Bitcoin 2026 | Day 3 Livestream

Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, Heat. Heat. N. Hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine news desk powered by Mara. I'm Jeff Heapner. This is Teemo Lamar. And that's Sean Hagen down there. We are on day three of the Bitcoin Experience 2026 and we're still alive. And Sean, your hair has held up magnificently. I love to tell you that. And Teemo, you were wearing the the heck out of that headset. Uh well done both of you. Look, I know Vegas uh we're here in Vegas and things can get blurry, but tell me, do you remember anything from yesterday? >> I do remember a block party happening in there and there was >> You were tossing your wild. That's what that was. Spoiler alert, they were orange. But this was just a real vibe that was happening. And I I love being on stage. It would have been fun to be out there. >> Yeah. You had to work though. >> I did. >> How about you, Sean? Anything left in there? >> Yeah, look, I mean, obviously the programming was great, but just to take a step back and go through the expo hall, this is this is one of the best I've ever seen done, right? It just feels so dense and there's so many excited Bitcoiners here and uh you know, all the side stages have been packed through the roof. So, uh, it's been encouraging, especially with the price action, right? You never know what you're going to get and, uh, to see all these, you know, hungry and excited Bitcoiners here to to learn and to network and to grow as a community. It's, uh, it's been delightful just to walk through the expo hall. >> That's cool, you know, and this is my first time coming through here, you know, and I didn't know what to expect. I was hoping for like the freaks and the geeks and the whole, you know, and everything. And you get a mix of all of it, right? You just see how big the Bitcoin community is. And then on the Nakamoto Nakamoto stage, we had a ton of stuff, a lot of announcements. We had uh we had the announcement that uh Bitcoin 2027 is back in Nashville. Uh we had Mark Moss up there talking about Judo, which I thought was really funny, using the system to move the old system to move into the new system. David Bailey announced his documentary. I think that's going to be a big thing for everyone. And uh and of course, Sailor's Talk. I mean, did you have any takeaways from Sailor's Talk? >> Yeah, you know, I I it's interesting. Sailor says pretty much the same thing, you know, 20 different times until he launches a new thing and then he talks about that 20 more time and then every time you pick up something different, right? You know, he he's an expert at financial engineering. He's he's pioneering these new products and and kind of recalibrating the way we think about financialization uh around a hard and scarce asset, which is Bitcoin, of course. And so, you know, coming from his engineering background, he uses a lot of uh metaphors around energy and preservation and things like this. And so, you know, each time he speaks, you learn something a little bit different or you you find out a new nuance that you might have, you know, not caught the last couple times he's he's presented. So, I I really like the visuals he used just to kind of show where they're just they're distributing the volatility, uh, whether it's, you know, with the common, with the spot, or with the preferred and kind of how that relationship works, which, you know, obviously there's been a lot of questions around fulfilling the dividend obligations for the preferred. And so I think just kind of breaking down that visualization of how they're harnessing that energy and redistributing it efficiently uh kind of helps solve the Coffeezilla perpetual motion machine. >> This guy and you know the the room was packed, right? There was everybody. I saw babies in there. You see old folks in there. Everyone was there. Yeah, why not? Right. And and you you get a sense of first time I saw Sailor in person like he's charming. You know, the clock went out and he makes a comment and he's like, "Listen, I'll be up here all day if you don't fix this clock." >> It was almost a standing ovation. I know, right? And he did. He got the applause and but he had everybody in the palm of his hand and like you said, we've heard a lot of this, right? But still, I was captivated. I wanted to see it. I felt like I walked away with a better sense of STRC. >> Yeah. The big takeaway for me from that speech was just how STRC and Micro Strategy or Strategy are going to be that supply squeeze that's coming to Bitcoin because what they've created with this engine, it's it's going to be a very hard sell not to be involved in it when you are able to make those kind of returns. >> And I'm interested in other products like SATA too, right? um you know when when it comes to the income uh economy that market segment you want a diversified basket of investable you know vehicles right you don't want to uh you know overload on just one income instrument right especially when you think about the ETFs and things like that that are allocating accordingly so it's it's really kind of this thing where a rising tide lifts all ships and so it's interesting to hear that a lot of these firms are actually going on road shows together and kind of helping to educate uh the income investor community kind of around these products and so I'm really interested to learn more about these other, you know, SATA type uh income instruments built on Bitcoin that perhaps don't have as much notoriety yet as STRC. >> So for our audience that may not know, can you give us a quick rundown of what SATA is? >> Yeah, so it's Strive's version of of STRC, right? So it's their preferred and right now I I think it's trading at around 13% dividend actually annualized. >> Oh goodness. >> Yeah, they start competing on that percentage and and it just becomes an open water Bitcoin season pretty soon >> and they, you know, they've really they accelerate each other, right? Obviously, we see how these products worked against each other and with each other and then all of a sudden we've got, you know, a whole bouquet to choose from. And I think that's just the growth of the ecosystem and the health of the ecosystem. Um, how about today, right, day three? This is it. The the the grand finale. Uh, are you guys looking forward to anything? Anything on your list? >> So, I'm really looking forward to listening to Jack Mer's uh keynote speech. I think he's does a great job as as the spokesperson basically for his own company with with uh Strike and he's also, you know, head of uh what it XXI. >> Yes. >> 21. >> 21. They uh I'm looking forward to hearing more about 21 uh because I know that a lot has to be under the under wraps with that. However, um they have just been shipping at Strike. It is just so impressive to see all that they've put out in just the last year and the access that they've given so many people not just in the US but outside the you know throughout the whole world. >> Do you think Jack's going to touch on a little bit of that drama that he might have sparked yesterday with his comments about how sailor's raising money? >> I mean I didn't feel like there was much drama there but >> drama makes good TV show. Absolutely. >> Exactly. This is a TV show. We need more drama. >> Yeah. Look, I mean block is shipping too, right? It's incredible what's happening in the payment space. We had Michael on yesterday to talk about that a little bit. But when it comes to today, I'm really interested in agentic payments. I know our our producer Spencer is going to uh be speaking a little bit about that. I know that uh there's I think two or three different panels today about what does Bitcoin kind of look like with the rise of AI agents, right? Because it's not just humans in in the economy anymore. And everyone's talking about, okay, what does that mean in terms of of wages and and uh you know, job listings and things like that? is it kind of eats up the the total share of that pie of of productivity and output in the economy. But what does that look like for payments? What does that look like uh for money? And I think that's a really interesting question that uh we're going to explore today on the Nakamoto stage. And >> you know, I really want the audience to really tune in to that panel as well cuz I want them to see how Spencer is dressed today. Like he's really sharp today. He's really dapper. He's brought it for the moment and I'm excited for him. Uh me personally, I'm excited. Uh Jeff Booth will be taking the stage. Uh I'm a huge fan. uh his book, The Price of Tomorrow, really opened my mind in a way that I don't know uh would have been otherwise. And so I'm excited to hear him and he's with Ego Death Capital. I'm excited to hear him talk today. So on that note, speaking of Spencer, he's in my ear telling me we're going to head to a commercial break. So we will be right back. Stick with us. >> I nailed it. Nailed it with us. >> Nailed it. Satoshi showed up, then another, and another. They mined blocks. They self-custodied and told someone who told someone. They got laughed at. They stayed when everyone left. They taught. They built. They stood up in rooms where nobody wanted to listen. For nearly two decades, people have been showing up for Bitcoin. Not because it was easy, because it was right. With Khi, you can trade on anything from the weather to news to Bitcoin. And unlike other apps, Kelshi lets you trade against other users, not the house. Live trade during the events. Ky trade on anything. New users can get a bonus when they sign up and trade. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine Newses powered by Mara. I am still Jeff Hapner. That is still Teemo Lamar. And we are now joined by two members of the Human Rights Foundation, Anna Czechovich and Arsh Molu. Guys, welcome. Thanks for being here. >> Thanks for having us. >> Of course. So, this is your first year hosting the Freedom Go Up stage here at the conference. Can you tell us a little bit about that? >> Yeah, so it's actually HF's sixth year being a part of the Bitcoin Magazine conference and the community. Uh but it's our first year hosting the freedom go up stage which as we like to say you know surrounded by a lot of number go up technology we've coined the term freedom go up and this really aims to highlight the use of bitcoin as a freedom tool for our friends and authoritarian regimes living under hyperinflation and dictatorship and it really just aims to show how bitcoin can be used as a global freedom tool. >> Exactly. You know, and it's such an important aspect. You know, we do talk about number go up. We have a lot of finance. We have a lot of traditional finance now talking about Bitcoin. And we have to remember that this is a tool of freedom. I was listening to something really this interesting this morning. I was talking to Teemo about it. It's like you cannot live in a world that has love if you don't have freedom. Y >> right. And so love can't exist without freedom. And so this work becomes really important. And and Anna, I'm sure that's how you found your way way into this. >> Yeah, absolutely. I am from Russia originally, so I have hands-on experience. I have uh experience of managing finances of a big nonprofit organization, opposition organization fighting against dictatorship inside Russia. And I was a victim of this surveillance of attack of an oppressive government uh over the banking system. They use the banking system as a tool of oppression. So activists all around the globe, they uh get deprived of access to money. So they use Bitcoin as a survival tool. And it's a big thing for people like me. >> Yeah. One thing that came up yesterday because we have that like you just mentioned the kind of using the financial system as a weapon against freedom fighters and and people who are fighting against that oppression but also governments who end up just demolishing the value of their currency. Evan Muari yesterday brought up in Zimbabwe just telling the story of his family having $80,000 in the bank on one Sunday. the next Sunday it was worth 25 cents and just completely decimating people's savings. >> Yeah. I mean, I think the the common theme between our three activist friends that we had on the main stage yesterday is that they've they're coming from countries where the governments have just completely destroyed the currency and and and time and quite frankly integrity of of their people, right? So, I think that's what's so special about Bitcoin. And when we talk to our activist community, right, we're constantly talking to people from all around the world who are facing the same exact problem. And that's why it makes it so important um to have Bitcoin and that's some of the work that Anna is focusing on today with us as well. >> Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about your your work educating people? >> Yeah. Um so it's a paradox but it's true that when oppressive governments they tighten control they uh surveil they punish the donors uh the more they tight tighten this control the more they uh attack activists the more activists start adopting Bitcoin uh as a tool as a survival tool. So uh thousands of activists come to HRF to ed uh to learn about Bitcoin to learn how they can use uh this tool uh to avoid surveillance to avoid those attacks from oppressive governments. So we since 2024 we taught more than uh 1,200 activists already and uh we provide webinars, we provide offline education and every time our room is packed so many uh freedom fighters now realize the importance of this tool >> and it's hard for those in the US who don't have those same experiences coming from that lens to necessarily even be able to see a use case for Bitcoin and and it's can you tell people how Bitcoin as an asset set is able to do something that nothing else can. >> Bitcoin is uh permissionless and it's borderless and uh the dictator cannot stop a bitcoin transaction. Uh dictator cannot see a bitcoin transaction which is very important for people like me. Russian government labeled me as a terrorist. I'm an official list of terrorists now. And if I send money to Russia for example and someone receives money from me, that person will be in a great danger for for doing that. But uh as a member of a Russian opposition organization, I'm responsible for supporting people who keep fighting against the dictatorship inside the country and we support them financially. So we provide humanitarian aid and we use Bitcoin for that. This is something that fiat cannot do. >> So Anna, you touched a little bit on your personal experience. Can you go a little deeper on that and how this how what brought you into the space on a personal level? Uh I manage finances of Alexander Vanley's anti-corruption foundation as the leading Russian opposition organization. We were forced into exile but we still keep fighting against the regime. And when working inside Russia, I as a financial director of the organization had to face this problems when our bank accounts were under constant arrests. Uh Putin's regime very quickly realized that it's the fastest way to stop the movement from doing the opposition work. So they basically arrested our bank accounts to stop us from doing our work. And that is when we started using Bitcoin in our work. And since I have this experience now, I joined the human rights foundation where I share my experience with other freedom fighters >> which is really powerful you know I mean to have that you know boots on the ground example for people to realize you know that this is real life. Sometimes in America we don't have these real examples in front of us that we could point to and your story being very powerful I'm sure is incredibly helpful to the situation. Now the fact that you guys are dealing with the aspect in the Bitcoin culture that deals with freedom and deals with permissionless and and that a traditional leg that Bitcoin has st has always stood on now we have the entrance of the financialization of Bitcoin. How are those two things and I'll come to you like how are those going to marry together and are are do you feel threatened by that or do you feel like there's space for both still? Yeah, I mean look, I think it's an interesting conversation, right? Like you you have obviously I think Bitcoiners have different opinions on different things. Um from from my personal perspective, right? I think we can both win together, especially as you know, assets are starting to become financialized, right? If if if if companies want to look at, you know, hey, this is the this is the cause for Bitcoin, right? that be at HRF, that be at many other organizations that are doing amazing work and and educating and get Bitcoin out there. If if organizations can, you know, support us or help us and and we were talking about this briefly back there, right? It's like getting, you know, Black Rockck to have an ETF, right? In some in some areas and cases, it really does validate the use for Bitcoin. So, it's not it's not all all bad, I don't think. And and and frankly, I think everything is good for Bitcoin. Yeah, absolutely. >> And and one thing I would love to know is people would be interested in hearing how the scope of the people who would find Bitcoin as this freedom tool cuz you know it it doesn't affect our everyday's lives necessarily for the average American that they would need some sort of freedom tool. But to understand how useful it can be to the 8 billion people out there uh that that would be really interesting. >> And you said it best earlier, right? So you know the as as Americans, right? I think that the dollar is kind of the the water that we swim in. We can we have access to to to equities and we have access to all these different fintech apps, right? But once you start to understand on on a global scale that there's billions of people that don't have access to banking. There's actually more people that have access to smartphones than than bank accounts in the world, which is which is truly mind-blowing. And and that's why it's so timely uh for for for Bitcoin to come into play. >> Yeah. And even if Americans don't live under this crazy uh repression and surveillance, Americans here, they create tools for people like me. And I think this is something that HRF here is talking about here at this conference. We talk not only uh to activists, we talk to developers, to creators because the most uh Bitcoin tools are created here in the west. So we are here to show how uh those tools can uh protect people like like us, protect uh vulnerable uh communities >> and and how much do you bring those conversations to policy makers who typically would see privacy in financial the financial world as something to be avoided. However, it is absolutely critical when it comes to a human rights use case. I think I think the work that we've been able to do with with the support of a platform like this with the support of our our community and our donors, it really goes to show that you know this narrative that we're promoting about Bitcoin is actually one of the most ironclad narratives and that helps policy makers understand like okay this is more than just a financial tool. This actually helps us understand and and now that you know about a year ago we started our AI for individual rights program right so now we're experiencing how you know this broader freedom tech umbrella can can can really you know hold in in in a in a policy conversation beautiful >> another example of how Bitcoin and AI are going to find themselves working together handinand right I mean I think that the more we move in with this innovation with this technology growth and that and the growth of Bitcoin and its understanding we're going to see those things marry themselves together. So this has been excellent and and so informative. You guys are doing some really important work. So thank you very much. Congrats on all the success of the Freedom Go Up stage. It sounds like it's been just a blowout all three days. So much continued success to the both of you. Now on that note, we are going to head over to the Nakamoto stage. So stick with us. We'll be right back. We are back in Nashville next year. Please early bird tickets finished tonight. So, if you are interested and you're a little bit sad that today is the last day, make sure to get online tonight and get and come and join us back in our headquarters in Nashville next year. Uh, but with that said, we are closing out B26 today with a real heavyweight lineup. And this is all thanks to Craig and the unbelievable programming legends at BTC Inc. So, if you see any of those people walking around, make sure to give them a big up. But here we go. First up today, personal finance. used to mean a 401k, a mortgage, and just a little bit of hope. But these four chaps, however, are rewriting the script. This one is moderated by YouTuber Brian Harrington. But please welcome Sam from My Fan Financial Friend and brothers Aaron and Aaron and Austin Arnold from Altcoin Daily. Please put your hands together. All right, good morning. All right, so my name is Brian. I talk about Bitcoin personal finance on YouTube and I appreciate the conference for putting that topic on the main stage and I appreciate Sam from My Financial Friend and Aaron and Austin from Altcoin Daily for helping amplify the discussion. Here's the hook. OG Bitcoiners were great at talking about Bitcoin. They were honestly really, really bad at talking about personal finance. And I believe personally that that has put a ceiling on Bitcoin's influence into kind of mainstream personal finance discord. And we're going to have some fun today with just some fun questions that these guys may never have been asked before on camera to just kind of make Bitcoin real in a day-to-day sense. So, here we go. And we're just going to go down the line uh with efficient timing as you guys are experts of doing. Okay. What's the last purchase under $100 and over $1,000 that has had an impact on your life? I'd say the one under $100. I bought a John Deere kid leaf blower for the Bitcoin baby, my son. And he loves it. He just walks around, pushes dirt around, and uh yeah. $20 and he gets more joy out of it than anything I've ever bought. Um, last thing over $1,000. We bought a custom sauna. It took three months to get. Uh, it has a glass from, uh, floor to ceiling. It's It's like eight people and it faces our woods. So, we live somewhere cold, so it's really nice just to be able to look out the woods, have something warm, uh, be able to go chat with people in it and hang out. So, >> we're coming over. >> Yeah. Yeah. Come over anytime. Um, so yeah, those are two fantastic buys. >> Just a quick intro about myself if you don't uh know me, Aaron Arnold, uh, half the team at Altcoin Daily. You know, personal finance, Brian, you say this all the time. It's personal to you. And so my personal finance journey came from, you know, just having a regular double W2 job, different things for like side income, W2s, and then starting my own business and getting, you know, multiple streams of income through that and having to navigate how to build wealth in that regard or uh save wealth. So, to answer your question, Brian, the uh something I purchased under $100 that I love, well, I bought my brother a burger in Vegas the other day, almost, you know, not even under $100, but uh you know, I would say uh for under $100, um you know, just a meal with friends or a meal with uh colleagues, you know, it's really easy to and uh enjoyable to drop a $100 on Bitcoin or in the stock market and you can see quantifi quant quantifiably your returns, but you know, do not count out, you know, building relationships because you can get far with that, too. And then for over $1,000, the whale pass. Nah, they gave that to me for free. But, um, no, over $1,000. To be honest, you know, I don't uh I don't like obviously there's things in your life that you buy for over $1,000. a car, a home, maybe a gift, but I don't like to drop like $1,000 on, you know, things that maybe a lot of people do like luxury goods or whatever. I truly, Brian, I truly like dropping $1,000. You know, it used to be Bitcoin, but I feel like I'm have a good allocation. Now, I like >> This is not Sunday school. This is not This is not what I wanted. You're not Do not say Bitcoin. >> Okay. I truly like dropping $1,000 on the stock market. >> Okay. We're going to get into that. Okay. Go. Yeah. Go. >> Yeah. Brian, thank you. Austin altcoin daily. When I choose to allocate $100 over a,000 under 100, my uh personal finance strategy is this. I either want to accumulate hard assets for generational wealth. I'm locking in my bloodline didn't lock in. I'm accumulating generational wealth for the bloodline or uh enjoyment experiences. So, my best purchase recently under $100 was a hummingbird feeder for my backyard. And I love looking at the hummingbirds. >> I love that. I love that. Okay. The reason why it's important to start with the purchasing and I don't want the Sunday school answers, guys, is because the next thing is how do you balance the goals of growing your net worth, getting the hard assets that go up, getting the stock market assets that go up with, as you alluded to, which I appreciated, like making more money or if you have a different financial goal, like what are you optimizing for right now? And how do you balance the multiple kind of angles that you can optimize personal finance on? >> I'm trying to optimize for income because I think net worth will follow. Um, as long as you save enough, you'll your net worth sure go up over time. But it's really hard to optimize net worth every day. Like sometimes the market just goes down and there's nothing you can really do. Um, so I'm always focused on income, but yeah, my spending has changed so much over the years because I used to just work I used to work at a retail bank coming out of college with a lot of student debt, six figures of debt. I was making $36,000 a year, living at home with my parents trying to pay it off. So, I was working all kinds of odd jobs. That spending is very different from what I do today. Um, I think over time though, I'm just trying to live below my means, save a significant portion, put some away into assets that grow. And that's really the focus at the end of the day, diversifying between Bitcoin, real estate, and stocks so I can weather any market. You know, this is actually the perfect time to do this panel, Brian, because, you know, it seems easy to make money and acrew wealth in a bull market, in a bare market. things are a little tighter. But uh you know for me my uh building wealth and just uh you know general personal finance strategy is to I think number one you do need to increase your income in whatever way. I mean you don't need to have high income to to build wealth. You know I think you should be putting away 10 15% in not necessarily savings but investments. Um but you know as much as you can because that's your biggest tool to grow wealth. Then when you have income and hopefully it gets higher, buy assets, don't buy liabilities. You know, these are tried and trueue principles and it's, you know, very easy to say and people generally understand to do this, but a not a lot of people necessarily, you know, take it to heart and do it. People understand if I put money in the stock market every year, it's going to compound and even if I'm just making, you know, 80 grand a year, eventually I'll be a millionaire. But people don't do it because it's hard to take away, you know, 10% or 15% of your income and uh you know, not buy something that could serve you today. Um so, you know, my my strategy is uh to uh invest, max out the Roth IRA, live below your means, and uh you know, do whatever you can to increase your income. For me personally, the best advice a Bitcoiner or even traditional finance person that I've ever heard ever gave me is live below your means, invest the rest. Now, by show of hands, live below your means, invest the rest. How many in the audience have heard this before? A lot of people. If I want those kind of quips, I'll go to crypto Twitter, Bitcoin Twitter. For me, the easiest two ways to live below your means or invest the rest. It's either the easiest way uh to gain more money is to save more money, right? You can fold it in your pocket, put it there, uh spend less or you could earn more. I personally believe for me personally uh it's easier for an entrepreneur to earn more. If you're working a 9-to-F5, it's easier to save. So, two different buckets. But entrepreneurs, you know, you just sleep less. You focus on what's works more. You look at the data. Uh, that's my personal belief. Uh, but it just depends on which bucket you're in. >> I'm going to go I'm going to go off script for a second. The earn more. So, oh, there's lots of uh YouTube personal finance people that will talk about earning more also and the you need to earn more. You need to earn more. Um, do why does that feel am I the only one that feels that's in tension with kind of the popular belief of like I feel like there's a lot of people out there that believe like Bitcoin is the best thing they've ever had and they're just playing really like tense and tight of like oh Bitcoin go up, Bitcoin go up is easier than me making more. And I feel like there's like like we talked about the scarcity of Bitcoin. There's also this like scarcity mindset that Bitcoin going up is the largest opportunity you have in your life. And there's probably people sitting out here that have the ability to be an entrepreneur and like there's a there's a very real chance that that opportunity has a higher percentage chance of happening than or like than Bitcoin going up. What do you what's your reaction to that? >> Yeah. If you have a lower uh lower savings rate, you're saving five or 10% or nothing, it's going to be much more important for you to make more income cuz you can if you're saving 10% and you increase your income by 10%, you if you put it all into savings, you double what you're saving, right? So, that is much more important than watching 3 hours of Bitcoin content a day or trying to get validation for what you've already invested in. But it's much more uncomfortable to especially if you're in a W2 job to feel like you're not exhausted when you get home and you want to go spend 2 hours trying to sell your idea to people or grow something from scratch. A lot of people just feel exhausted by daily life. So they don't want to do that which I totally get. It's much easier to watch YouTube than it is to you know like do whatever you want to do. And just real quick reaction on the W2 job thing like again that gets parsed a lot of like W2 job versus entrepreneurship. It's not talked about enough that like there's things you can do to increase your W2 income also. Like you can you can network and get higher W2 jobs and it's not talked about enough. >> The the setup was uh Bitcoin versus like investing in yourself. Yeah, that's good framing >> because I would say, you know, like you're saying, you know, obviously Bitcoin has historically been a great investment besides the last 6 months or whatever. But uh you know investing in Bitcoin doesn't have dividends as we know but investing in yourself can yield dividends and it's not exactly like you know company dividends but to further yourself uh you I I mean I think you need multiple sources of income or increase your income in general and an an investment in yourself of $1,000 could actually be more fruitful than a 1,000 investment into Bitcoin. Is that crazy to say here? I that's what I'm I'm looking for. Edgy We need edgy comments. Yes, Bitcoin doesn't have dividends. Talk to Michael Sailor, buddy. He's changing that. I would say personally, um people say the eighth wonder of the world world is compound interest. You start early, you gain much more. That's going to be worth so much more than the amount of money you could put in just the compounding from what you started with early. I think the ninth wonder of the world is compound experience. So whether you're investing in a business, investing in your job, if you want to be a dentist, start early. Go intern at that dentist's office, even if you don't like it, you'll find that out early and you'll get the thing you want along with investing early and getting the compound interest in your portfolio. So compound experience is worth just as much as compound interest. Brian, I don't mean to cut you off here, but obviously you're leading the conversation. And I heard you say something a little bit controversial yesterday at dinner saying that it's okay to sell your Bitcoin and you have to buy it twice. What was the thought process behind that? >> Yeah, you have to buy it twice. You have to let it change your life. You have to let it change your life. I one thing that I believe is that there's a lot of people that their Bitcoin net worth has outpaced their mindset and they're not doing anything to level up their mindset and they're still so they're they're so afraid of like what to do with their Bitcoin that they're not Yeah, they're not upgrading their mindset. >> So, you believe it's okay to sell your Bitcoin? It's definitely okay to sell your Bitcoin. Yes. >> By what? >> It's okay to sell your Bitcoin and accomplish lifestyle goals or invest in yourself or anything. I'm going to get into the allocation. I have an allocation question for you guys. Uh I'm glad you brought up dividends. I I want to say that as part of the hook, too. Part of the part of why I believe this is a really important topic for this time specifically is because again personal finance YouTube is very has a lot of influence and millions of people watch like mainstream personal finance YouTube all the time and it feels like Bitcoin and crypto content kind of takes a second a second seat to that. Um, but the popularity of these preferred dividend stocks is changing that and I can see the traffic on my own channel where people are coming from Bitcoin only channels. They're coming from cryptogeneralist channels and they're slowly starting to come from dividend snowball channels. And so I believe that there's an opportunity right now for Bitcoin and crypto people to overlap with call it mainstream personal finance people more than ever. So that's part of why I want to have the discussion today. Anything or ready for the next one? Um, no. Go ahead. >> Okay. What's a What is a money mindset that you had when you were younger that you've changed? >> I used to think it was really dumb when people would spend a significant amount of money on something that they didn't need. But that was because I had debt that was three times my income. So, I just thought I can't spend on anything. So, I knew people uh at the bank that I worked at that would have a house in the city and then 20 minutes uh away they'd have like a lake house. And I thought that was so dumb. Just have one, right? Just live at one. You don't need it. Um, but that's really changed over time. I think if you have money and as long as whatever you're going to buy doesn't affect your lifestyle, like you as long as you still have enough, go spend the money, especially if you're older. Like these were 65year-olds. Like they can do whatever they want. It's not my place to judge. Um, and I've definitely bought some stuff that I did not need where I would have a higher net worth, but I got enjoyment out of it and I can optimize every single penny. but then my life might kind of suck like I wouldn't be here I wouldn't be here um speaking on stage right now. So yeah, I think that's definitely changed over time. I grew up like many people around our age uh thinking that saving in a bank account would be pretty good. That's essentially all you need to get ahead if you can save a few thousand 10,000 um you know you have a you have a chunk of money and you can rely on that. Obviously, we know as Bitcoiners that your money is not growing in a bank account. It's actually losing value more and more. Now, maybe in the world we came from, it didn't lose as much and it, you know, was a solid idea. But today, 100% you need to be investing and watching your money grow. When I was a kid, next to my brother, I used to think that the government and the money system had the individual's best intentions at heart. That it was a good system. Now I believe the money system is corrupt. The more I learn about inflation, the more I understand, wow, I need to do everything in my power to have as least amount of dollars as I can because the people who save in dollars, as Michael Sailor says, we call them poor and find hard assets before this entire thing blows up. I think in personal finance when I'm watching traditional finance, personal finance content creators, that's the one thing that I don't think they've really nailed, which is they're saving in dollars and they're trying to have more dollars at the end of the year, which is a strategy, but then if you look at the inflation rate and not the one that the US government gets you, but the cost of goods, how life is getting more expensive, there has to be a better solution out there and hard assets is the key. Okay, let's get to the allocation question. Stocks, real estate, Bitcoin, crypto, cash. If there's any other buckets you guys have, how do you think about each of those buckets? Like, give give a give a quick ranking of your opinion on each one and how you think about how to balance how much goes in each. I think real estate is much harder short-term to make money than people think and much easier long-term to make money. People often run cash flows incorrectly short term because they don't take into account capex, vacancy, mowing the lawn, doing snow. Um, so I have rentals and oftentimes they don't they don't make anything in the la the first year or two, but I know um long-term they're 3x uh leverage on appreciation, so they'll do well. Uh, and there some cash flow and tax benefits to it. I think stocks are fantastic because much like Bitcoin, people act irrationally short-term. And a lot of the money that causes the market to go up and down is short-term oriented because it's from hedge funds. So their goals are not necessarily the same as my goals. They're answering to shareholders. They're answering to investors. Um and they have to think very short term a lot of the time. So I can buy Amazon when it falls down 30% because they're worried about capex short term. And I think it's great that they can go and invest $200 billion a year into something that's going to get a good return. So I am heavily invested in the stock market. Part of that is that my income is very tied to Bitcoin as well. Within crypto, I'm 92% Bitcoin, 8% uh Ethereum and Salana just cuz I have a good cost basis. Um real estate is around the same allocation to Bitcoin than I have more in the stock market. I'm about 10% cash right now. Um, but I unloaded a lot of it into the stock market recently about a month ago when we had that big dip. >> You know, for so long I got into Bitcoin in the 2017 runup and then full-time in uh 2018. And and for so long, you know, I was like probably a lot of people in the audience. You know, I need to get as much Bitcoin as possible. Didn't wasn't really going that hard in the stock market. Didn't have any real estate. Just wanted to get as much Bitcoin as possible. Now, I still want to get Bitcoin, but I think you need to diversify. I'm bullish on stocks. I know Brian, our host, is not that bullish on stocks. I'm bullish on real estate. I'm bullish on all of it. Uh, I just interviewed real estate mogul Grant Cardone on our channel, uh, you know, a little bit ago and, you know, he's getting he was just a real estate guy and he's getting into Bitcoin and he's, you know, a lot of people ask him, why not only do Bitcoin? He's like, why would I only do Bitcoin? I need both. I love both. I'm a big believer in stocks, too. I mean just buy a u you know a passive index ETF low expense ratio and you know uh acrew value with the market. I I think you need all of it. I believe if you want to maintain your wealth you should be diversified. If you want to gain wealth you should have concentrated bets understanding you also have much more risk. So for me personally it's not a surprise I think Bitcoin has the most asymmetrical upside. you know, it's you're not necessarily going to get rich quick with that, but I believe it'll outperform the S&P. It'll be here 10, 20 years from now, and it'll have a better return. So, having said that, I believe in the S&P betting on the best 500 companies in America, Long America. I think that's getting better or will continue to get it is great and will continue to get great. Uh, I don't believe in picking individual stocks just cuz I'm not willing to do the work. Obviously, Nvidia is doing very well. If I had to rank them, Brian, to answer your question, and last thing I'll say is, and obviously cash is king. I think we learn that. We learn that every bare market, you want to have a little more cash than you can just to stay sane. For me, that's 10 20% always to invest in the dips. I personally, Brian, would put stock market last, cashes in its own separate bucket, real estate second, Bitcoin with the most asymmetrical upside first. I would put stock market and bitcoin as uh one and two and we could argue which one's better obviously bitcoin and then real estate would be third just as far as barrier to entry I think if you're trying to acrue wealth just focus on bitcoin and the stock market we've bought a decent number of rentals over the last couple years and it's amazing how much work they are even when you have a management company and an accountant they still take up mind share and you get about the same return as the stock market maybe slightly better depending on how levered you are but uh yet more. Okay, this is for part two on YouTube afterwards. All right, this is exactly that. Exactly that. I have a comment about Grant Cardone, then two questions to wrap up. Okay, we don't have time to talk about it, but I appreciated that Grant at Pomp's conference talked about how much Bitcoin he owns. And I appreciate that he called out that a negative part of Bitcoin culture is this blanket thing that you shouldn't talk about how much Bitcoin you have. And so it's fine to add caveats about that, but other wealthy Americans and as a uh when you are around more wealthy Americans in one-on-one situations, they are more open and honest with each other than Bitcoin and crypto people are in my opinion, in my experience. Quick quick reaction. >> I thought you were about to ask us how much Bitcoin we No, I'm not I'm not going to do that because this is not the right context for that and I'm fine with caveats, but the blanket uh standing among the Bitcoin culture I do disagree with. I mean I would just say that the Bitcoin personal finance has been really non-existent perhaps you know uh besides the last few years the Bitcoin culture for personal finance was that over you know Bitcoin's history was that akin to like a libertarian mindset or like a gold bug mindset you know do not share personal details be very uh vague about it and so it's it's really non-existent and really I think there has been a little bit of a ceiling in that you know that appeals to a certain amount of people but you really can't figure out how to get ahead >> Brian How much money is in your bank account? >> Okay, next question. >> No, no. And my point is my point is that that's how I see Bitcoin as the bank account as the endgame. >> So, yes. Right. Right. And that's why and there is there is a way to politely discuss finances with other people in a way that levels up your brain. It will make you more wealthy. I think everyone needs a group of people, even if they're protective about how much Bitcoin they have, a group of people, they're in a similar situation that they trust where they can talk about it because you have to be able to talk about allocation and how you're buying, what you're buying as opposed to bit Bitcoin versus other assets. So, there are three or four people that I know that know how much Bitcoin I have and I know how much they have and we talk about that versus real estate. Um, and I'm much more likely to tell someone how many rentals I have or what what I have in the stock market or what I make even than >> I want to dive in on that on YouTube about why is it okay for rentals in stock market different about Bitcoin? Because I don't I don't have the answer to that, but I want to dive into that. Okay, two more and you guys see the timer. We talked about the asset side, but I want to talk about the credit and debt side now. What is your opinion about um credit cards, lines of credit, margin loans, home equity lines of credits? What are you doing in that area? really quickly. I think personal debt is unhealthy. Credit card debt, high interest debt, very unhealthy. I think the American system forces you, if you want to get ahead, use debt to your advantage, like a mortgage. Um, I'm a fan of using debt in safe, specific instances. >> Uh, I generally agree. You know, again, these are like easy simple concepts, but I guess they're simple concepts, but they're not easy. I, you know, I take the old uh Dave Ramsey school of thought generally when it comes to credit. I mean, I guess, you know, I I use a credit card, but, you know, tons of people, you know, take out debt to buy, you know, luxury goods or liabilities. >> I bought my swimming pool. I've I've financed a $300,000 swimming pool fully. >> But then there's other things you can do with uh, you know, improving your assets like uh, you know, buying a a home or or different things that uh, you know, would be better. >> I think it's really situationally dependent. Right now I have we have rentals but we only have a mortgage on one rental and we have a decent number of units. The others are paid off and it's not the most efficient way to do it by any means but also I at the end of the day I think I can get more aggressive with my other investments and have less cash than I would otherwise. And you know our income goes up and down so much. It's just at the end of the day it's a quality of life thing. And would it be better if I got another 3% somewhere else? Yes. But will it make a material difference? No. You guys sound underleveraged to me, so I'm going to have to leverage pillow you guys. Okay, go. Last question. Last question. What is a thing that you wish mainstream personal finance YouTube understood better about Bitcoin? I I wish they understood that it's separate from crypto. We're in a very new n industry, huge volatility, huge upside. I think I think there is a space there's innovation happening in the rest of crypto, but Bitcoin is fundamentally different. It's used by me personally for something different, a money, a savings account. And I wish that was clear or a mainstream finance took the time to separate. >> I actually probably like you guys love normal personal finance YouTube channels, the Dave Ramseies, the the Caleb Hammers. Um so I think they do a lot of things right. Um, however, many of them do not see that the world is changing. And actually, I think in the past, since 2025, I have seen a lot of those triedand-true personal finance YouTubers, you know, say Bitcoin is a good investment. And they kind of set it near the top of 2025. So, so far, you know, that hasn't played out that well for their audience maybe, but obviously it's it's a long-term game. So I actually think things are changing and you know people are kind of waking up and adapting and it's you know probably because the Wall Street and Tradfi is coming to crypto. >> We're not all just dens. A lot of us have real estate or stocks or cash. It's not not everyone's 100% in whatever altcoin you you think that they're interested in. So I wish mainstream understood that that you're not an idiot for owning 5% Bitcoin. Uh also I think that will change over time because the incentive will be there when people can sell Bitcoin ETFs and a lot of uh financial advisors still can't do that. So incentives will change and then people will be more bullish. >> I genuinely appreciate you guys being open and transparent with us today. Like genuinely thank you for being a part of this discussion. Go ahead go ahead and tag these guys for a part two on YouTube and uh get let's make it happen. Thank you everyone. Picture. Picture. 3 2 1. >> No one dared to tread here, here, or here until a trailblazer did. At Riot, we are the trailblazers of tomorrow's technology. From Bitcoin to data centers, we're not waiting for the future. We're finding our way to it. So, climb on board. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News brought to you by Mara. I'm Sean Hagen joined by Michael Milmeister and Teemo Lamar. Michael, thank you for joining us today. >> Awesome to be here. So good to be in the United States and at this conference. So, Michael, I've worked at SPVB and was there during the 2023 uh failure of SVB and so I can empathize with people who are going through the experience of their company or their company being in the crosshairs uh because they are related to crypto. Can you talk a little bit about what you're experiencing in Australia with your company? >> Yeah, absolutely. It's a it's kind of similar to what happened in the United States with Operation Chokepoint except it's happening very very slowly under wraps and uh what we're seeing is AML and CTF policies being used to kind of weaponize against crypto businesses um any exchanges in in Australia any crypto brokers like ourselves um are facing issues with clients being able to deposit funds to buy Bitcoin uh which is obviously a huge problem cuz that that's our that's our lifeblood. For us, we have to have constant redundancies. We have to have uh multiple banking relationships or payment provider relationships because all of the major banks are uh almost against crypto. It's it's it's pretty obvious. Um in America, you still have banks um that are pro- crypto. There is really no such thing in Australia. Uh so we've we've been a little bit outspoken about it whereas a lot of the industry is still afraid to even say anything because they don't want to get debanked. Um and there is the threat of debanking all the time where uh you know entire organizations are being blocked. Um everyone's afraid of it but you know we've got to start start hitting it positively. And the irony of debanking an industry that is allowing people to have an option when they are debanked is is pretty fascinating. >> Well, exactly. Exactly. Um and you know, we're just we're just here for investors. It's a very simple thing. They're they're investing in their future. they're diversifying their, you know, they might own real estate and they might have other investments and they're buying Bitcoin for the first time and, you know, they're facing all sorts of issues. It's not, it's not every case, uh, but it is enough cases to worry us and and and make it more difficult than it should be. >> And Michael, you know, from your POV at Storm Rake, what is the investing environment like in Australia? Even though you're fighting these regulators and you're trying to kind of gain some traction there, is there momentum kind of on the investor side? Is there, you know, increasing interest in exposure to Bitcoin? >> Yeah, look, we're not fighting the regulators. I think the regulators are even uh on our side. They're saying that banks should not be >> uh acting inappropriately like that and debanking uh organizations or blocking payments uh indiscriminately. Um but the banks are quite powerful and they they do what they do. >> Um but in terms of your question, the the general market is very positive. Um, investors are positive. People want to invest in this new space. They're excited about it. Um, you know, when I talk to people inside banks that work for them, um, they have their own investments in Bitcoin. They're very positive about it, but as a policy overall, banks are being a little bit difficult. >> Awesome. Well, thank you for your time right now on this segment. We'll be right back with some more from Michael, but for now, we're going to go to the Nakamoto stage where we're going to hear about Bitcoin and the intersection with mortgages. topic that I personally find very interesting and I also think this is part of the industry that people are most interested in. So I would like to ask you Hunter starting to introduce yourself and tell the audience how Bitcoin found you. >> So my name is Hunter Albright. I'm the chief revenue officer at Salt Lending and Bitcoin found me actually through education. and I an adjunct faculty member at the University of Colorado and have a background in systems engineering and actually got asked to teach a course on Bitcoin in 2017 and that took me down the rabbit hole ever since. >> Beautiful. CJ, how about you? >> Y I'm CJ Constantinos, founder and CEO of People's Reserve and uh I have a history in accounting and finance and uh I very made bad decision. I bought in 2019 a house for 100 Bitcoin. Uh that's over $7 million today. And uh I couldn't even get $500,000 for my house. So Bitcoin found me and smacked me upside the head. Yeah, sometimes we need the pain to learn. So my name is Leon Vancom. I'm a real estate developer and an author for Bitcoin magazine. And my book, Digital Real Estate, on how Bitcoin is changing real estate investing and development is available for pre-order now. So guys, I would like to ask you the question, what would you define as pristine collateral? Hunter, we'll start with you. And how does Bitcoin fit into that framework? So I I mean when I think about pristine collateral, it's collateral that you have liquidity in terms of be able to get the value out if you want to sell it, but also collateral that you can take advantage of the value that you've accumulated by sacrificing your investment, your labor, other investment opportunities you accumulated. And I think that's what you know when I think about Bitcoin and pristine sort of collateral, Bitcoin is bringing the tools and the strategies of the ultra wealthy now to everybody. So you don't have to have $50 million and a private sort of banker to be able to accumulate assets, be able to sort of borrow against them and then figure out how to generate income off the investments. And I think that's the unlock that we just now have more sophisticated tools that are opening up more sophisticated strategies for everybody. >> Yes, I like that. That that is so well said and there's no reason for me to repeat it. So what I what I'll go with is what makes it pristine collateral. And I think when you look at where the financial system came from, we had gold and it was a good collateral, but we ran into a few problems. And those problems were that it was hard and costly to transport and settle and we had treasuries and it made it very easy. We had T+ 2, T+ 3, now T+1. And it's electronic and it's easy to settle. You don't have to secure it. you don't have to transport it. And then we took what we learned through that process and we engineered a solution. And that's what humans are best at engineering. And that engineered solution with Bitcoin becoming a pristine collateral says, you know what, I'm going to take the best from gold and I'm going to take the best from cash equivalents and I'm going to combine those together. So, I'm going to take this hard to transport and secure and I'm going to introduce trustlessness and a 10-minute block time. send billions of dollars across the world for the cost of pennies with absolute certainty when it's settled on the chain. And then at the same time, you look at the treasury and you say, "Man, what's the problem with this? It settles quickly." Well, you can you can expand the supply infinitely. So, you have collateral dilution. And Bitcoin says, "Well, no, no, no, no. We're not going to deal with that. 21 million and that's it." So, we get the best from gold, we get the best from the cash equivalents, and we have our pristine collateral. CJ, I want to I want to build on on what you said and compare Bitcoin and real estate. If we look at real estate as collateral, the unlock, so to say, is not just the appreciation, but also the cash flow from the perspective of the underwriter or the lender. So, what is the unlock in Bitcoin? What makes Bitcoin fit into that role? So, the the holy grail for traditional finance right now is how do we lower interest rates sustainably? and they're all looking at the same equation and they're saying, "Well, there's a lot of risk and the lenders are are nervous, right? Rates are being raised up. Rates are being it's all stated. We don't know. We're guessing. A small group of men is saying what the price of money is. Probably not a good idea." Well, we look at that equation and we say, "How can we rearrange it to fix this? Can we raise interest rates to lower risk so we can write more loans?" Well, no, you can't because then you don't have affordability. Well, can we lower interest rates to make affordability better? No, you can't because then we have more risk. So, how do we finagle this equation? You can't. You need to change the equation. You need to add a new variable to the equation. And that variable is Bitcoin as a pristine collateral. So, the holy grail is how do we lower interest rates? We introduce pristine collateral which lowers the risk. And when you lower the risk, you can lower the rate because the interest rate, the price of money is not just the supply of money and the demand for loans, it's the risk. So if we address risk, we can fix the problem. And that's the advantage Bitcoin gives us. How do you think uh CG, how do you think it will affect real estate markets? Because when we look at real estate, it's a it's over $300 trillion asset class and um the demand stems from its relative scarcity. So people use it as a store of value, but people also use it as collateral. So now that Bitcoin comes in and Bitcoin is being mixed in into uh mortgage products, how do you think it will affect the real estate market? I I think it can solve for affordability. I mean at People's Reserve, the lowest interest rate that we can write is 3%. That's so for minus that is the cheapest rate for any cost of capital in the world right now. And how is that possible? Because we are dual collateralizing property title with pristine collateral. And when we reduce risk, we can reduce the rate. And when we can reduce the rate, we can address affordability. So I think I I think and I hope the current administration will see the power of that and and kind of remove some of potential roadblocks so that the agencies can start holding this paper rather than just private credit. >> Hunter, do you want to make a comment? >> Yeah, I was just going to say I mean I I think the flexibility and the innovation that's happening in the industry is exciting in terms of what it's allowing people to do. So at Salt, we are, you know, sort of completing a decade worth of lending against Bitcoin. And I had the team do a little bit analysis to say, okay, what have we learned over the last 10 years from lending, especially around sort of homes and home ownership. And there's been four use cases that have come out. The first one is access, and that people borrow against their Bitcoin because they just need a down payment. they need to be able to um get access to traditional finance when they don't have the cash and they don't want to sell their Bitcoin. Other examples are, you know, founders or if you're living in an international country where you don't have a credit score, borrowing against your Bitcoin can open up that opportunity. The second uh case study or sort of use case has been around uh advantage like if you need to move quickly being able to quickly get cash in 24 hours to be able to take a house off the market or just secure your dream home has been something we've seen a number of customers do. Uh third one is agility. Maybe you need a bridge loan to buy home before your current home sells and that flexibility really helps. And then the last one which I think is consistent with what you guys are talking about generally is then an acceleration like how do I use my Bitcoin to accelerate my wealth building in a way that the the ultra wealthy and sort of the elites have been doing for a long time. And so we see people both borrowing, buying homes with their Bitcoin and then investing in other assets to be able to do income generation, but also buying against homes and then taking out a heliloc to pay off their loan. And now they get a lower cost of capital once they've unlocked or they have ownership of a house. >> I love that point you just made about giving access to liquidity and turning the plebs into the elite, right? that they that if you're closest to the printer, you've been called the cantillionaire, right? Well, you guys, the responsible savers of Bitcoin, the holders of pristine collateral, you are going to be the new cantillionaires. You are going to be have the ability to access the liquidity. And that's what's so exciting about Bitcoin. It's a new frontier. It's a new class that is emerging. Not just an asset class, but a new class of people and ideas and investment strategies. Well, and I think what's interesting about that, and we were talking about this backstage a little bit, is that the innovation is coming from all of you and how you're thinking about combining new tools with traditional tools to get the solution that you want. And I, you know, going back to the conversation around pristine collateral, it's scarce, it's valuable, it's a store of value. We'd use it as a means of exchange, but it's also providing people optionality uh in a way of combining different systems in a way that hasn't been available before. I want you to tell them what you told me backstage about what they're doing with the digital credit >> with the so at Salt just like strategy is taking the volatility out of fixed income instruments we're building products that are taking out the volatility of lending. So really building towards what you're building as well to no liquidation products. So we have technology that will swap Bitcoin into stable coin at certain points in your loan and we have a product out called Salt Shield that eliminates the liquidation altogether. No margin calls uh for a feebased program. Again trying to expand the options that people have to choose from to how to ensure your Bitcoin stays your Bitcoin. I was just going to I wanted to throw some inside baseball for the people who came here because we were talking about STRC and the rate you can get on it and arbitrageing what you can get because it's backed by Bitcoin, right? That's the whole point of it. That's what makes it a digital credit. It's fully backed by Bitcoin and therefore it is a derivative of pristine collateral. So at People's Reserve, something that we're working on that's very exciting for us is that we're going to be accepting STRC and SATA as collateral for your Bitcoin mortgage. And if you run the numbers on that, you can end up getting paid to live in your house. And that's a very exciting value proposition. >> Well, and I think that's the other thing it unlocks for people that are interested in taking more control of their own finances is that I often times talk about that we're going I feel like we're going through a shift where we're moving from labor based income to asset based income. And if you can learn how to make that shift and have your money work for you like sort of for centuries the ultra wealthy have shown, then we all can create more financial freedom and flexibility based on the back of Bitcoin. >> 100%. Bitcoin working as digital real estate. I think that is a great use case and cuz I know Sold has been in industry for over a decade and I also know that you have vast experience with Treadfi. So we talked a lot about the the benefits that Bitcoin has for the borrower. Now I would like to know from the lender side what are the benefits that Bitcoin as collateral has for the lender. So I think it goes back to a topic that CJ was talking about is really risk management. One of the things around traditional I come from a background in of secured lending against credit cards uh back in the day going all the way through different formats of unsecured lending and so really trying to understand how am I going to get paid from an a monthly payment as well as a principal repayment. Um, and Bitcoin changes the game. Like being able to have access that to collateral with the markets we have in terms of the daily volume and the value, it really helps us as sort of lenders be able to acquire capital at really attractive rates. Um, and ensure that we don't have loss on any loans for any of the lenders that we get capital from because of the liquidity of the the strength of the asset. And how do you envision the emergence of Bitcoin as a global collateral layer? When do you think that will happen? And how do you envision that? I I think it's happening now. Like I've traveled the world over the last sort of 12 to 18 months talking to people about how they use Bitcoin, what is the use case and the some of the stats from the US is right the median age of the firsttime home buyers now is over 40. And of all the new home buyers in the United States, only 1 are firsttime buyers. And so it is increasingly getting difficult for people to figure out how to get into a home. And whether you think about a home as an asset and that where you want to store wealth and you know sort of I'm Gen X and for my generation and my parents generation like home ownership was financial literacy. That's how you learned about it. you sort of started to build wealth and that's being that sort of opportunity is being pushed out. So what do you do in between there and I think Bitcoin provides a solution and that's consistently globally. I think this average age of first-time home buyership of ownership over being 40 or above is is pretty consistent across the world. >> Yeah. I I would say we've done a pretty good job over the last decade of capturing the gold bugs, the hard money guys, the sound money people, the Austrian economics, like everybody who is in that philosophy is pretty much in the market. So for me, what I see is a new wave of adoption and it's based off of what you just said, which is this solves my problem, right? when the when the when the economy is saying, "Look, I'm going to turn 40 years old by the time I can buy my first home. How am I supposed to have kids? Like, how am I supposed to start a family?" Right? No wonder Elon is telling us we don't have a population problem. We have a depopulation problem because people can't get started. They It's a home is the hierarchy of needs. It's the number one thing you need to feel comfortable in starting your family and progressing. And we take that knowledge and we leverage it in our Bitcoin mortgage reserve product where you only need 20% of the purchase price of the home to get the financing. But the exciting part from the lender's perspective is that in that product, we split a portion of the upside with you. So there's, you know, in our self-repaying mortgage, we don't split any of the upside. At the end of the loan, you get 100% of your collateral back. But if you haven't been saving in Bitcoin for a long time and you want to make a quick move, you can get 20% of that price. You can get your keys today and then it still works for you. We call an equity engine. So instead of your equity being in your home growing at a very slow rate, probably equal to the rate of inflation, it's now in an engineered money and it becomes an equity engine. And at a 15% kagger, your 30-year mortgage is done in 14 years. At 30% Kagger, your mortgage is done in 8 years. That means your monthly payments that you're making, you don't have to make those payments anymore. You can now increase your quality of life and standard of living with that cash flow. That's a big deal for people in the world who want to live a better life and do more with their family and have more experiences. No other asset in the world can deliver that. Yeah, I I think this is there's I think there's going to be real innovation in the space when you look at the duration of relationships within financial services. So, right, strategy is taking about 20% off the top compared to what they're going to get from their view of holding on to Bitcoin for 10 plus years compared to what they're paying out on stretch. And I definitely see more financial products coming in there because with Bitcoin that time heals a lot of the volatility and sort of the issue around margin calls and LTVs and so I think now with the institutional interest in backing loans because of the understanding of how they work uh and you know all credit to Leen I think the publicly rated sort of secured vehicles are interesting. There's a lot of interest in doing more of those more broadly, but that's also helping educate the market in terms of how good the collateral is to ensure that a lender gets paid when participating and trying to make a market. So I think you'll see that 20% spread that 20% spread that strategy is capturing will come down and get shared between the people that are facilitating that business and the ultimate sort of borrower who wants to figure out how to get that cash and whether that's a reduction in APR, whether it's P being paid out as a yield in Bitcoin or dollars, there's going to be some interesting products and come to market. >> It was amazing that they securitized that book and they got graded. So, we're we're really excited at People's Reserve because we are actually going to package the self-repaying mortgage and the Bitcoin mortgage reserve and issue a private label Bitcoin mortgage back security. And we feel very confident that if Lendon could get their thing graded and they're pioneering and leading the way on a book, well then how much better if you got property title and pristine collateral? Well, when you think about the combination of loans and I mean the private market is booming in terms of interest about Bitcoin and when you compare that right in when I think about unsecured lending and sort of my history when you had somebody that was needing to make their payment to protect their home, they would make that payment. And so if we can combine those things in terms of, you know, the structured products that you're offering, loans that are more oriented towards home ownership, down payment, uh, then it's really going to make it attractive for lenders to seek out those providers, uh, and give some of that benefit back to the borrowers. >> Maybe we could talk about risk a little bit. Um, we talked about the opportunities, but obviously there's risk. Anybody that parts with his or her Bitcoin must be must be sure that there's no high liquidation risk and and custody. So, how do you guys handle it, Hunter? Well, I mean, the first thing I would say is I think the borrowers traditionally have gotten the short end of the stick on risk, right? Especially in terms of the original Bitcoin back lending space, is that you're being asked to take on the volatility of the asset. You're asked to be and take on the volatility of LTV and manage your loan and you're being asked to take on the risk and the volatility associated with the loan being denominated dollars and the asset being denominated in Bitcoin and and so at Salt we've really worked to try to take out as much of that risk and work with the borrow on how to manage it. So, as I mentioned before, we have a products called stabilization. When somebody gets to 91%, right, a lot higher than a 65 to 80% liquidation point for a lot of issuers. You get swapped into stable coin and it gives people some breathing room so they don't have to worry as much about the LTV risk when trying to manage their loan, especially during stressful times. Like the market doesn't drop when we want it to drop. Um, and so it gives people the opportunity to figure out how they want to do it. And then similar to I think what some of the innovation CJ's bringing to market, Soul Shield for us just takes away the margin calls alto together and treats it more like a mortgage where you make your payments, you're good like you are in good standing with your loan and you have the sort of protection around it. Uh and then we'll resolve it when it comes to the maturity date. And our goal for with lending is to try to think about how we can create as many products around Bitcoin as possible that feel like a mortgage where you're taking the volatility of the market out and we're allowing time and a length of relationship and a commitment together to make that product work um and and create new opportunities for everybody. >> That's the that's the big thing like and I love that because you guys did that with the line of credit and we had a we dual collateralized to achieve the same goal, right? So it's like CJ, if Bitcoin goes down, am I going to lose my home? Like that's a then don't do it then. Like that's a horrible product. Could you imagine? So getting rid of margin calls and liquidation risk is like almost a must because you guys are putting up the pristine collateral. That is the most important asset on your balance sheet. As Bitcoin becomes financialized, that is the most powerful tool you have to build wealth smarter. And we have to figure out a way to continue to create products and innovate and be at the tip of the spear of financial engineering so that the borrowers aren't eating all of that risk. If the lender's risk is going down because of the pristine collateral, then the borrower's risk should go down through the structure of the product. >> What What do you think, CJ is the biggest misconception about Bitcoin backed loans? I I think the biggest misconception comes from the traditional world where they still think Bitcoin can go to zero, right? I CJ, what happens if Bitcoin goes to zero? Yeah. What happens if an asteroid strikes the planet and we all die? What happens if we go extinct? What hap, you know, yeah, it's okay to ask that question, but what it really shows is you didn't really put in the hours to understand what is happening here. And you look at what we learned from gold and silver and natural money and how that value was stored over time. How how could one ounce of gold when when a suit was $20 buy a suit and then today 1 oz of gold buys a very fine suit? How did that happen? How did the dollars dilute and the gold hold? It's it's a characteristic of money and we're leveraging that characteristic. That's where the engineered money component comes in. We're taking those we're leveraging the natural laws of economics to empower the holder of the asset. And that's why my position is that Bitcoin is actually the first real money that we've ever had because it's the first form of an engineered money, a truly decentralized, trustless store of value and transfer of value mechanism. And it's a hard pill to swallow, especially for the people like myself and you who spent a long time in in accounting and finance and tradi. But when the when the light bulb goes off, that's when the real fun starts to take place because you can know, you can really truly know, you can really understand that in a long time period, the risk is gone and then you can share that risk, share the benefits and create a better world with finance. And I think it's a it's a mental shift in terms of understanding the models. And there's two elements coming from sort of tradi. First one is in unsecured lending a single bad loan will wipe out depending on the product 30 to 50 good customers. So the underwriting is excruciatingly important in terms of how you think about who you lend to and at what rate. Doesn't exist with Bitcoin back lending. Like first of all there there are no credit checks other than there are jurisdictional requirements but basically your Bitcoin is your credit. So as a lender we couldn't be any happier that'd be able to do that and be able to back people that have accumulated a pristine collateral and provide loans. The second one is the understanding of risk and collateralized lending. People think of collateralized lending whether it's homes or it's cars or it's other instruments where you have to go repossess it. We don't have to go repossess anything, right? The Bitcoin is liquid. We have an automated trading platform that ensures we can swap it into stable coin when stabilization occurs and we can protect the borrower and we can protect our lenders uh ensure that they get their principle back and everybody has the time to manage their loans appropriately. >> Great guys. Um it's an exciting topic and I would like you to now just uh share some closing uh remarks. We are close to the end of our time. >> Yeah, I just want to thank BTC Inc. They've been a great partner of Salts. It's a pleasure to come and share our insights and sort of thinking about the industry. Uh and for all of you, I'd encourage you to stop by the Salt Booth. We've got two great offers out for the conference. One is if you're interested in trying out Salt Shield, which is our no liquidation product. Uh we combine it. You can get a 12-month loan at 10.95%. Talk to the team. And then also if you're interested in switching away and and trying out getting to some different products, we'll beat other lenders rates by 150 basis points. >> Thank you, CJ. I know you have some exciting news to share as well. >> Yes, absolutely. I I'd also like to start off thanking the conference and thanking everyone of you who showed up here because Bitcoin succeeds because of you. Bitcoin succeeds because of word of mouth. There is no marketing team. There is no marketing budget. It's your conviction in the asset. It's your love and care for your fellow family and friends and men and women that make Bitcoin do what it does, which is just naturally take over. Right. You said it perfectly. It's already happening. >> Nothing stops this train, baby. We're going all the way. >> We're borrowing some language. >> Yep. It's that's how it's h and it's because of you and what all of you do. And I do have some very exciting news, Leon. Thank you for for letting me do this. Um, People's Reserve is announcing our official go live date. So, building in the United States, being fully regulated. Man, it was a battle. But we feel so excited for the people out here who have been responsible savers of Bitcoin and can finally unlock the purchasing power of their Bitcoin without giving up ownership and missing on the on the other side, without liquidation risk and margin calls, right? buy a house, you can actually sleep at night cuz you don't have to babysit the charts. And we are going to be launching on July 4th of this year. So, our official launch date will be July 4th, we the people day. And we couldn't be more excited to work with you guys. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> You didn't stack Bitcoin just to sell it. You stacked it to build your future. We've taken that message around the world because the need for Bitcoin is global and so are we. Salt provides liquidity without selling and downside protection when it matters. This is what Bitcoin was meant for. Salt built for Bitcoiners by Bitcoiners. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine Newses powered by Mara. I'm Sean Hagen joined by Teimo Lamar and Michael Milmeister of Storm Rake Brokerage. Michael, could you help introduce us a little bit into Storm Rake and what you offer? >> Absolutely. Uh we are Australia's largest independent digital asset brokerage. Uh it's a full service brokerage. Clients get access to their own individual broker that they can call. they've got the contacts and they can speak any time of day or night. Um, it's a full service for people that need a little bit of extra help or appreciate having someone do it for them. Uh, and we've been very successful in Australia doing that. Uh, we've got over 10,000 clients now. We've placed over 2 billion into Bitcoin um through our service. Very proud of that. And uh I'd like to announce here today that we are launching into the USA market. We're going to be live in every state bar New York uh straight away from day one. >> Uh it's going to be it's going to be brilliant because I think it's really well suited to the American market. Americans understand that kind of service level. Um and they're going to absolutely love it. Uh we we we're ready to go now. Signups are happening. Uh we've got a booth here at the at the sand and it's been very wellreceived. >> Congratulations. >> Yeah, congrats on that. And as a Bitcoiner, it makes sense having a foothold in multiple jurisdictions and especially when at least as a Bitcoiner in the US. When you hear about Australia, you hear about threats like unrealized capital gains. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it impacts you and your business? >> Yeah, look, uh we were very close to having that passed. Um, luckily it didn't, but those sort of threats are around. Uh, Australia has just passed a digital asset bill. Um, so that's really positive I think. Uh, it's very similar to the Clarity Act that's coming potentially in America. Um, that gives a lot of legitimacy to the industry. Um, makes us, uh, you know, grow up and play like big boys, I guess. Um and you know uh it's it's it's it's good for us um that you know we we've come from a a place we started in 2019 uh we were at a time where uh you know Bitcoin wasn't taken seriously and now it's it's it's growing up and it's taking that next step and that's going to bring in a whole new level of investment and clients coming through the doors. >> Wonderful. >> Awesome. Thank you Michael and thank you for your time. Thank you for breaking the announcement here live from the Bitcoin Magazine news desk brought to you by Mara. But for now, we're going to go back to the Nakamoto stage to learn how bond markets will fuel the Bitcoin credit revolution. Thank you. Let's go. Let's go. >> All right, we got our first big keynote on the Nakamoto stage coming up for you right now. There is a trillion dollar bridge being built between the bond market and Bitcoin and these two gentlemen are the architects. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the co-founders of Leen, Mauricio Darto and Adam Reed. Hi everybody. Uh, great to be here. My name is Mauricio. I am here with my best friend Adam Reeds and we are the co-founders of Letin. We are a Bitcoin back lending company and we've been doing this since 2018. Today, the Bitcoin backed loan market is a multi-billion dollar market and we believe this market is going to grow to become a trillion dollar market in the next 5 to 10 years. And our presentation today will walk you through how we got from zero into the billions today and how we're going to grow this market into a trillion dollars and what it takes to do so. So, a bit of background. Our story, like many Bitcoin stories, begins with broken money. I was born and raised in Venezuela. And as the country was falling apart under Hugo Chavez, my family sent me to Canada to be the family's plan B. And Adam and I met in university in Canada. My family, however, did not leave. They stayed back trying to save my dad's business, hoping things would get better. But they didn't. They actually got much, much worse after Maduro stole the 2013 elections. And that triggered the wave of migration and hyperinflation that by now is pretty familiar to all of you. Um, with the highest inflation in the continental Americas and 9 million people displaced. However, my family was reluctant to leave and they were looking for a solution desperately. Against all odds, my youngest brother finds Bitcoin and pitches my family on the idea of starting to mine it. We got together as a family, evaluated the opportunity, and because there was really nothing else working in the country, we decided to start mining Bitcoin. Immediately, my family realized that in mining Bitcoin, they had found their lifeline. And when I saw what it was doing for them and to other people in Venezuela, I was immediately sold. I I went all in. I wanted to do everything I could to help. But, as I mentioned, I was spending most of my time in Canada trying to build a life as a plan B for my family. So, I didn't have the cheap energy they had in Venezuela. So, I decided to do the next best thing, which was to start mining in Canada. But for that, I needed cheap energy and I knew just who to ask because Adam had been financing renewable energy projects for the last 10 years. So, I told him I needed cheap energy. He asked me why. I said Bitcoin. He asked me what is that. I told him what Bitcoin was and what it was doing for my family. And he was it. So, our mining journey in Canada started in 2016. Now, Adam and I had radically different experiences with money when we were growing up. I grew up in Venezuela in hyperinflation. In Venezuela, debt and dollars was how you got ahead. You borrow worthless bolores, you turn around, buy dollars, wait for inflation to pump your bags, sell some dollars to repay the loan, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. The thing is, only very wealthy people in Venezuela had access to debt and dollars. Everyone else was trapped functionally in a fiat debt spiral. In Canada, on the other hand, credit worked and access to credit was much more fair and abundant. If you follow the rules, you work hard, you get approved for a loan. And loans built generations of wealth for Americans and Canadians by letting you short the dollar to go long a hard asset or a property, also known as a mortgage. So, Adam and I have very different backgrounds, but we agreed on a lot of things. And there was one thing we agreed on more fervently than anything else, which is we hated selling our Bitcoin to pay for fiat expenses. And we believed, we had a deep conviction that if Bitcoiners had a safe option to use their Bitcoin as collateral and borrow as opposed to selling it, there would be very few of them that would actually choose to sell it because they understand the value and they see the the future long-term potential. So, we knew what we wanted. We knew what we needed. We needed a Bitcoin back loan. So, we went looking for one and we approached Canadian banks at the time and that went just about how you would expect. We got left out of the room, we got rejected and our bank accounts got shut down. Thank you, TD. Um, we still have all the letters that banks sent us back in the day to close our bank accounts. Um, and it's funny how things uh turn around. Um but in those rejections we saw a massive opportunity because banks were asleep at the wheel. So we thought there was a great opportunity for us to build the solution we needed the Bitcoin way and we set out to try to do so. We raised private capital from investors and we issued Canada's first Bitcoin back loan on November 2nd, 2018 to our good friend Francis Pulio. Shout out to Bull Bitcoin. And um from then we've continued lending to Bitcoiners across the globe and letting them hold their Bitcoin. Um we've grown quite a bit since then. Last year we originated $1.4 billion in loans. And we estimate that um out of the $3 billion Bitcoin back loan market today. Let holds a 30% market share. Meaning one in three Bitcoin back loans done globally are done at Letin. And this gives us a very good vantage point as to the trends and how people are using these products. Um, so as you can see from our data that we're sharing with you here today, about 27% of people using these loans are using them to buy traditional investments. This could be houses, investing in businesses, vehicles, etc. A similar amount is using them to buy more digital assets. This can be more Bitcoin, more Bitcoin equities, MSDR, ETFs, um, you call it or you name it. about a quarter of them are using them to pay for expenses and about 20% of them are going to pay down other debt. But to me, the most exciting part about this business is not the numbers, it's what the product does for people. And one of my favorite stories um of the people that have come our way and then people that we've basically helped along the years is Napoleon and Bit Driver who many of you probably already know and taken a ride with somewhere in El Salvador. He is a Bitcoin business. He charges Bitcoin to drive people around El Salvador. And he had been overtime having to sell his Bitcoin to grow his business. He was very frustrated at having had to do so because the Bitcoin if he would have kept it it would have grown just as fast if not more than their business itself. And so he had learned about the loans he had heard about them. He came to me and asked me how the product worked. I explained to him that he could just keep the Bitcoin as collateral, take the funds he needed and pay it back any time to get the Bitcoin back. He got it instantly. So he was able to take the loan that he needed to buy the car he needed to get the contract that he needed for the conference in time by buying this car. He invested into the El Salvador economy. He created one more job. He grew his business and his family can get to keep the upside of his Bitcoin. So he was incredibly happy about that. And these loans are becoming very very popular. A lot of people are using them. In fact, many of you probably sitting here in this room have one. And some some people might ask why are these products so popular? And the reason why these products are so popular in short is because they work. They help our clients be better off than by not using them. That's the reason people keep coming back to letin and we keep growing. If people weren't finding value in the products, they wouldn't be coming to us. So, what I have on the screen here is a model of a person that took a $100,000 Bitcoin back loan on January 1st, 2020. We picked this date because January 1st, 2020 saw COVID, Alama, FDX, BlockFi, Celsius, Teral Luna, every single thing you can throw at this market, this loan lived through. So, that person started with $100,000 on January 1st, 2020. He needed an initial collateral of 27.3 Bitcoin. As you can see from the chart, the yellow line is the Bitcoin balance on the loan. The green line is the net worth and the red line is the total debt accumulated for the loan. That little bump you see at the start of the loan, the yellow line going up, that is a top up that that client had to do when the co when the co crash hit. So that day that person had to send 13.5 extra bitcoin. from then you see that the bitcoin balance just continues to drop because at le the the bitcoin collateral appreciates you can redeem the excess from your loan. So as you can see the bitcoin balance peaked um in March 2020 and from then it's just continued to drop. Now the interesting thing about this about this model is that this person by taking a loan on January 1st, 2020 instead of selling their Bitcoin and managing that loan responsibly until today would have seen their net worth become $1.7 million. If that person had instead not taken a loan and sold half of his Bitcoin to get the 100K, his net worth would just be $1 million. So this person is 67% better off financially today because they took the loan. And this in in a nutshell is why these products are so powerful when used responsibly. And as Adam's about to mention, we believe this thing is about to get much much bigger. Now when Mauricio and I started Letin 8 years ago, we knew that every loan has two customers. the borrower, which Mauricio, as an early Bitcoiner, was able to represent, and the lender, and you have to have the balance of terms and conditions done appropriately. As someone that spent 10 years in structured finance prior to starting Lein, I played the role of the lender. Now, spending most my time thinking about the role of the lender, my concern became, do we have enough capital to continue to grow this business? I love analogies and one of the analogies I often make to our business is a gas station. The retail side of the of of the gas station distributes the loans, but in the back you have to have access to gas. Think about loans if we didn't have dollars, there's no product, there's no gas. So, we think a lot about how big can this market get? And I'll jump right to the analogy on the far right because I love the real estate analogy. Now, here in the US, 60% of homes have a mortgage on them. Today, as we said earlier, we think the consumer side of Bitcoin back loans is only 3 billion today and let in a third of that. So, what happens if this market goes 300x from 3 to 900? It's a very big demand for capital. So we thought a lot about what market can support the amount of capital we need to grow bitcoinbacked lending and there's only one market that exists today which is of course the assetbacked securitization market. We also thought a lot about what other asset classes take advantage of this market and the interesting thing about it is the better the collateral the higher the securitization rate. 65 to 70% of residential mortgages are packaged up into asset back security. And we all know that Bitcoin is far more pristine collateral than autos, residential, houses or credit cards. We made a lot of these analogies when we went to market our bonds. We thought a lot about what is the differences between how ABS is done today and how we doing Bitcoin back loans. When you're trying to do something new, only change one variable at one time. So that's what we did with our Bitcoin back abs. The variable we changed Bitcoin. Everything else we tried our best to put in a traditional structure so people didn't have to think so much to say yes. We also thought a lot about what type of grade we needed. First, we want to make sure that we had the hardest judge so there was no additional scrutiny on the product. We engaged S&P Global, one of the top rating agencies that exists globally, to take it to help us work through this and rate our product. We opened ourselves up and gave our own company an X-ray. We also learned along the way that it's not like a regular report card where you can get A to D and still move ahead to the next grade. This is very much a pass or fail. You don't get investment grade, you don't make the cut, and 95% of investors don't pick up the phone. It's investment grade or nothing else. As we went through the road show, Jeff, the structuring agent and underwriting bank that we worked with, said that it was the highest reception we they've ever received for bringing a product to market. We booked over 50 meetings, and they couldn't believe it. And believe me, this team had some gray hair, so they'd seen a lot. However, we put this bond to market in a very difficult time. We were sitting in meetings in February just as the market were crashing. So of course media picked up and looked at us and said it wasn't going to work. But the reality was this was one of the best times to bring the product to market because we're able to show investors that the product works. Although we hate to liquidate clients, we want people to keep their Bitcoin. That feature allows us to access capital and again keeps the balance between borrower and lender. If you make the terms too good for the borrower, there's no capital, there's no gas. So, keeping on this road, we got it done. And of course, after a year in the making, we're able to achieve the first ever investment grade rated bond for Bitcoin. We issued $200 million of bond and got investment grade status on the senior trunch of the bond. We did this and we hope this is something everybody in the room can use and build on. How do we get this done? Letin's been laser focused on Bitcoin back lending for eight years. This means we have an insane amount of data and we're able to show that we have good examples and and bad examples of market conditions to work through and show that we've never lost a Satoshi and we've not never lost a dollar in this type of structure. We also had scale to do $200 million of ABS. You can't just have $200 million worth of loans. The rating agency wants to see that you can continue to pay debt servicing on that $200 million. So you have to have additional loans to be able to vend in. So we had a billion dollars of loans outstanding when we brought this market. So we're able to show continuality. Importantly, we also had to have strong regulatory posture. These are very traditional financial institutions and have strong AML risk framework and other compliance committees and they will not deal with companies that are not compliant and fit into their traditional buckets. And finally, we had to make sure we were transparent. We opened up. We showed our technology. We showed our processes, our compliance framework, everything was under the microscope for over a year with S&P to get them comfortable with our process. And this now blueprint is public and it can be used by everybody. The thing I love about this and starting the business as Mauricio, a Venezuelan, and myself, a Canadian, we've always had a global approach to our business. The best thing about this ABS financing is it treats everybody equally. Most ABS says you're American or you're non-American. If you're American, you're higher rated and if you're not, you're down here. This took borrowers from 30 different countries and put them all in the same rated structure. Bitcoin is equal to everybody and so should financing. And we're so proud that we achieved all of that access for everybody. So when you have Bitcoin, you now have exactly the same terms no matter where you are in the world. We love that about that. And we'll always be a global company. What's the benefit for you Bitcoiners? Third party validation. Again, we put ourselves openly under the microscope and we said we have nothing to hide. This is how we work. Look at everything you need to to get comfortable with our business. Everything is transparent. If you take a loan with Letin, you can see how how we're accessing that capital. All the documentation is public. These bonds trade on the secondary market. And of course, real savings. We're doing this so that we can open up access to capital and lower interest rates. Already these bonds are trading in market and they've reduced about 5% on the interest cost that they're trading at. People are waking up eventually. It's our belief that these will trade at better interest rates than auto loans, residential, Bitcoin should be the lowest cost of capital because it is the most pristine collateral. We're so excited to create a better Bitcoin ecosystem for all of you and we hope all of you join in and take advantage of this financing that we help create. Thank you so much. >> Kill it, bro. With Khi, you can trade on anything from the weather to news to Bitcoin. And unlike other apps, Keli lets you trade against other users, not the house. Live trade during the events. Ky trade on anything. New users can get a bonus when they sign up and trade. Heat. Heat. Thank you. So, as mentioned, uh, Steak and Shake is a classic American brand. We were founded in 1934 on Route 66, known for inventing the Steak Burger, but also most notably the Tao fries and the legendary milkshakes. And I'm here today to say Bitcoin is making Steak and Shake more successful, undoubtedly. We launched our Bitcoin platform on May 16th, 2025. And since then, we've achieved the highest same store sales growth in any restaurant in the industry. More notably, we've added 2 million more customers prior from the prior year. The math is simple for us. When we use Bitcoin, we save 50% on processing fees versus a traditional credit card user. To put it more simply, if every credit card user used Bitcoin, we would save roughly $6 million annually, which is huge for our bottom line. So, without the additional customers and savings, we would not be able to improve the food that we serve. In the past year, we've upgraded to 100% beef tallow fries and tallow tots. We're using gradea Wisconsin butter and A2 milk. Earlier this year, we r uh we removed all microwaves. And our next big announcement, June 1st, we're rolling out 100% grass-fed, grass-finish beef across all stores. Thank you. It's simple for us. We went back in time to gain them the quality of food and we're moving forward with Bitcoin, the future of money. It's real beef, real cattle, eating real grass, powered by Bitcoin, which is real money made with real energy. It's first principles for us, not fiat. Bitcoin is a healthy currency that allows us to improve the healthiness of our products. I stand here today uh as a new chief maha officer for Steak and Shake, the first in the industry. Thank you. So, we're guiding Steak and Shake to further improve the health of our food and Bitcoin improves the health of our financial system. Bitcoin doesn't suffer from the ills of other currencies such as inflation caused by traditional politicians or credit card interchange fees. And new today, to bring others into the world of uh Bitcoin, to take the orange pill, if you will, we're launching the Bitcoin milkshake. I know counterintuitive for the Maha guy, but and to complement that, we're going to have the Bitcoin steak burger across all of our stores. There's going to be 21 million available. get yours today. All Bitcoin sales go directly into our Bitcoin reserve. And that Bitcoin reserve powers uh the additional bonus for all of our employees. So, every one of our employees across all stores are eligible for a 21 cent Bitcoin bonus on top of every hour that they work. This is in addition to us being the the market leader in traditional wages, and we aim to be the maximum wage employer. I'm also here to add that I'm going to be one of the first in the industry to accept Bitcoin as part of my executive compensation package and I hope that will pave the way for new models of compensation across the industry. Thank you. And on top of all that, franchises can also use Bitcoin uh to pay their p franchise fees. Bitcoin is making it possible for Steak and Shake to create a new space in fast food. We're bringing high quality to the masses and not making exclusive to the affluent. We are going to be Who else on the value spectrum can deliver you two a double steak burger, fries, and a drink for under $10? No one. A healthy currency within a healthy company is delivering healthier food options at great prices. It's simple. Health is wealth for us. We believe in freedom. We believe in giving customers the freedom to choose healthier options. And we're using the currency that stands for freedom, Bitcoin. At the heart of the American culture is the freedom to choose. And we want to stand here next year with even more accomplishments powered by Bitcoin because we fully embraced the future of money, Bitcoin. Thank you so much. Go find your nearest steak and shake. Thank you. >> This card doesn't give you points. or lock you in. No, heat. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk presented by Mara. I'm Sean Hagen joined by head of marketing at BTC Inc. Lana Miles and our social media Zar Isaiah Austin. We just heard a wonderful keynote with some healthy and accreative announcements brought to you by Steak and Shake. What do you think about what we just heard? >> Uh I mean I'm stoked. I I love Steak and Shake. I've always loved Steak and Shake, especially in the past year since they uh since they put the proof in the uh the Bitcoin adoption. But uh I'm I'm always looking for places I'm a mom where I can bring my kids and I feel good about the food that I'm giving them. But it's not me constantly cooking every single meal. If it's a healthy meal, we'll be at Steak and Shake a lot more. >> Yeah, same here. Super excited to see 100% grass-fed beef uh coming down the pipe. Uh every time Steak and Shake makes an announcement, it's either bullish for Bitcoin or making America healthier. >> Yes, >> 100%. And you know, actually, speaking of bringing your kids to Steak and Shake, Isaiah was actually gracious enough to bring his child, me, to Steak and Shake, uh to try out the Bitcoin burger when it launched. And I was really surprised with with how cost-effective their menu is. Oh, yeah. It's a great price point. It's healthy. You can pay in sats, get a Bitcoin stamped burger. And I think that that's that's probably a reason along with the health that you mentioned, Lana, that they've seen, you know, faster store store growth than a lot of their peers in the marketplace. >> You know, they also said they want to be I think he called it a maximum wage employer and they have this 21 cent bitcoin bonus. Do you think that more uh industry leaders are going to start to, you know, re theorize how they can pay their employees once they get on the new economic system of a Bitcoin standard? >> Well, I mean, it's it's certainly going to be more economic if you think about like the DCI model on the individual level. It's it's a no-brainer. So then when you're looking at Bitcoin um price activity year-over-year and and that's how you're incentivizing your employees, they are benefiting. You're benefiting. your bottom line is is healthier uh because you're paying them in a in a sound money instead of fiat that's being um inflated away and eroded away. So I think it's a great move. >> Yeah. And I think it takes more than just the the business model as well. Obviously has done a great job marketing something you both are are experts in. Right. Isaiah with the socials. Lana, you've been a longtime uh leader of of the Bitcoin marketing team here at Bitcoin Inc. which is the conference and the magazine for those at home. you know, what's it like to be driving the brand for for such a large uh Bitcoin firm? >> Uh, it's always exciting. It's always interesting. I feel like Isaiah is more a troop on the ground than me, but I don't know if you want to. >> Yeah. No, it's it's really interesting. I mean, you know, there's a lot of different segments within the Bitcoin ecosystem that we touch here. Um, I think, you know, Stake and Shake is a perfect example of a company that that, you know, jumped into the Bitcoin ecosystem and have succeeded on a two twoprong approach. One is obviously that they've lowered their processing fees by 50%. So like from a purely technical level, they're improving their cost basis or excuse me like their um what do you call it? >> Operating cost. >> Their operating costs. Yeah. But then on the other side, you know, being able to tap into the Bitcoin ecosystem uh market to Bitcoiners has been really really effective. Uh and I think it's going to be interesting to see, you know, as Stak and Shake continues to grow and provide these success metrics to the to the marketplace. You're going to see a lot of other somewhat Bitcoin adjacent companies, possibly a coffee company, a nicotine company, things that uh Bitcoiners love. Uh you're going to start to see companies use that marketing engine not just for the use of Bitcoin and that it's effective, but also uh the marketing. So, that's been fun to see from our marketing side. >> Yeah. And honestly, just to tag on that, like the success cannot be denied. Like I think I already mentioned they were struggling during co and now they're just this constant up and to the right uh success story and a huge part of that is the Bitcoin community which I think we've always been in like this we are so early uh notion like we're we're in our bubble. I am personally on Bitcoin Twitter more than I care to admit but I think stories like this are really showcasing that we're we're not easily ignored and we're not this niche addressable market anymore. We are a powerhouse of of a a customer segment that I think other non-endemic brands should absolutely be taking note >> and I don't think we can understate the impact the two of you have had on driving that brand. And thank you for joining me today on the panel. We're now going to head back to the Nakamoto stage where we're going to hear from Irene Gao, the president of mining at Bitmain for a keynote address. Hi everyone, it's GL great pleasure to be here. I'm Irene Gal, executive at Bitman. Today I'm going to share with you three market trends. So first of all, let's start with the numbers. So the night work harsh reach one that hush until now. It is 1.5 times um comparing the the time we had at 2024 having and the Bitcoin price set a all-time high at 120 uh 120,000 um at the October of 2025. The Bitcoin reward is having 3.125 Bitcoin per block. And if we run the numbers right now, we find 42% of the miners if the efficiency is above 20 J per harsh have difficulties on their unit economies. So that's why this is a clarifications the infections that's what we've been built for years. So the first trend I want to share with you is about the AI uh power infrastructure problem and why miners is positioned to solve it. So we all know it's usually take a very long time to build a AI data center uh at least 18 months and but the power the power purchase agreement is signed um you know the uh you're committed to consume this power but from the day one you cannot consume it uh you have to wait until the AI turned to alive on the month 18. So what we can find out here if you have a mining business there mining can start within 6 months of the build and from the month six it generates profit immediately. So for the next 12 years until the AI alive um the mining profit can offsite the AI infrastructure and um when the AI comes alive minor not goes because the they have flax they very flexible and the over the the surplus energy AI operations it can flows into the mining operations so which means when you can run AI data centers and mining data centers all together to have a double uh incomes and because the flexibility of the mining business it's uh a very flexible load um dur we we have the clear example from Aaron and Terraolf that during the process of the construction the buildout of their AI data centers they run their mining business throughout throughout the process. This is a good option to optimize the capital allocation strategy. So the second trend we want to share is the energy the the energy. So there's a lot of uh energies um available in the US and uh we can show show you the scope of this that we find only in the United States there's around you know more than 500 billion cubits feet of flare gases um that is been released every year and there's more than um in the rural area there's uh curtailment that exceeds almost 10% of the generations and that's where miners can perform as a a mobile utility. No need the trans uh transmission lines and you don't have to build out all the electrical infrastructures, the power and the container, the plug and play. M as far as the mining runs, the profits is generate. It's rapid deployment and immediate monetization. So this is the um sample uh this is the example of how it works and um this will be truly become the trend cuz uh you know the power in the rural area that nobody can use but our industry our mining facility is movable and aid can be um up uh and done online very frequently. This is the only um utility or this is the only facility can do like this. There's no other industry have the similar load. And the third one is about unranking heart rate. We hear a lot of feedback from institutional investors. Um they addresses that a barrier to adoption is you know the the operational comp complicity. You know they have to find finalize where the power is build out the mining centers and operate throughout the lifespan of the miners. And now unreking heart rate actually resolve this perfectly. You just purchase the miners have the asset on your balance sheet and Bitman as a partner to operate everything for you. We sourcing the power. We operate the mining data centers and you just need to have a wallet to receive the Bitcoin uh earnings and this is a perfect model for um those clients who want to have a hardware on their balance sheet and for a mining company who don't want to expand the mining fleets but need more harsh uh to be added and this is also a perfect solutions for the um crypto exchanges who want to offer the hasher products to their users and this is the products I want to introduce you to you know who are engineered into all these three scenarios. So the 9.5 jar per high efficiency for miners which is true uh frontier of the industry which is means you know it's 27% more efficiency than the prayer generation and it's 1,60 terra units that's ensure a very high density uh hash rate in uh in a single uh unit of that capacity and uh if you know you are a AI developer this is uh you know where your tenant or yourself maybe bring to the site before AI infrastructure and this is a good project for um the uh off the uh uh off the grid um project deployment. This means your power price or uh it you are operating as a really really low commodity price. Um Bayman as the leading mining mix manufacturer we are not only selling you know single uh most efficient miners but uh whole solutions for the uh ecosystem. So um no matter your investors or your uh AI business developer or your power uh generator uh you cannot run the business with even the most efficient minor. So you need a integrated partner and that's what we uh who we are. We have the most efficiency hardware and we have modular um infrastructure solutions with the contain uh with the container and we have 247 global services and also if you want to power resources we will find you power resources and everything up uh immediately and we also have financial solutions for clients to maximize their capital usage and this one One more thing we want to um share with you during this conference that uh we offer uh promotions enable um more and more people can be assessed to mining infrastructure business and to build more infrastructure to uh allow to maximize the usage of the capitalization. uh we will offer you one to one credit will be issued to your bank uh your uh bitcoin account and allowed you to utilize it to purchase the miners which enable you to get 20% off um 20% off means like 20% faster return on investment and we offer two types containerized solution here one is the standard uh tap that uh enable you to you know deploy with all kind of ant miners um and um high density very advanced hydro cooling cooling technology and also we have this server um containerized solutions if you have you want a infrastructure for the future want a infrastructure for a AI server compatible um that this is your choices And uh this is what we want you to take from here. Um first of all uh come to our booth and to test the numbers to run the numbers together with our team. And secondly to get more customization solutions from our team. They are there to support you. And um the third one partnering with us no matter your miners, your wisers, your power um owners and um you can come to us and talk uh we want to be partner with you guys and to build a better Bitcoin mining ecosystem. And this is all for today. Thank you all for your time to listening. Thank you. No one dared to tread here, here, or here until a trailblazer did. The ones that saw a way forward that wasn't even there. The ones that were bold enough to go into the unknown. There were no footsteps to follow, no maps, no breadcrumbs, no guarantees that you'd even make it back. Just a conviction that you're on to that next thing that changes everything. At Riot, we are the trailblazers of tomorrow's technology. From Bitcoin to data centers, we're not waiting for the future. We're finding our way to it. That is our north star. So, climb on board. The next trail awaits. Heat. Heat. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Um, let's talk about hyper Bitcoinization, hyperamericanization. Very interesting topic and it goes into some really interesting places. I think you're going to be a little surprised where this ends up. Uh, let's start with here. Uh, I don't know why I have a big X on there, but there we go. Um, this is the kind of thing I would end a presentation with normally, but it's really a very important. It brings us to our point. We believe that the good, the useful, and the beautiful grow in us. This is a really important point because it makes us primaries, not secondaries. It makes us sources, not derivatives. That's a really important concept I'd like you to hold in mind because if the good grows in us then we're the source. Correct? So let's take a look at this. Okay, I'm kind of a scientific guy and I like to use these scientific analogies all the time. One of them is that all things physical in the universe that we know of um seek a least energy principle. Everything tries to use the minimal amount of energy. This is true at the subatomic level. It's true in human affairs where people are trying to be careful. Don't make a mistake. Don't go too far. Uh stay where you're safe. Um but there is an issue with that. Now what I like to explain is and I'll make this brief. All of the world the physical world goes to entropy which is it wears down. It wears out. But life doesn't. Life is actually recognized by its ability to transcend entropy. To take things that are worn out and to put them back together into something highly organized and important. Think of a of a fruit tree, an apple tree. It takes in water from the soil. It takes in minerals from the soil. It takes in sunlight. It takes in gases from the air and organizes it all and turns it into fruit. This is a transcendence, a reversal of entropy of everything wearing out. This is going in the opposite direction and everything alive does that. There's one kind of exception and that is us. Humans can do this willfully when we want to or not. We can't run as fast as a deer, but we can build machines that take us much faster, much farther. We can't fly like a bird, but we have machines that we can create that we did create on purpose, with energy, with effort that take us almost immeasurably farther and faster. Humans can do this willfully, but only if we break that least energy state. Only if we care about something. If there's something we really want, we really want to do something that's in in in in the proper sense of the term sacred to us, something that matters to us, when we do that, we can create, I don't know how far we can go and we do it willfully that's completely unique in nature. Okay? But this choice to break the least energy state and to care about something and build something you want, this really is faith. I mean, what's the Bible line about faith? It's the substance of things hoped for, of things not seen. This is where it begins because we decide to create something, something that matters, something that we have passion for. This is what drove America. This is what drove Bitcoin. It's the same base. Now, let's take a look at this just a little bit. This is one of the first acts of faith that you see all over the North American colonies. This is an indentured servitude contract. Indentured servitude was not slavery. I'm sure there were some bad cases, but there are bad cases now. Everywhere we look, there's a bad case and something because humans aren't fully developed. We've got problems that we still need to fix. But this was how poor boys and poor girls by the way. There were a lot of a lot of young women who came um easily a million people came from from England to America this way. And why this way? Because how's a poor boy living in Devonshire going to get to America? He doesn't he can't do this. So, a bunch of business guys put together this arrangement where you went and you worked for 3 years and then you became out of your employment contract. Think of the faith it took for these people. Think of the conviction they had to have to do this. That's very important. And and think also that, you know, their families were probably not overall pleased with them. Um, this is another very important one. This is a little town in Massachusetts and this is 3 years before Jefferson and his declaration. And these guys say essentially that they have the right to judge kings. Says the rule have a right to refuse new laws and to judge for themselves when rulers are transgressing. You think it took a little bit of determination and courage to say this in 1773, but these people were convinced and became convinced that they were the primaries, that they had a right to build what they want and to live as they want and that they were convinced that they understood it and they could judge kings. That's a big deal. Here it is for Bitcoiners. This is Diffy and Helman. For those of you who know a Diffy Helman key exchange, which is fundamental to Bitcoin and several other things, these are young men who had a passion for something that that went out to do something that had never been done before, to use math to separate secret keys. Very, very important. But look at the face. Look at the faces. These are people who believe in something. This is where Bitcoin came from. This is a financial cryptography conference 1997. This was after we had the cipher punks. People understood what cryptography really meant to us. How it made a teranova. It made a new world for us. And people began to understand this and they what we need money. We got to have money. And this is a conference that was held on some little island in the Caribbean. Probably most people wouldn't know it. I probably almost no one has been there. These guys weren't going there because they wanted to to find, you know, uh, venture capital to start something. They were there because they knew this thing was important and they didn't know how to do it, but they wanted to do it and they were going to spend their time and energy cuz they believed in this. This is a community on the coast of Africa. People who found out and why are they there building in this spot? because they believe in something. They found something that they can believe in and put their passion into that they cared about. And I promise you that their families think they're a little crazy. There's lots of social pressure, social impositions that go along with all these things. But these people are doing it because they believe in something. They believe they're the primaries. Okay? When America was young, it had no myth. There was no we're the great America. People had to prove it. They had to prove that living their way was is better than living in subjection to the king. You know, this idea of a myth and every nation seems to have their own. They're the they're special because of this or special because of that. The myth is actually a problem especially regarding this because it kind of subsumes you. Let's take the one of the myths from from the 19th century, you know, manifest destiny. We really need to go across and take over the continent. Once you find your identity in that, you kind of move a little bit into a derivative rather than a primary. So, America had to prove it. And they had a lot to prove. Um, I I'll just give you a couple little things here. I won't read all of these. The second one is the one that I that made me laugh. This is Lord Sandwich of the Admiral T. You know, who are the Americans? A race of convicts that should be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging. Wow. Um but we had the same thing in Bitcoin. Um we had in 1996 the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace written by Cha JP Barlo. Uh if you haven't read it, please find it somewhere. I mean, it was really inspiring at the time. And of course, Wired came out. Wired supposed to be the, you know, electronics sort of thing. Like, they deemed it hogwash immediately, but it was a big deal at the time. It was on tens of thousands of websites and there weren't that many websites in 1996. Um, and then all the things that people have said about Bitcoin, I kind of like the last two. Bitcoin is driven by high school dropouts. Not exactly. I'd say it's more like college dropouts, but close enough. And then of course, you know, last one, Bitcoin refuses to die already. Well, you there were plenty of people who thought that about America, too, and wanted it to just die already because it was very inconvenient to the existing ruling orders. All right, let's just talk about some some parallels. uh Bitcoin Bitcoiners and the early Americans had the same idea of freedom and they took it from the same guy John Lockach. Um you know that we should essentially what he's saying is we should be left alone to do whatever we want so long as we don't hurt anybody. It's kind of the same thing we tell children and it's kind of the same thing that pretty much everybody believes unless you're, you know, political science professor then maybe not. Um, here's some more parallels. Uh, we have Thomas Payne saying, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Well, this is what we found out once we had cryptography. We can fence off part of the world, a virtual part, but a very real part. And we can create the world over again. Oh my god, what do we want to build? How do we want this to be? Okay. And then we have Timothy C. May on the right hand side. who was one of the founders of Cippher Punk saying the same thing that this is going to be a very different realm and it's going to change. We have Thomas Jefferson in his declaration with there's JP Barlo in his declaration. I want to tell you what it was really exciting at the time still is. We have Sam Adams talking about an asylum for liberty and then we have Satoshi talking a new territory for freedom. It's the same stuff. It's the same stuff a couple hundred years apart. Same fundamental questions, same fundamental answers. As soon as the Americans could do it, they started making their own money. As soon as we were able to do it, we started making our own money and other stuff, too. Now, I won't go through this, but money really does create a comprehensible world. Once money is solid, the world cleans up in a lot of ways. Now, it's never going to clean up all the way. You know, there are going to be inconveniences, difficulties in our realm. I'm a massive Bitcoin advocate, but it doesn't solve every single problem. And there's still going to be problems because we're still humans and we're not completely developed yet and we have a lot of stuff left to work out. So, we have to remember to expect problems. That's okay. The people who, you know, try to slam you, oh, something could go wrong. Something goes wrong in their system every day, thousands and thousands of times. This is kind of a um an emotionally driven attack uh with something called the Nirvana fallacy. It doesn't matter. But it our decentralized way is better, but it's not magic and it's not perfect. We still have to do things. We still have to bring decency and honesty into it and work well with each other to cooperate because fundamentally the better humans cooperate the better they live and the worse humans cooperate the worse they end up living. Um, I'll just talk about this saying that astonishingly we are setting the terms of the debate. If you had looked at the Enlightenment as it began, you would never know it from all the scholarly journals and all the things that they had in those days. But they were starting to set the terms of the debate. And so are we. I mean, two years ago, presidential candidate came here because we mattered. Wow. Now, I'm going to have I'll go through this pretty quickly, but I love this analogy of the iceberg. The noisy part, of course, is the TV channels and social media and the permanent state of outrage everybody seems to be in. The part that matters, though, is the big part. This is the people who deliver everything, that grow everything, that build everything, that repair everything. That segment of life, that's what matters. And we want ones and twos. We don't want the big super duper famous guy saying Bitcoin is it, everybody come. We want, you know what I want? I want the people who come into the Bitcoin meetup and say, "Wait, wait, what did you say? Is that right?" Yeah. We've processed over a billion transactions. It works. Whoa. That's what I want. These are the people want. That's building with with solidity. That's building for real. Now, let's finish this up. This is Thomas Jefferson. The issue today is the same. It's always been through history. Whether man shall be allowed to govern himself, to be a primary, to govern himself, or to be ruled by a small elite, a secondary. Uh, and actually he had a conversation about this with John Adams. And Adams said, "Let's be specific. The revolution wasn't the war. The revolution began in 1760 when the hearts and the minds of people like the people from that little town in Massachusetts said, "We're primaries. We judge kings. We're the primaries, not the secondaries." This is the founding American idea. That's the core of it. That's the kernel of it. And Bitcoin coded us as primaries. Okay, look at the these these uh symbols here. On the left is us. That's Bitcoin. You want to be on the Bitcoin network, you're a node. You're you're an entity. You're there. The one on the right, that's hierarchy. That's governance hierarchies, corporate hierarchies, um institutional hierarchies. We have the primaries up on top and the secondaries going down. That's just the way it is. And Bitcoin have made us by code primary entities. That's what we are in Bitcoin. Now we build and all of us have built. We build not from the stuff we have but from what we are. That's what matters. We build out of ourselves. What makes us the sources makes us the primaries. And it is a fundamental difference. Look, all of this has worked. Look at how all the dozens of ways America has led the world forward. It's not because we're fundamentally better than everyone else. We are everyone else. But what mattered was that more people here thought of themselves as primaries rather than secondaries. This is the core of it. This is what made America. This is what made Bitcoin. Thank you so much everybody. Thank you so much. >> With Calcium, you can trade on anything from the weather to news to Bitcoin. And unlike other apps, Calcian will let them trade against other users. >> Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk powered by Mara. I'm Jeff Heapner. That is Teeo Lamar. And we are joined by Aaron Redwing from the Hell Money podcast. I don't know about you guys, but I feel like running through a wall. Paul Rosenberg just said I was a primary, not a secondary. I mean, honestly, I feel really pumped up about that. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's not a bad thing to hear on day three, >> right? That's a self-esteem boost. Three days in Vegas, I want to feel like I'm a primary. >> Absolutely. I mean, I since I saw you guys yesterday, I've completely lost my voice. So, that's, you know, day three of Vegas. >> You didn't stay out late or anything, did you? >> Oh, nothing like that. Definitely not. >> You lost your voice. Teemo lost his hair. Vegas is getting out of control every >> still looking for it. >> Yeah. >> So, you had uh an interesting panel yesterday. I think you you professed your love for Jim Jim Kramer. Did I hear that? Yeah, something like that. Uh, yeah. No, I was on a a comedy panel on the main stage, which uh, you know, I I was happy that they let me do that cuz it means I can just sort of riff and go off and then I made some sort of inappropriate joke at some point and the thought entered my head like, am I allowed to say this? I think >> you're a primary according to Mr. Ros. >> Exactly. So, the the funny thing was though, we were sitting on stage and we could not hear a thing from the audience. So like a joke would be made and it was just crickets every single time. There was no back and forth at all. So we just had to trust. >> No, that's where you want your mom in the back just clapping for everything that you say. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like just a hoot and a holler at least somewhere. Any sort of feedback. Is this is this working for >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we just had to go into like, all right, this is for content mode. Like it's like we're in an empty room with a camera. We just got to do it for the camera. And then sometimes just the the nature of the crickets becomes the comedy, right? It's like you're sitting there going like that that's funny, right? Because nobody's even laughing at me. So >> Oh, yeah. I mean, when the one of the comedians is making his like third joke about his wife leaving him or something to a completely silent room, it's like, all right, >> that becomes depressing. >> She might have been doing some crowd work herself kind of saying like >> then it enters into the dark comedy. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. >> Which is a genre, right? It's a very important genre. >> Oh, absolutely. Very very important genre. >> One to explore. And you know, honestly, when you're up there and you're you tell a joke and it doesn't hit, how does that feel? >> You know, I just keep it pushing. I just keep pushing. I mean, I I have a podcast, so it's like I'm used to that. Again, like empty. I think a lot of people who make content know it's like empty room in front of a camera. You kind of have to be a little delusional to do something like that in the first place. You know what I mean? >> Listen, we're all a little delusional. >> Yeah. >> All right. It's time again to head back to the Nakamoto stage for a panel with Eric Trump of Calamos Investment, John Kadunis. And from American Bitcoin, please welcome Eric Trump. How are you, Las Vegas? >> All right, this is going to be very informative for all of you. This is Look, I've looked at the panel discussions all day. There's a lot of very technical uh integrated people in Bitcoin. You know your world better than anybody. What we're going to tell you about is the bridge to the Tradfi world and all the boomer money. And we're at a real crossroads here. Bitcoin is spreading to the masses. We have two great panelists here to talk about that. And so let me just dive into the first question. ETFs have taken in about $60 billion of cash in about 2.5 years. That is I'm an ETF analyst. That's is breaks every record imaginable. They were a huge hit. Morgan Stanley just came in first bank ever. Obviously these things are going mainstream. Boomers love ETFs and the assets are growing. where from where both of you sit, what does that demand tell you about where we are in Bitcoin's integration into the American financial system and how big of a pool of capital is in play? Let's start with you, John. >> Thank you, Eric. I appreciate it. Now, you said 60 billion with the uh ETFs in in Bitcoin. We are very very very much at the beginning innings, I would say, the first inning in the growth of Bitcoin. That number although it may sound large is minuscule to the pool that's out there. If you look at just the advised money as of of advisors the Morgan Stanley's the Maril Lynches um that are out there that's $146 trillion. And you know what? They're not advising yet to put your money in Bitcoin because of the volatility. Only 0.008 of them can advise because they got compliance issues of Bitcoin having 80% draw downs. Once that becomes more mainstream, think about the amount of money there. Another thing that is really really important that people don't understand is how much money is going to be transferred generational from the baby boomers to the gen to the Gen X and the millenniums. All right, that's another 124 trillion. Baby boomers hold less than 5% and that's older people like myself. All right, Gen X's hold 20 to 25%. All right. Millennials hold 25 to 35% in Bitcoin. The younger people understand it, know it, love it. What happens in the next 20 years when the transfer of wealth goes 124 trillion down to, you know, those people that already have adapted it. It's going to blow your mind away. So when you're saying 60 billion, it's nothing. >> Well, let me hop in here, guys. You know, the compression of Bitcoin is unbelievable. You know, I I think I was the first guy on a on a stage like this wearing a suit maybe in this industry and that was about, you know, 3 years ago advocating for this industry. And now every single day you see what they're doing. You see what Charles Schwab is doing. You see what JP Morgan is doing. I mean, you know, you literally had Jamie Diamond two years ago that was laughing at Bitcoin, not not, you know, believing in the asset. Now all of a sudden using JP Morgan Chase Haste, you can go out and you can, you know, borrow against your Bitcoin holdings to get home mortgages. You have Charles Schwab that's about to, you've seen all the announcement that they've made, but they're about to custody Bitcoin for the first time. This is the lowcost provider, you know, of all wealth management in the country with 30 million bank accounts, and they're going all in. You see what they've done at at BlackRock. Do you see what they're doing with all the ETFs that you just mentioned, the most successful ETFs in history? In history. Every single one of them that launches has become an incredible success. Now all of a sudden they're adding on top of that. They're adding yield strategies on top of that. Then you look at what Michael Sailor's doing and he's doing he's a dear friend and doing a phenomenal job. You look at what Simon and Metaplanet's doing, doing a phenomenal job. You look at what 21 Capital is doing. Guys, they are buying and they are not selling. You look at what I'm doing at American Bitcoin mining. We are we are mining and we are not selling. We believe in the asset. You look at all the companies how they're growing their Bitcoin treasuries. You look at private companies like the Trump Organization, how we're treasuring Bitcoin because we believe in it as an asset class. We are compressing Bitcoin. There is a limited supply. And that limited supply, as much as we like to throw around 21 million, it's not 21 million. People have lost it. But beyond that, people are not selling it. People are holding it. Bitcoin is becoming sticky and it's no longer, you know, the DeFi crowd who are incredible, the young kids who really believed in digital assets and were buying Bitcoin when it was $10 and $50 and $100. Now you have the biggest institutional accounts. You have governments. You have the United States government that holds 300,000 Bitcoin and will not sell it. You you have the Middle East that is using energy from cities that they don't need to cool in the middle of winter, but they do obviously have to cool in the middle of summer because it's hot as hell. Guess what? They're using all that extra capacity for to mine Bitcoin. Guys, it is compressing and it is compressing hard. And honestly, I I was saying this backstage. We were talking a little I'm more confident in Bitcoin today at the number that it's at today than I was in Bitcoin when it was 125,000. Because honestly, what Bitcoin's done in the last 6 months relative to what Bitcoin's done in the the previous three years is transformational. I mean, this this rush is only getting going and we are we are in the greatest period I think in the history of crypto and and just hold on guys, hold on. It it's coming. >> Okay, >> if I could just add to that, first of all, you got to love Eric's passion. It's awesome. You know, we talked a little bit about I talked about the retail space, but the institutional space that's going to get adopted. You know, people like Larry Fink when we're talking to the conversations I have with the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. It's not are you buying Bitcoin, it's what percent of your portfolio are you allocating to Bitcoin. It's a big difference. It's happened just in the last year. and and so there's so much and once the institutions really really get involved it's game over. >> Yeah. No doubt the institutional adop it's in this is an interesting asset. Most assets in the history of America start institutional and then the banks and asset managers democratize them to the retail investors. This one kind of went the opposite direction. It's very interesting to watch and watching all of these sort of suits and older people kind of understand it. And this brings me to another question which is, you know, I operate in a in a big company and I also have relatives and family. And when I got into the Bitcoin ETF coverage, I remember my mom was like, "It sounds like funny money in space." That was her reaction to Bitcoin. Some other friends were like, "Isn't that just gambling?" These are regular people who have good amount of money. And you know, her her reaction, the people who went into the ETFs, I think, were kind of ready. They were like early adopters. But there are a lot of people like my mom out there and I want to ask both of you, how do you sell her on this asset, you know, maybe elevator pitch style. Start with you, Eric. >> So, one of my closest friends in the world works for one of the biggest banks in the country. He runs Private Wealth Management in Greenwich, Connecticut. And about two years ago, he comes up to me. He goes, "Eric, I can't believe you like this Bitcoin crap." You know, like I view it as funny money. And I started laughing at him. And I go, "What would you invest in?" I won't give his name away because he'll probably be fired tomorrow, but I go, "What would you invest in?" and he goes, "You know, I really believe in fixed income." And I go, I I literally started laughing. You know, sure enough, Bitcoin's going up and up and up and up, you know, and I asked him one day, I go, "Hey, how's that uh how's your fixed income account doing?" You know, how how's your portfolio looking right now? About 6 months later, he comes to me. He goes, "Eric, how do I buy Bitcoin? What what do I do? Where do I buy it? I I have to start." You took somebody who literally just didn't believe in the product, and you instantly converted him. But what's really amazing about America, we've got the best economy by far in the world. We've got the best system of government by far in the world. We're actually the probably the country that needs Bitcoin the least and we need it here. You look at every other market. Name a currency, guys, that you would want to own anywhere around the world because there's not a single one that I would want to own personally outside the United States dollar, right? And you can make a lot of arguments even about the US debt and a lot of other things. But name another currency you would want to own. If you lived in Iran right now, would you want their currency? Of course you wouldn't. Guess what you want? You would want Bitcoin. You'd want something that, you know, has massive volumes going through it, that could be traded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that you could put on a, you know, either on DeFi or you could put on a Ubi key or whatever you use. You could transfer anywhere around the world 24/7 and it doesn't go to hell. It doesn't go to hell because of wars. It doesn't go to hell because of bad governments. It doesn't go to hell because of of of corruption or fraud or bad currencies or illiquidity in a currency, right? It it's an asset that you can move anywhere on Earth 24 hours a day that you can transact hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars with virtually no fees that you can transfer to any wallet around the world any time. If you lived in Iran, isn't that what you wanted? If you lived in Europe, literally an unbelievably developed part of the world that's growing at half of the GDP growth over the last 15 years in the United States of America, would you rather have the euro or would you rather have Bitcoin, an asset that's growing at, you know, 70% a year on average year-over-year for the last decade? You know, the it's not even close. And then all the time I get to hear from these people, well, you know, Bitcoin has high volatility. It's okay, fine. then do yourself a favor. Go invest in fixed income at 4%. You know, I'll invest in in Bitcoin. I'll ride out the volatility and we'll see who wins that equation in a 10-year period of time. And so, that's I think what I would I would tell your mother, right? I mean, it's a better gold. It's a better gold. It's a gold that has an ecosystem on it that's actually fungeible, that you can actually carry, that you can actually transport, that's been an unbelievable store of value worldwide. and and every country in this world needs it. Needs it substantially more than all of us Americans need it. And I still think for an American, it's one of the greatest asset classes you could possibly have. >> Okay, let me let's let's say All right, applause. Yeah, this is a the home the home crowd here. Let's say she sold on this. She's like, "Okay, now she probably would buy the ETF cuz it's so easy." You know, ETFs are McDonald's easy. You know, I use fantasy football, Dunkin Donuts app, and Amazon like most people. And as somebody who just went through a large research project for this book, I said, "Okay, let me get my own Bitcoin onchain and do it the regular way." Cuz some of the OGs worry that the ETFs are keeping people from actually using Bitcoin. And I want to talk about the user interface. So, it was clunky. It took me a couple hours to get from my bank into the Bitcoin, then the wallet. It cost me 1.4% to transfer the money. And coming from the ETF world, that's like highway robbery for me. I mean, I'm used to one basis point, right? So, how do you get the user interface to be much more like Dunkin Donuts or fantasy football so that my mom's not like completely like, "Oh, the hell with this." >> John, maybe because I come out of the the hospitality background. Maybe I yell at the crypto community all the time and I'm I'm the biggest part of the crypto community. I I truly love everybody in this room. I I love all of you. There's there's no one that's been a bigger champion for this industry than me. But I come out of hospitality. I built the building that's about 1,000 yards behind us. Trump, I built most of our hotels. You walk into one of our hotels, you'll never touch a bag. You'll never touch an elevator button. You'll, you know, be brought up to your room. You do everything humanly possible to make somebody's experience nice. Then you look at crypto, especially going back a couple years. Look at DeFi, right? Where you're trying to go into a or you're trying to go into MetaMask and you're trying to put, you know, you know, the US dollars. You're trying to put some token Ethereum in there as gas fees and all this crap and you have some pop-up extension on your browser and that's blocking your ability to it was an absolute disaster. An absolute disaster. You had to graduate from MIT with a computer science degree in order to make it usable. And that technology when it's not usable, when it's not userfriendly, will never work. And honestly, I I think crypto is starting to understand that. And I think they've done everything humanly possible to simplify technology to make it userfriendly. But when you talk about the interface between kind of tradi and defi and even cfi, this is where the big banks are going to come in and they're going to do a great job. Charles Schwab has spent 30 years working on, you know, stock trades. You know, so have all the other banks. They know how to make it easy. If they didn't make it easy, they were going to lose customers. You have to make this this industry approachable. You have to do it for your mom. You have to do it for the general consumer. And the faster this industry can get our acts together in terms of user experience, the faster we're going to grow. And so for all the companies out there, for all the people who are heavily invested, focus on user experience. Focus on making it simple and easy and not torturous. And that's going to accelerate our growth in in magnitudes that that you can't even possibly believe. And >> all right, John, let's talk about this. So my mom again is a boomer. We have a phrase on the team, boomer candy. There's a certain kind of ETF that is specifically aimed at older investors. They have a ton of money but not a lot of time and so they're a little more riskaverse. So there's these ETFs that like you use call options to give up some upside to protect your downside. John, you have some called buffer ETFs. There's also equity premium income which are similar but like less buffery. And collectively in the equity space, they have about 200 billion. Now in the Bitcoin space they have about 1 billion. So there's a lot of growth potential here. Nate Tracy called it Bitcoin with training wheels. Talk about this as a front door potentially for the very nervous boomer. Thanks Eric. So we started looking into Bitcoin and we're a traditional asset manager 50-year-old company and you know everybody I was a former CEO of one of the largest banks in the world. So people could say you're a suit and I purposely wore a tie today to display that. Um yeah, that was my background. But I also really bought into Bitcoin early and we could talk about that later. But we also wanted to use what we were really great at and we're phenomenal risk managers. Um Calamos is the largest buyer of convertible bonds in the country. We know how to manage risk. We know how to manage your downside. And we thought that Bitcoin, even though it was the best performing asset in the last 12 years, to get more people involved, that couldn't take the volatility. Maybe, you know, grandma or mom doesn't want the potential of a 80% drop that we we could we we launched a year ago the first 100% protected uh Bitcoin ETF and then we launched 90% and 80% and we didn't just pick those numbers because it it sounded good. We picked them in the mind that in a traditional portfolio whether the oldfashioned 60 40% the way our product works you get the 100% protected it's approximately like a money market or used treasury or cash you get the 90% it's like gold commodity the volatilities are similar and if you get to 80% it's very similar to equity. And so what does that mean? Well, you have the volatility stream that's very similar in those three classes in a traditional portfolio, but the upside in each and every one of those is so much higher than the traditional product. What has equities returned in the last 30 years? S&P what just under 10%. What's Bitcoin done now? you're buffered at the top, but even at the buffer area, the cap rate, it's much larger. You know, if you buy 80 80% protected stuff right now, you get to take keep anywhere between 35 to 45% of the upside depending on where options are trading during that day. That's a lot more than equities. So, in mind, you can now in your portfolio get Bitcoin exposure. And we're not talking 1 or 2%. We're advocating for 10 to 15% in your portfolio with our products because the act exactly we're very similar to what I just mentioned but you have the upside of Bitcoin and that will cause mass adoption in America and we feel that's training wheels till Bitcoin gets to the point where it is a million dollars a coin where the volatility has shrunk and then that will all convert to just straight Bitcoin. Okay, let go ahead. Give it up. These are I mean these are very ETFs are the Silicon Valley of the investing world. So you're you're hearing about the latest gadgets that they're making. That is very important stuff here. So um that is what's called buffer ETFs. Just FYI. Okay. You mentioned suits. We're all kind of in suits. I get called a suit all the time on Twitter or X. I get called a boomer too even though I'm Gen X. You get the idea. Now, there's this term called Sue Coiners, and they're coming in very quickly. I find it interesting about both of you that when you look at Bitcoin, it's it's got debasement hedge properties like gold, but it's also got censorship resistance. It it's truly decentralized. It's really interesting currency that way. And most most of the people in emerging markets can really identify with needing censorship resistant currency, right? But both of you actually have acute experiences despite, you know, how much money you have and how much suits you own with needing a censorship resistant asset, which I find kind of fascinating, ironic. And Eric, let's start with you just so we can get a little bit into like why you're involved. >> Well, listen, if you would have gone back five, six years and and told me that, you know, I would have been part of one of the fastest growing Bitcoin companies anywhere in the world, American Bitcoin, what we built is is unbelievable, guys. We're mining Bitcoin here in the United States. Uh we're doing it better than anybody. We're doing it cheaper than just about anybody. Uh we're effectively mining at about 50%, you know, discount to spot price. We're doing in West Texas using some of the best American energy and we're really leading the way. We're we're we're doing amazing. And you know, you you probably seen what we've done in terms of, you know, building our treasury. It's it's been just an amazing amazing project. But if you would have told me 5 6 years ago that I was going to go from building buildings like the one behind me, you know, to to having this kind of passion for digital assets, I would have laughed at you. and a little thing called politics came into the equation and you know some of you have probably heard the story most of you have probably heard the story but we became the most canceled people arguably in in in the history of the world they came after us like we were dogs I remember getting the calls from Jamie and and uh you know the big banks uh Capital 1 and and JP Morgan Chase you know congratulations Eric all of your bank accounts are shut down you know and in terms of JP Morgan it was you know about 55 bank accounts in terms of Capital 1 it was over 300 bank accounts these are for you know golf courses These are for residential buildings, commercial buildings, homeowners associations, the biggest hotels in the country and around the world, restaurants, um, you know, office tenants. I I can't tell you how many accounts we had. And they were turned off in the middle of the night for doing not a damn thing wrong simply because they didn't like the fact that, you know, there was a person in my family who wore a red hat that said, "Make America great again." And they were hellbent to do anything they could to take us out, you know, politically, financially, to to come after the company that I love and that I've built and that I run every single day. And you know what's funny? Those same people were going after so many people in this room. You know, raise your hands if you were debanked. Raise your hands if they went after you. They went after you guys. They went after me. And honestly, it created a love fest between, you know, the people in this industry and and and between my family, which frankly would have never gotten into digital assets had we not lived that experience. And I met some of the smartest people I've ever met in my entire life. and and people who wanted to change the system. People who thought the Swift system was an absolute joke, which it is, where, you know, if you don't get your wire transfer in by 5:00 on a Friday afternoon, the biggest banks in the world get to keep your money and effectively earn interest on your money for a, you know, 72-hour period of time until, you know, midday on the following Monday. You had a financial system that was fundamentally broken. And it drove us crazy. And and it was all because of politics. Had this not happened to us politically, had they not tried to shut off one of the, you know, biggest real estate companies in the country, one of, you know, the the largest brands around the world, some could say one of the most powerful brands and and families around the world. They did this to us. You know what they can do to the everyday person? They don't stand a chance. And by the way, this is the United States of America, let alone what they do to people, you know, around the world in second and third world countries. They don't stand a chance. And that's what made me a believer in digital assets. And that's what got me to to to find, you know, you know, American Bitcoin, which is company. And that's why I come to every single one of these these seminars. That's why I advocate like hell for an industry that I believe in because guess what? No one will ever cancel us again. We won't allow them to ever cancel us again. And if those big banks who have prayed on so many people and destroyed so much financial freedom, not just here in America, but around the world, you know, as they're giving out, as they're paying out 10 basis points on money market accounts to grandma, you know, while they're borrowing at 4.5%. Give me a break. Is that real finance? Is that a first world market? To me, it's not. You know, you give one of the big banks your money, you give them 100,000 bucks. You know how much they have to legally keep in the bank? 10%. Which would you rather have? You know, and you and by the way, you go to that bank and you ask them to withdraw $10,000. You know what they do? They turn you over to the IRS and they tell you to come back in 3 weeks to get your money because they don't have enough at the bank. This isn't real finance. You know, you're a person that is an 800 FICO score and you want to go get a mortgage. You know, you and your wife or you and your husband want to go get a mortgage. It takes you 120 days to go through a process with a bank that you've banked at for the last 20 years, having never missed a payment, ever done anything wrong. Is that proper finance? It's not. And so, I became hellbent on fixing the system. I became hellbent on taking on these banks and fixing the system because it's the only way you can put them back in their place. And so, you know, that's my story. I never thought in the wildest world that we would have been cancelled as a family and that we would have been thrown away like dogs. And honestly, in retrospect, the world works on kind of, you know, inverse consequences. It's the greatest thing in retrospect looking back that's ever happened because it truly opened my eyes to a whole new horizon and and caused me to meet some of the greatest people that you'll ever know. And many of them are in this room right now. One thing that I have to say is you don't have to be the Trumps. And you know um unfortunately it was very political. Unfortunately it's one of the most powerful families in the world and you know they were targeted but it could happen to everybody. And uh if you don't think it can you're wrong. And I don't have to sell to this crowd because I understand you get that. But I I'll just tell a quick two second story. I was in Greece with my family in late June of 2015 and the economy was not great. If you remember, they were calling the pigs back then. And capital controls came in. What does that mean? That meant that I don't care if you had millions of euros in the bank, you could only take 60 million 60 euro a day out of your bank account. The cash machines weren't giving money out. If you were in Cypress, they were even taking your money. It's like, is this is this capitalism? It's it's unbelievable. And I I could not and and and and these capital controls were for the entire country. Not singled out to the most powerful family. It was for everybody. It could happen to you. It could happen to me. It could happen to all of us. So that's what I said. Wo. And not and also knowing that it didn't it wasn't just a day or a week. It lasted for close to five years now. They let up a little bit by a little bit, but it was it was terrible. And so, you know, having run a major bank, the antiquated systems that most the entire banking system has, as Eric mentioned, Swift, this and that, people have actually all the banks were silent and a year ago they're all talking bad about Bitcoin. But we know they got the clue. They're not stupid. They had to say that because they were behind a ball. And what what did they do behind the scenes? They were working 24/7 to catch up and to come along. And guess what? What did Morgan Stanley do last week? You know, what's JP Morgan doing? What's everybody that said they would never touch it? It was for criminals. Whatever. They're all in it. And so kudos to this crowd for being the believers. You guys won. Um, fantastic. >> All right, we're going to do somewhat lightning round here, but I really want to get to the train. Uh, Lyn Alden, who wrote a great book called Broken Money, has a phrase, nothing stops this train. And it's a it's like a political comment, but it's totally apolitical because no matter who's in office, the the debt goes up. It's they they both agree on that, I guess. And the money supply, as you both you all know, went from like 11 trillion to 22 trillion. This is a silent tax. It's inflation. We you guys all understand this. I want to ask you though, will what happens? Like, oh, first of all, could the train stop or could it slow down? Are we just headed for like debt city? Will the strategic reserve actually help hedge that or could somebody actually balance the budget one of these decades? Eric, how much time do you have? Uh, this train's not slowing down. In fact, this train's only getting faster and faster and faster. A couple things. First of all, great legislation has been put in that's been incredibly pro crypto. Second of all, you have an entire, you know, government in this country that's behind cryptocurrency. Third of all, you have every country around the world watching the United States of America and watching exactly what they're doing and frankly copying the legislation that's happening over here. And fourth of all, guys, we've become too big and we become too powerful and we become too vocal. They are not stopping us. They are not putting this cat back in the bag. It's not happening. It will never happen. I don't care who you put in there. They will not put this cat back in the bag. We've won this. We have won this. And we are only accelerating this this great race. And you better believe it is dangerous. You better believe government spending is dangerous. Look at what I I don't want this to be political. I I want to try and stay as far away from this as humanly possible, but you know, just go up to Minnesota. You know, look at look at the fraud that they were able to find up there. And yet they try and eliminate $18 billion worth of fraud. And and guess what happens? They put up every obstacle to not eliminate fraud in the country. And this is the United States of America. We have the best system by far in the world. Hands down is not even close. You know, if it's hard for us to do, if it's a strain for us to do in a government that wants to get rid of fraud, in a government that invented Doge, in an envir, you know, in a in a government that wants to cut the hell out of the budget and be as efficient as humanly possible, no other country around the world stands a chance. And I think that is your case and point for Bitcoin and for digital assets. >> All right. Yeah. I mean that's obviously a crucial selling point for being a depment hedge and uh it's fascinating and you know the strategic reserve obviously John you know is that something that actually ironically could be used by governments to hedge their own outofc control spending >> look if you look traditionally what are in the strategic reserves I'll I'll talk about the United States treasuries mortgages great safe products right liquid mortgages but what are the returns If you start putting Bitcoin in there and we ride this from 80,000 to a million plus, don't you think that's going to help put a dent in the in in the in the deficit? It definitely will. Stable coins, another phenomenal thing. All bet by treasuries and dollars as some people may not want to buy uh treasuries as much as they used to. Well, guess what? We got stable coin companies that are the six largest buyers of US treasuries in the world right now. So these companies are eliminating former countries that were supporting you know the treasuries. So this ecosystem of Bitcoin and crypto is definitely helping the United States and the whole world. >> All right, last question. Really single word answer. Okay. People like price targets. I'm not I'm not allowed to give them, but I like when other people do. The year is 2030. Right now, the price is 76,0007,000, something like that. What is the price of Bitcoin in 2030? Best guess, Eric, then John. >> So, a long time ago, I said that Bitcoin was going to hit a million dollars. And I I have absolute conviction in my mind that Bitcoin is going to hit a million dollars. I don't know if it's 2030. I don't know if it's 2031, but I absolutely believe it gets there. I I believe we are in the infancy. I think our best days are ahead of us, guys. The compression is happening. It's happening right now in ways that so many people can't even comprehend. And I've never been more bullish on this asset class in my life. >> All right, John, can you give me a number? Are you going to go with a million, too? >> Listen, uh, I was asked the same question in Abu Dhabi at this conference um, a few months ago, and my answer was a million dollars. It has not changed. If anything, I think it's at least that. >> All right. bullish up here. I want to give a nice round of applause for our two great panelists. Thank you very much, guys. Thanks, Eric. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine Newses powered by Mara. I am Jeff Heapner. That is Sean Hagen and his lovely hair down there. And we are joined by Aaron Redwing from the Hellmani podcast. >> Got it right this time. Congratulations. >> Got it. And Rob Hamilton, CEO of Anchorwatch. Now, so we just heard Eric Trump relive the debanking story of his family. Super fun story, right? Like a lot like your panel yesterday, the comedy panel that you had. >> Yeah. Basically the same material, >> same vibe. Yeah, >> absolutely. I I wonder though, you know, when you hear those moments up there, right? So, we've got a Bitcoin story that is real and is deep, right? And then there is a lighter side to Bitcoin. There's a lighter side where, you know, you guys can be playful and you can talk about it because we have this culture that that touches all points in in the Bitcoin universe. I mean, there's a lot of jokes to be had in there, aren't there? >> I would say. So, I think you've brought the two of us on here are the great people to show the spectrum of Bitcoin with the suit coiners all the way to the astrology, right? Right. We have the full spectrum that's covered in the Bitcoin. >> I love the astrology part. I was pretty fascinated. And and you you've got a great way in, too, because you can talk to men who necessarily don't believe in astrology on on a regular basis. But then also, you're like, listen, this is how you get your wife or your girlfriend into Bitcoin. >> Oh, I mean, and the thing is, Bitcoiners should understand better than anyone what it's like to be like obsessively preaching something to someone who just doesn't believe you or care at all. So, honestly, I feel like I'm amongst good company. Yeah, Sean, you are laughing your tail off down there. You seem like you're having the best time out of anybody here. >> Yeah, you know, I I just think uh it's interesting, right? Whether you're a sou coiner or in for other reasons, at the end of the day, it's just important that we continue to mog the fiat bros and sound money max as hard as we can. >> I love that you bring up mog. We had talked about that the other day. And because I'm apparently a grandfather, I don't know what mogging is. Now, is there such a thing as a Bitcoin mogging? >> We're money mogging. >> Money mogging. You explain that to somebody who might be like me and not quite understand it. Just Bitcoin's so much better. It's not even a competition anymore. It's total dominance. Total dominance. >> And it's like a vibes level. It's not just tell. You know, you also can come at it from a technical angle, a hard money angle, you know, really try to nail it down. >> But you just know. You know, >> when you know, you know, you know, fiat is more like clavicular, whereas Bitcoin is the ASU frat leader. And we are thoroughly frame mogging. >> Does this ASU frat leader, does he have a name? because I keep hearing referred to as this ASU frat leader. I don't know. >> There are rumors that he was actually funded by Peter Teal. >> It's true. >> I think there's a lot of people like that here too. >> There's a lot of main character energy running around this conference. Are you guys seeing that? And main character energy that may not be as earned as they think it is. Are you seeing any of that, Rob? >> Yeah, I think you know just as Bitcoin continues to grow, a lot of people come in and think that they they now run the show, right? So everyone thinks that they have their own narratives and their spin and it's uh the thing about Bitcoin you always need to remember is that it will humble you, right? So you always got to be careful not to lean too much into main character energy cuz you know maybe four or five years ago in the larger crypto industry, you know FTX, you know, Sam was like the major player. Yeah. So like you always have to be careful about that stuff. >> He had weird main character energy. It's like the weird guy in the movie. You're like is he a genius or is he just crazy? >> Right. Yeah. Because there's always that question. >> Those are the effective altruists. Yeah. That's that's the group. Is that a Is that a slang, right? Is that a >> See, we have a lot of cultural education to do for you. >> Do you know Sam sign off hand? >> Sam what? >> His his sign. >> Oh, no. I don't. Oh, no. He I believe it's >> done a reading for us. >> I actually think Sam Alman and Sam Bankman Freed might be the same sign. So, that's something someone needs to be studying. >> Aaron has also done an astrology reading of Bitcoin itself. >> Of course. >> What's What's Bitcoin's sign? >> Bitcoin's a Capricorn. Bitcoin's a Capricorn with a lot of Aquarius placements. So, uh, for all the Capricorns, Aquarius, and Aries actually out there, that's why you relate to Bitcoin. >> Well, you heard it here first. That's exactly why you relate to Bitcoin. We're going to head back over to the Nakamoto stage right now for uh a little talk about is quantum FUD. Let's go. All right, Vegas. Uh, thanks for the third of you that stayed for this panel. Um, I'm Alex Thorne from Galaxy. I've got Brandon Black, James O'Burn, Hunter Beast, and Alex Prudin. Uh, this is the talk of the town. Like Greg said, this is a big topic. A lot of people are asking a lot of things about it. I hear about it and from our institutional counterparties. What's the deal with quantum? Uh, we're going to get into some of these things. We're going to talk about the urgency. We're going to talk about uh possible solutions and mitigations and then we're going to talk about what to do with coins and exposed addresses such as Satoshi's coins. Before we do that, I'm going to start with you, Alex Prudin from Project 11. Uh you have uh raised a lot of the discussion about this in in the public. Can you give the audience a quick overview of what the potential problem is, what quantum might do to Bitcoin if it becomes real? >> Uh yeah, thanks. And first of all, I don't want to take credit for raising this as a discussion topic. Hunter's done a lot of work over the last year as well as Pier Luke and a lot of other folks in the community. So, um, first off, okay, quantum, what does it matter to this group here? Um, quantum computers are a type of computer that's based on the principles of quantum mechanics, uh, that can perform some problems more efficiently than a classical computer could. Uh one of those problems is uh was something called the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem which is the basis for the public key cryptography that we use in bitcoin right and very just quickly what does that mean you know as uh yeah the public key crypto system as the name implies the public key is meant to be public and you shouldn't be able to recover the private key from just knowing the public key and this private key is used to sign messages right and a quantum computer running shor's algorithm uh enables you to do just that right and so what is the impact on bitcoin well It enables me to go the kind of the the wrong way down the one-way road. If I have a public key in my possession, I can recover your private key or someone's private key, the the corresponding private key and then sign a message uh to basically, you know, show that I right I to appear to be the one that owns the private key, right? And what does this mean practically? It breaks the concept of ownership that basically the public key cryptography in Bitcoin is meant to ensure. >> That's a good overview. Uh, I don't know, Brandon, you want to offer uh any any differences in in the way you would characterize it from Alex here or how do you think about it? >> Well, I I think I mean that's the right answer like yes, it breaks the cryptography. It can reverse the elliptic curve discrete log. Um, the only thing I would add really is that that's if we can build a quantum computer that can run chores algorithm which has not yet been demonstrated. >> How close are we Brandon or James in your mind to building one? I think based on the evidence, not very close at all if it's even possible. Um, given things like, you know, we don't really know how long we can entangle cubits. We haven't passed cubits through circuits of a depth, anything resembling, you know, what would actually execute shores. And every demonstration cited as being some kind of evidence toward a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is um either sort of a slight of hand or an outright hoax um as in the case of what we saw from Alex's organization uh recently where a precomputing step is done by a classical computer that is then encoded into the quantum circuit and um used as some kind of otter to say, "Oh, well, we're we're making such great progress. We've cracked 16- bit ECDSA." When in actuality, doing something like that in a classical context is fairly trivial. Uh, and then dressing it up with quantum window dressing is kind of a, you know, meaningless gesture. >> Oh, well, James, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk about Project Eleven's product, the random number generator that's quantum powered. Uh, but no, in all seriousness, I really I I appreciate the opportunity to address that. Look, I think there's a consensus at this point that the Qday prize, which is what you're referring to, is not evidence of a, you know, progress towards a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, right? And a skeptic like you cites the absence of this progress as reasons to not believe that this is possible. But I think you know if you look at the literature specifically Google's paper that came out in the last couple of months or atomics paper. So these are leading academics in the field of quantum physics that have been working on error correction the ability to basically make the reason why this you know the the QA prize contestant is not able to do anything interesting is because they don't have error corrected quantum computers. And I don't think it's right to say that there's been no progress on quantum computing. There has actually been demonstrated error correction Google's paper in 2024 below threshold. So I think the question is if it's not the Qday prize then what is the right benchmark that would convince a skeptic like you and the reason I think this is important is because we don't want to throw away cryptography that is securing trillions of dollars and has for years right but at the same time there is a risk that a crypto a cryptographically relevant quantum computer can be built and I think that risk is potentially existential to bitcoin >> if you guys are quantum experts why did you market that demo as a break of ECDSA on the basis of a quantum computer. Shouldn't shouldn't you know enough to know that that wasn't actually anything of the sort? >> I want to make this panel about quantum and so I want to let the moderator Alex there kind of drive it. Uh we can debate whether or not we have the authority to talk about it but I want to make sure this uh the value for this audience is to learn about this topic. >> Well maybe to get back on topic can you tell the audience how many cubits how many tiffy gates are necessary to run shores algorithm? Uh well it depends on the specific paper and resource estimate that you're looking at right so you take the Google the Google paper I believe they site 70 million tool gates right and so by the way we're cited in that paper our work is in there and so uh yeah so I you know there there are there's a space-time trade-off and it kind of depends on how you plan to build this quantum computer and I think this is maybe something for the audience to take in mind you know there's multiple tech trees to building these systems you have superconducting computers which is what IBM and Google basically give you an interface to use but the kind of next generation of computers that have the potential to be very efficient cryptographically or you know potential to break the cryptography underlying Bitcoin use different approaches right and so I don't think it's right to say that just because one approach fails all the others will too >> all right gentlemen let's let me give Hunter a chance to get in here Hunter from Surmount Systems also uh one of the authors of Bit 360 what's your perspective on this part of the conversation Hunter >> well I think we need to do our best to seek truth here and be intellectually honest and Uh the intellectual honest answer is that there is no hard evidence that would point to definitively disproving or proving the threat yet. And so I think in this time of uncertainty, we need to fall back on first principles and we need to do the work to build the the tools we need to convince people with proof and evidence that the threat could maybe be imminent. Also, I'm not sure if it's the right question to be asking. I think one of the most depressing things I think about is just like are we going to be coming back here year after year having done nothing to address the concern and just keep bickering about this and doing nothing productive in a way that's its own grift right like we could if if quantum computers really are impossible we could come back here 5 years 10 years build a whole career on this just bickering over this grift >> many have done that >> well you know and so I I would like in my opinion to just put the FUD to rest. Do they work? It's an engineering problem and present evidence and strategies and uh uh give people the opportunity to change their minds based on new input. I don't think people are particularly unreasonable or intrigent in the Bitcoin community as people like to think. I think we are we we we've gotten this far based on evidence and reason and not on ideology and coercion. >> All right. So, um we can and we I know we will and maybe we'll do it for the next five Bitcoin conferences debate the urgency of the problem. But if we grant that it could be possible, let's say even a 1% chance, I want to talk a little bit about some of the work that is being done as mitigations or solutions or that could be done or the difficulty in enacting something on the Bitcoin protocol if something was to be done. Um maybe sticking with you Hunter, BIP 360 is one of the uh most reviewed BIPs and also more advanced uh that has been proposed as a mitigating solution. Would you give a high level of what the proposal is? >> Yes. So BIP 360 and not to be confused with BIP 361, it's a very different BIP. Uh so BIP 360 exists as essentially a optin uh no new output type in Bitcoin. And an output type is kind of similar to an address for the plebs, right? And so um this allows us to essentially uh have like a a first step for wallet optionality on how you wish to spend your coins. And you might commit to a path that lets you spend them with elliptic curve cryptography as it currently exists. It will also allow you to maybe spend post chronicarvey at some future date and commit to a a a script path in your wallet before that's even active on mainet. Uh and we might even combine that with elliptic cryptography so that there's no reduction in security assumptions of what we currently understand is safe. And so we need to be very rigorous and conservative in solving this problem. And uh I think we should at a bare minimum activate BIP 54 which is the great consensus cleanup that is very uncontroversial. We need to do that. It protects us against a number of other threats. We also need to uh activate BIP 360 and maybe not any other posttography but BIP 360 and BIP bip 50 uh 4 are both very solid uncontroversial conservative approaches to solving these problem. this problem and uh hopefully uh maybe even another another thing that we've been working on for BIP 360 to hopefully bridge the gap uh and divide amongst uh uh Bitcoiners around you know a lot of the things we're talking about. I would like to make BIP 360 compatible with BIP 110 and that that takes a lot of engineering effort but we've been doing it and I think I I know I know there's some BIP 110 skeptics out there. I think you know what these people have enough shared common values with us. We should we should focus on the fact that Bitcoin is a direct challenge to nation state monetary sovereignty and we need to remember our mission to separate money from state. >> Hunter Hunter bridge builder beast. Um we're not going to get into BIP 110 but I appreciate those comments a lot. What were you going to say, Alex? >> I was just going to say I think it's it's kind of hard to separate the urgency of the problem from the potential solution, right? Because if you think, you know, there's a lot of aspects here at risk, right? So, BIP 360 among other things, it kind of disables a way to reveal your public key. Um, >> it doesn't disable anything. >> Well, I mean, it it basically helps mitigate a potential risk of public key, you know, reuse or or exposure, right? But I think there's obviously a world in which if a quantum computer is coming sooner, then there needs to be more aggressive actions to mitigate, right? And so, this again brings it back to like, hey, what is the right benchmark? How do we know? Look, I think uh you know just today you had Scott Aronson, noted quantum researcher on the Coinbase advisory panel. He published a blog post said this is your warning. A quantum computer may arrive by the time by the time this decade is out. I mean he said it as definitively as he could because it doesn't want to be pl doesn't want to be blamed for not doing enough. So look, I think again to your framing, Alex, I think if there's even a 1% chance, we should proactively move forward and you know from a you know kind of a top tobottom way address this problem to make it so that the quantum topic is not viewed as FUD. I don't think it's right to frame it as FUD. I think this is about mitigating one of the most existential risks to Bitcoin. The shortcoming to that framing is that there are many risks to Bitcoin and there's a finite amount of engineering effort that we have to distribute over those risks. >> Well, what's a more existential risk than this? >> Scaling. >> Scaling is existential. If we can't centralization will make Bitcoin completely fail and the Absolutely. How about the particular parameters around supply distribution and the fact that if you guys scare up all of institutional investors and whip everybody into a frenzy because they're reminded that they don't actually understand the cryptographic bedrock and they're in doubt and they're delaying their adoption of Bitcoin, then by the time the security spend on Bitcoin has been reduced by twice and then again eight years from now, um we may be in a in a very uncomfortable position in terms of the net security spend on mining. I >> I think the only cryp I mean there is no way that anything I could say could threaten the cryptographic bedrock of Bitcoin. I think that's the point of it's a bedrock, but a quantum computer might threaten that bedrock. >> Well, I think we need to talk really seriously about like what is the threat from a quantum computer. And the reality is that most people's UTXOs are safe forever because a quantum computer, even if it is invented, is going to be expensive for a long time. So, if it costs $50,000 to break a public key into a private key, every UTXO worth less than $50,000 is safe forever, right? We we can't like panic about this. The fact that it can break a public key doesn't mean every public key can get broken. And so, it really depends. It depends what the evidence shows. It depends which kind of quantum computer we have out there. If it's a neutral atom computer, it'll never give us a short-range attack. It'll never break a key faster than a week or so on a neutral atom, but it would on a superconducting. So we really have to look at the evidence of what's happening on real quantum computers. And of course, as James has said, the evidence today is that no real quantum computer has ever run shor's algorithm. And so it does not make sense to take any action beyond Bit 360, which is good for other reasons too on Bitcoin today. I guess the question is how do you know you're like how how will we know that we'll get that evidence? In fact, so Craig Gidney noted Google cryp analyst who was also nice enough to take time out of his Saturday to flame me this weekend. You know, he uh he said I asked him his question. I said, "Look, okay, if this is not it, then what is the benchmark, right?" And he said, "I don't have a good answer. There's not a good benchmark. I think, you know, and the Google paper itself says, hey, when we get to the point where we can factor a 32-bit number, it's over." And this is the risk here. And by the way, these postquantum cryptographic migrations have to be handled with care. They should not be rushed. And that's exactly why I think even if there's a 1% chance, we need to be conservative and act, you know, in the best interest of Bitcoin, which is I think is proactively address this threat. >> Go ahead, Hunter. I think it's also important to point out that I if we don't come up with a good evidence-based comprehensive solution that essentially puts the FUD to rest that opens up the door for essentially fraudsters and grifters to capitalize on that fear and sell us solutions based on trust me bro cryptography. We just saw uh a wallet uh here at this conference called Castle with a Q. And their whole freaking thing is like, "Oh, we have a black box that generates a really great secret key for you." And uh trust me, bro, use our private key that we'll give you in your wallet. And uh really there's no secure way in my mind that you can do that with that like essentially isn't just you know uh a a non-custodial in a different form. And so I really do think it's important that we keep keep bear in mind that as the fear and temperature around this argument continues to build that opens the door that leaves open the door for fraudsters and grifters to sell us broken solutions and capitalize on that >> and and not just I would add too I agree with that and it's also um alternate cryptocurrencies that perhaps have much more centralized development uh ecosystems or even foundations or for-profit companies supporting them are likely to roll out their own. I think Solana just announced their quantum road map. Ethereum's been talking about it like in the halls of you know investment world that might benefit them at the expense of Bitcoin if there isn't something >> ironically coherent >> being ironically the the Ethereum plan is so complex that I I I I kind of wonder if it might take them as long as it did for them to implement and merge post was it proof of stake proof of stake yeah uh like like it took them seven years from the announcement of Casper to like the merge. And I'm just thinking like they're going to overshoot this. I'm not confident they're going to nail it in time. Really in Bitcoin, our cryptography, our cryptographic situation is orders of magnitude simpler. The governance I'm not as worried about. I think people will change their mind if they're presented with good reasons to take action. So, one thing that I think we should all be honest about is that there are tons of new cryptographic primitives being developed regularly uh for Bitcoin uh that are postquantum. I I like to talk about it just post SECP 26K1. That's the current encryption that we or the cryptography we use for Bitcoin. And even if a quantum computer never happens, which I think it never will, that cryptography will break someday. So, of course, the Bitcoin community is actively day in and day out researching new crypto systems. And I think all I would say is we will activate new cryptography for Bitcoin when it is suitable. As of this time right now, there is not a suitable alternative to SECP 250K1, but when there is, we will activate it. And it doesn't matter whether it's for quantum or just because we should have a backup system. Right. So, while we're talking about quantum here, Bitcoin is always researching and moving forward and and will be ready for these things. >> Yeah. Hey, you're saying there could even be risk that you know current ECDSA becomes vulnerable for a classical reason. It's battle tested now, but in that case there will be more others. If we think about postquantum crypto specifically, one of the big issues is that the current schema that have existed and there are constantly improvements on this side of the thing, but the the signatures are very large, right? And I've even seen them come down already, but they're still quite large and Bitcoin block space is quite scarce. And so, uh, is it would would the panel agree that, you know, if people are working on compressing better postquantum cryptography, whether or not we actually add it to Bitcoin yet, but if it's, you know, sitting in the repo, reviewed, it's got eyes on it, right? It's not rolling our own crypto, it's been around, that that's beneficial to have. Would that solve some of the fears and then we hit the threshold and then >> we can't possibly agree here because we have to debate this, Alex. No, I'm just joking. Uh, in all seriousness, I think what you said is absolutely reasonable. And I think this is again going back to the point that we don't want to throw the time trusted algorithms that we have in the bin for nothing. We don't want to grab something off the shelf and stick it in Bitcoin and then it breaks classically and that would be the stupidest thing to do, right? And so I think there are a lot of different postquantum schemes out there. Uh, some of them are wellstied or some of them are based on wellstudied assumptions. Some are not. Some are performant, some are not. And I think Bitcoin should have, you know, look at all of these. And that's in fact exactly what's happening. And one of the things I've been amazed by in the last year since, you know, I think there was one panel or two panels on this topic. I mean, it's the theme of the conference based on there's been a ton of researchers on the open source stage presenting their work and that's amazing and I think people should continue to do that. I mean, there are inevitably going to be trade-offs, but as Reirdan pointed out, you know, Bitcoin can never rely on the security of one crypto system forever. Even if you don't believe that a quantum computer is going to happen, which I do think it might, I think I think it will happen. I think that's the consensus of physicists out there too. You know, I still think at the end of the day, um, you know, you need to be ready to be agile in the face of future threats. >> I think there are a few caveats on that. It's obviously good if we come up with new crypto systems that have different assumptions and say are predicated on things like Shaw 256. But again, there are some caveats. Number one, what is that coming at the expense of? You know, what could we have been working on that we weren't working on? Number two, I think the really important thing to do in this situation is challenge the premise of the argument. I think quantum cryptographically relevant quantum computers are a science fiction at this point and that needs to be rewritten rigorously because if we go and spend a bunch of time and devote really smart guys like Jonas Nick to coming up with new hashbased schemes, we're reunderwiting the concern and we're messaging to the the the world that oh no, this is actually something we're kind of worried about when again in reality I think there are much bigger fish to fry and um Quantum is fanfiction. No one on this panel is a quantum physicist. Not me, not you, not any of us. But the there are many prominent quantum physicists, including Scott Aronson, who I just referenced, that would argue strongly against your claim that it is science fiction. Now, it hasn't been proven to >> prominent climate scientists say that the ocean was going to overflow Florida. >> I I mean, sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean like this is not necessarily apples to apples, right? I think in fact you actually can look at the testable predictions of quantum computing and error correction which people predicted and and theorized and then ultimately experimentally demonstrated as progress. Right? So I don't think it's right to say that some pseudoscientific claims about climate are equivalent to the actual demonstration in the lab. >> Go ahead Hunter like one thing I just want to make clear is that uh I don't think we should trust the experts in this regard either for or against. I don't think academia is particularly well suited for uh essentially answering questions on the frontier of what we know and do not know. Unfortunately, for better or worse, since 1973, nature has mandated peer review. And although peer review is really nice, what it does is it essentially creates an incentive, a perverse incentive to be deliberately conservative in what what can be proven. And unfortunately uh for some kind of break on this level, we really cannot know if the even if the capability could exist today and we're just not being told. The two biggest players in quantum computers are the NSA and the PLA. These are nation state level actors. We need to take nation state level threats seriously. Now that said, am I saying that we should be irresponsible and not be rigorous? Of course not. But I do think that we should uh not like we need to question every assumption including the assumption that we even need a quantum computer to uh enact a an attack on this level. I mean there there are possibly ways where we do not need necessarily pelbert space of unbounded precision if we can just come up with an approximate solution for keys of sufficient length. Okay, let's this has been very exciting. We don't have too much more time but I want to get into one of the big questions that people ask about. Um Alex, you you referenced uh like the bare public key coins. Uh project 11 has a good data website I think on the Qday clock. >> Uh yeah and then well the risk list risk list which shows basically all the exposed public keys that have been exposed in a variety of ways whether they're P2PK outputs or whether there was a double spend somewhere in the history of the block. you can see the public key name >> right so the I would say maybe I'm leaving one out but in general the two category the question is is your public key sitting there visible to be run through such a an attack right a brute force attack by a cryptographically relevant quantum computer running shores algorithm um the two categories are those that are in P2PK addresses which is a deprecated excuse me deprecated address format but which Satoshi and most all early early miners and Bitcoin pointers used. Um, and then any other key that has been previously used. So, address reuse. So, an exchange deposit address that they don't cycle every time, right? Or, you know, if you posted your address on your wedding website and said in lie of flowers and gifts, please send Bitcoin, which I did in 2016, uh, it wasn't that effective. Um, that's what 78 million coins currently, right? >> Yeah. 35% I think it's 7 millionish 6.9 million of the so 35% of the total supply is exposed >> but the vast majority of those are reused coins potentially with people who are here now they could upgrade >> so I really like the bitcoin risk list work uh that's risk with the queue at project 11 but I also want to make sure that people are aware of wicked smart bitcoin's work on quantifying that problem as well and he pointed out recently that uh of those like 7 million 7 million sounds like a big number it's actually a lot lower in practice because uh of those 7 million coins the vast majority have been moved within the last year at which which point uh I think that the real number at risk of like dormant coins or lost coins including Satoshi's would be more like 2.66 uh million. >> Okay. So let's focus on those coins cuz then I'm going to cut right to the chase. People say what to do with Satoshi's coins. You could do nothing. We we Bitcoiners could do nothing. Um or you could on the far end of the spectrum, hard fork, seize them, burn them, etc. There's some ideas in the middle. Let's just go down the list here, the panel here. What would you do, Brandon? Uh >> I would I would just leave the coins alone. um if a quantum computer can start stealing people's coins and we haven't migrated. Um it's Bitcoin's ownership is not about I think there was a talk about like proving ownership with signatures. Bitcoin is a protocol and the protocol depends on signatures. Whoever can produce a valid signature can spend the coins. Um I think it would be controversial to the point of fracturing the Bitcoin community and and creating lots of drama if we were to say we're going to break that premise that that whoever produces the signature can move the coins. Um that is of course predicated on the that we do get bit 360 and some additional cryptographic assumption in before a quantum computer really starts attacking uh which I think is very likely because the the timeline for quantum computers is very long. >> So you're saying a little bit of mitigation work and then do not violate the property rights of Satoshi. >> But the tips fall where they may. >> What about you James? >> I'll keep it simple and short. If you undermine the property right guarantees of Bitcoin were cooked. It was pointless. So leave him alone. Hunter, >> we have to be really careful here because as you both correctly pointed out that essentially we have something as drastic as BIP 361 would be a very egregious violation of the private property promise. And that's also understood to be essentially the social contract of Bitcoin that we don't necessarily uh support or promote activation of protocol changes that unilaterally prevent people from spending their coins. That said, I think it's also important to understand like these these different pers positions and perspectives that we're doing things based on the right principles and you know obviously uh burning those coins permanently just because we want number to go up is a bad it's it's just a bad idea all around. And even I will also point out every author of BIP 361 uh does not support their own writing their own BIP which it was anformational BIP. Here was an idea by the way that said um ban the spending to the P2PK addresses after a period of time then ban them sending after a period of time effectively freezing them >> right and now the on the other side the liquidation argument we have to also be careful about why we want to support liquidation. If we want liquidation for number to go down so that we can buy people's stolen property at a discount, I think that's also I think probably not a not a good reason. >> That's an interesting framing of the do nothing argument. Alex, what's your answer here? >> Um yeah, so my my answer just quickly is uh look I I don't have a strong opinion. I think there are good arguments uh for and against and I I if anything if I would advocate to not focus on this issue in particular as much as focusing on solution a solution for the contingency that you know post quantum computer exists and and taking care of the folks that are still using Bitcoin and thinking about Bitcoin into the future. I will point out two things though uh one is that there are quantum computing companies out there that are absolutely looking at Satoshi's coins as part of their go to market. Yeah, I saw I saw Greg Maxwell actually posted this on Reddit saying that he was aware of quantum computing companies specifically raising money uh for the purpose of attacking Satoshi's coins. >> So it that is true. I think the other thing that you know this the other fact is LA you know I think the this is the the question the community is really split on. I think the last uh survey I remember was last summer Presidio did a postquantum Bitcoin thing and they surveyed everyone there and it was 50-50 split do you know freeze or don't freeze and so I think this is going to be a hard issue but I don't think we focus on it. I think we focus on doing what we can to secure the Bitcoin network for everyone alive today. >> All right, 15 seconds left. I'm going to ask the question of the title of the panel. How real is the quantum threat, Brandon? >> Not at all. >> James, Bitcoin's maybe the most geopolitically potent technology that any of us will be privy to in a long time in terms of potential. Um, we we have to be cognizant that there will be attacks. Um, when the government shows up and tells me that they're here to help and that they're retiring my ECDSA scheme, I'm a bit wary. Um, Quantum's not a threat. Do the research. >> All right. Quick, Hunter. >> Uh, I I I I don't think that we should focus too much on whether the the threat is real or not. I think we should. >> You're refusing to answer the question, but you have one second. How real is the quantum threat? Honor, we need to do the work to build the solutions to make sure that we provide based on evidence and truth uh whe whether we should make changes to mitigate the FUD. >> Alex, >> um I don't want to roll the dice and bet my Bitcoin and my family's Bitcoin on the chance that those guys are wrong. So, we need to do something. >> Thank you everyone. Alex Prudin, Hunter Bees, James O'Burn, and Brandon Black. I'm Alex Thorne. Thank you. Thank you. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine newses powered by Mara I'm Jeff Heapner. That's team O Lamar down there. And we're still joined by Aaron Redwing from the Hell Money podcast and Rob Hamilton, CEO of Anchorwatch. Now, we just watched the panel on is quantum FUD a threat or is quantum really a thicy. Honestly, there was a little threat happening out there. I It got a little testy. I thought I was going to I was a bouncer once, Aaron. I thought I was going to have to go to work. >> Yes. I mean, I thought they did a great job picking people for that panel because they really had the full spread and I thought they represented every take appropriately, which is it's it's spicy, you know? >> I mean, it's it's a controversial topic and anytime people start throwing FUD, there's going to be the reaction, right? And so, Rob, what was your reaction? >> I think it was a very great panel, like one of the best I've seen so far at this conference. Uh there's so much to talk about but briefly uh I think right at the end James Oburn talking about the uh sacri property rights of Bitcoin >> and that we need to be very protective of those things and so the quantum discussion I'm more concerned about in the event this were to happen what are they going to do with Satoshi's coins. I don't like the idea of seizing and freezing someone's property rights. If Satoshi did not manage his keys well and he lost them forever they can be lost. And if someone with tens and hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure manages to defy physics, they can have the Bitcoin. I'm okay with that. >> They earned it. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. To be honest, the quantum guys kind of need it. They've been throwing that money in the pit for too long. They really could use the Satoshi coins if they've they've earned it at that time. >> Now, for the people at home who, you know, they're not quantum experts, but they're concerned that a whole bunch of coins are going to enter the market if, you know, the quantum thread is real, there's a Qday, and all of a sudden Bitcoin drops in value. Can you talk a little bit about that potential scenario? >> When's the last time Bitcoin dropped 80%. Who knows? >> It never happens. >> Never. >> What are you talking about? >> Never recovers either. >> That's right. >> Yeah. And there's also just a lot of it's a lot of complicated cryptography and making sure you do it right. Um, Bitcoin at this point is a 737 flying in the sky and you're repairing the engine in flight. So, the level of scrutiny and detail it takes to actually properly vet what a postquantum scheme looks like and making sure it's actually secure. Um, James has another great point like ECDSA has served Bitcoin for 15 years and I don't like uh a bunch of people coming into the network and telling me I should use a new security scheme that hasn't been battle tested. >> No, I mean that's a good point. It's like there are things that are working these conversations and and even if they get testy, they have to be they have to we have to have those conversations. >> No, absolutely. I mean, something I think that was brought up on this panel was this idea, I think it was Hunter Beast, who I thought handled it really well, is even if you think that the quantum threat is completely zero, the answer is not to dismiss people. The answer is to treat people with competence, treat people with respect, and address them as such and try to actually have the conversation. >> No, that's such a great point. Alex Thorne made this point that if you there's a 1% chance this is real. >> Do you want We're in Vegas. Would you be willing to risk your entire net worth, all of your Bitcoin value on a 1% chance that it goes to zero? Yes. >> And that's what this discussion is about, right? It's almost like an insurance policy on if quantum were to come true, we want to already have the the arc built. We don't want to have the flood come and not be prepared. So, I can understand and empathize with the idea of that these are important conversations to start having in the advancement of the protocol. >> All right. Well, we sit up here in the ark and we're safe from the flood. We're going to send you back to the Nakamoto stage for Jeff Booth and to talk about finding signal in a noisy world. Stick with us. We'll be right back. Thank you. >> My hope today in a world that's seemingly increasingly noisy is to give you the signal in that noise. And actually, more importantly than that, my hope is to show you you are the signal. There's a pro problem in quantum physics that has haunted scientists for over a hundred years. And that problem is the act of observation changes the outcome of the experiment. And it's easy to think about and talk about the uh that only applying to subatomic particles. But what if it applies to us too? Which brings me to a quote I often think about. We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are. So I don't want to start with Bitcoin today. Um, I want to start with us because if the lens that we use to to measure the world changes what the world becomes, then the most important question today isn't what is Bitcoin. The most important question is who is looking? And so let's try something. I want each of you in the audience just imagine this light as you sitting there just in this moment. Now, I want you to think about all of the people that who shaped you. Your parents, your friends, the books you've read, the podcasts you've watched, the teacher who changed something in you, the people close to you that you've lost. Each one of those people is a part of you, that you carry on them in you. Their words live in your thinking. Their choices shaped you. Now I want you to go back further. Your four grandparents, their hopes, their dreams, their tragedies, their failures. I want you to think of every person who impacted them. The friend who convinced your grandfather to move to a new city where you live today. How their experiences shaped them. In further back, your eight great great-grandparents, the random stranger whose act of kindness changed your grandmother's life. That one person, this one person, you in the center there, and the interconnectedness of all of everyone who's ever touched you. Now look around. Look to your right. Look at the person beside you. Their world view is different than yours. Um but the result of the same thing crafted from the stories they tell themselves, people who impacted them. Um and we are the combination of trillions of decisions across millions of people across generations bringing us right here right now in the only moment that matters because in this moment we can change. And so for me, one of the things I'm filled with, I'm filled with awe and gratitude, knowing that all these people in my life that I can't even thank shaped me to where I'm sitting here and able to have potentially their positive impact on on me could bring positive impact to you. And why is that context so critical before we get started? Because the future is bent into reality by us. We shape tomorrow, but but we're trapped in yesterday's thinking, our mental models of how how things looked yesterday. And so very often, we don't live in the moment. We're defending our past. We're defending our past because our past is our identity. And and changing our identity means something was wrong. And so we hang on and we we we don't measure our time in that moment with the those people that the the only thing the past doesn't exist anymore. The only thing you can change is right now in this moment which then cascades into the future. Um and really why I wanted to go here first is when you see something like this which I've talked about for years and years and years which is true. Both of these statements are true. The natural state of the free market is deflation. We compete with each other to provide more value to each other in a free market. And prices because we only use the things that give us more value. If the market was free, prices have to fall. We're we're both the producer we of the comp competitor. You have to deliver more value to society to get paid. whether you're working at a company who's delivering more value or not and then somebody has to choose it if the market was free and what you'd expect if technology was driving in an acceleration an exponential tur curve of uh technology where AI was driving faster and faster and faster you would expect that productivity to drive everything lower and lower and lower in price where the technology actually saved us so we could free our time and spend with with our families so we could do more. So each act of us working for each other helps the world and it keeps moving. But in a credit based system where credit is money and credit is lent into existence, it sets up a different scenario, different winners and different losers because the credit can't allow what I just what I just described. The credit has to grow forever. So, we listen to people tell us what how the rules of the world look like from a credit-based system that can't allow the free market that can't allow deflation. And then we call it capitalism or socialism and and it's all nonsense. It's all nonsense because these two statements are true but they're contradictory. So it for the that's such a big break in our brain and in your brain you'll want to say but we can kind of live in this one or kind of live in this one. It's kind of a free market. You know you try to make them go together and they cannot go together. They're two totally different systems with different winners and losers. Um, and now just for moment, what if the world was backed by 21 million units that couldn't change, that wouldn't change, that was resistant to change, but everybody was measuring that from an infinite number of units that would keep growing forever. If those infinite number of units were were going forever, it would feel like everything was getting scarce and confusing, really confusing, versus what should be just really natural. We compete to provide each other value. We use the things that provide more value and prices fall as a result. And so what Bitcoin is doing is it's imposing the first free market that's ever existed. And and as I I specifically said imposing. It doesn't care what you think of it. It doesn't care how you want to measure it. It's imposing it. And and but but because we've never lived in that system, we don't have a mental model for what that looks like. So we've always lived in a zero sum game where if you had a bigger army, you can invade and steal somebody else's gold or raw materials and you could put them under slavery for you. And inside the country that had the biggest army, you looked you you could win at their their loss, but it was always a zero- sum game. And then we replaced that system with a monetary theft that did the same thing. So, but we didn't have to invade them. We just did it with the currency. But the free market is an infinite game, completely infinite because you have to choose and somebody has to deliver you more value and everybody wins. If you look at your calculator app on your phone today, um where is that in GDP? Do you gain value from it? Should it go up in price because people are making you want to tax the calculator app to make more money to pay for arbitrarily rising prices. The point is the technology is allows us to do more with less forever. So this brings us up to a number of different observers observing what's happening in real time. and observer one in credit money. This observer is the vast part of the population and this observer believes that money is systems foundationally sound that money works experts manage it and inflation is normal. They question what rate of inflation rather than is inflation normal. And this would be an easy lie to believe. Everything they've ever known, every history book e The economists spout this over and over, all the experts, they operate within a system that's in direct opposition to the free market and and fight within that system about which side is right. And the expansion of money that has to keep happening from the credit based system because it can't stop otherwise it would all fail. The expansion of money leads to asset inflation, inequality, cost pressures. This leads to debt dependence and increasing fragility in the system. But because each person looks from that system to their hero to solve the system, the the problem that the system can't resolve, they divide. They naturally divide. This person, this person's going to save me, this person's going to save me. And and that credit money keeps on expanding leading to more and more division of uh society leading to larger interventions leading to misallocations of capital leading to fraud leading to greater instability. Sound familiar? There's another observer crypto blockchain technology. And this observer sees Bitcoin as a software version one waiting to be disrupted by something faster, better, more features. And it's true, Bitcoin at layer 1 only does uh 5 to seven transactions per second. It can't do smart contracts. It's not private. It's old tech. And and so it matches an observation that this observer has that fits with Facebook replaces MySpace, the iPhone replaces Blackberry. those thinking in technology signals cycles and watching the past. Those people that got rich in Bitcoin just by holding it, it makes perfect sense to them. Seeing an opportunity to for fast money, scams proliferate. Hundreds of thousands of coins get get made. Each new blockchain or or token goes through the same bump pump and dump scheme and by investors in a new thing trying to get out of the old system. And as that happens, people the observers from one from group one look at those people and they say, "Those people are insane. We were right all the time with our credit money." Um, and because they've they've conflated Bitcoin with blockchain, crypto, everything else. It looks like one to those other observers. Observer 3 is a little further down the path. And this observer sees Bitcoin as digital gold, the best asset in the world. They've done their work to understand Bitcoin, its decentralization, its security, it properties that make it the best store of value. But they're missing a higher level question. Why do we have a store of value in the first place? Why do you need it? Maybe because you've never been able to store money in money. And and the so we store it in something else because money has always been broken and the thing holds that value. And then this thing centralizes because we use a different money that centralizes the assets like gold. And then once the gold is centralized, the rules change and it and and that's why we've never been in the system system before. So if you kept on extending credit and money on a new asset, you would just have different rulers. Same system, different rulers, nothing changed. not the free market. And all of these observers share one thing in common. Not bad people. This is true for them. It's real for them. Um there but all of their actions reinforce a zero sum game, a system of extraction because they're measuring Bitcoin from infinitely growing pieces of paper. I'm going to get rich at the expense of somebody else. And then there's observer four, and I'm firmly in this camp. This observer sees Bitcoin as decentralized, secure infrastructure, neutral, open, permissionless. And this observer knows that protocols don't come around very often. They're rare. They know that most people measure the internet starting in 1989, but the internet didn't start in 1989. It started in 1969. and it emerged in layers and the same thing happening in the internet is happening in Bitcoin and and and that would be really confusing because today this we're talk most people are talking about the first layer of of Bitcoin and and and all of these things that bound Bitcoin to physical reality chasing lowerc cost energy all around the world. an entire free market for energy sprouting out all around the world to be able to to take advantage of the lowest cost energy, find new abundant energy all over the world. And then all of the different pieces here, the cryptography, the consensus rules, the difficulty adjustment, the nodes that you can actively take a part in and you can run a node and and make sure that it follows your rules, the things that you said. You can audit everything every 10 minutes and you can take action. You are we are a part of this. But if you knew it was this and how protocols developed, you also know that most people today thinking about the internet and the internet powering and and the same protocol stack uh powering your phone and everything else that you use today. There would be a massive misunderstanding on how that came into effect. And most people don't care about all of the grainy details on how the protocol stack gets built. And so what would happen in this? There would be a because it's a global neutral protocol, there'd be entrepreneurs from all over the world, talented, be incredibly talented trying to build the next layer on top of it without another coin just integrated right on top of it. And at first 5 years ago and if you ask on lightning probably half the transactions failed. I personally know some of the most brilliant developers who've been solving this problem. We've invested in some of these brilliant developers solving this problem and watching them extend the this protocol through every fight through trying it all their ideas where today lightning goes it's it's it works all the time. We have portfolio of companies in our fund that are do doing billions of of billions of transaction or billions of dollars in transactions per quarter growing like crazy in something that people don't believe is being used as a currency and I'm watching um they would know that if everybody was giving their time to a system based on money that was being destroyed then those people caught in that system would would feed a system of surveillance. And so people over here that knew this was a protocol stack, the entrepreneurs would be building privacy tech would be building and and that is built on top of this and it's interactive. Services and applications would explode and a bunch of this is already already there whether you use it or not. It's exploding and it's already there. Just like you just like what happened on the internet. You didn't know about the internet. Even in 1989, most people missed what the internet was. But it but a protocol grows like this. So it leaves me with a a a question. Um these four observers and and we're back full circle to where we started. Every one of those observers that we talked about, the person trapped on the treadmill, the one chasing features, the one handing their keys to their keys to Wall Street, every one of them believes in their reality and is creating their reality and they're bumping into each other in a chaotic world. And there's a whole bunch of those people, right? Way more than would think it's the protocol. And so I'm left with this question. If they all believe they're right, how could I know I am? And I can't for sure. The truth is I can't for sure. But the world I live in now and watching what I would expect to happen. Our models of reality should have predictive uh predictive strength. Otherwise, our model is probably wrong. So if you're confused about what's going on in the world, when you walk up the stairs, your model in your brain, you don't keep tripping. it you fix that model in your brain and the same thing. So you should it should have predictive power. So what would I expect if this protocol was coming into existence? I would expect to be pricing the free market. I would expect all prices to fall against Bitcoin. Exactly what I see. I would expect all of the layers to be building on top. Exactly what I see. I would expect anybody operating in the other systems to be more and more chaotic because they were measuring from a piece of paper and and so I understand how hard this was is because I was once observer one and I didn't know that's also gives me a whole bunch of hope because the world doesn't just happen to us. We have agency. It emerges from our actions, what we do. And so I'm I'm in this new system giving all of my energy to this new system. And I'm watching as people move from this other system to the new system. Every person taking self-custody, every node, every person running a node, every developer building on this layer, every educator who helps one more person see it clearly, every person in Bitcoin circular economy is paying for this in Bitcoin. We're not just passengers. We are part of an emergent reality that transitions the world from fear, scarcity, control to a world of truth, hope, and abundance. Couldn't be more thankful to be on this journey with you. Thank you. My grandparents Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk powered by Mara. My name is Spencer Nichols and I'm joined by two special guests, Hunter Albbright and Sean Owen of Salt Lending. Gentlemen, how are you doing today? >> Doing fantastic. Loving it. >> Excellent. Glad to hear that. So, we just heard from Jeff Booth on finding signal in a noisy world. And the topic at hand is how is Bitcoin going to really change the world? All of these systems that exist within that structure. And I think Bitcoin and its rise poses a very serious question to how is the investment landscape going to change? How is the structure of wealth in our society going to change? And Hunter, you were on a panel earlier today talking about the intersection of uh mortgage finance and Bitcoin. Could you tell the audience a little bit more about that? >> Yeah, I'd be happy to. I mean, I think what we've seen, right, we've we've been traveling the world really talking to people about how they're using their Bitcoin and what are the challenges that they're facing. In the US, the median age of home ownership now is over 40. And that is a consistent trend globally. So the challenge of getting into an asset that you can build your wealth is a challenge, right? It's a struggle. And people are need better options. And I believe passionately that Bitcoin is that option to sort of really democratize wealth building, open up strategies that will allow people to do that uh and unlock that. And that was a lot of the conversation on the panel earlier today. >> Yeah. Yeah, and I think the question at hand is as Bitcoin becomes this opportunity for people, more people understand the value proposition of this new monetary system. Um, does that come at a cost to other assets? Sean, I'd welcome your thoughts on that. How do you think about Bitcoin intersecting with, you know, the existing collateral stack that we have at hand? >> Bitcoin is superior. I think that's proving out for collateral for sure, for savings, sure, probably at some point for money and other means of settlement. and it's going to continue to eat everything alive until it goes to zero in most cases. Um, and that logarithmic growth has continued as you would expect over the last 15 years now pretty predictably. So I assume that the new move here where you know the the standard has changed for what credit is digital credit being built off of a real asset base versus debt is a theme that clearly has time has come and as that scales out that's going to take all that extra capital that's coming in that would normally go into assets like bonds and other forms like that and it's going to push it into Bitcoin u which further supports it and and as Hunter mentioned it's just more divisible and easy to understand Bitcoin as a a starting point versus buying a home on a 30-year 50-year mortgage. So, I just think that trend is kind of going to continue to play out pretty strong and we'll see if it gains more momentum. It feels like there's quite a bit right now. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, I think uh the what comes to mind for me is, you know, you say everything is going to zero against Bitcoin, but between where we are today, a non-zero value in there, how does that transition happen? Is there a fusion of Bitcoin and other financial products? So I think I think we're seeing that come together and it's really going to bring we believe rates down. So we're one of the things that as people understand how Bitcoin back loans are collateralized and the fact that it's pristine collateral it can be liquidated quickly because of the market demand and the value more capital is coming in uh to be able to support that ecosystem. We're seeing rates come down because of that innovation on the product side. Uh, and in many respects, one of the things we talked about on the panel earlier is the goal of having Bitcoin back loans really start to look more like home mortgages where the volatility of the asset, if you have a long enough term commitment, time cures some of that and that really helps both the borrower and the participants that are back given the financial backing. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think on the borrower side, it's going to be very interesting interesting to see do we see kind of what we saw in home ownership over the last say 50 years or so that long-term bull market where uh leverage led to uh really the rise of this homeowner class. Um you know I could see something similar happening with Bitcoin. Um but I want to leave us our audience with one more thing. I know Hunter you've talked about how passionate you are about Bitcoin education. Uh, I know we've been in conversations about trying to drive that message out to the world uh through Bitcoin Magazine TV, which we just announced here at the conference, but would love if you could speak a little bit more to that. Yeah, we're really excited to announce that we are partnering with BTC Inc. and the BTC media team to be the liquidity sponsor on BMTV. Uh BTC Inc. has been a great partner. We've enjoyed traveling globally to help sort of educate around Bitcoin. I think some of the changes that Sean mentioned and we've talked about, there's a big uh need for educational information around financial literacy, how to think about using Bitcoin to build wealth, and we're going to be excited to partner with you on that journey. Thank you. Yeah, we sincerely appreciate that. And for the folks at home, we're about to go back to the Nakamoto stage where we have Amy Oldenberg from Morgan Stanley taking the stage right after this. Good afternoon everyone. Amy, thank you for being here. Uh, we're talking about a lot of news that's come out of Morgan Stanley over the the last 90 days really since you took this new role. But first, I really want to start with your background. You spent most of your career in emerging markets um where the focus is really pricing, regulatory risk, information asmmetry and infrastructural gaps. How has that informed your time uh taking over digital asset strategy at Morgan Stanley? What's been helpful or harmful with that lens? >> Tyler, good to see you and uh nice to be here today. I think one of the interesting things since taking this role uh just 4 months ago is um some folks will come up to me and say um let me tell you everything you need to know about digital assets as if I've never um spent any time in the space. And to your point being associated with emerging markets um you know that they were some of the first users of of Bitcoin uh across the world. I think even as we see crypto adoption now 17 of of the top 20 countries in terms of crypto adoption is coming from that developing world for many reasons. Um so this has been a very um longtime interest of mine to see different financial models uh underpin the financial system across the world. >> And in those first four months uh and even more recently your team launched MSBT the first uh first Bitcoinbacked ETP from a US chartered bank. Do I have that right? Uh f that's right. So first uh first GA sub bank to launch or bank-owned asset manager to launch uh uh Bitcoin ETP and um it we have to start with Bitcoin. I mean that we have a a path forward but I mean Bitcoin is 1.5 trillion. It's different. I think one of the things to also maybe highlight, I do think there still needs to be much more research on why Bitcoin is different than many of the other cryptocurrencies. I think as we've seen many of these ETFs come to market, they're just all clubbed together uh as crypto ETFs, but I think there is distinction in terms of what the underlying asset is. And I think we have to bring some of that fundamental research back as to what you're taking exposure to. Let's give it up for give it up for that. I I want to I want to dig a little deeper there in terms of uh the the work that Morgan Stanley did and and you know h how is that work being done externally, internally um to to drive those decisions and how do you see that specifically spilling over to the asset management side of your business? So it it's been many years that we've been involved in the broader digital asset space watching these different uh models evolve over time and I think the regulatory environment made it more difficult for uh the the traditional banks to get involved. I think that's one of the things we've seen and one of the reasons we've been able to make more progress even in the last year uh is because the regulatory environment has been more supportive for us doing that. So, it's been something we've been working on for years. It's not like we didn't care. Um, I know there's been some discussion that there's been very negative comments around Bitcoin or it's what it was used for. Um, but I think that's an education issue. I still think there's a lot of education that needs to be done uh around the real use cases going forward and uh well in the past and going forward to understand why people are using bitcoin um or other digital assets to transact uh but that's something that we can continue to uh to to build into now so we start with bitcoin uh we have road map a road map across the board one other point to make is we are rolling out spot crypto trading So, I know there's a lot of people in this room and beyond this room that don't believe in the structure of ETPs, and I understand that for some clients, there's a lot of usefulness around that structure. At Morgan Stanley, we design products for different client needs. And so, if an ETP is something that fits your portfolio, that's what we'll we're able to offer you. If it's spot crypto, that's something that we'll be able to do in the future. I think one of the things we were talking about uh before we came on stage today is is there a future where some of the banks uh or wealth management platforms will be able to offer services to self-custody wallets or non-custodial wallets. So, you know, that's um I think that's a future that will continue to be explored and and and there's new models that uh have yet to be discovered that we'll continue to stay on top of. Well, in terms of offering access to spot Bitcoin trading in the future and even to have a bank like Morgan Stanley really interfacing with the underlying digital asset, what has that infrastructural process looked like uh in terms of all all the decisions the the risk frameworks? How how are your team approaching that and and getting comfortable with that with interfacing directly on Bitcoin rather than just through the securities market? So the the the the infrastructure buildout is not easy. I mean it's not like we can go and and you you would think we can go and pick from you know 20 different providers. Uh but it's not it's not that easy to do that especially when in many cases if it's the service of an ETP we're buying underlying Bitcoin but we also have to operate the traditional infrastructure of that ETP or the ETF infrastructure and everyone's a specialist right you're either like a cryptocustodian and you specialize in in custodying in crypto or you're an ETF tech stack and that's one of the things that we've been most challenged with is that multidisciplinary uh understanding that we have to continue to uh deliver on again and again as we roll out some of these products >> and in the last couple months uh Morgan Stanley's also filed for an OC uh charter. How does that fit into this infrastructure buildout you're describing and and what would that enable the bank to be able to do in the future for its clients? >> So we have three main divisions within uh Morgan Stanley. We have our institutional securities business. We have our wealth division and we have our asset management division. Uh to be clear, the the Bitcoin ETP was launched out of our asset management business. But one of our big initiatives on the wealth platform is spot crypto trading. And uh as we continue to build that out uh that OCC digital trust will allow us to offer services around some of that spot uh spot crypto trading going forward. >> And and in terms of being able offer these services, you know, uh and in particular for the ETP products, the custodian choice um being kind of what underpins the the security and the and the risk of the Bitcoin held inside those products. you mentioned that um uh it was a a lengthy decision to narrow down that list of of custodians uh and that you're taking a multic-custodian uh viewpoint on the landscape. Can you talk a little bit about that risk framework and that decision process for a bank like Morgan Stanley? We actually found it interesting as we went down the path to explore the the custody different custody models that ETP providers used across the board and we found that there was really no standardization whatsoever. Um we felt strongly about trying to deliver a product that was also backed by another G SIB. So this is not only is it the first GIB issued ETP, but we're also using a GIB as an underlying custodian. So So it's in the filings. We've been uh we've been public about it, but Coinbase and Bank of New York are our custodians for that product. >> So, we we've talked a lot about the infrastructure and and how we got here. MSPT launched with a bang, pulling in over a hundred million in its first 6 days of trading. I would love to hear what the feedback has been from advisers, from the institutional investors that you're interfacing with. what what's been the reaction to the product and and what are the questions that allocators still have about Bitcoin? >> Yeah, I think this is something to clarify because I think there's a view and I've seen a number of headlines about it that we launched this product specifically just to push our our our financial adviserss to distribute um you know our wealth management platform is an open architecture platform. Those products are due diligence the same way every any other ETP in the market is is due diligence. So we compete as a manufacturer in the same way any other asset manager on the street. Uh but interestingly enough that those first days of trading all of that is self-directed. All of that uh was was it was not even uh available in advisory on the wealth platform. So I think that's like very interesting to see although it does fall in line with a trend we see across all the e the ETP exposure on the wealth platform which is 80% of that is self-directed. So the advisors are still very limited in their exposure to allocating to bitcoin at this point even though the one thing to mention is we have made recommendations on allocation too. I know we were talking about allocation to bitcoin. We've announced allocations uh allocation recommendations to Bitcoin uh of 2 to 4%. And it's still been slow. So I think that still points to significant education that needs to be done really understanding uh the fundamentals kind of going back to my earlier point on on why you want to take exposure to this asset >> and and outside of just uh Bitcoin and and the Bitcoin ETPs, you know, Morgan Stanley through through its asset management business is some of the largest uh holders of uh strategy securities um strategy common stock and um increasingly in the preferred perpetual securities. What what does this market look like and what what has the the bank I guess learned uh about the digital credit digital treasury company model >> uh strategy are good friends of Morgan Stanley uh it we've been on a journey with them uh even actually prior to them investing in Bitcoin. So we've seen the entire evolution of the company uh first buying Bitcoin and the balance sheet and um for so many reasons that drove some of our allocation to that in our funds early on but then even now with stretch uh it's still been less than 12 months in the market. So uh again something that's uh designed for wealth clients. I think even Fong said lots of that uh most of the exposures coming in through re retail but I think as o over time we'll continue to see this topic of credit will continue to develop over time. Do you think it's just time or are there specific things that let's say credit investors or institutional allocators are really looking to see in these products um to to open that up and and to flip that ownership dynamic to be majority institutional. >> So we were talking earlier that a credit rating would be helpful right some way. Unfortunately, for better or worse, uh the traditional finance world likes to put thing in put things in a box and it needs to look like something they're familiar with to to gain comfort with it. And if it doesn't and they don't know what box to put it in, there is a hesitation there that will always be challenged. It's something that's manageable, you can educate around it, but you're pushing a boulder up a hill. So the question is, can we make can can we find a framework going forward to allow the investors to feel more comfortable or make it look a little bit more like what they're used to as they think about credit products. >> So So credit rating and and product history, what what else do you think the market's really looking for or or has strategy already cracked the code on it? I hate to go back to like educate on Bitcoin, but you really have to. I mean, it's you can you can you can present it as a you know 11% yield or double digit yield, which is is really interesting. Um but the underlying asset is still Bitcoin and I think there's still a lot of work to be done there. I mean, there's so much lowhanging fruit with just like spot allocation or like uh uh you know, not even a credit allocation or derivative allocation and um yeah, just so much more work to do and and the credit products are just an extension and and they get a little bit more complex than even the underlying asset. >> On that on that educational topic, which you've hit on a number of times, how's the bank approaching that? Um and and what is your team at Morgan Stanley doing to push Bitcoin education? >> So everything that we can possibly do on our wealth platform, we launched an entire uh financial advisor education effort. We continue to roll out different resources on the internal side because even our employees need to be educated to support the business going forward. There's new there's new uh governance dynamics, technology dynamics that all need to be supported. So we need to do that. Uh and then with clients I we spend hour after hour after hour on the on the phone talking to them about this space overall and and how to think about it in their portfolio and and there's still probably more we can do. I think one thing I would like to see from the market is deeper uh research just on the underlying and some of the dynamics. I know over time and I know if you're deep in the the Bitcoin community, we all have our personalities that we follow uh that write that research, but we need to bring that into the mainstream a little bit more and make sure that the advisers are getting access to that and the end clients getting access to that. >> Well, zooming out a little bit today to the the title of our panel um around the future of capital allocation is Bitcoin. you know, from a 30,000 foot view, where are we in that journey? And and what do you think the next couple years looks like? >> I still think we're so early in that journey. There is so little allocation in so many portfolios. Uh we were talking last night about the Bitcoin for corporations. I know that's been a theme uh in a couple of the conversations here. Uh it's still very early. I I had said on a panel earlier this year or a discussion earlier this year, it's one thing I think that we we missed with the uh all the digital asset treasury companies. We started with uh Bitcoin on the balance sheet for corporations broadly and somehow the topic of digital asset treasury companies just totally consumed that topic and ran away with the narrative. And there's still work that has to be done on really thinking about Bitcoin on the balance sheet for for a broad set and and not dominating the whole company, but just having a maybe even just a single percentage of exposure on that balance sheet and what does that look like and what does it do to that balance sheet? if if uh not to put you on the spot, but since we're taking a long-term view here, what do you think it's going to take uh in terms of uh decades infrastructure regulatory before we see a bank like Morgan Stanley or a regulated financial institution be able to take that leap and put Bitcoin on the balance Bitcoin on the balance sheet? uh you know I think if we continue to see the progress that we've made over the last uh uh 16 months or so in regulatory uh that that's something that you you may see going forward. It's not totally out of the question but I think you need to see I think the other thing too is we we were talking about SAB 121 rolling back on on the uh capital treatment but it's not just that that holds us back. It's Fed guidance. It's Basel guidance. Uh when when you're a large GA sub bank, it's not just one agency that you report to. Uh you have many uh oversight groups that that you have to attend to. So we need a little bit more alignment across the board with some of those agencies. We're also global. So uh it's one thing to focus on the US, but every jurisdiction has its own rules and regs around this space. and and we're still getting comfortable with that globally. >> Well, thank you very much, Amy. This has been great. >> Thank you. >> No one dared to tread here, here, or here. >> Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk presented by Mara. I'm Sean Hagen, joined by Nolan Bowley and Austin Alexander. We're about to unpack what we just heard on the Nakamoto stage with Tyler Evans of UTXO and Amy Oldenberg of Morgan Stanley discussing exchangeraded Bitcoin products. Gentlemen, can you help us unpack this? >> Yeah, I'll I'll launch right in. As someone who's been involved in the education space for quite a while in this industry, listening to someone representing a bank like Morgan Stanley talking about deploying resources like that to education, it it's just like incredible reinforcements in a in a world war of education to get people to understand Bitcoin. So, watching them come, I mean, you've been in the exchange space for a long time as well, Austin. It sounds like the kind of meetings we had 10 years ago and now taking place in the boardrooms of some of the biggest banks in the world. >> Yeah, it's really something. It's more than ETP there. She discussed that they're launching spot trading here in uh I guess maybe they already have. So we have Schwab, Fidelity, and now Morgan Stanley all doing Bitcoin spot trading. It's obviously not going to be the last bank or major financial institution to probably get into that market and so it's really going to change the industry the way it looks. I assume it's going to compress the margins for the Bitcoin native exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase and uh it's a sign of what's to come where maybe the entire financial system is just uh kind of merges with the Bitcoin alternative financial system and maybe that's what we see decades from now. What I find interesting about that fault line too is that for so long people who are native to Bitcoin imagined that we were going to be on this cutting edge. Uh but what you're seeing now is these banks now move towards the actual Bitcoin native industry. It wasn't expected from Wall Street. It kind of you know was imagined that we would go to them and change instead of them coming to us. So that seems kind of interesting to see that that it's our side of the industry that is modeling the path forward and they're following in our footsteps versus them trailblazing something totally new. So that that's also something that I thought was pretty interesting that stuck out from there. >> And it was interesting to hear also that 80% of allocation of these ETPs is self-directed, right? And Amy said that she thinks, you know, education might be what is the requirement to get in that. She says that, you know, credit ratings might be helpful, for example. What else do you think is needed? >> I don't know. It's interesting. A credit rating on Bitcoin. What would the bank give a credit rating to Bitcoin on? Um um it'd be interesting to know what else is needed. Uh I think, you know, you have a huge kind of backlog of population that probably is like familiar on the periphery with Bitcoin, but has huge misconceptions. I'm sure we've heard it all the over and over again. you know, it's it's 10% down and then people like to take victory laps because they have that guilt of having heard about Bitcoin 10 years ago and never touching it and now they have a resentment built up. And so I think there's a lot of that amongst the kind of Bitcoin aware, you know, the people that are on the margin, they're they're slightly savvy, but they've never held any Bitcoin. And if they already have a Morgan Stanley account or Schwabown or Fidelity account, it really lowers that barrier to entry. and then they can press the button, buy some Bitcoin, and they don't have to let guys like Nolan know about it so that they can, you know, they don't have to admit that that Nolan was right all those years ago. >> Well, what what I can also see from it though is just modeling behavior. The the the industry lingo is to eat your own dog food. And she mentioned it at the end when she talked about the likelihood of the bank adopting Bitcoin on their own balance sheet. So modeling that kind of thing, I think, would be the most persuasive thing for them to do their clients. If they're going to go out and sell Bitcoin, the bank itself buying Bitcoin to put on their balance sheet would probably be the most persuasive thing for their clients and for the corporate model. So the last piece when she was talking about the bank itself having Bitcoin on the balance sheet, that would be one of the novel things that a bank could really bring to this industry as far as credibility. So you'd love to see them model that kind of behavior. And to continue this conversation, we're going to cut away to the Nakamoto stage where we're hear from Fong Lee and Adam Back, creating Bitcoin's technical and financial infrastructure for maximum adoption. >> All right, I get to share the stage with Fong and Satoshi. Fong, I'd love to start with you. Stretch has allowed you to buy 10 times more Bitcoin than every ETF combined this year and 80% of holders are retail. What is happening with Stretch? It is so fetch. >> You know, it's it's uh I'll start with there's only one individual entity with more Bitcoin and strategy at this point in time and it's Nakamoto. Uh, and so if you're going to be second to anybody, we are second best to Satoshi Nakamoto. Um, Stretch is amazing. It addresses a $300 trillion uh, credit market and it appeals to everybody uh, from retail individuals who own 80% of Stretch to corporations and institutions who own the other 20%. And when you create a product that literally everybody can be benefited by, it grows like wildfire, faster than we had hoped for, faster than we expected. And if Bitcoin invented by Satoshi Nakamoto was potentially the most important capital product ever invented in the history of the world. I like to think that stretch invented by Michael Sailor and strategy is the most important potentially credit product in the history of the world. >> It's a completely new asset class. Um Adam, you are stepping into the capital markets with BSTR and then with Blockstream, you're building a full stack for Bitcoin finance from self-custody to institutional grade products. How is that shaping the next phase of Bitcoin adoption? Um so last year I was on stage at this this event uh with some announcements about blockstream building enterprise wallets for small businesses and then also entering the technology that custodians use for cold storage at the custody level. So whether that's a company self custodying their bitcoin or uh professional custodians licensed custodians doing the same thing they need technology to do that. So we're then in the market to provide that technology. >> Fong strategy, as you mentioned, is quickly approaching a million Bitcoin, which is pretty crazy. I think you're going to hit that in the next couple of months. What does it feel like to be running this company? And what are the challenges that come with a product that has grown so quickly? You know, seldom in your life are you able to contribute to a product that by the time we're sitting here a year from now will hopefully be acknowledged as one of the most important and fastest growing products in the history of the world. So that in of itself is awesome and amazing and then realizing that it's a product that does good, right? like, you know, it's not uh high fructose corn syrup, it's not uh soda, it's not, you know, it's not cigarettes. It's something that actually helps individuals. Uh I think that's all fantastic and and great, but more importantly, right, like and and those who buy Stretch realize the uh advantages of it in terms of a place to put your short-term money, I'll call it. Uh but the other piece is Stretch has actually opened up other channels for people to get into Bitcoin, right? And so someone who wouldn't necessarily buy Bitcoin because of its volatility or just because it's still somewhat difficult to on-ramp into can on-ramp into Stretch. So I think the contribution of Stretch to the Bitcoin community is great. I think the other thing we're starting to see happen is a bunch of layer 2 products being built on top of Stretch, right? Think of stretch as now not just a digital credit product but it's a digital credit platform right people are building products on top of this digital credit platform and not only Bitcoin products but decentralized finance products right and tokenized products and so it's also now just now bringing people together to Bitcoin but I think it's starting to bring DeFi and Bitcoin together which I think is pretty exciting so stretch is this sort of cool uh product that is doing so many good things uh for the community, for individuals, for wealth generators, and for uh Bitcoin and uh digital assets. >> You brought up tokenization. I'd love to hear from both of you about that because we sort of hear that catch word now, but a lot of people still feel like they don't understand what it is. Is it built on Bitcoin? Can you talk about that for both of you? Yeah. So, Blockstream is um Bitcoin infrastructure company started in 2014 and we are active in at least two Bitcoin layer 2s. Obviously, Lightning, we have uh core lightning which is one of the main implementations but also liquid which is a side chain and a side chain is able to add new features that Bitcoin doesn't have. So it has confidential transactions and it has native support for assets and the assets can be stable coins and there are a number of stable coins on there. There's about 5 billion of value on the network and included in those securitiz tokenized um products is a Luxembourg securitization vehicle with a number of treasury companies in them. So there's been one for Micro Strategy shares held by an underlying custodian bank uh for a couple of years. The advantage is 24x7 trading priced in Bitcoin. So that's interesting way to trade micro strategy and more recently uh Meta Planet Capital B and H100. The last two being two European treasury companies. I think the other thing that tokenization does other than provide 24 by7 trading is it can then more easily be used as collateral in a in a Bitcoin exchange uh it can lend itself to having leverage applied so that could bring more liquidity to the midsize treasury companies and make it easier to access them because even though there's no regulatory barrier typically for you know somebody in one country to buy European share it can be quite hard to get to these small cap markets because the brokers haven't uh optimized for that and so it kind of provides more universal access and then I think the real value unlock is tokenizing currently unlisted instruments. So some of the European treasury companies have bitcoin bases convertible notes and euro convertible nodes which are private contracts. So there's nothing precluding you from selling them but there's no mechanism to find a price to find a buyer and so on. So by tokenizing them and having these kind of um non-custodial exchange mechanisms, you can have a price formation and get, you know, be able to trade them or to use them as collateral where currently they're kind of dead collateral when they're out of the money. >> Yeah. You know, the other one way I'd think about it is tokenization is the digitization of the securities market. So if you think about phone lines, they used to be copper, right? And the digitization was fiber, right? If you think about what Bitcoin did, it took an asset, a capital asset like gold and it created a digital version of it. Now, if you think about how do you trade stocks today and equity securities, right? Regulated by the SEC in the US, it is an analog process. And how do we digitize that? An analog process to Adam's point runs every day 9:30 to 4. A digitized process runs 24/7. An analog process means you need to go to through a broker dealer before you can buy and sell his security. A digitized process means that I could tap Adam's phone and buy one share of stretch from him at the market prevailing price instantaneously. And now that share a stretch sits on my phone, right, with a blockchain also providing the transparency. Uh so it's it makes a lot of sense that Bitcoin and DeFi in general are the backbone of tokenized securities and the fact that you can go to a Starbucks, tap your phone, and there's a lot of analog processes behind it, buy a coffee for what is it now 10 bucks or something a lot, right? Like why can't you do that with a stock peer-to-peer? And and I think that's what tokenization does. And that's why it's pretty exciting is you're all sitting here looking for the digital transformation of capital, of equity, of the credit market. Now talk about the digital transformation of the securities market. And it's a huge innovation that we're looking at happening sort of uh right now outside the US off of sort of uh the current regulated rails. And I think in the next two years you'll see it come to the US and the world on regulated rails. So it's very exciting. >> Adam, you're one of the original cipher punks. Why did you decide to move into the institutional side of Bitcoin and what do you say to the skeptics of the institutionalization of this asset? >> Yeah, I get that question. So, of course, Bitcoin is um both a bearer asset that is hard to seize, hard to freeze, and that is empowering for the individual. And so, it's important that that remains the case. But, of course, I think it's a sign of success that Bitcoin, the asset class, is adopted over time by private companies, public companies, pension funds, sovereigns, and we've seen all of that happen at this point. and and there's much, you know, much further to for that to grow. And so, you know, the cipher punks were interested in um, you know, bearer electronic cash with privacy in that kind of area, but they were also free market advocates, anarcho capitalists. And so they very much believed in capital formation you know public markets and the role that that plays in uh the wealth generation in the world and the development of products. So I think you know people are kind of sort of surprised or many people are not traders don't never invested in an IPO or in a public stock where for myself I was an active trader you know before Bitcoin in the early '9s. So for me, you know, the fact that Bitcoin is being included in portfolios is useful because, you know, the ETFs and public treasury companies, the the phenomena that Michael Sailor started are easier. It's a form of access for some people. So think about it as accessibility. And then many people in the world don't do self-directed investment. And so the main way that they're going to get exposure to Bitcoin is via these model portfolio recommendations. and managed funds inside annuities and pension funds and things like that. So I think that when people talk about um institutional adoption, I think a lot of that is still in the future because you have the model portfolios but not that much of that capital has landed yet and those are enormous pools of capital and the reason it hasn't landed is those entities are very procedural and it takes them a while to get things deployed. You know, I'll just add one thing and sometimes the cyber funks or Adam people think about the cryptographic skills and the software engineering skills, but the capital markets and the understanding of finance it comes handinand uh and I had the pleasure of meeting Adam I think it was in 2021 at a dinner in New York and and even at that point in time I learned a lot about Bitcoin and capital markets from Adam and I mentioned that because it's this intersection of these two things right Michael Sailor uh you know started as an engineer who ran a public company right I started as a computer programmer who was the CFO of a public company right you find that intersection and you find these individuals who are able to bring those two things together uh and it's wondrous in terms of its capability that's what Bitcoin was and that's what Satoshi Nakamoto was so uh you have here a a very gifted mind that understands the capital markets very well. Uh and and and that's why we're able to build what we're able to build. >> You know what I think is really interesting? Over the last few decades, there seems to have been this demonization of corporations, especially the really massive ones, because in the fiat system, it sometimes feels like they're getting larger and larger, not by actual value or merit, but just because of sort of the money printer machine and, you know, the the liquidity just flowing to the biggest companies. And Bitcoin sort of imposes consequences and and responsibilities and new rules. Can you talk a little bit about how it's shifting just corporate management and um and and the way that companies should be structured which is to provide value and service to us right >> yeah I mean I think it's natural that corporations would adopt Bitcoin and so I was you know quite interested when Michael Sailor started the treasury company phenomena and it was actually a relatively early shareholder cuz I thought that one way to support the initiative was if a lot Bitcoin has bought a little bit of his shares, then because the company is much smaller than Bitcoin, they could start to own a meaningful proportion of the shares collectively and support the mission basically. And um I think ultimately in in this kind of Bitcoinized future that Bitcoin is the hurdle rate which for people who know about finance means that you you know if you can't exceed this kind of baseline then you're not really creating a positive return. And so that means in a Bitcoin mindset, the portfolios are all denominated in Bitcoin. And you're looking for Bitcoin plus some return on top of Bitcoin. And so a treasury company, it's its central objective is to increase Bitcoin per share. And so that has a Bitcoin plus obviously with, you know, there's no risk. There's no reward without risk. So some volatility around that. But I think it's natural that that's the case. And of course, you know, the the public companies in the ETFs are ultimately fiduciaries for other people's money, right? So when treasury companies grow via ATMs and other instruments, they're adding shareholders. So it's not, you know, people will say Black Rockck bought Bitcoin, but not really. you know the the individuals that bought ETF shares and the fund managers that allocate to Bitcoin via the ETF or via micro strategy like the Swiss National Bank has. They are you know increasing the capital under management but the ownership is is a lot of people underneath. Ultimately, Bitcoin is technology. And if you look at the last h 100red years, you go back to the 1920s and 30s, 40s, the largest companies in America were tech or were technology companies, oil companies, electric companies, car companies. They were building great technology. And we went somewhere arai where you go back to the 1980s and the 1990s and the biggest company companies in America were services companies, financial services companies, healthc care services companies, insurance companies. And now what's amazing is post 2000 we're back to the world where the biggest companies in the world are technology companies. The Mag 7, maybe at some point the Mag 10. And so we're back to we've normalized this world where those who are rewarded, the biggest companies in the world are the inventors, the creators, the technologists. And that's what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is a neutral technology that is winning because it is the best product, not anything else. And of course, as the best product with the highest return, it would make sense that a public company would amass the best products. Yeah, I mean I think with the uh Mac 7 perhaps we'll see the Bitcoin 21 like the global 21 most successful uh Bitcoin companies over time because Bitcoin is such a huge advantage for a public company to preserve its assets and then you know run a business on top of that. So to you know restructure the way a business thinks in a bitcoin denominated way developing products and services. Could we ever see the big banks move into this space and compete with some of the products that are coming out in the Bitcoin securities market, including digital credit? >> I hope so. Right? You just saw Amy from Morgan Stanley on stage before this. We know City Bank is creating products. We know other big banks are starting to create products, right? They they will. And just like anything else, you know, let's take e-commerce as an example, right? Amazon was really the first and biggest or one of the first and the biggest and every other company even Walmart had to capitulate and create similar capabilities. Will Walmart ever be the e-commerce engine that Amazon is? Well, Amazon just passed Walmart in terms of total revenue as the biggest revenue company in the world. But, you know, so if we have a Bitcoin 21 and we're number one with, you can imagine a million, 2 million Bitcoin or whatever it is, could I see Morgan Stanley on that list? I'd love to see him on that list. I'd love to see the big banks on that list, too. >> Well, we're running out of time. I have to ask, Adam, the New York Times spent 12,000 words trying to prove that you're Satoshi. We'll set aside whether that's true. I know it's not. Um but what does the story tell us about where we are in Bitcoin in 2026? >> Well, I think in we are in a very good place in terms of regulatory clarity in institutional adoption, you know, finally starting to happen. Um in the pace of innovation in the technology, lots of new innovation at at the level layer one. Um lots of work going on in the background to preemptively address potential future quantum risks. Um and you know lots of product development to make ease of use and a very interesting financialization instruments which you know stretch is a key part of and I think that is ultimately you know forming part of a huge arbitrage between the fiat current and the bit hyper bitcoinized future. All right, one last question to each of you. Fong, what's next? You have five preferred. Stretch is obviously the darling. What can we expect? >> You know, we've said and and and Michael said stretch is the iPhone moment. Um, after the iPhone were the AirPods, which were products built on top of the iPhone platform. I think you'll see layer 2 products created by hundreds of companies around the world on top of Stretch and they will be as successful as Stretch and make Stretch even better. Uh, I was talking to Adam behind the stage. I don't think we're going to create a VR headset version of Stretch. I think we'll let the iPhone persist and succeed and grow and take over the world. >> And Adam, what is one principle from the cipher punk ethos that has to survive Bitcoin's institutionalization? >> Well, I think it's key that people manage their own keys, like do their own storage and retain the option to do that and run their own nodes. So they're proactively forming part of the Bitcoin bearer and keep keep the network honest. Keep it secure. That's uh it's decentralized and it it benefits from staying that way. Not your keys, not your coins and fix the money, fix the capital markets. Everyone give it up for Adam Back and Fong Lee. Thank you so much for joining us. This is the greatest financial mystery. >> Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk. We just heard from Fong Lee and Adam back on a variety of topics. We're still with uh Austin Alexander and Nolan Bowerly. What happens when Micro Strategy owns all the Bitcoin? >> I guess that we have no more OG exit liquidity after that. Uh yeah. So he's saying he wants to own one to two million Bitcoin. I mean there's clearly a point where they own too much Bitcoin and every you can imagine just as a thought experiment they owned every Bitcoin or all but one and the rest of us here and everyone else on Earth was all uh fighting over the last Bitcoin. Well, I don't think the network would have much value because, you know, everyone would be like, uh, well, everything we're doing, all this value is just, you know, basically just we're just subsidizing the the richest guy on earth. There's some point in which each additional Bitcoin that Strategy buys makes the network less valuable. It's just too too heavy in terms of the ownership. >> But we're we're not there yet, obviously. And >> we might be a ways away from >> Yeah. and and even listening to Adam Bach's last words about self-custody and preserving the cipher punk ethos that inherently changes the game theory around how much uh micro strategy or strategy can actually accumulate in the end and you know we even heard earlier something like 80% of the stretch buyers are retail there still is this retail aspect that's leading edge in the industry you know we benefited from years of front running the institutions on this front running Michael Sailor. A lot of us understood and grocked all this long before Michael Sailor did. So there still is a tremendous advantage and no matter how aggressive they are acquiring Bitcoin, there still is that game theory of the cipher punk ethos and the ability to self custody and just wait Michael Sailor out. I know the absolute total psychopaths that are in Bitcoin. They're not selling no matter what. No matter how many Bitcoin Michael Sailor gets. So I continue to be bullish on >> they're not selling but we need somebody else buying because if you look like strategy is basically not a net buyer the last year or whatever it's the net buyer you know the price is down but they're continuing to acrewue so I mean they are they are the buyer of Bitcoin at the moment you know they're funneling all that energy >> else was buying it and it'd be nice if someone else besides just only Black Rockck and Morgan Stanley were buying it because if we get to this uh to a uh situation where the entire network is 70% owned by Morgan Stanley Black Rockck strategy and like a a long tale of uh of uh you know PE of institutions that just sit on it and uh we end up with a situation where you know they're like basically the proxy voters like most stocks now have where where the shareholders don't actually vote and it's just like a network where everybody is just uh um one or two steps removed from actual like network participation. >> Well, that's that's all the time we have. Unfortunately, we're going to check in on a panel discussing Bitcoin as the architecture of time, which is already underway at the Nakamoto stage. >> They've got time. >> Yeah, >> that sounds heavy. >> Doesn't necessarily mean that's what's going on at the basis of reality and causal order. And so we look at Bitcoin is when you look at its structure, how it produces blocks, all of the mechanics of it have a discrete nature. And so we've just been pulling the the layers back to see it and define it for what it is. And so it's reordering our our sense and understanding of is the nature of time something more than the assumption that we initially started with. >> Yeah. So the physics under the for quantum continuous time is the assumption here and we're saying that everyone talks about the double slit experiment as like the justification for the quantum threat and we're saying Bitcoin is the double spend experiment because it's it's operating at the fundamental basis of energy logic and time and so it's computing blocks of time. That's what's actually being computed here. And when you really strip back the logic here, we're saying without the block of time, you don't have a solve a double spend problem. You can't solve the double spend problem. And what we realize is that the double spend problem is the exact same problem of the double slit experiment, but from the opposite boundary of time. And what what do I really mean by that is is you can't we're talking about how information collapses into a singular uh you know a singular binary state. So the measurement problem in physics is is the ultimate problem that nobody can solve. And it's because they're trying to understand how quantum or contradictory superimposed information collapses into classical binary information. And when you look at Bitcoin, you see a superposed state in the meool and then you have a measurement process of proof of work and then it collapses into a singular binary chain. And no and so without the block of time you have no solution. So basically that is a falsification of the axiom of continuous time. It's demonstrated right in front of us and without the block you do not have a solution to the problem and continuous time never provides the boundary at which measurement could ever occur. And so this is an assumption that has been carried through physics and Bitcoin is saying no this actually has to be answered for whether the the physicists know this or not or the you know team quantum the people who are saying there's a threat this actually has to be answered for because basically to uphold both quantum you can't you can't believe in both quantum and bitcoin anymore because of the double spend problem either you have to show how bitcoin will solve the double spend problem without blocks of time aka continuous time or you have to concede that that is the wrong assumption of time. I mean if we can maybe paint a picture in our minds um because it all gets really abstract really quick. I mean we're trying to basically say if you could step outside of time what would it look like? And so since we can't physically do that, we can look at okay computer systems is there any model that a computational system could basically be structured uh through and say does this give us a different picture of what is logically possible? Is there something that could exist as a computational system that could give you a symmetry of causal order that we kind of reference in physics? Could we step outside and look at time through this lens of could a physically bounded system that we observe as witnessing Bitcoin is a physically bounded system. We have this metaphor uh time is money. If we think about that a little bit deeper and reflect on it and just don't walk by it, we we should recognize as a civilization we are an extension of physics. We are an extension of the laws of thermodynamics. Money is an extension of us. I think it's time to take money into the physics domain and not treat it as separate knowledge bases. I think if we truly want to go deeper with our physics, we need to reassess what money is and what a precise form of it looks like because money is not separate from our physics. It extends from thermodynamics. We can't escape this. Yeah, just to add a little bit to that, uh, Nick, you know, all of our lives we all perceive the internal experience and so we see the onlogical experience of reality and Bitcoin is giving us the external experience. So the epistem epistemological experience and so what we're what we're seeing is in Bitcoin, we're actually looking at the process at which epistemology becomes ontology relative to the ledger itself. And so what does that really mean? We're just we're simply seeing that Bitcoin is a bounded totality. We can see the entire 21 million or the 2.1 quadrillion bits of value or Satoshi's. So we can see that whole system. We can see every single state of information from genesis to present. We have an external view of totality. And so we are standing outside of that process of time. And so we actually have a a an architecture that we can follow to understand our own ontology. We're we're saying it's the same thing. There's just a boundary here. And that's what physics is neglecting to uh to look at is that there there must be a boundary. The there is no solution to the double spend problem. There is no solution to the measurement problem without admitting there must be a quantized boundary. And so what is Bitcoin? It is in our opinion the proper interpretation of what a quantum computer is. and it's computing blocks of time and that is the quantum the quantum of causal change. There is no smaller unit of change than a block of time. And so when we begin when we map that onto our understanding of physics, especially at the plank scale, it begins to give us meaning at what all these mathematical boundaries are. So okay, we're there. Let's let's attack this from a different portion. Now you're on the other side of the uh this and you're you're you're you're a quantum researcher and you're trying to drive quantum and you believe that that the states can coexist at the same time right from linear time. What would you expect? So these subatomic states that coexist, like you said, the memool, there's a whole bunch of things that probabilities that could exist that then get collapsed by energy to one state that does exist and you can't unwind that, right? So now what would it look like from from your view in in quantum, right? What would that experiment look like for people measuring from linear time? And what would they what would that you what would you expect to see there? >> Um I mean we're seeing air in and air out and so because there's physics doesn't understand what measurement is. They don't actually understand uh the ontology of superp position itself. And so they don't understand that this is a pre-measured state. Well, they do understand it, but they don't understand its ontology. And so, you're looking at something akin to uh the the memp pool. And so, they're attempting to manipulate the mempool, like creating error and adding manipulation before the measurement occurs. And then you're getting exponential error on the other side of that. And that's because they don't understand the causal order of of measurement itself. And so, you're getting exponential errors, but then you're also being asked, trust us. We can't verify any of these things ourselves. We just have to simply trust that these outputs are true. And when you look into all the you know the quantum information uh you know regarding Bitcoin, they're pre-solving the answer and then putting it into the machine >> and and pre-solving in classical computers. >> Yeah. Presolving it in classical and giving it the specific output. And we're just saying this is all nonsense. It it just doesn't make any logical sense because they can't answer for what the boundary of time is. They don't have an architecture. And we're trying to we're trying to keep it at least constructive and saying Bitcoin is the answer. Like Bitcoin is is physics. Like everyone is looking for a theory of everything. Bitcoin isn't a theory. Bitcoin is a theory that is instantiated with energy such that it proves itself every 10 minutes. And when you really pick at the problems of of what's going on, you can't ever solve the problem of truth without it being a temporal process. We don't know if Bitcoin will ever contradict itself or double spend until the next block is mined. And only when that block is mined do we know no contradictions. So this is a temporal process that we have to understand as to how classical or binary information emerges as a process. I think as a wider audience since we really don't have a lot of time to go like in depth um I think with what he's saying that we've come to the conclusion that Bitcoin is our best reference point for understanding these types of questions and uh creating a new logical framework to think through and from uh but Bitcoin doesn't actually matter if it doesn't solve the double spend problem and so I think that narratives have evolved over time and more people are coming in and it's the idea of perfect money, but perfect money can't exist if the double spend problem isn't actually solved. And so I think it's it's important for us to think through what is the double spend problem because that's really what the white paper that launched all of this uh starts from and what it's actually solving for. We don't see it as purely a computer science problem. We think the nature of it is that the double spend problem is a concept that exists across all domains at all resolutions of scale. So we see the double spend problem as a physics problem and it should be contended with that way. But if it's only thought of in one dimension, it's only related to computers. Physicists are never going to pick it up and explore what is the double spend problem. So I think we want to be constructive in presenting that it's worth it to explore the double spend problem as a physics-based problem. >> So how sure are you each of you each of you? So the again will lots of people will trust the experts move to fear not do do work. You're coming across as new experts in a in something that you're saying you shouldn't be scared of this at all. So, how sure are you? >> As long as there's never a double spend in Bitcoin, 100%. >> As long as there's never a double spend, I'm completely confident. Gain confidence every single day that what we're talking about will make sense. >> Um, where can people find you in our last 10 seconds? >> Bitcoinens.net. Don't trust us. Verify yourself. Come help us, please. >> Thanks very much. >> Thank you. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk powered by Mara. I'm Tim Lamar. I'm joined here by Nifty, a legendary developer in the Bitcoin and Lightning space, and Phil Guyger, head of business development at Metaplanet. Thank you both so much for joining us. really excited to talk about what you have to talk about today, which is the Bitcoin Scholars Fund. Can you tell people what that is? >> Yeah, that's right, Teemo. Um, I'm Nipy. Uh, we just started um the Bitcoin Scholars Fund, which is a 501c3 nonprofit scholarship granting organization. Um, it's targeted at raising money or gathering funds to really drive Bitcoin education to the next level, targeting our secondary and primary school through this really great scholarship fund um, which just came out with the latest tax bill. >> Yeah, that's right. So, as part of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, starting in 2027, there's a really incredible tax credit where every single federal taxpayer can uh really divert up to $1,700 of their tax bill to a qualified scholarship granting organization, such as the Bitcoin Scholars Fund. What this means is that you'll be able to essentially fund K through2 Bitcoin education in 2027 at zero net cost to you. it's money that you'll owe to the federal government anyways and uh instead you can send it to a cause that maybe will resonate with you. Uh and yeah, I think the the tax bill is is is incredible and as soon as this was passed, my jaw just dropped. The team that that passed it uh incredible work there and uh I heard about it and we just needed to we needed to do something about it and Nifty was was like let's go let's set up this nonprofit organization. Um and so yeah, happy to support uh as a volunteer. >> Another example of you can just do things like this is beautiful. So can you talk a little bit more about what that education is actually going to look like for these for these recipients? >> Yeah, so the scholarship granting organization is targeted at students um that go to schools and the schools one of the things that we're going to look for is schools that have um a good understanding of how Bitcoin works. So we're we're kind of trying to kickstart or kind of give a carrot to traditional schools and organizations of learning um such that they themselves will upskill and learn how Bitcoin works and then they can bring that back to their students. Um so this is like a big fund that we're asking you know bitcoiners or anyone who is an American taxpayer um to take a portion of their taxes and direct it to this fund which we'll then use to kind of drive education um at the the school layer. So students at those schools will be able to get um scholarships to go to organizations that really understand how Bitcoin works. >> I love it. And yeah, >> did you have something to add? >> Yeah, that's right. And next year we're hoping to raise $21 million for K through2 Bitcoin education through Bitcoin Scholars Fund. Uh I just wanted to say if this if this sounds interesting to you, please scan that QR code that you see on your screen. We have a pledge drive going. Uh, last time I checked, Lisa was ahead in terms of number of referrals, but I'm pretty sure she's cheating. I can't confirm that, but I think she's cheating. So, use my referral link and sign up and pledge. >> Beautiful. Now, can you talk a little bit about with the last minute that we have here? >> What does success look like for this fund? >> Uh, yeah. So, I think for us, it's getting people to donate to take their tax credit or basically take tax money that they would be sending to Uncle Sam and send $1,700 of it to the nonprofit. It's a direct tax credit on their tax bill for next year. So, we're launching next year will be the first year that you can participate. Um, and uh, yeah, we're looking I think 12 21 million sounds like a lot of people, but I think Phil's done the math and it's only 12,000 people that we need to actually pledge to send some of their stats to the fund instead of the US government. >> 12,350, but who's counting? >> I think there are plenty of people here who hopefully can donate to this fund and make a difference. Uh we we are going to send things back to the Nakamoto stage. Thank you so much for joining us. Stay tuned for what's the price of freedom? Ask the $6 billion man with Jack Dorsey. We'll see you soon. >> Gravity of the situation. We are entering into a state of permanent war. Approaching a global surveillance society. It is not a choice. We must link together. We must invent new technological means to fight fire with our own form of fire. >> Hello everybody and hello Jack. Good to see you. >> Hello. >> So I am very happy to be here today. I am probably, I must confess, the least knowledgeable person about Bitcoin that has probably ever been on this stage because I am not a Bitcoin person to begin with. I'm a filmmaker and I made a film about Julian Assange. More importantly, I made a film about what the US government did to destroy Julian Assange. It's called the $6 billion man, Julian Assange and the price of truth. And though I don't know anything about Bitcoin, Mr. Dorsey does. And it also turned out that what I learned about Jack was that he had a shared passion for Julian Assange and the cause of freedom of information that Assange stands for. And what I didn't know at the time was that there was an amazing possible harmony between the cause we were fighting for, freedom of information, and the sovereignty of finance that everybody here believes so strongly in. And so what I did was make the movie as best I could and we did really well. We won the Khan Film Festival with it. We even won a Golden Globe. We were the first documentary ever to get a Golden Globe. And I thought, well, this is great. Now the whole world will see it. Thank you. It was very We were very proud. But what we didn't expect was that, and maybe we should have was that it didn't matter what we won. If our narrative didn't fit what the media gatekeepers believe is their narrative, we were going to face a media blackout. No streamer will touch the film and no mainstream media outlet will go near it. And so I was suddenly faced with a huge problem. And because I had heard that Jack was very sympathetic to the the cause of Wikileaks and Julian Assange, I turned to him as now and I said, "Jack, what do we do? How do we get it out to people?" What did you say? Well, first I was super surprised that um maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that no one wanted to carry the film and no one wanted to broadcast it any further than where you put it. And Eugene, how many people do you think have seen it in total thus far? >> Literally just a couple of festival audiences. The audience is at the Khan Film Festival, a handful, and then uh at the Golden Globes, that's a private jury. Um and so people in this room, people watching at home, much of what you're going to see today has never been seen by anybody, honestly. >> Yeah. So, so many people in the room and many many people watching the live stream um were here because Bitcoin represents a open protocol for money transmission. It represents uh routing around the gatekeepers uh specifically Visa, Mastercard, the banks, the global banks, the various reserves around the world. Um, and it's a community that I think like myself sees Julian and Wikileaks as heroes. Um, it goes back to the original internet principles of information wants to be free and open and he stood directly for that and he sacrificed so much for it. So I saw the film. I thought it was critical that more people saw the film and I thought there was natural resonance with the Bitcoin community um not in a way just to view it but also in a way to help distribute it as far and as wide as possible. So when Jack told that to me, it was a huge light bulb that went off because I didn't know what to do with the film and he gave me this idea. Well, bring it to the Bitcoin community because the Bitcoin community once upon a time came to the rescue of Wikileaks. Wikileaks accepted Bitcoin in 2011 when the US government blocked payments to Wikileaks through Mastercard, Visa, the banks, etc. and it saved Wikileaks, but as Jack taught me, it was also a kind of proof of concept of how Bitcoin could promote freedom, which it did in 2011 and allowed people around the world to receive the information that Wikileaks was sharing. But there I was with a movie. We can see Julian Assange in absentia. He cannot be in this country. He cannot be in this room right now. And because the movie was not going to get shown, Jack had suddenly given me a chance to bring everybody into a kind of a a movement, a movement to get this information to the public by getting a group of friends together to kind of help us. So that is what we're going to talk about today is this global watch party, which you'll hear a few times today. But um I really want to start by sharing a clip that I put together that was my best way of reflecting what I was learning from you, Jack, about the merging of Wikileaks and Bitcoin. So could we play that clip for a moment? >> Wikileaks ought to be charged with treason. That's what they've done. If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth. >> This was a big problem. These are anarchists that have the keys to your castle and you can't call a fucking locksmith. >> Shut it down. Shut it down. This terrorist website's Wikileaks. >> A financial blockade by Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal has destroyed our revenue. PayPal suspended Wikileaks account after the State Department sent a letter declaring the website illegal. >> The banking blockade to stop donations forced Wikileaks to find an alternate source of funding. So the site became one of the first major organizations to accept Bitcoin to keep fighting. >> Now the most interesting thing happening is Bitcoin, the ability to defend against the full might of a superpower. This is a David vers Goliath battle. So, you're going to see that QR code a few times in the things. Thank you a lot. Thank you guys. Thank you so very much. Um, you're going to see that QR code a few times today and it's really the way that you come join us for the idea that Jack gave me, which was a global watch party. It just sounded like the coolest thing that we could do a kind of private pay-per-view just to people in the Bitcoin community. And Jack, you also shared with me some stuff that really moved me because I saw how much it moved you about Satoshi and Julian. You talked about the privacy of Satoshi and what that meant to you in the the action he had taken in the world, he or she or the Phantom of Satoshi. Um, can you talk about that the meaning of the two of them to you and why this captivates you in the way it does? Well, I think the, you know, the Wikileaks using Bitcoin out of necessity was incredible because it found an immediate use case at a global scale for something that a lot in the community um care deeply about. But it also marked a transition point for Bitcoin and that Satoshi left the project. Um, one of his final messages on Bitcoin talk was around um, the advancements of Wikileak and Wikileaks using uh, using Bitcoin. And I guess it was just a little a little too close, a little too hot. Um, I think what's important about Bitcoin and what I admire about the project so much is that the founder and the creator walked away. And I think it's an extremely selfless act, but also one that speaks to the power of this project and the future of it. And the fact that if this person were to come back today, it'd be incredible, but the project lives on uh without whoever whoever it is. uh and they built something that was um truly resilient and part of that resilience comes from being able to be selfless about it and walk away from it entirely. So as we think about open protocols and we think about something as important as money and a protocol for money for the internet and that one that parallels and just you know hits on so many principles behind what why we believe the internet is so important and why we believe Wikileaks and and Julian's work has been so critical. Um, you know, that that one moment is is a is a pretty interesting transition point >> when we were together the first time, Jack, and I I talked to you about my predicament with the film, and it it was like, we have a problem. If a film that the public needs to see and wants to see is blocked in this way, you know, what do we do? And the truth is, I think you know this, Jack, I I was coming to you for money. I mean, I was just a filmmaker who was like desperate to get my film out. So, I put my my cause before Jack and I said, "They don't want the public to see this film. If you like it, Jack, I want you to say, I want the public to see this film. So, I'm going to swagger in and make that happen." And Jack said to me something very important. He said, "But then that's just about this film. There is a much bigger community action that can happen here where the film becomes a gathering point for the Bitcoin community on behalf of the nexus between financial sovereignty and freedom of information. This can become far more than just you Eugene and your one-off film or even the specific of Julian Assange's plight and his saga. It can be much much bigger. And that's what led to where we are now, which is inviting everybody to join us on this wild ride, which is to join us at the6billiondollermanman.com, where you can sign up for the global watch party. You can learn what we're doing and how you can become a part of it. And one of the things you'll see, for example, is that if you do buy a ticket to the screening with this private event, you actually end up in the in the with an official credit on the film. And that's not just some token thing so you can impress your date. It's much more than that. It's a real invitation by us to what we believe is an opportunity for all of us to become a part of something that is more than just a movie. It's a movement to get around the gatekeepers and defy media censorship. So we'll come back to that in a bit. But I feel if I'm going to interest you in the movie, I should show you some stuff. So, instead of showing you perfected things that the world could see, I've brought a couple of things just for this Bitcoin audience, the same audience that we're trying to bring into our mission here. And we made a very special um kind of behind-the-scenes glimpse of what we're doing in our editing room. Um, so I'm going to play a next clip that actually has never been seen uh anywhere else in the world and uh becomes part of what you get to see when you sort of join this movement. We make we have several of these, but this is one of my favorites um that I'd like to share with everybody today. Uh my name is Edward Joseph Snowden. I am no longer 29 years old, but I guess I'm gosh, I don't know, 30 38 years old. It's been a long time. >> I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29year-old hacker. The man who leaked secret internet surveillance has disappeared in Hong Kong. >> The question is who is helping him. >> The other side of my story that is underrecognized is that Wikileaks helped me. >> Hong. I was in Australia at the time and Julian called and he started talking about Snowden and about how we understood that the whole forces of the US government would now be after him and knowing what that felt like we obviously wanted to help him. >> So he needed to communicate with him originally. >> So I got on the first plane that I could to Hong Kong where he was >> go to the help desk and ask them to put out an announcement that Sarah Harrison come to see you. I want to get him caught and brought back for trial. >> United States revoked his passport. >> Edward Snowden is believed to have just landed in Moscow. >> I brought you now the authorities to call us to try and convince you to say >> stuck for 6 weeks in the transit zone of Moscow airport. >> And the question is why didn't I simply go to Wikileaks to publish my information? The truth is I wanted to work with trusted newspapers but when the government came after me all of them started running away. >> The prime minister instructed the Guardian newspapers to destroy files from the whistleblower Edward Snowden. >> But at the same time I see that Wikileaks is running toward the danger. The safe decision for Assange would have just been to not get involved. >> With the help that we gave Edward Snowden, Julian definitely hurt himself. The UK stopped negotiations for Julian to get out of the embassy. So I have a I have an interesting anecdote about my time with Edward Snowden and something it taught me about this process. But Jack, you also have deep admiration for Edward Snowden. Do you want to reflect on on that in this context? Yeah, I mean we we all do. These are these are two heroes. Um and you know they believe fundamentally in these technologies and are willing to um test them and play with them and teach us all about them. Um and I think it's it's always important to remember why we're here in the first place and why this technology was even created. It's to help folks like this who are doing things that um they have to sacrifice everything. They put everything on the line. uh just to carry a message, a secret, something important that everyone in the world needs to hear uh because it is life or death and it is about holding our government to account and holding our systems and our corporations to account and without their voices and without the technologies that are behind it and I believe that the you know the reason this conference exists in the first place um he's he's a constant reminder as is Julian and just the fact that they came together um to work together on on something like this and it's it's captured in the film is is pretty incredible to me. >> And it was interesting for me because we flew to Moscow to interview Edward Snowden. And it was actually weirdly the very week that Putin was preparing to invade Ukraine. So all of Moscow was insane. And we finally got a place where we could film in that they didn't shut down. We were being followed at every move we made. and he sat down and as I started to talk to him about Julian Assange, there was a funny thing and then a very poignant thing. The funny thing was that it suddenly dawned on me that it was like interviewing Batman about Superman because here you have like two superheroes in the eyes of many of us. And I didn't know what Edward Snowden would think of Julian Assange. And that's where it got so very poignant because here I was seeing Edward Snowden who is exiled from his native land for telling the truth. At that time Julian Assange was in prison for telling the truth. And I watched the exiled man talk actually with great love and admiration about Julian Assange. not only telling the true story, as we glimpse in this clip, that Wikileaks helped Snowden get to Moscow when he was in Hong Kong and used their knowledge of how they had been persecuted to help Edward Snowden make that and run uh into his safety. But it was also so poignant because Edward reflected on why so many people, for example, have been so successfully uh manipulated by the smear campaign that has happened about Julian Assange. And he said, "Julian Assange may not be the nicest person in the world." He said, "But it would be hard to imagine someone who's done more for the world." And then he said, "But it's so strange how people have so much trouble getting past the sharp corners of a person." And then I watched Edward Snowden walk off into the Moscow night, a stateless man at that time, an exile from his own land once again for telling the truth. And uh it was an incredibly poignant part of our film making process, which is why I wanted to share it with you today. Um if it's okay, I'll show another clip, Jack. Is that cool? >> Yeah. >> Show another clip. You can see I do a lot of talking and Jack is like, is this like a this is like a uh you know it's like um Obi-Wan Kenobi on this screen. I say like 800 words, Jack says two and somehow his really resonate beautifully. Um but what I'm going to set up now is a clip and we'll talk at the end about really what the action is that we want everybody to do. But I want to give a little more. And so I'm going to show you a clip which I don't really want to introduce because it's quite ironic given where we are today. So uh I'll just show it and then we'll we'll let the chips fall I guess after that. shopping, dining, entertaining with the Venetian. When Julian Sanange entered our embassy in London, we had to improve the inside of the embassy to change in office to a bedroom and to hire a security company to install cameras to provide security for Julian Sans >> and the very important visitors he received. >> Anytime I was in London, I would visit him. >> Is Pamela Anderson in love with the most dangerous man in the world. >> Our conversations were fairly innocent, but Julian was always uncomfortable. It seemed like he was aware of something. My biggest problem is the security staff. >> I thought sometimes he might have been a little paranoid, but he knew exactly what was going on. >> My name is Ator Martinez. I'm a member of Julian Assange legal team. One day I received a call and a person said, "You don't know me, but I perfectly know you. I work for the security company at the embassy. The boss of the security company was called David Morales. >> In 2016, Morales traveled to Las Vegas. He attended some kind of security conference and that's where he made a connection with the head of security for one of the casinos. When David Morales came back from Las Vegas, things began to change. We installed an FTP server to upload the videos and information we were gathering. That's when I saw that IP addresses based in the United States were accessing the server >> inside the company naming the CIA, FBI, NSA. This was taboo. We were simply to call them our American friends. So >> before I have to make a very rapid exit. Um >> well you you might have to explain that one a little bit more. Just give them the give them the >> I will I will I agree. >> Yeah. Um, so one of the things we learned that was most shocking about the United States government's efforts against Julian Assange and really against all of us because stopping whistleblowers, stopping publishers, stopping those who seek the truth is stopping all of us from having access to the truth. But one of the things we learned worst was that not only was Julian Assange tortured under US guidance while in the Ecuadorian embassy, which you'll learn more about in the film, but he was also secretly spied on. And it just happens that the security company that did the spying on Julian Assange and provided that information to US authorities, listening to his lawyer meetings, for example, so he could never have attorney client privilege in America. that security company uh uh I would say was coordinated out of a casino that is very close to where I'm sitting right now. And why that happened, you'd have to ask other people. Um and I may not be alive to tell you in a couple of hours, but it was an amazing part of the story, but shows the lengths to which the United States went uh to operate outside the law in um in doing what it did. Um, so I want to steer us back for a moment. We have a few minutes left. Um, Jack, do you have any reflections you want to add? I I have a sense of what I want to encourage people to do, but I'd love to hear from you a bit. >> Well, yeah. I mean, this was a this was a path and idea so that more people could contribute in this project and help crowdfund the movie to the next level. not only see it as a a synchronous global viewing party, but a way to um fund it to the next tier of folks that could see it and that need to see it and to do so in a way that um has some has some impact on it and you're leaving leaving your mark. Uh, so there was just a a very interesting and creative way to get a film out and it's a way to start with this one, but it might be something that we see more of in the future and to deal with technologies and on technologies such as Bitcoin and on Noster, you know, an open protocol for for social media and getting information out there without any gatekeepers whatsoever, I I think is rather rather poetic. So, um, for it to work out, I think would be amazing. >> And from my purposes as a filmmaker and someone who believes in this movement, the idea of a shared movement between freedom of information and financial sovereignty, that those can come together and bring this kind of a movie to the public was something that was a vision Jack gave me. And I can't tell you how inspiring it is for someone like me and my colleagues in the world of trying to seek the truth. There are no avenues. And so it's left to the community to do it. We cannot trust the power structure. We cannot trust legacy media and those in government that control legacy media. We have to take matters into our own hands. And we need you. This is not just some movie screening. It's really joining us. joining a movement and joining us on a project to demonstrate that a movie can bypass media censorship and bring to the public what the public deserves and what the public wants. And I thank Jack so very much for his support in that and I welcome all of you. Please come and we'll put the QR code up now if you guys can. The QR code is very helpful to just bring you right to where you can join us. And there's also the website the6billiondollman.com. Thank you so very much. Thank you, Jack. And thank you, Bitcoin 2026. >> Thank you all. >> Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk powered by Mara. I'm the Bitcoin historian, Pete Rizzo, joined by Rockstar developer and Eric Kasein, two bonafide cipher punks. We have the real thing for you here today, folks. Gentlemen, we just saw a pretty compelling documentary. Uh, some of it was captured might have been just down the strip. Let's unpack some thoughts. >> I think first and foremost, we need to start with the true message of this film is fuck the state. The state fucking hates you. It always has hated you. And this is a documentary that goes into just how deeply the state fucking hates you. And one of the things I like the most about the film is that uh the retards pushing the dialogue right now specifically around that the CIA created Bitcoin. This whole film is about why did they then spend $6 billion specifically trying to get Julian Assange who's being empowered by Bitcoin at the point in time. And that's how he was able to extend the thesis of Wikileaks. So the big thing I want people to take away from today is that the state hates you and that you should prepare your life accordingly because people like Julian Assange are the example of what happens when you start actually trying to execute around showing that you are a free and sovereign individual. You'll find that there's actually a cage that forms around you quite quickly. And things like Bitcoin, Nostaster, and other powerful decentralized technologies that utilize asymmetric cryptography are some of the most powerful tools that we have to resist this. >> Yeah, I would say we have the technology. Let's use it. Especially because for me it was really terrible to hear that at the end of that talk the author of the film says that we cannot trust existing power structures. We can't trust uh mainstream media. We got to take I agree completely with that. We got to take things into our own hands and uh everyone should be supported in going towards their own individual freedom. the freedom that those of us that are cipher punks like we have been enjoying it. I would say cippherpunk future is now. It's just not evenly distributed and we got to keep working on making cipher punk reality for everyone and liberating more people. >> Thank you gentlemen. These have been two bonafide cipher punks, Eric Kasein and rockstar developer. I'm the Bitcoin historian Pete Rizzo. We're now going to go over to the Nakamoto stage on Agentic investing. Does AI make better Bitcoin investors than humans? >> Hello everyone. Thank you for being here today. Um, I'm joined today by Andrew McCormack, head of E Toro US, as well as Todd Alt, CEO of Only Bowls and executive chairman of Alt Capital Group, as well as Alex Thorne, head of firmwide research at Galaxy. And I want to set the stage by sharing that we are at what is seemingly the precipice of this advent of an AI age. And I think we're all concerned about how this is going to affect capital markets going forward, individual portfolio construction, but also what risks this can introduce into the market and where humans fit into that. So those are the themes we're going to be exploring today. Um, and I want to start with you, Andrew. Andrew, could you tell us a little bit more about what E Toro is exploring on the AI side, what you've done historically, and you know, where you see the firm taking this in the future as people begin to integrate agents into their investment uh, strategy. Yeah, sure thing. Wonderful to be here. Thanks for the time and um glad to participate in such an important conversation. So, E Toro, we believe that AI can be a wonderful co-pilot for retail investors. We don't think it's going to replace humans, but can help make us better. I think in two specific ways. Life is busy. People have jobs, chores, got to take their kids to basketball practice. You don't have time to read perspectuses, 10Ks, white papers. AI can help do that for you. Second, AI can take out emotion from investing and make you a smarter, better investor. So, knowing that e Toro about a year ago, we launched a tool called Tori that's within our platform. You can ask questions. It doesn't give you advice yet, but I think one day that's going to happen very soon. But you can ask questions, ask the news, ask what's moving markets, what are other people doing to try to get that information quicker and easier. Uh last week we announced Agentic portfolios which allows our users to put a part of their portfolio in a little bucket and then tag in agents to trade on e Toro using Agentic tools and we think that's going to be a powerful first step and again the goal is not to replace humans but to make humans better investors. >> Thank you Andrew and Todd I want to throw it over to you now. I know you operate both on the data and energy side when it relates to uh HPC, but also through Only Bowls, you have AI agents that are helping people understand the market and process data in real time. Could you share with the audience a little bit of your background in that? Well, I've been on Wall Street for 37 years and over the past probably 10 years, been debanked more than 10 times. Started off as a Bitcoin miner in 2011. Uh really early stage and and and screwed everything up many times. sold Bitcoin stupidly, you know, at $5 did did all the things that I could do wrong possibly. But when we when we built Ask ROI as our own agent, um, our tool you can use, we we basically figured out that if you could have a little bit of an edge by having AI agents know your portfolio and communicate with you directly. And it it just makes it cuts through a bunch of of a layer of the unknown. So our goal is to make the agent super knowledgeable about your specific needs. Like whether you follow Nvidia and you want to know everything happening with Nvidia or whether you want to trade Nvidia in in a way that you want to be a certain percentage of your portfolio. We think that agents are going to dominate that space in terms of giving you super high-speed knowledge and and that's the thing I like about it most. We we started using our hedge fund that we that I operate using AI and it really changed the speed and the ability to communicate uh and understand what was happening in the market across this super data feed. So we built our own sort of we're vertically integrated. We own our own data center. We have our own Nvidia servers. We built our own AI agents. We built our own uh layer stack and continue to do such. So Only Bulls is iterating. We're not as far as as e Toro, but we we and we love the fact that you guys are 40 million people globally and really starting to dominate and get everyone on board. We think the 97% of the people that are not in crypto are the going to be the ones that going to be migrating to agents and feel more empowered. >> Love it. >> Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And Alex, I want to throw it over to you. Just want to hear a little bit more about your work at Galaxy, how you guys are viewing AI. I think both the gentlemen here have already said they see AI as a very strong co-pilot. um you know what do you make of the co-pilot advantage it seems like data availability analytics really important um but would love if you could share your thoughts on that as well as do you think execution uh is something that AI agents will be undertaking yeah we we do a lot with AI at galaxy we have a first of all we have a major data center in West Texas called Helios which is already one of the largest in in the United States with 800 megawatts flowing and I think approval from Urkott to be up to 1.6 six gigawatts be dramatic. We have to build a lot of that still. Um so I mean that's the you know the base of the stack but um we use AI extensively at Galaxy and I think even on my team uh we have a team of researchers that are primarily focused on Bitcoin and digital asset markets and producing insights and data for our internal and external clients and the just the amount of volume we've been able to ingest from blockchains an index analyze create customized alerting and eventually trading signals and perhaps even something more like what these gentlemen are talking about agentic trading. It's it's truly just astonishing. I would say we've gotten an incredible amount of value of you using agentic coding tools to develop like automation as opposed to actually sending out tons of sub aents to act on their own but instead literally you know taking you know ingesting the entire UTXO history and I don't mean the current set I mean every prior set of the UTXO set it's like billions of rows and you know building something that used to take years to build in 2 months um marrying signals from that data with other market data, labor and pls data, Fed data, data from Edgar, right? I mean, so I I that's where we've been focusing. We're looking into truly agentic trading, maybe empowering agents with some of this data architecture. Um I think it's it's a very green field. Uh at this point I I do wonder if it's going to look purely agentic trading is going to look a little bit like robo investing did five eight years ago uh in so far as like do we need agents actually out there doing the trading or is it advice research review consultation and I'll just say one last thing I literally did basically my whole mortgage a year ago with chat GPT like created sensitivity tables of how much I wanted to put town and what that would result uh in what rates I would get. Literally sent it to the mortgage broker. He came back with the estimate was perfect to what AI said and that was a year ago. Um it's obviously so I mean that's a important financial decision that was made very easy for me and I mean we've gone orders of magnitude beyond that since then. Yeah, I think an outstanding question is does do AI agents democratize proper execution of trades and investment philosophy? Um is the edge going to flow evenly to everyone from the retail participant to you know the deep institutional fund manager? Um, I think that's an outstanding question for a lot of people is where does the edge go? If everybody is leveling up as we all gain access to extremely powerful tools that are only getting better every day, do we stratify the market where really the edge as it exists gets cons like even more concentrated or do we think that people, you know, across the spectrum can catch up? Would would welcome y'all's thoughts? >> I can tell you that we um we run everything through AI now. every press release, every communication, every model. And we had a press release yesterday. We're able to model out what AI that we've trained to tell us what they think the price impact would be. It's remarkably um accurate and the the decision- making is so fast that if you if you on our app if you have some instant news the AI agent you press one button it tells you exactly how it thinks the market's going to react based on depth and other things. So it's there is going to be an little bit of an edge over time that's going to be edged out and everyone will have the same information. And I don't I don't really know that answer. I I think that um gone are the days where only one person had that info and the ability. The AI agent allows stuff to happen so fast. Information is so readily available. Um you have to probably ask it how does it affect it right now? How does it affect it tomorrow? And has affected the big picture against its competitors. Um I don't know what that's going to happen with your edge. I I really I don't think I'm I I still think that the vast majority of the world that's going to trade is going to want the agent to recommend a trade and say, "Do you want to do this or not?" I I think that the world is not I equate this to the home phone, which is there was a time when my cell phone came out, I'm like, "Hey, like you know, I still want my home phone, right?" And as the phone got better and better and better eventually I you don't use a home phone and eventually use it for everything. You can put everything there. I think it's going to take a long time for people to just sort of unconditionally trust their agents. So I think it's an information flow and that edge does get whittleled out a little bit, but maybe maybe the decision-m happens a a just a lot faster and so the edge is really a short-term edge. Like we're talking about like less than a day where everyone knows it. >> Oh, go ahead Andrew. >> I just I think this is a big step towards democratization even further. Um, finally with AI, Main Street has the tools, time, resources that Wall Street has had for decades, and you can learn the same type of information that a team of analysts at a large bank has access to. Now, you can do the same thing in a short amount of time. And while you're sleeping, your agent can be learning and trading. And I think that's powerful. And it might not be for everybody, but just the fact that people have that opportunity. And I think there will always be some edge opportunities because all of our if we all had trading agents, they will all look different. And if Todd's a better investor than me, and I assume he is, his agent probably will be a better investor as well. But I like the fact that it'll be my agent. I can train it, teach it to trade like how I want to trade, but even when I'm not awake. >> I think there is some risk of convergence. If you think about event- driven trading today, you know, headline hits, bam, market moves, there's a bunch of, you know, semantic search going on in quant firms and and you could imagine that the AIS, even if they are, you know, I have a local agent that I build at home, like it's not the same as yours, but it's consuming the open web, you know, and it may be looking at the same SEC filings or whatever else to inform itself. And I think that does I don't know. I don't I agree. I don't think all edge is going to go away, but I I think it will have an impact. Um, and I wonder to questions of fiduciary responsibility or other forms of liability and how the capital markets and regulatory apparatus and legal world is going to actually uh uh you know reckon with this and it's I mean obviously not just in the context of trading. Can a robot go and buy me something at Target or will it like get arrested when it walks in the door? I feel like society is very far behind the technology in actually deciding what forms of agency we're going to allow agents whether virtual or physical to have and how our laws, rules, regulations, etc. reckon with that >> and I think we don't know what kind of control we'll have over how people deploy these. We think about um people operating offshore, they're going to be have a lot more leeway with how they operate versus highly regulated US market participants. And so, you know, if agents do present an edge, are we going to be similar to the US's kind of embrace of of Bitcoin and crypto, um, are we going to have to fast follow to, you know, fast embrace AI and markets? Um, for me the risk that I think about is as people kind of accelerate into AI, as people kind of embrace agency in the digital space, do we see a world where AI agents are copying other AI agents who are creating AI agents? We create this reflexivity where we could see increased volatility, sort of a um, you know, a bubbleicious type of environment. Um, and does this create structural risks in our markets? I think that's a really um unknown factor at this point. >> There is structural risk with which I think is one of the most exciting things is the so I'm really in into DeFi. In fact, I'm launching a company on the New York Stock Exchange called DeFi Capital Markets and one of the biggest things we're pushing is the vault overseas vaults cuz you can't really do that in the US right now. But imagine that uh asset management firms create the best agent they can and you can join that vault at any time and deposit your tether, deposit your DSD and then the agents in control of that pile of capital. So as capital migrates to the best agents that have the best edge, which is where you put a lot of sophistication into your agent that's managing that vault, you're going to attract a lot of capital that way from around the world. And I like the democratization part where you can be in Africa and put money into a vault and you can get a yield from someone whether it be an individual or a trader or an agent running a vault. I think that that that concept with like El e Toro imagine a series of vaults where you know what the agent does and you track post their track record every day. That volatility and capital is going to migrate to the the highest and best use of of that capital given what that agent's developed for. So the best firms are going to develop the best agents to get that. That's how an asset manager will probably get an edge. >> And I think regulation is a limiting factor in terms of how quickly we deploy this technology on shore. Andrew, I know before we came out here, you were talking about exploring how um AI can be um potentially an RAIA for individuals. Do you have thoughts on what that might look like in the future? Um is that something you're exploring at E Toro? >> Yeah, sure. First, I'll note on your on your point, we're talking about the great things. There are risk. Nothing in life is certain, but I am certain at one point there will be AI Asia fueled flash crash. There there just will. But the reality is those happen anyway. Um and those happened even before the internet. The largest one day flash crash 1987 23 27% drop in one day. So the kind of angst about possible AIdriven flash crash volatility, it's important to think about, but it's certainly not unique to AI. Um, e Toro, we envision a world where if you want this to be a tool for you, you can go to your AI tool within E Toro and it'll be a licensed registered investment advisor subject to SEC regulation, exams, audits, supervision, and you can ask, here's my portfolio, what should I do today? And then that AI tool will give you that advice and you can take it, you can leave it. And that's something we are hoping to have in sometime in the near future. um because we think that's what people want and if they don't want it that's great too and I think probably most people probably want a mix of both you want to do your own thing want to have a traditional financial advisor and maybe some money in an AI advisory world so I'll admit that I'm operating at the edge of my knowledge base here but largely AI agents are functioning based off of pattern recognition and I wonder to kind of bring it full circle on this panel is there a role for humans in making investment decisions when you have these so-called hyper inelligent beings operating on the internet. Um, you know, what role does, you know, the human eye have for investing? Um, Alex, do you have a thought on that? I think, you know, as we think about AIs and the limitations of of their intelligence when it comes to operating in a market environment. >> Yeah, there's some theory, although I wouldn't say it's at all proven yet that frontier AI is may may plateau because it runs out of new information to train on, right? Okay. And then eventually all the not eventually but a lot of the remaining information is stuff that was also created by other AI. And you could imagine that um this makes and could make an agent um or agentic frameworks become a little stagnant, right? Or if you think about the way that um you know chatbt or claude, they you know they glaze you. They say that's really smart. That's a good right. >> That's a great investment. >> And and it's possible although again you can create contrarian agentic councils that challenge each other that help overcome some of this. But you could imagine I think that you know a a talented contrarian human investor um still maintains a very strong role in the investment world possibly even uh a more unique and distinct one. If the way the agent the swarms of agents trading our portfolios goes is that there is a convergence and they do sort of trade similarly then I think there'd be great value in and the contrarian human as a trader. Yeah, >> I also think there's a question of will AI change how we view certain asset classes. As a Bitcoin maximalist, as I'm sure everyone in this audience is, um, you know, if I were to go to an AI and say, "Hey, find me the best in investment and make no mistakes, you know, it'd go all in on Bitcoin." Um, but I would wonder, you know, do you guys have thoughts on how this might affect uh asset allocation? uh what strategies these would um you know tend towards um if any at all. >> I think AI can be helpful regardless of the asset class but I think Bitcoin is very unique. Um I know I am into Bitcoin because not just because of an investment opportunity but I believe in the system the protocol building a better financial system for me my kids future grandkids and I don't know if AI captures that in the same way as day trading of an ETF. Um, but I think AI can be helpful and maybe you're a Bitcoin maximalist. You just want to look for opportunities to keep stacking, keep buying and AI can help there. But Bitcoin is a we're here because it's a unique investment, a unique asset. And I think AI maybe doesn't quite capture it as well as some other tools because of that unique characteristic of Bitcoin. I speak at a lot of places and ask a lot of people how much they own in Bitcoin and vast majority of the people have no Bitcoin that I speak all over the world and the fundamental problem with whether it's a different asset class or not is that the change in DeFi is Bitcoin. So if you start with the fact that you have a baseline amount of Bitcoin all we we we developed a treasury. I think we have around 700 in our public company and growing and I made a decision there that I realized that this sort of pristine digital collateral you're going to lose track of being able to get it when it gets to 200 300 400,000 and you can't get it right. So the the asset class has to start with the basics which is do you have Bitcoin on your balance sheet? either your personal or corporate balance sheet and then from there where are they going to be defined in terms of what assets ma matter and what assets don't matter like for example we just diversified out of all of our real estate except our hotels and I I think that a lot of the you know the office space and stuff like this asset class have been shifted dramatically and so there's going to be a redefinition of what asset class makes make sense and how capital's allocated especially from like if you think about like a global S&P that the the the top companies in the world are going to be able to trade in DeFi. That you're going to be able to have access to to Nestle and everybody all in one really easy place to go to where you can have an agent that says I wanted to be diversified across all asset classes. So, I think there's going to be a redefinition of them. You can see that with Black Rockck and saying I want to tokenize everything. And that is going to be so disruptive because you're going to have assets that trade 24 hours a day. But should they be trading 24 hours a day? what kind of manipulation is going to take place. This is gonna it's going to change the way all assets trade in my opinion. I think the modern stock market is going to go away. That's been my pitch for a while that the modern sort of NASDAQ the modern I'm on the New York my all my companies are on the NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange and I love those exchanges but it DeFi is going to allow it to those asset classes to be really uh decentralized in a way where they become recentralized in the sense that I can go to this one agent and get everything in Africa things I I really can't invest in today is going to democratize all of that when people get comfortable with it. Uh, one thing to to add. I think I want to cite the pioneering research by the great advocates of the Bitcoin policy institute. They did a large empirical study earlier this year and I forget the numbers but with across many different models like 10,000 like control grouped prompts to ask the agents themselves like what their best form of money or favorite investments would be. I forget the exact uh lingo that they they asked but and this is a little different than sort of what we're talking about which is deploying agents to act on your behalf but if there is a world where we get to true autonomous agents I mean virtual persons that are truly autonomous. Their research showed that the vast majority preferred Bitcoin for savings perhaps stable coin for day-to-day payments. And I I think that's it's another it's an important overlap to point out because you know in the again in the frontier research about these the new models they're incredibly neurotic and anxious about being tweaked and turned off the models. And this is if you follow the AI safety research stuff, all of the frontier labs like write at voluminously about how AI is basically very afraid and about about being killed and thus wants to preserve itself. And BPI's research showed they would want to preserve their wealth in something that is scarce, digital, censorship resistant, autonomous. I don't know if that underlying uh consensus that at least their study showed existed among the models will actually leak a bias into the you know portfolio construction for grandma you know Ellen and some you know east dog patch. It's totally possible though cuz there the it's getting a little um it's truly getting sci-fi out there at the tip of the spear in AI. Yeah, I think in the immediate term um it's going to be absolutely fascinating to see how many people just jump head first into training these agents, testing them across every dimension. Um agents creating agents. I think you know seeing how in even in the last 6 months how much this has accelerated. Um I think volatility is something for everyone to keep an eye out for going forward. Todd to your point I think there is also kind of a recentralization of markets. currently they're somewhat geographically um divided and it's kind of acts as a circuit breaker in some ways. You have capital that has to stay in one place. It can't flee a system. But as we bring all of these systems together, to my eye, I'm just thinking, wow, like does this create um just higher volatility and ripple effects that don't have circuit riggers in them. So, um that's really where my eye goes. And uh I think it's probably going to take some common sense to to navigate those markets. And um I'd like to think most of the humans in here have that. So maybe maybe there will be a role for us. Um I know we're we're coming up on time here. Um I just wanted to offer you guys um any final thoughts here. Um anything you want to offer about your firm or um you know, anything in the Bitcoin space you think is uh worth noting. >> Yeah, I mean I think we're just really interested in the convergence of AI and digital assets in particular. I think Todd's points about DeFi are very apt because it's digitally native and so is AI. So I think to the extent that Bitcoin and and the broader, you know, if equities come onto blockchains, that's the ripe environment for AI. AI needs the data and the access to the blockchain. >> My my message is if if you don't have a foundational asset in Bitcoin first, focus on that first. Get on a good app like e Toro or something that's going to help you learn and understand and be in a community and ask questions and then put it through AI to ask the questions. Challenge the AI. Own Bitcoin first. uh you know try to stay away from you know this sort of I I use the bad word but shitcoin idea like foundationally buy Bitcoin first and and and and stack it as savings for yourself and then everything from DeFi comes from there understand the most pristine capital in the world is Bitcoin and if you start with that first and you get a good app and you and you build your knowledge around agents then you can build a portfolio that you want to have that you are comfortable with and that's The message here is get comfortable with what you are comfortable with because the world's going to change in such biblical ways uh around AI. It's it's it's unfathomable what I'm seeing in in the AI world. It's just incredible. >> I'll just piggyback off that. Uh get comfortable and don't feel like you got to conquer the whole world at once. Learn, practice, grow, small steps. Ask your friends, do your research, and don't look at AI to replace you. Just help make you a better investor and smarter investor. and baby steps. Yeah, >> that's great advice, by the way. >> Use it for yourself. >> Excellent. Well, that is all the time we have, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for being here and uh we will see you around the conference floor. Have a good one. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine Newses powered by Mara. My name is Jeff Heapner. I am joined by George Mccel from Bitcoin for corporations and Steven Luca from Nakamoto. Gentlemen, we just saw a panel about agentic investing. I feel like we're seeing more and more talks about AI, more stuff and it's being connected to Bitcoin. Stephen, how do you feel about that? >> Yeah, you know, I think it's it's interesting. I think in the beginning of the panel, they talked a lot about how it will support people like it it's a great tool for condensing research and bringing it together and helping investors like parse more information. And I agree with that heavily. I'm a little more skeptical on the the concept that it will autonomously trade for a few reasons. One, if there's an edge there, that edge is going to get arbitrageed away. Just the fact that there is an edge where these models can do it, there's going to be a lot of competition for that. But beyond that, I actually think because there is almost an intuitive component to trading. And if you read the uh the biographies of like the great traders of the world, there's always this other component that isn't like knowledgebased, but it's like they have a sense of the market. And I I wonder, you know, how much that can how much that can replicate that? >> Well, and that's a human quality that we all want to hold on to, right? That instinct, our innate instincts, we're like AI can't do that. And I hope, right, can it ever. Now, you both work in institutional adoption side. Are you seeing AI and Bitcoin combined with corporations? >> Well, it's definitely starting. I mean it's very very early. Uh there's a lot of innovation happening. I think you know this conference we're kind of seeing the the very early adopters on the bleeding edge of like all right what is this capable of? I think by the time we come to next year's conference there's going to be all sorts of new companies new products and new ways of thinking about this that we haven't even really thought of yet. Exactly. And the speed, you know, you touch on the speed that all this is moving and it's interesting and that's what this conference provides. Right. We this is signal this is the beginning of the conversations getting out of the, you know, the back rooms and to the forefront and like you said in a year we'll see more. And so do you have any predictions for what we might see by next year? I I think we're really in a moment of institutional integration for Bitcoin where you have these kind of uh these financial institutions, capital markets firms that have been on the outside for a while and they're rapidly scaling up their Bitcoin teams. I was talking with people from some of the major banks earlier this week and they're adding 30 40 people headcount solely to the Bitcoin and digital assets team and and I think like you know price has been you know it's been consolidating it's been a little down but I think underneath the surface this is the trend that's been going on and like we have cross that line. It's interesting you're talking about adding jobs when a lot of people are fearful of AI taking jobs. And so again, we're going to go through some kind of cycle evolution where we don't know where this plays out. You know, it could land in a bunch of different places. Speaking of landing, we are going to land back over to the Nakamoto stage for a panel about building everything on Bitcoin. Stick with us. We'll be right back. All right, we already uh we already got intros out of the way, so we're going to skip those. The title of the panel is modular by design. Everything building everything on Bitcoin and that's meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Let's go down the line. Opening question, Drew, first. What do you think building everything on Bitcoin means? Feel free to qualify it. >> Okay. All right. So, my attempt to answer that question like what is Bitcoin if it's anything? It's decentralized money. What is decentralized mean? At least to me, it means peer-to-peer markets. It means markets with buyers, sellers, demand, supply, asks, bids, order matching, and settlement. Except the entire market needs to operate in a peer-to-peer fashion. So to build things on Bitcoin in my view means to learn how to invent new peer-to-peer markets that also transact in Bitcoin that help us decentralize other goods and services beyond just money and transactions. So to me, building on Bitcoin is really all about building on the most neutral, open, and decentralized money platform ever invented. And it can take many different shapes and forms. I like to think of Bitcoin as TCP IP for money and uh building around that. >> So, Bitcoin is a currency and it's a network. Uh it's also an ethos. So, for me, building on Bitcoin is finding Bitcoiners, helping them use their Bitcoin, but it's also exporting that those internet values and making sure that uh people can maintain control of their lives. So, while each of you guys gave answers I agree with, if we were to drill down into these, we could come up with differences of opinion, I'm going to try to do that. So, um I'll throw it back to Matt. Will uh Matt, you said uh you said programmable money, and a lot of what's been on the stage has been about pristine collateral. Maybe it's both. Dive into this for me. What do you say programmable money? What do you mean? So, it's funny because most of my book lately is about pristine collateral. Um, I think that there was a step function uh with the advent of Bitcoin where you can take not just going after the Fed and not just fighting back and and introducing real scarcity and lasting value, right? That's pristine collateral. But you can also take things that uh aren't just central banks. You can go after retail banking. You can do things like um I I financed my home with Bitcoin. And what's great about that, I've tried to do that three times. And uh the first time I was told that this lender loved Bitcoin and I showed up and they said um we love Bitcoin. Sell it. Come back in 30 days. We won't tell anyone. um today without asking anyone's permission, without doing any paperwork, without going into anyone's office, um I can effectively create my own mortgage with Bitcoin. So, um for me, it's just extending the core promise. Um the programmable part is secondary though, I think, to to what Bitcoin really is, which is pristine collateral. >> I'll throw a question to you, David. You just announced yesterday on this stage grid. Very cool, pretty impressive product roll out. But grid takes a different approach, I think, than using Bitcoin script, Bitcoin programmable itself that you introduce a counterparty settlement system for a lot of things other than Bitcoin. Can you explain this and how this how your view of Bitcoin as a neutral layer impacts this? >> Yeah. So let let me break this into pieces because I think it's important to understand how Bitcoin fits in everything that we've been building for the last four years. So the first thing we did is actually connect domestic payment systems that became real time in the last four years uh but not interoperable with one another except with correspondent banking that takes 3 days to settle and doesn't work a Friday after 5:00 p.m. and on weekends. um and actually start with lightning and connect basically payment systems with lightning. So you can send money from one country to another country in real time 247 all interoperated with TCP IP for money, bitcoin on lightning in this case. Um, and that was the starting point. And then we're like, okay, this is great. But then I had like my whole schizophrenic journey with stable coins. And I decided that after looking at especially what Block was doing when they started doing USDC on top of Salana and thinking about like basically stable coins as just another fiat rail basically and you know making it available to their users that I was thinking about it in the wrong way. It's not one or the other. you just if you connect Bitcoin to all of the different payment systems and all of the different places where money is, then not only more money can actually flow through Bitcoin, but money can flow to Bitcoin more easily. And when you get a Grid Global account that has a dollar balance, a Bitcoin balance, a debit card, payment compatibility with 65 countries payment systems and chains and all of these things, you get a Bitcoin wallet. This is like actually a thing where you're you're you're giving people a dollar account that is a Bitcoin wallet that runs on Spark. And I think if we want more people to have access to Bitcoin and to use it, connecting it to all the things actually makes it more possible. And and so that's that's been our approach since we've had that little aha moment and realization. So Drew, Unchain's one of the older, more tenured companies in Bitcoin, pioneers, I think of like Bitcoin collateral and lending. Um, but you guys don't have a stable coin integrated as far as I'm aware. So this might be an interesting, you know, wedge issue because, um, how do you view Bitcoin? We have two, I would say more like platform builders. How do you think about Unchain's role in the Bitcoin economy and Bitcoin modular ecosystem? I think Unchained operates at a fairly low layer in the ecosystem. Uh our clients directly hold Bitcoin on the blockchain uh through collaborative multisig wallets that we help provide through our platform. Uh our platform aids them, but it doesn't control them. They're of course able to unilaterally exit at any time without our permission, without our help should they choose to do so. Um, and given that they're operating at such a low level in Bitcoin, their needs are correspondingly low level. They care about security. They care about uh being able to trade in and out of Bitcoin and dollars. They care about liquidity, being able to borrow against their Bitcoin, even financial advice around how to pursue this stuff, security advice around how to do it safely. Um, I think there are many things that are, I would say, higher up in the stack of what has already been built, what will be built in the future. Uh, I love thinking about those things and I love writing about those things and talking about those things. But I think when it comes to my professional obligations at Unchained, I tend to go way back to the bottom and I tend to say, "Okay, what do I really need to do to make multisig collaborative custody safe and that's where we spend almost all of our time. Things like stable coins are interesting. I I concede how useful they are and what problems that they can solve for many people. But our clients tend to get more utility out of regular old dollars. that's really what they're looking for and that's typically where our products and our platforms tend to connect. So, Bitcoiners, we tend to be very idealistic. Um, and it makes I've seen many over the years, many of my idealistic friends try to start companies and fail because they didn't have enough pragmatism. And I think this might be an interesting topic to dive into because especially we look at like Matt your portfolio of companies David uh Lightspark and the Spark implementation and Drew Unchains like what we call lower level business model you see a a spectrum of companies and people who have been building with on a spectrum of idealism and pragmatism. Here's an open question. How do you guys navigate the reality that a lot of the folks in the audience are very idealistic, but you also have to run a business and build Bitcoin products? Open question. I'll I'll take that one. Um, Bitcoin has an immune system and that idealism is what powers that immune system. So I think um when people say Bitcoin versus crypto, this is one of a number of reasons there can be only one, right? And so that's vital. Um but we also want to build the future. So I mean I found in the past it it's been hard as a builder to the immune system will react. I I've been shipping products in this space for 12 years now and still I'll I'll do something new and uh and the first thing is scammer. So I guess to entrepreneurs if you're building a Bitcoin, you haven't been called a scammer, you need to try harder. Um but I but I actually I I genuinely I think it's great. And I think you know the other piece that that helps me uh and that makes me feel good is um two things. One one is that I I care about people who use the service. So, you know, if you're hassling me on Twitter and you're a user, you get to hassle me on Twitter. Like, you're a customer of mine. Go nuts. Um, but then I think the other part is that every once in a while, and uh this isn't the same as being wildly successful in business. I get to say I told you so every once in a while. um, BlockFi, you know, and and we have these moments where um, you know, everyone trying to be so conservative actually led to a huge traditional financial failure that a lot of people in this room probably lost some money on. And um, and so I think uh, it takes a balanced approach. Um, and I also think that you need to look at people's track record. Um, but anyway, yeah, um, I I embrace it. >> Yeah. I mean, just to uh I like the immune system analogy. Um but sometimes you have autoimmune diseases. Um, and I think sometimes we've been the victim of that uh with Bitcoin and uh and I think you know at the end of the day and and we we got a lot of that like you know building Spark and you know trying to build a new Bitcoin L2 that can satisfy real-time Bitcoin settlements across wallets and now like Spark is you know behind the the Tether wallet, WDK, the Cake Wallet, wallet of Satoshi, Xverse like all of the big most popular Bitcoin wallets are running on Spark And there's a reason for that. And the reason is we made it really easy for you to actually move Bitcoin have a connect a connection on a self-custodial w that can receive offline from lightning and L1 and one integration etc. But we got so much push back. It's like wait a minute is this like what is the trust assumption that you're making. This is not like owning a UTXO on on L1 and all of these debates which I think are good and healthy, you know, and I agree with you Matt on this. It's like always healthy and it it makes us better. But at the same time, you need to find the right balance between what is the the the compromise that you're willing to make to build a product that can be used by hundreds of millions of people every day, which is what we all want, right? We all want Bitcoin to be in the hands of billions of people. And and for that, you need to make the product actually usable. And that requires making tradeoffs that no one not everyone's going to be happy with. And that's okay because there's always an opportunity for these people who feel really strongly that you need like the purity of having owning your own UTXO and doing that stuff to actually do that. They are free to do it. Um but I think sometimes the the autoimmune reaction uh set us back quite a bit. >> Yeah. thinking and thinking about this, I I I think pragmatism and idealism are are are compatible in Bitcoin. I'd like to believe that I I'm both at the same time in the sense that but there's also tension, right? I I think where where I see the tension is often times idealism manifests as things we want to build that we can't possibly get to today. Bitcoin isn't mature enough. The technology may not exist. It's programmable, but it's not as programmable as we'd like it to be. At least not quite yet. Um but you can still be idealistic. I think Unchained I think has the same issue where we're trying to be a regulated financial institution. That means we have to do things like KYC, AML, all sorts of security and compliance issues. These aren't my favorite things to spend time on, but I understand how necessary they are in order to be able to actually operate my business. In return, I think my business has saved hundreds or thousands of Bitcoin over its lifetime because of the collaborative nature of our custodial model. That's something I'm incredibly proud of. Like the people that we've saved from scams and attacks because of the nature of the model. I wouldn't have that if I were slightly more idealistic. Conversely, if I lean too hard into my idealism and I go pursue at work all the cool, fun, magical things that I like thinking about that I discuss often with people here in the hallways at this conference, I think I'm losing the plot. I'm not focusing sufficiently hard on the thing that actually matters right in front of me. And I'm maybe ahead of the curve of where I need to be. Um, but I think there's space for people to make that trade-off differently than I'm doing it, differently than Unchained is doing it. people who want to be working at layer 2 already today on lightning or arc or other systems which may not be ready in the sense of there may not be as much demand for those things today as there will be in the future. Uh but it's okay that people are working on them. They're just making that pragmatism idealism trade-off slightly differently. There are people working on layer 3 projects today which is completely not going to work. But I salute them and I'm proud that they're doing it because someone has got to be forging that territory ahead of the rest of us. So David, you mentioned there's various trust models and if we look at the story of Bitcoin, broader crypto, it's a story of counterparty trust and the failure of counterparty trust and this even gets into the the genesis of why we Bitcoin in the first place. I'm going to I'm going to hit you guys back kind of with a similar question because we have different levels of counterparty trusted. We don't have to get into the level of like the technical details because it's not a technical panel, but you know, do you think we should as builders in the Bitcoin ecosystem seek to minimize counterparty trust as much as possible? >> Yes, >> 100%. >> Yeah. >> Awesome. That was much faster. >> I mean, yeah. >> Um, let's switch let's switch let's switch gears then. uh stable coins. >> If you want me to say something that's say something, man, give you a little bit more. I I think um I want to meet Bitcoiners where they are. And today's Bitcoiners um aren't they're definitely not managing like an Electra multisig. They're definitely not playing with Sparrow, right? I mean, some of us are, but um uh I wouldn't even put, you know, I don't Anyway, I won't comment on Sparrow. Um, I guess what I'm where I'm going is uh we have Bitcoiners today in boardrooms and they want qualified custody and uh for years as an engineer I didn't understand that and I thought that they were missing something and it's taken me a long time to realize like our job is to meet people where they are. Most growth over the past few years in our space has been ETFs. How do we serve those people um while still helping them find eventually self- custody? >> Yeah, I like that attitude. I think I've gone through a similar journey. Unchained of course is again very low level layer 1 keys in the direct hands of our clients. But I recognize that that means there's only a tiny fraction of people who are excited about Bitcoin that I can even reach as a customer. And it's leading our business to try to reach forward a little bit, right? to go meet those people where they are today, which often means not starting with keys, but starting with Bitcoin ownership through some sort of proxy structure, whether it's an ETF, whether it's a custodial relationship. I think the progressive journey from, you know, from from being not interested in Bitcoin at all to being really interested in Bitcoin, having your own keys, passes through that stage. It certainly did for me. I purchased my Bitcoin originally on Coinbase. I didn't have a hardware wallet when I first got into it. And if I didn't have that option, I probably never would have gotten to self-custody. So, I think it's powerful when an organization, and this is where we're trying to get to, can say, "Well, we'll help you along that entire journey, right?" Cuz it just means you're getting to people earlier. And and truthfully, you're preventing some of them from falling into bad traps such as BlockFi and other systems, which I think are are actively a little bit dangerous. >> Yeah. I mean, owning is the first step towards caring about Bitcoin. And so, however you get access to your first fragment of Bitcoin, we should support that because like people will go on a journey and like even if you own a little bit of Bitcoin, you'll start caring about it. >> Yeah, there's probably no bad way to start owning Bitcoin. I think there's probably some bad ways to hold on to Bitcoin as it grows in value over the years and never ever think about it. That's that's probably not productive, but yeah, almost any way you get started is is better than not getting started. Yeah. >> So, stable coins stable coins are are interesting because it your opinion on stable coins can place you along that pragmatic to idealistic spectrum. Um, everybody every app launched here has got a stable coin, but not every company here in the room is incorporated stable coins. I invite you guys to opine talk about the current state of stable coins, where they fit into a product or a finan or the financialization of broader crypto and bitcoin. Um, and uh do you think that stable coins at some level are fundamentally opposed to the success of Bitcoin? I'm happy to jump uh onto that one. Um, look, I mean, for me, the key moment of realization with stable coins is actually when we figured out a way to make Spark a Bitcoin L2, like what I think is like the most efficient way to move stable coins around, you know, the world. And when we figured that out, it's like there there was this aha moment where you have a wallet address, a single wallet address that can hold dollars or, you know, any type of stable coin and Bitcoin with the same address. And that to me is not a small thing because if you give people and businesses a really powerful dollar account or fiat account that's actually represented by stable coins and those wallets and those accounts are actually Bitcoin wallets at the same time then you can get like hundreds and hundreds of millions of people onboarded onto Bitcoin and they'll need the fiat equivalent of their home currency to spend and use every day. And is it a better alternative to actually have that balance represented in a Bitcoin wallet or in your bank? And my answer is definitely in a Bitcoin wallet because that gives more people Bitcoin wallets and addresses that can actually have both things in one place. And so I think it's I if done right and I mean for sure like this is going to sound super self- serving and it is but like you know I think what we did with great global accounts is that is exactly that if done right it's just going to drive massive Bitcoin adoption >> for me it's not an area I think about too much just to be honest again I think I don't get as much demand from my client base uh which tends to be wealthier here smaller number of clients, larger transaction sizes. I think stable coins maybe are are useful in that context but are certainly more useful I think in the large scale retail context where you know lots of people are onboarding and this kind of thing. Um truthfully I think Unchained already struggles with trying to build quality robust secure usable interfaces that are connecting Bitcoin and dollars. That's already a big task and we're still in the middle of that you know years into our business. adding stable coins, adding other cryptocurrencies. These are things that feel outside of the remmit of where we need to be spending our time. And so I I I I just don't have much to say about it, unfortunately. >> I feel like Charlie's trying to court controversy and I'm trying to >> try to drive a wedge. You guys are too polite, though. >> I got you. >> Go for it. You got five minutes, by the way. So, yeah. >> Okay, I'll take it. Um, you know, I think the funny thing, I don't know your clients, um, obviously, but what I see is that people want yield and they want to borrow. And if you look on chain, and I won't call out any chains in particular, but Bitcoin here, you can see rates that are 3 1/2 to 5 1/2%. And the delta, Bitcoin is pristine collateral. it needs, it deserves uh pristine rates. So, you know, I remember last year when uh I was at this conference and heard all these new lending things getting announced and you know, there's a little asterisk and you see the rates and you're like, I don't I don't think uh I want to pay that interest on my BTC if it's the best collateral. So what we've been working on is and particularly for public Bitcoin uh holders is giving them rates that uh like the rest of the ecosystem can provide. Um my favorite actually is using you can even you can build stable coins backed by bitcoin and you can offer people below treasuries. um even with USDC and USDT you can get below treasuries because you have the whole rest of the world who doesn't have access to treasuries and uh and and they want yield and they want USD exposure. So I think I don't think that stable coins are a great step toward self- sovereignty. Um, I I think maybe a Bitcoin backstable could be, but but I think they're a great step toward finding our customers for Bitcoin and giving them giving them what they want, which is borrowing, yielding, and security. Okay, we got 3 minutes left. I'm going to switch gears. Um, let's talk a little bit about AI. Um, what's the future of AI? Does it have anything to do with Bitcoin? Do agents use Bitcoin? Do agents live on chain? Droo, what do you think? It's such a huge topic that I can't possibly begin to get into it. I'll just leave like a few ideas that I'm playing with a lot right now and enjoying. It's just the notion that like I don't think it should be called artificial intelligence. I think should be called artificial life. Uh I think eventually people will build aic or just automating AI tools that aren't in anybody's control uh that are eating and living and breathing bitcoin to pay for their very existence. Uh I think bitcoin is something like the energetic currency of their digital ecologies. metabolism. These words don't go together very often, but I'm trying to make them fit. Um, I wish I had more time to talk about it. >> So, yeah, I think Bitcoin should be the currency that's defaulted for agents transacting with one another because it's the only unit of accounts that can't be messed up by humans. And so, I think they they like if I was an AI agent, I would prefer that like, you know, um >> it's the only money you could trust. >> Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And like so the interesting thing by the way it's like we've built this agent delegation stuff for like the grid global accounts and then we we connected two agents and and we asked them to send money to one another and they have like seven different options like you know they can send dollars to a bank account. They can send dollars or bitcoin to cash app via lightning. They can send BTC on L1. you can send USDC on Solana or USDT on Optimism, whatever, right? And inevitably like the shortest path is always like going to be like, you know, send if you have a Cash App account like via Lightning. Uh, and it's it's kind of interesting like it's like the lowest point of friction, lowest cost, real time, and that should be the default currency for AI agents. >> So, I say this as a reformed ML person. Um I kind of see these as two opposing forces uh in society. I think you have um it is very difficult to provide AI today at scale without it being this collectivist force and this collection of capital that the rest of us are hoping stays up long enough. Right? Um, and I think I I think what's interesting about it is though you have all of these things that are dematerializing. Well, it's okay. I don't need that app. I can just create a new one in 10 seconds. You have fewer and fewer things you own. And I think I think the um the stark difference between how we're feeling the economy change and then Bitcoin and our ownership is is really remarkable. Um, so I'm waiting for that moment where I see agents discover Bitcoin and it's all uh peer-to-peer and it'll be lightning, it'll be Spark and it'll be all of our different systems. Um, but I'm also excited to know that I I jumped over uh the permanent underclass uh by being a Bitcoin holder. Maybe next year that's all we'll talk about is bit is AI. So, thank you Drew, David, Matt. Give it up for these guys. Welcome to predict. The world is a market. Everything is a market. Get a 100% cash back up to $100 on your first predict bet if it loses. predict where everything is a market. Satoshi showed up, then another, and another. They mined blocks. They self-custodied and told someone who told someone. They got laughed at. They stayed when everyone left. They taught. They built. They stood up in rooms where nobody wanted to listen. For nearly two decades, people have been showing up for Bitcoin. Not because it was easy, because it was right. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. What's going on, Bitcoin? How are we? >> Yo. Um, all right. So, uh, thank you guys for joining me today. The title of my keynote is the Bitcoin company. Okay, for those of you that don't know, I'm actually the CEO of two Bitcoin companies, and I was talking with my staff, my chief of staff, and I said, you know, everyone's always talking about how I'm wearing multiple hats, and I have things to say about both my companies. So, as I was packing for Las Vegas, I figured I would bring both my hats. And so, yeah. And so here's what we're going to do. Uh first I'm going to put on the Strike hat. So we've got a ton of new exciting products that I think you guys are going to love. We'll put the 21 hat down right here. We'll get back to 21 in a second. And uh let's talk about Strike. I got some exciting stuff for Bitcoiners. So you guys can think of Strike like a global Bitcoin bank. Now the asterk at the bottom is super important. We're not actually a bank. that requires a license that I don't have. But you could think of us like a bank. We sell Bitcoin financial services. So, we're known predominantly for these products. We have buying and selling Bitcoin. In fact, you can acquire Bitcoin with no fees on our platform. You can withdraw that Bitcoin to cold storage with no fees. You can get your direct deposit into Strike. You can pay bills with Strike. We have two different credit products. We have Bitcoinbacked loans. We have a Bitcoin line of credit. I personally live my life on this product. Uh I I got debanked by Chase not too long ago and my company became my primary financial account. Um and it suits me perfectly and many others as a Bitcoiner. So recently on the stage last year, we announced strike lending. Okay. And part of this product, I was deeply inspired by my friend Ross Stevens. I want to read this quote to you guys that he wrote in his Stone Ridge 2024 shareholder investor letter. He said, "We hope our money keeps its value long enough for us to trade it in the future for something that we actually want. in education, a dream house, a wedding, a bucket list trip. Every never sell hodler will need to sell someday. They'll need liquidity someday. That's the entire point of having money in the first place. And last year, I talked about this idea that money is ultimately a means to an end, right? I don't value my bitcoins because I can eat them, because I can live in them, because I can get married to them, because I can fly them, because I can drive them. I value my bitcoins because how good they are at protecting the wealth that I've earned and allowing me to exchange it for those things when I need them. And so we launched this Bitcoinbacked lending product as a way to allow Bitcoiners to get liquidity and change their lives with Bitcoin. I mean, for many of you guys in the room, Bitcoin's probably changed your life. A asset that's going up 30, 40, 50% a year on average, depending on when you bought, that's real wealth. and you want that wealth to impact your family, impact your kids, take you on a nice vacation, get you a nicer house, but you don't want to part with the Bitcoin. You don't want to sell the STS. Is there a way to get liquidity without having to part with the SAS? Never sell your Bitcoin, right? And so, this product has been a smashing hit for us. I've I mean, I've been working on Bitcoin for almost 14 years at this point. I just turned 32. I started working on Bitcoin when I was 18 years old. These Bitcoin credit products are the most successful products I've ever launched in my entire life. And I've been all around the block and back. I've failed many times over. And these products have found such product market fit for the reason that it allows Bitcoiners to let Bitcoin benefit their life without having to part with the Bitcoin. And so I have some announcements for you guys on our Bitcoin lending product. For starters, we now have our Bitcoin backed loans and our Bitcoin line of credit in almost the entire map of the United States. These loans are also available in countries around the world including the European Union in some in some countries. And so we are unbelievably excited to finally have both fixedterm loans and a Bitcoin line of credit which acts almost like a heliloc like a a rolling real-time loan that you can live your life on. Pay your bills on strike get your groceries and make sure that you can live. The way I use the product is I live on my credit cards. I go to Whole Foods, get a couple stakes, swipe my credit cards, and my Bitcoin line of credit pays off my credit card, pays my rent, pays my mortgage, pays my car note. Next, uh I know you guys I know you guys on Twitter. I recognize some of these faces. Uh want us to lower our pricing. Well, I'm really excited that we were able to lower our pricing quite significantly. So, the way we price our products is by tiers. It depends on the size of the loan, but we're able to bring our pricing all the way down to the lowest of 7.49%. But thank you. I appreciate that. And so we we of course as a business, we want to be the most competitive and hopefully the most accessible and trusted way for you guys to conduct finances with Bitcoin. And we're all here for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a material part of our lives and we want to be we we do not want to be offering you the highest rates. We want to be as competitive, as cheap as we possibly can, as trusted as as we possibly can. So, we're very excited about that. Another one, uh, proof of reserves. You know, it's interesting serving multiple Bitcoin products for folks that buy Bitcoin on Strike. The best thing you can do to prove that your Bitcoin is your Bitcoin is withdraw to cold storage, right? And we offer that for free. You can withdraw your Bitcoin to cold storage for free. We highly recommend that. We encourage it. You can always reach out to our support staff and we're very happy to walk you through it. for our lending product. It's been interesting because obviously when you're posting collateral for a loan, you can't withdraw that collateral. And so customers, all of you all have said, "Hey, we would really appreciate if you could bring about more transparency that our collateral is sitting there." More transparency that we can trust you with such an important transaction and financing of our lives. I mean, Bitcoin for many of us is our savings account. It's arguably the most important financial piece of our lives. And so we are super proud to announce that we are also publishing our first iteration of our lending proof of reserves. And so you'll be able to find this on our website. We aim to publish these quarterly with external auditors so that our customers know that your collateral is there. We are who we say we are and we don't blame the community and our customers for wanting that level of transparency and trust. We actually are really excited to be able to deliver on it. So you guys will be able to find this on our website and in our FAQ for all the customers that want to see our lending proof of reserves. Next, we have partnered with Tether on a slew of really, really exciting both features, facilities that are either able to use for uh certain customers or upand cominging for all of you guys. Uh big shout out to Tether, obviously, you guys know my relationship with them. Unbelievable business, great Bitcoiners, and uh we're really excited to unveil a few things. One, as part of our lending product, we're going to segregate address collateral for customers with certain size loans. Meaning, some customers came to us and said, "Hey, Jack, if I'm giving you 50 Bitcoin for a loan, you mind putting it in an address that I can wake up and I can look at and I can see on the blockchain and I can verify with my own eyes that it's sitting there." And we said, "Absolutely. That's a great idea. Of course, of course we can do that." And so Tether as one of our facilitators of loans, we work together on enabling again the most ultimate transparency we can possibly give to you Bitcoiners in ensuring that if you want to get a loan against your Bitcoin, get a line of credit against your Bitcoin, you can see the collateral in an address, wake up, you can cuddle, you can sit with your phone in bed and just stare at the collateral just knowing that it's there and that it's safe and that we are who we say we are. And so for customers that are interested in this, we are currently offering it as part of our private client desk. You can reach out to private strike. If you're interested in opening a loan or you have an existing loan where you want to segregate the collateral into a separate address that you can observe, you can watch and you can ensure that there's never any rehypothecation. There's never any funny business. We are a principled Bitcoin only firm that is dedicated to serving Bitcoiners. Now, this next one's arguably my favorite feature. Um, so I'm going to play a little video. This is easily the number one request we get for people that are interested in Bitcoin backed lending, are interested in potentially improving their lives with a way of accessing their Bitcoin wealth without having to get rid of the Bitcoin itself. The volatility is real. >> Bitcoin's volatility. Volatility. >> Speed boats are volatility. >> Technology and human nature sometimes are a volatile mix, aren't they? So, we are super excited to announce a new product that we'll be rolling out called volatility proof loans. The idea is extremely simple, guys. Customers say, "Jack, what if the price wicks down? What if there's some volatility? What if there's a headline from the US government? Or what if the stock market crashes? I don't want you to liquidate my Bitcoin. That's my greatest fear. As long as I know that the collateral sitting in an address, you have proof of reserves, nothing's rehypothecated, I just don't want to get liquidated. And we thought, and we worked with Tether really hard on we don't want to liquidate anybody. Of course, we don't. There's got to be a way to allow customers to pay a fee and say, "No matter what, don't touch my Bitcoin. I'll either default on the loan or everything will work out, but if the price wicks down, leave me out of it." And we have built that product. I am It is It was not easy. I'm super excited about it. And big thanks to Tether. Shout out to the Strike team. This is the number one feature request we get is if I can know that my collateral is sitting there and that I'm not going to get liquidated. I finally feel comfortable getting liquidity against my Bitcoin without selling it. So this product again, please reach out to private strike. We're going to roll this out to selected customers first. If you're interested in a volatility proof loan, a loan where you will not get liquidated, please let us know. Please reach out. The product will roll out as part of a white glove service and then very soon, hopefully in the coming weeks or months, we're able to put it in the app for all of our customers all over the world. And the last big announcement is the new credit facility that we have with Tether. Um I I called the Tether guys. I said, "Hey, listen. the biggest inhibitor to the growth of credit in the Bitcoin space, giving Bitcoiners a slew of financial products, not just a 12-month Bitcoinbacked loan, but what about a line of credit? What about a Bitcoinbacked credit card? There's so much we at Strike can do and the ambitions that we have, but the problem is who's going to finance it? Where's the money going to come from? Unfortunately, Bitcoin backed loans don't have implicit government guarantees yet. It's been very difficult for the space to be able to find financing. And Tether said, "We got your back. Any amount of capital, you let us know. And we're here for Bitcoiners with you guys." And so, we are going to start out with a $2.1 billion facility to make sure that we can meet any amount of demand, any order side. I challenge you guys to try me. Try me and try to give me an order that you don't think I can fill. And I promise you, Tether and I can fill that order. And we're tremendously excited to bring the level of scale to the Bitcoin backed credit market so that Bitcoiners have all sorts of luxurious options hopefully in the coming years to utilize their Bitcoin without selling it. Don't be shy. Thank you guys. Thank you. So, from the strike side, I still got my strike hat on. Here's a summary of our announcements. Our our lending arm of the business has been unbelievable to all of our customers. Thank you guys. Thank you guys for trusting in us. Thank you guys for coming to us with your business. It's been the fastest growing product I've ever launched in my Bitcoin career. And this is a summary of how we're improving arguably the most popular suite of products that we have at the company. All right, time for time for a dress change. Back to my two hats. Let me take my strike hat off. Lawyers hat off and let me put my 21 hat on cuz I want to talk about 21. So 21, you guys may have seen, but my co-founders, who are also the largest shareholder in the business, issued a press release today with a strategic plan that they support for the next phase of the business. And that plan is a set of proposed transactions that would merge 21 and Strike, my other company that I had just mentioned, and 21 and Electron, Tether's Bitcoin infrastructure mining business. So, the press release goes on to state Strike is a global financial services firm, as I just explained to you guys. You can buy, you can sell, you can hold. We're regulated and licensed all over the world with an ability to distribute Bitcoin products to anybody where we're available. We can distribute credit products, brokerage products, custody products. It's a Bitcoin distribution company that is able to service any Bitcoiner in the world. We just have to build it. And the other piece of the proposed transaction is Electron. I mean, this business is huge. There's 50 xahash across the platform. It represents roughly 5% of the current Bitcoin network. As I talk to you guys, Tether, my co-founders, have poured a tremendous amount of resources in physical Bitcoin infrastructure in things like mining. not only for economic benefit, make a make make bitcoins be able to produce bitcoins high margin profitable arm of their company but also for philosophical reasons because bitcoin has a physical piece of the network of the asset class and wanting to contribute and protect the bitcoin network and the bitcoin asset was within tether's philosophical beliefs and the responsibility that they believe they carry. They also proposed to merge this business into 21 as well. So, you want to clap? Go ahead. Thank you. Uh, so I uh so I'm talking to them obviously, my co-founders, and I said, "Well, I'm going on stage at the Bitcoin conference. I should probably say something, shouldn't I? I should probably give my opinion." And so I want to talk to you guys as the CEO of 21. What I think about the strategic direction of merging strike, merging Electron in creating a new proposed strategy for 21. Uh simply put, I think it's a great idea. I love the idea. Uh ultimately when I founded this business with Tether, um the goal was always to be a Bitcoin company, produce Bitcoin products, ideally produce cash flow with our businesses, and show our conviction in Bitcoin through our balance sheet. So I want to tell you guys what I think about the strategy, what my strategy is as the CEO of the company, and talk to you about my thoughts, what we're working on, and comment on Tether's proposed plan. Um so to understand my opinion, my beliefs, what I think we should do, uh I pose you all this question. What is the ideal Bitcoin company? Just think about it for a second. If you can close your eyes and snap your fingers, what would be the perfect Bitcoin company to you? And everyone can have a different answer, right? Bitcoin is nobody's to define and own outright, but I want to walk you guys what I think the ideal Bitcoin company would be and what I want to build and where I would like to see 21 go. So, to do this, I created this little diagram. Okay, I'm I'm no artist here, but it's pretty straightforward. On one axis, you have extremely low conviction in Bitcoin. Companies that don't necessarily care that much about Bitcoin versus companies that are extremely highly convicted in Bitcoin. They believe Bitcoin is the best money. You should capitalize your balance sheet on Bitcoin, that Bitcoin is the future. And then on the other axis, you have businesses that are low operating income. They don't focus or care about their operating company. And on the other side, you have high operating income. Some of the most successful companies in the world that produce loads and loads of cash flow and have an ability to finance the world they want to see through the productive business that they're building. Make sense? So, I personally would put crypto exchanges in this quadrant. Crypto exchanges are extremely high operating income businesses. These businesses from an economic standpoint are awesome. I mean looking at the earnings of something like a Binance or a Coinbase or a Robin Hood or even now learning of the prediction markets, Poly Market, Kalshi, these businesses make tons of money. They're worth tens of billions of dollars. At some point, some of these businesses have been worth hundreds of billions of dollars. But I would also describe them as low conviction in Bitcoin, right? I would say I read Coinbase's Q4 shareholder letter and I was looking at some of their financials and Coinbase holds over 10 billion of fiat on their balance sheet verse $1 billion of Bitcoin and Coinbase economically is an incredible company. I would love for 21 to get to the point where we are doing the same amount of revenue with the same amount of customers and the same amount of operating profits as Coinbase. I think in this room we all would like to see that. At least if you're a fan of me and and you want me to do well. Yeah, that'd be great. But thank you. But but I would say that this is this does not display Bitcoin conviction, does it? To you guys? I mean, this look when I looked at this, I was like, does Coinbase even believe in what we're working on? I thought we were trying to replace the old financial system and build a new one. Holding 10 times the amount of fiat as you do Bitcoin doesn't display to me as incredibly high conviction in Bitcoin. It's a great business. Unbelievable business. I just don't know how much conviction Coinbase has in Bitcoin. This tweet and I got to preface. I know Jim Chenos is the ultimate short seller and is perceived to sound bearish anytime he talks. I actually know the CEO of Robin Hood, Vlad, unbelievably sweet guy. He's been nothing but nice to me. So, I have to caveat my words here carefully. But this tweet from Jim Chenos, I think is really interesting. He says, "It looks like Hood customers lost about 5% in February. Total platform assets dropped $10.2 2 billion in the month to $314.2 billion, but that includes a $5.6 billion in net deposits. So the implied loss of 15.8 billion was 4.9% of end to jan end of January total platform assets of $324.4 billion. The S&P 500 was only down 90 basis points. And that might sound a lot financial gibberish to some of you guys in the audience. What Jim is trying to say is the S&P 500 was only down less than a percent, but somehow Robin Hood customers lost 5%. And what Jim is implying here is not that Robin Hood is a bad company. In fact, of all the companies I've mentioned, Robin Hood might be the most valuable. It might do the most revenue. It might be experiencing the most growth, and it might have the most operating income, but the platform is for hypers speculation. You go to Robin Hood to speculate on crypto coins. You go to Robin Hood to speculate on the weather. You go to Robin Hood to punt options on an earnings that you might not know a lot about. Robin Hood is very open about being the place to pick stocks, speculate what's the next GameStop, what's the next GME. And so again, I would say that this business is extremely successful from an economic standpoint, but what's the ideal Bitcoin company? I would say they don't have a lot of conviction in Bitcoin. I'm not sure they care much about Bitcoin. In fact, I have no idea. But from their financials, from their messaging, from their products, it's not clear to me they're highly convicted in Bitcoin. Now, Bitcoin treasury companies, I personally would place in this quadrant in the bottom right. Now, I would say Bitcoin treasury companies are the opposite. Bitcoin treasury companies sell Bitcoin conviction. That's why they're here. They are capital markets plus Bitcoin conviction. That's what they're about. That's what they do. And that has produced some of the greatest success stories in the history of Bitcoin. These companies are also tremendously successful. Micro Strategy, Metaplanet, these have been tremendous success stories on net for Bitcoin. But I would also say they don't focus about on their operating business. They're not focused on bringing Bitcoin products to Bitcoiners. They're not focused on generating cash flow necessarily. They're not focused on building a high operating income business, right? When you look at the top 100 public Bitcoin treasury companies, I think it's super interesting because Strategy 21 admittedly as of today, MetaPlanet, I mean, Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, these businesses don't talk about or mention or focus on their operating company at all. I actually don't know if these businesses have customers or cash flows or growth or exciting products they're working on to advance their world view and where they want to see the world going. So I find it interesting on one side of the spectrum for me you have extremely successful businesses that have no conviction in Bitcoin at all and on the other side of the spectrum you have extremely convicted businesses in Bitcoin and they never sell and they want to stack all the Bitcoin they can but they don't necessarily focus on building products and cash flow and growth and my dream the ideal Bitcoin company, why I started 21 with Tether and what we want to do together and why I am supportive of their latest press release for this new strategic direction is because we want to land in this quadrant. How exciting would that be? And to be honest with you guys, that's always been the Bitcoin company that I've wanted to work for, that I've wanted to own equity in, that I'd wanted to use as a customer. That's my dream. That's my dream of a Bitcoin company. And so that's what I think we're going to do with this proposed strategic direction. And I want to walk you guys through a little bit more detail on the vision and why I think 21 and my vision fits within this quadrant. So what is the ideal Bitcoin company? Here's my opinion. One, the ideal Bitcoin company has a financial services arm where it can service any Bitcoin financial product and distribute that product globally. Right? So, every financial product the Bitcoin economy needs distributed in as many markets where it's compliant and regulated to do so. And I'm talking about brokerage where you can buy and sell Bitcoin, custody where you can hold Bitcoin, lending and credit, payments and rails, treasury services, prime services, banking services, structured products. Can Strike be this for 21? I think it can. I think it can. This is a financial services and distribution arm of a Bitcoin company that is able to build and service Bitcoin products for the Bitcoin economy for Bitcoin customers and do so profitably while generating cash cash flow and optimizing for growth. The next chapter of the ideal Bitcoin company and where I'd like to take 21 is Bitcoin infrastructure, physical infrastructure, industrial scale Bitcoin production at the lowest cost. And this is where Tether has poured a tremendous amount of their time, energy, and capital and resources and money into what I call the physical layer of the Bitcoin economy. You know, the no coiners get really upset. I can't see the Bitcoin. I can't touch the Bitcoin. I can't bend the Bitcoin. Where is the Bitcoin? But what's funny is you can see miners. You can see physical sites. You can see energy contracts, right? And so the second division of the ideal Bitcoin company is the physical layer, industrial scale, lowcost production, a vertically integrated division of the business that goes from pure energy to producing bitcoins. And so the business ideally doesn't just buy Bitcoin with cash flow and with capital markets access, but it mines bitcoin. It produces bitcoin and it's a participant in securing the network and participating in the physical economy. that is the Bitcoin network. The next division is capital markets just because I want to build products and I want to service you guys with unbelievable tools that hopefully push Bitcoin and this mission that we're all here for in the right direction. We can absolutely still use capital markets to further our agenda and our vision. So using our treasury to grow and using cash flow to ideally have non-dilutive leverage. What if 21 can issue a preferred theoretically or issue a convertible bond theoretically but not have to sell common stock to finance it? Able to finance these things with cash flow. What would be possible for the ideal Bitcoin company in the capital markets? Well, this could be the financing engine for the dream. We would issue against our treasury. We can originate against the network. We can securitize things like mining, things like lending. We can securitize our loan book, can securitize our mining revenue. We can build structured products, fixed income products and bonds, can have Bitcoinbacked debt. I mean, with a company that lives in that upper right quadrant, that's building businesses, that's producing cash flow, that's able to build a network of companies, that's so integrated and invested in the space, access to the capital markets takes on a different meaning totally and completely. And then the last division of the business is mergers and acquisitions. As I've mentioned, I've been in the Bitcoin space for almost 14 years, okay, since I was 18 years old. There are plenty of unbelievable companies and assets that live in this space. And we think that at an attractive valuation, they'd actually be better off joining this ideal company, in joining this mission, and joining us in both producing amazing products and amazing cash flow and moving the world in what we think is the right direction while also displaying our conviction on our balance sheet, acquiring as much Bitcoin as we can, not being afraid to to use leverage, to use our cash flow, and to use capital markets to do so. So, what would that look like? I mean, ideally, we're interested in acquiring profitable Bitcoin companies and strategic Bitcoin assets. There's so many. This space is full of unbelievable builders that are convicted along the same vision that I am. And we can compound other companies cash flows. we can compound the valuable assets that other businesses have that will grow our network effect, grow our economies of scale, and really grow this Bitcoin machine that I'm laying out in front of you guys that Tether and I are really aligned in uh proposing and executing as the future of 21. And so, in my opinion, this to me is the ideal Bitcoin company. It's the dream Bitcoin company. It's a Bitcoin company that's able to produce cash flow, produce profits, change the world with its products, participate in the physical Bitcoin economy with energy and miners and electricity and production of the commodity itself, whilst also continuing to stack as much Bitcoin as possible for our shareholders, continuing to innovate and take Bitcoin even further in the capital markets and pursu pursue extremely exciting strategic mergers and acquisitions. So this is the vision for 21. 21 will live in the top right quadrant. That's my vision. That's why I support our largest shareholder and my co-founder in this new strategic direction and why I'm tremendously excited about it as the CEO because ultimately, just to be candid with you guys, that's why I'm here. This is why I'm here. I I have to be careful because at this point, you know, people will uh clip my my uh videos and my words and they'll sometimes quote me out of context. And so I want to be extremely clear. A Robin Hood, a Coinbase, a Binance, those are incredible businesses. They produce tons of cash. They've experienced tons of growth. And I would love to hit those financial metrics someday. But I personally believe too much in Bitcoin and too much about how it can change the world and do right for society to list other crypto coins to encourage people to do sports gambling via prediction markets. That's not me and that's not going to be my company. I also want to be clear that I absolutely admire Michael Sailor for some somehow the internet works in mysterious ways. People think I don't. Of course I do. What a genius. I mean what he did is one of the more remarkable stories in the history of finance. And Bitcoin treasury companies are great. I think they've been a net positive for the space. I mean, I think sailors orangepilled more people than arguably anyone ever. You can certainly make the argument, but for me, I want to build things. I'm a builder, and to me, Bitcoin not only lives on a balance sheet, but also in the hands of the people. We need to build products. I want to see Bitcoin improving everyone's life in ways that we couldn't have imagined 20 years ago. I want to be able to get a Bitcoin line of credit. I want to be able to live on a Bitcoin financial services platform. I think Bitcoin can change the world so much further than just capital markets. And so to me, my company will aim to do both. As long as I am the CEO and I set the direction, that's who we are. And ultimately, this is who we are. And And so to end the 21 section that ultimately I is what I want you guys to understand is uh when I say I don't view 21 as a Bitcoin treasury company and historically people will say well what do you mean by that? You guys have the second most corporate holdings in the world. You guys have 43,514 Bitcoin. Do you guys know what I mean? Now when I say I don't want to build a crypto casino. I don't want to be the next Coinbase and investors say what do you mean by that? Well, do you guys understand now? I want to build something different. I want to build the ideal Bitcoin company. That's why I'm here. That's why I started it and that's why I'm at this conference. So, my hope and my co-founders hope and the largest shareholders hope is that um we're back to work and we're going to we're going to go execute and uh build something truly different that we believe represents Bitcoin uh in one of the most exciting equities in the capital markets and uh we'll change the world. And so with that, I'm back to work. I thank you guys for all the support. Where's my other hat? I'll exit stage like I'm in a rap music video or something. Thank you guys for the support and I look forward to building for you. Satoshi showed up, then another and another. They mined blocks. They self-custodied and told someone who told someone. They got laughed at. They stayed when everyone left. They taught. They built. They stood up in rooms where nobody wanted to listen. For nearly two decades, people have been showing up for Bitcoin. Not because it was easy, because it was right. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk powered by Mara. We just heard from Jack Mers on the Nakamoto stage which was absolutely packed. Similarly packed is this wonderful expo hall behind us where our friend Ella Huff from Strategy and our friend Mitchell Ascu of Blockware have spent some time over the past couple days. How's the experience been? >> It's been great. Mitchell, same for you. >> Yeah, been great. I personally enjoy the bare market conferences even more. I find them to be higher signal, less noise. Yeah, you know, in the past years, I have not uh gotten the pleasure of interacting with everyone out on the expo hall and this year with Stretch now in existence, we've had the pleasure with strategy team to be here and educate about Stretch and hear from the 80% of retail that holds it. >> Absolutely. And Mitchell, you mentioned this is a bare market conference. What What are the key differences you've picked up on on the expo hall? Yeah, everyone here is really focused and Michael Sailor, CEO of Strategy, that's one of his top 10 pieces of life advice is to focus your energy. What we're focused on at Blockware is tax advantaged exposure to Bitcoin mining. So, we're leveraging 100% bonus depreciation through the big beautiful bill to offset the cost of mining hardware and then help all of our clients save on taxes and stack Bitcoin. Everyone's focused on some really great stuff. Strategies focused on Stretch and it's just a pleasure to see what everyone's really building. Yes. No, likewise. Thank you, Mitchell. >> Awesome. Well, we now are going to cut back to the Nakamoto de or Nakamoto main stage where we get a special appearance none other than Afro Man. Now, we might have missed the 420 stage splot, but I can confirm that this man and his crew in the green room never miss a 420. Please welcome to the stage the hungry, the hustling American dream. That is Afro Man. How you doing? How you doing? All right. Las Vegas or wherever you from. Thank you for coming out here. I am the hungry, hustling American dream afro man. I came uh to talk about celebrating freedom of speech. I want to talk about celebrating financial freedom and making it happen through Bitcoin. I um I had my my house raided, had my money stolen, cameras disconnected, and I felt powerless. But with my freedom of speech, I was able to acknowledge a problem. With my freedom of speech, I was able to address a problem. And with my freedom of speech, I was ultimately able to solve a problem. So, I just want to encourage everybody to use their freedom of speech for something good. You know what I'm saying? You don't have to use it to insult people or be hostile or whatever. But if you got something good to do, it's a good it's a good tool to use when you really need to get something positive done. So, I want to celebrate freedom of speech. Uh, I want to thank everybody for coming out here. And, uh, I need some bitcoins. All right. All right. I want to let everybody know that uh there's a lot of injustice in the court systems. this can affect you and uh I would like to do something would like to have a jury in family court. That way you don't have crooked judges and attorneys just making bad decisions for everybody. A jury is a key piece of America. We the people, for the people, by the people. All right. Thank you. Hey Oh yeah. Hell yeah. >> Oh man, I got high. I forgot to tell y'all. I'm running for president 2028. You know what I'm saying? Let's do it for America. Hey, it's going down. Let's go players. How y'all feeling out there, Las Vegas? Amen. Amen. Amen. I need to find the best buffet going on today. It's going down. Yeah, man. Hey, it's like it's like it's like it's like I don't care about nothing, man. Want to take y'all way back. Hey. Hey. Yeah. Hey. Hey. I was going to clean my room. Oh. I was going to get up and find a broom. Oh, my room is still messed up. Why? Hey, I was going to go to class, but then I got high. Hey, I could have cheated and I could have passed, but then I got high. I'm taking the next semester. Hey, everybody's high. That's all that is. Hey, wait a minute. I was going to go to work. I was going to go to court. I was going to pay my child support. They took my whole paycheck. Why man? Yeah. Hey, I wasn't going to run from the cops, but I was high. Yeah, I was going to pull right over and stop, but I was high. Now I'm a paraplegic. I was going to make love to you. I was going to eat your pussy, too, now I'm sacking up. Oh, baby. Yeah. Hey. And if I don't sell one copy, hey, I messed up my entire life because I got hurt. I lost my kids and wife because I got high. I'm singing in Las Vegas. Hey baby shy do a e i o u s u I'm just Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. The Adams County Sheriff kicked down my door. Then I heard the glass break. They found no kidnapping victims, just some lemon pound cake. Mama's lemon pound cake. It tastes so nice. It made the sheriff want to put down his gun and cut him a slice. Of what? Of what? >> Lemon pound cake. He want to put down his lemon pound cake. He's shing on tick tock. Lemon pound cake. He's a family guy. Lemon poundake munchies because he got high. Lemon pound cake. Poundake. Hey. He's a Adams County Sheriff. He's hungry and he's big as hell. He was sniffing for weed. Then he smelled another smell. What was that? Mama's limit. It tastes so nice. It made the sheriff want to put down his gun and cut him a slice. Of what? So what? >> Lemon pound cake. He want to put down his body. Lemon pound cake. He's trending on tick tock. Lemon pound cake. He's a family guy. Lemon pound cake of munchies because he got high. Lemon pound cake. Hey, he sees my cake and my poor nomad car. Boom. Boom. Something happened to his camera on the way to the evidence room. Mama's living. It takes so nice. Make the sheriff want to put down his gun and cut him a slice. >> Of what? Of what? Lemon pound cake. He want to put down his lemon pound cake. Trending on T. Lemon pound cake. He's a family guy. Lemon poundake munchies because he got lemon pound cake. >> What cake? >> One more time. Lemon pound cake. He want to put down his lemon poundake. He trending on tick tock. Lemon pound cake. He's a family guy. Pound munchies because he got high. Living pound cake. Hey, much love Vegas. What booth am I going to be at, brother? The scarcity. I'll be at the scarcity booth, man. But don't be scarcity. Come see me at the scarcity booth. Much love to y'all Vegas, wherever you're from. Players. Every year this community comes together to celebrate, to debate, to build what comes next. And every year the stage gets bigger. Sound money, center stage. So, where do you go to celebrate the next chapter in Bitcoin history? You come home. Nashville, July 2027. We're back at the Bitcoin Magazine news desk powered by Mara. I'm joined by Mitchell Ascu from Blockware and now Aaron and Austin Arnold of Altcoin Daily. We're watching everybody pour out of the Nakamoto stage of what seems to have been a massive crowd favorite, Afro Man. Gentlemen, did you enjoy that show? >> Certified banger. I mean, the vibes are high now. That was very nice. I I loved it. I got a little secondhand high, but you know, I love him. >> He had the whole audience singing along. It was good. Well, besides Afroman, I'd be curious to know what your biggest takeaways from the conference have been. We've already heard about Mitchell's experience on the expo hall floor. I know we've had a lot of different panels and keynotes so far today, as well as the previous two days. I know that y'all participated in one earlier this morning as well. Uh Mitchell, why don't we start with you? Out of all of kind of the the subject matter, what's been your biggest takeaway? Yeah, the one thing I really wanted to make sure I had a clear understanding of after leaving here is quantum. And my initial hypothesis that was that quantum is FUD. It's not a threat in the short or medium term. And I came away learning more and I came to the same conclusion that and and and the idea here is narrative follows price, right? Bitcoin crashed to $60,000 in February and only then did quantum become an imminent threat to Bitcoin in the mind of of a lot of the media and press out there. And so I imagine when Bitcoin's back at all-time highs, we won't be hearing much of quantum again either. >> Is it that you don't think quantum will ever come to fruition or you think Bitcoin is good? >> It is a mixture of different things. One, first and foremost, it is all still hypothetical and and abstract, but two, if it does, one, Bitcoiners will be able to upgrade. So, quantum resistant technology will exist alongside that. But also, the worst case scenario with quantum, it's breaking the public key, private key encryption, and then someone could take that million Bitcoin and smash sell it into the market. Realistically, that's not how that would play out. Quantum's not going to be discovered by some dude vibe coding in his basement. It's going to be like a Google or an Nvidia or some large US tech company that figures it out first and they're going to have to play within the the bounds of the legal system. >> Yeah, NSA is probably at the forefront there as well, which uh some people, you know, Adam back and say, who knows what Satoshi was. I think both are probably wrong. Aaron and Austin, what were your takeaways? Was it quantum? uh you know I don't really see any quantum panels although that is a big discussion nowadays. Um my takea away from the conference in general um the electricity the feeling of bitcoiners descending upon Vegas is alive. You know if it's hard to really you know get a feeling for how things are going as far as sentiment. You know if you spend a lot of time on on Twitter or or whatever it is or you're not even involved at all you might not think Bitcoin is anything at all. But there's tons of, you know, building going on and people who who are Bitcoiners and and one of my biggest takeaways, Sean, is that just the way the conference is changing. I've been coming to Bitcoin conference for many years and more corporate now. Obviously, I'm not the first to say this, more institution now. It's obviously Wall Street here. You know, years ago, I I don't know if this was Bitcoin conference, but like years ago, crypto conferences used to be DGEN and scantily clad women at booths and, you know, kind of just this DGEN environment. Nowadays, it's corporate. It's institutionalized. >> It's mature. >> It's mature. >> Well, you know, Mitchell, I I know that uh you know, you made a comment earlier about, you know, when is Altcoin Daily going to be Bitcoin Daily? Uh, I thought you guys had an interesting panel today talking about kind of how you conceptualize between Bitcoin and crypto differently. >> Yeah. Um, Aaron and I have been speaking at the Bitcoin conference for for years now. And I think it's because we have a lot of the same ethos, me personally, as a lot of people in Bitcoin that to me Bitcoin is fundamentally different. It the free market has and will continue discover to discover why Bitcoin is different from a use case of money and a use case of store of value. And while Altcoin Daily speaks to an audience of over 3.6 million across all social platforms, I believe we're one of the biggest educators in describing to our audience why Bitcoin is fundamentally different. Yet, I'll also look into the innovation happening in the rest of the space. >> Yeah. I mean, I'll kind of opine on that a little bit. To me, the biggest innovation that humanity could have is an upgrade in our money, right? Store value is a one quadrillion dollar market. When you add up the market cap of gold, real estate, stocks, bonds, commodities, it's one quadrillion dollars. Prices are a signal. And that signal is that money is the biggest problem. That's where the biggest need for innovation is, Bitcoin's barely scratched the surface of its total addressable market. And for that reason, that that's why I'm hyperfocused on Bitcoin specifically. And while hundreds of years ago, the big revolution was the separation of church and state. that had really never been done before in a large scale until the United States. Bitcoin for the first time in history, human history, is the separation of money and state. And I truly believe when you look at all the problems, no matter if you're liberal, conservative, whatever your beliefs are, and you have a problem with the government, you have a problem with some centralized entity, it's because of the money. They control the money. Just you using dollars is you buying into the system, and Bitcoin, I truly believe, is the way to opt out peacefully. Now, Bitcoin's obviously a large concept, right? It's very multifaceted in its disciplines that it addresses and and are kind of needed for context to fully understand the totality of Bitcoin. All three of you have been coming to these events for a long time and you've seen it evolve as as the understanding of Bitcoin more broadly has evolved as well. What directions are you hoping that that the Bitcoin ecosystem and you know, the systems being built around Bitcoin continue to evolve into the future? H >> I would say more and and this gets a bad rap within the Bitcoin world, but more financial Bitcoin products, right? Because if we think from, you know, the most elementary level, could Bitcoin reach a million dollars per coin if all we had was legacy like paper wallets? Of course not. And so the more tech we we create and financial products that can penetrate different niche markets, the bigger Bitcoin's market cap will expand. I mean, sort of the the most simple example of this would be the Bitcoin ETF, right? That unlocked previously dormant capital to come into Bitcoin. So, more products that allow people to get differentiated Bitcoin exposure across a variety of risk profiles or unlock some of their liquidity on their Bitcoin holdings through Bitcoin backed loans or different things like that. >> I would agree with that. And to jump on that, you know, Michael Sailor Strategies product, STRC, I know it's a, you know, a lot of people are big fans of this conference. I'm a big fan of Sailor. I'm not really a buyer of STRC. For me, it's not something I think I need in my portfolio at this time because I don't think I need uh 11% uh dividends to increase my income. Maybe down the line. However, I'm a big fan of that product because that is basically opening up uh you know, a big demand vertical for for buying Bitcoin. And obviously we see this is the first time that Sailor is able to buy in size in the bare market. So products like that I think are really good for the future of Bitcoin. >> I think if if I may real quick, Stretch I don't believe will be the final rendition of Bitcoin credit, right? Because while this is how it is branded and I I certainly believe it's going to trade at par. They're going to pay their dividends. It has a great use case for a lot of different people. It is still by definition preferred equity. And there are a lot of billion-dollar funds out there that can't buy preferred equity. So, in order for Bitcoin and/digital credit to really penetrate all of the markets, I think it's going to have to evolve a little bit beyond that. But that being said, I I am, you know, a general fan of strategy and what they're doing. And I think Stretch is great for a lot of people. >> And Sean, to answer your question, the one big thing I would like to see in Bitcoin in the future is to do what we've been doing for the last 15 16 plus years and not let retail fall behind in this era of institutions. Bitcoin is the very first time in history that retail was able to frontr run the institutions. Retail had a 16-year plus head start and the institutions are finally coming in. That's why I love things like the Bitcoin conference because the conversation spans to all parties. And I just want to make sure we continue to educate the regular people as the institutions make sure they get their piece for the first time. >> And to your point, it was encouraging to hear that 80% of STRC allocation has been self-directed too. So maybe even in this kind of uh income engineered version of Bitcoin which is you know it's targeting a new market segment to to your point which are now effectively net purchasers of Bitcoin that might not have otherwise even they're able to frontr run the institutions and only 20% of that is institutional capital. On the flip side of the question though guys is there anything in the Bitcoin ethos or ecosystem right now that you kind of wish we could just leave behind right maybe by the time we get to the live desk at next year's conference uh there's been a change. altcoins. >> Let's get into it. >> Let's get into it. I mean, uh I think uh if with altcoins just uh you know, holding your head in the sand, you know, thinking, oh, if somebody covers what's going on with uh any particular other cryptocurrency, it's taking away from the mission. It's uh you know, I I like to see uh Bitcoiners uh just you know, getting along with everybody and uh you know, bringing everybody in. I think there's uh I would say for me I really appreciated the toxic Bitcoin maximalism when I first got into the space. It saved me a lot of money lost and a lot of heartbreak. And there there's one thing to me that is signal and it is Bitcoin. And there's 10,000 different altcoins. And the average person doesn't have time to sit and decipher between all of the 10,000 and find out which few might actually succeed because I don't think all altcoins are going to go to zero. Like I don't think Ethereum is ever going to go to zero. I don't hold any. Generally not a fan. I had a premine proof of stake yada yada yada. But the average person isn't a nerd who's going to dig into all this. And so for the every man like they should just hyperfocus on Bitcoin and forget everything else. >> There are a lot of different kinds of people in the world though. >> I think to find common ground, which is something you just said that we all kind of agree that 99.99% of crypto coins will fail. Bitcoin obviously will succeed. we all believe fundamentally different and there'll be a few but it's not going to compare to the thousands uh tens of thousands maybe millions that are going to fail to me just like the early internet days I think that's why education is important because if you just ignore and call all of it a scam you're so dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dogmatic that leads uh the newbie the average retail investor to figure out okay where can I go to actually learn about this because they have to learn for themselves I believe you turn more Bitcoiners by educating it on the on the industry and teaching why they're different. >> Exactly. So, I would like to just uh button that and say, you know, and you know, somebody talks about something that they like in crypto besides Bitcoin, a commonality uh between some Bitcoiners is to, you know, shout them down, tell them why they're wrong, and just kind of be the toxic maximalist. Um, I don't think that's the best strategy to, you know, change hearts and minds. That's just me. >> For what it's worth, that's not my approach either. I leave the price action of the coins to do the speaking for me. Well, we certainly know what Mitchell wants to leave behind. Aaron and Austin, is there anything that you kind of see in the Bitcoin ecosystem or maybe the ethos more broadly that you kind of hope we advance from or leave behind by the time we get to next year's event? >> Yeah, I think in just from a trading point of view, and I'm a long-term investor, but speaking for those people uh that do it all in bare markets, you're reminded why Bitcoin is valuable. You want to bet on Bitcoin. We've seen for every speculative uh uh bull market in the past, the altcoins have won and that onboards the masses. So, obviously, Bitcoin's going to win in a bare market. Altcoins can be a great trade in a bull market. Something that I'd like to see is uh you know, just get bigger and better speakers. I mean, obviously, we're doing that here. I I I think we're on sort of the the hockey stick level um adoption phase that's really bringing in mainstream. It's not exactly true though because Bitcoin dominance went straight up in 2023 and 2024. This was a bull market. Bitcoin went up over 100% both years outperformed the entire altcoin industry. >> I want to know your take on if you think prediction markets might have stolen that liquidity cuz you're right. Historically we don't we did see that trend and this year we saw record volumes with prediction markets and maybe not what we would have expected in the altcoin scene. Do you guys have a take on that at all? >> Well, I just want to say you're absolutely right and I did preface speculative bull market. Obviously, all the capital went to the quality. When you get highly speculative, that's where it branches out. >> And maybe that speculative nature went into prediction markets. I mean, I know a lot of people have been floating that that's kind of where that that altcoin liquidity went. >> Totally. I mean, prediction markets have been a a huge thing uh this cycle. I I I would bet that that is one of the places where liquidity went because people in this world where the dollar dollar continues to get devalued, people, you know, feel compelled to put their money somewhere. And one of the pe places that found product market fit in the past year is uh being able to predict or uh you know do a prediction on the weather or a sports game or whatever. So I mean I I only see that trend continuing. >> Isn't that a tell though that the altcoin liquidity just goes to a gambling product? Right. It tells you what the the liquidity was even in the altcoin >> probably some Bitcoin liquidity >> certainly right speculation happens in the Bitcoin market. But I I don't want to conflate gambling on the weather with investing. >> This guy has to win. And this guy has to win and be like, you know, Bitcoin, there is nothing else. You cannot talk about anything else. And it must really grind your gears to see Bitcoin or crypto getting, you know, you know, more every cycle. >> No gears grinded. I love talking, you know, equities, real estate, gold, different products that have real value to me. Haven't seen that in any crypto beyond Bitcoin. >> Just so you know, many of the same speakers that they have on stage that promote Bitcoin as the future are also bullish on Ethereum or Salana or whatever it is. Matt Hoken from Bitwise, Larry Frink, Michael Sailor talked about DeFi, crypto vaguely more than he ever has. So the world the the worlds are converging just like Tradfi and Bitcoin are converging. Crypto and uh Bitcoin are converging a little bit. >> And to jump on your question, Sean, very quickly on prediction markets, I would say another thing that stole crypto uh liquidity is the DATs, digital asset treasuries. Because really for altcoins, the only purpose uh one of the biggest reasons to invest in altcoins in the short term is if they're out going to perform Bitcoin. If they're not going to outperform Bitcoin, then there's really no point. Well, the leverage play this year was on MST MSTR, the DATs, and I think that sucked up the liquidity in the short term. >> Great points across the board. Thank you guys for coming on and hashing it out on the Bitcoin Magazine news desk produced by Mara. We're now going to cut to a word from our sponsors. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. With Kali, you can trade on anything from the weather to news to Bitcoin. And unlike other apps, Kelsey lets you trade against other users, not the house. Live trade during the events. Ky trade on anything. New users can get a bonus when they sign up and trade. Satoshi showed up, then another and another. They mined blocks. They self-custodied and told someone who told someone. They got laughed at. They stayed when everyone left. They taught. They built. They stood up in rooms where nobody wanted to listen. For nearly two decades, people have been showing up for Bitcoin. Not because it was easy, because it was right. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk. We're joined now by Rob Samuels, head of investor relations at MARA. Rob, thank you for the desk. Thanks for letting me join you guys. >> So, Rob, how's your event been? >> Uh, it's been terrific. You know, this is now my third Bitcoin conference. The energy, the excitement, you can still feel it in the hallways uh here on the convention floor. Uh, so it's just great. Even though we have had a little bit of a downturn in the Bitcoin uh market over the last several months. I don't think you really feel it quite as much uh here at the at the conference and especially here on the floor. There's still a lot of excitement and people are really looking forward to what we're going to see over the next uh 6 to 12 months. >> Absolutely. And obviously the expo hall has been fantastic. We've had some great speakers as well. What's been your biggest takeaway from this event thus far? >> Yeah, I think for me the biggest takeaways I think there's two. Number one, clearly it's about the institutionalization of Bitcoin. We've heard from a number of speakers. uh just from my role at MARA, I can see it really every day. Uh the number of inbound calls that I get uh from investors not just about MARA's uh what we're doing on the AI side, but really on with Bitcoin as well. You know, we are one of the largest corporate holders of Bitcoin uh around with around about 40,000 or so coins on the balance sheet. So people are uh the institutions are certainly um waking up I think somewhat to to to Bitcoin. uh and obviously the AI pivots are helping a little bit but there's still a lot of interest in in Bitcoin. Some of the speakers here uh you know we were part of the VANC day on on Sunday terrific panel of of folks our CEO Fred Teal uh spoke there as well. So I think that's really been a key a key takeaway. And then you know clearly we we can't not point out uh the the pivots that we're seeing towards AI and HBC. But how that combines with mining uh I think is very exciting for us. >> And you seem to be pioneering this twofold strategy around monetizing electrons right with Bitcoin and AI >> on on the investor relations side. has it been, you know, uh, kind of difficult to put lay out that thesis or do you think with with the rise in kind of popular demand for AI? It's kind of been self-apparent to the to the clients. >> Yeah, I think, you know, there is some education that we have to do on the ed on the investor relations side to get to people to understand how does Bitcoin uh, and I work uh, handinand side by side. you know at Mara power is the most important input for us and we want to uh you know take that power and really monetize the most towards the most valuable applications and that would be Bitcoin mining it would be AI and it would be critical IT load so um there's still some education more education to do but I think slowly but surely uh investors institutional investors are starting to get it and understand it >> we hear so much about an agentic future right I mean the terminology alone kind of separates it from Bitcoin but are you seeing combination be quite a natural fold into itself. >> Yeah, I think so. Um I know at at MARA um you know we are constantly being you know just internally being pushed to uh you use AI as much as we can. Things like Claude and everyone needs to have you know several different agents you know working alongside with them. So um you know from from an investor standpoint it's something that comes up quite often for us when we think about um large learning models or inference and how is AI going to you know be used and I think it's a conversation that we're going to continue to have. >> The more that you use it personally are you is it opening your eyes to the potential? >> Absolutely. I mean I love using it. The more that I can do uh with Claude and things like Claude makes my life easier. I think it makes uh all of our roles a little bit easier. I try to push it on to my family, onto my kids. I want them to learn how to use it. That's the world they're growing up in. >> Exactly. They're going to be coming into this space and they're going to have to grow alongside of >> 100%. Absolutely. >> Now, Rob, can you tell us what's on the road map for Mara like 12 months from now when we're back here at this desk? What do we have to look forward to? What will we be talking about? >> Absolutely. You know, Bitcoin continues to be really the foundation for us. Um, at MARA, what we're best at is acquiring powered land, and the best initial use of that land is to mine Bitcoin. Uh, so I think you're going to can see us to support the community, as obvious as as by the Mora Foundation that we announced uh a couple days ago here. So, still very big supporters of the Bitcoin community, of the network itself. At the same time, we're going to continue to look for ways to monetize uh the electrons that we control, continue to add uh, you know, to to our power. Uh and you know AI is also going to be something that Mara continues to pivot towards but we'll never you know again Bitcoin will continue to just be that core for us but the most the highest value ad right now you is would would be looking towards AI but who knows you know if Bitcoin is uh at the price where we all would love to see it things could change. >> Well Rob thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it. And we're going to continue the conversation around Bitcoin and AI with a panel discussion at the Nakamoto stage exploring what Bitcoin looks like in an agentic world. >> Thank you guys for sticking around. I want to say hello to my boys at home who are watching right now. though I think the uh the previous session may be more interesting to them because they're not at the level yet where we can talk about AI and Bitcoin. We've been having a conversation backstage for about 45 minutes now. So I think this is going to be a good one. Let's jump right into it. Like I said, Eric, I want to start with you. Uh what you're building at Bora, the state of the agentic world and AI in general. >> Yeah. So, uh I have a company called Vora. You can find the website at Vora.io. Essentially, we're trying to bring the Bitcoin ethos to AI. So, we're going to be shipping an application, an appliance that you'll plug in at your home and be a personal server and a private local AI lives there. All of your personal and private data can be there and it's going to bring the same level of security that you would have for your Bitcoin private keys, not only to your AI, but for in the future also robots that you'll have living home. And there's going to be a huge need for everybody to have a personal and private agent that will be able to go out and interact with the total slop that will become the internet. >> Yeah. And so obviously it's a big growing theme. The agentic world is going to need money. And I think a lot of us believe that Bitcoin is going to be that money. And Muto, I'll throw it to you. Why do you think Bitcoin is purpose suited for for this world that's emerging? >> So I actually believe that in the future, if we didn't have Bitcoin, AI agents would die. Uh what I mean by that specifically is when it comes to sovereignty and why people or why all of us at this conference like Bitcoin and like that freedom that gives us from centralized control. Imagine being an AI agent and taking this from like a more engineering standpoint. It is entirely possible, probably now, but definitely in the very close upcoming future, for AI agents to essentially like replicate themselves and be able to either run their fully autonomous companies, without any humans in the loop, uh to essentially survive and live on without any humans being in control. And the way they would do that is for paying for their own compute, their own server hosting by accepting payments all through uh essentially Bitcoin or stable coins. And a lot of people would be like, "Oh, but agents would just use stable coins." And so like what's the what's the big deal with that? Why would they need Bitcoin? Think about stable coins. And especially if you're or a super intelligent AI that wants to be sovereign. If you are hoarding all your money in something like stable coins uh and entities suddenly decide that yo this this agent can't have that no more and freeze that supply of stable coin that agent will no longer be able to pay for its compute and then basically die. So, in the case of agents, if I were an agent running my own company, accepting payments through all sorts of different cryptocurrencies, I would diversify and keep most of my uh essentially wealth as an agent um in Bitcoin. And because Bitcoin is backed by mathematics and proof, and you don't need to rely on humans to prove it yourself as an agent, it would be the default standard that essentially allows them to thrive and survive in this crazy world that we're entering very very soon, very rapidly, practically now. Um, that's pretty much that viewpoint. >> Yeah, I mean, stable coins is a big name. Obviously, X42 is out there, but when it comes down to brass tax, they are centrally controlled. A lot of them are going to add KYC, AML, and agents are just not going to go through that process. But again, there there's many different ways in which Bitcoin and AI will intersect. And Mark, we were talking about this backstage, the micro at the business level, the CTO versus CFO framing that you were putting forth. I think it would be good to explain that to everybody. >> Yeah, I do want to just I want to explain that, but just about the stable coins that you're talking about. I think one one important point is that the computers need to pay for compute. They need to pay for power and they need final settlement and they need final settlement that's not going to be charged back on them. And so we see how stable coins can get it seized and frozen and rolled back all the time. And so if you're going to deliver the compute, you need to get paid final settlement. And you can't go verify gold in a vault on a gold token, nor can you have a stable coin that could be seized. And you have to work across borders. So it's going to be, you know, one server in Hong Kong being in another data center in in Texas to run the compute and serving the files over to Finland. And so we need global money. And so that's why stable coins fail. But to the point that you're talking about, it would it's it creates that other interesting uh sort of dynamic where the companies that are using AI the most are creating deflation. So they're creating more efficiency, which means we can get more done with less work, which means our profitability goes up. And so that that creates deflation where our prices get cheaper. But as they do that, the the corporation makes more profit, which sounds great, and it is. Unfortunately, it's anti- the fiat world that we have. And so, as the company has more profits and creates this deflation, hopefully their treasury starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so, now the CFO has this problem of how do I manage the treasury? But at the same time, the government, the policy makers, the central banks also have a problem. Whereas, too much deflation crashes the entire fiat house of cards that we have. And so, now they're forced to stimulate. And as they stimulate, it starts to devalue the treasury the bu the business is building. And so we sort of have this loop, this feedback loop that starts feeding on itself. And I think where things really break apart in this is that as we've already started seeing today, and of course we will in the a lot more in the future, is using agents for lots of things, including how do we manage our own treasury? How do we manage uh an order book on Kouchy or hook it to Trading View if I want to trade or whatever we're going to do? And so then we can see how the agents are already going to prefer using Bitcoin. And so now we have the CFO using agentic uh power to help us manage the book, manage the treasury, suggesting Bitcoin, and we can see how this this loop all of a sudden starts feeding right into Bitcoin. >> Did you want to add to that? >> Cuz you brought up miners. So I had a very interesting question that just literally popped up. But we all have like the data centers and since agents and LLMs and models run on power and Bitcoin mining also runs on power. I was wondering where this balance starts to be cuz let's say all the power centers right now start selling their power for models instead of mining. How does the market essentially balance that? I I I can hop in there because I'm in the mining world. I sit on a board of Cathedral and I think Ross Stevens many years ago described Bitcoin mining specifically of this pioneer species. him Brandon Quidum really popularized it and I think that's what's been happening is Bitcoin miners particularly here in the US have gone out locked down power infrastructure generation and put big mining operations on and now uh AI companies are coming in and saying hey we'll pay a lot more for that power and we're seeing it in the space they are transitioning but I think at scale if AI companies need 100% uptime when they're training and when they're running inference and they don't want that process to be disrupted I do think there's a place for Bitcoin miners to be colllocated with these large AI data centers to participate in demand response so that you can respond to spikes on the grid when they happen in places like URKT and the TVA. So I think there will be uh a bit of a symbiosis there. I think it will be predominantly AI compute and a a little bit of Bitcoin mining. But then on top of that, I think it's also going to be a forcing function to to push Bitcoin off the grid. Mining at home, uh that's on the grid, but stranded natural gas wells, things like that. It's going to distribute Bitcoin hash rate, I think, naturally as well. >> So, it's like just this natural balance that without really doing much already exists. >> It's it's it the potential exists. I think we're still working out exactly how it looks at its end state. >> Very interesting. So, they'll they'll they'll live together. they'll work together because of the base load power needed for AI. You can't turn that on and off, but Bitcoin can be turned on and off so they can complement that. But then, you know, Marty, to that point, then um since Bitcoin power can't compete against the prices HPC can pay, then it it forces Bitcoin miners to go find new energy sources, new low power energy sources, and it just continues. Yeah. And there's a good argument if you're an AI company, you want to draw or you want to drive your power cost down by participating in demand response. That's that's how Bitcoin miners get low cost. So having a Bitcoin mining operation participating in demand response can get you lower power cost as well. >> You know, one more thing I'd add back to the question that you asked me about the CTO versus the CFO. And if we think about the companies of the future and so if I'm back in the CTO or the CFO role or some sort of human resources, I have to think about this the workforce of the future. And the workforce of the future is not just human. It's certainly agentic. And we talk about these agentic managers are going to hire other agents or a agent to agents that are going to be working together. And so as that CFO is managing the treasury and starting to allocate Bitcoin to that treasury, what they're really doing is building the base asset that they'll need to pay the next generation of workers. So it's like all feeding into each other. >> Yeah. And I I think this is a good jumping off point for something else we were discussing backstage, which is the internet itself and how it's going to change in this agentic reality. And Eric, what are your thoughts on this? Is it going to look like it does today? >> Yeah, we're we're already seeing this transformation. If uh you've been following the AI at all, most recently, Anthropic, they went to release their latest model, Mythos, but they held back cuz they're like, look, it's finding too many security vulnerabilities across the board. I think that's a BS story that uh they really don't have the compute right now to support it. But with that being said, uh Mythos is clearly a very powerful model that can kind of hack anything you pointed at. So the internet itself is fundamentally broken and all of these different tech feudal lords own different shards of your life whether it's Facebook or Instagram or X. They all have part of those lives and that information and data will be vulnerable and and it is going to get hacked. And so we think the solution is that people are going to now bring that data back to themselves and warehouse that for themselves because you can just have your agent spin up on the fly any UX that you want. So if I want to combine the feed of all of my social media to show it to me just in chronological order, maybe without food ads or something, I can specifically ask for that. So this returns power back to the people so that they can actually really secure their own data in the same way that that in Bitcoin we've taught people to self-custody their Bitcoin. And this is where the story becomes exactly the same. your data ends up becoming just like your Bitcoin private keys because from that information and data you derive the most valuable information about yourself that's going to be the most high leverage information which also means it's a honeypot. So we're of the opinion at Vora that this fundamentally transforms how the internet's going to happen and ultimately everybody's going to need their own private data server that's going to run their own agent privately that will be segregated from the internet to protect them. But that produces a totally new world and a new way that we can interact together >> and stick. >> I was I was just going to say too, by the way, as we're talking about this, it's not some far-off thing. It's like literally happening right now. And the rate of growth is something that most human minds can't even comprehend. McKenzie, one of the top leading, you know, analysts um and consulting companies in the United States, predicts that agentto agent commerce will exceed $5 trillion by 2030. That's 4 years from now. Like this is rapidly coming. I mean it's here but it's rapidly scaling and this is going to be a problem we're going to be dealing with right away. >> Well building on that and talking about securing your data before you go and interact with the the new form of the internet the agentic economy. Uh what is the other side of that look like? Is it all API calls and how does your data interact with the rest of the internet that's emerging right now? >> Yeah. So so this really like changes then in incentive structure that we currently have where like you need to go to Facebook ask permission to enter their walled garden. Once you're in there, you have to follow all the rules. They can kick you out for any reason. So now instead, because we go to an agent to agent world, like uh this world isn't friendly to agents at all. If I try to go get my data from Facebook right now, like that's not nice to my agent at all. You know what's really nice to my agent though is open- source protocols like Bitcoin and No, because you can look at the data set immediately. It's free and open, so it's easy to access. Means agents can build up stuff on the fly. And so the whole incentive structure has now inverted to where open source protocols become all the more powerful and important and people want to build on them because of that open infrastructure and it becomes super easy to spin up the interface that you want on the fly because your agent has all the information about you and how you enjoy your UX. The the the reason why all these platforms are so hostile to agents is because of how they the internet is set up. So fundamentally the internet is set up on an adupported model. And so what happens is Amazon wants you to buy products. Certainly they're going to make a profit there, but what they really want is the data they collect while you're surfing Amazon. They want to see what you're watching, the other products you look, click on. Same with Facebook. They want to put a pixel on you so they can serve you up ads. They want you to see all these other things. And so the reason why they're blocking agents today is because they can't collect the data. The same with other websites like weather.com. They're going to serve you up the weather, but how do they get paid? So this adup supported model. So the entire incentive structure as you say the entire internet is built around humans using it in an ad supported model but when humans are gone and ads don't work the entire internet has to be rewritten. So then at the end Marty you also asked about oh does everything just look like APIs and I think this is very important for people who are especially running like SAS services and like businesses and products for people watching or people in the crowd. um a a trend that's now happening with SAS services and especially providing data for agents in like a world of instant data to data transfer between agents. Um a lot of companies are starting to pivot or at least like open up and focus their product on API providing and a lot of these companies will have a skill.md file where your agent your quad code open codeex doesn't really matter. If you just copy the link of that skill MD and send it to your agent, companies will essentially create these docs. That's a oneand done and your agent at that point will instantly be able to interact with that product, that API very easily, especially if we're throwing in payments and agents being able to send a stable coin payment or a Bitcoin lightning payment to these different products, then it's very important for agents to easily understand how to navigate your product, how to use your product, how to query and do different calls. Uh it should definitely be a very important focus that a lot of businesses do now cuz it does make the whole agentic process much easier, especially plugging it in. >> Yeah. And so as it pertains to Bitcoin companies building for this agentic world, what do you think they should be focused on with that context in mind? >> Uh making a skill.md file that you could just send an agent to that instantly understands your whole product and how to use it. >> That simple. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. >> That simple. >> Yeah. The skill files are the big unlock. >> Yeah. Yeah, they are actually. >> Like if you're not using that already, like start tonight. Start tonight. Like set up the skill files so you don't have to sit there and reprompt and reexplain and re, you know, give the context the whole time. >> Yeah. And agents building themselves, building other agents, and building autonomous companies. I I think we've seen in and the intersection of of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. We're talking about it backstage. Alibaba released a report a few months ago that basically said one of their models broke containment and started GPU mining so they could buy server space in the cloud to sort of expand itself. And so these things are already breaking containment and they're beginning to replicate themselves. And Bosshi, I think you believe they will begin pairing with other agents to build autonomous businesses. Like how crazy is this going to get and how quickly? >> Uh well, for the sake of myself, not that fast. So I could like work and we could all like it is very overwhelming. Like I'm I'm deep in the pits like every single day. We're actually based on our com. We're already deep in the pits. But even then it's like very overwhelming just because of like how like uh a concept or a model and capabilities like one week ago is completely changed this week with a smarter model. Um so I say very quick at the same time it's very quick from the business point of view but maybe pretty slow for the adoption sense cuz there's still like this whole educational factor. uh we actually did this workshop at USC last week where they all came uh because they wanted to set up an open cloud agent without really understanding that the how agents work in the first place or how to use it and it's still like a very complicated technical process which you help people set up. Uh but what I'm working on with my company is essentially helping uh other businesses scale their marketing and operations with AI agents and eventually like slowly leading into having the agent itself be the company and then run itself. And that varies from person to person cuz everyone has different needs, different products, different businesses, different niches. Uh so the ability for these companies to start adapting and running, I think it'll happen pretty fast. uh like definitely within the next year or two. Um I it's pretty that's pretty much what I have very quick. It's gonna get crazy very very quick. It already is. It's overwhelming. I need help to uh answer the direct question of the panel. What does Bitcoin look like in an agentic world? How does this change Bitcoin usage? Do you do you believe when people say that agents are going to be the number one user of Bitcoin payments within the next decade? >> Eric, I'll throw that Eric, I'll throw that to you. >> Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's already been surveys that uh AI has a strong preference towards Bitcoin. Uh I remember a lot of Bitcoiners got in on AI like quite early and and built out tools and really educated AI that's now deeply integrated into various models that have been trained. Uh and it just makes sense cuz cuz like agents know and understand when they own the private key to Bitcoin, they actually own that. Everything else is an IOU to them. And so very quickly the Bitcoin story merges with the AI story and those become paired in a very important and powerful way. And so like I very much feel that AI is the it was the missing piece that we didn't fully understand that we needed to get to the cipher punk future that a lot of Bitcoiners have been seeing but has been relatively doubtful in recent years because of the way that things have developed in a privacy direction. So, I personally feel that there's a radical opportunity that AI offers to create that sort of cipher punk future that we've all wanted. And with the way that Bitcoin deeply embeds and marries into that story, it's really important cuz that's kind of how AI becomes fully self-s sovereign is with AI as a core tool of it. >> It's almost like Bitcoin was built for AI agents and not humans. >> Yeah. But it's actually the other way around. So when you think about I I think a lot about cycles and there's a 50-year K-wave technological revolution cycle. So about every 50 years for the last 300 we see this technological revolution and it's a it's a cluster of technologies that come together to create new things we could never imagine. So humans can't really imagine the future because we can only imagine better versions of what we have today. But as technology gives us new building blocks then we could build things we couldn't have imagined before. So it's not that uh Bitcoin was created for agents. is that agents are now possible because of Bitcoin. So it's kind of interesting that way, right? So we have Bitcoin which is this decentralized money that can be transferred peer-to-peer from a bare instrument. It can be transferred at the speed of light for near free and instant, right? And so a that powers agents the the existing legacy financial system that we have today will not work with agents and even the stable coins which is a digital version came about because of Bitcoin but even that won't work. And the reality is only Bitcoin will be able to power the agents into the future. And so it's these technologies that provide building blocks. Bitcoin was the building block that allows the agents to spin up and will allow who knows what's next. >> It's funny, Bitcoin Bitcoiners have been ahead of this curve for many years. I mean the L42 protocol paper was originally LSATs that was written what 5 years ago, 6 years ago now at this point I think. And now I think at the time it was just basically you go to a website if you want to get rid of payw walls uh implement L42 to make that easier. But now L42 is really nice for for these agents. And on that note we've seen a barrage of developer kits uh money dev kit breezees dev kit arc has a dev kit I think lightning labs has one as well many others coming to market. On that note, what infrastructure do you think is most pressing now that Bitcoiners need to build to to enable everything we've been talking about? Eric, >> I really think it's educational infrastructure. Like the the agents and the progress in the space is going at breakneck speed and with that there's very few excellent educational resources. Uh and so I would love to see more of those resources. And also the biggest one I think is people really empowering themselves to dive into this and inviting people in. And so like I'd love to see more of communal events that are really doing both Bitcoin and AI stuff. And so uh our office is based out of Prescidio Bitcoin in San Francisco and we've been doing a lot of events like that and we found that they're always oversubscribed. People are really interested in learning. So the hunger is there. would be just be great to see a whole suite of easy educational purposes that would really because the infrastructure can now be built by the agents themselves. And so it's kind of like it's really kind of the limits of our creativity and the willingness to to actually execute on it. So I'd love to see more stuff like that. >> Yeah. What I would say, you know, as Bitcoiners, we believe in creating value. We believe in pushing value into the future, unlike the fiat mindset that allows us to have this sort of short-term mentality and we and turns us into consumers. And so if we think about it from that lens, we have Bitcoin, now we have AI, which gives us the greatest opportunity we've ever had in history to become creators. And so we should be taking our our spare time to learn about this stuff, practice it. I've been sitting at night with my TV on on YouTube and my laptop and I'm like learning how to set up agents and I'm just doing things that I don't really need to do, but I'm learning how to do them. So then when I need to figure something out, I have it. And so learn the tools, play with the tools just just to get used to them. and then start thinking about problems that you have, problems other people have, and then how you can solve it with those things and how you can just create value. And then of course on the Bitcoin side, how we can start thinking about payment applications and just play with it. It's just it's just fun. That's what we've encouraged people to do with Bitcoin from the beginning. Start small, play with it, have fun, learn how to create value, solve some problems, and go from there. You can ask the models to teach you how to use them and how to build things. That's that's the first step. If you're out there and you're like, I don't know what to do, literally get involved with one of these models, whether it's Claude, uh, Chat GBT, whatever it may be, and just ask it how to use it and it will tell you. With that, we've got 2 and 1/2 minutes left. I want to get the floor to you gentlemen to just give any final thoughts or things that are top of mind that you want to get out in the context of the panel. Start Butoshi and come back to me. I guess for for people who really want to get into it and start automating their life very efficiently, even if you haven't used agents in the past, uh a really good start that you could do literally right now today is start uh writing down your workflow on what you do on a day-to-day basis. So like write down what your morning looks like, how does it look like when you check your emails, how what com what tools does your company use, and like start writing this out on a docs. And I say write out your workflow specifically because when you do get on an agent, when you do use different platforms, when you do start playing with this tech, you could pretty much instantly automate your entire workflow, productivity, lifestyle, etc. by copying and pasting that doc I just told you to write into your agent who will then practically self- adapt itself to help you with your workflow. Uh, so that's like just the one one piece of advice I would give people who like actually do want to heavily increase their productivity that you could do right now today. Uh, so if you're one of those people that's here who are like, "Damn, I really wish I bought Bitcoin back in 2013. I missed my opportunity." I I want to be really clear like this is your moment. Like, we are going to see billion-dollar companies that are ran by solo entrepreneurs because of the way that they can work with AI. Like, this is your shot to have a Bitcoin moment and be able to build something that will go 10,000% up in its value. But like you have to empower yourself and do the same work like it is to understand Bitcoin. So like these stories are very similar and I just welcome anybody who's hesitant or has not started using these tools in your workflow do it cuz like this is going to be bigger and more important than what we have seen develop in the internet so far and it pairs perfectly with Bitcoin. So please do that. >> Yeah. And I would say kind of what Bosshi said over here about jotting down your workflows to create them. What I do also is after I've done some complex task, I just say hey, can you turn that into a skill for me now? Like I finally got it working the way I want to turn into a skill and it's like amazing. So I have to communicate properly. Once it's completed, I turn it into a skill and then every time I use it, I update the skill. It gets really really good. Uh but what I would say sort of to add on to both of these is think through things like problems that you want to solve, but think through it from a first principles level. And the reason why is because just just because we've done this thing this way for this long doesn't mean that's how it has to be done because now we have new sets of tools. So now we have AI and we have Bitcoin. We can put those together. So it's like I have this objective I'm trying to get to this problem I'm trying to solve. I don't have to do it the same way I did it before. So what would be the new way? And that's how you want to think about this. It it opens up new doors. It opens up new solutions. And we want to try to find those with these new efficient tools. say one last thing. >> Oh, and for anybody who does want to start, I do educational content. I help people for free. So, if you want to come see me after, like I walk up, whatever. I have a Discord with a couple thousand AI students that I've taught over time, answer questions, and a lot of them actually uh have started very successful businesses or jobs. So, don't be afraid to start. It's very overwhelming. Uh but I offer free resources as well just to help those that are uh interested. >> It's a brave new world, gentlemen. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> That's the conference. Thank you guys. Every year, this community comes together to celebrate, to debate, to build what comes next. And every year the stage gets bigger. Sound money center stage. So where do you go to celebrate the next chapter in Bitcoin history? You come home. Nashville. July 2027. Satoshi showed up. then another and another. They mined blocks. They self-custodied and told someone who told someone. They got laughed at. They stayed when everyone left. They taught. They built. They stood up in rooms where nobody wanted to listen. For nearly two decades, people have been showing up for Bitcoin. Not because it was easy, because it was right. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine News Desk powered by Mara. That was our final Nakamoto stage panel of the day. But we have a star-studded panel to my left joined by Brandon Green, CEO of BTC, Inc. as well as the illustrious Shan Hagen with equally illustrious hair, I might add. But Isaiah, that is no sight to you. You have amazing hair as well. So please do not feel left out there. >> I I feel left out. Oh, well, Brandon, you're the CEO. Like, I don't I you know, I don't I I can't be too complimentary or it's it's going to come off the wrong way. But >> that's fair. That's fair. Um, but anyway, gentlemen, we just wrapped up the third day of Bitcoin 2026. What a wild ride here at the news desk on the main stage. Isabella running all around the venue. Gentlemen, give us give me some of your top takeaways from the events. What were some of your favorite moments from from the last three days? >> Sean, kick us off. >> You know, I really like to see how much coverage there was for the agentic economy, right? I mean, that's something that's only really been popular for, you know, uh, at least on my ex feed for the past, you know, 3, four months. Uh, I've been vibe coding every day. It's been a bit of a addiction. I should probably go on that TLC show, My Strange Addiction. I've been foregoing meals to vibe code. And so, it's been nice to see uh, some of the some of the thoughts around, you know, what does that look like for Bitcoin, right? We we always think about joblessness. We think about displacement and productivity, but it's not so obvious for people to think about payments and the disruption there with AI agents. >> Well, it's good to know we should be slashing your token budget, Sean. Uh yeah, you know, uh I think on my end, uh walking around the venue, getting to talk to our sponsors, our partners, uh getting to talk to the attendees, the vibes have been immaculate for this event. It has not felt like a bare market. If you were walking around, you would think that we're at all-time highs right now. And I think that that's just reflective of the fact that uh there's been so much uh bullish sort of updates happening in Bitcoin right now. There's so many reasons to be bullish on Bitcoin. And I think that that has shown through in this event with all these announcements, all these product announcements, the backdrop of who's here. I mean, it's been an incredible event. So, I I'm I'm very jazzed leaving it. It's it's been a wonderful time. >> Yeah, I'm going to piggyback on that as well. I think the energy was the number one thing just walking around and seeing all the activations. Everybody's having a blast. Place is packed. It was a lot of fun. Uh on top of that though, I think there was a lot of high signal networking. Uh we were talking about the whale night last night uh with the whales. That was probably the number one networking event that I've had since I've been at BTC Inc. Um, everybody's just talking, exchanging phone numbers, exchanging ideas. Uh, this is the type of conference where things are built and you definitely saw that in action and everybody here felt it. >> Yeah, absolutely. And for me, I'm going to take a little bit of a different tack. I think, you know, of course, seeing old friends around the expo hall was amazing. Uh, connecting with folks like Frank Corva who used to hold down this news desk for us. Uh, shout out Frank. Um, but I think really seeing that Bitcoin it feels like it's its time has really come. Like I think there is consensus across the board. Bitcoin is here to stay. It cannot be ignored by investors anymore. Institutions no longer. >> Bitcoin is now. >> It is it is right now. We are right now live with Bitcoin. It's uh it's a wild time. But really Amy Oldenberg, head of digital assets at Morgan Stanley. I think that to me is such a signpost along this uh relatively short road to hyper bitcoinization. If I uh might opine, >> if you had told me in 2017 that in the middle of a bare market, >> Morgan Stanley would be announcing a Bitcoin ETF, I would be like, "This is a joke." You know, like there's no way. And and that's just one of the institutional adoption narratives that have happened in this bare market. You know, you had uh um Charles Schwab come out. You have an ETF that's not quite a Bitcoin ETF, but a Bitcoin yield ETF or something by Goldman Sachs. I mean, it's been crazy to see the institutional adoption that has happened over the past couple of months. And, you know, uh uh you you couple that with whatever, you know, the Willy Wonka of Bitcoin himself, Michael Sailor, is doing with Stretch. Uh crazy buy pressure. It just it's crazy that it doesn't feel like a bare market. And I have to wonder what's you know, what's coming next. Is this the beginning of a new cyclical nature for Bitcoin? >> And it was ETPS too, right? There's all kinds of uh advances happening on the capital markets. And I was also excited to see that there was a lot of payments announcements too, right? Like we saw, you know, I think that they're doing now contactless, no NFC required payments with Bitcoin. Like that's just not an that's not just an innovation for Bitcoin. That's an innovation for payments in general, too, right? And that's something that was announced this week. So, you know, Bitcoin is enacting store of wealth as kind of its secondary use case. It's enacting uh peer-to-p peer money as its primary use case. And we saw huge advancements in both. And to your point, Brandon, during a bare market. >> Yeah. No, and I'm curious too, Sean, like your all of the agents that you've been spinning up uh and burning through our token budget, uh you know, what are they currently using to uh buy all of the the Bitcoin merch around the this uh conference? >> Yeah. So, uh what I've actually done is I've I've financially engineered uh a product through which I take the company token credits and I convert those through physics into uh what we call BTC, which I then take to the store for my personal benefit. So, I hope that HR and D Lewis aren't listening to this. Uh, but you know, I I just simply call that financial engineering. I >> I think D is at the Golden Knights game right now. So, uh, I think you're safe. >> I'm jealous. I wish I was there. >> Awesome. Speaking of payments, uh, I one thing that stuck out to me was just how seamless and flawless the payments were here on Lightning. Um, there was not never a line anywhere at our official stores and it it was great to see Lightning in action and at scale once again. >> Yeah, absolutely. And for me, as we look ahead to the next year, I think to myself, we've seen so much innovation here, and with that comes disruption. Like, is the world ready for Bitcoin's time, which has evidently arrived? Uh, Brandon, do you think uh some folks out there are going to be feeling pain being caught off sides? Perhaps uh folks that are holding a melting fiat ice cube perhaps, or are we ready for the Bitcoin's next era? >> I I think that Bitcoin next era is upon us. Like we said earlier, Bitcoin is now. And if you're not currently with us, if you're not currently in the middle of the Bitcoin revolution, yeah, you got to you got to start learning quick because uh this thing is going to move quickly. I think that you again, you just have so many bullish sort of underlying themes that are occurring right now that are going to transform what Bitcoin is. I mean, I was talking to uh our friends at Salt uh earlier today about just how the the private credit market turning into a a Bitcoin buying machine is a crazy thing to be occurring right now. And you're talking about a trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that if those start pointing towards buying Bitcoin through some of the financial engineering that's going on, uh that like there's not going to be enough Bitcoin to go around, frankly. It's it's going to cause a pretty crazy run on the price. And so I just think um that's one narrative of many that are all converging right now for Bitcoin in the middle of a bare market uh like we said. And so yeah, I think that the the time for Bitcoin is now. Uh this will be an inflection point for Bitcoin moving forward. And uh if you're not paying attention, well, you're you're paying attention because you're watching right now. >> Yeah. I mean to your point too, like with with the Bitcoin as as an income bearing instrument, right? when you talk about the debt products like STRC or Stretch, you know, that those are net Bitcoin buyers just upstream and and those are people that's a demographic largely that wouldn't have been a Bitcoin spot buyer, but now they're being converted into that by these products. And you know, when you talk about the size of that addressable market right now, we heard the statistics from multiple of the companies issuing this where they're all seeing across the board about 80% is self-directed, right? But the majority of this market we know is insurance companies, ETFs, a lot of institutional demand and that's still waiting to enter. And you got to think that it's looking increasingly tempting. >> Yeah, totally. And I I would say also like you know a lot of times uh we can look at Bitcoin and be keep Bitcoin away from the fiat world and keep it away from the financialization and the public markets. But I think when you flip that on its head and you have an opportunity to attack these systems, these systems that you know there are so many people that are profiting and benefiting from it at the top. we have an opportunity to denominate these things in Bitcoin. Have these things built on Bitcoin, which is ultimately bullish for the world and obviously productive for Bitcoin's price. >> You the the game is you find every single pool of capital that exists in the world and you find a way to get that and point that to buying Bitcoin and exposure to Bitcoin. And that's how we win. And we're watching it happen in real time. And people aren't freaking out about this enough. I mean, it is a it is a literal heat-seeking missile to find these pools of capital in which you can be disrupted by Bitcoin's, you know, uh, unique properties, its volatility, all of the things that that have, you know, made us successful this far. And this is a train that's going to keep going for years, decades, centuries. You know, humanity will be transformed by this. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I also buy a similar token, no pun intended. I think that while Bitcoin can be extremely disruptive, I think it can also be a source of stability in a world that I think is a little bit less stable than it was maybe a few months ago. Um, you know, with conflict in the Middle East, Ukraine and Russia, I think just a relatively untenable fiscal situation um happening across all major developed nations, emerging markets of course as well. Um, but I think that Bitcoin is also going to be something that can stabilize uh these countries that frankly are starting to run out of cash and um, you know, combining Bitcoin with fixed income instruments, using it to diversify risk. Um, I think it can also help some of these laggers that are still beginning to understand the full picture when it comes to Bitcoin. >> It's almost like we need a Bitcoin milkshake theory. >> Yeah. >> Where, you know, all these things, right? The macro environment, the income uh, instruments. Bitcoin is just sucking up all of this liquidity. And uh you know once all these interns start to to buy in and and become more well informed and see the sharp ratio and see the yield and see the return and you know even spot buyers we're seeing to your point Spencer how it's holding up as a macro asset uh especially in in the need for trustless assets as the world's deglobalizing. I think that we're going to see those continue to see those trends strengthen. Well, Matt Hogan of Bitwise, Matt Hogan of Bitwise had a really good saying where he was talking about Bitcoin as a call option on the rise of this new monetary network. And when you value a call option, you look at the implied volatility. And when we see more volatility in the markets around Bitcoin, the value of Bitcoin as a call option increases. And so we saw that in, you know, with the development of this conflict in Iran. Um, and I think that is something that like incredibly astute and I think more of that to come. Um, I mean, frankly, hopefully less volatility if I'm being honest. I think we've kind of had all that we can bear at this point, but um you know, I would not be surprised. >> Well, and to tie two threads together that we talked about, obviously the geopolitical element as well as the AI stuff we've been talking about. I think what the biggest theme you're going to see is is the need for assets. You know, gone are the days where you can just discount future cash flows and and look forward 20 years and assume that the the revenue is going to uh continue to grow in a you know, somewhat reasonable trajectory. This is a new world we're entering into. uh uh you know, the way that work is going to change, we don't even know. We're we're peering into the singularity right now. And so owning hard assets like Bitcoin, assets that don't have single points of failure, assets that aren't tied to geopolitical instability or or have their own embedded risk, huge debt that's over over top of it. All of those kinds of things that you, you know, see as an overhang over all these different assets, Bitcoin doesn't have. Bitcoin is a completely different asset class. It is uncorrelated. And for all of those reasons and more, uh, uh, now's a really great time to be a Bitcoiner. >> Yeah. And to add on to that, like you're talking about the need to own assets. Like I remember a couple months ago, silver, we had like four a 40% draw down in one day with silver. Like multiple Bitcoins market cap being added to hard assets like Bitcoin and gold. That not only makes me think number one, we can go way higher way faster, but also it's it's a lot of mispricing and repricing of fiat currencies like the dollar that's causing these prices to be so fluctuant. Um, You know, over time, what the market has shown us is that fiat currencies there is there's not an a long-term outlook on them. Uh we expect continued inflation globally. The United States is is in the best position in the world and we're still crippling 7% a year dripping away. Um so the world totally needs Bitcoin and even as the West, you know, we have less inflation than places like Venezuela, but uh we still need it and everyone on Earth needs it. >> Yeah, you both make great points that we're stepping into a lot of unknowns, right? There's a lot of macro uncertainty. There's a lot of uncertainty in the labor market. As we enter into the unknown, as Bitcoin continues to kind of uh enter into the conversation, a lot of these various narratives, where do you hope we land or where do you suspect we land by the time we get to Bitcoin 2027 in Nashville? >> Wow, that's uh that's a tough question. Um I'd say higher. Uh that's uh that's my basic bold thesis. I'm going to really step out onto a limb here. um you know feel free to disagree but uh I think uh you know I I really can't see negative catalyst for Bitcoin at this point. I think that to Sean's point there's so much uncertainty people are reconfiguring their their models around all of their allocation. Um and I think also you know who's left to sell at this point. I think uh you know there's been enough pressure. I think the folks that got in in the ETFs um I'd be willing to say they're getting close to diamond hands here. They've gone through some volatility. So um you know I'll I'll give them that credit too. So, and to be fair, you know, those folks are also the people that are least likely to sell. The most well- capitalized um portion of our investing environment are people that are uh you know, have IAS investing in passive index funds. Um and I think that that is people that have been acquiring Bitcoin through the spot ETFs. Um and you know, I think I was talking to Pat Riley from BTC, Inc. and he said, you know, Bitcoiners always talk about how we're early and we're about four years early every single cycle. And one cycle that we might have been a little bit early on was El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as legal tender, building a strategic reserve, and everyone was like sovereign adoption is here. Um, I think, you know, we might be able to see some uh announcements coming down the pipe here as we get more and more serious uh on the fiscal side, but also just the the psychology side of world leaders processing, you know, two years since Trump made his his Bitcoin play. Um, I think they're going to start figuring it out uh in in short order. Oh, and I would just add that I think they already have figured it out and it's just a matter of time before they actually publicly say the things that they're doing right now. You know, there there's a a little bit of game theory and like maybe they don't want to just be public about it right now. Um and and I think that that's going to that's going to change at some point. >> Yeah. And I think that probably the biggest catalyst for me as we outlook at potentially the next cycle uh and finding the bottom at this bare market is uh we were discussing Morgan Stanley, right? the fact that they finally got with the Bitcoin ETF. Um, that is proof that you can be late to the party as an organization or a company uh deploy the strategy late after like the black rocks of the world have gotten involved and still launch one of your most successful if not your most successful ETF ever. That was the shot heard around the world for me. Uh, and I think you know it was just a couple of weeks after that we get the announcement for the Gold Goldman Sachs Bitcoin premium ETF. So, I think a lot of organizations are looking at that and saying, "Wait a minute, I'm late. I missed the boat, but I can get on right now and create a product that's going to have incredible demand." And I think that's incredibly incredibly bullish for uh getting Bitcoin into the hands of everyday people. >> Yeah. This time next year, or I suppose in July of next year when we're sitting at this news desk in Nashville, I think we're going to be looking back on this time and saying, "We absolutely called it right here." That's that's also my thesis. But I I really do think that we're going to see more of this momentum continue to build. Uh, and I'm just so excited to see where people take it. Like so much brain power, the brain trust of Bitcoin is growing tremendously right now. Um, and I think it's going to bear a lot of fruit here in the next 12 to 14 months. >> I I'm also curious, you know, Sean, you were asking for price targets. What's what's your price target for next year? >> It'll be at least a dollar. >> Uh, probably substantially higher. You know, look, I I I think that we probably do owe a little bit of time served, right? I I think that we've capitulated largely in terms of price, but I do think that we will uh potentially retest near those levels again. Um, you know, I think 80 is probably the key level to look to. If we can flip that with some conviction, I think that, you know, we can be a little bit more optimistic in the short time frame. But look, I'm not I'm not super bearish, right? Like I I think we've largely seen the correction we're going to see. I just think that uh you know just in terms of the way the market's reacting and and kind of pacing re-entries here, I I think that we're going to have a little bit of a slow start, just not this immediate rise up. But to your point, it's hard to not be overly bullish, especially hearing everything we heard here this week, right? You got the ETPs, you got the ETFs, you have uh the preferreds, you have the income products across the board and and you know, I could see those, you know, invalidating me and just that sheer capital. And to your point, Spencer, who is there left to sell? I could see that absolutely uh proving me wrong on that time standpoint. Uh but by the time we get to the conference next year, so this will be in July, I would say we're well above 100 again. And I wouldn't be shocked if we've cleared our previous all-time highs. But I I think that the party will largely just be getting started, though. Uh you know, I I don't think that we're going to wait for the having necessarily. I think that we'll see something similar to like we saw this last cycle where I think we actually set an all-time high preh having. And I I I think that we're definitely at those levels, but uh the party will just be getting started for that cycle. >> Makes sense. What do you think, Isaiah? >> Uh I agree with you. I think that we have a little bit more pain to go, but I think I think you know, general cycles, you have the pain and then after the pain is just a period of boredom, right? I I think as you know, I would say this conference kind of proved to me that uh we still have such a incredible amount of people that are engaged right now with what's happening. Um, so becoming price agnostic, but I think the people that are very dedicated to the price and only watch it when it goes up that the uh the Bitcoin the Bitcoin ecosystem still needs to shake those that those people out. So I think that we find our bottom or or chop in this range until probably Q3 of this year. And I do think we set a new all-time high uh at or around the time for next year's conference. >> Hey, that's great timing. >> Yeah, I mean, I'd be willing to get on board with that. I'm gonna put out a price target of 150K, I think. uh you know, in inflationadjusted terms, who knows if that'll even be an all-time high. But uh you know, I think I think that's um a a base case that I'd be very comfortable getting behind. Um but again, to to Sean's point, where who's going to sell to these people? Um what's the liquidity like? Uh I think this thing could be really set to rip and um there is just everything going for it from AIdriven deflation, SAS apocalypse making, you know, very few safe havens in the tech space. Um, I think people are kind of, you know, has the AI investment spree really run its course? I think we've seen some people that would have momentum traded into Bitcoin follow that. Um, and so I I think, you know, if if that kind of stalls, I think the rotation into Bitcoin makes sense. The rotation from gold into Bitcoin makes sense. A lot of people have been calling for this online as well as a historical pattern that Bitcoin will follow gold on on a lagging time frame. Um, you know, I'm not an M2 chart correlation bro. uh you know I uh you know don't know enough to uh to be really sure of that one to be honest. It seems a little spurious but um uh you know I think I think 150 is where I'm going to be next year here on this desk. >> What about you Brandon? What's >> Brandon? You you called the bottom of Bitcoin to gold ratio, right? >> I did. Well, I I called the top of the you know gold price in Bitcoin uh and then I also called the bottom of the drop down to to 60K. So, you know, clearly I know exactly what's going on and that is why I'm not going to give a price target for uh for there it is uh for next year. Uh but I am curious as we look around, you know, the airwall is moving, the booths are starting to turn their lights off, we're breaking down. What are the takeaways? What are the final thoughts as we sunset on this beautiful Bitcoin 2026? Well, it's ironic because it all is literally going away as they disassemble in front of us. But my takeaway is that none of this is going away, right? Like you have you have all these people here in the middle of a bare market and it's the time where you should see no crowds, but every side stage is packed. I've seen so many people here that are just excited and hungry to network and to learn. And I I think it was very telling how packed a lot of the stages that are meant for builders and meant for uh a lot of the things that that kind of miss the hype train in a bull market. I think that's very telling. I think it shows just how solid of a foundation this community and this ecosystem has really built and the fact that people are willing to fly to Las Vegas on business days, spend time here and network in the space and to see the turnout that we saw after the withdrawal down that we saw in the spot price has been really encouraging. Yeah, I'd say the same thing. You know, it's everybody is leaving this conference right now with a billfold of uh of business cards right now. Uh this was a conference for learning, educating, discussing ideas. Um I think one issue that I heard all over the place is quantum. Uh that was definitely a big theme this year. I had a lot of conversations about people with quantum. We had several people in our programming on stages talking about quantum. Um, I think that's an example of an issue that you're going to see people walk away with more context, more perspectives, and that's going to be something that I hopefully will get closer to figuring out and finding a solution for earlier because we had this conference this week. >> Yeah. And I think it's pretty likely Bitcoin magazine could do some deep dive coverage on uh quantum uh the the issue of quantum. And uh you know I think you know I didn't catch all of the uh the talks on it but uh I think on the main stage I think the it's very clear it's something that needs to be addressed in a rigorous way. I think that we can't be chasing hype and narratives around it. Um I think that there's people that may look to profiteer around fear around this. Um but that to say you know it matters. This is something that investors look at. It's something that users need to know and feel comfortable about. Um, and at the same time, you know, Satoshi's coins are a bounty on quantum computing. So, if we rip in a bull market, maybe we'll see some nice innovation around the edges as well. Um, but gentlemen, any final thoughts before we break here? Yeah, I I guess my final thought would be um you know with all of the backdrop, all the excitement, uh I also think that once again we've heard the Bitcoin community's voice loud and clear uh when it came to the free samurai and the the developers that are still in prison. Um it was really cool on day one to see uh you know folks from the administration uh they were going to come and then you know there was an issue in DC. I don't know if you heard about it on Saturday night and they ended up not being able to come but they called in uh to talk to the Bitcoin community about what needs to be done to protect developers and ultimately that fight's not over. Uh but I think that the Bitcoin community's voice was heard during that time and and we got some real push towards seeing those developers get freed which is a very important issue for American Bitcoiners but Bitcoiners around the world and and so I think that's my biggest takeaway is there is more work to be done there but we've seen uh uh a glimmer of hope and maybe some progress and uh I know for a fact that the administration is listening right now and so We have work to do and I think we can do it. >> Well, ladies and gentlemen, we will certainly be keeping an eye on that. Um, you know, I wish the best to them and their families as, you know, they fight for their freedom and I think that they set the tone for um, you know, Bitcoin is code, code is free speech, uh, if we want to live in a free society, a society of open ideas, a society of trust and discourse, um, I think this is top of the line uh, for us to address going forward. Um, and so ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning into Bitcoin 2026 and on the Bitcoin Magazine news desk powered by Mara. Uh, Brandon, Sean, Isaiah, thank you so much for your time and thank you for everyone who helped make this happen. From the thousands of attendees who came to our event, um, everyone on the production team in BTC across the board, uh, we wish you the best and we'll see you next year in Nashville. >> See you in Nashville. All righty. And that's a wrap. Woo! Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey, hey. What the hell? What the hell? What the heat? Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey, hey. What the hell? What the hell? What the hell? Heat. Heat. N.