May 24, 2025 • 59 mins
Marty sits down with Jessy Gilger to discuss Bitcoin retirement planning as prices approach $110K, the launch of Gannett Trust as the first Bitcoin-native trust company, and the risks of derivative products like MSTY in the current bull market.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
(00:10):
If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their
currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
(00:31):
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
We're meeting on a day when we hit new all-time highs.
Bitcoin approached $110,000.
Got Jesse back on the show to talk about many things, not just the price ripping.
(00:53):
A lot of good things happening on the unchained side of things.
Watching Gannett Trust.
We'll get into it.
Yeah.
Lots of stuff happening.
I think the price likes Gannett.
I think that's the mover.
I mean, that's been a big discussion in the space right now is,
(01:18):
are we heading to new all-time highs?
How should Bitcoiners be preparing?
How much Bitcoin do people need to retire?
How are you thinking about all this as we approach what seems to be another bull cycle?
Yeah, that's a common question, right?
How much Bitcoin do I need to retire?
(01:39):
I get it a lot.
And there's so many other questions I want to ask.
Like, well, how much money are you spending, right?
Do you need to be on a yacht every week?
Or are you staying humble and keeping those sats?
And so the amount of Bitcoin can vary because the spending pressure you're putting against your Bitcoin stack is the biggest factor.
Right. And age is probably in the second.
(02:01):
A 30 year old retiring on Bitcoin is different than a 75 year old retiring on Bitcoin just because of the horizon.
So stacks vary.
We've got people retiring with less than seven figures of Bitcoin because they have other assets.
And then we have people retiring with hundreds of Bitcoin and putting very little pressure against that portfolio.
(02:22):
So it can go in a lot of different ways.
But it is a question of the day.
As you're poking new all-time highs, everyone's like, well, how high is it going to get?
And then a huge question is, do we have cycles again, right?
If countries are buying, what would a downside look like?
And that's the big question in the retirees' mind is,
How do I protect and not ride that downside all the way down if we do have another 70, 80% drawback?
(02:48):
Yeah.
No, and I think particularly for younger people having in their mind, like the perspective of 21 million Bitcoin, 8 billion people.
What's the stat?
60 million millionaires in the world.
How much, how many sats do I need to get to feel comfortable that I have a sufficient slice of the Bitcoin pie?
(03:11):
That feel comfortable concept is just so different, right? Because Bitcoin is moving and shaking and all-time highs are down 30% and that's still within a bull market. Is that comfortable? Can you actually hang it up and like, all right, not going into work and I'm just going to continue to ride these adoption cycles?
I don't know if it ever gets comfortable.
(03:33):
The most comfort comes from putting as little pressure as possible against that stack, right?
That you're not pushing these withdrawal rates of like 5%, 10%, 20% of my Bitcoin stack.
I'm needing to live on every...
Because then you're requiring Bitcoin to do something for you in the short term, which is just not great at, right?
What's Bitcoin price going to be in a year?
(03:55):
Far less reliable than what's Bitcoin price going to be in 30 years.
Yeah. Well, I think one of the holdups too is the ability for people to get into Bitcoin and know where to put it and not only have certainty of what it will be valued at in 30 years, but will they have access to it?
(04:16):
that's one thing that you guys have been very much focused on.
Sound advisory is separate from unchained technically,
but within the unchained umbrella,
but unchained focused on helping secure individuals and business is and trust
Bitcoin.
And I think today's announcement of Gannett trust is a massive step in a
(04:39):
direction towards more certainty for long-term holdings for particular
entities.
Yes.
The Unchained umbrella or family of companies is growing.
And the intention will be for Sound Advisory to tuck under or be merged into, folded into Gannett Trust Company as it gets set up.
But it is the most robust compliance offering that is out there in the fiduciary space.
(05:03):
And so that, in my opinion, was the one thing missing as people want to live on a Bitcoin standard.
Sometimes they're in an entity or an organization or have a structure that requires a fiduciary standard.
And these two coming together is solved by Gannett Trust Company.
So it's going to be the most robust way to hold Bitcoin and have like true inheritance that can be administered through generations.
(05:30):
So how does this work mechanically via Gannett?
Mechanically.
So as the first Bitcoin native trust company, other trust companies do exist, right?
but they don't build upon Bitcoin in the way that Unchained has.
So Gannett in its Unchained roots and using Unchained technology
(05:50):
is going to be able to use multi-sig to achieve trust company goals.
And what that likely will mean is Gannett holding a key,
Unchained holding a key, third party holding a key.
Those three keys together ensure that the Bitcoin's not being held at any one spot.
right we could get into the coinbase honeypot we've actually talked about this on our last
(06:13):
episode like hey what do you think is the uh the risk out there that the industry might disagree
with i'm launching a new segment i'm going to ask you a prediction what what's out there that the uh
the industry doesn't see eye to eye with you at and i was at conferences and they're saying hey
coinbase is the best that's where we put all the cut it means all the keys are at coinbase
(06:34):
and with the news of the last week, like, Hey, there could be cracks, right? If you've got
exposure to Coinbase now, you could be questioning. I was on the list. I got the email.
You were affected. That's not great. It doesn't feel good knowing that information,
that information could have been a lot worse. That headline could have been private keys
being mismanaged. When you overlay what Gannett is going to offer to the custody space,
(07:02):
It means that not all of the keys are going to be at any one entity. And so that gives the Bitcoiner who understands multisig the confidence that, OK, I'm upgrading from a honeypot to a distributed key setup.
But it has to be done in a fiduciary and compliant way to satisfy the institutional and big money of the world, right? Family offices, Bitcoin treasury companies, they're going to need a structure that the CIO, the CFO can point to and say, yes, that is regulated.
(07:33):
that meets all of our expectations, all of our standards, that's going to satisfy our board,
our CPAs. There's a long list of industry professionals that have fiduciary obligations
to clients and they just need certain boxes checked. And that's what the trust company
brings to the table. So trust company think fiduciary standard and then Bitcoin multi-sig,
(07:53):
like Bitcoin standard through Unchained combining those two things. It's that Venn diagram overlap
that is going to be the true unlock and upgrade yeah this is desperately needed right now as
coinbase via the emergence of etfs how popular their launches were obviously the bitcoin treasury
(08:14):
companies which you mentioned microstrategy really leaning into that more and more and now
a bunch of copycats coming to market and coinbase has taken a large part of that market in terms of
securing those treasures. Perfect use case. I've floated the idea internally. I think it might be
too early. That's like a first week in business, but going for an ETF, right? How is a third,
(08:39):
fourth or fifth place AUM ETF keeping up with the BlackRock and the Fidelity? They all just
hold the spot Bitcoin. That's what they have. And so I look at that space as maybe it's a Bitwise
or an ARK or someone on that list might want to have a multi-sig secure Bitcoin ETF.
(09:01):
Gannett can hold a key. Unchain holds a key. ETF provider potentially even hold a key.
Right now, you've got three people securing that Bitcoin and it's not all at Coinbase.
I think 10 of the 12 ETFs are at Coinbase, all but Fidelity and VanEck.
Fidelity Custody is their own keys and VanEck uses Gemini.
10 out of the 12 are at coinbase and we just saw that they had an exposure last week right so that's
(09:27):
it's kind of showing you there's cracks and again it can be a structure and it can evolve into
many different use cases of securing coins for large pools of capital with multi-sig
multi-institutional yet still regulated and compliant to fiduciary standards
(09:47):
and moving from like the corporate and etf balance sheets but for high net worth individuals from i
understand the problem of holding bitcoin in a trust in a way that makes hardcore bitcoiners feel
comfortable has been pretty hard yeah to date yeah
(10:10):
As a precursor, a lot of trust structures are pursued because you've got to get the money out of your name.
It's got to get out of Marty's name or out of Jesse's name.
Because if you die with too much money, there's the death tax.
Now, that number fluctuates all around.
Right now, it's about $28 million for a married couple.
(10:30):
It's on the table in the Trump tax bill to maybe change.
But the number fluctuates.
But if you're over $28 million, you're in this world where you could be exposed to the death tax.
And so there's a state planning where you get the money out of your name and into some other entity.
That's often a trust, sometimes an LLC, but in this case, we'll use a trust.
(10:51):
That trust has to have separation from you.
And so when you get into the key management or who's the trustee part of that,
there's sometimes a conflict between the Bitcoiner and then the trust structures.
I want to hold keys, right?
That's what Bitcoiners mean by custody is like no keys, no cheese, keys above all else.
(11:12):
Bitcoin doesn't know about trust.
It doesn't care about trust.
It cares about private keys.
But trust company can serve as a trustee on that trust, right?
So having a trust company that understands Bitcoin, understands proper key management,
that can be the overlapping solution that I need to get this money out of my name.
(11:36):
for significant death tax reasons. Now it's in this structure. I'm happy with the rules,
but something professional needs to oversee that those rules are actually carried through.
That's what trust companies or professional trustees do for trust, that they are held legally
to, if I do Sherry Standard, to effectuate that trust. If it says do this, that's what the trust
(12:01):
company makes sure happens. So having one of those that gets Bitcoin, gets key management,
that's the solution that we saw was missing in the space. And it's over a year ago, a lot of hard
work went into it. It's live. We're standing up and really excited about what that's going to be
able to unlock. Yeah, I know it's been a Herculean task for you guys to get this out there. So I'm
(12:25):
pumped. And honestly, like looking at the history of trust companies within the ecosystem, they
haven't been so trustworthy i get entities like prime trust and others and it seems like they
were cutting corners to bring a product to market that many uh sort of white label exchanges were
yeah we're anchoring into maybe perhaps similar to coinbase they would have been better focusing
(12:50):
on bitcoin building on bitcoin and got distracted by crypto so there are other trust companies out
there and they're very amenable to like altcoins and you know how broad trust companies can be with
many different types of assets but what's going to be the one that starts to go deep
(13:10):
into Bitcoin right and having it be a serious focus and designing the operations procedures
protection security that Bitcoiners kind of demand from a key control perspective
it was just missing so yeah so beyond the sort of multi-institution multi-sig what does it mean
(13:33):
going deeper in terms of giving those types of clients that that comfortability you know when
you're operating at those levels um especially in like the family and inheritance side um
sure you've heard the term trust fund kid right these structures can last generations and
it is a way to make money last beyond yourself, but with your intentions. And so,
(13:57):
when you're having conversations about, well, what did the trust say? Sometimes there can be
an interpretation of like, well, how does that apply to the family? So, there is,
if you're getting into the weeds in each specific family, like trust officers,
as they're carrying out the role of the trust, they're like, okay, this kid or this beneficiary
(14:18):
has this need? Does that meet the terms of the trust? And there's a lot of just administration
and you're kind of along with the family in that ride, right? Everyone's kind of beholden to the
trust structure and it can't always be changed. And it just is what it is. And
trust fund kids now because of it, how does the trust company navigate how money goes
(14:45):
out of the trust and to beneficiaries and for what reasons They just very involved um from an administration and like relationship management side of things So yeah that would be
on like the family side and the treasury side, you can look at, um, different strategies. Like
I imagine where you've got Bitcoin and a serious focus on Bitcoin as a treasury company,
(15:11):
but you want to reduce volatility within that because it's too much.
So designing other, let's call them fiat components around,
maybe it's using derivatives or rebalancing to cash in an automated way.
If things get out of band,
when a trust company is involved in it has some level of control and being
(15:31):
able to make those like rebalancing or derivative decisions with and for your
company, then you can have more of an autopilot,
like volatility compression within your treasury. So there are lots of different applications and
we're just now like standing up the basics. It'll roll out to unchained clients before
(15:54):
the broader public just because of the pent up demand. And we'll see where it goes. Like I think
the sky's the limit because we've seen over the last six months, like Wall Street is here and it
is headbutting Bitcoin head on, right?
Those worlds are colliding and navigating the middle
(16:15):
and what's going to satisfy both sides.
Trust Company is just a powerful Swiss army knife
that can unlock a lot of things.
Yeah, well, on the topic of volatility suppression,
you had it in your pre-production notes
that you want to talk about MISTI,
which is all these different sort of derivatives
(16:35):
and preferred offerings that strategy has leaned into themselves with strike and strife and then
products like misty and mstu which have sort of merged as derivative plays on micro strategy
strategy to yeah get a different return profile yeah i think that's a good way to put it is like
(16:58):
different return profile right it's all built upon bitcoin you've got bitcoin as a base layer
as money. MicroStrategy is a company that is built on Bitcoin. It's got all of the risks of
Bitcoin, right? The volatility, the political, the technical, but then it's got its own set of risks,
MicroStrategy risks. Let's call them sailor and key control and profitability and governance and
(17:22):
all company. Then you have derivatives, which are on top of MicroStrategy and they retain the risks
of everything underneath. They have all the MicroStrategy risks, all the Bitcoin, and then
their own set of derivative risks. And so when I was asked the question a dozen times earlier in
this year, I was like, okay, this is where the question set is heading. I better get into it.
And ended up releasing an article about MSTY specifically, because that was the hot buzz
(17:48):
of the day. And like, what are the risks? Some aren't so bad. And then others I'd seen were
catastrophic in the past. And so I lived through COVID, the March 2020 as an advisor and saw
certain ETF or derivative structures. ETFs that use derivatives, they blew up during COVID,
(18:12):
like just unrecoverable, down 95%, never came back. And these were gold mining ETFs. And I
thought that that was a pretty good analogy because Bitcoiners are sympathetic to the gold bugs,
right? To this day, gold is approaching all-time highs like Bitcoin, but that ETF that used
derivatives on goldmine has never recovered. It never came back. And so a Bitcoiner could be right
(18:36):
about the underlying thesis of Bitcoin and Bitcoin could be successful. But if derivative-based ETFs
aren't managed well, or there's a rush for the exits and someone needs to sell and into an
illiquid market, it can blow everything up. It can affect everyone in the pool.
And so the metaphor I started to tease out, which I didn't know if it was kosher or not, but I landed on it and I'm comfortable with how edgy it is.
(19:02):
If a whale pees in the pool, everyone is affected.
If a large participant in an ETF structure wants out in size and MSTY in particular is using derivatives to create a synthetic micro strategy position and then call options against that as well, that can be an illiquid market.
(19:24):
If there's a rush to dollars, global crisis, correlation to one, everyone wants dollars and a big whale wants out of MSTY, they could sell those derivative positions into an illiquid market where there's no bid.
And it basically, I mean, that's my read on what happened with the gold mining ETF that never recovered.
(19:44):
I've got clients asking questions.
I'm looking out for something like that.
Like, what is the risk and how do we avoid a 95% collapse that's unrecoverable?
Because you could be right about Bitcoin.
And if you had too much of your money in MSTY, you're down bad, never coming back.
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card queue. It's a beautiful thing. Yeah. So let's dive into sort of what MSTY does or how it's
marketed the way i understand it and i'll admit my understanding is cursory just at an arm's length
from observing people talk about it on x for the last three months or whatever since the beginning
of the year actually so from what i understand you put money into this etf that's your principle
(21:14):
and then these derivatives and options um sort of structures are layered into the etf which provide
fixed income based off the principle that you're putting in.
Is that correct?
Pretty close.
Only one word I'm going to pull out of that.
It's not fixed.
Not fixed.
So income.
And this is a misconception that was rampant on Twitter, calling it a dividend, right?
(21:38):
Dividends come from profits.
MSTY is not issuing a dividend.
It's a distribution.
Similar, but a big difference, right?
Because the distribution can be options or premiums that are received from the option,
but it could also be return of capital. You give me a hundred bucks and I'm like,
thanks Marty. And I give you 20 bucks back. You have no idea if that was from profit that I
(22:00):
actually used in a business activity or a good investment, or I just gave you $20 of your hundred
back, right? I distributed it back to you, but it wasn't a dividend. And so let, I think it could
be helpful to pause and just what is the income generating piece of Misty? They're writing call
(22:21):
options against an underlying position. What that means and writing a call option,
it's very simple. It's just trading your upside for income. You can imagine you have a hundred
shares of MicroStrategy and you think it's going to the moon. You don't know when you're like,
ah, I'd really like to live on some of it now. Let me pick a date. Let's call it December.
(22:43):
And if MicroStrategy goes to $600 a share, I'd be willing to part with it after that.
you can have all the moon. I'm happy to let it go for 600. The person taking the other side of that
trade is buying the call option at 600, right? Micro strategy. If it goes to 700, they're going
(23:03):
to get it from you at 600. And so for giving them that promise of unlimited upside, you're getting
income now, today, you're going to get like a premium or a paycheck for giving them that promise.
that is the writing a call option strategy it's one of the most basic and one of the
most harmless options strategies it's not one of the more advanced you know levered
(23:29):
it's just trading your upside for income now it's more of a protective strategy and
msty is doing that they don't necessarily hold micro strategy underneath the hood they don't
They've said they use synthetic derivatives to create what's similar to microstrategy.
(23:50):
So they might not even have the exact 100 shares that are called away at a certain price.
Adds a little bit of complexity, in my opinion, reduces some liquidity because you're dealing with more and more options and less microstrategy shares.
And so it's a risk.
It doesn't mean it's right or wrong, but it's there.
We need to understand what's happening.
I quoted a client what micro strategy yield is looking like at certain price points this week.
(24:22):
And we came up with a range of what could be reasonable.
We got an annualized yield between 16 and 22% that we were looking at for a particular client.
MSTY's most recent distribution was annualized at like 120%.
So I look at that and I'm seeing the same options market, right? We're looking at writing call options against microstrategy for a client. We think 16% to 22% is reasonable trading income for upside. Now, 120% is well beyond that 16% to 22%, but it is happening.
(24:57):
So the questions are, is some of that return of capital, is some of that leverage, is some of that just money rushing in and demanding and it's hot right now?
I don't know, but I see risks.
And my main job for clients is just protecting them against risks that they might not see themselves.
So hopefully that's a little glimpse under the hood.
(25:19):
Happy to click in deeper, tease it out.
yeah well it's it's msty has been one of the like one of those things the last six months where
it's it's reminding me a lot of like waves of altcoin pump and dumps in the past and not saying
that msty is a pump and dump i'm just saying the pattern recognition alarm bells are going off a
(25:41):
little bit we have people sharing screenshots of how much money they put in what the distribution
looks like and they're calling people idiots for holding bitcoin and i'm just like it almost seems
too good to be true but then you'll be like hey this we're at this inflection point nation states
are adopting bitcoin all these corporate treasuries are adopting bitcoin it's up only from here and so
(26:01):
we're are being this information asymmetry that still exists in the market and we're in a super
cycle it does a ring of that right like 2017 is ico's 2021 is nfts now we got mstys they always
have letters. People are piling into something thinking it's a silver bullet and then the
narrative can take off on its own. I saw similar things. Hey, I was years away from retirement,
(26:26):
but I decided to YOLO it all in the MSTY. Now I retired both myself and my mom. She's in 100%
MSTY. Okay. It's not a dividend. So you just call it a dividend within that. What are the risks,
right? Because if you go down 90% and you're never coming back, that can be a life altering.
if you put all your money into something and lose 19 out of 20 eggs and it's never coming back,
(26:50):
it's unrecoverable. And that's, I'm sure it happened with ICOs and NFTs, you know, FTXs.
And if we're looking at something like MSTY, we just need to know the risks. Now the same strategy
can be done. And so what I saw as the biggest risk within that MSTY, that whale in the pool moment,
is that you can just have a private pool. You can do it yourself. You can write the options
(27:15):
yourself. You can stay in your... You don't need to use MSTY to get income from MicroStrategy.
And so that's something that we started rolling out to our clients internally. They're called
SMAs, separately managed accounts. You can think of it as like a private pool that,
hey, this is your own MicroStrategy. We will do your call option. If someone else wants out of
MSTY, you wouldn't know. You're not in a part of that pool. You're in your own private way.
(27:38):
So if and when it is right for clients, there's a better way to do it that removes some of the biggest risks.
Yeah, that's what I wonder is how many individuals, entities that are piling into MSTY understand the risk and view it as a game of hot potato where they're going to juice the distributions for six months, a year, whatever it may be, and then get out when they feel like they've sufficiently produced enough income.
(28:07):
Mm-hmm. And is MSTY aware of the narrative they've caught, right? They've caught this
big pool and audience and they can juice their own distributions. They can return some capital.
They can take on a little more leverage, get a little more aggressive. And can that cause an
unsuspecting person to be like going along with the herd, right? If MSTY is successful
(28:31):
and gathering all of this narrative and inflow because of it,
their incentives are aligned to keep that up, right?
Keep every distribution higher than the last.
And are you marching towards more and more risk
thinking you're in something like a fixed income?
That's the big, because it's not fixed.
It could dry up.
You could have something that happened to Bitcoin,
(28:52):
which I don't think would happen and I hope doesn't.
That would affect everything above it.
MSTR and the derivatives.
You could have something to have the micro strategy, right?
Something happened to sailor or the company that would affect everything.
And then its own set of risks, like the fund management risk that you're in the pool with everyone else.
And you've got the decision making of that manager who's making a decision for all of the pool participants.
(29:19):
And so if it's right, I think the private pool is a better way to go.
Just have the options managed according to you.
You can dial it up, make it spicier.
You dial it down.
and make it more plain vanilla.
It's your private pool.
You can kind of control the temperature.
MSTY is a little bit too much going along with the herd for my comfort Who issuing MSTY It a company called Yieldmax or is that just the name of them
(29:49):
You might have to double check on that one.
I have the fact sheet posted in the article.
That would be a link to the company's page.
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Unchain and Strive, Vivek Ramaswamy's asset management firm, just released a new report called Repricing the Economy in Bitcoin.
(30:10):
It introduces a Bitcoin-denominated DCF model and shows what happens when you revalue equities like Apple using Bitcoin instead of dollars.
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Read it now at unchained.com slash tftc.
That's unchained.com slash tftc.
And then obviously this is a derivative of micro strategy and what they're
(30:32):
doing,
but,
um,
how does it compare to something like strike or strife?
These two preferred preferred share offerings.
So the strike and strife wouldn't be derivatives.
They're not,
um,
there's contracts on top of micro strategy.
They're an actual offering from the company.
And those are,
let's just call them sailors way to dampen the volatility.
(30:54):
Right.
And if you don't want all the volatility of micro strategy, but you want to use the power of what it's doing with Bitcoin in some different flavors, that's what strike and strife are for.
I do mix them up from time to time, but one is a 10% preferred dividend.
(31:14):
So the dividend has a little bit better taxation than bond interest incomes taxed at a qualified dividend rate.
So that can be nice and attractive, 10%.
And depending on where it's trading, you can get higher than 10% if you're buying it below par.
But it is attractive to the fixed income market because they're not being offered 10% or 11% in their world.
(31:43):
So that way, you're taking that nuclear reactor that sailors talked about with Bitcoin and shoving it into a fixed income product.
There you go.
you got a 10 to 11% yield.
The other one is convertible.
So it's a little bit less yield,
but it can retain some upside of micro strategy truly runs and pops that
you'll be able to participate in that.
(32:04):
So think of that one as more of like a hybrid between the fixed income and
some of that upside or pop.
Yeah.
It's fast.
And what are your thoughts on all this financialization of,
or the Bitcoinization of finance to a certain degree with all these unique
offerings. It's a lot, a lot to keep up with. Um, there are times where clients will ask me
(32:30):
something that I have never heard of. I got one this week. Hey, did you hear about micro strategies?
Third offering STRD or something? I was like, no, I haven't. I wouldn't look. It's fake. It wasn't
even real. It was some hypothetical that a, uh, a YouTuber made up. Like, here's what I think
micro strategy could do. And I'm like, Oh goodness. There's so much financialization and then so much,
(32:51):
social media momentum that can just, it can get overwhelming, but it was inevitable,
right? That as Bitcoin collides with the world and wall street specifically,
they're going to have to interact with its ruthless fairness. And it's like unchanging
potential for how it improves people's finances. And they're going to create products around it.
(33:15):
Some will be helpful. Some will fail. Some will hurt people. And it's the humans and the institutions colliding with this protocol that doesn't seem to be moving. It's doing its TikTok next block thing. And Wall Street doesn't operate with that level of patience or consistency. They're going to buzz around it and create a lot of, usually a lot of selling, right? That's where their interests are aligned.
(33:41):
If we can create products and people buy those over Bitcoin, that's how we make money.
So I think it's an interesting time to be a Bitcoin-focused financial planner and advisor because you have to help clients navigate that space.
We're at the top of the call talking about retirees.
They love Bitcoin.
My clients love Bitcoin.
(34:02):
They believe in the future and what it's...
But they're in their mid-60s.
They're approaching 70.
They need to retire now.
And they're wanting to pull some of that forward because they've got more Bitcoin than time often, right?
And so a financialized product can sometimes be a solution, but we don't want to approach it without understanding the risks and having balance around it.
(34:28):
So very interesting time to be navigating case by case.
What are all these products coming out and how could I interpret and apply them in a way that my clients are still safe and meeting their goals?
Yeah, I think the private pool options play is very smart.
Yeah, I can't put my finger on or I don't know if I can articulate it exactly.
(34:53):
but again pattern recognition alarm bells going off the animal spirits of
ex-community groups and um youtubers who think they're trading savants um it's just like uh
some of this seems too good to be true not all but obviously bitcoin nation-state adoption
corporate treasury adoption in and of itself is not a bad thing it's a very positive thing but
(35:18):
all these derivative plays around it with people trying to catch up
scares me i recorded a podcast yesterday that'll come out on friday with the 1031 guys and
john arnold had a really good point like people try to use leverage to become an og
(35:38):
they have fomo and they feel like they need to play catch up and accumulate
um enough bitcoin to be on the level of who they perceive to be ogs and the way they typically try
to do that is leverage and historically in bitcoin it's never worked out too well for people
yes over the years whether it's just at unchanged or sound advisory the two biggest things that wreck
(36:02):
people are the ego and the emotion right and that's they're almost combined into the same thing
every bitcoiner i talk to feels like they were late because they know someone else who's in before
them. They know someone who got a price lower than they did. And it can feel, it can be a shot
to the ego that you're not as smart as you think you are, right? Bitcoin humbles all of us. And
(36:23):
there's a reason why that saying exists like stay humble, stack, because the emotion and the ego can
lead you to do something, whether it's fear or greed driving you there, that you're going out
on the risk spec and you're going to trade something that's more certain because you're
feeling like you're lacking. And that is what wrecks people. I think it was the underlying
(36:44):
thing under Celsius, BlockFi, FTA, that when Bitcoin's not doing something on your timeframe
and you want income or you want the yield, I'll just put it with them and I'll get 5%
more Bitcoin. Okay, well, now you've got Celsius. Oh, I'm just going to do this with it so I can
have it. And you're kind of like bartering with Bitcoin because it's not meeting your expectations.
(37:08):
right i've got a timeline i want to do x y and z and here's my ego i want to impose it on bitcoin
we're supposed to be this far into having it should be at this price it's not doing that
this chop is boring let me there's the ego the emotion right i'm going to take a different risk
level with my bitcoin to try and do something with it and i think people are blinded to the
(37:31):
risk by the greed or the the fear or the uh yeah it's um the underlying cause of a lot of bad
decisions yeah no i think the the right move what i've learned over the years is that when you feel
that urge to lever up and try to play catch up instead of expressing that by levering up your
(37:53):
bitcoin go try to be more productive and produce more income so that you can buy more it's very
real because everyone knows what fear and greed feel like he knows what like patience feels like
just it's neutral and it's it's hard and it's discipline and it's continuing to work and build
or or have a disciplined investing strategy if you're if you're no longer working and building
(38:19):
and you're retiring like sometimes people are having to settle for the ultimate enemy of just
like i should have some dollars right if i have enough dollars to ride through a cycle then i
know I never need to sell Bitcoin this cycle. And that's the unfortunate trade-off that the
hyper-Bitcoinizing generations have to live through. Because we're not a full unit of
(38:42):
account medium of exchange yet. And if we're headed there, it's going to be volatile. And
we'll have this transition period where we live in the dollar and the Bitcoin at the same time.
And in my opinion, that's where all the best companies are solving for, right? How do we
navigate between dollars and Bitcoin as things are volatile, whether it's unchained, strike,
(39:03):
river, they're creating these dollar and Bitcoin services and products, secure
and really designed to be a bridge, right? They're trying to build a strong, secure bridge
where you can hop back and forth between those two worlds, dollar and Bitcoin, as your needs change.
and i think that's where the majority of bitcoin companies value is being built yeah
(39:32):
it can only be built if you're focused right which is very important yeah it's easy to buy
a ticker symbol it's hard to build something that hasn't existed before right let's see uh
the whole bitcoin corporate treasury thing again in and of itself i think it's a good thing but
(39:54):
i think there is information asymmetry a potential financial arbitrage that is being exploited right
now but at some point in the future when bitcoin reaches a particular liquidity profile that game
sort of has marginal diminishing returns and yes you're gonna have to look at yourself as a
(40:16):
business as an entity and be like, okay, how do I actually produce value and turn that value into
income and EBITDA that allows me to sustain my business? Yeah. The P&L will matter more as the
balance sheet gets commoditized. Sailor is a pioneer in putting it on the balance sheet.
Early mover, in size, found a lot of arbitrage opportunities, whether it's
(40:38):
the convertible or the preferred. When you're first, you don't even have to be the best because
you're the only, but now there's more and more participants. You're getting Bitcoin treasury
companies that understand that it's powerful to put Bitcoin on a balance sheet. And at the end
state, many, many companies will have Bitcoin on their balance sheet. It's table stakes at that
(40:59):
point. And so how are you going to differentiate and provide value on top of Bitcoin? That's the
building, right? And so in my opinion, there are some treasury companies that are doing the
equivalent of buying that ticker symbol. Oh, if I just switched to Bitcoin balance sheet,
all this money's going to flow to me.
Still pretty early,
right?
You're probably still within the group of pioneers and that may happen,
but it's not sustainable if you don't have a thesis or a value proposition of
(41:23):
how you build value on top of Bitcoin.
Just having Bitcoin on the balance sheet is not a sustainable unlock because
that's where most companies are going to be headed over the coming decades.
Yeah.
And.
Yeah.
I can already hear people like Marty you're so
(41:43):
bearish you don't understand what's going on I just
want to say hey
been around the block
few times few cycles
just be careful out there
be careful out there stay humble stack
sats exist for a reason
and then for anybody who doesn't understand
like the stay humble
stack sats meme
started Matt started it
(42:05):
this is like six or seven years
ago now at this point
and it's basically just don't go levered long don't margin trade don't shit coin during the
bull market because that's how you get blown up yeah and end up with less than you otherwise would
have had yeah if i can fanboy for a little bit i listen to you and matt all the time and i i love
(42:28):
that quote and i've started to uh personalize it for myself the meme of stay humble sacksats and
And I see within the social media sometimes where people ask, well, how much Bitcoin do you have?
Not enough.
I never have enough Bitcoin.
I've gotten to a point within my own personal life where I'm like, I feel like I have enough.
If I can just stay humble, stack the sats that my bullishness I'm trying to express through my patience.
(42:55):
And so I'm changing that sats to Saturdays.
I don't work on Saturdays.
And I want to stack those because if I've got enough Bitcoin, what don't I have enough of?
is time with my family. I got a boy who's about to be seven. I'm like, man, he's getting into
T-ball and I need to stack Saturdays now because the Bitcoin is, I'm confident that it'll be there
(43:16):
in the longterm. And I believe I have enough that I'm trying to build and be patient and do the
things that I think will make Bitcoiners proud and see this industry flourish. Let's stack some
Saturdays too, right? And start to get some time. And like, it helps connect me to like,
what is the Bitcoin all for? If I die and leave my family a stack and they're like, okay, well,
(43:37):
I want to have those meaningful experiences along the way. And I think that when people find that
value and what connects them to their money, that can pull you out of the fear and greed.
You're no longer comparing to, oh, so-and-so got in before me. They were class of 20,
whatever. I've found a way that Bitcoin is a powerful tool in my life and it's helping me
(44:00):
stack some Saturdays, right? I get to live for now because I feel more confident in my future.
And so I don't know if anyone that had ever brought up that pun or double entendre to you,
but that's what I'm hearing. You guys close out your podcast, stay humble, stack stats. And
I think y'all record on like a Thursday or Friday.
Depending on Saturdays. Okay. Saturdays come in. I'm like, all right, well, I don't know how many
(44:23):
Saturdays I have left in this life We know there 21 billion Bitcoin I only got some time with a six and seven year old and I need to make today count And so that my own personal rabbit trail I love that You never asked for but it is it deeply meaningful to me and helps me remember that
Bitcoin is a tool that should be empowering our lives.
(44:44):
It's that fix the world, you know, fix Jesse side of, okay, if the money's fixed, it can
help be a tool in my life here and now.
No, I love that.
And I've never heard it.
So it's the first time I'm hearing a double entendre.
No, no, no.
It reminded me like last night we had an event here at Bitcoin Park Austin with Adam Back,
Turdemister, Parker, a bunch of others speaking.
(45:07):
And everybody's like, oh, you want to go grab dinner?
I was like, no, I'm going to go home.
I was able to make it home in time for bedtime and read stories.
Do you really feel that working in Bitcoin?
Like you're surrounded by all the questions, all the news, all the products and people
and personalities and drama.
And did you see who did this and that?
(45:27):
And you're talking about Trump did something crazy.
It can be so much that it's overwhelming.
And to shrink down and be like, I'm just dead.
I get to read a book.
Might have read it eight or 10 times before, but I'm never getting these moments back.
And I am so fortunate that I get to work with clients in their 60s and 70s.
And they have money.
(45:48):
They have resources.
And their retirement's locked.
What do they want?
a lot of them want to go back to when their kids were six and seven, right? They want that time
back with their kids. And I'm fortunate that they share that with me. And it had brought tears to my
eyes a couple of times because I'm like, okay, well, I get to live like that client. Their wish
(46:10):
is to go back to where I am right now and I get to live it. Right. And I don't need to be stacking
sets right now. I need to be stacking a Saturday and like really making the most of this moment.
so yeah yeah no it's really important to put those things into perspective it's the most important
thing and i i've had i don't want to say regrets but there's been times where i've like committed
(46:37):
to something in the industry gone wasn't it was like i didn't have to do this and then i get home
the kids are asleep i'm like i missed yeah i missed a bedtime tonight that wasn't fun much
would have much rather done a bedtime. It's that, it's that double-edged sword of success,
right? When things are taking off and Bitcoin's winning and your company's healthy and the people
(47:01):
around you are excited and want to talk to you, it can take you from the people that are the most
patient with you, right? My wife, my kid, my dad, um, I know you've got a story that it's like
That time is so precious and remembering it and anchoring to it is a powerful draw against the negative emotions that Bitcoin can easily sweep you up into.
(47:27):
Right. Whether we have a bear in its fear or a bull in its greed.
Those aren't the emotions that you want in your life.
You need to find something deeper than the tool, deeper than Bitcoin.
Like what are your values? For a lot of people, it's family and time.
There can be others, you know, hobbies, just things that really connect you and make you feel alive.
That's what the money's there for. That's what's going to fix the world. And that's,
(47:48):
once you know that the money can serve that, and you're not just thinking only as deep as the money,
you've got a deeper base layer of what it's all there for. Yeah. It's very, probably, yeah,
I can hop off the soapbox, but I think so much of my job, like I thought I was going to be a
financial advisor, but it gets so psychological so quickly because the saying is personal finance
(48:12):
is 80 personal and only 20 finance and it's even more powerful in the bitcoin world because
bitcoin is such a powerful tool yeah it really is it really is not not i'm happy you hopped on that
soapbox because especially right now as we're we passed all-time highs earlier we're a little below
it but who knows could continue and things are going to get crazy and it's important to have
(48:36):
have this perspective in mind as things are getting crazy. Yeah. Um, and as they get crazy
and you feel right and your thesis was proved, just remember that you being right about this is
also simultaneously painful for the rest of the world. It doesn't see it as early as you like it's
(48:58):
that just don't dance from the, uh, the big short. Is it, is what he says, right? Just don't dance.
It's like, this is, this is not a good thing we're going through.
It's good that we have a solution, but you understand the solution far more than 99%
of the world and 99% of the world going through pain is not, it's probably what's happening.
(49:21):
I prefer it happens slower than all at once, but just don't dance because, um, so yeah,
connecting to the things that are deeper than money will help you from help you from dancing
as others are yet to transition and haven't found bitcoin yet yeah get uh get so distracted
(49:42):
at t-ball games that you don't even think to death just losing your mind and throwing peanuts
yeah yeah but speaking of like things do seem to be getting out of whack in the traditional
financial system it seems like japan's completely lost control their yield curve
looks like we're losing control of our yield curve here in the united states uh is japan losing the
(50:07):
their bond market to meta planet yeah it seems like it's very possible market of japan just
flowed into a hotel company that's why i tweeted that out yesterday i was like is
are the japanese using meta planet as a bitcoin proxy yeah they're like the micro strategy of
their country right like yeah you know just uh the escape hatch is tiny and so it can easily blow out
(50:31):
when the the flood comes none for those who are unaware i think japan's tax situation is such where
it's a massive tax benefit to buy stocks over spot bitcoin as well so um it makes sense that
people would flow in the meta planet yeah i think if i could segue a little bit it's that
(50:53):
every country's got that different tax, right? Japan, I'm not familiar with their tax regime,
but pretty familiar with America's. And that is what drives so much.
It's the number one friction in people's lives, right? The CPAs are in business because tax is
there. It's a powerful reason why loans exist. I don't want to sell my Bitcoin and pay tax,
(51:17):
I'd rather take a loan against it.
IRAs, gains, losses.
Bitcoin's trying to be money, but it's not tax like money.
It's tax like property.
And I had used...
Saylor and Jack Mauler had different opinions on this.
Or I think even Odell had one that...
What is Bitcoin?
Saylor will say property.
Maybe an Odell would say something like money.
(51:39):
Yes, technologically, Bitcoin's trying to be money and money's property.
But where they disagree is like that tax component.
It's so powerful to just hodl or hold Bitcoin because of the tax friction.
And so the thing I pay most attention to is which countries are easing up the friction on people.
El Salvador being a great example.
(52:00):
But you see other countries or even states in America where they're trying to do something with cap gains or reduce frictions in and out of certain structures.
I think that's where all of the, as the floods coming and Bitcoin is hitting the global world, the water is going to find its sweet spot, right?
(52:23):
In the jurisdictions that carve the trench for it.
And so the number one thing I'm paying attention to for my clients is what's coming in this big, beautiful tax bill, right?
Trump has called it big and beautiful.
Great.
I'm sure it's beautiful.
Well, what's in it and how does that tax affect the Bitcoiners or maybe even other parts of that, you know, Bitcoiners financial life.
(52:49):
But that's once they change the game of the friction, that's what you navigate for people, because it's not an opinion of price.
Price can do this or that or MetaPlanet or Microsoft.
They might do this. Those are just crystal ball and opinion taxes here and now.
And if you say if you do X, Y and Z, you're going to save this much money.
very, very powerful, sometimes boring, right? People don't like tax, but that is a needle
(53:14):
mover in Bitcoiners financial lives. And so what can we expect with this big,
beautiful tax bill? Oh goodness. I've heard they're going to eliminate the IRS.
Doesn't sound like it would need to be a big, beautiful tax bill to do that. So if it's big
and beautiful, it's probably got a lot of different bells and whistles that are likely
an extension of the TCJA. So I know I see there's jockeying between the Senate and the House and
(53:42):
what's going to be in there and what's not. I imagine it's something like the TCJA bill we've
had for the last seven years with maybe some new caveats. Things that Bitcoiners could pay attention
to bonus depreciation. If mining is on your radar, right? Being able to depreciate those
(54:03):
mining machines could look at like, and this is just a side note that the public miners aren't
able to pass through losses or that bonus depreciation, but the privates sometimes can.
And so that could be a benefit. Bonus depreciation comes back. I'd be looking at if you're exposed to
the mining space, like, well, now do we buy rigs because we can write it all off.
(54:29):
Social security, if that's a part of your now or your future, there might be no tax on that.
No tax on tips. If you're in the service industry, there could be others.
They do end up getting rid of the IRS. There's some strategies for that too. Maybe it's selling
all your Bitcoin and buying it right back to lock in a new basis. Talk to some clients that think
(54:52):
the IRS will go away. There's a potential strategy of sell your $100 Bitcoin and buy the $110,000
Bitcoin. If there's no IRS, reset your basis and floor, you could do Roth conversions.
There's so many what ifs that I'm just telling many, many clients, let's pause,
let's see what the rules are. And then I'll help you play the game after that.
(55:13):
Do you think no capital gains on Bitcoin is on?
That'd be nice. Yeah. On whose table? I don't know. I mean, America needs money. Even if they
got rid of the IRS, like where's the money going to come from? There's probably a large, they did
that. That's a tariff regime, right? They're going to have to get the money from somewhere else.
(55:36):
Cap gains would be internal. They're losing a big chunk of revenue for not taxing that.
Is it only to Bitcoin? Would it be to stocks and real estate as well?
I think it's pretty far-fetched. I would give it a 5%, 10% chance.
Nothing's zero these days. Lots of craziness, but not a base case.
(55:59):
If there's no cap gains, I'm personally probably waiting until December 31st of the year
so they don't change their mind and say, and then I'll sell the Bitcoin and buy it right back to lock in a higher basis.
wild times jesse wild times wild times yes thank you for coming on particularly
(56:21):
helping people gain perspective on how to approach this things are going to get weird
both in the bitcoin world and the fiat world trying to keep your head on straight stay humble
don't become beholden to the whims of FOMO and animal spirits and have a plan and stick to it
(56:43):
yeah i think uh i've heard you say is this peak clown world like is it peak
maybe the peak is uh correlated with m2 money supply like it's more the more they print the
more the peaks just keep coming it's going up going up forever laura hyper bullish on peak
clown world clown world is going up forever jesse yeah yeah where can people are ticker c
(57:08):
clwn can i invest in peak clown world not yet just wait that'll come the treasury company you're
going to spack it out that'll come that'll come um where can people find out more about gannett
gannett is at gannettrust.com they are operationalizing standing it up as we speak
So Chartered, Wyoming Trust Company, getting installed and rolling out to Unchained Clients first, probably in the second half of the year that'll be made more broadly available to others.
(57:39):
So GannettTrust.com.
If you're interested in learning what that rollout looks like, you can request an introduction there.
sound advisory which i help run is going to be tucking up and under gannett trust over the next
few months and will be the the wealth advisory arm of the trust company and then that can currently
(58:00):
be found at the sound advisory.com but it'll tuck under gannett eventually and as always unchained
the parent company and umbrella the leader of the umbrella family is unchained.com
for their products and services.
Check it out.
Think about using unchained.com slash TFTC
(58:20):
if you want to engage in anything they're doing there.
Yeah, check it out.
Jesse, thank you.
You're welcome.
I know, and congrats on getting Gannett out there
because I know it's been a long haul.
It's very important, very important to do it correctly.
And for anybody out there, high net worth individual,
somebody managing a corporate balance sheet
(58:42):
or a pension fund, whatever it may be looking for.
Say for fiduciaries, families, founders.
So if you're in that world, we'd love to start a conversation with you.
And yeah, as the world gets crazier and develops and there's more products,
we are doing our part to try and build and solve what we think is needed in the space.
(59:04):
And again, it was a lot of proof of work and proud of the team that launched it.
and we'll see what we can do with that Swiss army knife here in the coming years.
All right. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing it flourish.
All right. Well, thank you, sir. Thanks for the time.
Thank you. Peace and love, freaks.
You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
(00:10):
If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their
currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
(00:31):
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
We're meeting on a day when we hit new all-time highs.
Bitcoin approached $110,000.
Got Jesse back on the show to talk about many things, not just the price ripping.
(00:53):
A lot of good things happening on the unchained side of things.
Watching Gannett Trust.
We'll get into it.
Yeah.
Lots of stuff happening.
I think the price likes Gannett.
I think that's the mover.
I mean, that's been a big discussion in the space right now is,
(01:18):
are we heading to new all-time highs?
How should Bitcoiners be preparing?
How much Bitcoin do people need to retire?
How are you thinking about all this as we approach what seems to be another bull cycle?
Yeah, that's a common question, right?
How much Bitcoin do I need to retire?
(01:39):
I get it a lot.
And there's so many other questions I want to ask.
Like, well, how much money are you spending, right?
Do you need to be on a yacht every week?
Or are you staying humble and keeping those sats?
And so the amount of Bitcoin can vary because the spending pressure you're putting against your Bitcoin stack is the biggest factor.
Right. And age is probably in the second.
(02:01):
A 30 year old retiring on Bitcoin is different than a 75 year old retiring on Bitcoin just because of the horizon.
So stacks vary.
We've got people retiring with less than seven figures of Bitcoin because they have other assets.
And then we have people retiring with hundreds of Bitcoin and putting very little pressure against that portfolio.
(02:22):
So it can go in a lot of different ways.
But it is a question of the day.
As you're poking new all-time highs, everyone's like, well, how high is it going to get?
And then a huge question is, do we have cycles again, right?
If countries are buying, what would a downside look like?
And that's the big question in the retirees' mind is,
How do I protect and not ride that downside all the way down if we do have another 70, 80% drawback?
(02:48):
Yeah.
No, and I think particularly for younger people having in their mind, like the perspective of 21 million Bitcoin, 8 billion people.
What's the stat?
60 million millionaires in the world.
How much, how many sats do I need to get to feel comfortable that I have a sufficient slice of the Bitcoin pie?
(03:11):
That feel comfortable concept is just so different, right? Because Bitcoin is moving and shaking and all-time highs are down 30% and that's still within a bull market. Is that comfortable? Can you actually hang it up and like, all right, not going into work and I'm just going to continue to ride these adoption cycles?
I don't know if it ever gets comfortable.
(03:33):
The most comfort comes from putting as little pressure as possible against that stack, right?
That you're not pushing these withdrawal rates of like 5%, 10%, 20% of my Bitcoin stack.
I'm needing to live on every...
Because then you're requiring Bitcoin to do something for you in the short term, which is just not great at, right?
What's Bitcoin price going to be in a year?
(03:55):
Far less reliable than what's Bitcoin price going to be in 30 years.
Yeah. Well, I think one of the holdups too is the ability for people to get into Bitcoin and know where to put it and not only have certainty of what it will be valued at in 30 years, but will they have access to it?
(04:16):
that's one thing that you guys have been very much focused on.
Sound advisory is separate from unchained technically,
but within the unchained umbrella,
but unchained focused on helping secure individuals and business is and trust
Bitcoin.
And I think today's announcement of Gannett trust is a massive step in a
(04:39):
direction towards more certainty for long-term holdings for particular
entities.
Yes.
The Unchained umbrella or family of companies is growing.
And the intention will be for Sound Advisory to tuck under or be merged into, folded into Gannett Trust Company as it gets set up.
But it is the most robust compliance offering that is out there in the fiduciary space.
(05:03):
And so that, in my opinion, was the one thing missing as people want to live on a Bitcoin standard.
Sometimes they're in an entity or an organization or have a structure that requires a fiduciary standard.
And these two coming together is solved by Gannett Trust Company.
So it's going to be the most robust way to hold Bitcoin and have like true inheritance that can be administered through generations.
(05:30):
So how does this work mechanically via Gannett?
Mechanically.
So as the first Bitcoin native trust company, other trust companies do exist, right?
but they don't build upon Bitcoin in the way that Unchained has.
So Gannett in its Unchained roots and using Unchained technology
(05:50):
is going to be able to use multi-sig to achieve trust company goals.
And what that likely will mean is Gannett holding a key,
Unchained holding a key, third party holding a key.
Those three keys together ensure that the Bitcoin's not being held at any one spot.
right we could get into the coinbase honeypot we've actually talked about this on our last
(06:13):
episode like hey what do you think is the uh the risk out there that the industry might disagree
with i'm launching a new segment i'm going to ask you a prediction what what's out there that the uh
the industry doesn't see eye to eye with you at and i was at conferences and they're saying hey
coinbase is the best that's where we put all the cut it means all the keys are at coinbase
(06:34):
and with the news of the last week, like, Hey, there could be cracks, right? If you've got
exposure to Coinbase now, you could be questioning. I was on the list. I got the email.
You were affected. That's not great. It doesn't feel good knowing that information,
that information could have been a lot worse. That headline could have been private keys
being mismanaged. When you overlay what Gannett is going to offer to the custody space,
(07:02):
It means that not all of the keys are going to be at any one entity. And so that gives the Bitcoiner who understands multisig the confidence that, OK, I'm upgrading from a honeypot to a distributed key setup.
But it has to be done in a fiduciary and compliant way to satisfy the institutional and big money of the world, right? Family offices, Bitcoin treasury companies, they're going to need a structure that the CIO, the CFO can point to and say, yes, that is regulated.
(07:33):
that meets all of our expectations, all of our standards, that's going to satisfy our board,
our CPAs. There's a long list of industry professionals that have fiduciary obligations
to clients and they just need certain boxes checked. And that's what the trust company
brings to the table. So trust company think fiduciary standard and then Bitcoin multi-sig,
(07:53):
like Bitcoin standard through Unchained combining those two things. It's that Venn diagram overlap
that is going to be the true unlock and upgrade yeah this is desperately needed right now as
coinbase via the emergence of etfs how popular their launches were obviously the bitcoin treasury
(08:14):
companies which you mentioned microstrategy really leaning into that more and more and now
a bunch of copycats coming to market and coinbase has taken a large part of that market in terms of
securing those treasures. Perfect use case. I've floated the idea internally. I think it might be
too early. That's like a first week in business, but going for an ETF, right? How is a third,
(08:39):
fourth or fifth place AUM ETF keeping up with the BlackRock and the Fidelity? They all just
hold the spot Bitcoin. That's what they have. And so I look at that space as maybe it's a Bitwise
or an ARK or someone on that list might want to have a multi-sig secure Bitcoin ETF.
(09:01):
Gannett can hold a key. Unchain holds a key. ETF provider potentially even hold a key.
Right now, you've got three people securing that Bitcoin and it's not all at Coinbase.
I think 10 of the 12 ETFs are at Coinbase, all but Fidelity and VanEck.
Fidelity Custody is their own keys and VanEck uses Gemini.
10 out of the 12 are at coinbase and we just saw that they had an exposure last week right so that's
(09:27):
it's kind of showing you there's cracks and again it can be a structure and it can evolve into
many different use cases of securing coins for large pools of capital with multi-sig
multi-institutional yet still regulated and compliant to fiduciary standards
(09:47):
and moving from like the corporate and etf balance sheets but for high net worth individuals from i
understand the problem of holding bitcoin in a trust in a way that makes hardcore bitcoiners feel
comfortable has been pretty hard yeah to date yeah
(10:10):
As a precursor, a lot of trust structures are pursued because you've got to get the money out of your name.
It's got to get out of Marty's name or out of Jesse's name.
Because if you die with too much money, there's the death tax.
Now, that number fluctuates all around.
Right now, it's about $28 million for a married couple.
(10:30):
It's on the table in the Trump tax bill to maybe change.
But the number fluctuates.
But if you're over $28 million, you're in this world where you could be exposed to the death tax.
And so there's a state planning where you get the money out of your name and into some other entity.
That's often a trust, sometimes an LLC, but in this case, we'll use a trust.
(10:51):
That trust has to have separation from you.
And so when you get into the key management or who's the trustee part of that,
there's sometimes a conflict between the Bitcoiner and then the trust structures.
I want to hold keys, right?
That's what Bitcoiners mean by custody is like no keys, no cheese, keys above all else.
(11:12):
Bitcoin doesn't know about trust.
It doesn't care about trust.
It cares about private keys.
But trust company can serve as a trustee on that trust, right?
So having a trust company that understands Bitcoin, understands proper key management,
that can be the overlapping solution that I need to get this money out of my name.
(11:36):
for significant death tax reasons. Now it's in this structure. I'm happy with the rules,
but something professional needs to oversee that those rules are actually carried through.
That's what trust companies or professional trustees do for trust, that they are held legally
to, if I do Sherry Standard, to effectuate that trust. If it says do this, that's what the trust
(12:01):
company makes sure happens. So having one of those that gets Bitcoin, gets key management,
that's the solution that we saw was missing in the space. And it's over a year ago, a lot of hard
work went into it. It's live. We're standing up and really excited about what that's going to be
able to unlock. Yeah, I know it's been a Herculean task for you guys to get this out there. So I'm
(12:25):
pumped. And honestly, like looking at the history of trust companies within the ecosystem, they
haven't been so trustworthy i get entities like prime trust and others and it seems like they
were cutting corners to bring a product to market that many uh sort of white label exchanges were
yeah we're anchoring into maybe perhaps similar to coinbase they would have been better focusing
(12:50):
on bitcoin building on bitcoin and got distracted by crypto so there are other trust companies out
there and they're very amenable to like altcoins and you know how broad trust companies can be with
many different types of assets but what's going to be the one that starts to go deep
(13:10):
into Bitcoin right and having it be a serious focus and designing the operations procedures
protection security that Bitcoiners kind of demand from a key control perspective
it was just missing so yeah so beyond the sort of multi-institution multi-sig what does it mean
(13:33):
going deeper in terms of giving those types of clients that that comfortability you know when
you're operating at those levels um especially in like the family and inheritance side um
sure you've heard the term trust fund kid right these structures can last generations and
it is a way to make money last beyond yourself, but with your intentions. And so,
(13:57):
when you're having conversations about, well, what did the trust say? Sometimes there can be
an interpretation of like, well, how does that apply to the family? So, there is,
if you're getting into the weeds in each specific family, like trust officers,
as they're carrying out the role of the trust, they're like, okay, this kid or this beneficiary
(14:18):
has this need? Does that meet the terms of the trust? And there's a lot of just administration
and you're kind of along with the family in that ride, right? Everyone's kind of beholden to the
trust structure and it can't always be changed. And it just is what it is. And
trust fund kids now because of it, how does the trust company navigate how money goes
(14:45):
out of the trust and to beneficiaries and for what reasons They just very involved um from an administration and like relationship management side of things So yeah that would be
on like the family side and the treasury side, you can look at, um, different strategies. Like
I imagine where you've got Bitcoin and a serious focus on Bitcoin as a treasury company,
(15:11):
but you want to reduce volatility within that because it's too much.
So designing other, let's call them fiat components around,
maybe it's using derivatives or rebalancing to cash in an automated way.
If things get out of band,
when a trust company is involved in it has some level of control and being
(15:31):
able to make those like rebalancing or derivative decisions with and for your
company, then you can have more of an autopilot,
like volatility compression within your treasury. So there are lots of different applications and
we're just now like standing up the basics. It'll roll out to unchained clients before
(15:54):
the broader public just because of the pent up demand. And we'll see where it goes. Like I think
the sky's the limit because we've seen over the last six months, like Wall Street is here and it
is headbutting Bitcoin head on, right?
Those worlds are colliding and navigating the middle
(16:15):
and what's going to satisfy both sides.
Trust Company is just a powerful Swiss army knife
that can unlock a lot of things.
Yeah, well, on the topic of volatility suppression,
you had it in your pre-production notes
that you want to talk about MISTI,
which is all these different sort of derivatives
(16:35):
and preferred offerings that strategy has leaned into themselves with strike and strife and then
products like misty and mstu which have sort of merged as derivative plays on micro strategy
strategy to yeah get a different return profile yeah i think that's a good way to put it is like
(16:58):
different return profile right it's all built upon bitcoin you've got bitcoin as a base layer
as money. MicroStrategy is a company that is built on Bitcoin. It's got all of the risks of
Bitcoin, right? The volatility, the political, the technical, but then it's got its own set of risks,
MicroStrategy risks. Let's call them sailor and key control and profitability and governance and
(17:22):
all company. Then you have derivatives, which are on top of MicroStrategy and they retain the risks
of everything underneath. They have all the MicroStrategy risks, all the Bitcoin, and then
their own set of derivative risks. And so when I was asked the question a dozen times earlier in
this year, I was like, okay, this is where the question set is heading. I better get into it.
And ended up releasing an article about MSTY specifically, because that was the hot buzz
(17:48):
of the day. And like, what are the risks? Some aren't so bad. And then others I'd seen were
catastrophic in the past. And so I lived through COVID, the March 2020 as an advisor and saw
certain ETF or derivative structures. ETFs that use derivatives, they blew up during COVID,
(18:12):
like just unrecoverable, down 95%, never came back. And these were gold mining ETFs. And I
thought that that was a pretty good analogy because Bitcoiners are sympathetic to the gold bugs,
right? To this day, gold is approaching all-time highs like Bitcoin, but that ETF that used
derivatives on goldmine has never recovered. It never came back. And so a Bitcoiner could be right
(18:36):
about the underlying thesis of Bitcoin and Bitcoin could be successful. But if derivative-based ETFs
aren't managed well, or there's a rush for the exits and someone needs to sell and into an
illiquid market, it can blow everything up. It can affect everyone in the pool.
And so the metaphor I started to tease out, which I didn't know if it was kosher or not, but I landed on it and I'm comfortable with how edgy it is.
(19:02):
If a whale pees in the pool, everyone is affected.
If a large participant in an ETF structure wants out in size and MSTY in particular is using derivatives to create a synthetic micro strategy position and then call options against that as well, that can be an illiquid market.
(19:24):
If there's a rush to dollars, global crisis, correlation to one, everyone wants dollars and a big whale wants out of MSTY, they could sell those derivative positions into an illiquid market where there's no bid.
And it basically, I mean, that's my read on what happened with the gold mining ETF that never recovered.
(19:44):
I've got clients asking questions.
I'm looking out for something like that.
Like, what is the risk and how do we avoid a 95% collapse that's unrecoverable?
Because you could be right about Bitcoin.
And if you had too much of your money in MSTY, you're down bad, never coming back.
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(20:06):
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(20:49):
card queue. It's a beautiful thing. Yeah. So let's dive into sort of what MSTY does or how it's
marketed the way i understand it and i'll admit my understanding is cursory just at an arm's length
from observing people talk about it on x for the last three months or whatever since the beginning
of the year actually so from what i understand you put money into this etf that's your principle
(21:14):
and then these derivatives and options um sort of structures are layered into the etf which provide
fixed income based off the principle that you're putting in.
Is that correct?
Pretty close.
Only one word I'm going to pull out of that.
It's not fixed.
Not fixed.
So income.
And this is a misconception that was rampant on Twitter, calling it a dividend, right?
(21:38):
Dividends come from profits.
MSTY is not issuing a dividend.
It's a distribution.
Similar, but a big difference, right?
Because the distribution can be options or premiums that are received from the option,
but it could also be return of capital. You give me a hundred bucks and I'm like,
thanks Marty. And I give you 20 bucks back. You have no idea if that was from profit that I
(22:00):
actually used in a business activity or a good investment, or I just gave you $20 of your hundred
back, right? I distributed it back to you, but it wasn't a dividend. And so let, I think it could
be helpful to pause and just what is the income generating piece of Misty? They're writing call
(22:21):
options against an underlying position. What that means and writing a call option,
it's very simple. It's just trading your upside for income. You can imagine you have a hundred
shares of MicroStrategy and you think it's going to the moon. You don't know when you're like,
ah, I'd really like to live on some of it now. Let me pick a date. Let's call it December.
(22:43):
And if MicroStrategy goes to $600 a share, I'd be willing to part with it after that.
you can have all the moon. I'm happy to let it go for 600. The person taking the other side of that
trade is buying the call option at 600, right? Micro strategy. If it goes to 700, they're going
(23:03):
to get it from you at 600. And so for giving them that promise of unlimited upside, you're getting
income now, today, you're going to get like a premium or a paycheck for giving them that promise.
that is the writing a call option strategy it's one of the most basic and one of the
most harmless options strategies it's not one of the more advanced you know levered
(23:29):
it's just trading your upside for income now it's more of a protective strategy and
msty is doing that they don't necessarily hold micro strategy underneath the hood they don't
They've said they use synthetic derivatives to create what's similar to microstrategy.
(23:50):
So they might not even have the exact 100 shares that are called away at a certain price.
Adds a little bit of complexity, in my opinion, reduces some liquidity because you're dealing with more and more options and less microstrategy shares.
And so it's a risk.
It doesn't mean it's right or wrong, but it's there.
We need to understand what's happening.
I quoted a client what micro strategy yield is looking like at certain price points this week.
(24:22):
And we came up with a range of what could be reasonable.
We got an annualized yield between 16 and 22% that we were looking at for a particular client.
MSTY's most recent distribution was annualized at like 120%.
So I look at that and I'm seeing the same options market, right? We're looking at writing call options against microstrategy for a client. We think 16% to 22% is reasonable trading income for upside. Now, 120% is well beyond that 16% to 22%, but it is happening.
(24:57):
So the questions are, is some of that return of capital, is some of that leverage, is some of that just money rushing in and demanding and it's hot right now?
I don't know, but I see risks.
And my main job for clients is just protecting them against risks that they might not see themselves.
So hopefully that's a little glimpse under the hood.
(25:19):
Happy to click in deeper, tease it out.
yeah well it's it's msty has been one of the like one of those things the last six months where
it's it's reminding me a lot of like waves of altcoin pump and dumps in the past and not saying
that msty is a pump and dump i'm just saying the pattern recognition alarm bells are going off a
(25:41):
little bit we have people sharing screenshots of how much money they put in what the distribution
looks like and they're calling people idiots for holding bitcoin and i'm just like it almost seems
too good to be true but then you'll be like hey this we're at this inflection point nation states
are adopting bitcoin all these corporate treasuries are adopting bitcoin it's up only from here and so
(26:01):
we're are being this information asymmetry that still exists in the market and we're in a super
cycle it does a ring of that right like 2017 is ico's 2021 is nfts now we got mstys they always
have letters. People are piling into something thinking it's a silver bullet and then the
narrative can take off on its own. I saw similar things. Hey, I was years away from retirement,
(26:26):
but I decided to YOLO it all in the MSTY. Now I retired both myself and my mom. She's in 100%
MSTY. Okay. It's not a dividend. So you just call it a dividend within that. What are the risks,
right? Because if you go down 90% and you're never coming back, that can be a life altering.
if you put all your money into something and lose 19 out of 20 eggs and it's never coming back,
(26:50):
it's unrecoverable. And that's, I'm sure it happened with ICOs and NFTs, you know, FTXs.
And if we're looking at something like MSTY, we just need to know the risks. Now the same strategy
can be done. And so what I saw as the biggest risk within that MSTY, that whale in the pool moment,
is that you can just have a private pool. You can do it yourself. You can write the options
(27:15):
yourself. You can stay in your... You don't need to use MSTY to get income from MicroStrategy.
And so that's something that we started rolling out to our clients internally. They're called
SMAs, separately managed accounts. You can think of it as like a private pool that,
hey, this is your own MicroStrategy. We will do your call option. If someone else wants out of
MSTY, you wouldn't know. You're not in a part of that pool. You're in your own private way.
(27:38):
So if and when it is right for clients, there's a better way to do it that removes some of the biggest risks.
Yeah, that's what I wonder is how many individuals, entities that are piling into MSTY understand the risk and view it as a game of hot potato where they're going to juice the distributions for six months, a year, whatever it may be, and then get out when they feel like they've sufficiently produced enough income.
(28:07):
Mm-hmm. And is MSTY aware of the narrative they've caught, right? They've caught this
big pool and audience and they can juice their own distributions. They can return some capital.
They can take on a little more leverage, get a little more aggressive. And can that cause an
unsuspecting person to be like going along with the herd, right? If MSTY is successful
(28:31):
and gathering all of this narrative and inflow because of it,
their incentives are aligned to keep that up, right?
Keep every distribution higher than the last.
And are you marching towards more and more risk
thinking you're in something like a fixed income?
That's the big, because it's not fixed.
It could dry up.
You could have something that happened to Bitcoin,
(28:52):
which I don't think would happen and I hope doesn't.
That would affect everything above it.
MSTR and the derivatives.
You could have something to have the micro strategy, right?
Something happened to sailor or the company that would affect everything.
And then its own set of risks, like the fund management risk that you're in the pool with everyone else.
And you've got the decision making of that manager who's making a decision for all of the pool participants.
(29:19):
And so if it's right, I think the private pool is a better way to go.
Just have the options managed according to you.
You can dial it up, make it spicier.
You dial it down.
and make it more plain vanilla.
It's your private pool.
You can kind of control the temperature.
MSTY is a little bit too much going along with the herd for my comfort Who issuing MSTY It a company called Yieldmax or is that just the name of them
(29:49):
You might have to double check on that one.
I have the fact sheet posted in the article.
That would be a link to the company's page.
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(30:10):
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That's unchained.com slash tftc.
And then obviously this is a derivative of micro strategy and what they're
(30:32):
doing,
but,
um,
how does it compare to something like strike or strife?
These two preferred preferred share offerings.
So the strike and strife wouldn't be derivatives.
They're not,
um,
there's contracts on top of micro strategy.
They're an actual offering from the company.
And those are,
let's just call them sailors way to dampen the volatility.
(30:54):
Right.
And if you don't want all the volatility of micro strategy, but you want to use the power of what it's doing with Bitcoin in some different flavors, that's what strike and strife are for.
I do mix them up from time to time, but one is a 10% preferred dividend.
(31:14):
So the dividend has a little bit better taxation than bond interest incomes taxed at a qualified dividend rate.
So that can be nice and attractive, 10%.
And depending on where it's trading, you can get higher than 10% if you're buying it below par.
But it is attractive to the fixed income market because they're not being offered 10% or 11% in their world.
(31:43):
So that way, you're taking that nuclear reactor that sailors talked about with Bitcoin and shoving it into a fixed income product.
There you go.
you got a 10 to 11% yield.
The other one is convertible.
So it's a little bit less yield,
but it can retain some upside of micro strategy truly runs and pops that
you'll be able to participate in that.
(32:04):
So think of that one as more of like a hybrid between the fixed income and
some of that upside or pop.
Yeah.
It's fast.
And what are your thoughts on all this financialization of,
or the Bitcoinization of finance to a certain degree with all these unique
offerings. It's a lot, a lot to keep up with. Um, there are times where clients will ask me
(32:30):
something that I have never heard of. I got one this week. Hey, did you hear about micro strategies?
Third offering STRD or something? I was like, no, I haven't. I wouldn't look. It's fake. It wasn't
even real. It was some hypothetical that a, uh, a YouTuber made up. Like, here's what I think
micro strategy could do. And I'm like, Oh goodness. There's so much financialization and then so much,
(32:51):
social media momentum that can just, it can get overwhelming, but it was inevitable,
right? That as Bitcoin collides with the world and wall street specifically,
they're going to have to interact with its ruthless fairness. And it's like unchanging
potential for how it improves people's finances. And they're going to create products around it.
(33:15):
Some will be helpful. Some will fail. Some will hurt people. And it's the humans and the institutions colliding with this protocol that doesn't seem to be moving. It's doing its TikTok next block thing. And Wall Street doesn't operate with that level of patience or consistency. They're going to buzz around it and create a lot of, usually a lot of selling, right? That's where their interests are aligned.
(33:41):
If we can create products and people buy those over Bitcoin, that's how we make money.
So I think it's an interesting time to be a Bitcoin-focused financial planner and advisor because you have to help clients navigate that space.
We're at the top of the call talking about retirees.
They love Bitcoin.
My clients love Bitcoin.
(34:02):
They believe in the future and what it's...
But they're in their mid-60s.
They're approaching 70.
They need to retire now.
And they're wanting to pull some of that forward because they've got more Bitcoin than time often, right?
And so a financialized product can sometimes be a solution, but we don't want to approach it without understanding the risks and having balance around it.
(34:28):
So very interesting time to be navigating case by case.
What are all these products coming out and how could I interpret and apply them in a way that my clients are still safe and meeting their goals?
Yeah, I think the private pool options play is very smart.
Yeah, I can't put my finger on or I don't know if I can articulate it exactly.
(34:53):
but again pattern recognition alarm bells going off the animal spirits of
ex-community groups and um youtubers who think they're trading savants um it's just like uh
some of this seems too good to be true not all but obviously bitcoin nation-state adoption
corporate treasury adoption in and of itself is not a bad thing it's a very positive thing but
(35:18):
all these derivative plays around it with people trying to catch up
scares me i recorded a podcast yesterday that'll come out on friday with the 1031 guys and
john arnold had a really good point like people try to use leverage to become an og
(35:38):
they have fomo and they feel like they need to play catch up and accumulate
um enough bitcoin to be on the level of who they perceive to be ogs and the way they typically try
to do that is leverage and historically in bitcoin it's never worked out too well for people
yes over the years whether it's just at unchanged or sound advisory the two biggest things that wreck
(36:02):
people are the ego and the emotion right and that's they're almost combined into the same thing
every bitcoiner i talk to feels like they were late because they know someone else who's in before
them. They know someone who got a price lower than they did. And it can feel, it can be a shot
to the ego that you're not as smart as you think you are, right? Bitcoin humbles all of us. And
(36:23):
there's a reason why that saying exists like stay humble, stack, because the emotion and the ego can
lead you to do something, whether it's fear or greed driving you there, that you're going out
on the risk spec and you're going to trade something that's more certain because you're
feeling like you're lacking. And that is what wrecks people. I think it was the underlying
(36:44):
thing under Celsius, BlockFi, FTA, that when Bitcoin's not doing something on your timeframe
and you want income or you want the yield, I'll just put it with them and I'll get 5%
more Bitcoin. Okay, well, now you've got Celsius. Oh, I'm just going to do this with it so I can
have it. And you're kind of like bartering with Bitcoin because it's not meeting your expectations.
(37:08):
right i've got a timeline i want to do x y and z and here's my ego i want to impose it on bitcoin
we're supposed to be this far into having it should be at this price it's not doing that
this chop is boring let me there's the ego the emotion right i'm going to take a different risk
level with my bitcoin to try and do something with it and i think people are blinded to the
(37:31):
risk by the greed or the the fear or the uh yeah it's um the underlying cause of a lot of bad
decisions yeah no i think the the right move what i've learned over the years is that when you feel
that urge to lever up and try to play catch up instead of expressing that by levering up your
(37:53):
bitcoin go try to be more productive and produce more income so that you can buy more it's very
real because everyone knows what fear and greed feel like he knows what like patience feels like
just it's neutral and it's it's hard and it's discipline and it's continuing to work and build
or or have a disciplined investing strategy if you're if you're no longer working and building
(38:19):
and you're retiring like sometimes people are having to settle for the ultimate enemy of just
like i should have some dollars right if i have enough dollars to ride through a cycle then i
know I never need to sell Bitcoin this cycle. And that's the unfortunate trade-off that the
hyper-Bitcoinizing generations have to live through. Because we're not a full unit of
(38:42):
account medium of exchange yet. And if we're headed there, it's going to be volatile. And
we'll have this transition period where we live in the dollar and the Bitcoin at the same time.
And in my opinion, that's where all the best companies are solving for, right? How do we
navigate between dollars and Bitcoin as things are volatile, whether it's unchained, strike,
(39:03):
river, they're creating these dollar and Bitcoin services and products, secure
and really designed to be a bridge, right? They're trying to build a strong, secure bridge
where you can hop back and forth between those two worlds, dollar and Bitcoin, as your needs change.
and i think that's where the majority of bitcoin companies value is being built yeah
(39:32):
it can only be built if you're focused right which is very important yeah it's easy to buy
a ticker symbol it's hard to build something that hasn't existed before right let's see uh
the whole bitcoin corporate treasury thing again in and of itself i think it's a good thing but
(39:54):
i think there is information asymmetry a potential financial arbitrage that is being exploited right
now but at some point in the future when bitcoin reaches a particular liquidity profile that game
sort of has marginal diminishing returns and yes you're gonna have to look at yourself as a
(40:16):
business as an entity and be like, okay, how do I actually produce value and turn that value into
income and EBITDA that allows me to sustain my business? Yeah. The P&L will matter more as the
balance sheet gets commoditized. Sailor is a pioneer in putting it on the balance sheet.
Early mover, in size, found a lot of arbitrage opportunities, whether it's
(40:38):
the convertible or the preferred. When you're first, you don't even have to be the best because
you're the only, but now there's more and more participants. You're getting Bitcoin treasury
companies that understand that it's powerful to put Bitcoin on a balance sheet. And at the end
state, many, many companies will have Bitcoin on their balance sheet. It's table stakes at that
(40:59):
point. And so how are you going to differentiate and provide value on top of Bitcoin? That's the
building, right? And so in my opinion, there are some treasury companies that are doing the
equivalent of buying that ticker symbol. Oh, if I just switched to Bitcoin balance sheet,
all this money's going to flow to me.
Still pretty early,
right?
You're probably still within the group of pioneers and that may happen,
but it's not sustainable if you don't have a thesis or a value proposition of
(41:23):
how you build value on top of Bitcoin.
Just having Bitcoin on the balance sheet is not a sustainable unlock because
that's where most companies are going to be headed over the coming decades.
Yeah.
And.
Yeah.
I can already hear people like Marty you're so
(41:43):
bearish you don't understand what's going on I just
want to say hey
been around the block
few times few cycles
just be careful out there
be careful out there stay humble stack
sats exist for a reason
and then for anybody who doesn't understand
like the stay humble
stack sats meme
started Matt started it
(42:05):
this is like six or seven years
ago now at this point
and it's basically just don't go levered long don't margin trade don't shit coin during the
bull market because that's how you get blown up yeah and end up with less than you otherwise would
have had yeah if i can fanboy for a little bit i listen to you and matt all the time and i i love
(42:28):
that quote and i've started to uh personalize it for myself the meme of stay humble sacksats and
And I see within the social media sometimes where people ask, well, how much Bitcoin do you have?
Not enough.
I never have enough Bitcoin.
I've gotten to a point within my own personal life where I'm like, I feel like I have enough.
If I can just stay humble, stack the sats that my bullishness I'm trying to express through my patience.
(42:55):
And so I'm changing that sats to Saturdays.
I don't work on Saturdays.
And I want to stack those because if I've got enough Bitcoin, what don't I have enough of?
is time with my family. I got a boy who's about to be seven. I'm like, man, he's getting into
T-ball and I need to stack Saturdays now because the Bitcoin is, I'm confident that it'll be there
(43:16):
in the longterm. And I believe I have enough that I'm trying to build and be patient and do the
things that I think will make Bitcoiners proud and see this industry flourish. Let's stack some
Saturdays too, right? And start to get some time. And like, it helps connect me to like,
what is the Bitcoin all for? If I die and leave my family a stack and they're like, okay, well,
(43:37):
I want to have those meaningful experiences along the way. And I think that when people find that
value and what connects them to their money, that can pull you out of the fear and greed.
You're no longer comparing to, oh, so-and-so got in before me. They were class of 20,
whatever. I've found a way that Bitcoin is a powerful tool in my life and it's helping me
(44:00):
stack some Saturdays, right? I get to live for now because I feel more confident in my future.
And so I don't know if anyone that had ever brought up that pun or double entendre to you,
but that's what I'm hearing. You guys close out your podcast, stay humble, stack stats. And
I think y'all record on like a Thursday or Friday.
Depending on Saturdays. Okay. Saturdays come in. I'm like, all right, well, I don't know how many
(44:23):
Saturdays I have left in this life We know there 21 billion Bitcoin I only got some time with a six and seven year old and I need to make today count And so that my own personal rabbit trail I love that You never asked for but it is it deeply meaningful to me and helps me remember that
Bitcoin is a tool that should be empowering our lives.
(44:44):
It's that fix the world, you know, fix Jesse side of, okay, if the money's fixed, it can
help be a tool in my life here and now.
No, I love that.
And I've never heard it.
So it's the first time I'm hearing a double entendre.
No, no, no.
It reminded me like last night we had an event here at Bitcoin Park Austin with Adam Back,
Turdemister, Parker, a bunch of others speaking.
(45:07):
And everybody's like, oh, you want to go grab dinner?
I was like, no, I'm going to go home.
I was able to make it home in time for bedtime and read stories.
Do you really feel that working in Bitcoin?
Like you're surrounded by all the questions, all the news, all the products and people
and personalities and drama.
And did you see who did this and that?
(45:27):
And you're talking about Trump did something crazy.
It can be so much that it's overwhelming.
And to shrink down and be like, I'm just dead.
I get to read a book.
Might have read it eight or 10 times before, but I'm never getting these moments back.
And I am so fortunate that I get to work with clients in their 60s and 70s.
And they have money.
(45:48):
They have resources.
And their retirement's locked.
What do they want?
a lot of them want to go back to when their kids were six and seven, right? They want that time
back with their kids. And I'm fortunate that they share that with me. And it had brought tears to my
eyes a couple of times because I'm like, okay, well, I get to live like that client. Their wish
(46:10):
is to go back to where I am right now and I get to live it. Right. And I don't need to be stacking
sets right now. I need to be stacking a Saturday and like really making the most of this moment.
so yeah yeah no it's really important to put those things into perspective it's the most important
thing and i i've had i don't want to say regrets but there's been times where i've like committed
(46:37):
to something in the industry gone wasn't it was like i didn't have to do this and then i get home
the kids are asleep i'm like i missed yeah i missed a bedtime tonight that wasn't fun much
would have much rather done a bedtime. It's that, it's that double-edged sword of success,
right? When things are taking off and Bitcoin's winning and your company's healthy and the people
(47:01):
around you are excited and want to talk to you, it can take you from the people that are the most
patient with you, right? My wife, my kid, my dad, um, I know you've got a story that it's like
That time is so precious and remembering it and anchoring to it is a powerful draw against the negative emotions that Bitcoin can easily sweep you up into.
(47:27):
Right. Whether we have a bear in its fear or a bull in its greed.
Those aren't the emotions that you want in your life.
You need to find something deeper than the tool, deeper than Bitcoin.
Like what are your values? For a lot of people, it's family and time.
There can be others, you know, hobbies, just things that really connect you and make you feel alive.
That's what the money's there for. That's what's going to fix the world. And that's,
(47:48):
once you know that the money can serve that, and you're not just thinking only as deep as the money,
you've got a deeper base layer of what it's all there for. Yeah. It's very, probably, yeah,
I can hop off the soapbox, but I think so much of my job, like I thought I was going to be a
financial advisor, but it gets so psychological so quickly because the saying is personal finance
(48:12):
is 80 personal and only 20 finance and it's even more powerful in the bitcoin world because
bitcoin is such a powerful tool yeah it really is it really is not not i'm happy you hopped on that
soapbox because especially right now as we're we passed all-time highs earlier we're a little below
it but who knows could continue and things are going to get crazy and it's important to have
(48:36):
have this perspective in mind as things are getting crazy. Yeah. Um, and as they get crazy
and you feel right and your thesis was proved, just remember that you being right about this is
also simultaneously painful for the rest of the world. It doesn't see it as early as you like it's
(48:58):
that just don't dance from the, uh, the big short. Is it, is what he says, right? Just don't dance.
It's like, this is, this is not a good thing we're going through.
It's good that we have a solution, but you understand the solution far more than 99%
of the world and 99% of the world going through pain is not, it's probably what's happening.
(49:21):
I prefer it happens slower than all at once, but just don't dance because, um, so yeah,
connecting to the things that are deeper than money will help you from help you from dancing
as others are yet to transition and haven't found bitcoin yet yeah get uh get so distracted
(49:42):
at t-ball games that you don't even think to death just losing your mind and throwing peanuts
yeah yeah but speaking of like things do seem to be getting out of whack in the traditional
financial system it seems like japan's completely lost control their yield curve
looks like we're losing control of our yield curve here in the united states uh is japan losing the
(50:07):
their bond market to meta planet yeah it seems like it's very possible market of japan just
flowed into a hotel company that's why i tweeted that out yesterday i was like is
are the japanese using meta planet as a bitcoin proxy yeah they're like the micro strategy of
their country right like yeah you know just uh the escape hatch is tiny and so it can easily blow out
(50:31):
when the the flood comes none for those who are unaware i think japan's tax situation is such where
it's a massive tax benefit to buy stocks over spot bitcoin as well so um it makes sense that
people would flow in the meta planet yeah i think if i could segue a little bit it's that
(50:53):
every country's got that different tax, right? Japan, I'm not familiar with their tax regime,
but pretty familiar with America's. And that is what drives so much.
It's the number one friction in people's lives, right? The CPAs are in business because tax is
there. It's a powerful reason why loans exist. I don't want to sell my Bitcoin and pay tax,
(51:17):
I'd rather take a loan against it.
IRAs, gains, losses.
Bitcoin's trying to be money, but it's not tax like money.
It's tax like property.
And I had used...
Saylor and Jack Mauler had different opinions on this.
Or I think even Odell had one that...
What is Bitcoin?
Saylor will say property.
Maybe an Odell would say something like money.
(51:39):
Yes, technologically, Bitcoin's trying to be money and money's property.
But where they disagree is like that tax component.
It's so powerful to just hodl or hold Bitcoin because of the tax friction.
And so the thing I pay most attention to is which countries are easing up the friction on people.
El Salvador being a great example.
(52:00):
But you see other countries or even states in America where they're trying to do something with cap gains or reduce frictions in and out of certain structures.
I think that's where all of the, as the floods coming and Bitcoin is hitting the global world, the water is going to find its sweet spot, right?
(52:23):
In the jurisdictions that carve the trench for it.
And so the number one thing I'm paying attention to for my clients is what's coming in this big, beautiful tax bill, right?
Trump has called it big and beautiful.
Great.
I'm sure it's beautiful.
Well, what's in it and how does that tax affect the Bitcoiners or maybe even other parts of that, you know, Bitcoiners financial life.
(52:49):
But that's once they change the game of the friction, that's what you navigate for people, because it's not an opinion of price.
Price can do this or that or MetaPlanet or Microsoft.
They might do this. Those are just crystal ball and opinion taxes here and now.
And if you say if you do X, Y and Z, you're going to save this much money.
very, very powerful, sometimes boring, right? People don't like tax, but that is a needle
(53:14):
mover in Bitcoiners financial lives. And so what can we expect with this big,
beautiful tax bill? Oh goodness. I've heard they're going to eliminate the IRS.
Doesn't sound like it would need to be a big, beautiful tax bill to do that. So if it's big
and beautiful, it's probably got a lot of different bells and whistles that are likely
an extension of the TCJA. So I know I see there's jockeying between the Senate and the House and
(53:42):
what's going to be in there and what's not. I imagine it's something like the TCJA bill we've
had for the last seven years with maybe some new caveats. Things that Bitcoiners could pay attention
to bonus depreciation. If mining is on your radar, right? Being able to depreciate those
(54:03):
mining machines could look at like, and this is just a side note that the public miners aren't
able to pass through losses or that bonus depreciation, but the privates sometimes can.
And so that could be a benefit. Bonus depreciation comes back. I'd be looking at if you're exposed to
the mining space, like, well, now do we buy rigs because we can write it all off.
(54:29):
Social security, if that's a part of your now or your future, there might be no tax on that.
No tax on tips. If you're in the service industry, there could be others.
They do end up getting rid of the IRS. There's some strategies for that too. Maybe it's selling
all your Bitcoin and buying it right back to lock in a new basis. Talk to some clients that think
(54:52):
the IRS will go away. There's a potential strategy of sell your $100 Bitcoin and buy the $110,000
Bitcoin. If there's no IRS, reset your basis and floor, you could do Roth conversions.
There's so many what ifs that I'm just telling many, many clients, let's pause,
let's see what the rules are. And then I'll help you play the game after that.
(55:13):
Do you think no capital gains on Bitcoin is on?
That'd be nice. Yeah. On whose table? I don't know. I mean, America needs money. Even if they
got rid of the IRS, like where's the money going to come from? There's probably a large, they did
that. That's a tariff regime, right? They're going to have to get the money from somewhere else.
(55:36):
Cap gains would be internal. They're losing a big chunk of revenue for not taxing that.
Is it only to Bitcoin? Would it be to stocks and real estate as well?
I think it's pretty far-fetched. I would give it a 5%, 10% chance.
Nothing's zero these days. Lots of craziness, but not a base case.
(55:59):
If there's no cap gains, I'm personally probably waiting until December 31st of the year
so they don't change their mind and say, and then I'll sell the Bitcoin and buy it right back to lock in a higher basis.
wild times jesse wild times wild times yes thank you for coming on particularly
(56:21):
helping people gain perspective on how to approach this things are going to get weird
both in the bitcoin world and the fiat world trying to keep your head on straight stay humble
don't become beholden to the whims of FOMO and animal spirits and have a plan and stick to it
(56:43):
yeah i think uh i've heard you say is this peak clown world like is it peak
maybe the peak is uh correlated with m2 money supply like it's more the more they print the
more the peaks just keep coming it's going up going up forever laura hyper bullish on peak
clown world clown world is going up forever jesse yeah yeah where can people are ticker c
(57:08):
clwn can i invest in peak clown world not yet just wait that'll come the treasury company you're
going to spack it out that'll come that'll come um where can people find out more about gannett
gannett is at gannettrust.com they are operationalizing standing it up as we speak
So Chartered, Wyoming Trust Company, getting installed and rolling out to Unchained Clients first, probably in the second half of the year that'll be made more broadly available to others.
(57:39):
So GannettTrust.com.
If you're interested in learning what that rollout looks like, you can request an introduction there.
sound advisory which i help run is going to be tucking up and under gannett trust over the next
few months and will be the the wealth advisory arm of the trust company and then that can currently
(58:00):
be found at the sound advisory.com but it'll tuck under gannett eventually and as always unchained
the parent company and umbrella the leader of the umbrella family is unchained.com
for their products and services.
Check it out.
Think about using unchained.com slash TFTC
(58:20):
if you want to engage in anything they're doing there.
Yeah, check it out.
Jesse, thank you.
You're welcome.
I know, and congrats on getting Gannett out there
because I know it's been a long haul.
It's very important, very important to do it correctly.
And for anybody out there, high net worth individual,
somebody managing a corporate balance sheet
(58:42):
or a pension fund, whatever it may be looking for.
Say for fiduciaries, families, founders.
So if you're in that world, we'd love to start a conversation with you.
And yeah, as the world gets crazier and develops and there's more products,
we are doing our part to try and build and solve what we think is needed in the space.
(59:04):
And again, it was a lot of proof of work and proud of the team that launched it.
and we'll see what we can do with that Swiss army knife here in the coming years.
All right. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing it flourish.
All right. Well, thank you, sir. Thanks for the time.
Thank you. Peace and love, freaks.
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