June 19, 2025 • 47 mins
David Bailey is the founder and CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, the first and longest-running source of Bitcoin news. He’s been at the forefront of Bitcoin’s evolution and is one of its most outspoken advocates today. In this episode, David lays out why Bitcoin is on the verge of becoming too big to fail. We dive into how Wall Street, pension funds, and even your retirement account may already be exposed to Bitcoin—without you even knowing. From a looming $21 trillion supply squeeze to why Bitcoin could hit $1 million under the next U.S. president, this conversation will change the way you think about the future of money.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're entering a stage now where people are buying bitcoin.
They don't even know they're buying it. I don't even
know that the underlying asset that's driving the performance is bitcoin.
That creates a levering within the system itself that is
kind of invisible.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
You recently had tweeted that there's a few new public
companies announcing bitcoin treasuries every week.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Soon it'll be every day.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It's but how you think about like the public companies
as a bitcoin treasury versus like a strategy type company.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
You meet the buyer where they are, and you sell
them bitcoin in whatever form or fashion they need to
be able to buy. Every product that sailor's spinning out
could be rebuilt and repackaged for every domestic capital market
wherever there's captured liquidity. What these products are going to
have buyers? When I think about what a bitcoin treasury
company is, in my mind, is the new form of
a bitcoin exchange. Because you're creating a vehicle for people
(00:45):
to get exposure to bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
What is one thing that you could say tell the
world why bitcoin matters not as a currency, but as
a revolution. You've predicted that bitcoin could hit a million
dollars during Trump's presidency, and.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
That sounds insane for most people.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So what would you say that you see about bitcoin
that most people are missing.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, you know the million dollar price tag comes because
that's the if you comp against another asset, it's gold.
So you know, bitcoin is digital gold. Gold is the
is the comp and to be at gold bitcoin period
is a million dollars a bitcoin. I mean, gold's had
a nice runs. It started I think at at six
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a bitcoin, but after this
gold run, now it's a million of bitcoin. You know.
(01:31):
I think bitcoin's better than gold in every possible from
every possible metric. I mean, it's more scarce, it's more divisible,
it can be transported over the internet, it has you know,
no security costs. You know, it's better in every way,
and so it should be like, I think a million
dollars is the floor value of bitcoin when you think
about it purely from a fundamental perspective, and you know,
(01:53):
adding the element of I think it can happen in
the next four years. You know, I could very easily
see it not happening the next four years. So I'm
not saying that's like the the most likely outcome. But
you know, I see a series of factors that have
built up that have created like a you know, a
slow motion avalanche that's happening. And I think that as
(02:14):
the year goes on, this is going to pick up
speed and you know where it stops. You know, I
think there's enough buyers in the market, and enough buyers
that are watching the market that have deep enough liquidity
and size that they could take this thing all the
way to a million bucks. And and you know, when
you start looking at sovereign spying bitcoin, which is happening
(02:36):
already right now, and you throw in, okay, a couple
of g twenty countries doing it, the price can just
can just run really really quickly. And so I think
it is it is very much within the possibility that
with the next four years we see gold bitcoin parody.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I agree at Bitcoin Meana in December, I gave
the closing keynote there and broke down where I think
it's in twenty thirty, twenty forty, and twenty fifty, using
sort of basically inflation debasement and sort of math on
how it takes from gold and other assets. And so
certainly there's an easy, easy case, a very conservative case
in my opinion, that we get there.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And I saw, I'm sure you did.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Kathy wood Arc put out maybe now two point five
million in play for twenty thirty, so I don't know
if you saw that was a couple of days ago,
a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
But you know, I'm still I'm still the old guard
that believes in like the four year cycle, and I
see the four year cycle changing, so I'm I'm not
saying that it's an exact four years, but like, I
still believe in the cycles of bitcoin, you know, the
the you know, I feel like you need the bear
markets with the bull markets. There's that there's a relationship
between the two, and you don't want to just have
(03:44):
like too long of a period where nothing like kind
of let's say it's like a fire cleaning out like
brush from a forest. Do you want that? Yeah, But
I definitely see this cycle lasting longer. I think the
buyers that are coming in are much more sophisticated. I
think that they deploy capital in a different way than
than what how retail deploys it. And I think that like, uh, yeah,
(04:09):
I think if we get to a million bucks, there's
no reason we can't go well beyond a million bucks. Yeah.
The bigger question to me is kind of like, what's
the threshold that we cross where bitcoin becomes too big
to fail? Where you know, a crash of bitcoin actually
would result in a financial systemic financial issue for the
for the global markets, and at that point in time,
(04:31):
then there's only one direction for bitcoin to go, Like,
once we become too big to fail, there's only up
into the right. And so I feel like we're we
approach that point. You know, at a million bucks, you're
talking about bitcoin being worth basically us GDP, So you know,
at two million bucks you can't just lose a us
GDP and and the global economy be okay. You know.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, So that's where you sort of think that level
is at a at a million bucks twenty one train
market cap is sort of that escape velocity too big
to fail sort of moment or.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah, I mean I think it could be low more
than that. I think it could be lower than that,
But you know, at that, at that level or somewhere
near that, it starts to get damn close. I mean
you're talking I think like commercial real estate is like
thirty trillion. So yeah, twenty one trillion dollar dollar mark
cap is pretty pretty serious asset.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, and it also depends on how much Wall Street
is allocated to it, maybe how levered up they are
against it, because you know, we've seen maybe just recently
in the last couple of weeks where sort of some
of these hedge funds we're sort of leaning on the
Trumpe administration like hey, like you got to help us
out here. We're getting like unwound. And so maybe it's
not even a trillion, Maybe it's just some of the
black rock et cetera. They are setting up some of
these funds. Maybe it gets so over levered.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
But and even if it's not the funds that get levered,
I mean, we're entering a stage now where people are
buying bitcoin they don't even know they're buying it, which
is a very interesting phenomenon. I think it's it's exciting,
and I think it's a you know, depressingly like probably
how this plays out because most people just don't care,
(05:56):
but you know, people are. You know, if you own
have a retirement account and your your retirement account is
buying you know, the biggest indexes in the world let's
say it's buying Nasdaq one hundred. Now you are a
shareholder of micro Strategy without even without even knowing, and
you know, my micro strategy is using you know, your
your shareholder equity to buy bitcoin, so you have exposure,
(06:17):
and so you're gonna get a statement when micro Strategy
hundred x's you're gonna get a statement. It's like, oh, wow,
you're my IRA is performing really well, like my pension
fund is booming, and so I'm gonna go out. I'm
gonna spend more money. I might go get a beach house,
I might go get a mortgage. You know, I I
do change my behavior because I'm looking at how well
I'm performing. I don't even know that the underlying asset
(06:37):
that's driving the performance is bitcoin. Yeah, and so that's
that creates a levering within the system itself that is
kind of invisible.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And we've seen Larry Fink from Black Rocks say that
they're gonna start recommending to like all their advisor networks
to start allocating to it. So then all those people
that use advisors will be allocated into it as well,
and they won't even know it. We're sort of at
that point in that game theory competitive land where the
advisors are going to have to do that if they
want to remain competitive.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Oh yeah, and and and I think they've already rolled
it out in their in their modern portfolio product. I
mean the uh yeah, I mean I I agree. Like
I feel like the the the things that need to
happen to make this outcome occur have already happened. Like
what now is just like the gravitational momentum of this
(07:25):
avalanche building as it goes down the mountain. But like
the I feel like it, there's there's no doubt that
it makes it to the bottom of the mountain. Yeah,
you know, so.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Tell me, tell me let's go back to the four
year cycle, because that's something that gets talked about quite often.
I remember last cycle when sailors saying all your models
were broken, and then of course then.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
The cycle came and hit.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
But I think to the point that you're making with
all the institutional adoptions, specifically a lot of the the
ETFs and whatnot, a lot of that bitcoin goes into
deep dark cold storage, right, and they're not really cyclical buyers.
Is that kind of what you're thinking, I mean, do
you do you think do you think the volatility just
dampens down or maybe the four year cycle sort of
ends and we started to just kind of ramp right
through it.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah, it's a good question, and I don't know, like
and I and I think it's definitely interesting that we
are in you know, uh, you know, it's nice when
our when our preconceived notions of bitcoin are challenged. And
so we had a lot of cycles that looked exactly
like each other, and you start getting kind of too
locked into a certain perspective and now like, okay, this
the cycle is playing out differently, without a doubt, I think,
(08:29):
you know, in terms of just the the the buyers
are different. You know, I think there's two phenomenon that
are happening. One is, you know, if you're going to
go buy unless you're sailor if you're going to go
buy a few billion dollars a bitcoin or one hundred
billion dollars a bitcoin, you're going to implement an acquisition
program that takes place over time, and you're going to
be basically dcing effectively at a really big level over
(08:53):
a long period of time. And so I think like
that that makes liquidity flow into the system in a
in a much more progrect like slow and intentional way
rather than just like you're yoloing in two. I think
like there's a bigger and bigger amount of of bitcoin
that is being owned by UH indexes, mutual funds, you know,
(09:18):
general strategies that are market cap weighted, and they're going
to be rebalancing their portfolios regularly. And so you're going
to have a rebalancing effect as you see outperformance from
from bitcoin both two bitcoin's benefit and also against bitcoin
as is, people rotate out. And so I think that
that rebalancing is going to have a a a healthy
(09:40):
kind of moderating effect in terms of the rate of change.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah, but you know.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
In terms of like does the volatility come down or not.
You know, it's interesting, like, you know, I see so
many products being created that are these like income based
products where effectively, like you're shorting volatility and that like
that where the income is being drived from and you know,
you know, running a covered call strategy or something like that,
(10:07):
and and and like uh that that and of itself
will dampen volatility until it doesn't and then it'll amplify volatility.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Like you know, something.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's like uh uh exactly, you're just
like moving the the the tail fat tail events like
further out into the tail, but they still happen. So
I don't know if we're really like, uh, reducing volatility
over the long term, or if we're just like, uh,
you know, uh trading less volatility today for more volatility tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah, I would probably say less volatility, right because as
the ASCID gets bigger, a one trillion dollar asset is
much harder to move than five hundred and a half
half a trillion, and and and so forth. And so
then you mentioned some of these big like allocators who
are like rebalancing, so they're selling at the top rebalancing.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Which then tampers the upside. But then but then they're buying,
but then they're.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Buying through the dip, which then keeps the you know,
the bottom from falling out, And so that volatility just
starts shrinking probably over time.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
No I I and I agree with that, But you know,
what you also have is this phenomenon of of bitcoin,
bitcoin securitization and and bitcoin backed you know, companies effectively
buying bitcoin and not selling it, right, and and you know,
if you look at that category, it's it's dominated by
by micro strategy. But if you look at that category,
it's like seven hundred and fifty thousand bitcoins or something
(11:32):
like that are owned by bitcoin treasury companies. You know,
like project that number forward. Like if you if you
increase the number of bitcoin treasury companies and you increase
their time in market, and you increase let's say, their
ability to uh find additional financing or dilution events because
the price of bitcoin is going up and that's like
(11:54):
driving liquidity into these these instruments, then they're going to
be able to continue to grow an ever increasing rate
the amount of bitcoin held by those types of vehicles.
And so you know, if seven hundred and fifty thousand
bitcoins becomes three million bitcoins or four million bitcoins, like
it's going to cause a massive supply shock, and it's like, well,
(12:16):
how do you get the bitcoin out of those companies
once it goes in? And so ultimately, like if if
the sailors of the world can accumulate too much bitcoin,
you know, it doesn't matter if people are rebalancing or not.
There's there's just going to be a massive squeeze on
the market, and and until those those businesses, until Sailors
(12:36):
will sell some bitcoin like it, you know, there's no
solution for it. I mean it's absolute scarce to do.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, And typically you think about price elasticity and there's
always enough you know, whatever asset to go around at
the right price. But someone like Sailor probably at no
price he's selling, and so maybe some of that price
elasticity doesn't actually work out in some of these some
of these hands.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I'm curious how you think about it.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You recently had tweeted that you there's a few new
public companies announcing bitcoin treasuries every week.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Soon it'll be every.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Day a thousand cash flowing and capital raising public equities
listed in every market, including in every index, repackaging and
every wrapper, et cetera, et cetera, every single day. I'm
curious how you think about And I know Bitcoin magazine
Pro now has like a tracker where you're tracking like publicly.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Traded companies that have a bitcoin treasury.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
But how you think about like the public companies, is
the bitcoin treasury versus like a strategy type company.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Because the way I think about it is like if
you're just like putting part of my treasury on bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So what like Apple sitting on billions of dollars, Like,
what do they have that billions of dollars in?
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Do I really care?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Does it really affect what their market cap is? And
so if they decide to put some of that into bitcoin,
I mean, it's great for bitcoin in a sense where
it's you know, buying it up, But does it really
affect Apple? So you know, obviously micro strategy is creating
financial products out of that, but if Apple does, does
it really And I guess so that's what I'm thinking
when it's just a treasury company or is it like
(14:00):
a treasury strategy for the stock?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, so I think you know, what sailor is doing
is monetizing volatility, and so you want max volatility, and uh,
you know, I think for somebody like Apple, where they
have an underlying business that has a massive enterprise value,
that's going to mute the volatility of the stock because
the business is going to be disconnected from the performance
of the balance sheet. And so you know, I don't
(14:26):
think it would work as well for a company like Apple,
But you know, at the end of the day, you know,
in the in the uh long term, view of the
terminal value of bitcoin. Bitcoin as the reserve asset of
the world. One bitcoin is you know, one twenty one
millionth of of all the world of all. Yeah, so
(14:46):
it's you know, like you know, I think apples it
would be very wise to lock down a couple of
percentage points of the supply, you know, with their big
with their bitcoin, But I don't I don't think it
will have the same effect as it does for for Sailor.
Sailor is uh, I mean, Sailor is a genius, and
I mean I'm really interested in seeing like what instruments
he creates next, and you know, strike and strife. I
(15:08):
mean I was looking up what other you know, str uh,
you know, four letter acronyms that he can create, and
there's quite a few actually, so I already I can
already predict like a couple that might be coming.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Uh yeah, I think you know what he's doing is
is really introducing new levers to create volatility and to
tap different different parts of his his cap stack with
different types of buyers. And like, I think the big
picture thing that's at Sailor has taught me, which is
you know, so obvious in retrospect is like like you
(15:45):
meet the buyer where they are and you sell them
Bitcoin and whatever form or fashion they need to be able.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
To buy boom, which is like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
You know, that's like sales one on one, like you know,
like sales one on one. So he's really pioneered this,
and I think he this has so many layers to it.
He can go so much deeper, and he's really pioneering
the way. The way I'm approaching these things is much
more sixty IQ. I'm you know, I don't have the
(16:14):
strategist mind of Sailor or the brilliance of Sailors. So
you know, I'm just taking the easiest structures to replicate,
and I'm spreading them horizontally into other markets rather than
doing you know, basically scaling vertically into other instruments. And
so you know, I think like this there's just massive
expansion of this of this terrain, Like you know, strife
(16:36):
and strike could be recreated for every other international market
as well, Like every product that Sailor's spinning out could
be rebuilt and repackaged for every domestic capital market wherever
there's captured liquidity. What these products are going to have buyers.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Okay, So that's what I was trying to understand.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
So when you say, you know, when you talk about
all these public companies and announcing bitcoin treasury programs, it's
not the apples of the world that have a bunch
of big treasury and they're allocating some to bitcoin. It's
other companies that are actually bringing some bitcoin products to market,
but not maybe in so much in the US markets
because maybe a lot of that's already sort of taken.
But how do we launch that in Japan or India
(17:17):
or Brazil or something like that.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Is that kind of maybe more.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, And I was really combining the two. So, I mean,
I see both of them as complimentary to each other,
but yeah, I think they are fundamentally different. You know,
I think that there is room, though in the US,
for there to be multiple micro strategies. I think even
Sailor says, you know, there's there's ten companies that are
going to be trillion dollar companies, and you know, there's
(17:40):
one hundred companies that are going to be one hundred
billion dollar companies, and there's a thousand that are going
to be ten billion, and you know, so on and
so forth. And you know, when I look at when
I think about what a bitcoin treasury company is, in
my mind, it's it's the it's the new form of
a of a of a bitcoin exchange, you know, like
that's effectively what you're what you're doing, is you're creating
a vehicle for people to get exposure to bitcoin. And
(18:03):
rather than having a connect your bank account and go
through KYC and you know, blah blah blah blah blah
fund your account, instead like you just take a brokerage
account and you go buy this instrument and boom, now
you have exposure to bitcoin. And you know, so, like
how many bitcoin exchanges can the United States support?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Right?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
More than one?
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
You know, like every one of these businesses they have
their own network to go to, their own customer base,
their own way to market the product that they're Like,
each of these is going to have their incremental differences,
and so I think there's space for many players to compete,
and I think competition is really healthy and all of
them win together by you know, any of them succeeding.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah. Well, that's the good thing about wealth. It's not
a zero some game. Right.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
The more wealth that's created, the more wealth we have,
And I guess if you think about sort of like
sailor already creating three different products off of it, I mean,
then you just extrapolate that. I mean, there's potentially infinite
amount of products that could be created with more creative.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Correct kind of like that correct.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
It's like I mean, it's it's it's a new asset class,
and it's like it will balloon in size, and every
new innovative product that's created, you're gonna have one hundred
investment bankers figuring out how to clone the product and
repackage it and sell it into different market Yeah. And
so like this is gonna be a gold rush of
just securitization of new instruments and and and accessing new markets.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
One thing I took away when I left the Abu
Dhabi event Bitcoin Mina, was like Bitcoin's coming for every
area of finance, just completely every area of finance. And
I used to be in creative financing. I had my
finance learner's license here in California and we did like
invoice factoring and per sort of financing and first trusteed,
et cetera. And all of a sudden, my creative financing
(19:47):
mind started thinking about all these different financial products, lending
products mostly that bitcoin can slip into, and I know
there's several that are already underway and some I'm working
on as well. And so I mean it's really infinite,
right as far as the mind can imagine these things,
I guess, yeah, we just have more idea, more and
more more ways.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
We're cannibalizing the capital markets and we we are, we are.
I mean, this is how bigcoin takes over. I mean,
this is the thing, like, this is how it takes over.
And you know, it's not that we overnight shut down
and cast out the institutions that rule the world today.
It's that we force the institutions to engage in this
(20:30):
new economy, this new market. And if they don't, then
then then we will and it'll be it'll be forced
upon them. And so you know, it's it's you know,
it's it's very interesting to watch. It's very interesting to watch.
It's exciting.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Oh it's super exciting. What a time to be alive.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
And we're we're literally alive for history you made, you know,
And as someone who makes a lot of content, and
I love to reference history because it's so insightful for us.
And there's these big dates, the nineteen forty four Breton
Woods Agreement, you know, nineteen thirteen and nineteen forty four
Applausa cord in nineteen eighty five, seventy one mix and
off the gold stands like these key dates, and I
feel like we're like in one of those dates right now, right, Yeah, No.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I mean I feel like the the ultimate story that's
playing out here is like have you seen this this
I'm blanking on the guy's name, Luke, Luke Grohman. I
think it's Luke Groman, Yeah, Luca and the Triffan's Dilimma.
I feel like that's a meme that's just like gaining
mind share. And you know, I have yet to hear
(21:35):
someone from the let's say, prevailing geopolitical order explained to
me like like the solution to that dilemma. And you know,
really the in state of it is like we need
the dollar to free float against a neutral asset, Like
that's that's the end state of that. And so that's
how we solve this this trade deficit issue. That's how
(21:56):
we solve for you know, the industrialization of our economy,
that's how we solve the megabig problems that have to
get resolved. And you know, when we get to that state,
then it's like okay. Now bitcoin is the most widely accepted,
most liquid instrument in the world, and it is the
neutral asset that every currency will float against. And like now,
bitcoin underpins the entire global financial and monetary system.
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Speaker 1 (23:12):
I can tell you one with certainty that the Triven's
dilemma and that that worldview on on Basically, the burden
of carrying dollar reserve status is something that our military
industrial complex, our defense complex is becoming ever more aware of.
(23:34):
And you know, like at the end of the day,
like the United States military is like, you know, the
hollowing out of America's industrial base directly affects their ability
to fight wars and defend the country. And like, uh,
you know, like the institutions I guess that in the
United States that can actually push for this kind of
(23:56):
change to occur are acutely aware of what's going on.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, for sure, for sure the military understands the implications
of all this. I want to take it to the
next level here. So sort of in this fifty year
cycle thesis that I use that I use in talks,
and I talk about how there's these different stages. So
each fifty year cycle throughout the last three hundred years,
financial revolutions and financial capitals sort of follow this predictable pattern.
(24:21):
And stage one is sort of like this eruption and
that sort of represents like retail, which was sort of
like this explosion of bitcoin and alt coins. And then
phase two goes into what's called the frenzy phase, which
is more sovereign institutions and sovereigns. And so we just
talked about the institutions and you're, you know, you're saying
thousands of public companies will be coming in with these
bitcoin treasury plays.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
But I want to jump to the sovereign level.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And first I want to hear your story, because from
the world looking from the outside in, like you seem
to be the one that went and got Trump and
like pulled him into the entire market, got to speak
at the conference, all of that right around the time
he was getting his ear shot off and all those
other things, like give us a story on that.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Oh man, it's a long and it's the longest.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Even start, Like where did it even start?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It started, uh in Puerto Rico late night on like
a Saturday night, sitting around shooting the shit with a
friend of mine, Tracy, and a couple of our other friends.
And it started with like, you know, if we could
just get in front of Trump, like we could pitch
Trump on bitcoin and get him to like bitcoin. We
(25:29):
can get him into bitcoin. And then my friend Tracy
is like, well, I know someone who might be able
to like get us infront of them, and they're like
no way, and she's like, yeah, like my sister's godfather
is Paul Manafort, and Paul Manafort was the campaign chair
for Trump in the last election and in the twenty
(25:53):
sixteen election. Maybe he can help us. And so that's
how it started. And then like it started with you know,
a phone call to get past Paul's like sniff test,
and then you know, it was very clear that that
the Trump team and Trump orbit, you know, had not
dived deeply into this issue, like they had a service
(26:15):
level understanding, which is very understandable, but like it's just
like they hadn't dived into the into detail. And so
then began like began like a back and forth of
like like, you know, these are all the reasons why
it won't work or we can't like you know, why
we're not doing it now or whatever, and then us
coming back with like an answer to each one of
those issues and why it's actually not an issue or
(26:37):
et cetera. And so like back and forth, back and forth,
back and forth. Every couple of days were like flipping
something new to them, and then eventually it was like okay, well,
so if this could work, what would it what would
it look like? And so, uh, we assembled like a
brain trust of people from the industry. This is an
effort that to actually a lot of people were involved in,
(26:57):
but we assembled it like a brain trust and we
kind of tried to like brainstorm ideas of what's like
an America First agenda and platform that like bitcoin is
is coherent with and like and authentic to and so
like then we went back with like, Okay, these are
all these different ideas of things that we think like
could work with your platform and and you know that
(27:22):
the president would like that Trump would like and they
liked it, and and it you know, actually bitcoin is
does fit really well within the America First political platform.
And so you know, I think Trump energy independence really
resonated with Trump and and energy abundance. I think, you know,
(27:42):
Trump was the victim of you know, the political politicization
politicis I can't say that word politicization of our financial
system and banking system, and so you know, he was
a victim of money being sees, bank accounts being shut
and so I think it really resonated with him to
that that's wrong, that that there needs to be people
(28:03):
need to have tools to protect themselves from a captured
financial institutions. And you know, I like, as we kind
of developed this platform, then like only when it got
to like the really well developed the Trump way in
and I think like the key point for him was
like he came back with the question, is like all right,
(28:23):
like this is all great, but you know, I like
the dollar. I'm a fan of the US dollar, and
every bitcoinner I know tells me that Bitcoin's going to
destroy the dollar, like like what am I missing here?
And so our response to that was, you know, the
United States, building Fort Knox and storing the world's gold
(28:45):
in the United States did not undermine the power of
the US dollar. If anything, it enshrined the power and
value of the US dollar and made the dollar what
it is today, the reserve currency of the world. And
that if you want the dollar to remain the reserve
currency of the world, then we have to have a
digital Fort Knox, and we need to store the digital gold.
And that's how we keep the dollar relevant for hundreds
(29:06):
of years to come. And like then it was like okay,
I'm interested, and let's meet. And so we went up
to Trump Tower and and made the case in person.
And you know, the president is is is a brilliant guy.
He really is an extraordinary person. And you know, he
(29:30):
has an intuitive sense of opportunity. I mean, he's he's
he's an entrepreneur, and you know, he he has many
people around him that like bitcoin. His his kids like bitcoin.
You know, there's lots of libertarians that like bitcoin, that
are that are in some of those circles, and so
you know, he he saw this as a vehicle where
like bitcoin is like the new dal Jones of the
(29:52):
youngest generation of the young people, and so like to
integrate this into his platform was also to integrate and
bring along, you know, the youth in his platform. And
then as he went out into the market and started
talking about bitcoin, and he said he had a campaign
rally where he talked about like we want one hundred
percent of the bitcoin made in America. Yeah, you know,
like like the reaction that he got, he picks up
(30:17):
on that reaction. And so when he's talking to a
bunch of people and in the course of a day,
a lot of them mentioned, hey, I saw what you
said about bitcoin or crypto, or like my kid told
me about what you said. YadA, YadA. He has an
intuitive sense of like picking up on that and like
doubling down on it. And so it was a very
interesting process of seeing him like this, this like give
and take process of him like taking a step forward
(30:38):
and then the market reacting in a positive way and
then him kind of taking another step forward. And yeah,
it was it was really quite like quite quite the
roller coast. I mean, there's way more detail of things
that happened along the way I can go into, but
ultimately it culminated with him giving a speech at Nashville,
and uh, that speech was a very i mean a
(30:59):
true a historic historic speech and uh, you know, from
like from when he gave that speech, he left the
conference and he like he walked into the conference and
it was very much like nervous of how the crowd
would respond to him. He had just done the Libertarian convention,
which was not a nice audience at all, and you
know there was people doing and stuff classic libertarians. Yeah,
(31:25):
but like he was he was a little bit you know,
had some anxiety. And then when he got the reaction
that he got he left, he was like, dude, these
people love me. I love this. I love you know,
like this is like, you know, I've been on this
and so you know, it's been his words a love
fest ever since. And you know, I think in terms
of like what he's delivered as president in his first
(31:47):
hundred days, which I think just happened maybe today or
this week, he's delivered on almost everything he said he
would deliver on. Like there's a few things that are
still in flight and process, but you know, everything from
you know Sabe uh, freeing Ross Olbrigg, you know, uh,
ending the broker rules that the IRS put in place.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Uh, you know, firing Gensler.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I Gary Ginsler. He took care of that one before
he even got into into office, you know, putting in
place a bitcoin friendly cabinet, uh, completely changing the SEC's attitude,
rolling back the litigation against all of the American bitcoin firms,
signing into signing an executive order to establish a strategic
bitcoin reserve. I mean, like, dude, like just one of
(32:34):
these would have been incredible, and he's He's delivered, and
so you know, I I at this point in time,
I feel a deep, an immense amount of respect and
gratitude for what he's done. And you know now I
feel like, uh, regardless of how terrorist worked out good
or bad whatever. I'm writer died Trump because he's delivered
(32:55):
for us and and you know, he delivered for Ross,
and I like a lot of people were like, he's
not deliver for Roster. There's no ways going to do
it once he gets elected, you know. And then every
hour that take by when he was elected, because he
said he'd do a day one, people are like, yeah,
it's been three hours, he hasn't been out. And then
first first twenty six hours he got it done. So
really it was a lot of work, but it was
(33:19):
an incredible thing to be a part of, and it
was worth every dollar and every ounce of sweat.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Amazing story. Thanks for telling us that.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I love how you talked about It's what you said earlier,
like meeting people where they are, So you sort of
understood what was important to Trump and then you fed
him those things along the way and let him sort
of discover and take more. And one thing I get
asked all the time, and I'm sure you've heard ten
thousand times or more ten million times, is like, you know,
how do we orange fill people? And it's like, well,
it's that you find out where they are. What's the
(33:48):
one thing that they're concerned with, and then how do
we match that one benefit and then let them take
on more.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
One hundred percent. I mean that's you know, it's not
that complicated. People make it so much more complicated than that.
It's like you don't have to like fit into like
an army uniform and put on like an orange suit
and go out there and like believe in all the doctrine.
It's like, you know, what are the things that matter
to you, What are the problems that you have in
your life? How does bitcoin affect those things? Why is
it better for you if the bitcoin vision plays out?
(34:17):
That's how you bring people along.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, I'm curious what you think. I mean, I agree
and love all that stuff, But I'm curious because there's
plenty of people that have been saying online on Twitter
on x you know, oh yeah, sucking up to the
central banks to buy your coin. Oh yeah, the government
to buy your coin kind of thing, and that someone
like you who's been in it, you know since the
early early early days, the early stipherpunk days. I mean,
(34:39):
how's your view on that.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
So we're not sucking up to anyone, like we're we're
not begging them for the position that we have, Like
we've taken the position that we have through sheer will
and entrepreneurship and building bitcoin into an asset that got
so big that they're they have to reckon with us.
You know, So like this is not a ah. Bitcoin
(35:05):
has not changed one ounce. The technology has not changed
one line of code, has not changed since before Trump
liked bitcoin to after Trump liked bitcoin. And you know,
like the the the inevitability of bitcoin is such that
you know, eventually every government on the planet is gonna
have to hold bitcoin, every central bank on the plane
(35:26):
is gonna have to hold bitcoin, Every financial institution is
gonna have to support bitcoin, and if they don't, they're
gonna they're gonna go bye bye. So like that's that's
that's not us losing and succumbing to the system. That's
us eating the system and the system having to become
part of part of our system. So you know, I, I,
you know, I understand that it's weird to be used
(35:49):
to occupying Wall Street and now you know, instead of
occupying Wall Street in front of the building, we're occupying
you know, the building. Yeah, but like this is the
process of us eating the world and eventually bitcoiners are
going to become the people in the institutions that have
to build the society we want to see. We can't
(36:09):
just complain about the society as it is. We actually
have to go and create the alternative system. And like
that's what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, it was always going to be that way.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I mean, how do you take over the world without
getting to every highest office there is? Right, But I
love what you said. It wasn't like, you know, Bitcoin
became O fact compliant or something like that in order
for Trump to endorse it, Like he just took it
as it was.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
And I think that's a super key piece there. So
let's talk about game theory.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
He did take it, like he didn't just take it
because it was like him being charitable. He took it
because it was it was the right move to make,
because we earned it. Like there are there's one hundred
million of US in America, seventy million of US in
America that own this asset. It's a multi trillion dollar asset.
If those things were not true, it wouldn't have happened.
So it's like we we earned the seat at the table,
(36:57):
and then he wants to play ball with us as
as a peer, you know, as a movement because of
the power that we've been able to build and wield effectively.
Any respects that, and so yeah, I mean it's it's
it's nothing was given to Bitcoin, you know, like we
everything that Bitcoin has, Bitcoin Bitcoin had to earn.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah, So jumping into the game theory piece, because like
we saw, you know, El Salvador come along, a sovereign
nation come along to Bitcoin a few years ago, but
they're not like a really big influential nation, you know,
if you will, right, But now we have the leader
of the free world, you know, the US dollar, the
United States government, et cetera, openly embracing it, and not
(37:37):
just that like Trump publicly declaring that, you know, the
US should be a strategic Bitcoin will reserve, but a superpower,
if you will.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
And so I'm curious in the talks that you've.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Had how that influence starts to play out in game theory.
And I saw, you know, before we started recording, I
mentioned that I you know, in Abu Dhabi, we are
there a few months ago, and you were so busy
running around with all the chiks that I ain't really
get to catch up with you.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
But it's like the capital of capital. So I know
you've been in those those rooms. What is the game theory? Like,
now that the US and Trump have made that declaration.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
There's there's nations all over the world that are either
active getting active in the market, have already gotten active,
like just started to get active, or are in the
process of getting active, or are studying and will get
active over the course of the year. And so you know,
and like nation state buy in. You know, capital it
(38:28):
comes in many different shapes and forms. So you know,
it's not just like hey, we're gonna go out onto
coinbase and we're gonna hammer spot bitcoin. You know, after
that conference, it was it was revealed that some of
the sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dabi that you know
are not that are not you know, directly the central bank,
but they are sovereign money had bought bitcoin through the
(38:51):
Black rock etf They've bought bitcoin through different funds, and
then those funds have exposure to bitcoin. You know. A
great analogy or example would be like this deal that
just happened with Cantor and soft Bank, cant Or, soft
Bank and Tether that happened last week. Okay, well, soft
Bank put in a billion dollars. Whose money is that?
(39:13):
Where to SoftBank GI their money? Oh, soft bank is
back by Saudi, So that's Saldi money wrapped in a
in a Japanese you know, corporate that's then deploying it
into a US securitized bitcoin structure. Yeah, so like that's
sober money. So like the money is flowing. Uh, you know,
just in the same way that bitcoin carries career risk
(39:37):
for someone pushing it internally at their company, It carries
career risk for central bankers, it carries career risk for politicians,
it carries career risk for kings, and so you know,
there is a a step by step process that people
go through so that they are they are being appropriate
(39:57):
and respectful, uh, and and how they go about embracing
this technology, and that they're doing it in a way
that they have consensus or at least enough consensus amongst
their peers and amongst the other kind of power structures
within within their their their government. But without a doubt
it's happening. And I would say, you know, the phases
(40:21):
of adoption, Like right now, if I had a guess,
there's probably fifty nation states globally that are that are
actively mining bitcoin in one hundred megawatt plus size, and
you know some that have been talked about, many that
are not talked about or not not public. That's kind
of like the the let's say, lowest friction way through
(40:44):
the door for a government. You know, like there's one
government that well well known that you know they're turning
on right now four hundred megawatts of power to use
for bitcoin mining. And you know this is like their
first fora well, like as these facilities get up and running,
their next challenge is gonna be what happens with the bitcoin?
(41:06):
What do we do with the bitcoin that we mind? Like, uh,
who's responsible for collecting it, who's responsible for auditing it,
who's responsible for liquidating it? You know, are are are
we gonna have a custody provider? What custody provider are
we gonna pick? We're gonna build our own custody provider.
Like these are all like the next step consequences of
the initial decision that you have to figure out, and
then before you know it, it's like, oh, well this
(41:28):
this country has just built out their bitcoin program. You know,
now now they have all their chosen vendors to work with.
Now they have their chosen delegates within the government who
are responsible for the outcomes, and so like, once you
have that infrastructure developed, then it's like the next step becomes, Hey,
you know what, we don't have as much bitcoin as
we wish we had. Let's get the central bank plugged
(41:48):
into that thing and let's start. Let's start, let's start
running our own open market operations to get some more
of that. And so it's this like step by step process,
but it's happening, and you already have government at the
Let's get our teams into the market and start acquiring
this stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's great that you lay it out like that.
You know, someone like you have have been around a
really long time. I've been around, not as long as
you've been a long time as well, and I've built
a lot of businesses, so I tend to be able
to think longer.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
But the one problem I see for most people is
they just think.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
So short term, and it's like, you know, why isn't
this moving the market up already?
Speaker 3 (42:22):
I saw the news yesterday, right, But it's like, man,
you don't just bring governments and sovereigns in. It takes time.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
As you laid out very well, like the step by
step sort of incremental process that it takes to even
get in. So is this something that you know takes
these next three four years or it's probably more.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Of just like the continued gradual sort of Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
No, it's like it's like the corporate adoption. It's the
same dynamic playing out. It's like, Okay, first there was one,
and then there was two, and then there was five,
and then there was ten, and then there was one hundred,
and now there's two hundred, and then in a year
there'll be a thousand, right, you know, And so it
is it is a continuous march, and you know, there's
definitely going to be a degree of like there's definitely
(43:06):
nation state competition and so like you know, right now,
most on the corporate adoption side, most people can ignore
micro strategy. But like the first like mag seven stock
that buys bitcoin, like the other seven are buying bitcoin
right away, and you know, the first G twenty country
that buys bitcoin and and is public about it or
(43:26):
is you know, people can identify it outside of the US,
but yeah, outside of the UK, no, but the US
hasn't bought yet. I mean the like as soon as
the US start is it becomes active in the market,
the second G twenty country is going to be going
to be days behind. And so you know, the even
in the United States, like I can tell you, like
there's the people a strategic Bitcoin reserve, and the program
(43:50):
for the US to go out and acquire more bitcoin
is a priority to make happen, and there are people
who are tasked with making it happen, and it is
there they are actively working on this, this this challenge.
It takes time to do these things right, Like it
takes time, like even if you wanted to go full speed,
it takes months and months and months. It's not like
(44:12):
the same as just like you setting up a coin
base account, you know, and and and getting to work.
So these things take time. And you know, I anticipate
personally that you're going to see the US get active
in the market this year. And I think that you know,
every other country. I mean, as I travel places, I'm
(44:34):
asked one hundred percent of the time, what is America's
bitcoin policy? You know, what is the plan with the
strategic Bitcoin reserve? Is America buying bitcoin? And like every
country wants to know that, So you know, the attention
is there, the activity is there, and then you know,
the urgency is what's developing, and and the urgency only
(44:57):
comes when you feel a sense of competition.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Yeah, man, zoom out, zoom out. It's extremely bullish. It's
all in play, it's all in process, right.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah, it's crazy. The wheel it's and.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
The wheels are emotion.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
And you know, the one thing I just add to
what you're saying is like, obviously corporations take a long
time to change their mandates and shareholders and all that.
The government obviously takes longer, but once those wheels are
in motion, they don't just easily stop either.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Correct, it works both, It works both ways.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah, well, I think that's a good place to wrap
it up. Let's just have you leave us with something.
Since you've been in bitcoin, building in bitcoin for so long,
I didn't even get into the media company.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
That's something I was interested in as I'm in the
media as well. But building in the space for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
I mean, you've probably convinced a million skeptics about it,
you got the US President on board. What is one
thing that you could say, uh, tell the world why
bitcoin matters not as a currency but as a revolution.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
You know, I think fundamentally it is it is the
separation of money in state, and is the removal of
the unchecked, unfettered power of nations to compel their people
to do things by access and control of the money.
Like that is the fundamental premise of this whole thing.
And when we separate money and the state, we create
(46:15):
a consensual society. And every part of our society has
the capacity to grow in a way that it can't
when it's being malformed via centralized control. And so, you know,
I think the way to unshackle humanity is through unshackling
(46:39):
control over the money that rules us.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
Love it, separate money in state, and that's why. All right, David,
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Anything I want to shout out obviously, bitcoin conference next month,
bitcoin magazine, anything else, Yeah, man.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Just buy some bitcoin.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Bitcoin, all right, all.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Right, and thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Mark.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Enjoyed being on
We're entering a stage now where people are buying bitcoin.
They don't even know they're buying it. I don't even
know that the underlying asset that's driving the performance is bitcoin.
That creates a levering within the system itself that is
kind of invisible.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
You recently had tweeted that there's a few new public
companies announcing bitcoin treasuries every week.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Soon it'll be every day.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It's but how you think about like the public companies
as a bitcoin treasury versus like a strategy type company.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
You meet the buyer where they are, and you sell
them bitcoin in whatever form or fashion they need to
be able to buy. Every product that sailor's spinning out
could be rebuilt and repackaged for every domestic capital market
wherever there's captured liquidity. What these products are going to
have buyers? When I think about what a bitcoin treasury
company is, in my mind, is the new form of
a bitcoin exchange. Because you're creating a vehicle for people
(00:45):
to get exposure to bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
What is one thing that you could say tell the
world why bitcoin matters not as a currency, but as
a revolution. You've predicted that bitcoin could hit a million
dollars during Trump's presidency, and.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
That sounds insane for most people.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So what would you say that you see about bitcoin
that most people are missing.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, you know the million dollar price tag comes because
that's the if you comp against another asset, it's gold.
So you know, bitcoin is digital gold. Gold is the
is the comp and to be at gold bitcoin period
is a million dollars a bitcoin. I mean, gold's had
a nice runs. It started I think at at six
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a bitcoin, but after this
gold run, now it's a million of bitcoin. You know.
(01:31):
I think bitcoin's better than gold in every possible from
every possible metric. I mean, it's more scarce, it's more divisible,
it can be transported over the internet, it has you know,
no security costs. You know, it's better in every way,
and so it should be like, I think a million
dollars is the floor value of bitcoin when you think
about it purely from a fundamental perspective, and you know,
(01:53):
adding the element of I think it can happen in
the next four years. You know, I could very easily
see it not happening the next four years. So I'm
not saying that's like the the most likely outcome. But
you know, I see a series of factors that have
built up that have created like a you know, a
slow motion avalanche that's happening. And I think that as
(02:14):
the year goes on, this is going to pick up
speed and you know where it stops. You know, I
think there's enough buyers in the market, and enough buyers
that are watching the market that have deep enough liquidity
and size that they could take this thing all the
way to a million bucks. And and you know, when
you start looking at sovereign spying bitcoin, which is happening
(02:36):
already right now, and you throw in, okay, a couple
of g twenty countries doing it, the price can just
can just run really really quickly. And so I think
it is it is very much within the possibility that
with the next four years we see gold bitcoin parody.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I agree at Bitcoin Meana in December, I gave
the closing keynote there and broke down where I think
it's in twenty thirty, twenty forty, and twenty fifty, using
sort of basically inflation debasement and sort of math on
how it takes from gold and other assets. And so
certainly there's an easy, easy case, a very conservative case
in my opinion, that we get there.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And I saw, I'm sure you did.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Kathy wood Arc put out maybe now two point five
million in play for twenty thirty, so I don't know
if you saw that was a couple of days ago,
a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
But you know, I'm still I'm still the old guard
that believes in like the four year cycle, and I
see the four year cycle changing, so I'm I'm not
saying that it's an exact four years, but like, I
still believe in the cycles of bitcoin, you know, the
the you know, I feel like you need the bear
markets with the bull markets. There's that there's a relationship
between the two, and you don't want to just have
(03:44):
like too long of a period where nothing like kind
of let's say it's like a fire cleaning out like
brush from a forest. Do you want that? Yeah, But
I definitely see this cycle lasting longer. I think the
buyers that are coming in are much more sophisticated. I
think that they deploy capital in a different way than
than what how retail deploys it. And I think that like, uh, yeah,
(04:09):
I think if we get to a million bucks, there's
no reason we can't go well beyond a million bucks. Yeah.
The bigger question to me is kind of like, what's
the threshold that we cross where bitcoin becomes too big
to fail? Where you know, a crash of bitcoin actually
would result in a financial systemic financial issue for the
for the global markets, and at that point in time,
(04:31):
then there's only one direction for bitcoin to go, Like,
once we become too big to fail, there's only up
into the right. And so I feel like we're we
approach that point. You know, at a million bucks, you're
talking about bitcoin being worth basically us GDP, So you know,
at two million bucks you can't just lose a us
GDP and and the global economy be okay. You know.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, So that's where you sort of think that level
is at a at a million bucks twenty one train
market cap is sort of that escape velocity too big
to fail sort of moment or.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah, I mean I think it could be low more
than that. I think it could be lower than that,
But you know, at that, at that level or somewhere
near that, it starts to get damn close. I mean
you're talking I think like commercial real estate is like
thirty trillion. So yeah, twenty one trillion dollar dollar mark
cap is pretty pretty serious asset.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, and it also depends on how much Wall Street
is allocated to it, maybe how levered up they are
against it, because you know, we've seen maybe just recently
in the last couple of weeks where sort of some
of these hedge funds we're sort of leaning on the
Trumpe administration like hey, like you got to help us
out here. We're getting like unwound. And so maybe it's
not even a trillion, Maybe it's just some of the
black rock et cetera. They are setting up some of
these funds. Maybe it gets so over levered.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
But and even if it's not the funds that get levered,
I mean, we're entering a stage now where people are
buying bitcoin they don't even know they're buying it, which
is a very interesting phenomenon. I think it's it's exciting,
and I think it's a you know, depressingly like probably
how this plays out because most people just don't care,
(05:56):
but you know, people are. You know, if you own
have a retirement account and your your retirement account is
buying you know, the biggest indexes in the world let's
say it's buying Nasdaq one hundred. Now you are a
shareholder of micro Strategy without even without even knowing, and
you know, my micro strategy is using you know, your
your shareholder equity to buy bitcoin, so you have exposure,
(06:17):
and so you're gonna get a statement when micro Strategy
hundred x's you're gonna get a statement. It's like, oh, wow,
you're my IRA is performing really well, like my pension
fund is booming, and so I'm gonna go out. I'm
gonna spend more money. I might go get a beach house,
I might go get a mortgage. You know, I I
do change my behavior because I'm looking at how well
I'm performing. I don't even know that the underlying asset
(06:37):
that's driving the performance is bitcoin. Yeah, and so that's
that creates a levering within the system itself that is
kind of invisible.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And we've seen Larry Fink from Black Rocks say that
they're gonna start recommending to like all their advisor networks
to start allocating to it. So then all those people
that use advisors will be allocated into it as well,
and they won't even know it. We're sort of at
that point in that game theory competitive land where the
advisors are going to have to do that if they
want to remain competitive.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Oh yeah, and and and I think they've already rolled
it out in their in their modern portfolio product. I
mean the uh yeah, I mean I I agree. Like
I feel like the the the things that need to
happen to make this outcome occur have already happened. Like
what now is just like the gravitational momentum of this
(07:25):
avalanche building as it goes down the mountain. But like
the I feel like it, there's there's no doubt that
it makes it to the bottom of the mountain. Yeah,
you know, so.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Tell me, tell me let's go back to the four
year cycle, because that's something that gets talked about quite often.
I remember last cycle when sailors saying all your models
were broken, and then of course then.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
The cycle came and hit.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
But I think to the point that you're making with
all the institutional adoptions, specifically a lot of the the
ETFs and whatnot, a lot of that bitcoin goes into
deep dark cold storage, right, and they're not really cyclical buyers.
Is that kind of what you're thinking, I mean, do
you do you think do you think the volatility just
dampens down or maybe the four year cycle sort of
ends and we started to just kind of ramp right
through it.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah, it's a good question, and I don't know, like
and I and I think it's definitely interesting that we
are in you know, uh, you know, it's nice when
our when our preconceived notions of bitcoin are challenged. And
so we had a lot of cycles that looked exactly
like each other, and you start getting kind of too
locked into a certain perspective and now like, okay, this
the cycle is playing out differently, without a doubt, I think,
(08:29):
you know, in terms of just the the the buyers
are different. You know, I think there's two phenomenon that
are happening. One is, you know, if you're going to
go buy unless you're sailor if you're going to go
buy a few billion dollars a bitcoin or one hundred
billion dollars a bitcoin, you're going to implement an acquisition
program that takes place over time, and you're going to
be basically dcing effectively at a really big level over
(08:53):
a long period of time. And so I think like
that that makes liquidity flow into the system in a
in a much more progrect like slow and intentional way
rather than just like you're yoloing in two. I think
like there's a bigger and bigger amount of of bitcoin
that is being owned by UH indexes, mutual funds, you know,
(09:18):
general strategies that are market cap weighted, and they're going
to be rebalancing their portfolios regularly. And so you're going
to have a rebalancing effect as you see outperformance from
from bitcoin both two bitcoin's benefit and also against bitcoin
as is, people rotate out. And so I think that
that rebalancing is going to have a a a healthy
(09:40):
kind of moderating effect in terms of the rate of change.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah, but you know.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
In terms of like does the volatility come down or not.
You know, it's interesting, like, you know, I see so
many products being created that are these like income based
products where effectively, like you're shorting volatility and that like
that where the income is being drived from and you know,
you know, running a covered call strategy or something like that,
(10:07):
and and and like uh that that and of itself
will dampen volatility until it doesn't and then it'll amplify volatility.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Like you know, something.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's like uh uh exactly, you're just
like moving the the the tail fat tail events like
further out into the tail, but they still happen. So
I don't know if we're really like, uh, reducing volatility
over the long term, or if we're just like, uh,
you know, uh trading less volatility today for more volatility tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah, I would probably say less volatility, right because as
the ASCID gets bigger, a one trillion dollar asset is
much harder to move than five hundred and a half
half a trillion, and and and so forth. And so
then you mentioned some of these big like allocators who
are like rebalancing, so they're selling at the top rebalancing.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Which then tampers the upside. But then but then they're buying,
but then they're.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Buying through the dip, which then keeps the you know,
the bottom from falling out, And so that volatility just
starts shrinking probably over time.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
No I I and I agree with that, But you know,
what you also have is this phenomenon of of bitcoin,
bitcoin securitization and and bitcoin backed you know, companies effectively
buying bitcoin and not selling it, right, and and you know,
if you look at that category, it's it's dominated by
by micro strategy. But if you look at that category,
it's like seven hundred and fifty thousand bitcoins or something
(11:32):
like that are owned by bitcoin treasury companies. You know,
like project that number forward. Like if you if you
increase the number of bitcoin treasury companies and you increase
their time in market, and you increase let's say, their
ability to uh find additional financing or dilution events because
the price of bitcoin is going up and that's like
(11:54):
driving liquidity into these these instruments, then they're going to
be able to continue to grow an ever increasing rate
the amount of bitcoin held by those types of vehicles.
And so you know, if seven hundred and fifty thousand
bitcoins becomes three million bitcoins or four million bitcoins, like
it's going to cause a massive supply shock, and it's like, well,
(12:16):
how do you get the bitcoin out of those companies
once it goes in? And so ultimately, like if if
the sailors of the world can accumulate too much bitcoin,
you know, it doesn't matter if people are rebalancing or not.
There's there's just going to be a massive squeeze on
the market, and and until those those businesses, until Sailors
(12:36):
will sell some bitcoin like it, you know, there's no
solution for it. I mean it's absolute scarce to do.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, And typically you think about price elasticity and there's
always enough you know, whatever asset to go around at
the right price. But someone like Sailor probably at no
price he's selling, and so maybe some of that price
elasticity doesn't actually work out in some of these some
of these hands.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I'm curious how you think about it.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You recently had tweeted that you there's a few new
public companies announcing bitcoin treasuries every week.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Soon it'll be every.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Day a thousand cash flowing and capital raising public equities
listed in every market, including in every index, repackaging and
every wrapper, et cetera, et cetera, every single day. I'm
curious how you think about And I know Bitcoin magazine
Pro now has like a tracker where you're tracking like publicly.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Traded companies that have a bitcoin treasury.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
But how you think about like the public companies, is
the bitcoin treasury versus like a strategy type company.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Because the way I think about it is like if
you're just like putting part of my treasury on bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So what like Apple sitting on billions of dollars, Like,
what do they have that billions of dollars in?
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Do I really care?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Does it really affect what their market cap is? And
so if they decide to put some of that into bitcoin,
I mean, it's great for bitcoin in a sense where
it's you know, buying it up, But does it really
affect Apple? So you know, obviously micro strategy is creating
financial products out of that, but if Apple does, does
it really And I guess so that's what I'm thinking
when it's just a treasury company or is it like
(14:00):
a treasury strategy for the stock?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, so I think you know, what sailor is doing
is monetizing volatility, and so you want max volatility, and uh,
you know, I think for somebody like Apple, where they
have an underlying business that has a massive enterprise value,
that's going to mute the volatility of the stock because
the business is going to be disconnected from the performance
of the balance sheet. And so you know, I don't
(14:26):
think it would work as well for a company like Apple,
But you know, at the end of the day, you know,
in the in the uh long term, view of the
terminal value of bitcoin. Bitcoin as the reserve asset of
the world. One bitcoin is you know, one twenty one
millionth of of all the world of all. Yeah, so
(14:46):
it's you know, like you know, I think apples it
would be very wise to lock down a couple of
percentage points of the supply, you know, with their big
with their bitcoin, But I don't I don't think it
will have the same effect as it does for for Sailor.
Sailor is uh, I mean, Sailor is a genius, and
I mean I'm really interested in seeing like what instruments
he creates next, and you know, strike and strife. I
(15:08):
mean I was looking up what other you know, str uh,
you know, four letter acronyms that he can create, and
there's quite a few actually, so I already I can
already predict like a couple that might be coming.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Uh yeah, I think you know what he's doing is
is really introducing new levers to create volatility and to
tap different different parts of his his cap stack with
different types of buyers. And like, I think the big
picture thing that's at Sailor has taught me, which is
you know, so obvious in retrospect is like like you
(15:45):
meet the buyer where they are and you sell them
Bitcoin and whatever form or fashion they need to be able.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
To buy boom, which is like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
You know, that's like sales one on one, like you know,
like sales one on one. So he's really pioneered this,
and I think he this has so many layers to it.
He can go so much deeper, and he's really pioneering
the way. The way I'm approaching these things is much
more sixty IQ. I'm you know, I don't have the
(16:14):
strategist mind of Sailor or the brilliance of Sailors. So
you know, I'm just taking the easiest structures to replicate,
and I'm spreading them horizontally into other markets rather than
doing you know, basically scaling vertically into other instruments. And
so you know, I think like this there's just massive
expansion of this of this terrain, Like you know, strife
(16:36):
and strike could be recreated for every other international market
as well, Like every product that Sailor's spinning out could
be rebuilt and repackaged for every domestic capital market wherever
there's captured liquidity. What these products are going to have buyers.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Okay, So that's what I was trying to understand.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
So when you say, you know, when you talk about
all these public companies and announcing bitcoin treasury programs, it's
not the apples of the world that have a bunch
of big treasury and they're allocating some to bitcoin. It's
other companies that are actually bringing some bitcoin products to market,
but not maybe in so much in the US markets
because maybe a lot of that's already sort of taken.
But how do we launch that in Japan or India
(17:17):
or Brazil or something like that.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Is that kind of maybe more.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, And I was really combining the two. So, I mean,
I see both of them as complimentary to each other,
but yeah, I think they are fundamentally different. You know,
I think that there is room, though in the US,
for there to be multiple micro strategies. I think even
Sailor says, you know, there's there's ten companies that are
going to be trillion dollar companies, and you know, there's
(17:40):
one hundred companies that are going to be one hundred
billion dollar companies, and there's a thousand that are going
to be ten billion, and you know, so on and
so forth. And you know, when I look at when
I think about what a bitcoin treasury company is, in
my mind, it's it's the it's the new form of
a of a of a bitcoin exchange, you know, like
that's effectively what you're what you're doing, is you're creating
a vehicle for people to get exposure to bitcoin. And
(18:03):
rather than having a connect your bank account and go
through KYC and you know, blah blah blah blah blah
fund your account, instead like you just take a brokerage
account and you go buy this instrument and boom, now
you have exposure to bitcoin. And you know, so, like
how many bitcoin exchanges can the United States support?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Right?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
More than one?
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
You know, like every one of these businesses they have
their own network to go to, their own customer base,
their own way to market the product that they're Like,
each of these is going to have their incremental differences,
and so I think there's space for many players to compete,
and I think competition is really healthy and all of
them win together by you know, any of them succeeding.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah. Well, that's the good thing about wealth. It's not
a zero some game. Right.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
The more wealth that's created, the more wealth we have,
And I guess if you think about sort of like
sailor already creating three different products off of it, I mean,
then you just extrapolate that. I mean, there's potentially infinite
amount of products that could be created with more creative.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Correct kind of like that correct.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
It's like I mean, it's it's it's a new asset class,
and it's like it will balloon in size, and every
new innovative product that's created, you're gonna have one hundred
investment bankers figuring out how to clone the product and
repackage it and sell it into different market Yeah. And
so like this is gonna be a gold rush of
just securitization of new instruments and and and accessing new markets.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
One thing I took away when I left the Abu
Dhabi event Bitcoin Mina, was like Bitcoin's coming for every
area of finance, just completely every area of finance. And
I used to be in creative financing. I had my
finance learner's license here in California and we did like
invoice factoring and per sort of financing and first trusteed,
et cetera. And all of a sudden, my creative financing
(19:47):
mind started thinking about all these different financial products, lending
products mostly that bitcoin can slip into, and I know
there's several that are already underway and some I'm working
on as well. And so I mean it's really infinite,
right as far as the mind can imagine these things,
I guess, yeah, we just have more idea, more and
more more ways.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
We're cannibalizing the capital markets and we we are, we are.
I mean, this is how bigcoin takes over. I mean,
this is the thing, like, this is how it takes over.
And you know, it's not that we overnight shut down
and cast out the institutions that rule the world today.
It's that we force the institutions to engage in this
(20:30):
new economy, this new market. And if they don't, then
then then we will and it'll be it'll be forced
upon them. And so you know, it's it's you know,
it's it's very interesting to watch. It's very interesting to watch.
It's exciting.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Oh it's super exciting. What a time to be alive.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
And we're we're literally alive for history you made, you know,
And as someone who makes a lot of content, and
I love to reference history because it's so insightful for us.
And there's these big dates, the nineteen forty four Breton
Woods Agreement, you know, nineteen thirteen and nineteen forty four
Applausa cord in nineteen eighty five, seventy one mix and
off the gold stands like these key dates, and I
feel like we're like in one of those dates right now, right, Yeah, No.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I mean I feel like the the ultimate story that's
playing out here is like have you seen this this
I'm blanking on the guy's name, Luke, Luke Grohman. I
think it's Luke Groman, Yeah, Luca and the Triffan's Dilimma.
I feel like that's a meme that's just like gaining
mind share. And you know, I have yet to hear
(21:35):
someone from the let's say, prevailing geopolitical order explained to
me like like the solution to that dilemma. And you know,
really the in state of it is like we need
the dollar to free float against a neutral asset, Like
that's that's the end state of that. And so that's
how we solve this this trade deficit issue. That's how
(21:56):
we solve for you know, the industrialization of our economy,
that's how we solve the megabig problems that have to
get resolved. And you know, when we get to that state,
then it's like okay. Now bitcoin is the most widely accepted,
most liquid instrument in the world, and it is the
neutral asset that every currency will float against. And like now,
bitcoin underpins the entire global financial and monetary system.
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Speaker 1 (23:12):
I can tell you one with certainty that the Triven's
dilemma and that that worldview on on Basically, the burden
of carrying dollar reserve status is something that our military
industrial complex, our defense complex is becoming ever more aware of.
(23:34):
And you know, like at the end of the day,
like the United States military is like, you know, the
hollowing out of America's industrial base directly affects their ability
to fight wars and defend the country. And like, uh,
you know, like the institutions I guess that in the
United States that can actually push for this kind of
(23:56):
change to occur are acutely aware of what's going on.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, for sure, for sure the military understands the implications
of all this. I want to take it to the
next level here. So sort of in this fifty year
cycle thesis that I use that I use in talks,
and I talk about how there's these different stages. So
each fifty year cycle throughout the last three hundred years,
financial revolutions and financial capitals sort of follow this predictable pattern.
(24:21):
And stage one is sort of like this eruption and
that sort of represents like retail, which was sort of
like this explosion of bitcoin and alt coins. And then
phase two goes into what's called the frenzy phase, which
is more sovereign institutions and sovereigns. And so we just
talked about the institutions and you're, you know, you're saying
thousands of public companies will be coming in with these
bitcoin treasury plays.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
But I want to jump to the sovereign level.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And first I want to hear your story, because from
the world looking from the outside in, like you seem
to be the one that went and got Trump and
like pulled him into the entire market, got to speak
at the conference, all of that right around the time
he was getting his ear shot off and all those
other things, like give us a story on that.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Oh man, it's a long and it's the longest.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Even start, Like where did it even start?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It started, uh in Puerto Rico late night on like
a Saturday night, sitting around shooting the shit with a
friend of mine, Tracy, and a couple of our other friends.
And it started with like, you know, if we could
just get in front of Trump, like we could pitch
Trump on bitcoin and get him to like bitcoin. We
(25:29):
can get him into bitcoin. And then my friend Tracy
is like, well, I know someone who might be able
to like get us infront of them, and they're like
no way, and she's like, yeah, like my sister's godfather
is Paul Manafort, and Paul Manafort was the campaign chair
for Trump in the last election and in the twenty
(25:53):
sixteen election. Maybe he can help us. And so that's
how it started. And then like it started with you know,
a phone call to get past Paul's like sniff test,
and then you know, it was very clear that that
the Trump team and Trump orbit, you know, had not
dived deeply into this issue, like they had a service
(26:15):
level understanding, which is very understandable, but like it's just
like they hadn't dived into the into detail. And so
then began like began like a back and forth of
like like, you know, these are all the reasons why
it won't work or we can't like you know, why
we're not doing it now or whatever, and then us
coming back with like an answer to each one of
those issues and why it's actually not an issue or
(26:37):
et cetera. And so like back and forth, back and forth,
back and forth. Every couple of days were like flipping
something new to them, and then eventually it was like okay, well,
so if this could work, what would it what would
it look like? And so, uh, we assembled like a
brain trust of people from the industry. This is an
effort that to actually a lot of people were involved in,
(26:57):
but we assembled it like a brain trust and we
kind of tried to like brainstorm ideas of what's like
an America First agenda and platform that like bitcoin is
is coherent with and like and authentic to and so
like then we went back with like, Okay, these are
all these different ideas of things that we think like
could work with your platform and and you know that
(27:22):
the president would like that Trump would like and they
liked it, and and it you know, actually bitcoin is
does fit really well within the America First political platform.
And so you know, I think Trump energy independence really
resonated with Trump and and energy abundance. I think, you know,
(27:42):
Trump was the victim of you know, the political politicization
politicis I can't say that word politicization of our financial
system and banking system, and so you know, he was
a victim of money being sees, bank accounts being shut
and so I think it really resonated with him to
that that's wrong, that that there needs to be people
(28:03):
need to have tools to protect themselves from a captured
financial institutions. And you know, I like, as we kind
of developed this platform, then like only when it got
to like the really well developed the Trump way in
and I think like the key point for him was
like he came back with the question, is like all right,
(28:23):
like this is all great, but you know, I like
the dollar. I'm a fan of the US dollar, and
every bitcoinner I know tells me that Bitcoin's going to
destroy the dollar, like like what am I missing here?
And so our response to that was, you know, the
United States, building Fort Knox and storing the world's gold
(28:45):
in the United States did not undermine the power of
the US dollar. If anything, it enshrined the power and
value of the US dollar and made the dollar what
it is today, the reserve currency of the world. And
that if you want the dollar to remain the reserve
currency of the world, then we have to have a
digital Fort Knox, and we need to store the digital gold.
And that's how we keep the dollar relevant for hundreds
(29:06):
of years to come. And like then it was like okay,
I'm interested, and let's meet. And so we went up
to Trump Tower and and made the case in person.
And you know, the president is is is a brilliant guy.
He really is an extraordinary person. And you know, he
(29:30):
has an intuitive sense of opportunity. I mean, he's he's
he's an entrepreneur, and you know, he he has many
people around him that like bitcoin. His his kids like bitcoin.
You know, there's lots of libertarians that like bitcoin, that
are that are in some of those circles, and so
you know, he he saw this as a vehicle where
like bitcoin is like the new dal Jones of the
(29:52):
youngest generation of the young people, and so like to
integrate this into his platform was also to integrate and
bring along, you know, the youth in his platform. And
then as he went out into the market and started
talking about bitcoin, and he said he had a campaign
rally where he talked about like we want one hundred
percent of the bitcoin made in America. Yeah, you know,
like like the reaction that he got, he picks up
(30:17):
on that reaction. And so when he's talking to a
bunch of people and in the course of a day,
a lot of them mentioned, hey, I saw what you
said about bitcoin or crypto, or like my kid told
me about what you said. YadA, YadA. He has an
intuitive sense of like picking up on that and like
doubling down on it. And so it was a very
interesting process of seeing him like this, this like give
and take process of him like taking a step forward
(30:38):
and then the market reacting in a positive way and
then him kind of taking another step forward. And yeah,
it was it was really quite like quite quite the
roller coast. I mean, there's way more detail of things
that happened along the way I can go into, but
ultimately it culminated with him giving a speech at Nashville,
and uh, that speech was a very i mean a
(30:59):
true a historic historic speech and uh, you know, from
like from when he gave that speech, he left the
conference and he like he walked into the conference and
it was very much like nervous of how the crowd
would respond to him. He had just done the Libertarian convention,
which was not a nice audience at all, and you
know there was people doing and stuff classic libertarians. Yeah,
(31:25):
but like he was he was a little bit you know,
had some anxiety. And then when he got the reaction
that he got he left, he was like, dude, these
people love me. I love this. I love you know,
like this is like, you know, I've been on this
and so you know, it's been his words a love
fest ever since. And you know, I think in terms
of like what he's delivered as president in his first
(31:47):
hundred days, which I think just happened maybe today or
this week, he's delivered on almost everything he said he
would deliver on. Like there's a few things that are
still in flight and process, but you know, everything from
you know Sabe uh, freeing Ross Olbrigg, you know, uh,
ending the broker rules that the IRS put in place.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Uh, you know, firing Gensler.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I Gary Ginsler. He took care of that one before
he even got into into office, you know, putting in
place a bitcoin friendly cabinet, uh, completely changing the SEC's attitude,
rolling back the litigation against all of the American bitcoin firms,
signing into signing an executive order to establish a strategic
bitcoin reserve. I mean, like, dude, like just one of
(32:34):
these would have been incredible, and he's He's delivered, and
so you know, I I at this point in time,
I feel a deep, an immense amount of respect and
gratitude for what he's done. And you know now I
feel like, uh, regardless of how terrorist worked out good
or bad whatever. I'm writer died Trump because he's delivered
(32:55):
for us and and you know, he delivered for Ross,
and I like a lot of people were like, he's
not deliver for Roster. There's no ways going to do
it once he gets elected, you know. And then every
hour that take by when he was elected, because he
said he'd do a day one, people are like, yeah,
it's been three hours, he hasn't been out. And then
first first twenty six hours he got it done. So
really it was a lot of work, but it was
(33:19):
an incredible thing to be a part of, and it
was worth every dollar and every ounce of sweat.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Amazing story. Thanks for telling us that.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I love how you talked about It's what you said earlier,
like meeting people where they are, So you sort of
understood what was important to Trump and then you fed
him those things along the way and let him sort
of discover and take more. And one thing I get
asked all the time, and I'm sure you've heard ten
thousand times or more ten million times, is like, you know,
how do we orange fill people? And it's like, well,
it's that you find out where they are. What's the
(33:48):
one thing that they're concerned with, and then how do
we match that one benefit and then let them take
on more.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
One hundred percent. I mean that's you know, it's not
that complicated. People make it so much more complicated than that.
It's like you don't have to like fit into like
an army uniform and put on like an orange suit
and go out there and like believe in all the doctrine.
It's like, you know, what are the things that matter
to you, What are the problems that you have in
your life? How does bitcoin affect those things? Why is
it better for you if the bitcoin vision plays out?
(34:17):
That's how you bring people along.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, I'm curious what you think. I mean, I agree
and love all that stuff, But I'm curious because there's
plenty of people that have been saying online on Twitter
on x you know, oh yeah, sucking up to the
central banks to buy your coin. Oh yeah, the government
to buy your coin kind of thing, and that someone
like you who's been in it, you know since the
early early early days, the early stipherpunk days. I mean,
(34:39):
how's your view on that.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
So we're not sucking up to anyone, like we're we're
not begging them for the position that we have, Like
we've taken the position that we have through sheer will
and entrepreneurship and building bitcoin into an asset that got
so big that they're they have to reckon with us.
You know, So like this is not a ah. Bitcoin
(35:05):
has not changed one ounce. The technology has not changed
one line of code, has not changed since before Trump
liked bitcoin to after Trump liked bitcoin. And you know,
like the the the inevitability of bitcoin is such that
you know, eventually every government on the planet is gonna
have to hold bitcoin, every central bank on the plane
(35:26):
is gonna have to hold bitcoin, Every financial institution is
gonna have to support bitcoin, and if they don't, they're
gonna they're gonna go bye bye. So like that's that's
that's not us losing and succumbing to the system. That's
us eating the system and the system having to become
part of part of our system. So you know, I, I,
you know, I understand that it's weird to be used
(35:49):
to occupying Wall Street and now you know, instead of
occupying Wall Street in front of the building, we're occupying
you know, the building. Yeah, but like this is the
process of us eating the world and eventually bitcoiners are
going to become the people in the institutions that have
to build the society we want to see. We can't
(36:09):
just complain about the society as it is. We actually
have to go and create the alternative system. And like
that's what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, it was always going to be that way.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I mean, how do you take over the world without
getting to every highest office there is? Right, But I
love what you said. It wasn't like, you know, Bitcoin
became O fact compliant or something like that in order
for Trump to endorse it, Like he just took it
as it was.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
And I think that's a super key piece there. So
let's talk about game theory.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
He did take it, like he didn't just take it
because it was like him being charitable. He took it
because it was it was the right move to make,
because we earned it. Like there are there's one hundred
million of US in America, seventy million of US in
America that own this asset. It's a multi trillion dollar asset.
If those things were not true, it wouldn't have happened.
So it's like we we earned the seat at the table,
(36:57):
and then he wants to play ball with us as
as a peer, you know, as a movement because of
the power that we've been able to build and wield effectively.
Any respects that, and so yeah, I mean it's it's
it's nothing was given to Bitcoin, you know, like we
everything that Bitcoin has, Bitcoin Bitcoin had to earn.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah, So jumping into the game theory piece, because like
we saw, you know, El Salvador come along, a sovereign
nation come along to Bitcoin a few years ago, but
they're not like a really big influential nation, you know,
if you will, right, But now we have the leader
of the free world, you know, the US dollar, the
United States government, et cetera, openly embracing it, and not
(37:37):
just that like Trump publicly declaring that, you know, the
US should be a strategic Bitcoin will reserve, but a superpower,
if you will.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
And so I'm curious in the talks that you've.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Had how that influence starts to play out in game theory.
And I saw, you know, before we started recording, I
mentioned that I you know, in Abu Dhabi, we are
there a few months ago, and you were so busy
running around with all the chiks that I ain't really
get to catch up with you.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
But it's like the capital of capital. So I know
you've been in those those rooms. What is the game theory? Like,
now that the US and Trump have made that declaration.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
There's there's nations all over the world that are either
active getting active in the market, have already gotten active,
like just started to get active, or are in the
process of getting active, or are studying and will get
active over the course of the year. And so you know,
and like nation state buy in. You know, capital it
(38:28):
comes in many different shapes and forms. So you know,
it's not just like hey, we're gonna go out onto
coinbase and we're gonna hammer spot bitcoin. You know, after
that conference, it was it was revealed that some of
the sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dabi that you know
are not that are not you know, directly the central bank,
but they are sovereign money had bought bitcoin through the
(38:51):
Black rock etf They've bought bitcoin through different funds, and
then those funds have exposure to bitcoin. You know. A
great analogy or example would be like this deal that
just happened with Cantor and soft Bank, cant Or, soft
Bank and Tether that happened last week. Okay, well, soft
Bank put in a billion dollars. Whose money is that?
(39:13):
Where to SoftBank GI their money? Oh, soft bank is
back by Saudi, So that's Saldi money wrapped in a
in a Japanese you know, corporate that's then deploying it
into a US securitized bitcoin structure. Yeah, so like that's
sober money. So like the money is flowing. Uh, you know,
just in the same way that bitcoin carries career risk
(39:37):
for someone pushing it internally at their company, It carries
career risk for central bankers, it carries career risk for politicians,
it carries career risk for kings, and so you know,
there is a a step by step process that people
go through so that they are they are being appropriate
(39:57):
and respectful, uh, and and how they go about embracing
this technology, and that they're doing it in a way
that they have consensus or at least enough consensus amongst
their peers and amongst the other kind of power structures
within within their their their government. But without a doubt
it's happening. And I would say, you know, the phases
(40:21):
of adoption, Like right now, if I had a guess,
there's probably fifty nation states globally that are that are
actively mining bitcoin in one hundred megawatt plus size, and
you know some that have been talked about, many that
are not talked about or not not public. That's kind
of like the the let's say, lowest friction way through
(40:44):
the door for a government. You know, like there's one
government that well well known that you know they're turning
on right now four hundred megawatts of power to use
for bitcoin mining. And you know this is like their
first fora well, like as these facilities get up and running,
their next challenge is gonna be what happens with the bitcoin?
(41:06):
What do we do with the bitcoin that we mind? Like, uh,
who's responsible for collecting it, who's responsible for auditing it,
who's responsible for liquidating it? You know, are are are
we gonna have a custody provider? What custody provider are
we gonna pick? We're gonna build our own custody provider.
Like these are all like the next step consequences of
the initial decision that you have to figure out, and
then before you know it, it's like, oh, well this
(41:28):
this country has just built out their bitcoin program. You know,
now now they have all their chosen vendors to work with.
Now they have their chosen delegates within the government who
are responsible for the outcomes, and so like, once you
have that infrastructure developed, then it's like the next step becomes, Hey,
you know what, we don't have as much bitcoin as
we wish we had. Let's get the central bank plugged
(41:48):
into that thing and let's start. Let's start, let's start
running our own open market operations to get some more
of that. And so it's this like step by step process,
but it's happening, and you already have government at the
Let's get our teams into the market and start acquiring
this stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's great that you lay it out like that.
You know, someone like you have have been around a
really long time. I've been around, not as long as
you've been a long time as well, and I've built
a lot of businesses, so I tend to be able
to think longer.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
But the one problem I see for most people is
they just think.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
So short term, and it's like, you know, why isn't
this moving the market up already?
Speaker 3 (42:22):
I saw the news yesterday, right, But it's like, man,
you don't just bring governments and sovereigns in. It takes time.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
As you laid out very well, like the step by
step sort of incremental process that it takes to even
get in. So is this something that you know takes
these next three four years or it's probably more.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Of just like the continued gradual sort of Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
No, it's like it's like the corporate adoption. It's the
same dynamic playing out. It's like, Okay, first there was one,
and then there was two, and then there was five,
and then there was ten, and then there was one hundred,
and now there's two hundred, and then in a year
there'll be a thousand, right, you know, And so it
is it is a continuous march, and you know, there's
definitely going to be a degree of like there's definitely
(43:06):
nation state competition and so like you know, right now,
most on the corporate adoption side, most people can ignore
micro strategy. But like the first like mag seven stock
that buys bitcoin, like the other seven are buying bitcoin
right away, and you know, the first G twenty country
that buys bitcoin and and is public about it or
(43:26):
is you know, people can identify it outside of the US,
but yeah, outside of the UK, no, but the US
hasn't bought yet. I mean the like as soon as
the US start is it becomes active in the market,
the second G twenty country is going to be going
to be days behind. And so you know, the even
in the United States, like I can tell you, like
there's the people a strategic Bitcoin reserve, and the program
(43:50):
for the US to go out and acquire more bitcoin
is a priority to make happen, and there are people
who are tasked with making it happen, and it is
there they are actively working on this, this this challenge.
It takes time to do these things right, Like it
takes time, like even if you wanted to go full speed,
it takes months and months and months. It's not like
(44:12):
the same as just like you setting up a coin
base account, you know, and and and getting to work.
So these things take time. And you know, I anticipate
personally that you're going to see the US get active
in the market this year. And I think that you know,
every other country. I mean, as I travel places, I'm
(44:34):
asked one hundred percent of the time, what is America's
bitcoin policy? You know, what is the plan with the
strategic Bitcoin reserve? Is America buying bitcoin? And like every
country wants to know that, So you know, the attention
is there, the activity is there, and then you know,
the urgency is what's developing, and and the urgency only
(44:57):
comes when you feel a sense of competition.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Yeah, man, zoom out, zoom out. It's extremely bullish. It's
all in play, it's all in process, right.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah, it's crazy. The wheel it's and.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
The wheels are emotion.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
And you know, the one thing I just add to
what you're saying is like, obviously corporations take a long
time to change their mandates and shareholders and all that.
The government obviously takes longer, but once those wheels are
in motion, they don't just easily stop either.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Correct, it works both, It works both ways.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah, well, I think that's a good place to wrap
it up. Let's just have you leave us with something.
Since you've been in bitcoin, building in bitcoin for so long,
I didn't even get into the media company.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
That's something I was interested in as I'm in the
media as well. But building in the space for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
I mean, you've probably convinced a million skeptics about it,
you got the US President on board. What is one
thing that you could say, uh, tell the world why
bitcoin matters not as a currency but as a revolution.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
You know, I think fundamentally it is it is the
separation of money in state, and is the removal of
the unchecked, unfettered power of nations to compel their people
to do things by access and control of the money.
Like that is the fundamental premise of this whole thing.
And when we separate money and the state, we create
(46:15):
a consensual society. And every part of our society has
the capacity to grow in a way that it can't
when it's being malformed via centralized control. And so, you know,
I think the way to unshackle humanity is through unshackling
(46:39):
control over the money that rules us.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
Love it, separate money in state, and that's why. All right, David,
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Anything I want to shout out obviously, bitcoin conference next month,
bitcoin magazine, anything else, Yeah, man.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Just buy some bitcoin.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Bitcoin, all right, all.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Right, and thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Mark.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Enjoyed being on
Host
Mark Moss
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