kinds of things. Like, I think much more in, in that kind of sphere or like on what exchanges is a whole bunch of the Bitcoin stored and like how secure are those, then it is like geographically any kind of concern. And why is it that you think America is winning so hard at this right now? Because like you just earlier, you were saying if you walk down the street and you ask people if they care about essentially like being self-sovereign, I agree that it's not many.

But I also think in America, that's probably a higher percentage than anywhere else in the world that I've been to at least. Yeah, yeah. And we think about this a lot. I think a really big factor is how financialized the U.S. is. Yeah. It's actually one of the things like when I visit, it's one of the things that kind of reminds me like I don't necessarily want to live in society. Like I don't live in the U.S. live in a society where everything is so financialized. It gets a bit exhausting at times, I think. But that is like that's also its strength. People are in. general, more financially literate than they are in Europe, for example, or in other parts of the world. And that just makes more people investment savvy, makes more people want to build things up. And that is the spirit of the country as well.

It's like it's the innovation, the progressiveness to building a better society. Like that's just always been rooted in the way the US has been built up. And I think that's a really big driving force behind so many people getting into Bitcoin. And there's of course to like the, I guess like the general. drive to create things is so super strong here. Yeah, 100%. And there's almost like a chicken and egg problem with that. Whereas like there's so many products in America that if I lived here, like Bitcoin

products, I would definitely use. And I just don't have access to them in like Australia or in the UK. And like I don't know what it takes to unlock those sort of products elsewhere. And maybe that's down to policy. I'm not really sure. And that's a fantastic question, I think really, because Europeans also in general look at this stuff and go like, like how can we, we get the question to? like when are you guys moving to Europe?

Like how do we get that stuff here? And very often the answer is like it's partially, it's regulatory. It's partially businesses need to make investments to operate in those countries. It comes with a lot of upfront costs. And very often there's like there's like a local Bitcoin brokerage in one way or another already. And it's like, are you going to compete with those without competing with them and only offering other products like it's a little bit tricky. So you need to get like start fighting them basically for market share.

And a lot of the problems. products because of the way it works in the US, like, people go like, oh, why don't we have like Bitcoin interest on cash in the UK with a certain. It's like, yeah, because like the UK kind of like the capital markets are very different. The like the treasury and all like the way people invest in treasuries in the US versus in the UK is totally different. Yeah. So like you'd get the same product, but you wouldn't get anywhere near the rates that get you as excited. And you would get an experience where because of UK law, for example, you have to fill out a always like a service. to be an accredited investor. There's just so many things that get involved there that for a lot of companies, it's just like, there's still so much market share to get in the US and that's how River thinks. It's like, let's just focus here,

do things really well here. And maybe that starts showing a lot of the world that actually we're going to have to change our rules and laws locally. The issue is then comes back to like, especially in Europe, the average person is so far removed from the politicians, like the European Parliament, European Union, that are making decisions that influence them.

And it's just like, they don't even, people don't even know where to start. They don't think about it. They don't talk about it too much, like some people obviously do. But they just don't get like, how do we navigate this? Like, how do we get this to the level where we start making meaningful change so that we can start getting these kinds of companies and products and solutions here? And the question is also like, who's going to fight that fight?

Who wants to spend their kind of like their career or their influence or capital to try to build something like that up in Europe. And that's not really something we're seeing at scale anywhere so far. 100%. And in the UK, there is like a policy group there with like Freddie New and Susie. And they're trying. But like it's an uphill battle. And don't get me wrong.

I know when BPI started, they also had a period where they really struggled. They had to grind for a long time. But like they're seeing incredible results now. And I don't know if that pathways is clear outside of the US. Totally. Even I had Matt Corallo in here yesterday. And he's like putting. pushing this Save Our Wallets campaign, which is making sure that we're able to continue to

self-custody Bitcoin. And like, he was saying people need to call their congressman. I was like, I don't even know if you can do that in England. Like, I don't know if that exists. And I could be wrong, but like that as a concept, just like getting on the phone to your local politician. You're absolutely not speaking to. They're so connected here, which is, it was amazing. And so like during the Biden admin, the US still continue to like dominate Bitcoin really, even despite having that Biden administration. Now Trump's, and obviously all the changes that he's put in place. Do you think that's just going to get supercharged?

So do you think this is actually going to grow? I think it's possible, but I'm not sure. I mean, like, it's obviously it's most likely going to go up, and that's generally how I look at Bitcoin, because mostly people who get into Bitcoin, they don't really, like, leave. No one leaves. It's Hotel California.

You keep stacking, and that's just like a general trend that you see. So it's going to grow. The question is mostly like how fast is it going to accelerate? And that's kind of like where everyone seems to be wondering today. Like where's retail at? Like we're at all time highs. The media isn't really talking about Bitcoin that much. The average person hasn't really picked up on it too much either.

Or even if they have, they're like, you know, I thought about that years ago. I feel like I missed the boat. I'm not going to bother with it too much. And that's like a really big question for a lot of Bitcoiners at the moment. Me too, me included. Like so normally during like bull runs like the amount of new list, to the show increases like crazy. And you see it in things like Google trends and obviously you see it in the price. Like that's where these like euphoria things have always come in.

And and also like just speaking to friends. Like the people that are the no coiners amongst your friend group will always be asking questions. None of that's happened really. Like there's definitely been a small influx of new listeners to the podcast. It's hard to know whether that's because it's like the relaunch of what Bitcoin did or if it's if it's just genuinely new listeners. But like why is that? Like a river is not really seeing the same thing. So we are seeing great growth, but for different reasons, it's more like the way we operate a lot today is you see people who initially interface with a big exchange of some kind and then they've tried a couple of exchanges and then they get frustrated about things and they start asking like, what's a better place because I'm getting frustrated here. And then we find that a lot of people end up at river. So for now, for us, there's like a lot of room for growth for people burning out.

I feel like that's almost like solidifying this argument because that's like mature Bitcoin is learning the problem. and moving to something that's better, not new people coming in. But we do think about this a lot, like super actively. We just met with the marketing team before the conference this week because we were very actively thinking about like, what more can we do to grow the pond? Because ultimately like River primarily serves individuals. We also have like over 2,000 businesses at this point. That segment has actually been growing very like more rapidly.

I would say. But individuals is like, you know, like if we just sit around and we're going to grow at the kind of like the rate of the market, at like there should be more that we're able to do. But what's the issue there? Like, why aren't people getting in? And we think about this a lot because it's like, if we're a Bitcoin only company, like we have to make it work with Bitcoin. We can't like the other exchanges kind of jump on trends of like,

oh, this tokens going crazy right now. Let's get everyone trading that and make a whole bunch of revenue there. Or let's do like a variety of risky products that just allow us to make a whole bunch of money. River doesn't do that. So for us, it's so super critical to deeply understand like what the hell is happening. like why isn't retail around more? And I thought about this a lot. I think there's a couple of big reasons that are happening.

I'd say like one is people realizing that they kind of feel like, oh, I missed the boat at some point. That's like the really obvious one. The unit bias. Yeah. I didn't. Well, that's another one. Actually, that's a secondary one.

That's really interesting. But just feeling like I missed the boat because I should have bought so many years ago. And we all know these stories of like the friend you spoke to when it was like $10,000. or something and they're like, I'm going to wait until it's 5,000 and I never went back 10 to 5. It's like that over and over. And at some point, they just get a bit disillusioned and go like, whatever, like, this wasn't meant to be for me kind of thing. Or they just like moved on with their life. And to your point, like now nobody's talking about it for individuals either.

I think a second part is also that within Bitcoin, Bitcoin is really strongly that Bitcoin's like money for the people. If you look from the outside perspective, if you go talk to any like any random person in the world that has heard of Bitcoin at some point, they probably won't tell you that they feel like it's money for the people in the way that a Bitcoin would describe it. They look at it very differently. They look at it as like a, you know, this was like some, some crypto thing that made a whole bunch of crypto bros very rich. And many of them won't even realize that like, oh, Black Rock's buying it and all of these

treasury companies are hoarding as much as possible. Does that also work the other way where they're seeing like BlackRock and Michael Saylor and all these people and being like, oh, this is a Wall Street asset now, not money like not something that i have an opportunity maybe for some of them i think the vast majority like isn't there like they don't realize that black cork instead of our buying and even if they hear about it for them it's like okay but i still feel like it's gone up too much um and they're just like hesitant about it in one way or another um it's also the i i think like for a lot of these people it's just so tricky to get to the point where they make that decision of i maybe i was wrong in

the past they don't really want to admit that and you see this You see there's in all these comical examples, like the Financial Times journalist recently that went super viral. It's like there's a very large group of people that also just refuse to accept the possibility that Bitcoin might be money that is here to stay, that it might be better money than what they're used to. And then what kind of like what the government's been telling them and what banks and institutions have been telling them, that all of that is wrong.

Because it's a very uncomfortable feeling for them that their worldview might actually not be the best view. or that they've been doing too much what they're told. And there's probably no one more entrenched in that view than a journalist at the financial times. It changes everything. It's like a meme where it comes out. But there's like underneath that, there is just such a vast array of people that look at this thing. And they don't see it the way Bitcoiners do.

But because Bitcoiners, like, we really like stick together more and more over the years. And you just hang out with more and more Bitcoiners, less than the others because you get frustrated if they don't get convinced to potentially do something with it. You isolate yourself from that in a lot of cases. Not everyone does that. Plenty of people have no coin or friends, et cetera, or just like friends that just, you know, for a variety of reasons, don't have any. But that's how a lot of people think ultimately.

That's a really big blocker for adoption. They don't look at this as we could build a really beautiful world. If we use, if we all use this asset, if we'll use this currency, if we started using it for payments, they think of it as like, you know, like maybe this will go up more, but it's too risky. for me. Like, what if it plummet's halfway back down? What if it's kind of ran its course and like how much more upside is there possibly? It's funny, though, because I agree with you that all these are like valid arguments that people have, well, not valid arguments, but there are arguments that people coming into this will have. But I had them when I got into it. These are all things

I thought. At some point, you've just got to bite the bullet and do it. I fully agree, but I would, like, not that we're special, but we are different people. There was this, there was some interesting analysis done at some point of like across personality types and like people have their opinions about personality types whether that's like mega accurate or not but there was a very clear bias towards certain personality types to be far more statistically likely to get into bitcoin and what were those to be open to those personality types i think it was like uh it's like the meyers briggs types which again like a lot of people challenged but like more introverted more I think it's like I and it's like the technical more technically inclined

people. I think if you look up the visual, there's like an overview of like breakdown by the 16 personality types and it was very heavily concentrated. And was one of them being like leaning towards being confrontational as well? Could be. I think so. It's more like the kind of like the or disagreeable. Yeah, disagreeableness plays into this kind of stuff as well. Like just general skepticism towards the government.

My kind of theory here is that a lot of the people that were going to get Bitcoin, they're already in. They're like through whatever direction they converged on Bitcoin and there are so many, a lot of these people like have made it in there. And then everyone else who's not in there, it takes more to convince them. They're not going to go through that journey themselves

because they don't have the same like intrinsic motivators, they don't have the same interests, the same backgrounds. They get very easily distracted by everything else that's happening in the world. It's like, oh, look, there's like a scandal. over here or a thing over there that's so much cooler. And they're much more focused on like, how do I look, like, how do other people look at me? Do I have fancy clothes? Do I like drive a nice car? They're like, they're thinking from that perspective. And they don't have like the long term planning mindset of like what do I want to build out of my life. They're just living much more

day to day. Yeah. And much more like kind of like image related, visual related. That's also why platforms like Instagram and TikTok are so large because it's all like it's visual, visual, visual. And Bitcoin is so technical, so abstract. It's actually a tip I could give people. One thing that I do, because so many people are visual learners, is I have a folder on my phone with a variety of graphs and visuals that I think are very nice to explain Bitcoin to people in accessible ways. Because when you have a conversation with someone,

you're just sitting around there, like, waving your hands and explaining the blockchain and stuff, they're like, this is all so abstract and I can't touch it. And it's not like cash in my wallet. And even though for a lot of people, like, all their money is already digital. But for a lot of people, that's a big hurdle. And the moment you make it super tangible and you just like show someone like, oh, you're still thinking about crypto, et cetera. Here's a graph of the market caps of Bitcoin versus all of cryptocurrencies and how they're diverging. And then they're suddenly like, oh, holy shit.

It's like it's really changed. Maybe there is no old season and I should actually be paying attention to Bitcoin. This episode is also brought to you by Iron, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy. Iron are not just powering the Bitcoin network, they also provide cutting-edge computing resources for AI, all backed by renewable energy. We've been working with the founders Dan and Will for a long time now and have been really impressed with their values, especially when it comes to their commitment to local communities and sustainable computing power. So whether you're interested in mining Bitcoin or harnessing AI compute power, Iron is setting the standard. Visitiron.com to learn more, which is iraireen.com. This episode is brought to you by CoinKite.

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That's also made by CoinKite. So head over to coinkite.com. If you use code WBD, you get 5% off storewide. So go to coincite.com and use code WBD. It's funny because like apart from doing this podcast, I very rarely talk to people who don't like Bitcoin outside of this. Because I just can't be bothered. Like when people come and like start saying, yeah, but what about Shebrino or whatever?

I'm just like, okay, cool. No, but I'm great to you bring this up because this is, for me, this is one of the biggest factors as well in like, why are we not seeing more adoption? It's because a lot of my kind of point of the like the people who are going to get it, they're already in. It's like everyone else is going to take more convincing. And what we very often do as bit corners is outsource that education to a book, a video, a podcast with some very articulate, charismatic speaker that knows a lot about interesting analogies to get you into Bitcoin.

But the average Bitcoiner, I don't think is necessarily great at explaining Bitcoin to other people in very accessible ways. And for very valid reasons, it is incredibly hard. Like everyone and looking back at like Andreas Antonopoulos back of the day, so articulate, so good at breaking these things down. I think more recently like Joe, what's the problem? That's where I send people now. If anyone asked me, instead of me trying to like explain to them, I just go, just watch this video.

And that's how it goes. And it's totally fine to do that, I think. But what a lot of people do is like, again, they outsource that education part. But there's a ton of people that would much rather learn from you, Danny, in person. If they're like a friend of mine, they trust me. Or like if you're able to approach it from the right angle.

What a lot of Bitcoiners will like frustratingly do is like kind of like push it on to them. Like look for that first opportunity to talk about Bitcoin. Yeah. To kind of be like, oh, you're, you're frustrated about this thing in your life. Like Bitcoin fixes that kind of like knee jerk reaction. And most people like will never be trained and like how do you approach it? Like how do you kind of like break that down and approach it from the right angle? That's a skill of its own.

Yeah. That's very difficult to learn. So it's natural that people outsource it. But if you outsource it, if you tell someone like, oh, you want to understand. nuclear physics or something like i'm a nuclear physicist but i'm not going to explain the basics you just go read this book like the like your hit rate is going to be ridiculously low which just doesn't work so as bitcoin is kind of like you have two choices either you accept that bitcoin adoption is going to take decades by very gradually getting more people through the door

that will have the patience to learn about these things to go through all of the literature and video material etc or you actively go out and do things and you you you try to like, it can even be like revisiting someone you talk to in the past about Bitcoin. And kind of going, I've tried this before. Like go at it from an angle of like, I've made the mistake in the past of just pushing it too much. Going at them like, hey, I know I was a bit too pushy about Bitcoin in the past, but know that I did that because I care about you and I want something good for you. And it's been benefiting me a lot of my life and like the people that I hang out with and the way I look at the future of the world now. Whereas in the past, I looked at it much more kind of like most.

of our generation does, like pretty gloomy and depressed, like, where is this going? But I have hope for the future now. And it's like, if you approach it in that kind of like humanized the way, a lot of these people will be like, oh, like, you do it because you care about me, not because you think it's fun to like gamble on degenerate stuff together or something. And for some people, that angle will work. For others, it obviously doesn't. But it's like finding with the people that you care about, like, what's a way to just like

revisit that conversation in an open and honest way without pushing it on to them? It's being like, hey, you know why I spent so much time on this stuff. And I just actively saying, I don't want to push it onto you. But I think it's worth having this conversation because I'm going to regret for the rest of my life, not like more deeply explaining to you why this stuff matters so much. And when you talk to people at that level, it's like, it's totally different from like, oh, have you heard about the Bitcoin price reason? Like it's gone up like another 15% in the past month or something. Like, don't you have any yet? For them, it's like it immediately thugs at that like frustration that they have internally of like, I should have.

bought some back then and I didn't do it. And now I'm like, you know, they immediately go on a defensive like, oh, I made a mistake. You're confronting me with that. Is he gloating? So you have to think through this stuff very carefully. And most people just don't think at that level. All right. You convinced me to go back to those frustrating conversations. It's funny that you say when you're talking about like people coming to Bitcoin and like the people who this may appeal to the most are already here. I see that with the podcast. I'm always trying to find new interesting people to speak to on the podcast. And in previous cycles, like, every time Bitcoin has, like, been running up, new, interesting, like, intellectually curious people are coming out in the space

and being, like, turning into really big guests. Like, one, like, in the life of the podcast, has been tons. But even people like Lynn Alden, like, when we started the podcast, she wasn't talking about Bitcoin, really, apart from maybe, like, occasionally mentioning it on the newsletter. And now she's one of the biggest people in Bitcoin. And I feel like in the last few years, we've had less people like that coming through. Do you think that is, definitely? down to the fact that if you are smart and intellectually curious, you may be already here. That could be part of the reason. I think another part is also like, what are we attracting now in this part of the cycle? Like there's very clearly a lot of attention around companies getting

involved, the government's getting involved and whatnot. And that's like a certain angle of people who are, they tend to have more baggage behind it. Like they really need to think about like, how am I representing this entity, need to watch their words more. Often it gets a bit duller, it gets a bit more financial and you don't have people like, I know, like American Hodel who just like throws out of there what he's thinking and how he feels about stuff. Like you get a lot less of that, which a lot of people emotionally connect with a lot more. So I think that's part of the reason. Another part can also be, I think it's like a lot of stuff has been said in a way. Yep. And kind of like finding a different way to rehash something that's already been done. It's more tricky.

So it takes a bit more creativity as well to think about like, is there an angle to approach Bitcoin from that other people haven't done it through yet that actually resonates with a really interesting audience and i think like joe that we were touching on earlier with the what's the problem video like people see that and go like oh he's like taking a different angle here that's really interesting let me throw that at people that i know and see if that resonates with them so they kind of like hop around thing after thing after thing to see if it works and then get frustrated when it doesn't they're like see they're the problem they're not going to do anything with it and they're hopeless i'm just going to give up and hang out with bit coiner yeah and like

that journey that a lot of people go through. Well, I really enjoyed, like, a few years ago, there was all these, like, esoteric, like, articles and things coming out about Bitcoin. Like, Brandon Quitten did Mycelium of Money. I can't remember what the exact title that was. And recently Jesse Myers came out with a piece talking about, I don't know if you saw this, like, money potentially being one of the things that allowed us to out compete. I listen to the episode.

I love that stuff. And that seems to be happening less and less. I want more of that creativity coming back. Yeah. Because, again, like, it's just, interesting conversation that maybe has a broader reach than just talking about like the technicals of bitcoin totally and and for us actually uh like it's a big factor in being a sponsor for what bitcoin did as well in that like what you pursue i think is the sort of like the intellectual curiosity that sort of like a subset of the bitcoiners have yeah to keep exploring new topics that are

related and like keep advancing your understanding of bitcoin in the world in a variety of ways whereas there's a lot of shows and things out there that focus much more and like the kind of like the narrow scope of like number go up. Yeah. Like how high can this thing go? It's kind of like what you see on Twitter as well. It's like shout the things they get the most likes. Totally.

And I feel like if we don't continue doing that, if we don't continue to figure out kind of like the intellectual culture around Bitcoin, then that would be a really big pity and shame. If we're not thinking at that level anymore, if we're just, you know, like if it's all just like number go up and whenever number goes down, everyone's depressed because there's nothing to learn or nothing to do and people start fighting each other about silly things, that would be a true shame. So I think like the show is a really nice. I've listened to almost every single episode from way back in the day. It just has a great range of topics.

And even when you feel like, oh, I don't know this person, they're not a Lynn Alden or a sailor or someone that I've looked up to or that has a really big reach, let me just go ahead and click on that episode. And maybe I'm going to learn something really interesting. And very often it surprises and impresses you of like, oh, that's that's actually awesome. I think partially for you, and I mentioned this to you the other day, I think, it's like also just like putting that word out there of like, hey, I'm looking for more interesting people that might have some kind of angle or something that they're doing in their lives. It could be really cool. And we're seeing, like we're starting to dive into this with River a lot ourselves too because we're seeing really rapid growth with business clients.

And it's just like, it's from the craziest industries where you're just like, wait, there's like a, okay, this week we got like a dermatologist for, clinic, like a construction company, a lawyer firm. It's just like every week. You get like a range of like 15, 20, 30 different companies from totally different industries. Well, Tahini's was like a perfect classic example, like just a cab shop that did this. That's where I think it's really, like the business adoption of Bitcoin is really exciting because that's just normal like family or small businesses doing it. Totally.

And actually, back to the retail thing. I think this might be where we're using retail is too. things like micro strategy. Like I think a lot of people who are coming into like broadly, roughly, Bitcoin, I think they're seeing micro strategy and MSTY and Metaplanet and all these things and being like, this is how I catch up. Like it, Hodgeel brought this up on the show, but it's like people see leverage as like a pathway to becoming an OG. Absolutely. And 100%. And so I think we're losing a lot of the retail people to that. And what I don't know is like as this, whether we're in a cycle or the super cycle, Or who knows.

Like at some point, I wonder if those people migrate to actually Bitcoin. Like if they start to understand the underlying and move to Bitcoin away from these derivative products. I think as long as nothing kind of like blows up there and people keep the narrative going around like how potentially lucrative it is, a lot of these people kind of hang in there. What is interesting though is like what we've seen with the trend of like the first alt coins back in like 2013, 2014, they started becoming more and more. of a thing to like ICOs 2017 to NFTs and all this defy stuff 2021 to now 2025 with like treasury

companies and and all of this kind of stuff it's like you see an evolution but it's getting closer and closer to Bitcoin itself totally and at some point yeah that does pull in a lot of the people but what's wild now is what you're saying with the leverage is like wait you discovered an asset that returns 60% plus per year on average for the past 10 years and that's not enough for you like You're going to gamble here on some kind of other path because you feel like otherwise you won't catch up or you won't be as rich as you'd like to be. That is a very big part of the problem. Also, like when you hear a lot of people that invest in all these other things, talk about Bitcoin. It's like, yeah, but what are the odds that Bitcoin's going to 10X?

Like that's not going to bail me out now, like 31 year old dude who has like 10 grand or something because he gambled everything else away and like doesn't really own much stuff. It's like they're thinking from perspective of even if I return 60%. per year, that's not good enough for me. I've got to take on the risk and try to catch up somehow. And this seems like a cool, smart group of people who's like doing all kinds of innovative things. So they feel like they're part of a group there that's being more intellectual than just like the boring holding Bitcoin and gradually not getting poor.

Yeah. And don't get me wrong. Like, if there's anyone listening to this who owns these things, like, I hope you make fuck loads of money. But like I got into Bitcoin 2016, 2017. I did all the I SEO stuff back then. like I was shit coining. I get a lot of similar vibes.

Like there's with what's going on now, but in like a Bitcoin context. And like it's the pre-sales, like the things that are happening behind the scenes before these things even list. Like it's, it's chit-coining on Bitcoin. Like I don't think there's any other way of saying it.

Yeah, I worry about it. Just like, you know, like I, and similarly, like I don't wish these people any ill personally. I just find it like there's so many red flags, so many things that directionally like it doesn't feel right. that I'm just hesitant. Like I would never recommend anyone to invest in those things. And it's not to say like, oh, we sell Bitcoin.

So we only want people in Bitcoin. It's just like from a risk-averse perspective, like Bitcoin itself is like historically, it's already been risky enough. It's like, let's go play around in this playground with like, sure, if it's money, you can afford to lose. Totally fine. And again, it's people's choice. But it is, yeah, something's going to give at some point.

Even if it's not the biggest ones, it can be the other ones. Like I think you discussed this maybe in. one episode with people. It's like, okay, maybe Sailor's got a great plan in case we have like a massive bear market or whatever. But will the 23 others or like the 330 others at that point or whatever the number ends up being? And I'm like above 95% confident that they're not all going to hold the Bitcoin to the bare market. They just can't. Like I think Saylor will. And I think like Jack Miles's new company probably will. Like the ones that understand this, they'll manage to hold on and they'll, I'm sure, do really well. But there's going to be like a long

tale of people on this trend who are going to hoover up a bunch of coins and then spit them straight out again when this goes wrong. And like, again, who knows if this has 12 months or five years to play out? But I think there's a real possibility we have like a dot com style boom and bus cycle in this like public equity world. Totally. And it's crazy that we're at a point where it's like people are getting hyped up about buying stocks. Yeah, we're all stonks maxies now. Yeah, it's it's funny. And then this morning I think the game stop announcement happened. So I saw that. We're going to get a whole wave of people with that mindset into, I think.

But it's going to be interesting. I mean, I think like it's easy to criticize all of these things. For me, like, I'm all about the optionality. I'm glad for people that adoption exists. I'm just personally cautious about it and also. That's the thing. It's not that I don't want these things to exist. Like, people can do what they want with their money.

But I just hope people are being cautious enough. And like, we'll take some of that money out and put it into Bitcoin when, when they made some. But the last thing I want to talk to you about before we go to down to the conference, and this is kind of back to your piece on American superpower, is the strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

And I kind of want your take as like Sam the analyst and Sam the Bitcoiner. And like what do you think about what the US are doing? It's like Sam the Bitcoin are things like these are politicians shouting things that get votes that get them votes. And let's see. to what extent they're actually going to follow up on the words. I think like the sort of like

the level of how advanced the discourse is in the US now, it feels likely. Like it like not going through in one way or another at this point is like that feels very unlikely. I would say at this point. Yeah. That's maybe the analyst speaking from like a like what are the alt here perspective. I think, uh, from an analytical perspective, it's it's really interesting to see how much appetite there is to do this in budget neutral ways. That I'm actually very, I think like most Bitcoiners will be very open to that idea. And I think one part of Troy survey that he did this year as well

was asking people across that survey, like if you had to invest part of the gold treasury into Bitcoin, what percentage would that be from like zero to 100? And then the average range was somewhere, I think it was somewhere around like 10% or so, which is like, okay, it's not zero. Like people would put in a decent jump key. There was very few people that said zero.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's where it gets really, really interesting from like the kind of like the analytical perspective of okay clearly there is an appetite here and hopefully kind of like the right people will see those numbers and start thinking about it because from my perspective is like there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why a country shouldn't have a Bitcoin reserve they also have gold reserves or other kinds of reserves. It's just another thing. Personally I'm not like for empowering the state with Bitcoin and like getting them involved in the like the whole like do we want to upgrade

Bitcoin or not that side of things or like overregulation, all these things. But it's also like it's not up to me. I mean, this, you know, this is going to happen one way or another probably. And in some countries, it will and some countries it won't. And I think like back to the Bitcoiner, I am definitely apprehensive about like how much, how much are they going to be watching things related to development? I am certainly not an Eosophy Bitcoin camp. I think it's very like it's too, it's too, we're.

speaking a bit too early here. Yeah. Like we haven't, there's a bunch of things we haven't figured out yet. And there's just like generally like things will have to upgrade regardless. Like we will actually, I believe there's like, I don't know if the technical solution's been found, but I believe there's some kind of overflow bug or something that will need to be solved at some point. And there's the timestamp bug that like, yeah, or that one. It just definitely needs to be solved at some point. Yeah, sorry. It's not over. It's a time stamp really. Yeah, exactly. And there's no like, there's no debate about that. Like that is going to be an issue that that we have to change and like what happens.

And I think that's the only sort of, maybe not the only. That's the most realistic concern, I think, about the strategic Bitcoin Reserve is that like if upgrades become a national security issue, which they will if they own a load of Bitcoin, like what does that do to development? Yeah.

I'm with you. I think that is the only concern. On Troy's surveys, I know surveys aren't like perfect. But it was super interesting to see the results from that because if you had have asked me just to guess what the results would have been, I'd have got basically all of them wrong, apart from the age.

Oh, that's interesting. That's great. Like, in terms of when it comes to, like, Bitcoiners across the political aisle, I'd have definitely got that wrong. Yeah. Even, like, even some of, so what was interesting is,

like, the demographics that I always assume are Bitcoiners, are the Bitcoiners that listen to the podcast. And they were pretty wildly different to Troy's results, which is really interesting. Yeah. Because I think that, again, is one of the biggest challenges in terms of getting more and more people into Bitcoin

is getting more and more different people into Bitcoin. Because, like, all of Us Nut Jobs are already here. We need normal people now. And I think that's going to be like, again, I think this kind of comes down to who's out there talking about Bitcoin and who do they appeal to. And I was at the, I'm going on a bit of rant here. That's fine. But I was at the pub key thing last night. And they did a variety show.

And don't get me wrong, it was full of like the most lunatic Bitcoiners in Vegas. But like it was cool to see just something different. Like it was a comedy show. They had people singing. Like they had someone doing like shanties, like, like pirate shanties. Like I just like seeing us push that kind of culture further and further out and do different stuff.

Totally. I mean, there's a lot of bitcoins who think from respect of Bitcoin's only going to succeed if all the other people think like me. If all of them think that we need to hold Bitcoin in self-custody, that we're going to use it for payments at some point, like screw the state, all of these kind of things. And unless they think like me, it's failed in one way or another. And I'm much more of the perspective of a lot of people are going to use the

very different ways than you would like to see. A lot of them aren't even going to own Bitcoin directly, unfortunately, but that is a reality. And you can keep fighting against that and getting frustrated about it or like trying to turn other people's worldview the way you look at it. But that's like, that's not the purpose of Bitcoin. And like, you're not sometimes I think like, are you going to live a happy life? It's kind of like insisting that everyone else who gets into this is going to adopt the same

world views as you. Like that's not a recipe for success. That's a losing battle. Yeah. I think so. So I'd say like people should be a bit more open-minded in that sense. As long as someone is from one way or another interest, from one like angle or another interested in Bitcoin, you probably already have a ton of things in common, even if you

don't look at the world the same way. And I'm like, personally, I'm totally happy to have friends on like either side of the spectrum, political spectrum and like interests and all these kinds of things. It is actually what makes it enriching to like understand their. line of thinking and i'm i'm very obsessed in general with like like kind of like where is the like what is the adoption trajectory look like how do all these different people look at bitcoin and it's just like avoiding having that confirmation biases always suck into the same group of people or like nodding like yeah you know we got to get everyone to hold bitcoin in self-custody and do no k yc and just all this

kind of stuff yeah hopefully like i look at it as a funnel as a like marketer you look at it as a funnel is like the more people we can get at like solid over like at solid company solid hardware wallet company solid exchanges that like don't rock pool them in one way or another they're trying to do things right the more of them will gradually adopt the features and things that you would love to see the more of them will use Bitcoin for payments the more of them will save in Bitcoin the more of them will start getting other people interested in one way or another but if you start with the insanely impossible high bar of like you either

need to like fit this super specific niche that I believe in, then like we're not going to get there, guys. Totally. And at the same time, like, I agree with you 100%. But I think it's very important that we do have people holding those like very key aspects of Bitcoin. 100%. And as long as we have that, I think we can kind of, you can get through all the other stuff. And eventually people move like, people will move down the funnel and get to the point where they like have their Bitcoin on a cold card. But like you can't start there. That's the thing. And there's this amazing like, it's kind of like a gravitational pull towards the group of Bitcoiners that believe that, that operate that way. They tend to be the most influential, most sort of like intellectual speakers about it.

And people just gravitate towards that. So even if it takes five, 10, 20 years for people to eventually make this step like, hey, maybe I'm going to self-custody. That's totally fine. Like it doesn't need to happen within a week from now. What's most important is that they don't end up in a place where that's like enticing them to go gamble half of their stack on some other token that was just. just launched, that is the real big issue.

Yeah. And you see a lot of Bitcoiners that are like, they don't think from that perspective of what if I would have gotten into Bitcoin today? I didn't understand all of these things. And you need to be able to look at Bitcoin through that kind of lens of just like a, like either it's a less smart person, less technical person. You need to be able to switch between those things very quickly and understand like, who is it that I'm talking to?

Because if you don't do that, then you're just like, you're trying to see like, how can I like mold this clay to be like, here we have another hardcore Bitcoiner. is going to go in our direction. Like, that's a journey. That's going to take a lot of time. Yeah. And people often say like you're like the kind of like the sum of the people that you hang out with the most like the five, 10 people or so.

And it's kind of like in that way like you can gradually influence someone's preferences and behavior over time. Not in a like a manipulative way, but more like leading by example. Leading by example. Exactly. And that's what people should be thinking more about it. So instead of cutting those like no corners out of your life, it's like lead by example and show how your life is getting better without gloating about. it or stuffing it in their face it's like it like for a lot of people it creates a lot of trust it's

like wow look at look at dany since he's been doing this podcast like a totally different guy from what i remember like that's interesting what's behind that totally that's how you want to influence people with it and not so much like my life is great now because i bought bitcoin and uh it's the best formal money ever my parents are like the perfect example of this because like they i convinced him to buy some bitcoin and this was i did convince i basically made them um a little while ago and But first, they just had it on the exchange. I was like trying to figure out what the best thing to do was. And what actually happened was my mom came to me.

It was like, she came to Bedford when we did one of the conferences. And afterwards, she was like, I don't want to have my Bitcoin in exchange. And so like, to be fair, I hold that Bitcoin for them because I'm not willing to like take that step yet. But like it was her coming to me asking to do this, not the other way around. Because I was like, I don't want to put the pressure on them of like, if they fuck up, they lose their Bitcoin. But it was very cool to have it go the other way.

And instead her come to me and be like, I need to me. 100% and that's a minute but but in order for us to have that path and that's where i think like the keep using the word hardcore bitcoiners but like that kind of like that mindset it is critical that we keep pushing exchanges to do things right then because if the vast majority of people are going to hold their bitcoin on exchange then we need to make sure that the exchanges don't mess up absolutely and that they are properly transparent about what they do that they don't take on insane risks and stuff and we get a lot of questions from people as well about like oh when are you guys going to like uh like start doing lending and stuff

But there's a lot of risk involved in that. And the last thing we want is that like, oh, we make a whole bunch of money off of this. But actually there was a bare market and tons of clients got wrecked because they started taken on leverage that they didn't really understand how to use. So if we build it, we want to build it right in a way where the client wins rather than like, oh, great, we diversified our revenue stream made a bunch of money. But actually, we hurt a lot of people in the process. Yeah.

And that's the hard thing about a lending product. And again, I spoke to Jack about this recently. It's like you can, you build this product. I think this product has every right to. exist. I think it's a product that I would use. I think it's great. But like how you kind of talk to your client base is super important in terms of how they actually think about this and understand the risk that they are taking. Because you can't control an amazing product. Yeah, exactly. You can't control how everyone use it and some people are going to use it in a stupid

way. And the vast majority of people, I would imagine like we'll buy more Bitcoin with it. Yeah. A ton of people. Which depending on position size might be a great decision. But totally also someone's going to do it in the wrong way. Yeah, and people start just listening to friends who are saying, like, I've got this great strategy. I'm doing this thing or I'm like earning yield off of this and that. And they just get like, yeah, maybe I should do that too. Like indeed, then I can earn Bitcoin faster. And that's just again where a lot of people hit their head.

The messaging around it is super important. Yeah, 100%. But again, like totally like valid products who exist. It's just a lot of people aren't necessarily certain what they're taken on there when they get into it. Yeah, because when you think about who Bitcoiners are, like as a perfect example, like me. I had no clue about any of this stuff. I'm not a finance, bro. Knowing how to take leverage takes time.

You need to understand the risks. Totally. Yeah, controlling might be the wrong word, but kind of influencing your customer base to do the right thing is very hard and people are going to fuck it up. And you don't want to... At the end of the day, that's not your fault. You're offering a product.

It's not your fault. But at the same time, like, it does kind of reflect on, like, a lot of people will feel like that was the, like, there's this kind of like saying of like, people don't remember what exactly you said or what you did. They remember how you made them feel. And they also feel that way towards an exchange. It's like, like, yeah, they didn't make me buy it up, but they offered me the

shiny thing. And that's the place where I lost a lot of money was that exchange. Yeah. When they offered this and they could take sort of like responsibility and be like, yeah, but I was the one who pulled the trigger and and use their products. I didn't need to. But if the marketing is in such a way, it's like, oh, this is like such a great thing to do or the brand itself like boosts people who are talking

about this like the smartest strategy ever and then a lot of other people get on board. Then you do kind of feel to them like you guys also didn't say that, you know, there, there was that much risk involved or that these strategies that your clients are shouting about that like, guys, take it easy. Like there is some risk involved here. Yeah. It's also like, it's not very sexy to do it as a company either. Like guys, we got a product, but you know, like be very careful.

Be very careful. Yeah, that doesn't happen. So I think like we agree here. It's just like it's much more nuanced than a lot of people realize. Totally. Just like, just give me the product. I'm smart enough. I know how to do these things. I just want to do it at your place. And super valid requests, I think, and a great product, I think, for, again, as an option,

we talked about having optionality. I think it's great that it exists. And hopefully people will sort of like gradually learn, like, how do I use that in a, in a non-crazy way? And that's why I think, like, it's awesome that it's there now. We can start learning from that and people will get a first taste of it. Yeah. Well, Sam, I've really enjoyed this. Thank you for coming back on the show. It's been a little while. Yeah. It must have been a few years since you've been on the show.

Yeah, it was in Nashville. Like the one Zetasheaport, we're actually almost there now, I think. I know. Do you know what? I had a bet with Pete. You did actually, right. I think it ended at the end of last year. He bet that it would hit a Zetashe before the end of 24.

And I obviously took the under on that. And it was much closer than I thought it was going to be. Nice. Yeah, we're nearly there. But thank you for coming on the show. Should we go and check out this conference? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.

All right. Thank you, Sam. Thank you.