You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 89: Eric Weiss - Why Corporate Adoption Is Driving Bitcoin Like Never Before

Starting point is 00:00:00 the treasury companies globally are creating a massive supply demand imbalance in bitcoin which uh is going to drive the price of bitcoin up uh dramatically i bought some bitcoin i ended up selling that bitcoin less than a year later you think it's volatile now it was a lot more volatile then it's like this was maybe more of an emotional investment than a good financial investment in paris the taxi drivers were literally lighting cars on fire protesting uber and it's like oh uber's never gonna fly in paris okay well here we are i can't think of a single party that's been aggrieved by bitcoin's success and those that have embraced bitcoin literally everyone who has embraced bitcoin has prospered right if you can make the lives of the people

Starting point is 00:00:49 that you care about better, if you can not make the lives of other people worse, and you can find a way to be happy, that's success to me. Eric Weiss, hello, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm super excited to have you on my show. Thank you. It's great to be here. Wonderful. Okay. For my audience that may not know you, quick intro. I'm going to try. Eric Weiss is the founder and managing partner of Blockchain Investment Group,

Starting point is 00:01:33 one of the earliest institutional investors in Bitcoin. He's known for his conviction, long-term vision, and close ties with key industry figures like Saylor, for example. And you sit on boards of many companies these days, you are definitely at the spearhead of this whole change that we're seeing right now with a lot of public companies going into holding Bitcoin on their treasuries, becoming public and creating type of a new entity that we have not known before. And I think that that is a super exciting evolution of Bitcoin and the Bitcoin industry. So let's start with that. How are you seeing your role evolving in this ecosystem? So Bitcoin treasury companies were started by strategy. And that is essentially what Michael did at MicroStrategy, now Strategy,

Starting point is 00:02:35 where they base the treasury of the company on Bitcoin and then issue securities, equity, and debt to raise capital to buy Bitcoin. And this is saved microstrategy. It went from a $600 million market cap to $120 billion market cap in five years. It's created the best performing equities in the U.S., in Japan, in MetaPlanet, in France. blockchain group hopefully soon in Brazil and you know these companies have a need for capital whereas traditional companies it's the opposite right now if you look at the most famous companies in the world whether it's Nvidia or Apple

Starting point is 00:03:24 they take great pride in giving the money that the company earns back to shareholders surrendering the capital which is insane right business is very competitive it's hard to stay competitive for uh decades generations and ultimately these companies will need the money that they're giving away in order to stay competitive but they take great pride in giving it back um and so what the bitcoin treasury companies do is they're positively polarized to capital meaning they have a need for capital um so the market is content to give them all this capital and strategies case many billions of dollars um because they're investing in something that has an ARR of, you know, 30 plus percent per year. So you can pay, you know, up to

Starting point is 00:04:13 30% and still come out ahead. So whether they're issuing equity or debt, they have tremendous need for capital and they're willing to take more and more capital. So it's great for Bitcoin in the sense that these companies are buying significantly more than the natural supply of Bitcoin. Roughly 45 million dollars a day is what the miners put out or about that i think that equates to about 16 million 16 billion a year and so even strategy alone has already bought more than that this year so the treasury companies globally are creating a massive supply demand imbalance in bitcoin which uh is going to drive the price of bitcoin up uh dramatically and uh wow yeah it's amazing And I think that that phenomena of trying to copy that playbook and take it and adopt it to different geographies, different markets, is something that we're going to see more and more of, right?

Starting point is 00:05:12 Very much so. I mean, it's powerful in the United States, and the United States has still the reserve currency of the world. So by definition, it's more powerful in every other market. We're launching one in Brazil. Brazil has, you know, is battling inflation issues. One-year rates are 14%. So, you know, the Brazilian stock market, the B3, is up about 16% in total in the last six years. So if you can put a stock on that exchange that is going to perform similar to Bitcoin,

Starting point is 00:05:46 cut through the currency exposure and deliver Bitcoin-like returns, that's very compelling for people in that region who are battling inflation personally so it's powerful at the corporate level it's been great for companies but the same thing can be done for a family or an individual and do you think it it is complementary to our um wish to see an increase in bitcoin adoption around the world or is it cannibalizing that because we're kind of offering another tool and they don't get access to the assets itself it's very much complementary in a number of ways so first from an awareness point of view if you think about um what strategy did for the awareness of bitcoin in the united states it was incredible incredible and then if you think

Starting point is 00:06:34 about what they can do in other regions like latin america south america europe africa um so from an awareness point of view it's great right there in addition to that people kind of go okay this company is is succeeding phenomenally because it's got bitcoin but what is this bitcoin thing and that makes them question and get curious exactly it drives a lot of awareness but then there are also structural advantages in a lot of regions so for example in brazil if you own bitcoin and you sell bitcoin you pay 22 and a half percent tax if you own a listed stock and you sell the listed stock, you pay 15%. So it's 50% higher tax rate if you hold Bitcoin directly. So for some people, saving that tax, that tax arbitrage is super powerful. There's a similar

Starting point is 00:07:23 dynamic in Japan that MetaPlanet is benefiting from. So in different regions, there are different nuances that make potentially holding the stock of a Bitcoin treasury company financially more advantageous than holding bitcoin directly that's not to take away from the bare aspects of bitcoin and self-custody but there are you know there are different flavors for different absolutely and sometimes people need that push to get in through a softer tool and then later on get familiar with actual asset and then and then get hold of it exactly absolutely okay um i want to we'll pause here on that topic and we'll come back to bitcoin later but i want to talk more about you so So what shaped your worldview early on?

Starting point is 00:08:09 Was there a defining experience or influence that set you on a path towards finance, investing, and eventually Bitcoin? What had you go in that trajectory that you went through in life? When I was an undergrad, I did internships in Wall Street, and I got exposed to trading. And trading was, you know, somewhat analogous to playing a sport from an excitement, positive-negative reinforcement point of view. So I became enamored with trading. My first job out of undergrad was I was a U.S. government bond trader. Really? Proprietary bond trader.

Starting point is 00:08:49 So that was good. Taught me a lot about economics and interest rates and what moves markets and things of that nature. But trading is a pretty intense game. and the burnout rate for people was high. So I was looking, and there are not a lot of transferable skills from trading to other professions. It's funny, that's similar to what Daniel Prince

Starting point is 00:09:11 was telling me about his past. Yeah, in traditional finance, he said it was very intense. It's very intense. It's very gratifying and Wall Street compensates you fairly well when you do well, but also the second you don't do well, you're gone.

Starting point is 00:09:25 so it's a very cutthroat uh industry but it's intellectually stimulating you meet great people it's challenging uh there's a lot of camaraderie it's it's fun um but i looked around the trading floor and thought um maybe i wanted to do something a little different so i needed a pivot point so i uh i went to columbia business school and then after that i got into venture capital and private equity. Now it sounds like I think everybody's on the planet is a venture capitalist. Yeah, that was, um, we won't use dates, but it was, it was a long time ago. Um, at the time there were 4,500 people in the United States in venture capital. Whoa. So early on. Yeah. It was a pretty small industry. Um, and I went to GE capital, which was the largest VC investor at the time.

Starting point is 00:10:15 As in GE? As in GE. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, and they were investing about a billion dollars a year which was an awful lot of money back then and they were the only one that had a training program right so i chose to go there and i started investing mostly in internet related businesses um invested in a company called internet capital group at the time which was a super high flyer pre-internet bubble it was the largest ipo of 2000 and um ultimately joined internet capital group which was business-to-business internet applications. by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code FLAT. And so we became very good at understanding what the internet was good for in the early days

Starting point is 00:11:24 and what it was not good for. What it was good for was sharing information quickly across the entire planet and getting information into the hands of those that it was most valuable to. That was the greatest aspect of the internet. What the internet was not good for was exchanging value in any kind of way. And so when you're in venture capital, one of the things you do is you go around to lots of industry conferences around the world to kind of see what the new technologies are, see what the new applications are. And I went to a Bitcoin conference in 2013. Wow, where?

Starting point is 00:12:01 In Miami, ironically, where I did not live at the time. Was it a meetup kind of thing or an actual conference? It was an actual conference. I'd say there were probably a hundred people there and almost everybody was wearing a t-shirt that said something like, I can help you set up your wallet or something. And, um, I was just blown away because it was the first time that I saw the internet being used to transmit value safely and securely. And then, you know, the party A and party B didn't need to know or trust each other either. And there was no intermediary. And so this was kind of mind blowing to me. And I just thought,

Starting point is 00:12:37 okay, this is going to be something. I need to start a business in this space. And I thought, what kind of business can I start in Bitcoin? And I came up with absolutely nothing. The only thing I had come up with was maybe I could start a directory or something of companies that take Bitcoin, which as you can imagine, in 2013, there were not a lot of companies that accepted Bitcoin. There still aren't. And so I couldn't come up with any good ideas. So I just figured, well, there's a limited supply of it and if this is going to turn out to be something the price will go up so i bought some bitcoin in 2013 um but at that point on a risk adjusted basis it's a much better investment now than it was then it was just kind of like an emotional hope and pray kind of

Starting point is 00:13:22 thing other cryptos were coming out and it was like you know it's hard to hold conviction for yeah there was no reason to have conviction there it was equally a good chance that this was going to get shut down or you know turn out to be nothing um and did you make any investments in any bitcoin companies at the time i didn't no there was nothing really so you were just like watching the space and so i bought some bitcoin i ended up selling that bitcoin less than a year later it was just it was you think it's volatile now it was a lot more volatile then it's like you're down 80 you're up 100 you're down 90 it was like okay this was uh this was maybe more of an emotional investment than a good financial investment right obviously hindsight's 2020

Starting point is 00:14:05 i wish i didn't sell that bitcoin but i've been stacking since uh 2015 2016 so uh it's okay we're back we're back to where we were then which is good good okay wow so cool to hear that story i wasn't aware that you got to it from the tech angle like tech investing angle yeah so nice that brought you there yeah it was is really um sometimes people just overlook the fact that bitcoin you know uses the internet right and this is this is a great application of the internet absolutely yeah i i was also working in tech for 20 something years and i heard about it i think for the first time when it just came out 2009 or 10 because i was working with internet companies and they had they had like the news came out and people started talking about it and i'm like

Starting point is 00:15:04 what is this thing it's like a fly on the wall yeah it's like this annoying buzz i'm gonna just like ignore that because it must be another fud another another i don't know just another nice thing to talk about and it will go away and it kept coming back every two years two or three years and i kept ignoring obviously and then around 2017 it was the ico period right and because i was i was at the time in autonomous drones and robotics i was a cmo of a company a startup that was in that space so the pr agency that i'd worked with had also served a lot of companies in crypto and ico space so they kept bringing me like you gotta hear about this you gotta hear about i'm like dude just leave me alone that bitcoin crypto shit it's all the same

Starting point is 00:15:57 it's gonna it's a bubble it will blow up because i had put that in the same bucket right of crypto and bitcoin and i and no one bothered to tell me that it's not the same and i didn't go to the extent of learning because i was so consumed with what i was doing and only a few years later I needed it because of the pain of COVID. And that's when I learned. That's when people discover Bitcoin is when they need it. Yes, absolutely. You always say that.

Starting point is 00:16:25 You always say that. I hear you in other places saying, I mean, it's great that Bitcoiners are so passionate and they really do want to pay it forward. But people get things in the right timing for them, right? Yeah. There are lots of companies. There are lots of people with all kinds of great stuff going on in their life right now.

Starting point is 00:16:48 There are some people with businesses that are currently returning better returns than Bitcoin. And not a lot of them, but there are. And so you have to be respectful of what people have going on in their life. They may have really awesome positive things going on. They may have overwhelming negative things going on. and it's just not the right time for them to appreciate Bitcoin. And as you kind of intimated, it takes some work. Just hearing about it isn't enough.

Starting point is 00:17:18 You have to actually take the time to focus a little bit on it, understand it, do your own research. You really have to do your own research because the knowledge is the superpower. Due to the volatility, if you purchase Bitcoin because a friend that you have respect for told you, and then all of a sudden we have a 50% drawdown in the fiat price of Bitcoin, you start questioning what you did.

Starting point is 00:17:43 Maybe you sell it because you haven't done the research. You don't have the conviction. But if you understand it, genuinely understand it. You'll never let go. Yeah, not only will you never let go, all of a sudden you see this dip as an opportunity to get more Bitcoin for your fiat. And it can be very exciting. Even I, when I heard people say that, you know, I kind of thought,

Starting point is 00:18:05 that's bullshit you know like you don't really feel that you're you're just upset that it went down and you're trying to like console yourself now you know i look at it coming over here and i'm like oh shit we might get below a hundred thousand usd that's great you know i i could so you know you do start to have a different perspective the other thing that i was thinking on the way over here just kind of a random thought is you know people no one really cares what the average cost of your Bitcoin is. It's all about how many sats do you have, right? And so if you think about it in that context, all of a sudden the price that you acquired, it doesn't matter that much. It's just how much do you have? If you look at strategy, Michael's bought every top

Starting point is 00:18:47 there's been. He doesn't care. It's not like he gets the money from issuing a security and then tries to decide when to buy it. It's like he just buys it. I buy Bitcoin every day. I don't think about the price at all. But if we get a nice dip, I will find a way to liquidate something and ape in bigger. All right. What does success mean to you personally in a world that often measures success by material metrics? How do you define it for yourself and why? I try to live on relatively simple terms. So I think that if you can make the lives of the people that you care about better, if you can not make the lives of other people worse, and you can find a way to be happy day to day, that's success to me. So yeah, financial success can help with those things.

Starting point is 00:19:50 but at the end of the day if you can do those things outside of financial success even better so just kind of being happy day to day and and making the lives of the people you care about better absolutely and um what kind of world are you trying to help build what do you think long-term legacy impact like what's the vision that drives you i don't really think about things And in that context, I'm not, I've never given a moment's thought to leaving a legacy of any kind. I think that, you know, one of my favorite quotes is Marcus Aurelius, soon you will have forgotten all and all will have forgotten you. So, and it doesn't, you know, for those who have big egos and think that they're going to be remembered for some long period of time, you know, I would just suggest to those people

Starting point is 00:20:49 that time is a little bit longer than they may realize. And nobody knows the name of a single person that lived 7,000 years ago or 10,000 years ago. And human beings have been on the planet for over a million years. So when you start to have that context, I think legacy is kind of a bunch of crap. And, you know, I just go back to my three little things

Starting point is 00:21:14 about enjoying my life and making the lives of those you care about better and trying not to mess up anyone else's. It sounds like you live very much in the present. I try to. You know, we've all got goals and objectives and things we're working on and we've all got limited time. So, you know, dealing with the constraints kind of sucks and trying to balance enjoying your life

Starting point is 00:21:40 and doing some of those other things can be challenging. Good stuff. We're in a decade of a transition of the monetary order. What I called in my keynote a couple of days ago, the musical chairs of the monetary order. That's how I see it. It's like they're all like trying everything, you know, walking around a bunch of chairs. Whenever there's a queue, they try to sit down and someone falls and they're experimenting with kind of every monetary instrument that there is right now to try and see what's going to work in a new reality of a digital financial system, which we didn't have really until today. Yes, fiat is digital in a way, but we're moving into a new era. Yes. And so what is your view on that changing monetary order in the world? Where do you see this heading?

Starting point is 00:22:34 I think the change is smaller and more subtle than a lot of my Bitcoin brethren would suggest. I hear terms like hyper-Bitcoinization and all this stuff, and I really don't subscribe to that. But even wider, not just Bitcoin. Like all the changes that you see in the monetary world. Yeah, I think a lot of that change is relatively small. Okay. It's just a format change, right? So things may be digitized, things may be tokenized,

Starting point is 00:23:10 but we'll still have real estate. We'll still have currency. We'll still have, you know, tangible assets, intangible assets. Half of everything in the world will still be, you know, store of value. There'll still be assets of utility. So I think we're messing around with some digital formats that may be superior. Like technicalities. Yeah, technicalities.

Starting point is 00:23:31 Wrapping of... Yeah. Okay. And that's great. And there are certainly advantages, financial advantages for early adapters. I do think that Bitcoin's superpower is the store of value aspect. And for the first time in the world, Satoshi has kind of invented perfect money in the general sense of money.

Starting point is 00:23:52 And so I think that's the advantage. I think the problem that the entire world is facing, whether you're an individual wage earner who's able to just save a couple bucks after living paycheck to paycheck, or you're a nation state or anything in between, company, family, whatever, everybody's in the same boat in that their purchasing power is being inflated away and deteriorating. and that's a that's a problem that the world has and that's a problem that bitcoin solves so that's why um i think it's worth taking the time to explain and educate people on that topic because it really can uh help individuals families companies countries and do you think we're going to stay with a fiat based system that is then just pegged to bitcoin at one point yes okay yeah and we're in a transitory phase to get there right yeah i think uh i don't understand what the fascination is with uh trying to take over fiat or being fiat right uh currency is a relatively small value proposition in the grand scheme of things

Starting point is 00:25:03 i think there's less than 100 trillion dollars of currency in the world and there's a 130 some currencies and the majority of them are going to go away over some period of time. So I think there'll be dominant currencies. I don't know what they'll be, probably a USD, you know, Chinese Yuan, I don't know, and maybe a handful of others. But currency is not going away. As long as we have nation states, they're going to be currency. I don't understand why Bitcoin would want to try so hard to be a currency. There's very little value in it. But we can be and we are a store of value. And that's a problem that the whole world has. So it's a much better value proposition. Half of everything is worth a hell of a lot more than $100 trillion. So I think going after that

Starting point is 00:25:57 value proposition is great. I mean, I envision a world where we will have a wallet or an app on our phone, which I think is kind of the killer app, which is, you know, if you're in the United States, you'll have a Bitcoin wallet as your savings account. And then you'll have a stable coin, US dollar, something when you transact and need to use currency for something. And it's kind of like a savings and checking account kind of thing. And I think we'll see that, you know, where every major currency is, and that will allow people to save in Bitcoin and transact in currency. The dollar is still the currency that the world wants. And so I think that Trump and the administration are exactly correct that stablecoins will proliferate the U.S. dollar

Starting point is 00:26:42 across the entire world. And it'll generate trillions of dollars of U.S. treasury buying because stablecoins have to be backed by U.S. treasuries, which is great for the United States. So I see a world where Bitcoin and currency lives very harmoniously. Tired of feeling like your freedom and future are fading away? Do you live in a country with growing inflation, crazy housing prices, weird culture, and a chaotic economy? You're not alone. And my friend Mikel Thorpe and his team at Expat Money can help. Mikel is the world's leading expat consultant on a mission to free you from broken systems.

Starting point is 00:27:19 He's been an expat for 25 years, lived in nine different countries and has helped hundreds of people with second residencies and passports, offshore banking, international investing and many other essential tools. If you're serious about protecting your wealth and your family, it's not enough to hope things will get better. You need a plan B in another country. The team at Expat Money can help you build it legally, safely and without wasting years of research. Visit expatmoney.com and leave your details for a follow-up. In a world hypnotized and sleepwalking towards totalitarian control and digital enforcement, awakened voices rise to inspire change and radiate hope. In December 2024, I had the honor of hosting Professor Matthias Desmet at a conference I produced called New Totalitarian Order. This masterclass is now recorded and available to watch.

Starting point is 00:28:15 The conference explores the psychology behind global mass processes, offering a behind-the-scenes look at science, economics, and human potential. It addresses challenging global agendas, mass formation, transhumanism, consciousness, societal change, and the path to transformation. Click the link in the show notes to access three and a half hours of exclusive presentations, in-depth content, and my fireside chat with Professor Desmet. Use my code EFRAD for 10% off. I hope you find great value in it. Do you think Trump and his administration, or maybe even the next one, because who knows how long this process is going to take,

Starting point is 00:28:59 do you think that they will be facing some geopolitical tensions, political tensions related to that from other countries or powers around the world that will try to resist for the U.S. to stay the world empire and the U.S. dollar to stay the world's reserve currency? Oh, yeah. You think so? Oh, yeah, I think.

Starting point is 00:29:20 You think we're up for a bumpy ride there? I think, I mean, there's certainly an access of countries that certainly under the last administration that were aligning against the United States and coming together, kind of forming an informal union, so to speak, and doing energy transactions between Russia and China that wasn't in U.S. dollars.

Starting point is 00:29:51 And so I think there's probably great appetite for countries around the world that are not allies of the U.S. to transact in things other than the dollar. It's great for the U.S. if the world continues to transact in dollars. I think that the current administration is more effective at facilitating that kind of trade in U.S. dollars. And I think U.S. dollar stablecoins and the U.S. being a leader in this space, embracing it, getting this Genius Act done, and proliferating the U.S. dollar is going to help us tremendously in that area.

Starting point is 00:30:26 I agree that that is a very smart move. And I think that that's happening very fast. And I think that that will preserve the – I mean, that's my personal opinion. It will preserve the position of the U.S. and the U.S. dollar as the world's empire once again for another cycle at least. Yeah, there's this – Especially if Bitcoin does become the new reserve asset of the world. It'll certainly be a reserve asset of the world. Yeah, maybe not the only one.

Starting point is 00:30:54 Yeah. But I think, you know, if you look at the pragmatism of the Trump administration and David Sachs or crypto and AI as are, it's just, you know, prior administration, I look at it and they say, oh, no, no, we don't, you know, we're not going to give you any rules of the road for this. We're not giving you any guidelines for crypto or AI or whatever. And what happens is the innovation goes offshore. Literally, it's like, OK, well, if I can't do it safely inside the U.S., I'm going to go do it somewhere else. Right. And this like fallacy that you can somehow put the brakes on a technology whose time has come that the world wants is just lunacy. It's just sheer stupidity, right? Like the world wants this technology. It's going to get the technology. You either take the approach that the Trump administration has done, which says, we want the US to be the home of it. We want the US to be the AI superpower. We want the US to be the Bitcoin superpower, right? And that's like their language. And they want to do it. It's like, okay, we want to be able to put our stamp on it, embrace it, have whatever guidelines we think are pragmatic and appropriate, and let's make this the home of it in the United States. It's an infinitely more intelligent way than pushing it overseas and pushing the innovation elsewhere. So I'm more optimistic now than I was. So both you and I come from tech, and we know that you cannot stop it.

Starting point is 00:32:14 Once something starts, and it's got a good use case. And the market demand, that's it, game over. Like, it's going to happen whether you like it or not. Look at the EU now, starving for innovation and technology. They're, like, so behind. And that's why they're, like, doubling down on their CBDCs, launching in October 25. We're going to go all in on this. And, you know, I come from Israel.

Starting point is 00:32:39 So in Israel, there is a special program between the EU and Israel where they try to invite innovation from Israel to the EU. They give them subsidizing and funding. Everything is in the trajectory of CBDCs. Nothing is more powerful than a technology whose time has come. And I'm old enough to remember when Uber started. And I remember in France, in Paris, the taxi drivers were literally lighting cars on fire protesting Uber, right? Because Uber was threatening to the taxi driver's way of life. And it's like, oh, Uber's never going to fly in Paris.

Starting point is 00:33:25 Okay, well, here we are, right? If you're in Paris, you can get an Uber, no problem. So it's just nothing's more powerful than an idea as time has come. 100%. And that's what I try to educate my audience about because many of them come from like, you know, they've woken up during COVID to everything to like the overreach of state powers over their rights and things like that and me too like that's what happened to me as well but then i kept going and discovered you know money and bitcoin and all of that and and i have a lot

Starting point is 00:33:58 of hope and and i do see the trajectory that we're going in yes we are going to introduce new ways of operating money in the world like that is going undergoing a transition however there's nothing to be afraid of i mean yes cbdc's are coming in certain places in the world yes they are a bit draconian in many places around the world they've tried to like enforce a lot of programmability and you know expiry dates and things like that on many pilots however the moment if you start becoming afraid of what's happening yeah rather than understanding this is happening whether i like it or not. I may as well start learning that field and then I can choose the best solution for myself and I can hedge myself and then I can discover Bitcoin, right? For example.

Starting point is 00:34:47 CBDCs are going to drive more Bitcoin adoption than anything else has. I have a friend in the US who I'd been speaking to about Bitcoin for many years and he's very successful. He had no interest in Bitcoin whatsoever. He read a very elaborate article on CBDCs. Right. And then he called me and he said, OK, I get it. Teach me Bitcoin. Yeah, I get it now. I don't want the government seeing where every dollar that I spend goes. I don't want this to be able to be ring fenced, traceable, deleted, whatever. He's like, now I understand the power of Bitcoin. So, you know, there are lots of counter reactions to lots of these technological developments, some of which are, you know, not so easily foreseen. And at the end of the day, Bitcoin has just such

Starting point is 00:35:33 extraordinary merit in so many ways that I think it's going to continue to be the beneficiary of a lot of these technological developments. So let me ask you then like a kind of a challenging question, I think, because what you say, I 100% agree, but then let's look at stable coins then leading us to Bitcoin, hopefully. Let's take the US, for example. Would that not be able to be traced and tracked like stable coins i mean stable coins and even if we go to kyc bitcoin in the end of the day i don't think we're going to kyc bitcoin so quickly okay yeah i think um i think i think sovereignty is kind of making a comeback okay and i think that uh certainly the current administration uh understands the true merits of bitcoin the first family understands

Starting point is 00:36:21 the true merits of bitcoin and i think um i think we're i think we're seeing great advocacy for it so yes there'll be areas of the world where it's a little more draconian and and they're looking to um government's always going going to look to infringe on people's um you know rights and liberties so uh money is a great way to do it yep um but i think bitcoin's i think bitcoin's going to be pretty safe from that. It's pretty hard to put guardrails on Bitcoin. I think, you know, the effective guardrails that are put on Bitcoin are kind of these Bitcoin treasury companies and the ETFs. I view them as kind of like domesticated Bitcoin in the sense that there are a number of countries in the world that are very concerned with capital flight,

Starting point is 00:37:11 money leaving their country, China, for example. Right. So I think the Chinese are happy for their people to prosper, right? That takes a burden off the government. If you have wealthy Chinese people and they want to see their people prosper, what they don't want is people to take their money out of China. So if you have exposure to Bitcoin in the form of a publicly traded ETF in China, great. You can't transfer your shares and take your money to Monaco so easily, right? So I think they're very happy to see ETFs and Bitcoin treasury companies even in these more oppressive regimes. Interesting. I get it. OK. OK. Why Bitcoin? I mean, on top of being obviously an investment for you and this is your career, but you invest so much time and energy into this.

Starting point is 00:38:08 Is there anything that you see in Bitcoin above the obvious traits of being a good asset class? Yeah, I think I like business in general, but it's not often in business that you get to champion something that you think is morally and ethically sound. So I can't think of a single party that's been aggrieved by Bitcoin's success. There is no individual, there's no company, there's no anybody that I can find to date who has suffered in order for Bitcoin to succeed. And those that have embraced Bitcoin, literally everyone who has embraced Bitcoin has prospered, right? We're pretty much at the all-time highs here.

Starting point is 00:38:59 So I think it's nice to be able to champion something that's morally and ethically sound and to help people keep the fruits of their labor. So yeah, it's a feel-good thing to be on the side of something that is just. And it makes it easy. Absolutely. All right, let's ask you about Sailor.

Starting point is 00:39:19 So how did your relationship with Michael evolve through the years? And what have you learned from each other? How do your approach to Bitcoin differ or align? So we've been friends for decades. And I think one of the great things about Michael coming into Bitcoin and doing all the podcasts that he does and being so visible is the world is getting to see the Michael that his friends, um a handful of you know close people see on a daily basis so the michael that you see on the podcasts and the amount of words that you get in as the podcast uh interviewer is about the same as you get at lunch or dinner or breakfast with michael really and so prior to bitcoin it was

Starting point is 00:40:16 whatever topic uh was of the greatest interest to him right and so you just get a phenomenal education in life, and just having access to a friend with a supercomputer for a brain. Wow, seriously supercomputer for a brain. Yeah, it's really extraordinary. And his ability in particular to understand how technology is going to impact our lives and see it just a little bit before other people is really extraordinary. There's that famous clip of him articulating how Apple and the iPhone was going to evolve, and he was spot on. I remember early, early on, you know, he told me, he was explaining to me how Apple had already won. And at the time Apple had like 15% of the market. And he said, well,

Starting point is 00:41:05 and he was explaining the difference between iOS and Android to me. And that, you know, iOS had like 80% of the money in the world on iOS. Every wealthy person had, was on, you know, an iPhone or an iPad and that Android might have 80% of the banks was the analogy, but only 20% of the money. And that, you know, the die was cast and Apple was going to win. And after that conversation, I bought a lot of Apple stock, you know, and it was very beneficial, but just anytime you're faced with, um, a big life decision, uh, it's nice to have Michael, uh, to ask his opinion and advice. And, and, uh, he gives great advice and he's a good friend. And so since I've, known him yeah i know he's a real phenomena that person but otherwise i would say he's type of a

Starting point is 00:41:54 chat gpt friend it's like this yeah no they're they're i mean just in terms of the capacity yeah he's much more human i mean he's he's he's very yeah yeah he's he's laser focused and um we all have opinions and views on things outside of bitcoin but it's largely counterproductive to share them uh when you're laser focused so we try to just focus on on on bitcoin in particular um but yeah i i think you know i got the benefit of being the person to uh really introduce uh bitcoin to michael which is which has been a great honor uh if it wasn't me it would have been someone else down the road but i was there for years bringing it up until he was finally receptive enough to, you know, the persistent. Yeah. And so so that's been really nice. And so

Starting point is 00:42:45 we've kind of been on this journey together. Yeah. And I've been able to to make some contributions on the Bitcoin treasury side as well. And, you know, leverage my career on Wall Street and share some ideas and things that he's implemented to strategies benefits. So it's been very I think it's been very mutually rewarding for both of us. And it's been it's been a fun thing uh to be doing together and it's also nice i think for both of us to kind of have someone uh you know a trusted friend to be able to go through this yeah it's been fun wonderful so that really leads me gracefully to the next question about how do you view or or how do you think about influence and impact in the world do you

Starting point is 00:43:33 do you stop to reflect on your role in the world as someone that because you you have made a lot of impact through what you have done being persistent like that with sailor and you know that you're the origin for it i think michael's made a lot of impact he has but dude you did you did that i mean yeah i don't i don't really see it that way um okay i mean you've orange killed a lot of friends right yep do you do you yeah i'm just i'm phenomenally happy whenever someone tells me yeah i'm happy for them they get it yeah i'm happy for them it's been it's been it's been great for michael um it's been it's a great application of his skill set his ability to relate things to people is extraordinary his depth of knowledge in so many different topics

Starting point is 00:44:25 whether it's history, science, other areas. And he can usually find a way through an analogy or a metaphor to explain things to someone in a way that clicks for them. So he's been great for Bitcoin in that sense because he'll meet someone wherever they are. And that's been great. At the time he came into Bitcoin and strategy came into Bitcoin, it was exactly what Bitcoin needed was credibility.

Starting point is 00:44:49 And to have a U.S. public company and someone who's been CEO and founder of a public company for, you know, 25 years or something at the time to give Bitcoin the credibility that it needed was extraordinary. And so I think what he's done for Bitcoin has been remarkable. And yeah, it feels good to have played a very small role in being a catalyst for that. But it's him.

Starting point is 00:45:18 It's not somebody. i mean but you know you can own what what your role is in this because the way i see my role in life like i'm far from doing great things like he does or many other people do it's just that i have a role and it's normally to just be of service for humanity by providing information for them that would help them better their lives and and protect themselves from whatever is happening in the world and I find like my modest, you know, role and boundaries and I play in that and in that I feel so grateful and fulfilled every time I get a signal from the outside that it works. It does feel really nice to be involved and Michael and I still spend an awful lot of time

Starting point is 00:46:10 together and it's great to travel around the world and see people from every walk of life whether it's the person working on the tarmac with the fluorescent vest at an airport come up to him or the well-known billionaire or celebrity and it's literally everyone in between and i've never seen anything other than appreciation yeah uh which is great and then occasionally uh you know I'll even have people come up to me, you know, so, uh, that's usually at conferences or something like that, but, but it's a nice feeling. Um, and I've never seen anything except positive reaction, uh, which is nice, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. It does a lot of good in the world. I, I see that too. Um, and that really ties into what next I wanted to ask you,

Starting point is 00:47:02 what do you love doing apart from bitcoin and work like what are you yeah i like travel you enjoy doing um traveling yes traveling yes great um and i see you traveling a lot in like sailing and yeah you like the sea right yeah it's nice it's nice to it's nice to escape a little bit we work we work really hard um so it's it's good to get away a little and unplug um we haven't gotten to do it that much since the new administration because you know when when the wind is at your back you have to make as much progress as you can um and so being on a a handful of boards now um is is time consuming but worthwhile so uh yeah i enjoy spending time with friends um michael and i play a decent amount of chess uh just because it's you have to be so

Starting point is 00:47:55 focused on the game itself that it doesn't allow you to think about the other thoughts rattling around your head. So meditation, isn't it? Yeah. I meditate as well. Um, yeah, I've been doing, uh, TM transcendental meditation for, uh, probably about 10 years. Wow. So I don't always get in my, my two times a day, but I try to, so at least once a day, at least once a day, at least once a day um morning morning the afternoon ones can be harder to wake up i try to it depends how quickly the day starts you know sometimes i grab that phone and uh we have to skip the morning one and try to get in the afternoon one but uh yeah it's been a good habit it's been constructive for me um i know a lot of people have different views on it but it's just uh it's nice to to try to

Starting point is 00:48:46 clear your brain out for a second um so yeah that travel um some sports and just getting to see my friends you know and it's been um it's been challenging friends and family so awesome wonderful um last question what advice would you give someone that's just starting their bitcoin journey beyond the technical or financial like the kind of wisdom you'd want your kids or younger audience to to hear i think the best advice i could give would be do your own research because it's just very very hard to have the conviction that you need to have if you haven't taken the time to put in a little bit of work yourself and understand it and there's so much out there for people to do research in a way that works for them. Not everybody reads,

Starting point is 00:49:47 but there are books. Some people like to watch podcasts. Some people just get it more in a meme and just go up the learning curve whatever way you can, understand the handful of very significant value propositions that Bitcoin has. And once you have some of that basis of that knowledge then you know that'll give you the ability to not lose your bitcoin or not be so casual about it yep and put in the time put in the energy like it takes work you know it's michael always says people spend you know god knows how many hundred thousands of hours working to make the money but they don't spend that much time uh you know figuring out how to keep the money exactly and it's worth it's worth spending some time figuring out how to keep your money

Starting point is 00:50:35 a thousand percent yeah a thousand percent eric you're so awesome i love talking to you you're so selfless you're so beautiful thank you so much thank you so much for having me it's been fun it's been amazing and thank you and i i can't wait to see in the next conference on the next event so looking forward to it thank you so much my pleasure thanks for being with us please take a minute to give this episode a like a comment and subscribe or follow and please share it with your friends so they can also get value and choose to take some positive action in their lives till next time

You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 89: Eric Weiss - Why Corporate Adoption Is Driving Bitcoin Like Never Before

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