What Bitcoin Did - Why Every Company Will Hold Bitcoin | Freddie New

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

Freddie New unpacks why the next wave of Bitcoin treasury companies could change the game, and why his new venture, B Hodl, is designed to be more than just another balance sheet play. From Lightning Network infrastructure and UK policy battles to raising fresh capital without leverage, Freddie explains how Bitcoin-only businesses can scale sustainably while strengthening the network itself. We dig into why so many treasury companies risk collapse in a bear market, how B Hodl is structured to avoid forced selling, and why the UK urgently needs a strong Bitcoin voice in both finance and politics. Freddie also explores why institutions will eventually be forced to hold Bitcoin, how mNAV multiples shape valuations, and why every treasury company needs to prove it’s building real infrastructure, not just stacking sats. In this episode: - Why B Hodl is more than a Bitcoin treasury company - How Lightning node operations create real Bitcoin-denominated revenue - Why avoiding leverage is key to long-term survival - Why every company will one day hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN RIVER ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY Follow: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Freddie New: Freddie New: https://x.com/freddienew

Eventually, all companies will hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets. Day one, it's about acquiring as much Bitcoin as we can. But we want to be an absolutely integral part of the Bitcoin infrastructure system. Total market cap of Bitcoin is roughly $2 trillion in the moment. We are talking about a total pool of wealth that is in the hundreds of trillions. Bitcoin is this like £800-pound gorilla sitting in the corner, while all of these tiny little marmasets are scurrying around. and the gorilla's just sitting there doing nothing.

I want him to get up and start beating his chest. If you don't engage with politicians, they just make bad laws. There's no incentives for politicians to understand, but people take away some of their power. But at some point, they may realize that they can actually get more money and more power by embracing it rather than resisting it. And I think that's a tipping point. Cheers.

Cheers. Nice to you again. Welcome to the new What Bitcoin did. This is your first appearance. It is. Thank you very much for having me back. The poshest man in Bitcoin. Is that still true? I think so.

I can't think of someone more posh. Yeah. I mean, my mother did have a double-barreled name before she got married. There you go. And my grandfather was what's now the mayor of London. Your grandfather was the mayor of London? Well, he was the head of the GLC, the General Under Council, who's a conservative politician, Bernard Burttridge. So perhaps I am the poshest man in Bitcoin.

I think so. I think you've just solidified it. What would your grandfather think of the state of London today? Well, the one surviving clip, I think, of my grandfather that is on YouTube is of him ranting about the sex pistols and how pleased he is that he's finally managed to get sex shop windows covered in opaque kleza paint, which until recently was still the case. We need more punk. I'm more of a cyphopunk fan than a straight punk. Fair. As you can probably tell by my voice and my haircuts and my love for ties.

I don't know if you have a love the ties, really. I think you masquerade as a suit corner when it's necessary. Yeah, I mean, I do like a good suit. Do you? Yeah, I've got about 40 as ties in my cupboard. Holy shit. I was a corporate lawyer for years. I have one suit that I wore on my wedding, and then I wear it.

The only other time I've worn it is at BPI events. Nice. Yeah, because they make me wear a suit. Oh, I used to read a websites where, which told you exactly where James Bond got all of his suits made. and who the brands were, and so I religiously followed this. I used to get my shoes in the same churches in Cocherton Jones, black capital Oxford's, Drake's ties, Sandleranassah shirts from German Street.

So you are officially a suitoran. You even say it suit. Yes, that's quite an old-fashioned pronunciation. Is that right? Yeah, not many people say that anymore. Yeah, I've never heard that before. So this might be the poshest conversation I've ever had. Jesus Christ.

Well, I think the conclusion here is we need more posh representation in Bitcoin. We do. We need diverse. We need diversity in Bitcoin. Posh lives matter. But we're here to talk about something totally different. You are the latest Bitcoin Treasury Company, as if we didn't have enough. What's happening?

Yeah, it's exciting times. And obviously why, it's like waiting for a bus, isn't it? You wait all night for a Bitcoin Treasury company, and then three of them arrive at once. So I announced a couple of months. ago that I was moving out of the fear world. I'd obviously wanted to work in Bitcoin for a long time. And it was proposed that I was going to join Coin Corner. As part of those discussions, we began to explore a new venture that some of the Coin Corner team were working on. And as part of those discussions, we decided that instead of joining Coin Corner, I joined the new venture

and would head it up. So I'm going to be acting as the CEO there. None of this is. is public yet, but I think by the time this interview goes out, it will all be public. It will all be public. And we will have announced what I think is going to be quite an exciting change, not just for us, but hopefully for the Bitcoin industry as well. So you focus on the idea that this is a Bitcoin Treasury company. I would say that it's not just a Bitcoin Treasury company. We aim to essentially make Bitcoin our business and we'll obviously delve into this as we talk. But the idea is that we will not just acquire and hold Bitcoin, but we will actively use that, particularly via the deployment of that Bitcoin into lining nodes and generate revenue thereby.

So we very much want this to be a genuine, functional, profitable operating business, which happens to buy and whole Bitcoin and aggressively wants to accumulate as much of that Bitcoin as we can. Considering that our business model actually involves the acquisition deployment of Bitcoin, it makes complete business sense for us to raise as much capital as we can as quickly as possible, deploy as much as we possibly can as soon as we can, because that then creates a virtuous circle or a flywheel of continuing acquisition deployment revenue, acquisition deployment revenue. Okay, so let's go right back to the start. This new company that's spinning up, It's backed by Coin Corner.

Can you talk about who else is going to be involved in the project? Yeah, I can give you a few names. So these will all be public as well. And actually, this is probably the item that we often flagged third when we're speaking to investors. But I think it's worth doing as you have and actually focusing on this from day one. So one of the key differentiating factors that we see for ourselves is that we are a Bitcoin first, Bitcoin only, and Bitcoin-focused business. So a lot of the other treasury companies, many of which I like and whose management I admire strategy, for example, or SWC, those are companies which began in different business sectors and have pivoted.

The differentiating factor for us is really twofold. We're starting in Bitcoin. We're going to remain in Bitcoin. And the people coming on board are some of the best known and most well-experienced Bitcoiners with a UK focus. So just giving you a few names. So alongside me, we're going to have Danny from Coin Corner, who's joining as the chief Bitcoin officer. Dave from Coin Corner is joining as our CFO. So two of the most well-respected and most experienced people already.

Zach from Coin Corner is coming over as a CTO. So he'll be handing the technical side of things. Between Zach and Danny, you've probably got one of the most experienced sets of people in managing and running a lightning node, which would be the core business proposition. We've also got Alan Farrington coming on board as a director. David Jacks is joining us from PayPal. So he was PayPal's first ever CFO, and he's coming aboard as chairman. Is he a Bitcoiner?

He is now. And so what did he do at PayPal? I'm interested. He was their CFO in the very, very early days, so the chief financial officer. Yeah. And perhaps it's worth spending a bit of time on that. So across, I think between what we've tried to do in assembly in the team here is to put together a group of people who are very, very focused on Bitcoin, also very, very focused on paytech, and also with a wide and broad understanding of capital markets and money raising, and also asset management. So Allen's background, of course, is with Bailey Gifford, as you'll know, one of the biggest asset and wealth managers in the world. Bailey Giff had happened to be a client of mine when I was at Robes and Gray. I did a bunch of deals for them.

Some of the most interesting work I did was for Bailey Gifford, particularly in their early startup and tech work. And also we have obviously very, very extreme corporate experience from David. I should say that David's also been on boards of banks. He was on Silicon Valley Bank. He's work for Barclays as well. So he straddles both the pay tech and the traditional financial world. And we really want to combine that, I suppose, that triumvirate of experience between the Bitcoin world, the Paytech world, and the financial capital markets and asset management worlds to really, I suppose, the base layer of the pyramid that we're trying to build.

And so, okay, is there anyone else on the board worth mentioning? Well, I haven't talked very much about myself, but we know each other. No, but I think actually it's worth getting into your background because in Bitcoin, I imagine most people know you as the policy person. Yes. But you obviously have extensive experience before that. So maybe it is worth talking about that. Yeah, sure. Very happy to do that. So my professional background, I trained as a lawyer at Freshfields, which is one of the oldest and most well-respected firms in the UK. Funnily enough, the Bank of England's lawyers for two or three hundred years. No coincidence, I'm sure. And so there I worked for a lot of private equity houses, largely doing take privates. But I also

advise the boards of various different listed companies. So I worked with the Board of Cattles PLC. When I was a young lawyer trainee, I would draft briefing papers for the boards of companies such as Tesco.

And I also advise the board of Avis Europe when they were undergoing their takeover by Avis US, so pushing them back together. I did the first prepack administration of a listed company ever. I think that's

weirdly that's such an esoterically weird thing to say and it's something that no one will ever remember but if there is ever a wiki page on... You'll be on it. That was a horrendous deal. That was DTZPLC. So I've got a lot of experience both in terms of advising boards that

unlisted companies but also doing listed company work as well, which is crucially important for the of responsibilities I will have as CEO of our new company. We should probably mention the name, which I think will be in public domain by the time we. Yeah. We've finally settled on B-hoddle, obviously the B-Hoddle, obviously the B-L looking like the Bitcoin B. I don't know whether it's deliberate that it sounds a little bit like Behold, but, you know. I don't know how like you though. Maybe there's a marketing ploy. Behold, B-Hoddle. Anyway, no. If you already self-custody

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That's LEDN.io forward slash WBD. The focus on this treasury company, which is more than just a treasury company, is British. So who else have you got to come in on like the investment side? Well, Adam Back is taking a significant position in the company. So he will be subscribing prior, to IPO. So fantastic to have him on board. And to the extent that we can draw on his expertise, that would be fantastic. And I think the fact that he's coming in this early on and with this much enthusiasm is a good sign for our future prospects. And certainly we'd like to gain as much

benefit as we can, both from our association with him as one of our shareholders to whom I will be owing my duties and also his incredible experience in the Bitcoin world. Yeah. And also, so full disclosure, I am also going to be an investor. It's funny because I almost feel awkward about saying it because I've been so critical of treasury companies. And like to be very clear, the reason this is interesting to me is because of the team you guys have. So when Danny first told me about this, first of all, I think what Danny and the team of Coin Coin Con have done is incredible. Like, they're people that I trust deeply. And the thing that resonated with me is that this is a Bitcoin first play. So maybe it's worth getting into

how this business model is actually set up. Sure. And perhaps before, even before I answer that, I think it's right to be skeptical. We come from an industry where we are encouraged to challenge everything. And I completely think that's the correct approach to take. And it's the reason that I'm much less rich than I might otherwise be. If I was less skeptical, I would have bought a lot more Bitcoin early on. Yeah. I didn't. I misunderstood it. And I have to live with the consequences now. But so I, I completely agree. And maybe we'll dig in a little. I think we should because one of the, when I look at the treasury companies, I almost separate strategy. I think meta planet because of its jurisdiction and the length it's been running.

And I think there'll be a few others in terms of, I assume what Adam is going to do with his own treasury treasury company is going to be successful. I think what Jack's doing at 21 is likely to be. And those ones I put down to just the sheer size of them to starting out. I think there's then a lot of also Rams that see Bitcoin as kind of a get out of jet of jet, sale free card for a failing company. And they're the ones that I'm incredibly skeptical of. I don't know how they're going to weather any kind of bear market. Maybe it's worth getting your opinion on just like the entire market here.

Okay. So stepping back a few months and possibly even years, I originally had slight misgivings around Michael Saylor buying all the Bitcoin. Not least because if you take it to an absurd extent, If Saylor holds all of the Bitcoin, then it's completely pointless. No one will be using it as money. No, I'll be paying with it. No, it will be self-custodying it.

And all of those three things, I think, are fundamentally important to Bitcoin and all in its nature. So without those, what on earth is the point? I would like Sayler to stop buying so much and leave some for the rest of us. But at the same time, I think what he's done is crucially important in opening the gates to a gigantic total addressable market. And again, here's the conflict between my suit coin and nature and my Bitcoin in nature. I very strongly adhere to the principles of self-custody, but I also concede that for some

people, self-custody is either difficult or impossible. Whether you are talking about someone who wants to get tax-favored exposure to Bitcoin through buying an ETF, and that's fine. I'm a free market capitalist, I believe that you should be free to deploy your money however you see fit. Or if you're someone, maybe you're an elderly person who doesn't understand how to use their phone. So good luck using a cold card. Brilliant products there they are. So there's one pool of capital, which is definitely under-exposed to Bitcoin.

And I think secondly, once you have achieved the size of a strategy, then you will, are able to attract more attention from other industry players, which will bring more capital into the industry. And we don't need to rehash exactly what Saylor is doing, but that is completely what he's doing. Yes, he's tapping into the equity capital markets, the debt capital markets, and those are gigantic pools of capital. Interestingly, as well, some of those pools of capital are, effectively what's called mandated capital. So in otherwise, they will be running pools of capital or wealth funds that are invested according to certain rules that are determined by their risk committee, by their investment committee and so on. And many of those will simply be unable

to hold self-custy Bitcoin. And again, this is where some of the conflict arises. If I believe that all investors deserve exposure to Bitcoin and to the Bitcoin industry, then those mandated pools of capital also deserve that. I agree. And I think it's worth think maybe before we drill on even further, it's worth focusing on, I think, one of the business angles that we believe is under addressed. So we've already explained that we think that the total of pool of capital that wants exposure to Bitcoin probably doesn't have it yet. So from an investor perspective, you're talking about a total addressable market that could hockey stick up from where we are at the moment. Just putting some numbers on that. Total market

cap of Bitcoin is roughly $2 trillion at the moment. We are talking about. We are talking about talking about a total pool of wealth that is in the hundreds of trillions. So the amount of exposure of Bitcoin is tiny. In pure number terms, in America, we think maybe 50 million people hold it. In the UK, maybe 7 million. And I think those numbers are really high. Yeah, I agree. I don't think it's that high.

And those could include people who've, you know, got a hundred Satoshis that someone sent them in the wallet of Satoshi. So the investment thesis there is very simple. And this applies whether you're talking about Bitcoin or a Bitcoin Treasury company, lots and lots of capital out there under-allocated Bitcoin. That's the first point. And the second point is, we like to think of, certainly at B. Hoddle, we like to think of the three aspects of the Bitcoin industry. First is Bitcoin itself as an asset. And then second, we have the network. It's both of those things and more. It's also an ecosystem of businesses

that are growing up around exposure to use of custody of that asset. And that includes businesses like Debify or like Anchor Watch, which offering lending or insurance products and so on. And then in terms of the network, all of the pay tech businesses, the lightning implementations, mini bits and the e-cash developments that we're seeing, all of the software development and hardware development actually in terms of point of sale devices and bolt cards. There's a huge pay tech piece as well. And each of those three, we believe, again, in a fly beyond system, are further, I suppose, building out and growing each of the others.

All three of those are important. And we aim to sit at the epicenter of those three different pillars of what we see as the Bitcoin industry. So when you looking at this, like a lot of the Treasury companies that are popping up don't actually really have a business model. Like, this is no shade on Metaplanet, but the hotel part of the business doesn't matter. You can't stay in a Metaplanet Hotel? I have not. Not yet. I think so, yeah.

And when it comes to like strategy, again, like that has become a very insignificant portion of the business. Some of these like flat out really don't have anything. Are you going to have an actual business? The actual business is going to be the first, in the acquisition and then secondly the deployment of Lightning. So it's worth explaining how that deployment of Lightning. any works. Sure.

Yeah, I'm very happy. So if no one's ever run a Lightning Note before, the basic principle is that you you peg in and peg out from the base layer. I mean, you know this as well, if not better than I do. So you have an initial transaction to open the channel. And then once your channel is opened, your node then connects to other participants in the Lightning network, almost like a mesh. So it's not a one-to-one correspondence.

It's literally a network. And the way that you derive revenue from using that is you are able to charge as a routing fee a proportion of the amount of Bitcoin that you have locked in that channel. So we are leasing a top 100 rated Lightning node on day one from Coin Corner. And that will be owned, managed and run for the period of that rolling lease by Bee Hoddle. And it's important to note that the ranking is very important. Ranking is based on both age of the known and also capacity. So the one that we're acquiring from day one is going to be one of the notes with the best reputation globally

for routing and secure payments. And we're really starting as we mean to go on. We believe that pay tech is integral to the success of Bitcoin. And it happens to be a way that you can legitimately charge revenue in Bitcoin from day one and immediately derive income into the company simply from the acquisition of the asset Bitcoin itself. So in a nutshell, that is the business model. And then maybe to finish off in percentage terms, the routing fees will range between 1, sort of 9.7%. So that's the interesting part to me that I want to try and dig into a little if we can.

I mean, I was talking to Alan Farrington probably less than that. And this is where the yield actually comes from. Yes, yes, it is. But when you say that the range goes from, I think you said 1% to 9. I think those figures that you're talking about is, I'm pretty sure Block came out and said they were getting 9% on their lightning node. From what I understand, I could be wrong.

The reason they get such high numbers is because they essentially set the fees for anyone sending transactions from Cash App. I know River have come out with the report. They run a really large Lightning Node. I think they said they get about 1.5%. So where do you think you can sit on that? We would be looking to hit a range of about 2 to 2.5. Okay, that seems achievable.

Yeah, we hope so. And remember that this is a flywheel as well. So the more Bitcoin you acquire, the more we will be able to deploy its lightning. And at the same time, it becomes a virtuous circle because the more reliable your node infrastructure is the fewer failed payments there are. And ideally, the more people will build on the lightning network. And that supports the third piece of the stool that I spoke of before, which is the ecosystem of businesses. So the more reliable your pay-tech network, the more people will be looking

to start companies and to launch payment processing businesses, et cetera, et cetera. And then each of the three limbs begin to support each other. Okay, that makes sense. So we've got, on the business model, there's running a lightning node as one part of it. Is there anything else in the roadmap that you can talk about yet? There are other things in the roadmap, but I'm not able to talk about those at the moment. But there are. are two, if not three, different business opportunities we're also exploring. But this will become public in due course. Okay. Well, you have to let me know when you can talk about it. You come back on the show. So what do you think will, again, when I come back to the fact that I'm skeptical on

treasury companies, one of the things that I am skeptical about is the idea of a treasury company that's just copy-paste, but in a different jurisdiction, to me is not that interesting. Because if you're in the UK and you want exposure to a treasury company, you can still buy strategy. It doesn't matter that you're in the UK. But with these new kind of novel business models, I think that does make it interesting. So what is your differentiator? I think we've spoken about it to an extent.

And maybe I'd add one more. So you mentioned earlier that a lot of these companies seem like zombie companies or failing companies that saw Bitcoin is a Hail Mary pass. We're actually not that at all. We are, in fact, definitively a new company that is starting from day one with a clean business plan and a, clean balance sheet. And our focus is very much on Bitcoin. I haven't aired this with the team so far, but I don't know if you know the myth of Athena's birth. No, I don't. Tell me. Well, Athena

sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus. Zeus had an affair with her mother, Metus, who was the goddess of wisdom. And Metis was a shapeshifter, and Zeus swallowed her. And after she turned to a fly and thought he'd got rid of her. And then Zeus had an absolutely terrible headache, and Prometheus split his head open with an axe. Obviously, Zeus was an immortal, so it might have hurt him, but didn't kill him. And then Athena, a goddess of wisdom and war, springs fully formed from the head of Zeus. So in that context, we're aiming to enter the market fully formed as a Bitcoin business from day one, with a business model that's focused on Bitcoin and growth and development plans that are focused purely on Bitcoin in the Bitcoin industry.

So that for me is a key differentiator. I love that analogy. So when it comes down to the long-term viability of these companies, again, an idea I've had in my head for a long time, which may be proven to be wrong, and that's great if it is, is that we're going to have these Treasury's companies crop up, hoover up Bitcoin, and then depending on things like the terms on their debt, they're going to end up having to spit that out in a bare market.

And I don't know how it will play out, but I could see a scenario where if it doesn't cause the next bear market, it certainly exacerbates the next bear market. So how are you thinking about that? That's a brilliant question. And that actually is probably my key worry about Bitcoin treasury companies as well. And I think because of that, it's something that I am laser focused on and the team is laser focused on. So maybe backtracking to some of my previous career, I mentioned the, uh, the prepack. So a prepack admin is when a company has effectively become insolvent conduct administration and it is then restructured and it's

debts are either repaid or refinance and so on. So I spend a lot of time as a restructuring and insolvency lawyer. So I've seen how bad debts poorly managed can be for a company and how these things can very easily precipitate state insolvency. In the Bitcoin world, I'm still very alive to what happened in summer of 2022. And I think the Lunar Foundation Guard and what happened with that, with that organization of Bitcoin is a good, cautionary tale for all of us involved in this space. You'll remember that LFG accumulated, I mean, God knows how many Bitcoin. Yeah, it was a lot. I can't remember. It was a huge amount. Yeah. And then there was a fire sale as they tried to maintain the pig.

and that I think is a key risk for the sector. If you enter a market downturn and you become a forced seller, then that snowballs. And to be honest, that's the same for any asset. If there's more selling pressure than buying pressure, the price drops is very simple. It's not hard math. And if you have any form of leverage at some point,

it's not whether you want to sell, you have to sell. Exactly. And so worth addressing that point up front, we are entering the market with no leverage. we are purely raising funds through equity finance, which yes, is dilutive, but at the same time, it enables us to acquire more Bitcoin. And so the more Bitcoin we have, the more we will be able to deploy and so on. And so we create the virtuous circle. Secondly, in terms of becoming a forced seller, because the team are so acutely focused on downside risk, and I should mention that

the coin corner guys, the ones who are joining our board, they have got experience of whether during two if not three bear markets. Yeah. For anyone who's listening who doesn't know who coin kind or are, they're probably the best exchange in the UK, really solid team, been going for a long time. Completely agree with that. That's the principal reason.

The TLDAR. Yeah. Yeah. The quality of the team, I think, is unmatched. Yeah. And one of the things I was very keen to understand was how they had managed to steer their business through two if not three bare markets since they first launched.

Yeah. 2014, I think they kicked off. And so they are super focused on that. So am I. The absolutely red line for me is becoming a forced seller of B. Hoddle's Bitcoin into a seller, into effectively a buyer's market. I don't want that to happen. And there are two ways of avoiding that, being very simplistic about it.

One is being very careful about the amount of debt that you take on and whether you can service that debt. So in some ways, it doesn't matter how much debt you have, so long as you have sufficient free cash flow to service that debt. Time and time again in my restructuring work, you would see people taking on too much debt when interest rates are low and thinking they were going to remain low forever. And then suddenly when you come to refinance, you have to refinance at 7.5% rather than that five. And the free cash flow generated by your business is no longer sufficient to pay the coupon on

that debt or to pay your interest. At that point, that's when you begin to get into trouble. So drawing on all of my experiences of restructuring an insolvency lawyer, this is something that I'm acutely cautious of. So the way that the team have decided to focus on that, and credit to Dave in particular for modeling this, the initial raise, we will hold back sufficient working capital to fund four years' worth of operations, which should take us, even if we do have another 50 to 80 percent downturn of the Bitcoin price, which I personally think is unlikely, given the current state of the market. but, you know, we've all been wrong before.

Yeah, I don't know. It's one of those things where I don't think it's going to happen, but I would not be shocked if it did happen. Exactly. If, and even though I don't think it might happen, I'm like 60% at most. So if you do go into that drawdown, you're saying like the only issue is if you have debt,

where I understand if you've got no leverage, you have no need to sell. But are you planning on taking leverage against that Bitcoin at some point? Not initially. Okay. And any such decision would be one for the board to do, and we would only take that.

decision provided that it was in the best interests of both the company and our shareholders at the time. So our focus as board members and minor CEO is on maximizing value for shareholders. And that is absolutely primary. So initially we will begin with no leverage. And as I say, we will retain sufficient working capital from that first raise to make sure that we can run for four years without actually. having to generate any income at all.

What percentage of the Bitcoin you're raising has to be, say, put to one side for working to capital? I can't put an exact percentage on it for the purposes of this interview, but I can say the vast majority of the initial raise will be deployed immediately into Bitcoin purchases, and then we want to continue accumulating our Bitcoin from further raises as aggressively as we possibly can. So the plan is to raise more money through, to stack more Bitcoin, but you're not going to take on debt to stack more Bitcoin. Not initially, no. And like I said, unless the board determine that it's in the best interest of the company and shareholders to do so. Yeah. And I think it's worth

backtracking to something we said about strategy. You can't do that until you hit a certain size. Yeah. And until you have exposure to those vast pools of institutional capital that we talked about as well. Bitcoin is absolutely ripping. And in every ball market, there's always a new wave of investors. And with it, a flood of new companies, new products and new promises. But if you've been around long enough, you've seen how this story ends for a lot of them. Some cut corners, take risk with your money, or just disappear. That's why when it comes to buying Bitcoin, the only exchange I recommend is River. They deeply care about doing things right for their clients and are built to last with security and transparency at their core. With River, you have

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long does just selling equity to buy Bitcoin remain interesting? Because we've seen strategy come out and they've done all these preferred. And I think some of those products are really interesting. I think they're going to drive massive demand. Is there still a market for just purely selling equity to buy Bitcoin? Potentially, but I also counter that by saying that we're doing more than that. We're selling equity to buy Bitcoin to use the Bitcoin. Yep.

So I think I'd triangulate that in terms of B-Hoddle for what we're actually trying to do in terms of the Bitcoin industry. and the first, pretty much the first page of our marketing deck sets out that, we want to be a Bitcoin infrastructure and services company. So this, for us, this is just the beginning. And some of those additional business lines that I talked about are things that we're actively going to explore over the next few years, with a dual mandate, really, of keeping costs and expenses low, while absolutely maximizing the amount of other income that comes in to the business.

And again, worth flagging the example you go of the zombie companies, we very much don't want to be a zombie company, and we can't be because we're brand new. And we want to be an integral part of the Bitcoin industry, potentially globally, but definitely in the United Kingdom. And maybe worth getting on one of my hobby horses, if you don't mind. I've said before I've been to a lot of events in parliament and lobbying and so on, where they are full to the brim of shitcoiners. Yep. And Web3 people who are creating companies and products backed by VC money,

products that have no product market fit, for which there will likely never be an addressable market, let alone a total addressable market. And yet they are making a lot of noise. And I've often felt as though Bitcoin is this like 800-pound gorilla sitting in the corner, while all of these tiny little marmasets are scurrying around. And the gorilla's just sitting there doing nothing.

I want him to get up and start beating his chest. And creating a company like this, growing up the scale we hope to grow, we want to be a part, not just of that conversation, but also in part of being an integral player in the Bitcoin industry in the UK, which we think is aggressively underserved. I mean, I totally agree. We were talking about this just before. The number of products that they have in the US that you can't get access to in the UK,

and the same in Australia where I live, is shocking. There's so much, there's so much base for people to innovate there, but the problem is just the regulations and the law gets in the way. So are you still going to be doing the policy work that you're doing now? Yes, I will. So I think we're delving into that a little bit. I was just on a panel here in Riga talking about Bitcoin and State. And again, it's the suit corner dilemma, isn't it?

A suit. Exactly. Exactly. Some of us think there's no point in engaging with politicians. But one of the points I made on stage is that if you don't engage with politicians, they just make bad laws. And we need to do everything in our power to make sure that they're inevitably going to make laws. So if that's the case, let them be as good as they possibly can be. And unless we stand up for ourselves and make noise, they won't be.

So in terms of policy work, we are hoping to also deploy some some of the funds raised towards advocacy efforts, whether those are via BPUK or otherwise. And as part of that, in order to remain completely objective, I've stepped off the board of BPUK, so I will no longer take operational decisions at the company. I will still write policy papers for them on a more fellowship basis, perhaps more akin to the way that BPI function. Yeah. But the current management team will take operational decisions.

and I'll still be ideally going to Parliament and negotiating with regulators with HMRC, Treasury and so on. I already have a line of direct communication with Lord Vasey, who is co-chair of the new cryptocurrency and digital assets, all-party parliamentary group. See, I know nothing about this. What is this? Oh, do you remember Lisa Cameron, who came to Edinburgh a few years back? No, I don't. I didn't go to Edinburgh. Oh, okay. So in the UK, we have... various different all-party parliamentary groups which bring together lords and MPs from both sides of the table to talk about important issues and effectively push for those issues in

parliament and decision-making. So Lisa Cameron was chair of the APBG. I used to attend and I've given evidence a couple of times there and Lord Vasey has recently reconstituted it. He is, I think, hesitantly quite good news for the space. It is In the ride over here, I was describing in the car how we had used an analogy of sort of blue chip companies listed on a market as more akin to Bitcoin and new codes that I established in my kitchen as more akin to a meme coin on Solana. Yeah. He understood that immediately, the different risk profiles of those two assets. And we obviously have a principle in UK and elsewhere, which is same risk, same regulation. if you concede that two assets have a different risk profile,

then, provided you still believe in same risk regulation, same risk, same regulation, you should also then differentiate the way that you regulate those assets. So that's a chinkanarama. He liked that. I wrote to him just yesterday, congratulating him on the new APBG. So I definitely want to exploit that relationship. I have a direct line in also to the, the head of fintech at the Department for Business Industry and Trade.

We very, very much want to act as a loud voice in the United Kingdom for Bitcoin and the Bitcoin industry. And this is a personal bugbear of mine, as you probably know. Britain's fantastic at finance and we were fantastic at information technology. It is almost criminal that Bitcoin, which sits at basically the Venn diagram that that is a circle, is criminal that we have let that opportunity to pass us by. I think it's the most frustrating thing I've ever seen a country do

is when Brexit happened, no matter whether you thought it was good or bad, the fact that the UK didn't incentivize as much business as possible comes to the UK and on top of that, incentivize Bitcoin is the biggest miss.

Completely. And it's shocking to see. And the fact that it's only got worse is just, it's honestly embarrassing at this point. And it's still getting worse. Yeah. It's utterly extraordinary.

Yeah. I don't know how closely you follow our work, but the direct communications we've had with Treasury over the past year and a half got increasingly frustrating. Andrew Griffith and the last government from Bimafalami were not bad. We even had a cordial exchange with Tulip Zedek once she came into government. Emma Reynolds, bless her, I'm not going to slander her, but it's clear from her correspondence with us that she doesn't understand Bitcoin at all and likely never will.

Yeah. That's the thing. It's not in that interest. understand it because it just disrupts the power that they already have. And that's why I'm both very appreciative of the work that you are doing here. But I also think at some point, like something has to change. This is like one of those situations where change happens one funeral at a time, I think. Yeah, I love that quote.

I mean, being slightly more elaborate, I think it was Max Planck who said that, you know, people don't, people don't convince other people of the truth of new ideas. what really happens is that the adorned of the old die out over time until they are replaced by the new yours is much neater i've never heard the real one but there we go yeah no no it's true but so are you seeing the policy side of this like you said that the company may help support these policy institutes in the UK as almost an insurance plan for the main treasury company in generic terms i'd say that all in the industries have lobbying arms. And you will have seen recently photographs of Brian Armstrong at 10 Downing Street.

Pretend to be a bit quieter. What exactly? Although he's got a great haircut. He has a great haircut. Yeah. I totally agree. I would, I mean, not bigging myself up, but I would much prefer that it was me standing. Oh, I agree. A wholeheartedly, yeah. Oh, thank you. I'll shave my head out of respect. So, I mean, one of the key issues we've, I default to this all the time, there is a complete failure of politicians, regulators to understand the difference between Bitcoin and the very broad crypto market. I mean, it's got to the point where I feel that crypto is so broad a term, it's almost useless now.

100%. Yeah, I'm glad you agree. It's because it's very, very difficult to see that an NFT of a cat has anything to do with a non-state, globally accessible, completely decentralized, peer-to-beer digital money. How are those two things the same? They are as different as you watching, I don't know, a trailer on, no, for the new Bond film, or doing an Excel spreadsheets. They're completely different things. They both happen to use computers. And to a degree, your UX is similar, and you may be accessing them through a keyboard,

but other than that, they have nothing in common with each other. And so do you almost see this as a way of getting more attention from policymakers, in the sense that if you are a real business that has a proven track record, they might actually listen to you more than being just a policy group in the UK. Personally, I think that's a good summary. And the BP UK will continue doing its work and will continue writing papers and hopefully holding events and pushing forwards. But as you were talking a moment ago,

I strongly feel a lot of the incentives here are ultimately going to be market-driven. So you said that there's no incentives for politicians to understand, but it will take away some of their power. That's true. But at some point, they may realize that they can actually get more money and more power by embracing it rather than resisting it.

And I think that's a tipping point. And I've mentioned before that in some respects, I've always felt that commercial banks were going to be an ally in the fight against CBDCs, largely because CBDCs have the potential to disintermediate. To circumvent that. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Yeah, you get it. So at some point, once banks and other institutions and businesses realize and are demonstrating that there's a lot of money to be made in the space, then it's your incentives of being in the business. into line with those of politicians who, frankly, just want to tax businesses and tax people in order to make more laws, which hopefully won't be bad ones, because we'll be lobbying them. And I don't even think that, I think you're 100% right. That's not even speculation at this

point, because we've seen what's happened in America with Larry Fink. He has gone from being someone who was strongly pushing this ESG narrative, which was very negative, especially for Bitcoin mining, to being like a pretend bitconer who's now pushing Bitcoin. And I can see that thing happening to the UK as well. But it's just, I mean, we're simply. still so far behind. Yeah, and honestly, I don't, I don't sadly have a good answer as to why we are so far behind because, I mean, return to Adam back, who you mentioned earlier, you know, we've got an incredible reputation in the space, some of the best minds who worked on this stuff have been

Brits. And yet our government and our political class are full of people who don't understand and don't care. And honestly, I try to be nice to them. I believe a lot of them went into the jobs they do for good intentions. And sometimes I wonder whether we should simply just pay them more. Well, I mean, I don't disagree, though. Like, you would probably know the figure, but the Prime Minister of the UK earns a shockingly small amount of money for the job that they're doing. Yeah, I mean, not blowing my own trumpet, but when I was a senior associate at Robson

and Grey, I was earning more than the Prime Minister. Yeah, and that's insane. Like, there's no way a job of that. I mean, I was working hard on him. Yeah, well, but maybe if you pay more, you work hard. Well, yeah. Yeah, exactly. But I totally agree with that.

I think the answer could be to pay these people more. Just getting back to the new business, how much are you raising? We've not even got there yet. How much Bitcoin are you going to stack? I can't give you an exact figure because the round hasn't closed yet, and it's not public yet, but it will be very soon. So we are, I think I can say we're raising a very healthy amount from a number of well-respected investors, some of whom you may know. personally. Danny Knowles is, for example. I've heard of him.

And like I say, we will deploy the vast majority of that immediately into Bitcoin and then we'll get back on the road. And we're looking to raise more money to tell the equity story to more people and raise more and more Bitcoin. We want to grow as aggressively and as fast as possible. And to be honest, I really admire what Andrew at Smolowaweber's done. And I like the fact that we have a very strong competitor. And in some ways, having them ahead of us is kind of fun.

Did you ever run track when you're a kid? I know you played very slow. I was very slow. I was slow. Yeah, no, I never run track. I threw the discus, but I never run track. Discus was fun. I used to run track.

I used to be first leg in our 4x-by-100. And you don't look like you should be fast. You're fucking massive. I was a lot smaller. And I used to be fast as well. Yeah, running in lane one, running the inside bend was wonderful because you could literally see how far ahead everyone was of you. And when you come around the bend, you suddenly realize you've overtaken them all. And that's the mental model I have in my mind here.

I like the fact that there are people ahead of us. It gives us something to aim for and something to overtake. So we should talk about a smart web company because they, I think it's the most successful IPO in UK history, is that right? Believe so on their metrics in terms of share price growth. And they launched on Acquis, which is a small exchange in the UK compared to like the LSE. You're launching on the same one. I think I probably know the answer to this, but why are you launching on that one? Well, it's a, it's in some ways it's quicker to market.

and it's also a growth-focused exchange. So for those, and perhaps another thing to mention is that they also have a degree of familiarity with this type of business model. So those things are helpful. The process of going through an IPO is extremely rigorous, and I won't go into details here because it's easy to look them up,

but just for context's sake, a lot of regulation has to be complied with, a lot of disclosures have to be made, and an awful lot of paperwork has to be done. For example, every statement that you make in your prospectors or your offering document, which is the basis on which investors are putting their money into your company, needs to be verifiably true, and each of those statements need to be checked in rigorous detail by your lawyers, your accountants, your financial advisor.

So the process of launching on any exchanges is rigorous. Having an exchange that understands your business model is helpful and also launching on a growth market is also helpful because frankly, as I mentioned before, we're not a zombie company. We're a new, we're a day one business. And effectively, our first day of trading is also new, could be thought of as, you know, effectively our first day of actually doing business because it's the day on which we can commence our business model. When it comes to Aquis, I see the being kind of positives and negatives to being on an exchange of that size. And the benefit there is, like, if this is retail driven, it's real like spot-driven market

without all that kind of financial engineering on top. But does it also limit your upside potential without the real big money being there? I think that's fair. And this is a comment made generally about the wider market, not simply a B-Hoddle and our company. I think that's a fair categorization. So you've got to think about what's the size of the pool in which you're swimming. and who might join that pool and what's the total size of that pool. So, SmarterWeb grew to about a billion market cap quite quickly, largely driven from retail and high net worths.

A billion is great, but to access to bigger pools of capital, you would ideally also list, and you would potentially move your listing from AQUEST maybe to aim or eventually the LSE. And I probably can't give too many details about this, but in order to access pools of capital that are larger than would might be available on ACMES, that would be something that the board would consider. And again, at all times with a view on maximizing shareholder value and is it in the best interest of the company. But there is a potential pathway to move into those other exchanges. It's perfectly possible to move from one, to move the listing. and it's even possible to move a listing from one country to another.

Some countries are dual listed. So some companies, Carnival cruise ships from, they used to be dual listed on London and New York Stock Exchange. Okay, but you don't see the fact that Aquis being mainly, well, first of all, it's a very small market compared to LSC, mainly retail, you don't see that as a negative. Could it be a positive for you? Ideally, positive initially, and that's why we've chosen to go there. speed to market, word of mouth, and hopefully supportive of the rate at which we hope to grow. And so when, again, back to Smarter Web Company, they had an insane rise. They did incredibly well. Share prices down quite a lot from the top that they put in.

Is that because they've diluted, or is that just the way that the market is gone? I think they've suffered from a general market-wide reduction because, Coincillium suffered a similar drop in share price at roughly the same time. And actually, micro-charities stock hasn't been performed particularly well over the same period as well. So it's possible that's a wider macro market reaction. And I mean, look, we've been a Bitcoin for a long time. We know what happens when a price goes vertical.

It goes the other way quite quick. Well, yeah. Swings and roundabouts. It's the little meme of the guy in the roller coaster, isn't it? Yeah. So let's go into the MNAV stuff because I don't actually know what strategy is that. I think it's under two at the moment. I think meta planets at like three and a half or something like that.

What do you think a realistic, mature MNAV for a company like this should be? I think the answer would depend on where you are in Bitcoin's history. So eventually over the very long term, I would have thought that most MNabs would trend to what, wouldn't they, because once all of the Bitcoin has been issued and acquired and absent any underlying operating business, then your multiple is, well, actually, perhaps that's not fair. So maybe let's think about how companies are traditionally valued. So you'll be familiar with the different ways of valuing companies just to rattle a few off. You know, you have an EBITDA multiple, a discounted cash flow multiple for an asset management

business or you might have an AUM multiple. And all valuations are forward-looking. They're about the expectations of a future value or future cash flow. So when I take one of the most basic being an EBITDA multiple, that's your earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. So when I was working in private equity, we would see EBITDA multiples between five, going up to 12 times, which was pretty nuts in a private equity business. And what that translates to in actual cash terms is that today's value of the company includes the expectations of between five and 12 years of future cash flow at that same level.

And that's the basic principle on which MNAV potentially works. So MNAV is obviously the, that's the ratio between the enterprise value of the company and the asset value of the Bitcoin that you hold, basically. So it's exposed to the wide variations and fluctuations in the Bitcoin price and also the rate at which the company can aggressively acquire it. So in some ways, valuing a company on an MNAV that is greater than one isn't necessarily illogical because what you're assuming there is that two things really, I think. Firstly, that the Bitcoin which you hold is likely to continue appreciating. I forget what the cargo of Bitcoin is the moment. It's about 40%. 37% or something like that, yeah.

Yeah, there you go. So if you're doing an EMNA evaluation, you're looking at a 40% annual increase over X period of time. And in the example I just gave on EBITDA, even in the PE industry, that was 5 to 12. The tech giants in the US, I think some of them are on insane multiples, 30, 40, 50. I think Costco's at like 20-something.

Yeah, I mean, which is functionally insane. That's a whole different conversation around why are those valuations so high, and is that because people are parking their money in them because they can't need it in the bank account. So I think potentially, you know, slightly backtracking in what I said a moment ago, an M now are greater than one, if you factor into the M now of the future gains that you see in your Bitcoin holdings, so even if you never bought another Bitcoin, let's say you get, I don't know, nice round number 2100, even if you never bought another Bitcoin, if the cargo stays reasonably high, the compound annual growth rate,

then for the period that you hold the stock, you might look to see appreciation based on that number of years you hold it multiplied by the compound annual growth rate. So even where you never to buy any more Bitcoin, you could potentially see an MNAV of greater than or significantly greater than one. It's because to me, I think these treasury companies have to keep MNAV of greater than one. Otherwise, I don't see why anyone will buy them. Well, yes, that is a fairly, it's an elegant point well made. But so, like, when you look at this, obviously, there's always

the, like, growth period of a company like this where MNAVs tend to go high. Whether that happens or not, who knows? That's up to the market to decide. But what I can't quite figure out is what the end game for these companies is. Like, is one and a half MNAV enough to make it interesting to investors? Or, like, because at some point, you have to factor in risk of parting with your keys, essentially. Like, if the comparison is you either buy one of these treasury companies or you buy Bitcoin, you can buy Bitcoin at one XMNAV yourself with no risk or the risk is with you. So, like, what is the amount above one that these treasury companies have to retain to make them an interesting proposition?

I think that's an interesting question. I can't answer for other companies, but I think certainly for ours, the answer is quite simple that we are going to be a Bitcoin business, not just a Bitcoin holding business. And so for us, being and developing the Bitcoin infrastructure and services side is an additional kicker that you would have in terms of our valuation. And so being an actual operating business that derives cash flow, and revenues from additional services in the Bitcoin industry is another way in which you could value the business. In fact, over time, it might not be unfair to value us on an EBITR multiple basis, for example. Or if our business models, proposition and forecast are successful, you could even value us on a DCF basis. So, I mean, there are all kinds of different ways of valuing companies and you're not restricted in in using one or the other.

And I mentioned private equity earlier, a lot of private equity houses will have their own in-house secret source valuation models that they will use. So I think it's an interesting question. I think you really got to drill down at what the business actually does. If all your business does is buy and hold Bitcoin. It's not interesting. Exactly.

Well, other than academic do, if you're watching your stock ticker, if all your business does is own and hold Bitcoin, And perhaps that's the only valuation metric that you should use. But if your business doesn't mourn than just hold it, then it's interesting to consider other valuation methodologies that may also be applicable. Yeah, okay. So, like, looking further out, because it's funny,

this podcast at the moment almost feels like a Bitcoin Treasury podcast. It comes up in every show. It's all people want to talk about. And, like, to be fully transparent, I find a lot of it boring. And the reason being, like, this is, is not why I got into Bitcoin. I got into Bitcoin for sort of the freedom money side of things. At the same time, I would never have done this investment if I didn't think this was something a little bit unique. And honestly, the big thing was the team behind it. Like, I trust that these

are actual bitcoins. And there's a lot of people that are just sort of cosplaying as Bitcoiners doing this thing. But if you look further out as this matures, at the moment we're seeing a Bitcoin treasury company literally every week, do you think that is going to diminish or increase? I suspect the spate of Bitcoin trading companies will probably slow down. And that's just my personal view, not one from B-Hoddle. I also think the space for businesses working in the sector, I hopefully will increase. And again, taking a very, very sort of bird's-eye view of this, I think it's a principle that all of the team hold that eventually all companies will hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet. That's something I'm very bullish on. Like, I want to see the big

companies that have cash flows buying Bitcoin. That's way more interesting to me than like some random coffee company in like some tiny country doing a Bitcoin treasury play to try and save their balance sheet. But I think what you said there, you've pinpointed exactly why you would do it. Why would you hold Bitcoin on your balance sheet if you're a small company? It's because you don't want to see the value of your cash treasury be the melting ice cube that Saylor talked about years ago. And the percentage, if you think about it in a percentage terms, it's utterly astonishing. I forget how much cash Apple had on its balance sheet, but at one point it was sitting on something at 70 billion. And at the rate of inflation at the time, that was evaporating. Yeah. And yet they did nothing

with it. They kept it in cash. I find that decision inexplicable. I agree. Why wouldn't they allocate even 1% into the best performing asset of all time? They would have, I mean, And again, looking at in risk-adjusting, I love it when people bring up Bitcoin risk. Risk is a part of life. Yeah. Risk is fun. And all you need to decide is what's your level of risk tolerance and to whom do you owe the duties to? So if I'm a manager of someone else's money, I owe, I have fiduciary responsibilities to them to manage the money as responsibly as I possibly can with a level of risk to which they are accustomed and happy with.

So if they are happy for me to take a slightly riskier position with 1% of their capital, their worst case now is they lose 1% of their capital, completely gone forever. So that's your absolute worst case. Well, I think the actual worst case is maybe different to that. And correct me if I'm wrong here, but the way I think about the reason companies like Apple don't do it is probably one, they're like very conservative in nature. And I think what they'd be worried about, although I do not think this would happen, is if they decided to have, allocate 1% of their cash position to Bitcoin, what happens to the share price? And I think they'd be wearing the share price then falls, which I don't think would happen.

Interesting. I could be wrong. I suspect. I mean, I'm just playing that through. If Apple were to buy Bitcoin, would their share price fall? No, it wouldn't. I really don't think it would fall, but I think that's the risk that their way, like, their sort of trading are.

Well, yeah, and remember, your decision-making at a company that big is very slow and very cumbersome, which is why we've seen Bitcoin adoption largely. smaller companies. So for Apple to make a decision like that, it would need to go through the risk committee, you would have many different board meetings. There would be investor relations calls and a lot of the investors might say, we don't like exposure to Bitcoin, don't do this. Yeah. You probably saw the recent proposition at Microsoft's board where the Microsoft should adopt Bitcoin. When Saylor did his call with them. Yes, exactly. And they voted no. I was completely unsurprised by that. Yeah, me too. I completely unsurprised. And you've got to remember that

this is a slightly geeky point, but one that's important, a lot of the shares of these very big companies are held, not by active, motivated investors who go to shareholder meetings and vote. They are held by funds like BlackRock or like Hargues Landstown, and those institutions will hold those shares on behalf of millions and millions of small investors. You know, I own some Microsoft shares, not many, you know, three or four or something like that. Shikwiner. I still use a PC.

But I didn't vote on their shareholders because Hargues Landsland Holden said my behalf, and most of the fund providers and platforms will have a policy in place that they will vote on shareholder votes in accordance with the recommendations of the board. And the board recommends vote no on adopting Bitcoin. So the vast majority of people vote no. And the reason people notice actually... activist investors is because they're so extraordinarily rare. There's an activist investor at Disney who's like, I think he holds like 2, 3%, percent. He's been making a nuisance of himself for the last few years in a relatively amusing way.

But people notice him because he's absurd. What's been doing? I can't remember. He's been, I think he's been having a go about the direction of the company and film making decisions and so on. About Snow White. Well, who wouldn't? Actually, in fans, I haven't seen Snow White, so I probably should be rude about it.

Me neither. Apart of, I have been watching the original version with my daughter. Oh, sweet. Yeah. But I've not seen the new one. Freddie, is there anything that you want to talk about about this company that we've not covered yet? I think it's worth reiterating our long-term vision for it. Day one, it's about acquiring as much Bitcoin as we can. But we want to be an absolutely integral part of the Bitcoin infrastructure system. and that's starting with our participation as a lightning node runner, which will have two benefits, both generating revenue and secondly making the network more stable.

And then we really want to be a focal point for the growth of the Bitcoin industry in the United Kingdom. And if we can achieve those things, I'll go to bed happy that I've been able to deliver value for shareholders and also promote the adoption of Bitcoin in the United Kingdom. I think that's a very honorable goal. We need that to happen. And I'm sorry if I've come across skeptical at any of this.

But, like, truthfully, I am skeptical of a lot of these treasury companies. I've literally put my money here, which is like a vote of confidence in the sense that I do think you guys can do something different. I hope you can. I'm going to be watching it pretty closely. We are, I mean, look, I think you're mates. And not only do I owe your fiduciary duty to you, but I absolutely want to see you make the best of your investment. Do you work for me now?

I suppose actually I do. There we go. It's the meme on the boat. I'm the captain. Well, I'm excited for this, Freddie. Thank you for the time. And when you can talk about kind of the future business plans for this company, I'd like to do it again. So let me know.

Thank you so much. All right. I appreciate you. Thank you, man. Thank you. Cheers.