Former le crédit privé à valoriser les entreprises Bitcoin | Bitcoin 2026

All right. Hello everybody. Good morning. Uh my name is Brian Dixon. I'm the CEO of Offthechain Capital. Um we are a Warren Buffett Benjamin Graham style of discount value investor in the blockchain space that lean very Bitcoin heavy with a lot of our investment strategy. And I'm excited to uh speak with the panel today. Um we're going to be talking to you about the intersection of Bitcoin and private credit. So I'd like to start off if we just go down the road and you guys please do a quick introduction of yourself. >> Thanks Brian. Mark, I'm a Swiss national. Uh I come from actually a dynasty of traditional finance people. Uh created the banks, insurance companies such as Zurich Insurance, which uh believe it or not 170 years ago was innovative at the time. And now uh I lead a alternative investment firm focused on growth and stability, basically growing capital and preserving capital. >> Yeah. Hey, I'm Scott Marl. I'm a founder and managing director of Capital B Advisory. Uh we're a boutique investment bank focused on M&A and capital raising advisory for Bitcoiner business owners. >> Hi everyone. I am Jonathan Kirkwood, one of the co-founders of 1031, an investment platform that invests in businesses that touch Bitcoin. Uh we do everything from early uh pre-stage investing to public markets to credit and um you know try to help to push the um the Bitcoin space forward. Awesome. Thank you. So, the first topic I want to talk through is kind of the elephant in the room, which is we are 16 years basically into this asset over 1.5 trillion in market cap, yet institutions and the private credit market is still very scared to get exposed to this. So, I'd love to get your guys' perspective on why you think that is. Um, Jonathan, why don't we start with you? We can work our way back down. You know, I think the the way to look at, you know, that question like why is private institution, you know, scared to get in into the space? You know, when you look at Bitcoin as a whole, you know, 95% of Bitcoin is held in cold storage. It is not being used. Maybe about 2% is being leveraged. like there's 24 billion in total outstanding uh Bitcoin collateralized loans right now. 1% maybe is for transactions and you know that means that the most of the majority of Bitcoin yes it's being it's a productive use of capital and that you're saving and storing your time and energy for us you know moving forward but it is idle and bitcoin you know when we had a market cap of 400 trillion or 400 billion you know there wasn't there there was significant volatility the overall risk in trying to lend against the asset was extremely high. Like that's coming down as you know we've gotten to 1.4 trillion. as we move this um the the price appreciation forward to you know 4 trillion to 10 trillion that's going to be the real key that unlocks the ability for you know more private credit to come in because that 95% that's solely in cold storage will then be able to have kind of a different spectrum of time preference where they'll be able to um use a sleeve of capital for borrowing against or being able to stake towards some type of yield generation and overcolateralization use. Like as price appreciates more the risk will come down over the the volatility of the asset so that you know private credit can come in and further unlock. right now private credit in the space is you know vast majority people that have been in and weathered like multiple bare cycles and have been able to survive. >> I I think private credit needs to see a longer track record as well. Um Bitcoin is 17 years old. It can't even buy a beer yet. Um, and you've got to see a lot more time for institutional investors to get comfortable that this thing isn't going anywhere. I know in this room that feels like a foregone conclusion, but you have to explain that to a committee of investors and they have limited partners to answer to. Um, so there's there's a lot of work left to be done. I think what we've seen work so far is uh Bitcoin backed loans over collateralized where the lender provides some level of value beneath the total amount of collateral that's posted. Leen, for example, has managed to to achieve the sort of final form of this financing in a securization. That's a huge win. Um but the counterparty for that transaction, the lender is underwriting an asset that they have more than 100% of their risk out standing outstanding as collateral that they can liquidate 24/7 365. So, you know, it's it's a huge win for our industry, but we have a lot of work to do because the private credit and the the institutional credit that's lending to Bitcoin backed loans is in a zero- loss position. We we as Bitcoiners understand that uh and and those lenders are starting to understand that. But you know most of these policies have a you know 85% loan to value covenant that they can liquidate sell into the market and and close their lending position. Which means that it's very hard to actually lose money on that trade. My point there is that while there is great momentum here, these lenders are not bullish Bitcoin. They're just doing enough diligence to understand whatever I'm lending against, I can sell overnight, over the weekend, and I can get whole on the position. So, we need to work hard. We have a lot of work to do as an industry to help educate these folks to a point where they are saying, "Okay, I'm actually comfortable with gap risk and equity-like exposure in the private credit markets and the institutional credit markets, not just a 100% overcolateralized position. That in reality, that collateral could be inventory. It could be chairs. As long as they've underwritten their ability to take the asset and sell it to close their loan, they don't really care about Bitcoin yet. >> Yeah. I mean, a lot of been said by my two colleagues, but the problem with, you know, private credit, they're paid, you know, not to be early, but basically paid to survive mistakes. And so, as you said, I mean, Bitcoin's been here for 16 years, but it's still early for a lot of these players to understand the asset. So private credit funds or any kind of lender they need to manage downside risk and so today you still have you know a lot of these firms where they say well the underlying asset is extremely volatile so the cash flows are volatile the collateral you know is volatile and the underwriting framework for a lot of these private credit funds is still very uncertain they just don't know so it's not a question of oh is Bitcoin a great asset it's more to say well is there a standardized you know underwriting framework network which we can understand and which my investment committee will understand. So the conversations a lot have to be well you know how is the collateral behaving? What happens if bitcoin loses 50%. You know how do I get my money back and until this actually matures you know there's a lot of education who has to happen for private credit funds to be actually comfortable you know coming into uh into that asset class. >> Those are great points. Um, when you think from a lending perspective, traditionally they really care about three things. They care about cash flow, collateral, and the regulatory or reputational risk. And when you think about it, Bitcoin really kind of infringes on all three of those topics. So, I'd love to get your guys' perspective on the frameworks of how lenders are looking at this. Do you think it's accurate? Is it reasonable? Or are they just pattern matching throughout history? And let's start with you, Mark, and work our way down. >> Yeah, great question. And I think when you think about, you know, those three items, cash flow, that's a very valid point. I mean, any kind of lender will look and say, well, what's the cash flow of the business, right? Um, how is there a mismatch, for example, if you're a Bitcoin miner, between, you know, your costs, you know, which are all paid in fiat and basically your asset or, you know, the coins bitcoins are actually generating. So that cash flow underwriting model is is very very valid in terms of you know uh uh collateral. The reality there is is again it's a a framework of understanding way how does that actually behave and a lot that's where a lot of lenders you know get it wrong is to say well you know it can be volatile but what is the right underwriting framework is it LTV is it something else you know do I have other crossc collateralized you know potential and the third one you know regulatory um that's also a valid concern the problem what we still have today is a lot of private credit funds even if they want to lend to bitcoin denominator type firms, they can't because it's not in their mandate. So, do I go against, you know, the people who are actually giving me money as a private credit fund to say, well, I'm going to do, you know, entraving my own mandate to give money to an asset class which I shouldn't be giving money to. That's still that's still a problem. And so, that's something to be addressed. Now, if you can have a conversation, you know, with your investors and saying, "Listen, it's not about Bitcoin. forget Bitcoin for a moment, but I can explain to you how we've done this underwriting and how we're going to get cash back even if basically, you know, the firm goes to zero and how the asset behaves. You know, those are three legitimate concerns you can actually address. >> So, I'm I'm going to focus just on regulatory because for me cash flow is just an understanding mismatch, right? the the whole sort of investor world, the whole fiat economy is built on cash flows and it's just an education hurdle of understanding that Bitcoin is an asset that doesn't need cash flows. It's just money. And then, you know, for collateral, Bitcoin is perfect collateral. It it it's the reason it's so easy to underwrite these Bitcoin back loans is because of the quality of that collateral. The regulatory pieces is the big one. Um, and there's two things that I think we need. one is uh more time to heal from the scars of really bad mismanagement of capital in previous cycles, right? So the this you know if someone is at an institutional investor fund and they think and they want to learn about Bitcoin and they just Google Bitcoin backed loans and they read the history of how that's gone, there was a lot of mistakes made last cycle and a lot of businesses that no longer exist because of it. And so I think if you're a busy institutional allocator, you close the web page after you read the couple of headlines there. So we need more time and and and more work to differentiate the right way to do that sort of work and the wrong way as far as rehypothecation goes. Um and the other is there's kind of stroke of the pen concern, stroke of the pen risk concern, which is the current administration is the first to sort of have a pretty forwardly, you know, friendly with a bunch of asterisks uh position towards Bitcoin and crypto. And so if you're trying to underwrite a 10 or 15 year thesis on this, you need to have in your threat model that the administration changes and the body language towards Bitcoin also changes. And I think I'm very hopeful that Bitcoin can remain a a a nonpartisan or a bipartisan sort of asset class. But one thing that would be really helpful for the underwriting and for the invitation for institutional investors to come to the space would be um more than one political cycle of supportive environment for Bitcoin and the institutions that are building in the space so that it's not so much a well this is just a easy environment and that could really change really quickly as a change of administration were were to maybe happen. So that's kind of a derivative of just we need more time, but it's one we need more time with a non-adversarial environment for the space. >> I mean, I I I definitely agree, Scott, that this administration is like head and shoulders, much better to work with. My thought on like why haven't we cracked the nut on private credit? Why hasn't it like further expanded? And I mean we do you know sizable private credit against um you know Bitcoin and over collateralized loans with Strike and Unchained uh and then also our our credit fund is like I don't think we've necessarily figured out the actual either the order of operations or the structure to unlock the value that has accured to Bitcoin where Bitcoin has you know 95% of the Bitcoin hasn't moved or isn't being used. Um if you compare that to gold you know just in if you look at India India has a large population with a heavy concentration of gold and 20 to 40% of gold in India is collateralized and that's you know one you know subsection of a population that uses gold as a store of value and also a productive use of capital with Bitcoin. If 20% of Bitcoin were being used in a productive way for collateralization, that's a $240 billion market. I mean, that is 10 times the size of where we are today. So yes, we you know the regulatory uh risk has come down and maybe that can you know open us up to being able to think differently on how we structure or what is the actual order of operations like is Bitcoin you know the first loss or is maybe Bitcoin the second loss because it's an over collateralization and the first loss has a lower threshold for liquidation like there's like This is a new technology. We're all here kind of pioneering on, you know, how can we unlock this value that is here for, you know, a productive use to create the cra cash flow to satisfy the obligation. >> It's a great point. Um, I want to walk through now a little bit the competition for capital. So, we've seen AI really suck the oxygen out of the room in terms of new investment, new capital flowing into that. uh we've seen strategy stretch product uh likely pull in five to 10 years of future institutional demand into the Bitcoin space via that product. So if you're looking at things like that, why would you not just go get 11 and a half% on a product like that? Or why would you not be chasing AI opportunities? What is the reason today to actually really take Bitcoin private credit serious? John, I'll start with you and we'll go back and forth. >> Thanks. I I appreciate that. I mean it's a good question. I mean if you can have I mean most like you know we have funds we we raise from endowments pension funds uh insurance and you know being able to have a guaranteed 11 and a half% I mean that's a that's a high bar to have to clear um because we're looking for you know on a venture style 25% IRRs and with private credit if you're only looking for 16 to ing like why are you taking the risk when you can put it in to stretch? Uh so we have to be creative. It's not necessarily I I would say venture style debt because we do want to be more like private equity focused where there are businesses with cash flows. Is it free cash flow or just enough cash flow to satisfy the obligation? You know, that's where we're going to to be targeting. But I think you know what the benefit of stretch is is that 5 to 10 years in demand for Bitcoin that would not have existed because it's only after the 11.5% it will push the price of Bitcoin much higher. So we'll pull forward the price appreciation of Bitcoin that's then the key to unlock the ability to uh create innovative products for collateralizing it. I have to assume that a dollar into stretch ends up buying Bitcoin after some fees along the way. That is an assumption. I'm not able to verify that myself. Um and so I don't think I I think Jonathan's right. Stretch is is likely pulling forward a lot of Bitcoin purchasing and and that's exciting as someone who only owns Bitcoin. Um the the counterveailing trend there with two two other trends is the the general market for sort of nonaware of stretch investors is the the risk-free rate uh treasuries is higher today than it was in the easy money environment that we've been in for a lot of you know Bitcoin's history. So that that does raise the hurdle rate and make it harder to bring capital into the space. But the real problem or the real sort of competition for capital and attention right now is AI. And I think in the Bitcoin mining space in particular, folks are starting to look at their operations and say, I don't make great money on Bitcoin mining. It's a brutally competitive narrow margin business. And when the price of Bitcoin is down like it is right now, it's it's really really thin margins. and the there's a lot of enticing opportunity to try to pivot or switch some of that compute to the current darling of of AI. I think that Bitcoin typically chooses the most ironic and painful path forward. And for the miners, I think what that is is that um there's a real scenario where well there there's a Bitcoin price where Bitcoin mining is just as profitable to these Bitcoin mining businesses that pivot to AI as the current AI sort of you know price per megawatt. It's probably in the $200,000 Bitcoin price range. And the the real irony would be we see a bunch of Bitcoin miners currently pivoting from Bitcoin mining to AI and then October of this year we hit a $200,000 Bitcoin price and they've been offline m not mining Bitcoin for six months and they're about to plug in GPUs and they're like, "Oh, we could have just had A6 the whole time." That's that's my sort of contrarian take. But the reality is that in the meantime, AI is is is sucking the wind out of a lot of other investment conversations because it is a massive new industry. I I think my thesis is that, you know, there is orders of magnitude more compute needed per human per person per white collar job. Um and that the industry is a little overexuberant. Those two things can be true at the same time. >> Yeah. Yeah, and I think to to build on what Scott said, you know, AI is a much more simple model to underwrite. It's a lot like you know data centers. So it basically facilitates the work of a lot of private credit funds to say well this is something we can understand you know this is you know there's cash flows there's real estate and I can understand all the underlying collateral and the assets. So it's much easier from just an underwriting perspective to give money to those companies. Regarding the stretch product, similar thing here I mean it's you know 11 and a half percent you know headline even though that interest rate is you know basically variable and let's not forget this is you know you're taking single credit risk so you have to assume that strategy is going to continue to service that debt that they have the cash to be able to to pay for it and I think that's precisely where the opportunity lies for private credit investments because you get a diversification approach where you're going to say well I'm backing a number of you know bitcoin denominated firms and which is apart from diversification also where I think the opportunity lies because it's niche so it's a much less crowded space so you have more complexity which also means potentially you know more yield to get but in order to do that you have to be able to do the hard work which is take almost some leap of faith of understanding okay what are the metrics I'm going to look at how do I price in you know uh any kind of downside risk and then actually, you know, come up with a compelling value proposition. But I think the opportunity definitely lies there in the credit credit private credit space. >> Could if I could just add one thing on Stretch, I think I find it interesting if you can underwrite the creditworthiness of Stretch paying you back. Um, you if you do that diligence all the way to its conclusion, then you've underwritten Bitcoin's growth. And the irony is that if you've made that conclusion, you can run the stretch trade yourself. you can just be spot long Bitcoin and peel off 11 and a half percent yourself. I think that's the bearish take on stretch. The bullish take would just be that there's a lot of capital that can come to that conclusion but is literally not capable via fund mandate or or allocation requirements to make that trade themselves and so stretch does it for them. >> Well, I'd say the other like the other really significant opportunity is is the fact that I mean capital is scarce. it is being sucked into AI, you know, starting to be sucked into stretch, which means that comp like good companies that have good businesses operate morally and ethically are starred for capital. And so that gives us the, you know, a clear opportunity to have better terms and better stewardship of that capital than necessarily we would have in 2022 or 2021. Welcome to predict. The world is a market. Everything is a market. Every headline moves the line. Every moment is your market. Call the moves. Bet on your instinct. Your prediction, your edge. Dual bits. Predict where everything is a market. For sure. One of the things that's interesting is the private credit professionals that are underwriting these deals almost have a structural incentive not to understand Bitcoin because once they do the numbers on it and they start understanding and educating people on it, they're basically talking themselves out of a job. So, how do you think we get past that? Like, how do we really drive towards making this make sense? And is it the allocators or the managers? Who are the first people that need to take the entry into this to really get the market moving? Let's start with you, Scott, and then we'll do Jonathan and then Mark. >> Yeah, I've got a lot of thoughts on this one. So, the um as someone who came from that world, uh the reason I left private equity was because I was writing co-investment checks into the platforms that we were doing control buyouts on. And we were underwriting returns that I believed were going to underperform Bitcoin. So it start to get started to get laborious writing checks into things that I didn't have as much conviction as I did in Bitcoin. And you know a a quick lesson on private equity private credit the the the economic model is usually something like five to seven years of ili liquidity and the fund manager charges a 2% management fee and a 20% carry on the return that they generate. and they're targeting returns profiles that oftentimes underperform or or in the past at least have underperformed spot bitcoin. And there's a lot of work that goes into diligencing closing negotiating diligencing and closing either a buyout equity or a private credit financing. And then you go into management mode and you spend five to seven years hoping that they pay that money back and then you exit and you make that return and you return that money to to LPs. all of that work to generate a lower return than just spot bitcoin. If you force a five to sevenyear hold period onto a spot bitcoin position, suddenly the fund manager 2 and 20 model gets really hard to justify. And so I think you find two phenomenons. The folks trapped in that industry are pretty str they struggle to understand Bitcoin. um maybe because fundamentally it changes what their sort of value proposition is to the marketplace and then the other folks end up like me quitting and figuring out a way to work in this industry instead. the maxim, you know, you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve, I mean, is just absolutely, I mean, true. And anyone that's that's working in the space knows. And so what what I think will like separate the the weed from the chaff on private credit is do you have more Bitcoin in five years than you started with today? Like that's it. It's literally that simple. like yes, Bitcoin is going to appreciate. You're going to have all of these other uh business models that um you know like like who knows what Stray Sailor is going to create to to find more Bitcoin. But when we're doing private credit and we issue um the nodes, our goal is do we have more Bitcoin in 5 years, 10 years than we started with? That's the credible finance. I mean, are you a good steward of the capital? Yeah, and I think I'd add to that. I mean, a lot of has been said, but a lot of these credit managers, you know, they're not paid to say, "Oh, I found this, you know, great new asset called Bitcoin. It's super innovative, etc." It's more about, I'm doing an investment and here is how I protect my capital and I can explain it to my investment committee, right? And and that makes, you know, it a very hard conversation because it's much easier to actually avoid. Now, if you can come, you know, and you say, "Listen, I have an amazing company which we're lending money to. it's going to give us, you know, mid- teen, you know, or high teen, you know, kind of double digit returns. Um, and this is how we're going to get paid back. This is basically, you know, how we can underwrite the collateral, etc., etc. That makes for a much more meaningful conversation. But for a lot of these guys, that's not the case and that is really the difficult part. >> So, this will be the uh the final lightning round question. So, we need Bitcoin to significantly appreciate in value to really unlock these lending markets. In your guys' opinion, you know, what is the milestone that we should be looking for? Is it market cap? Is it regulatory posture? What do you guys think we should really be paying attention to that's really going to drive that living market so that they just can't ignore it anymore? Start with you. >> I think it's a number of things. I think you it's not just price. Uh, definitely not. I think a lot has to do and that is the opportunity we're discussing a little bit today is it's actually translation right and education. So a lot has to do for example like one of the most obvious things you know any kind of Bitcoin nominated company should have as a conversation with a lender is not you know as you mentioned before Bitcoin is going to the moon it's right it should be a boring conversation it should actually be to say hey these are the metrics you know here's if you're a minor what is my cost per coin you know how do I recover my bitcoins where is you know my debt service coverage ratio if bitcoin falls off 30 50% etc and then create a framework and give assurance insurance to the lender that you know what you're actually doing. So has a lot to do about you know maturity of the asset class and then seeing more products you know stretch you know preferred other kind of credit instruments which are coming onto the market and so the market needs maturity and the final point which you mentioned is regulatory. Yes, it needs to continue to evolve but it needs to come into the mind of people that today a lot of these funds in you know basically their placement memorandums or the contracts they have with their own investors it's Sean's certain industry you know vice industries or even bitcoin right it's like you know defense for years was uninvestable bitcoin is uninvestable and I think that's that's wrong these are the kind of things which needs to change you know in the mindset of people so that people say well I actually don't care I gave money to a credit fund Whether you invested in Bitcoin in many companies or not, I don't really care as long as you I get my money back and you understand what you're doing. >> I I'll be quick. Uh I'll I'll disagree with Mark. It's just price. Um Bitcoin needs to be So at this point, I think when people talk about the Bitcoin price crashing, everybody's pretty much dismissed the possibility that we return to somewhere like 10k, right? Higher highs, higher lows needs to happen over and over again. And I think when we're, you know, sad about being a 10 trillion dollar market cap, I think that that's a a pretty big unlock for institutional capital and also the time frame that comes with that. You know, we're 25 basis points, maybe 50 basis points into our total TAM, 500 trillion to one quadrillion dollars of, you know, the total value of money in all the world. And uh, you know, so we're babies still. We've just got time uh and and number go up that that makes that happen. >> I'm going to take a different route. I'm going to say um this is all in incentives. You know, we had the you know the underlying thesis that capital begets capital. And when we started 1031 7 years ago, it was the idea that if we could put capital to work and show that it produced more capital, then more capital would come in to this space. And that's really going to be what drives greed is good. >> Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate everybody joining us today. Please join me in giving our panelists a round of applause. 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.