How Trump became a Bitcoiner | David Bailey

Transcript

today's episode is brought to you by godod net discover how the Network's native token geod is powering the next wave of the robotics Revolution by hitting the link in the description of today's episode hey guys just wanted to take a moment to tell you about our upcoming conference the digital asset Summit New York join us in March where we'll be hosting some of the largest allocators institutions and asset managers in crypto you'll be hearing from guests including Michael sailor Mike novag Gratz Kathy Wood Anatoli and of course me and Santi themes of the conference will include the macro case for digital assets ETF demand and institutional investment us and Global digital asset policy the case for

tokenization and real world assets the rise of stable coins Global Payments and much more hit the link in the show notes and use code Empire 10 for 10% off all right everyone first time on the show David Bailey what's up man yo what's up up uh thank you for having me on dude I don't know how to introduce you anymore I feel I the the intro that I initially wrote down was uh founder of Bitcoin mag but you're doing like I think 17 other things so how do how do you introduce yourself these days I don't even know a bitcoiner that's bitcoiner yeah bitcoiner you've been in the space for a while huh yeah uh got my first Bitcoins in 2012 um kind of went

all in uh my senior year of college in 2013 just like emotionally mentally like is like okay um I either have to jump on this right now or regret it for the rest of my life if it if it works out and so uh since May of 2013 this has been my my full-time career so I really have no real world experience or or valuable uh skills other than Bitcoin is this Saudi wealth fund uh calling you about uh about their Bitcoin purchase while while so we're recording this February uh 14 we're recording this Valentine's Day at noon and like three minutes ago the Saudi well I think it was saudi's Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi thank you um wealth fund

just announced that they uh bought a bunch of Bitcoin so we'll talk about that in a second but I guess back to your story so did did you started Bitcoin mag or did you buy it from somewhere no so I started a magazine called why Bitcoin which was like uh it just it was um like Evergreen content that just explained to people what it is how to buy it like what what's it wor earth like how do you store it you know what's Bitcoin mining just like Basics because no one knew anything so anytime you you said anything about Bitcoin you got hit with the same list of questions again and again and again so I I made this magazine and I really had no idea what I was doing I mean I was 22 years old so it was just like kind of just

making it up and um uh quickly learned that like you know being in the print media business is the wrong business uh but uh you know Bitcoin magazine when I got into the space was like the author authoritative Source like it was like the comment threads on bitcoin magazine articles is like where I learned what multisig was and like where like like the the the most important things were talked about um outside of like the Bitcoin talk uh threads uh and so uh yeah when when vitalic and Mii I I built a relationship with them and then when they decided they want to go do their little ethereum thing um they needed someone to be like the exit liquidity for Bitcoin magazine and so I bought it from them in

2014 um and yeah been been uh paying the bills there ever since so what okay so I mean I remember 20 I mean you guys did a bunch right you had the magazine and then you did like you did poet you raised a bunch of money for a bunch of different things you had like you guys did an Ico at one point for some for something or maybe multiple things like what what what's the and dude I remember like like Rizzo who we both are very good friends with Rizzo's like dude you just talk to David about resiliency because like that dude's been through some through some highs and some lows man oh man dude like man there's so much that can be said on this top I remember we facetimed at one point the must have in 2018 or

2019 I think you're were eating Chick-fil-A and you were just like dude we're we're in you're I think you're in Tennessee or yeah you're like we're in it now man like this is the bear like yeah yeah dude I mean uh I um so like I think most people like you know this has been all people honestly this has been a journey and um you know when I first got into it like everything was Bitcoin other than like you know there was there was altcoins is what we called them at the time but you know they were just all kind of like you know uh let's say experimental at best and the idea of an altcoin was really like just coming about um and then you know the first bare Market hit and like uh it became

all about like Enterprise blockchain and so it's was like okay you know all these big Enterprises like deoy and all these people they're all saying they're going to use blockchain for their systems and so we built like a media brand around like Enterprise blockchains like if that's what the market wants we're gonna like you know respond to the market um and it took me a while of just like watching every Enterprise blockchain company fail to understand like uh that wasn't really a real thing um and that the people who were saying they wanted blockchain they didn't really understand what they wanted they just wanted they wanted Bitcoin without the controversy of Bitcoin but you know like they couldn't say they wanted Bitcoin they didn't even know that that's what they wanted they just wanted to like you know make it more what's the word uh um uh

clean for corporate activity I guess yeah like Peak like blockchain not Bitcoin days yeah yeah yeah and then then uh it was the Ico world and like dude I've never been a like I've never been good at at funraising for like I can fundraise for other people's stuff but I can't fundraise for my own stuff I don't know I just like I'm not good at at it I and you know yeah I'm not good at it so uh I've always operated our business where like we have to like make money like we have to follow the money like we have to make a profit like you know um and so when the Ico Mania started popping off a lot of my friends were doing the first icos and you know I know these guys really well and they're like nice guys they're my friends but they're not like

super Geniuses and I'm like okay dude if these guys are you know doing these icos they're making $10 million like why couldn't I do an Ico and so um we did one called poet and this was at the time this was like there was definitely a lot of Skeptics of icos and and tokens and stuff but also it was like no one really knew we were just kind of like like forging out into the unknown and you know we hadn't gone through like the disillusionment phase of like what like with Enterprise blockchain the way everyone got bearish on Enterprise blockchain is they watched like all the Enterprise blockchain stuff fail so like we hadn't really seen like all the kind of crypto projects Ico projects fail at this point and so uh yeah we did an Ico and then we we got into you know um

basically building a services around the Ico business like we had a venture fund advisory business and a marketing Services business and um you know like uh when the when the bull market was running like all these businesses were making money but it was all built kind of like on quickstand and when the bare Market came dude it just it was vicious it was vicious what did you guys go to from like the the the the top of the top line to the bottom of the top like best Revenue month best Revenue year or something down to the B I don't remember the exact numbers but like when I was I was like 27 28 at the time and like in 2017 we made like half a billion dollars like like maybe two-thirds three4 of a

billion dollars you know a lot of money um now like all I mean not all paper gains like I mean we made a lot of money in in all the different cryptos but a lot of it just like paper gains and and [ __ ] um and then when the bare Market came uh not only did we proceed to lose like all of that but we also had uh we were burning I don't know two million two and a half million a month because we had scaled up this business to service this like vaporware industry and um and it's like okay it's really hard to realign that ship when you're just burning insane sums of money and like the the market has like fallen out and the customers have fallen out and

like dude it really you know it caused like I'm not gonna call it a midlife crisis because I was in my 20s but it it caused like you know it's like damn I lost so much money this year like I I could go bankrupt this year and I like bet it all on [ __ ] that I really didn't even believe in like I was just doing these things to make money and I wasn't really like asking myself the question like fundamentally like is this something that I'm willing to bet everything on and I had kind of made that type of bet without even realizing I was making that type of bet and you know at there was a conversation with someone from our team uh that really kind of like changed you know how my perspective on it but it was you know

like if I'm GNA go bankrupt I might as well go bankrupt like in a way that if you know I looked in the mirror I could be like it I'd do it all over again and I've always believed in Bitcoin from the earliest days like that's why I was here um and you know even amongst my friends when I was doing crypto stuff like people always thought like David you're a Bitcoin Maxi um and so it's like okay I'm just gonna go all in on bitcoin and so I divested everything um that wasn't Bitcoin related if I couldn't sell it to someone I just shut it down uh we from from the peak to the the bottom you know we laid off I don't know like we were 10 like 10 people at our company but we had all

these subsidiaries that I don't even I don't even know how many people were employed across the whole operation like may maybe 150 or or more and we went all the way down to 10 people like that's how much wow that's that's that's intense yeah that's and every single person was like you are insane for doing this like there is no Bitcoin Market you're you're you're dooming yourself do you ever do you ever think about just either shutting it all down and just maybe becoming like some guy who just had a lot of money and you know bought Bitcoin or like launching a fund or like selling it all or did you ever think about that yeah well I mean I I I did but there's so much inertia in an organization that I didn't think about it seriously enough until it's like okay

well by like the process of shutting this all down like I've basically just roundt tripped everything so it's like uh uh like yeah and and dude I mean it's when you have an organization with that many people and like that much deals in the pipe and contracts and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah like to say hey stop shut it all down everything that's not Bitcoin shut it like it is not something that you can just like do it I mean that I mean like it's it's it's tough and and uh but you know ultimately we we made the decision to do it like summer of 2018 and um uh by uh like January of 2019 or

December 2018 we we announced that we had we were doing it and and we had already executed most of the the trade and um then we like the the pivot was like we're just going to do Bitcoin um we had Bitcoin magazine returned to just covering Bitcoin and there was no Bitcoin conference at the time the only conference that existed was like scaling Bitcoin which was really more like you know uh very technical event so like we need to create a Bitcoin conference um that can compete with Devcon um and then it was like and you know we we have been investors this entire time in the space and so it's like we need to make our fund uh Bitcoin only and so uh yeah that was kind of the start of the

the Bitcoin only journey and I think that was really the inflection point where our our business took off yeah 100% um all right we'll come back to the to the biz actually at the end um but tell me about the Trump Story how did you get connected dude I mean I'm curious before we get into that like I'm curious like how much of that story do you do you uh can you feel like from your own experiences man I'm like I'm living it with you I remember I remember like I mean we could do no wrong like we our business was like up only for five years in a row like you know 200k Revenue to 2 million to 5 million to 10 million to 25 million it was like I mean and you know we were we started when we

were 23 so it was like we you know we could do no wrong and we also knew nothing right we were like I mean Sim it sounds like similar shoes to you I think by the way media company's the best business for like a early 20s person to start because I for just many reasons um but then yeah we got so we were one cycle later than you right just in our Learning Journey and it was 2020 it was like the 23 bare Market that just whacked us and like everything got cut in half and yeah we just you know we got completely clobbered too so it was dude I'm I'm I'm I'm sure that there are people that are hearing this that are like you know they're looking at like all of their tokens right now and there's no liquidity they just get [ __ ] crushed and it's like dude you

know you really you get a lot of self-doubt when you're like dude why did I put all my life savings in [ __ ] fart coin you know like why did I why did I do like why did I go all in on Meme coins it's a dark place to be and I think for you know if someone's listening to this and they're like have that sort of self-doubt about you know the um what are they doing here it's like dude zero in on the thing that you can go all in on and not think not second guess yourself on hey everyone just wanted to give a quick thanks to today's title sponsor geod net by setting up a base station you can get involved with this groundbreaking web3 ecosystem learn more

by heading over to geod net.com or just by hitting the link in the description of today's episode today's episode is brought to you by uni chain the layer 2 designed to be the home for Defi and cross chain liquidity with up to 95% lower fees than ethereum and launching with 1 second block times uni chain is the L2 purposely built for defi powered by Unis swap uni chain enhances defi experiences with faster cheaper and seamless transactions even across chains uni chain mainnet is live and available for every everyone to use so click the link in the show notes to find out more thanks to UNI chain for making today's episode

possible 100% And you just need to survive like we've I've shared this story before but I'll share it again is like we had this adviser in the really early days of block works and he said he's like look in an industry as volatile as this one you just need to survive both financially and uh mentally honestly because it's so violent on your mindset and even on some people's body and stuff like that so like in the bare in the bare markets you just got to get through you just got to get make it to the other side and and get through so yeah I commend you for that man I commend and then I remember like I was down in Miami the first Bitcoin conference was in was in Miami SF the first one was in SF oh yeah of course of course that's right people yeah that's

right okay that was 20120 no 2019 2019 and and that was like that was that was when we knew we had product Market fit and like I had never experienced product Market fit before that and like you know I always like oh like we have product Market fit it's like no like if you don't know you have it you don't have it and after that conference like it was the first product we'd ever done where like the customers were like pissed that we couldn't give them the details on the next conference like when they can book their sponsorships when they can start buying tickets like they were pissed and it's like oh [ __ ] like I got people angry that I won't take their money and uh um yeah like uh uh the the conference trajectory I mean honestly one day there

has to be like a a case study or something on it because we I mean tell us tell us about it so for first year is 2019 20 okay 2000 then tell and then I don't know how much you comfortable sharing the top line of the event and like bottom line too but as a conference organizer I'm very curious about that but tell me as much as you can tell about the trajectory of that event yeah so like uh I could share it I mean uh uh so 2,000 people you know 800k Revenue like break even event um you know uh 2020 we had to cancel because of covid but I mean we almost fully baked the event like you know the week it was like three weeks before the event that we canceled it um and that was the whole

situation in its own right that was crazy but um that event was like on Pace to be like a 4,000 person event and then um we did uh 2021 we were the first event in the world back from Co that was crazy I remember that event that that event is like up there in my mind yeah it like Woodstock yeah I have people come up to me that like to this day they're like hey like I was at the event in 2021 and like that was the like most meaningful event I've ever been to In My Life um so that one was like 11,000 12,000 but we don't have the exact numbers because people like tore down the fences and were just like stampeding in and stuff so uh uh we think it was like 12,000 in in

change um and we made I don't I don't remember the number I think we did maybe 20 million in revenue on that event or maybe that's what I that's what I had heard from some folks too yeah yeah and then um we did 2022 2022 we I mean did the the we messed up some things on 2022 just because we we we were growing way too fast but uh 2022 we had 26,000 people um and that was Topline 44 million um 40 43 million something like that and then uh then we did um 2023 we dropped in half so we went to

13,000 attendees and Top Line was like um like 20 I I don't remember the exact number it was a huge decline um maybe it's even lower than 20 uh and then uh uh uh 2024 which is it's pretty hard to plan a business when you have like that much volatility and like uh Revenue income you I'm in it man we're we're a conference business too I know the I know the game so yeah so and then 2024 we were at uh like 20 23, 22,500 something like that and uh you know it was tied for the biggest because with the 22 event we had a music festival that we added on to it and so

like 4,000 of the attendees like just came to the music festival they weren't really like real real attendees um so it's about the same size as as the 2022 event and we did Revenue wise um we did uh in in the 20s somewhere I don't I I forget what the number is and then for uh 25 we're expecting between 30 and 40,000 attendees uh based on our our registration data and Top Line will be we'll find out we'll find out soon enough what the top line is but it's it's looking good nice when is when is that one may that's May that's that's May Vegas okay yeah and that that's like

the trajectory of the of the US events and then now we've also added three international events so we have one in Europe one in Hong Kong and one in um Abu Dhabi I would guess those are just pale in comparison into the size though they do but I I've been surprised Europe Europe I love the European event so for any European listeners like you know Europe's a great place but the European market sucks it just so um that event has like I think its biggest year was like 4,000 people um the Hong Kong event and the uh uh Abu Dhabi event like both those events uh like we think will get quite large and the the Hong Kong event

was like maybe year one was like 6,500 people uh 7,000 people um and the Abu Dhabi event was 8,500 people um and people were very surprised by that because Abu dhab is like off the be path like we didn't do and how are you getting 8,500 people to Abu Dhabi is it because Bitcoin mag has such a big distribution are you giving a lot of these tickets away for free are you like do you guys run a bunch of paid ads like what how do you get these people there yeah I mean we uh it's a little bit of all of it like we we have a ticket strategy on like basically how do we build momentum around an event and so like we will be aggressive on the front end to like get the Snowball Effect going and we um you know the the um it's it's always hard to

build a year one event but we we get people on the ground in those areas that have relationships um and like we also Bitcoin magazine has great distribution and like our sales team I think is the best in the industry and so uh we just have very deep Rolodex of of clients and then we do deals with those clients that help also create the momentum and then we have a great programming team so we you know like for Abu Dhabi we had Eric Trump speak we had Steve wickoff speak it was like the first place that the Trump administration had people deployed um and uh you know we uh the the product is a good product like people have fun it's it's Unique and and there's a lot of people that go to it because Bitcoin is just like at a different caliber of

quality than than the rest of crypto like PE people don't like the buy my token you know uh like raw raw uh stuff in the same way that like when they're like ideologically bought in on something yeah I mean there's a there's a power in building conferences around one to tokens are just Cults in my opinion and um like whe whether it's Bitcoin or something else like I think it's I think there's a powerful thing building a conference around just one cult community so actually like like salana I think has done this well too even if you don't like salana like they've done it well with like breakpoint right it's like everyone's like so like everyone knows why they're there it's like for this one thing or like the Bitcoin conference everyone is

a bitcoiner at your event so I think I think that's powerful how do you um I have one more question on conferences and then we can move past it which is uh because this is something blockworks thinks about a lot is like how do you think about planning for conferences years in in in the future right so for like I mean let's say you guys have 30,000 people this year or 40,000 people this year like you the natural progression of an event business would be like great like next year let's go to 50,000 next year let's go to 60,000 and for anyone who hasn't been in the events business you have to book those venues years in advance but in our industry you can't it's very tough to do that because I mean you guys you know we could be in like a deep bare market and you guys get

cut by 50% again so how do you think about uh like cycle planning yeah yeah so I mean you know I'm sure you and Rizzo have talked about this but I I think this is actually one of the things that we are really good at that we get zero credit for um uh because no one really cares I guess but but us but uh we we we've always been big Believers in the fouryear cycle and so like when we're planning events we're like okay like you know three years from now that's going to be a bare Market year so we should like go ahead and plan on like not just growth being flat we should plan on a 50% shrink like for 2023 we were expecting our Revenue to Fall by 50% like so you you just build everything around a four-year cycle yeah

basically and and and uh um uh like so we were expecting now it was ended up being worse than 50% draw down I think like it was like a 60 something percent draw down but um uh like if we had been anticipating like a flat year like we would have been smoked so um uh so yeah like we we definitely project like even when we booked Vegas like we booked Vegas on the on the presumption like okay this is going to be like a bull market year like we need to have venues that can go like way bigger and so like we try to like you know negotiate contracts so we have some flexibility but we like are negoti like we're picking destinations and and uh time frames and venues based on like okay we need the capacity for this many people

etc etc and um yeah we're not good about booking like like venues many years out so like we'll pick a city we'll pick a loc location we'll start negotiating but like dude we need to be booking event our size we should be booking venues like five years out and we're like barely two years out yeah yeah yeah um all right let's pivot Trump uh Trump headlined the Bitcoin conference in July I want to say of 24 yeah um and I was like that damn that's crazy how did they get that and um I remember folks telling me they're like well David is like very behind the scenes with Trump and I was like oh that's cool good good for D and then it your tweets started to make sense for me I was like oh that's cool um what is the early backstory of how

you got involved with the Trump Administration uh I was hanging out in PTO Rico with a friend of mine that lives here and uh we were like sitting around like we like we're like is 23 24 this is 24 this is like January 24 and like like our company like we're a company but like we are all in on bitcoin like we are all in emotionally spiritually financially like like we our mission is hyperbitcoinization and like you know we actually believe like all the time like how do we accelerate hyperbitcoinization and so uh we were sitting around it's like damn if we could just get in front of trump like we could we could like pitch Bitcoin to Trump and get him boted on it it'd be

huge for Bitcoin and my friend who's sitting there is like well I know someone someone who might be able to get us in touch with Trump like sure whatever and they're like her sister's Godfather was Paul maniff for who was the previous campaign manager for Trump in the last yeah and um and so she was able to get a call setup with with uh uh Paul and so that's how it started and then like we like basically pitched Paul and then Paul you pitched Paul on what you pitched Paul on bitcoin or on like on bitcoin like why Trump should be supporting it what

what's the pitch well you know I I don't want to betray any confidence but we made M multiple decks we went back and forth many many times first with Paul then when when Paul like basically like got the door open to Trump then with Trump's team then you know um you know back and forth responding like they they knew not a lot on the topic so there's a lot of Education that had to happen and then like as they got bought in and it was like okay well if we were bought in like what would even be our policies on this and it was like okay well you know now we need to like create a Bitcoin an America First Bitcoin policy platform for yall and um and like so we went like through that process and then it was like you know then I think like the key

moment was like like it got all the way to the the big man all the stuff we'd gone through I don't know we've been working on it for months every day like full-time job basically and uh um like Trump was like okay well everyone I know who's a bitcoiner says that Bitcoin is going to destroy the dollar like I like the dollar so you know like what what's your response and we were like well you know uh um like America built Fort Knox and like stored like the world's gold in America storing the world's gold in Fort Knox like didn't undermine the dollar it made the dollar stronger than ever and if you want the dollar to stay strong into the future then we got to build the digital Fort Knox and we need to have

the world's digital gold you know stored in America as well and um and that like that's how we get another 200 years of the dollar being relevant and like instantly it was like okay I agree with that like next step let's meet and so um went to tr Trump Tower to make the the the pitch in person and you know there's also like the political calculus like this is how many votes we think are out there this is how much money we think we can raise around these different topics and stuff like you know Trump's like a entrepreneurial guy so he's looking at this from the point of like you know uh not only like how's it good for the us but also like how's it good for my election prospects and um yeah and he

liked he liked the pitch I mean we were making up the numbers on like how many voters we could get and how much money we could raise we had no idea nobody had any like actual data on any of this stuff so we're just kind of like you know flying a little bit by the the seat of our pants but uh uh he he kind of gave us a chance and he's like let's do this but like you know let's like let's see some tangible results and then we did uh we like gathered all the miners in the country for uh Mar Lago to do a mining round table and we raised some money and also like I tried to like basically show him the most legit part of our industry where it would like you he could uh uh get excited about and um

it went really well and you know then we started helping him with some tweets to put out there and and um like as he like kept stepping deeper and deeper the reaction he was getting from the world basically on it was like really strong and so they were like wow like I'm raising money I mean I'm sure he loved it his tweets were getting all this engagement and he's raising money and like you I I heard you guys raised a good amount of money for him like I'm sure I'm sure he loved it so and and he so he just kept doubling down like he basically like the more like it was like dating it's like you know you don't just go straight to marriage it's like you know like you you go on dates and like the relationship builds and the trust builds y Yad and so that's kind of like

what the whole process was like and then it culminated and him speaking in Nashville and um us working with his team on kind of like what you know what what he was going to say I it's the first ever presidential address to the to the World on bitcoin and um uh we put together a fundraiser for him and we raised a lot of money uh $25 million um which was his you guys raised 25 million at the Bitcoin conference for him yeah it was the I mean we raised the money leading up to the conference and stuff but like the kind of key event was there and um it you know know it was uh his second biggest fundraiser he'd ever had across all three presidential elections and the only one that was bigger one guy wrote a $50 million check and if you took that out then it was the biggest

fundraiser ever amongst all three races so um yeah and then like after that like he was on cloud n about Bitcoin Community you know Bitcoin crypto that's when he decided to do a token he's like oh I love these guys like let that you know everybody wants me to do a token let's give them a token you know it's like so uh uh but you know Trump is like you know just taking away like the politics of it is an awesome person like very kind very funny extremely charismatic um very entrepreneurial amazing instincts like doesn't understand all the details doesn't need to understand all the details like he can the the things that he needs to understand he understands and uh uh very

uh loyal team around him that are vicious executors like I am like like our works hard like these people work they make me feel like so lazy like they're up at 4:00 a.m. and they're like texting you back at 1:00 a.m. like it's like when do these people sleep um so really just very impressed by Trump in general and it makes sense like why he's been as successful as he has been and like the media Persona that they build of trump I just think is like total total fantasy and he kind of leans into it like the you know um yeah it's like let this let the fantasy be what you know yeah yeah but um so yeah and then like uh I've built a good relationship with this apparatus

and team around them um you know a lot of the people who ended up going into his cabinet uh which I I call the first Bitcoin cabinet um were people that we got into Bitcoin or or uh like you know we were a platform for them like we you know RFK got into Bitcoin uh through Bitcoin 2023 through what we did with the truckers in Canada um you know we have a good relationship with Tulsi um with Howard lutnick um with uh uh uh the new SEC chairman I mean like there's it's kind of crazy the level of um of of access our industry has across the new the new admin so um yeah we've just been on this ride and then I guess the last

thing we just did was the crypto ball that we hosted the first ever uh you guys you guys ran the ball right yeah it was us and and David Sachs and so um uh and it was like just an amazing moment for the industry I mean uh really it felt like something like historic was happening and um yeah I mean it's uh and like Trump has you know there's been mixed re reception to some of the stuff Trump has done uh since the ball I mean he launched the Trump coin there which I you know wouldn't have advised him doing and and um but whatever you know uh the uh he freed Ross uh you know he he uh rolled back Sab 121 he you know put

together this working group that became went from Bitcoin strategic Reserve to digital assets strategic Reserve so you know there's like it's not like no cbdc subcommittee with lumus so he's delivered on tons of stuff I mean I he is an amazing partner for our industry but also like as more and more people have like uh gotten access and a seat at the table the messaging has become much more mixed and it's you know know been kind of trickier to navigate so um I think you know uh the next four years are going to be very interesting like this is not like one andone with the president like this is like a I would expect new things to

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satellite Miner by setting up a base station you can get involved with this uh groundbreaking web 3 ecosystem learn more by heading over to geod net.com or just by hitting the link in the description of today's episode today's episode is brought to you by uni chain the layer 2 designed to be the home for Defi and cross chain liquidity with up to 95% lower fees than ethereum and launching with 1 second block times unich chain is the L2 purposely built for defi over 80 apps infrastructure providers are already building on uni chain including coinbase Circle Unis Swap and many more so users can seamlessly interact with the largest centralized exchanges lending protocols

and stable coins from day one the uni chain validation network is coming soon which will allow anyone to run a node and verify blocks I mean we let's talk about the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve right because I think you've been really Hands-On with the Strategic Bitcoin reserve and with lumus and and you know the other folks involved in that and I think people came you know uh David Sachs had this press conference and I think people actually took it as pretty bearish and you I I saw you tweeted you said look people are completely misreading today's press conference the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is happening it is a top priority directly from Donald Trump um and I think you said there assembling the top officials in the country to formulate a plan in the next you know 70 80 Days

half the working group is bitcoiners spr sprs happening so I think there's kind of this like is it really happening there's another angle to this which is like you know I think a lot of people now know about the lobbying work that Ripple is doing in DC and so like is this thing gonna be a strategic Bitcoin Reserve is it gonna be like a a national like digital asset stockpile which I don't think anybody wants um and so like I'm yeah I don't know the answer of like what exactly is gonna happen and and the truth is like no one does what I know is that Trump fully intends to deliver on uh every promise that he that he made to the community like he he is a promises made Promises Kept guy like that is like what he's about and so um and like the

media doesn't give him credit for that but like truly like that is how he thinks about stuff um loyalty is like one of the things he cares most about and um uh like the the the working group that was formed like you know there wasn't like exactly what happened is how it should have gone down like you symbol the the top people in the government who are responsible for touching America's money you get them together you give them a very tight deadline to to articulate a plan and you say Okay I want y'all to tell me what the plan is in 90 days and then you have another 90 days to get to to tell the rest of the world what plan is and um uh like the reason that it became the digital asset

uh um uh stockpile and like Trump's team is always very uh uh consistent with me that it's a stockpile not a reserve um but uh is because like they didn't want to show that they were just like blindly picking Bitcoin they wanted to show that like they um they're not picking winners and losers they're approaching this in a method like with a methodical uh approach of like okay we're going to create a framework and like you know we're g to make a a determination about like how do things get added to this reserve and how to like Etc and so I think for people from our industry who know how much [ __ ] there is in a lot of the industry they hear that and they're like okay like great like you're going to be putting bull [ __ ] in

there from their perspective they have no idea how much [ __ ] is in our industry and so they're like you know we want to be like fair and like approach Us in the right way and we don't want to be you know like like um so you know I think the reality is is like the reason why there isn't clear-cut lines at the SEC about what is the security or what isn't with tokens or any of this stuff is because it's very hard to differentiate like once you get past Bitcoin like you know maybe once you get past like the top three or four cryptos uh it's very hard to differentiate number number seven from number 30 from number 200 you know so um like once they get into this process like either

they're going to come to a conclusion that like everything goes in or they're going to get to the conclusion that like Bitcoin goes in and and maybe there's one one or two other things but like that's that's kind of like the the extreme that I see and I don't think everything's going to go in because like I don't think it makes sense to put Securities or you know we want to put stocks in a strategic stockpile and so you know why are we gonna put yeah I agree with that I agree it seems silly to put a even even to put something like as much as I I'm I'm not like I I I like other things outside of just Bitcoin but like to me it feels ridiculous to put like salana and etherium and stuff in like this National Stock pile or Reserve but and like the thing that like gives

me kind of conf on this uh like what the final outcome will be is like lutnick bessent Atkins um like all the people that he gathered for this uh uh to put this together like they know what's up like like letnik knows what's up uh and like letnik is not going to let trash be added to the the the Strategic stockpile so you know what's actually an interesting Dynamic that I think a lot of people haven't thought about at all is like if this working group comes together says here here's the framework that we we developed and like the framework says the only thing that qualifies is Bitcoin um that has massive Downstream implications like you've just

gathered the top Regulators in the most powerful country in the world to come up with a framework of like what's an asset that qualifies for like your sovereign country to hold you know on its balance sheet and they just made a determination that like if you're a proof of stake you know whatever their framework is like oh like if there's you know uh however they're going to define centralization or Etc like like um that's like a new Hoy test almost except it's not whether you're security or not it's like whether you're an asset that reaches the caliber of like being oh I see yeah that's interesting and so like uh the this is gonna like this report's gonna have implications in other countries around the world it's going to be a report that people are going to reference for the next decade plus so um yeah a lot of the

line what uh so right now in poly Market there's a 40ish percent chance that we get the spr spr what would you put that up well when they say spr do they mean like uh just we're going to get a a stockpile of digital assets well what what's your okay what is your uh what is your prediction for like if you had to apply a probability to it of like okay we're just going to get a stock pile verse we're going to start doing maybe lumus is plan of buying what was ls' plan I think a million Bitcoin Bitcoins yeah I would say a stock pilot to hold what we already have I put the odds of that at 95% plus um so and and I think we get it this year um in terms of

buying you know the the the EO doesn't actually doesn't say that there won't be Acquisitions like the EO is very vague so uhh what's the the chances that we get executive action to acquire more Bitcoin um I think it is uh you know probably lower than 50% but if you told me it's was 50-50 I I I think that that's probably i' i' believe that um and that can also take other forms and Fashions like this Sovereign wealth fund kind of came out of nowhere like letnik is running The Sovereign wealth fund like Abu Dhabi just announced their Sovereign wealth fund just aped into the Bitcoin like lutnick if he has the opportunity to ape into

Bitcoin he's aping in so like okay maybe the buying actually happens in The Sovereign wealth fund that's still from the executive branch yeah and then you know in terms of the likel of the lumus bill getting passed I don't think that that happens until next year but I think it's very very likely to happen when I look at the political Dynamic that exist there really is not a counter political group to bitcoin like we we basically trampled our our enemies and the the Democrats want to reset the Republicans are like wanting our our lobbying dollars um and they're wanting our votes like and like who's the counter constituency like who's the voter the marginal voter you lose by

saying hey we're going to do a um we're going to vote for America to hold Bitcoin on its balance sheet um versus like who's the marginal voter you gain if you say that and it's like massively lopsided yeah so I think like as this builds momentum as the price of Bitcoin goes up over the course of the year like this is what people want and like you can already see it in the in the you know they've announced the stable coin stuff Market structured stuff guess what the price has done nothing like w w no one cares like in fact like I talked to a lot of the CEOs of these companies I don't know how much they care like like this Market structure stuff it's like how much is that even holding us back at this point we've we've we've

done such good jurisdictional Arbitrage like who isn't able to launch a token you know uh I guess maybe like legit companies but like the like it's not like um uh having clarification that the cftc is our regulator now it's gonna like solve the pro yeah I see what you're saying yeah and so I I I think like the only thing that people are going to respond to is like is America buying Bitcoin like it buys gold do you think that's do you think that's a problem though David that like not the price is not moving unless Trump says I'm buying Bitcoin like is it too dependent on that no no but it's it's um uh uh I'm not I don't think that that's why the price is is not moving I'm saying that like like all of these other

announcements that they thought were going to give juice to the price like Trump wants the price to go up Trump wants the price to be $150,000 in his first 100 days like said that uh like he is looking at the price of Bitcoin like it's the Dow Jones for the next generation and he wants it to go up every day and so when it doesn't go up and he's doing stuff for it it's like well what what's going on like why is the market not reacting uh to all this stuff we're doing and and it's like you know at the end of the day they're gonna figure out like you know lumus puts out a tweet where people think the SBR is about to something about the SBR is going to be said price is up 10 per. you know bunch of senators come out and say

Here's all the clarification the industry has been saying they need for a decade and we're going to hand it to you and the price goes down 2% it's like they're going to figure out like what this what the market wants yeah and so I think the lumus bill is very likely to happen uh but it's going to be uh a year plus out from happening yeah um what about the crypto Council so I saw a headline it said Trump is having second thoughts about the crypto Council uh Trump admin made Nicks has promised exec Council in favor of informal industry Summits new plan has seen as a way to avoid rif tribalism and in fighting within the crypto industry I mean I I I you know I uh I you know no one no there's no one

knows exactly what's happening so like I mean the the like these are things like there's a lot of like floating stuff out there or whatever without before things are final um but yeah I mean it's it's there is uh very real chance that that's the case yeah I just finished reading uh Jared kushner's book about his about his time in in the admin and um it just struck me uh I mean he every every chapter he talks about how many leaks happen when you work in he's like especially he's like especially for one reason or another in you know in in DC but also in in Trump's admin uh he's like there are just so many leaks we couldn't get he's

like we figured out so many things we couldn't we couldn't get a a handle on the leaks so I think about kushner's statements when I see something like that dude I have never seen anything like it in my entire life uh the amount of Palace Intrigue about Trump yeah is I I honestly can't even articulate it in a way that's like until you see it you can't understand it like I can be having a conversation with someone in the airport on the phone and like someone overhears that I said the word Trump and they start listening and then like they pick up like you know some words that I said and they send a text message to someone like I just heard a guy at the airport saying this and then it's like you know ding dong ding ding ding like four hours later like New York Times

Trump says this and it's like some like regurgitated like Hal trueu thing and it's like dude like like you literally like you know one time I had a meeting um I had a meeting with someone that happened spontaneously and before the it was a dinner we went to dinner before the dinner was over I got a text from The New York Times asking me about um uh like H having that dinner and it's like yeah yeah so uh yeah I mean it's it's it's crazy and it's really hard to do stuff when that's um when that's the the environment but like also you can weaponize it too like you can like you

can turn it against itself so um you just got to have the experience and the Trump team does but for people who have never seen it before like myself Etc it's like shocking to see the inj hey everyone earlier in today today's episode I mentioned Petra a top non-custodial wallet developed by Aptos labs they just launched NN a new feature to access defi with just one click earn lets non- us users deposit usdt directly into Aries markets lending pools to gain interest and rewards and manage it all directly from the Petra wallet Petra earn was designed to make defi more accessible for everyone you can manage your balance claim rewards and deposit directly from the app this is of course

not Financial advice participating in defi carries risks to learn more visit petra. apppp earn or by hitting the link in the description of today's episode hey everyone Jason here earlier in today's episode you heard me mention the weekly CI o Memo from bitwise in an industry as hectic fast and complex as ours it's incredibly hard to get an easy noons stream of what's actually moving crypto the memo comes from Matt Hogan bit wise's Chief investment officer he's been on the show before and he has this amazing ability to take the most complex topics and break them down with Clarity trust me on this one the bitwise weekly CIO memo is really worth the five

minutes of your time check it out at bitwise investments.com memoire or just hit the link in the description of today's episode to get started carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing AO the hyper parallel computer is here a decentralized supercomputer built on top of rwe's permanent data storage AO offers infinite parallel processing and leverages web infrastructure HTTP for unprecedented scalability addressing limitations of existing blockchains AO smart contracts support large programs including llms and can execute autonomously enabling new classes of decentralized

applications utilizing tees for secure comput ations and features a 100% Fair token distribution to R weave holders and Bridge depositors emphasizing Community ownership thanks to rwe for making today's episode possible you can find out more by clicking the link in the show notes what does hyperbitcoinization mean to you it means 100% penetration uh uh 100% um uh adoption of every of every uh every transaction Financial transaction that happens on the planet uh on the individual level um on the corporate level on The Sovereign level um on the um on the Machine level uh uh on the

intergalactic level um happens in Bitcoin that's crazy yeah that's nuts uh I'm laughing because you said on the intergalactic level but yeah sure yeah I mean I mean what sending wires to Mars no you know like you're GNA be using you know math-based money that that's dig what um you don't think there'll be any dollars you don't think there'll be any Fiat I think the timeline that this plays out over is is long and complicated and so hundreds of years or or many

decades it's really hard to say and by the way do you think this will happen or you want this to happen uh I think it will happen and I want it to happen so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to take it from because you think it's better for the world or because you'll be like you know a multi-billionaire 100 times over yeah no I mean uh uh I'd be lying if I didn't say the second one factored in but because I think it's better for the world I mean that's that's why I got into this in the first place is like wow like we can have a true golden age for Humanity even even though the world would have to burn so hard to that get there you think think it's worth it oh I I don't I don't agree with that with

that conclusion you don't think if the US dollar collapsed we would go into just a well I think I think the US dollar collapsing is the wrong way to to frame like what that process looks like like you know you know the the there was a time not that long ago where the English pound was the reserve currency of the world and you know it became the dollar and it's not like the United Kingdom burned to the ground or the world burned to the ground because we switch from the pound to the dollar um so like I I I think how the systems transition and evolve is way more complex than like people want to be very uh it's much more gradual than like a civil war moment in time in the year 2045 you're saying I see yeah and and

like and and not even that it's necessarily just gradual like it can happen fast but like like it can be much more complex like like if if the United States ends up dominating Bitcoin like the dollar actually could become a relevant asset for a while because of the position the United States has in the Bitcoin ecosystem the United States economy has with Bitcoin Etc so like there are there it's not just a a simple equation of like bitcoin's rise to power means like the collapse of all the institutions that we' we've ever known uh some of those institutions get co-opted some of those institutions go away some of those institutions evolve and morph so I think it's just a very

complex thing and um you know I think that like our goal at our company is to accelerate the timeline that this happens over um okay tell me about M building mini micro strategies like tell me about um yeah what's are you wearing a metal Planet hat I am yeah yeah so I mean you guys you guys own or you're a board member or something I don't understand the relationship but meta Planet by the way for people who don't know I think it's the best performing stock in the entire world on any stock market right now um and then there's also you're running a similar Playbook with uh 1723 in in in Hong Kong but yeah tell tell me about these yeah you broke up there for a minute so I missed what you said but it like uh yeah it's you know it's

pretty it's actually very funny thing like I'm a DieHard libertarian like Ron Paul libertarian and like you know anti anti the FED anti uh you know not anti-wall street but like definitely uh sympathize with like Occupy Wall Street um and uh now like this past year I'm like you know uh funding politicians and he you know getting involved in political races and I'm like you know uh doing like uh Bitcoin plays on Wall Street and like working with like trafi institutions so uh uh it's definitely come full circle but yeah dude I mean I think in general like uh metal planet um yeah so first off metal Planet uh us and

three other people like basically bought this company uh and partnered with the CEO of the company uh to Pivot this hotel company in Tokyo that had like one hotel making a million dollars a year um into a Bitcoin company and we just copied the Sailor Playbook I think we're the first company to copy the Sailor Playbook and uh We've like speed ran that from a $15 million market cap to uh the other day it it was just shy of A2 billion doll market cap you guys tooking from $15 million market cap to two billion yeah in like 10 months and that that's nuts congrats that's awesome that's awesome and you're just buying and and it's because it's a a the best

proxy for Bitcoin on the Japanese stock market it's more complex than that um like we can go deep on on this conversation but um you know what what sailor pioneered is like there are pools of liquidity and capital all over the world and these these pools of liquidity uh have different needs and when you're selling Bitcoin to these pools of liquidity you meet the liquidity where it is in the form and fashion that it needs you to be in in order to sell to it and so there's money that has to go into debt okay well then you wrap you securitize Bitcoin in convertible notes and you sell you know debt that is backed by Bitcoin or has exposure to bitcoin to that liquidity

pool you know there's there's there's pools of capital that can only buy public equities they can't even buy ETFs okay so you wrap you securitize Bitcoin in the wrapper of a corporate company and you sell it to those liquidity pool there's money that's stuck in Japan or South Korea or Brazil or South Africa I mean there's Capital controls all over the the world for different reasons so you wrap it in some structure that's in that jurisdiction and you sell it to the liquidity pools there so we're just like repackaging Bitcoin into every possible Financial form so that we can sell it to some pool of liquidity that wants access to bitcoin but is just stuck and so like this process is actually in the early stages um it's going to get way bigger and uh sailor like pioneered this Vision

but like there's room here for tens of thousands of products to be created like like you've seen nothing like we haven't T tapped into Sovereign in any meaningful way we haven't tapped into Insurance in any meaningful way like this is this is at the very early stages and um yeah so like we we did metap plan it and the results and the reaction to it uh it was like kind of like oh like this like micro strategy isn't about Michael sailor Michael sailor is just the Visionary who saw it like like the strategy so what are you doing with meta plan what is the strategy for someone who doesn't who hasn't been following it uh we we literally just copy Michael sailor I mean it's it's uh we we buy Bitcoin and we put it on the balance

sheet and uh we either uh uh issue debt to buy Bitcoin um or we um if the if the Val if the market cap of the company is at a a premium to the value of the underlying assets we dilute and issue shares to buy Bitcoin and um you know metop plet has a crude um a few hundred million dollars of Bitcoin it's already it's buying now like $30 million slugs of Bitcoin no debt um and you know it's trading at a big premium but like you know this company had no assets 10 months ago now it has hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin so uh it's uh like the strategy was very effective and and so we're like okay we

need to do more of these we should do one of these in every Capital Market on the planet so that's that's the goal this year we want to do one in the top 20 Capital markets top maybe top 25 Capital markets we want a public company that we have controlling interest in each each of those doing this plan so you've done it in two right met five and and we have so we've done it in uh two in Canada um one in India one in Hong Kong that we just announced a couple weeks ago and then one in um uh the the Met plan in Japan and then we are working right now deals in we just closed on a deal in the United Kingdom we're working on a deal in Brazil we're working on a deal in uh Taiwan South Korea um in Thailand in

Indonesia and who who's we David is it is this Bitcoin mag or this is you and like your family office SL like like group of operators or we have an investment arm uh as well um so that's utxo management and so that has two different funds a venture fund and and a hedge fund and the hedge fund you know wasn't all sorts of of Bitcoin strategies um trying to just generate uh Alpha on bitcoin I did I cut out there did you hear yeah just cut that you said the hedge fund was in all sorts of what Bitcoin strategies to try to generate Alpha on bitcoin so you know we we Benchmark internally against Bitcoin we want to beat Bitcoin and um uh uh but now like this play has become so

successful that I think like 70 80% of the um of the hedge fund is is in public equities because like this is where all the returns are right now so um so yeah so we like like so we have a team there it's pretty small team and then we have like a network of what I'll call like our Bitcoin Bros um around the world that we've just done deals with over the over the past 12 years 13 years and so like we've just started like as these deals come together there's maybe a couple of our friends that are like getting in there with us we've done a lot of deals with Jason Fang from Sora um but like each of these deals maybe has like a different like kind of key person who's like kind of like yeah I saw Dylan is Dylan running meta planet

or he's like one of the leaders strategy and he's he's an employee of our company yeah and he's also he's like 24 or something that's amazing yeah so like every one of these companies we're doing there's gonna be a Dylan in the company every one of these companies needs a Michael sailor so you got to have like the Public Public Market CEO who's going to be like the champion in that local market then you need like a Dylan who's like going to help with like the messaging with the going to help with like the structuring like best practices Etc and so like we're like hodg podging these deals together like pulling together different people you know if you get bored at at blockworks and you want to like take over as Bitcoin you know strategy officer at a public company let me know and we can plug you

in somewhere but uh yeah what's the what's the pitch for okay so if all these public companies are doing it why doesn't why don't you like what do you you guys do with your balance sheet or like should like what's the pitch for blockworks to move our you know yeah I mean we're in process of of uh aring right now and I think we're gonna be public very soon so uh I heard I heard that I heard you were raising much money to go public yeah yeah I I don't know how much I am able to talk about that without like getting into any any trouble so the so Bitcoin you think and that what's the what's the entity Bitcoin Inc or Bitcoin mag we're going to take over a public company and roll our assets from both our operating companies into that business wait say

say that again you cut out we're going to take over a public company and then we're going to roll both of our operating companies BTC Inc which has the conference and Bitcoin magazine and utxo which has our funds into one one in oh you so you'll do a pipe basically yeah basically okay it's a little more complex than that to to optimize for time but yeah that's that's effectively what we're doing that's crazy that's cool so yeah like we're all in on this on this strategy right now and the returns are just like you know I mean we took over this Hong Kong deal we put we deployed 24 million bucks split amongst three Partners um so we each put in 8 mil um you know we own like almost 80% of this public company like 70 something percent of this public company in Hong Kong they

started trading a few weeks ago like last night it like tapped like $180 million market cap uh so our stake is worth like 50 something million dollars we're like three weeks in so it's like you know it's like like just do more of these what are like what what are we doing like this is just just do this so um yeah I mean we want to do one in every Capital Market and then as like we as the resources keep growing you know we started off doing these deals of like million dollar checks now we're doing like you know 10 million doll checks like we want to get to the point where we're writing you know multiple hundreds of millions of dollars is this internal capital or is this internal capital or are you raising do you have external Capital that flows into guys both we're

it's it's primarily coming from our fund but part the reason that we've been taking our our company public is we want to do as much of of this as possible from our own balance sheet so like uh you know doing metap planet we wrote the metap planet check out of the fund um you know we should have doubled the investment size and done it from our own balance sheet as well so um uh but yeah it's uh uh D what have you learned about like over the years um I do feel like every entrepreneur in crypto every site they do crazier things and they think bigger and and they get a lot better at executing too obviously how like how do you I I mean I'm I'm very I I I just

love I I'm really enjoying this because I love hearing I feel like I've seen you in the early days like I mean we were like slinging podcast ads together um yeah and it's very cool to see just what you're doing so I'm like what I mean how does it feel to be doing these like crazy deals and stuff honestly it it feels right to be honest like it feels like uh you know I was talking about this with somebody the other day it's like the reason why we're this is gonna get really big is because like we have absolute conviction in Bitcoin like absolute conviction and um to a degree that other people can't have without living the experiences that we've lived and um and like we are absolutely reckless in a way that no one who has

this amount of resources is reckless like that and so like those two things put together mean that we're going to do deals that other people are going to like be afraid to do and that they're not going to have the conviction to follow through on and like you know um where I was like yeah we have no problem buying Papa John's Pizza for a billion dollars and then just saying okay now you're a Bitcoin company divest the pizza and take their take their Bouy like we we we we will roll I did see you I did see you tweet about Papa John yeah I mean so it's like who else is GNA do that you know and and like sailor is like crazy like sailor's amazing person but like he's a has a very unique personality and um so like I we just feel like you know uh this cycle

like we've just had you know it's it's been building up to us doing this and I uh for for whatever reason like we are not really afraid of making decisions that have multiple hundred million dollar implications on these companies like it just I don't know it just feels like the right thing to do so so um yeah dude it's been fun and it's it's uh it's definitely I'm learning a new game and you know it's kind of like funny like how much you know I I've always been in crypto my entire professional career uh and you feel like you know we're inventing so much stuff in crypto and then the more time you spend in like trafi you realize like like we really

haven't invented like [ __ ] we really just like did a bad job copying what like was inv like you know a long time ago in in the so long ago that even the Wall Street guys had forgotten like how it got created but like it it already exists in a much more you know polished format so yeah uh uh it's cool and like the the stuff we're doing on the corporate side I feel like it's just the Prelude to what where we take this next which is the Sovereign side like bit the Bitcoin strategic Reserve is just um Bitcoin on the balance sheet of a Sovereign Nation and like the the bit bonds and like Bitcoin back debt that that's issued by a Sovereign Nation that's just the convertible note of The

Sovereign on The Sovereign level yeah I saw yeah yeah I saw um I saw those bit bonds that's interesting um what I've uh okay so if you extend out your like public markets thesis of like I feel like you're half joking and half serious about Papa John's probably more serious than joking actually but um I was pitched that that that company and like and we start we like the we have looked at like we're now trying to find like what's a billion- dollar market cap company that we so so so okay so let me ask let me ask the question which is the Papa John's if you wipe out the pizza then it's just a Bitcoin company you can't do that with all companies in the world because some companies need to deliver services like you you know you

wouldn't go into apple and wipe out the iPhones because like they no but what what you would do is you'd stop investing the capital into trying to to grow the the underlying business because the the the your going to get better Returns on Capital so I thought so I thought you would get there but then what happens to the growth of eventual GDP and like how do you actually improve things if you're stripping away all of the Innovation like investment the R&D I I I would argue that it's not that you're you're you're stripping away the Innovation I would say that you are you are stripping out the 80% of investment into R&D that generates 20% of the returns and the that there like the like the things that

are actually Innovation are still going to get funded your just hurdle rate is going to be much higher and so like as the price of Bitcoin matures the market cap of Bitcoin grows the rate of return of Bitcoin reduces like that hurdle rate is going to be like okay can can your technology you know can this investment generate us more than a 40% return on investment annually and it's like if the answer is no you should buy Bitcoin if the answer is yes then you should do do invest into that R&D and um there is so much wasted money spent on brand on marketing like on marginal changes to the business um that yeah I I think uh uh there's a lot of misallocation of

capital um and you know when you buy Bitcoin um you know it's not like you delete the money like it's not like you like somehow like the wealth has just been like gone into this like black hole and it doesn't like when you buy Bitcoin and you send the price of Bitcoin up there are hundreds of millions of people around the the world that own Bitcoin you're just redistributing the wealth within Society to people who hold this specific asset and then the people who hold that asset they have different Behavior or consumption Behavior or economic decisions that they make based on the value of the assets that they hold and so you're really just empowering a different set of economic actors to make decisions and those decisions are going to result in them having increased consumption or or

funding a business that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to fund and so like it's not like it's uh uh you're removing resources from society you're just redeploying resources in society okay all right I need to process that one um you know I mean like this like um like you've been you've benefited from the appreciation of of so here's the okay here's like here's the thing so block works like block like block works right okay so we I mean about half of our balance sheet is is like we sit on a bunch of Bitcoin like we we also and like our board actually likes it like they they're like yeah you gotta think

about it's a capital allocation game but let's say it was aund let's say we took a 100% of our cash and we put it into Bitcoin well I mean I think bitcoin's going to rip this year so like we'd make a lot of money but then we go into a bare market like that happens we don't invest in our data product where like a lot of the value and the future of the business revenue is going to come um why would you not in invest in the data product like when your Bitcoin appreciates does that not change your investment decisions like if you have a a balance sheet with a hundred million doll of Bitcoin versus a balance sheet that has $1 million of cash like would you not actually oh I see okay so you do spend the Bitcoin

eventually if you need to invest it your just hurdle rate is much higher I okay I see the point then well how do you how do you make financial planning decisions when your your treasury is going like this all the time well yeah I mean the volatility definitely is is um like it is a reason why you don't want to have you you it's a reason why it makes sense to make fixed investments into certain assets that have a predictable yield so likey I'm gonna buy um I'm G to buy my house and I'm going to sell my Bitcoin to buy this house rather than uh doing it with debt because bitcoin's a very volatile asset and I don't want to be caught in a place where like I can't make a payment on on my home and so like I've made the

the decision the tradeoff like uh uh I want the predictability of owning this asset outright than you know increasing the volatility of my balance sheet by by financing this this home so like uh uh yeah it's it's um uh like you factor that into your economic equation you know it's like yeah um okay makes sense um okay you believe in the foure cycle forever you know that that's a very complex question um you know I believe in the underlying dynamics of the four-year cycle uh for quite a long like I think that that

plays out for a while but like I actually I I've I as I've gotten close to this trafi this trafi convergence with crypto that's occurring right now ever since the ETF launched I don't think that the four-year cycle can work in this run like the four-year cycle would dictate to us 20126 is a bare Market um there's not enough time for the capital to be deployed from trafi that is being deployed um like like there's too much liquidity coming into the market for for it to be possible to have a sustained bare Market at this point the pricings to go up way more so that the the it's the instability of that price can

justify a prolonged bare Market environment so I don't see that that happening by the end of this year so you think you think the poe cycle could be could be over then I think it could be elongated but I I I do think that the underlying dynamics of um uh like stock to flow and I I I feel like stock to flow is also like too reductionist but like the underlying mechanics of like the inflation rate of the system versus like the IL liquidity of the system that is going to maintain itself for quite a while like the the the the people misunderstand the liquidity of Bitcoin and it's like like there's like four million Bitcoins like there like that's

it like that's the entire liquidity picture is based on four million Bitcoins and if you have a a hundred trillion dollars or you have a trillion dollars like there it's bidding over the same four million Bitcoins yeah yeah um uh you know like the the price runs to some point that the inflation rate of the system on a daily basis surpasses the plus the outflowing liquidity surpasses what is inflowing on a daily basis it's like like liquidity in liquidity out and at some point in time that that imbalance has to rear itself and I think that like the fouryear cycle is actually it's a healthy part of our system because the bare markets Wipe Out the the the the malinvestment that's

going on it's like the forest fire you need to happen in the forest so that like it the forest can regrow healthier and so if we lose like imagine how horrible it would be if we just had like a you know a linear growth rate forever up on bitcoin people like like SBF they would have run their Ponzi to like unbelievable unbelievable levels no no yeah flush flushes are good right like like a poet like a flush poet out exactly and it's like you know you know how many people's time was wasting and how much money I was wasting on poet like you know how many smart people worked there that could have been doing other [ __ ] that actually mattered was did did you hire was Jared running that yeah yeah no I mean dude we we had a

huge organization there and it's like like waste of [ __ ] time and so like need like the market needs to tell us like how to deploy our Resources by like [ __ ] punishing us for dumb [ __ ] what do you think about crypto what what about crypto um um let me read two of your tweets you said I'm not rejoicing at my eth friend's loss but to State the obvious hugely bullish confirmation of Bitcoin if ethereum loses number two Spot Will mean there's no staying power for any network Beyond Bitcoin will cause crisis of confidence amongst ogs who became eth Maxis that's one second one is right now crypto is almost entirely secure also I

like you put quotes on crypto every time you say uh right now crypto is almost entirely sec Securities with zero cash flow until they generate cash flow they will Trend to zero it's not investable Embrace that you are a company generate a profit distribute to investors and crypto plus Bitcoin will explode only path forward oh that's interesting so you do think crypto you're fine with like like let me ask you about a specific company like what do you think of like Unis swap you know the problem with Unis swap is that Unis swap is a platform to trade uh worthless tokens so it's like like uh if it was actually a tool that was being used for and I don't know the the like like the thing about decentralization is

like the way decentralization is used in crypto is like decentralization like pixie dust that you sprinkle on your security to like a great enough degree that then you can basically claim like uh regulatory Arbitrage and be like oh well like we don't control this we don't control that and so therefore like you know we are immune from whatever it is you're trying to tell us um you know so I don't know like what pixie dust uh Unis swap uses I've used the product I think it's a great product um and you know if there's a day where I can swap tokens of of Apple for tokens of Google um uh using a product like Unis swap I think that that would be cool I think that would be cool um you know I think like probably the token out

there that I think has done the best job maybe there's like a couple that I would reference one would be BNB uh because BNB like the the the exchange token model all they're doing is like re like redirecting the cash flows that they would otherwise generate from charging fees into automatically buying their own [ __ ] shitcoin and so they've they've um like the core the reason the token is up is because the Core Business which is an exchange that generates fees like is the bid underneath the asset it's like a continual stock buyback and so like uh that's like the most direct binance is the same thing as Unis swap because it's uh it's the exact same

business uh you're just Trad to you you're trading worthless tokens yeah well uh like binance could trade I mean binance has all sorts of financial products and and D Etc so I mean like I mean binance is just NASDAQ it's like if NASDAQ was just like hey like we're notna make any profit we're just gonna like every dollar as soon as we make it we're just going to buy our shares of our own stock back so like like uh I think done well another one that I think did well was bitfinex when they got hacked back in the day they created the bfx token that was actually the best still the best way to do a bankruptcy or a um a a hack to to solve a hack yeah it was it was it was a bond I mean they issued a bond and it was like okay face

face value of the bond it matures at like1 and you know it can trade free float and like dude and it worked it worked so um I I am totally on board like I I feel like the person who said it best and and you know it was it was very bold of him to to put this out there just because of the blowback you could get is sailor he he he did his policy framework that he published and he he really reduced it to First principles and it's like I totally agree with where his mind is at on this like using crypto uh like like the um the technological cost of issuing a security trading a security doing a public

offering has been reduced dramatically instead of it costing a million dollars to do it and a year it can be done in an hour and you know with a hundred bucks and so like that is a step function Improvement in in the process of creating Securities and securities have a fundamental purpose in society to organize the economy and resources so that people can go and create [ __ ] so like there's a reason why we have stocks they're a useful thing and so you know that efficiency gain we should unleash for society um but like the reason we have Securities laws is because we want to protect people and like fundamentally

you know sailor laid out like three things that like that we want to optimize for like we don't want people to lie we don't want people to cheat and we don't want people to steal okay like that's like the fundamentals of it and so you know uh if we could have some common sense reform of the Securities laws so that you know like it doesn't cost a million dollars to file an S1 no one even reads these s1s I've asked every investment banker who reads this [ __ ] no one reads it it's like the terms and conditions on a piece of software where you just click agree or whatever I know I clicked coinbase's earnings yesterday to read coinbase's earnings and it was 382 pages and I was like who's no one's reading this the only people who are reading this is the lawyers who wrote it and they're

probably not even reading they're probably just like you know so it's like that that is not helpful for society and so if we could reform the securities regulations then it would be easy for uh uh companies to comply with Securities laws it would be cheaper for them to use tokens to to to track like ownership of their of their security and then like we just have an explosion of our Capital markets because like right now we have this huge [ __ ] up situation where if you're public you have a massive advantage over companies that are private um uh like you have a much cheaper cost of capital and so what ends up happening is these public companies snuff out these small companies and so it actually kills Innovation it actually kills like the the most efficient

companies in the market because you're giving these entrenched Powers this special privilege that other people don't have because they don't have the requisite resources to get to that point already and so like like I'm I'm bullish on uh like I have I have played with tokens and I have also managed the cap table of a private company it is an absolute [ __ ] show after 10 years to like track down options that were PID I mean it is a [ __ ] show and you know like I have like shitcoins that like no one's even [ __ ] looked at these these things in 10 years time and I can go log into the wallet and I can see all the latest transactions that I can happen like I like like it still exists there and so it's like it's fundamentally

better but it's not better as long as um like these things are securities and you I I think I understand your problem you want the the companies behind the products to build good or behind the tokens to build good products and make money and have pnls that generate profit like yeah yeah it's like it's like you know like like tokens are just [ __ ] stocks with no cash flow no profit no product no management team to hold accountable what the [ __ ] is that like that is [ __ ] just make it where they can have those things and then all of a sudden it's real and like as soon as that happens dude this thing goes like like so so why are you guys going public why don't you guys just flip your equity

into a token uh why are we going public because there is massive benefits to tapping the public markets like yeah because it's a much bigger pool of capital than yeah yeah there's passive buyers there's index funds there's like it's it's the advantage so we're signing up for the unfair advantage and so um but like yeah dude it's it's I I think it's such a simple fix and you know when the way you get trafi to come into into to crypto like into Bitcoin is there has to be Investments that they that like if they want the highest rate of return they have to go into crypto to get access to those like the next Apple has to be

something that trades in crypto and it pays dividends in Bitcoin and if you [ __ ] want at Apple you have to go in through this vehicle that's how you get the [ __ ] flows to come over to this new world as long as it's meme coins bro these people do not give like this like it's we are embarrassing ourselves right now I mean it's like it's just kids gambling like you know on forchan and it's like uh uh so yeah I I think yeah I mean that's my view yeah yeah point taken um when do we hit a million now I'm like worked up talking about [ __ ] tokens and like you know every time I I talk about that like all the bitcoiners like they're [ __ ] coins and like you know I'm like try to give

like a substantive critique and it's like I actually enjoyed that I thought you were I I thought there's like a philosophical like I am against crypto with a Capital C like I am against I will never be into crypto but actually that was not that's not the answer I thought you were going to give I think your answer was very reasonable which is um yeah look a lot of the stuff is like a much better system like a lot more efficient like trafy rails suck um but I want to see good businesses built behind the tokens yeah so uh you're win a million bucks um I think it's a very real possibility that we could see a million bucks like in the next 18 months uh I think it's uh uh very real that we could see a million Bitcoins the next

four years and I think it's possible that it takes a decade so it's like that's a wide range of outcomes but um I think like the the the where we're at in the adoption cycle of trafi like you know the you know the like uh the adoption curve the the S curve it's like there's like S curves on S curves on S curves so there's S curves for retail and there's like S curves for VCS and and techn Tech and there's like s-curves for institutional adoption there's s s-curves for like Sovereign Sovereign adoption like the institutional adoption scurve is right at the inflection point where it goes wild and the ETF like dude like if you think about this stuff

as just like icos or whatever tokens um like sailor plus ibit plus the ETFs have like sucked up like uh net like a million and a half Bitcoins two million Bitcoins over the past uh like two years basically you know the ETFs have sucked up a million 1.2 million Bitcoins in in less than one year name the last token project that was able to pull in a million Bitcoins name the last token project that was able to pull in 100,000 Bitcoins like like I mean EOS was like the last one I mean like there's just not that doesn't exist and then and then EOS converted into a Bitcoin company just holding

Bitcoin yeah so so when I look at like the ETFs like dude like this is if you fast forward one year from now there's gonna be another million Bitcoins sucked up by the ETFs and earlier like there's four million Bitcoins out there like that's what we're really fighting over these four million Bitcoins and so uh the the price is going to get massive lift from that process so I think it happened fast but you know uh I also think that there are things that could happen that could slow it down yeah David man always good chatting with you this is awesome dude thank you for having me on man uh cool to see how far you've come it it really is cheers to another

decade you know uh how old are you uh 30 30 so I'm 34 so hell yeah dude I feel like we were born in the right place in time for for this journey and it's like you know I I don't even know I couldn't even go back to the real world now at this point and so it's like dude I got another I got another 30 years of me like we got a long time buddy yeah let's go so cheers cheers to building it maners cheers hey everyone just wanted to give a quick thanks to today's title sponsor geod net by setting up a base station you can get involved with this groundbreaking web 3 ecosystem learn more by heading over to geod net.com or

just by hitting the link in the description of today's episode [Music]