I think this has been a very good year in terms of like fundamental Bitcoin value.
It's easier than ever to use Bitcoin in a freedom oriented way.
This is a long term game.
This is a grind.
I think the best path and the hardest path is to stay humble and stack sats and not chase
easy wins that you think are easy that you're just going to lose all your money on.
States are not really accumulating yet.
Institutional players are accumulating.
we are going to have to go through this period of sort of co-option.
Who sits at the table of power, right?
And there's a small club that has all of the money,
they have all of the guns and they make all of the laws
and none of us are in that club.
It's going to take some time for us basically
to get a seat at the table of power
and be able to rewrite the rules to enable more freedom.
And I think that if you're in Bitcoin, it's a long journey.
It's a long bet.
Bitcoin has to enter into the traditional system.
If Bitcoin remains as outside capital forever,
It never fulfills its mandate.
How you doing, man?
I'm ready. Let's do this.
Let's talk about the year that sucked.
Yeah, this.
And why it sucked.
Last year when we recorded this.
Nick Carter's right.
And he's rubbing it in your face, you know?
Let's talk about it. Let's get into it.
So last year when we recorded this, it was 92K.
And I think we all kind of agreed.
Matt put some caveats in because Matt always puts caveats in.
but we kind of all agreed that this was going to be
Super Cycle and the green green
I'm sure I said a million
I probably said a million like
I don't know what I said
What's happened HODL?
I recall saying that if it was
similar to previous cycles
2 million was in play
I think I said that
You said 2 million in 2025
No I didn't make it a call
it wasn't a call I just said
if it was similar to previous cycles
then 2 million would be in play
Damn
Yeah, it's probably the year where I think everyone was wrong, though.
When Matt said that, they liked it.
I remember that.
It's like it's the only year of Bitcoin I remember where I don't think anyone's got it right.
Like normally when years like are turning bearish, there's always someone like last cycle was Dan Held calling Super Cycle.
But there's always someone who's like right calling the top.
And I don't think anyone did that a year out.
No, not at all.
I think, I mean, I guess the my feeling about it has been that we, the Bitcoin influencer class, have become superfluous and that we kind of don't have the money to pump this thing anymore.
I think it was Matt who actually said, like, each bull run is the story of a group of investors coming in and basically deciding they can pump this thing.
And there was basically no retail involvement this this time around.
I mean, if there was, it went into MSTR and treasury companies.
And then, you know, people kind of got wrecked before the bubble could even start.
Like if you invested in the majority of treasury companies, you pretty much lost money unless you were doing them as quick flips.
There was like a two to two week to one month period where you could actually make some money on some of the treasury company things.
And then, you know, it just completely collapsed.
And I think like, you know, there's this institutional inflow of capital that doesn't seem to stop.
It's very consistent.
None of us really understand how the institutional players are thinking about this market.
We don't understand what games they play.
We're kind of out of our depth.
And I think we should just probably just be honest about that instead of throwing around cycle words at each other.
And more likely than like, you know, we're in a super cycle.
It's a this cycle.
It's a crab bull.
It's a bull crab.
It's a bear crab.
It's like, shut the fuck up.
Like these are all just, we're kind of dumb
and we don't really know what we're talking about.
And I think that, you know,
if you look at the way Bitcoin has been trading
and potentially could trade in the future,
it might trade more like an NVIDIA or something like that
where every year we get an all-time high,
but every year we get a 30 to 40% correction on top of that.
Like that's kind of how the tech stocks trade.
And so that wouldn't surprise me.
It also wouldn't surprise me
if next year is wildly bearish or wildly bullish.
I don't know what's going on.
I just don't know.
And so it's like, I think this whole thing,
like the influencer sphere, the podcast sphere,
like the whole, it's out of our hands now.
Like we're not really the guys that have control
over this market anymore.
We used to be, or we thought we were at least.
It's interesting though,
because like you say,
we're not the people that can pump the bags,
but like with the ETFs,
like we all thought institutional money
was actually coming.
and yet here we are lower than we were last year.
Do you think this might be the wrong two people
to ask this question
because you're not like markets macro guys,
but do you think the option market on top of Ibit
has had a negative impact on Bitcoin price?
Well, I want to, I mean,
first of all, I want to put some numbers here.
Okay, so we're currently at $88,000, right?
Just to put a pin in the cycle talk,
we're currently at $88,000.
If this was equivalent to the 2012 cycle,
we should be at $3 million.
right now. If this is equivalent to the 2016 cycle, we should be at $930,000. If it was equivalent to
the 2020 cycle, we should be at $326,000. But we're at $88,000. So no matter how you cut it,
this year was a fucking disappointment, a massive disappointment. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is at all
time highs, silver is at all time highs, and gold is at all time highs. I agree with HODL that most
of the existing influencers have become irrelevant.
But also, a lot of them just sold out
to these fucking treasury companies.
They pretty much all joined treasury companies,
and they all shot the bed.
Any retail we had that came into the market
went into the treasury companies
instead of going into Bitcoin.
And a lot of times they did it with leverage too.
It was like the opposite of Stay Humble Stack Sats.
And we're starting to, I think we seal,
I think that probably was more of an impact than options on Ibit.
We just don't have real spot retail demand.
Even regular Ibit demand has been actually,
that's probably been one of the most bullish fundamentals.
But it feels like it got dwarfed by a lot of the treasury companies.
There's just a lot of distractions there.
And then the last piece that I would put out there is,
if this is what a super cycle looks like, it doesn't feel that super.
um we we we didn't even hit a new all-time high in gold this this time around yet i mean hopefully
we do that next year maybe in four-year cycles are dead and we hit it next year but it's just
been a massive disappointment i you can't really cut it any other way yeah i also saw alex thorn
just tweeted like an hour or two ago saying if inflation adjusted we've not even broken 100k
like it's definitely been well i mean can can you even really call this year a bull market year i
I mean, we hit some all time highs.
We were doing well, but we're going to end the year down.
Right.
So like there's the pattern which I was helped.
I helped me in which is green, green, green, red.
And of course, once you mean something, it dies.
So I killed it.
Now, green, green, green, red is now dead because we're unless, you know, something happens in the next few days, like we're going to end the year on a red candle.
So it's green, green, red TBD.
Like we don't know is next year red or is it green or is it whatever?
I think, again, we have sort of brain damage from all these years in Bitcoin, and the game has fundamentally changed in the ETF era, and we're still kind of playing catch up to it. I think that's what's going on. And we're kind of like, we're doing divination where we're basically like, we're doing astrology. This is astrology for guys, like tuning into Bitcoin price talk, you know, like that's what we're doing.
That's really what it is.
and we need to stop and be sober and rational and reasonable and say,
okay, yeah, the year was bad.
It was a bust.
It was flat, but really it was bad because of our expectations.
You know, we had really high expectations because we thought,
oh, there has to be a bull run every four years.
And there kind of was, there kind of wasn't.
I don't know.
I think looking forward, I think it's more important instead of saying,
you know, cycle this, cycle that, that we just look at, you know,
how the market is going to trade, who the players are, who's buying Bitcoin, why are they buying
Bitcoin? What are their reasons for owning it? How do they feel about it? Because price is set
at the margin. And so these big buyers who come in, they are going to be able to set the price.
Hodler set the floor and new buyers set the set the highs. So, you know, to me, I still don't
really understand the new buyers. And it seems like states are not really accumulating yet.
institutional players are accumulating.
You still have BlackRock pretty, you know,
fundamentally bullish on this thing.
I saw Fidelity revise some of their price projections down,
but, you know, they were like way over bullish.
They were like, you know, they were as bullish as we were.
They were like two, three million a coin.
So anyway, I think the time is to be more,
the appropriate thing now at this time
is to be more rational and sober and act like adults
instead of being like,
it's going to bajillions next year, bro.
I mean, I will say also we saw like Tom Lee was like he was posting his like bullish engagement predictions, but then behind the scenes sending out letters to investors being like, we're going to have a down year next year, which I mean is, I think, a bullish fundamental.
But a lot of this stuff is momentum.
And in today's market, particularly on the short-term side,
a lot of things is like we live in a meme coin world,
like a meme stock world in a lot of ways, right?
With a lot of momentum trading.
And if you do look, and I'm not someone who paid,
first of all, I'm not a chart guy.
I'm not a short-term trader guy.
I definitely don't pay attention to the crypto markets,
like the broader crypto markets, shitcoins, whatnot.
I just focus on Bitcoin long-term investments in Bitcoin,
whether that's the asset or the underlying companies that are building on it.
But something feels like it broke on October 10th in the crypto markets.
And that's when a bunch of liquidations happened.
A lot of the shitcoiners got wrecked.
And then a lot of the market makers that were cross-shitcoin exposed.
like they were they held a lot of bitcoin but then they also were market makers in shitcoin land
got really hit hard and one of the rumors is that winter mute which is one of the largest
crypto market makers has basically been liquidating bitcoin since then or at least for a while after
that happened right today is december 23rd i don't know you're going to release this in a little bit
But for like two months, right, they've been like unwinding positions with the only thing they actually had left, which was Bitcoin, because like a bunch of shit coins like literally like wick to zero that day.
And if you look at a chart, it's a crazy chart.
Like I tell people, this is the one chart this year that is really, really interesting.
And that is gold, silver, S&P 500, Bitcoin.
and you can literally see the divergence
that happened on October 10th.
So who knows?
Like maybe that doesn't happen.
And what we've seen with Bitcoin,
like we got the majority of our gains
in a very short period of time.
And then maybe, you know, what was the meme?
Uptober.
We were supposed to have Uptober.
And we did for like seven days.
And instead we just had downtober and downvember
and downdecember.
And so maybe it would have been different.
Maybe it would have looked different if that didn't happen.
Yeah.
And so wait, I mean, you're suing Binance now.
Is that right?
And that was the other thing.
I think that was right.
I mean, if you want to be a conspiracy theorist, which I don't prescribe to this particular
conspiracy, but like CZ got pardoned and then 1010 happened.
Like you just was there like you get the pardon if you just nuke the market.
Just nuke the market.
let us get in cheaper and then you'll have your part in.
Oh, I kind of like that one.
But now CZ is getting sued.
Yeah.
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you were saying that none of the influencers have enough sway right now but i actually don't
know if that's true because like like you hodl as an influencer maybe not but like the biggest
bitcoin influencer now is michael saylor and he's been buying like a shit ton of bitcoin all year
and not really done very much to the price like i i don't okay but go on yeah but that's my point
first of all is saylor and then who else there's not many other people the ones that that remain
that are Bitcoin specific, right?
Like Larry Fink is the largest Bitcoin influencer
in the world now.
But the ones that are Bitcoin specific
told everyone to buy treasury companies.
Like Saylor literally was in Prague
and was like, tell your friends and family
you need to borrow a million dollars from them
and buy Bitcoin with it.
But he kind of was really implying
borrow a million dollars and buy MSTR with it.
And it's down like 50% since he said that.
Yeah.
Like that's not how you make a foundational
like solid market.
it's super tempting for the retail that does show up here like i think everyone's gotten the memo
um when i talk to people you know i said this last year but it's it's true still which is when
i talk to friends they know about the bitcoin price without me telling it to them which has
never happened before in my decade in bitcoin um so now people are like they're aware of what
bitcoin is trading at they're aware that it's a big deal they they believe in bitcoin you know
they believe in the story broadly but they don't think they're going to be a participant and that's
story. And so if you have all of those things and then you say to yourself, well, I want to get into
Bitcoin, you know, people kind of think that leverage is like a way to cheat the system.
And it's like, OK, I'm going to get in with leverage and then I'm going to make up for lost
time. And that turns out to be, you know, just the quickest trip to wreck city. And the treasury
companies are really struggling because, you know, like everything was great when it was like,
yeah, bro, premiums on Bitcoin, bro.
And you're like, why?
And they're like, reasons, me, dude, come on, dude, premiums, dude.
And then the premiums go away.
And like all the guys like Jim Chanos are right.
And they can just are about the premium super easily.
And it's like, we're going to, we're going to like acquire businesses, man.
And, and, and shit.
And it's, and I don't really, you know, I don't, the treasury companies are not that
defensible without a premium.
I mean, I think that's the one call that we got right last year.
I was listening to the show before we did this to see where we were wrong.
We were wrong a lot, to be honest.
But we did say that we thought the treasury companies, like the long tail, were going to get wiped out.
And basically just the cream of the crop was going to be the only thing that was interesting and actually stuck around.
And I think we're seeing that.
Like the acquisitions that are happening now, that seems like bad news for most of the companies involved.
Like I think Saylor is going to be fine.
Strategy will always be there.
I think there's probably two or three others.
But I think this idea that you can have like a coffee shop that's struggling and buying Bitcoin is your like last chance at actually making the company successful.
That's over.
You said earlier in this rip that no one, I don't know if we can call this a cycle, but no one this cycle like successfully called the top or not.
Like HODL just reminded me like Chanos' call was epic.
Like people were giving him so much shit for that call.
And it was a very simple trade.
He was like, I am just short Microsoft's MicroStrategy's MNav Premium.
And he held long Bitcoin and went short MSDR and pretty much nailed the timing.
Absolutely nailed the timing very publicly and got a lot of shit for it.
Yeah.
And I mean, we're living in a weird, bizarro world where Peter Schiff is having an amazing year.
I fucking hate it.
We got to give it up to Jim Chanos.
If you look at the asset charts, you know, that dude, Charlie Bilillo, he always puts it out.
Gold is the best performing asset of the year.
No, isn't silver?
Is silver above gold now?
I checked it only like a month ago.
Okay, well, silver had a really hot month.
Right.
So it's precious metals at the top and Bitcoin at the bottom.
And for the entirety of Bitcoin's history, that has never been true before.
And so this is just, you know, you kind of got to ask yourself like, okay, is Bitcoin a canary in the coal mine for something larger that's about to happen at the markets?
or is Bitcoin a beach ball that's being held underwater?
Those are kind of the two questions
and nobody has a good answer.
But I will say that whenever the Bitcoin price
hangs out for a long time like this
in a specific range,
I tend to think it's going to dump.
It either goes up or down.
It's going to go hard in one direction.
I think it's a simpler answer.
I think we're basically living in a global depression right now,
printing fiat has hidden that so people think that we're not to a degree but most people are
poor as fuck um and there's a there's a safe haven trade going on and that's what gold and
silver are benefiting from people are still treating bitcoin as a risk-off asset uh which
is fine like i treat it as a safe haven but specifically like if you don't hold bitcoin
in self-custody i think it's really easy to think of it as a risk-off asset like almost like a tech
stock. And the only thing that's weird about the play right now or how the market's trading is the
big tech companies are also at all time highs. But that starts to make sense when you realize that
I think a lot of people are treating those as risk off assets. They're thinking of it as a safe haven
because they have large treasuries like cash treasuries They considered too big to fail think like the US government will not let NVIDIA fall Google a fucking behemoth
Apple's a fucking behemoth.
And they're treating them as safe haven assets themselves.
I think they actually might end up being safe haven assets.
Like I don't think the government can let NVIDIA fail.
Like I think the government is so reliant on AI working as like a productivity boom to make the economy work
that they will probably do everything they can
to not allow that stock to fail.
But I think what Hoddle said earlier is right.
In fact, I think you said this maybe on another show recorded
that it's just the weirdest thing that's happened this year
is Bitcoin isn't volatile enough for people,
which is why they're going into treasury companies.
I think that's why they're going into AI stocks
that are absolutely pumping.
But the thing that I never expected
was gold to have more retail FOMO than Bitcoin.
I would never have guessed that.
And I just wonder if we're like,
are we missing a narrative in Bitcoin?
Because it feels like every cycle there's some sort of dominant narrative.
And this time it seemed to be like every corporation was going to own Bitcoin.
And then a ton of corporations put Bitcoin in the balance sheet and ended up trading at a discount.
I think gold has the unit bias thing going for it, actually, because it's a lot easier to wrap your head around owning an ounce of gold than it is to wrap your head around owning $100,000 Bitcoin.
And I do think that for retail, the average person looks at, you know, Bitcoin price of $100,000, $125,000 and they just go, that's great, but that's completely out of my realm of, you know, potentiality here.
Like, and they don't realize that you can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin.
There's still like a learning curve there.
And so that forces, that's one of the forcing functions, you know, that pushes people towards treasuries or towards other things like, you know, gold, for instance.
I also think gold is somewhat easier to wrap your mind around.
And then, listen, like there are, you know, I don't even know if I want to bring this up.
I'll bring it up.
The quantum thing is an actual consideration in the mind of new investors.
I agree.
Because if there's this boogeyman out there that's like, hey, this thing that, you know,
is being sold to as rock solid could potentially be obliterated within, you know, a period of,
I don't know, five years time, 10 years time. How investable is it? Should you be investing?
And what is the timeline? Is the timeline three years? Is it five? Is it 10? Is it 20? Is it
bullshit? Is the error correction on quantum not real? What's the difference between a short range
and long range attack? Like these things get confusing. They're confusing for me. And I've
been in Bitcoin for a long time. So I think, you know, Nick Carter recently came out and
talked about quantum and that's been all over and like uh you know at least now we're not talking
about spam anymore so we got something new to talk about so that's been nice got that going for us
but i do think that he's right that there is capital that's scared of quantum i i think nick
is being incredibly alarmist um for engagement um but as someone who runs a fund that competes with
his um he is correct in that i i we have heard this from large allocators like large allocators
are thinking about it and there's not a real answer because I think the real answer is it's
not a real concern right now and it'll be fine. But that's not satisfying. What they want to see
is they want to see some tangible technical option for people that want more quantum resistance.
I mean, right now, if you hold Bitcoin and you're doing it under best practices, you're holding
self-custody Bitcoin, you're not reusing addresses, you're very well protected from
some kind of quantum breakthrough that is purely theoretical right now.
But that's not an easy answer for them.
I do think it's probably weighing down the market a little bit
and it's adding a little bit more uncertainty
where we already had uncertainty, right?
And I think the key here, though, with gold is gold is not –
I don't think it's a retail-driven rally.
I think gold is institutional sovereigns.
This is very, very large allocators.
and for them, it's actually easier for them to allocate to gold.
First of all, there's way less career risk.
There's already a bunch of different avenues
for large allocators to move into gold in size.
The story is very clean.
You know, it's multi-thousand year asset
that has historically been a safe haven.
And Bitcoin is, you know, is new
and it's hard to understand.
The interesting thing though, by the way,
And I'll just hand up probably first time in my life that I've ever felt any kind of gold FOMO.
And, you know, it's like everything we said is true, but gold and silver are fucking ripping.
And I feel sidelined. I feel sidelined to a degree.
There's no easy way for smaller people to allocate to gold.
like I don't even
I joked about this on
Rabadol Recap
I need like a BTC sessions video
on how to verify
physical gold
I just assume that if I go out and try and buy
physical gold in any reasonable
size
I'm probably going to get a bunch of Chinese
fakes
and to me Bitcoin is
way easier to allocate in those
like middle ranges
like the $500,000 to $2 million ranges.
You can go out and get self-custody Bitcoin on strike
and have it fully verified in 30 minutes.
By the way, the cheap, easy way to assay gold
is you take an impact drill and you just drill into it.
But doesn't that hurt the value of it?
I mean, you're destroying some portion of the gold.
Anyway, I decided to, just for it to be clear here,
I've decided that I'm not going to allocate to gold at all.
And instead, my Bitcoin hedge is just large quantities of ammunition, which is much easier to verify.
Whiskey, prescription pills, ammunition.
Absolutely.
I know you've got some gold around your neck right now, Odell, but we should talk about the quantum thing.
Besides made X's jewelry.
We should talk about the quantum thing because like I may be, I know you kind of get sick of the conversation, Matt, but like it, from my perspective, it probably will be true in my lifetime.
I'm not anywhere near competent enough to put a kind of time frame on it, but I would imagine it happens in my lifetime.
And so I think we do need to start having the conversation in a reasonable way, because like you saying that if you hold it in self custody, you're not reusing addresses, like you're pretty safe.
But that's not really the big threat. The big threat is like, what happens to all the old coins?
What does that do to the price of Bitcoin?
So, so, yeah, there's correct. There's two things.
So if you're if you're concerned about quantum is someone stealing your own Bitcoin, you're going to be fine.
We have some of the smartest minds in the world working on more advanced quantum protected schemes, signature schemes for Bitcoin that will be opt in that people can move to if they want to.
In the short to medium term, and that's like five to 20 years, the current hashed addresses on Segwit are probably fine, you know, because you're only subject to an attack at the point of spend.
And so you're imagining someone with a theoretical magic computer, basically, that is able to attack you within 10 minutes to an hour, which is just not going to happen.
So then what's the real concern that people have?
The real concern people have, and these two things are mixed together, is old coins and lost coins.
And the easy meme way to talk about this is Satoshi's Bitcoin.
Satoshi's got a million Bitcoin that's just sitting out there for a quantum attacker.
i like this is this is what you sign up for with bitcoin this is also what you sign up for with
gold like if someone steals someone's gold it doesn't invalidate the gold's value prop if
someone steals someone's bitcoin it doesn't invalidate bitcoin's value prop we earlier in
this year people were cheering on the strategic bitcoin reserve which is literally designed to be
built on stolen Bitcoin. And they cheer that on. But if for some reason someone has a massive
breakthrough and is able to create a quantum computer that actually fucking works and they
get some Bitcoin, which, by the way, they can't dump in size without destroying the value that
they created, people lose their fucking mind and start advocating for seizures that we've never
done in Bitcoin's history. Bitcoin has gone 17 plus years without a single seizure and without
a single transaction blocked at the protocol level. Like, yes, there's been seizures where
people take people's private keys or governments come in and arrest you and put a gun to your head
and force you to give them the private keys. That's unavoidable. That's in the physical realm.
But as a digital protocol, as an internet native protocol, we've never had a seizure and we've
never had any transaction blocked, which is absolutely phenomenal. People do not appreciate
that fact. And so to throw that out and basically preemptively try and steal Bitcoin because you're
afraid someone else might steal it is insane to me. And it's a weird obsession that people have.
And I think the cleanest thing to do here, narrative wise, if the concern is that large
allocators are worried about potential market impacts on that hitting the market, is being
very loud about the fact that that will not happen. We will not be preemptively stealing
people's Bitcoin. Because I'll tell you, there's also the opposite side of the equation.
Satoshi could have burned his Bitcoin if he wanted to. Large holders could have burned their Bitcoin.
OG holders that are in old legacy addresses that are vulnerable to this theoretical attack
could have burned their Bitcoin if they wanted to. They chose not to. Some of them might not
be moving their Bitcoin because of concerns over market impact. This actual movement,
this idea of spreading this narrative that we're going to preemptively seize satoshi's coins
if satoshi is actually alive and out there right now i've fucking moved my bitcoin like you might
actually force the market impact that you're so scared of because of of that preemptive fear yeah
but when i say this is stuff we should be talking about this is exactly what i mean like this is
this is the important conversation to have because like i think it's also really short-sighted from
another way whereas one of the key values of bitcoin is property rights and the fact that
you can't do anything with anyone else's Bitcoin.
And even if like, there's going to be a portion of the market that think we should seize Bitcoin
because they think short term, it'll be better for the price chart, essentially.
But like, what does that do to the long term value proposition of Bitcoin?
If we've proven at once under these like extreme circumstances, we can steal people's Bitcoin.
Like, I think people aren't thinking of the second and third order consequence of this.
Yeah, there's probably a lot of people who haven't been around for some of the
the messier times in Bitcoin too, you know, like where 2017 was a very messy year in Bitcoin. We
had a full on block size war that was raging. There was a lot of uncertainty. There were all
these airdrops, et cetera. And, you know, Bitcoin survived. And in fact, the price ripped that year.
And I think people want easy answers to some of these things. And the question, you know, like
the idea that we're going to put in a quantum secure encryption scheme before the threat is
prevalent and we might make a mistake is in and of itself just as big a threat as if we don't get
there in time. So you put in, you know, you're kind of damned if you do and you're damned if you
don't. So you have to be prudent and watch what's going on and then put in these, you know, schemes
at the right time. And then on top of that, you also have, you know, I think it's worth double
clicking on what Matt was talking about with the short range versus long range attacks. Like if you
are in like a P2WSH, like multi-sig, you know, hash protected, like you're good. You know,
Quantum is not going to get you.
And that's long range.
So that would be a long range attack if they were trying to get, you know,
hodled Bitcoin secure, hash protected Bitcoin.
But if you are, you know, transacting at the moment of transaction,
you might be vulnerable to some sort of quantum actor if one exists.
So right now it is still, you know, purely theoretical.
And I think that that's really not that big of a concern, right?
So you can kind of table it because it's not a big deal.
Most people are just hodling their coins anyway.
and it doesn't like destroy the value proposition of Bitcoin.
But if people can get access to your coins,
that's obviously a much bigger deal.
And then again, you have to dig into quantum,
how it works.
And like, there's a lot of talk,
you know, I'm not smart enough to understand it,
to be honest,
but there's a lot of talk about the error correction principles.
And like, they haven't really gotten there
on the technology side of like being able to error correct
the quantum state of these machines.
And so that means they're not really useful
in production yet, right?
Now, there might be a breakthrough any moment or in a couple of years or whenever that makes that possible.
But right now, it's a theoretical conversation.
We're having a theoretical conversation in public.
And I think one of the things we should do, in my opinion, my estimation, is to basically, we should have sort of a state of quantum discourse every year, quarterly or whatever, where we just sort of update as we go and say, hey, if you're interested in what the Bitcoiners are thinking about quantum, they're thinking this.
because one of the things that Nick Carter was saying
is the devs are not paying attention, whatever.
But there was a whole conference about this,
talk about this at Presidio Bitcoin,
where the devs were going over,
our highest level devs were going over the quantum threat,
what the potentiality is, what can be done,
what are the types of schemes.
Hunter Beast has done an incredible,
amazing amount of work on this.
There's a lot going on and people just don't know about it.
And so I think it's really contingent on us
to just sort of instead of be here's the other thing too about i want to like put this out to
bitcoiners like we've memed our way out of a lot of shit so bitcoin has no ceo that's just something
you can meme your way out of bitcoin has no intrinsic value what even is intrinsic value bro
like we can meme our way out of stuff but if quantum is real or if it becomes real it's not
it's more like a bitcoin y2k moment and it's not something that you can meme yourself out of
and the story of y2k by the way is not that y2k was not a big deal the story was that the people
that were in charge of updating the mainframe systems took it as a responsibility and did the
work ahead of time to make it so that Y2K ended up being nothing. And that is the same type of
thing we will do in Bitcoin when the time comes with the quantum thing, but it's not something
you can just meme your way out of. So I think that's the message I'd like to get across to
Bitcoiners on Twitter who are just like, oh, it's just fun, bro. It could be a real thing in the
future. It's just not a real thing right now. I was telling you, the real thing is going to be
likely the first contentious fork we've had since 2017,
which will be on seizing Bitcoin.
And I just want to reiterate this one more time.
If Navy SEALs or Delta Force or whatever
found Satoshi and accused him of money laundering
for terrorists and took his a million Bitcoin at gunpoint
and added it to the strategic Bitcoin reserve,
there'd be no conversations
around forking out their Bitcoin.
But if some math genius working in a secret lab somewhere figures out this insane crypto breaking computer to attack his Bitcoin, then we're going to we're going to do a protocol change to stop the Bitcoin.
That makes no fucking sense.
It just logically does not flow.
So this goes back to Ethereum's Dow fork, which is like they they came to this crossroads and they made the wrong decision.
And this was back in 2017, I think, or no, even earlier, 2016.
they made the wrong decision and they
somebody attacked the DAO
which had a lot of Ethereum in it
and they made the community
you know, decision to
roll it back and give those coins
back to the Ethereum Foundation
and all the other holders
but that was the wrong
and it created a chain split right
and then there was Ethereum Classic
and Barry Silver started buying up all the Ethereum Classic
that was the wrong decision
they hit that fork in the road and they made the bad path
and if Ethereum has done anything for us
it's shown us what not to do. So we can learn from their example and just not take the bad path.
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All right, Matt, just before we move on from this, I want a one-word answer, yes or no.
do you agree with that analogy what that's like the doubt for it yeah i think it's it's close
enough do you remember when we were recording at your house i used that exact same analogy
you told me it was a dumb take so uh what was my what was my reasoning for saying i don't remember
that was quite a while ago but i remember you telling me it was about that was when you forgot
to record car you see you're always just you're slippy you're getting out of it um we should talk
about trump though because this was one area where matt when i was listening back you had a really
poor take you said 90 sure we would have a strategic reserve this year yeah well we didn't
we did get one but it's it's a shitty one what what's your take on trump's entire first year
Oh my God, it's been, it's been wildly disappointing. Just like the Bitcoin market,
it's been disappointing. I think, you know, seems that the focus, I think the big thing that the
Trump base feels is that the focus has been much more on geopolitical foreign affairs than it has
been here at home. And people are not really getting what they voted for. And so there's
disappointment about that. And then the Trump admin
is doing sort of these
performative measures.
Like, for instance, the deportation numbers are not
as high as they should be And so ICE is doing TikTok edits to Little Dark Age on X And it like yo look how like fucking cool we being while we deport this person right it like nobody actually wants that
that's uh i don't know why you're trying to be cool on x instead of governing right so or like
you know we kind of seems like we have podcasters running the government man like dan bongino like
was on a podcast you know saying if he got into the fbi he would fix it and then he got into the
FBI and he was like, this shit is tough. I'm going back to podcasting. It's like, what the fuck?
I don't know, man. Or like, it's, it's weird. It's like, I'm watching, you know,
Steven Miller's wife has a podcast and cash Patel is on there with his girlfriend. Like,
why is the FBI director on a podcast with his girlfriend? This is like just weird norm breaking
for me. And it's like, what is it accomplishing in the middle of a manhunt for the Brown shooting
suspect. He's like doing the podcast. Like it's very odd what's going on. It's like this, I don't
know, the whole Trump admin has been very performative. And obviously I voted for Trump.
And, uh, you know, I think it's better than what we would have had with Harris because with Harris,
we would have been completely under the gun, especially as Bitcoin people. Um, and we probably
still will be in a future Democrat administration. So keep your nose clean now. Don't, I mean, like
maybe don't tweet that thing about the democrat senator you hate but um yeah it's been
disappointing disappointing yeah i mean i agree with that like the funny thing is though as especially
as an outsider you can't say anything negative about trump without like being told you have
trump arrangement syndrome but this year seems like a shit show like i i don't see that much
positive stuff that's come out of his his campaign so far and i agree that like harris might have
been worse but it doesn't mean trump's been good um and matt i'm giving you shit about the strategic
reserve call like i thought the same thing obviously you were never going to know but
do you think now the like first year is nearly up that the kind of idea of good bitcoin policy
is over or do you think there's still legs in it well first of all i'm still thinking about the
dow fork and i just want to apologize to you i forgive you matt but uh clearly people's opinions
change i'll tell you when we when we when we chatted last i wasn't thinking about quantum as
much and now I have to talk about it all the
fucking time.
Look, I think
on the Trump side, first of all, way better than Harris.
It's not even close.
Absolutely not even close. We were on the
verge of us and our friends
and important businesses
and Bitcoin throughout the country having
the feds raid their
houses at some point. It was really, really
bad. And we got
Ross free. Ross is free. That's a huge
win. I would love to see the Samurai developers
get pardoned. I think that's another easy
tangible win for the administration on the Bitcoin side.
I think, you know, the Trump administration himself and a lot of the people around him
are very, very transactional.
And it seems like they've been filling up their own coffers rather than filling up the
U.S. government's coffers on Bitcoin.
I mean, his son literally has his own American Bitcoin company.
Trump has Trump Media.
You mentioned the Brown guy, by the way.
Trump media is not only stacking Bitcoin, but they're also doing a 50-50 merger with their fusion company right after our top fusion researcher gets fucking murdered in his house.
So maybe it's Cope, maybe it's not.
But I think there is a play where you see the strategic Bitcoin reserve stuff happen after him and his cronies have their bags fully packed.
but as Haddle said, we do technically have a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
It's mostly just not selling Bitcoin that we've already stolen.
I do not like that the precedent is being set that stolen Bitcoin is seeding the reserve
and will be used for the reserve.
I would much rather see a law in the books that says stolen Bitcoin has to get burned.
I would not advocate for a protocol change to force that though
and that's where we all come back together.
But I will say that, look, no matter how you cut it, you know, the last year of Biden versus this year, it's just been way better for Bitcoin. It's been so much better for Bitcoin.
I'll say on the policy side, I think, you know, the guys at BPI are doing an incredible job. They only seem to be getting better and better as time goes on. And it's been nice to have our own think tank of really intelligent, smart, young, ambitious guys who are doing a lot of that legwork in Washington. And I'm very bullish on their team. And, you know, I think there are more policy wins ahead. I know they're working on a lot of stuff.
obviously it's not so easy to get you know things accomplished in washington and it's a it's a big
effort and it's a fucking you know daily grind you got to show up and really pound the pavement
talk to people and shake hands and kiss babies um so yeah i think that we we are going to see
more wins it's just you know we're going to have to be patient i will say um
on the SBR side, not only did we have technically the SBR get created, but we also had a sovereign
wealth fund get created. And the big one was, I think we bought like 10% of Intel.
The US government did. Now, this is a non-zero call, but I'm definitely not confident in this
call at all, but I'm just going to point and try and hit the home run. Next year, to stop the
bleeding of the Bitcoin market, what if the US government goes out and buys 10, 20% of MicroStrategy
at a discount and turns the whole fucking thing around? I don't think that's the most far-fetched
scenario to play out. And actually, it would probably be way more positive. It would definitely
be way more positive than going and stealing people's Bitcoin and putting it in the SBR.
If they went and bought 10% of strategy, would that basically just lay the groundwork for them
going in and stealing strategy in the future? And basically like bail out the entire industry
by buying MicroStrategy at a discount. Yeah. I don't think there's any for them to steal coins
when they can print currency, you know, like the, the reason that the, the strategic reserve is
being seated with, you know, stolen Bitcoin or, you know, the, the investigation, uh, sorry,
the, the proceeds, criminal proceeds from, uh, law enforcement investigations is because they
thought that that was an easy, clean way that they could win on this and give the Bitcoiners
what they promised us, uh, while also not stepping on toes in Washington. And to us,
we see the negative, you know, long term downstream consequences of that action.
But to them, it was just like, hey, here's an easy one.
Give the Bitcoiners this.
You know, we already have it.
We already took it from the criminals.
Just give it to them and put in the reserve or whatever.
I think that I have said this as a MicroStrategy shareholder and I still own MicroStrategy.
I've owned it for a while now, like five years now that I kind of think sometimes to myself
when I'm alone, that we're just engaged in this project of stacking America's Bitcoin
that's kind of what we're doing as mstr shareholders and i do think matt's call is
probably going to age well that there will be some type of relationship between micro strategy and
the u.s government similar to the intel relationship but like my question on that though is like
do you have a like realistically be very honest do you have a fear that the u.s government steps in
and tries to take strategies coins at some point um i i don't think they're gonna do it outright
like that because it gives up the game of American capitalism. So that would be there in truly dire
straits. And it's a Hail Mary effort, you know, at the very end of the game. I think much more
likely it's going to be this slow and sippid thing, kind of like Matt pointed out where it's
like you take a stake, then you take a slightly larger stake and take a slightly larger again,
all with printed money. And then, you know, it's that's like getting something for nothing.
So why do you need to come in as like jackboot thugs and steal it all in one go when you could
just like sort of transgress slowly over time and end up with the entire horde anyway yeah it's an
american technology company that's holding their bitcoin with multiple american financial companies
um that's also i don't know what the exact amnav is right now but it's pretty close to trading at
a discount if it's not already trading at a discount um so you can come in the shareholders
would actually be very,
I think would be positive
after this year for MicroStrategy.
I think shareholders would be ecstatic
if Trump came out and announced
that he bought 20% of MicroStrategy
at a slight discount to market price.
And I think most people would be happy
as opposed to, as Hodel said,
which is like pretty obvious,
like authoritarianism move
of just stealing all the Bitcoin.
Now, I just want to put this out there
once again,
that, you know,
the U.S. government could also see the SBR
by having a secret quantum computer
that attacks Satoshi's Bitcoin.
And it's interesting, like, I wonder if,
and I haven't had these conversations yet,
and I plan to have it because I think this is going to be
a very long conversation that happens for a while.
But with the proponents of the freezing stuff,
if it changes depending on who seizes it,
who steals the Bitcoin.
If it's the U.S. government and it gets seeded into an SBR,
are they cool with it?
If it's the Chinese government, are they not cool with it?
If it's a startup, are startups not allowed to take it?
It's interesting because it kind of changed.
I think it changes people's framing on how they think about it.
But yeah, I mean, for all intents and purposes,
regardless if they buy a stake in MSTR.
MSTR Bitcoin is American domiciled Bitcoin
that can be taxed and harvested
and taken advantage of.
You don't have to actually seize it.
Right, exactly.
I want to talk a little bit about
the samurai devs, Odell.
This one's right up your alley.
So this obviously didn't start under the Trump regime.
This was under Biden.
But when it went to court,
I did expect them to get a more lenient sentence than they got.
Like it was the absolute maximum I think they were up for.
Do you think there's any chance, like realistic chance of a pardon for them?
Well, they were being charged with conspiracy for money laundering conspiracy, which had up to 25 years.
And they were being charged for unlicensed money transmitter business, which is basically like not running KYC on like a financial institution, which had a charge of five years.
and they pled guilty in a plea deal
for the unlicensed money transmitter business
to drop the money laundering charge
and then got hit with the max sentencing for that.
So they got five years.
So they didn't, you know,
technically they didn't get the max sentencing.
Now, it's a self-custody wallet.
Like FinCEN themselves said
they are not a money transmitter business.
So it's a ridiculous fucking charge
to be found guilty of.
Now, the counter argument is that they pled to it.
Now, Keon and Bill,
Keon has publicly said that it was basically a coerced plea.
He was looking there, they have families.
They were afraid they were going to get thrown in jail for 25 years.
And they took the deal.
I would like to see them pardoned.
I think it's a travesty.
I think it's really bad for America.
I think it's worse for America than it is for Bitcoin.
But as an American, as someone who builds businesses here, as someone who's building a family here, like I would like to see that wrong righted.
But yeah, I think it's important to realize, once again, I'm not a lawyer, but this is a federal court, but it's the New York federal court.
This is the same court that went after Trump.
This is, you know, in a lot of ways, I think leftovers of the Biden administration.
And Trump has got a bunch of things on his plate.
for him to like preemptively get involved there
is like, was never really going to happen.
We also didn't have that much money behind them.
You know, like I was involved in raising their fundraising.
Like I think we ended up getting like in legal defense ones
like a little over a million dollars.
If you're someone like CZ or Justin Sun or whatever,
you can pay Trump like tens of millions of dollars
to guarantee a pardon.
We just didn't have that kind of capital behind us.
So it needs to be more of a narrative story, I think, to reach him because I think that does work with him.
And he has commented on it recently.
So hopefully we hopefully we do see a part in here.
I think I think they deserve one.
I think it's good for the country.
Wait, I missed that.
Did Trump comment on the Samurai case?
Yeah, there was a decrypt reporter specifically in the White House that asked him about it and he didn't seem aware of it.
But he said he was going to look into it.
I watched the videos of that Keone's wife had posted, you know, of him going into prison and, you know, them having Chris early Christmas dinner, obviously, because he was going to be in federal prison.
And those were very difficult to watch. And, you know, I think there's a like Matt said, like the plea thing, by the way, is the norm.
It is coerced, but that's why the feds have such a high win rate is because they coerce everybody.
So the feds really don't bring a case against you unless they know they can win it.
and the way they win it is by being like,
you're going away forever,
or you can go away for this five year stretch
and get back to your life after five years.
And like, again, if you have a family
and you're looking at 30 years versus five,
the smart play is to take five every time.
And like, it doesn't, you know, make you cool on Twitter,
but who gives a shit about being cool on Twitter
when you're talking about missing 25 more birthdays
of your children, right?
And so that's a really rough reality
that they're going through.
And I think the thing that Matt was talking about,
the reason why it's bad for America
is because, you know, I'm not a lawyer either,
but in America, the law of the land is essentially
that if something is not explicitly illegal,
that it is legal to do.
And in the case of, you know, coin joint implementations,
in my opinion, those were in a legal gray area.
They had not been explicitly defined.
And so I think it's actually, you know,
I think it is a disaster
that we're throwing startup investors in jail
for doing things in the fintech space
that were not strictly illegal, you know?
I mean, the government's claim is that they were strictly illegal based on intent, essentially.
But that's not my view at all.
And I think, like, if you look at the cases of, you know, Ross Ulbricht versus Keown Rodriguez,
you know, Ross is doing something that's much more explicitly illegal than Keown was.
And not that I think it was wrong what he did or morally wrong.
You know, I think Ross deserves to be free.
But like, to me, the samurai case is even cleaner.
And I do think that, you know, these are our guys.
Right.
So, like.
Yeah. I mean, there was a flame wars on Twitter and, you know, were you Wasabi or were you Sam?
Who gives a fuck? We're all Bitcoiners. These are our guys. We don't leave anybody behind.
Let's go get them out of jail. You know, period. We got Ross out. Let's go get them out.
Yeah. I think the narrative is going to be really important because like
the reason Ross is free is like obviously down to a ton of amazing work from like his mom and the
libertarian group and then Bitcoiners. But it was also a really strong narrative that resonated with
Trump voters. Like, I think we need to make a lot of noise and try and make him care about this topic.
But Oda, was it frustrating that this only raised like just over a million dollars when I think the Tornado Cash guy raised, was it 10 times that amount?
Yeah, I mean, look, it was super frustrating trying to build support for this stuff behind the scenes and in public while all the limelight was on name and influencer joining a treasury company board.
Like that's literally just to get their piece, right?
like they weren't doing it for the good of bitcoin let's be honest here that's fine they
were doing it to get their bread and and to reward their family for years of twitter posting that's
what they were doing and that was highlighted as being like heroic and people were like like bitcoin
twitter became like linkedin it was like i'm joining the board of bullshit treasury company
and then all the posts underneath was like congrats congrats congrats congrats congrats
Congrats. And then meanwhile, like fundraising or getting any kind of real tangible support for Samurai was was really floundering.
Now, I will say that was very disappointing this year.
But the last month or so, it's been really it's been really cool to see people coming around to there's been a lot more support than I've expected.
So I think on the positive side, it's been it's it's been good to see in the last month.
I will also say it's been broader than Bitcoin. Like we're seeing it in libertarian circles. We're seeing it just in freedom-minded circles. I mean, Keon got on a television show in the UK. Like they hate freedom over there. But for some reason, they wanted to support Samurai. And like that was really cool to see.
I want to be clear here on the American side. None of us are lawyers. And there's a lot of
misunderstanding. This doesn't set a legal precedent in America because they pled. If they
tried to fight it and lost, then it would have set a legal precedent. So there's not a legal precedent
we have to be worried here. CoinJoin, self-custody wallets, privacy-focused self-custody wallets
remain in a legal gray area.
That's where we are right now.
But what has happened,
and I see this all the time,
particularly on the OpenSat side,
where we're supporting, you know,
350 plus developers in 40 plus countries,
is there has been a tangible chilling effect
on people working on self-custody
and privacy-focused software, period.
And that makes sense
because no one wants to be thrown in jail.
And it's worse than just being thrown in jail.
They had like 40 plus federal agents with guns
raid his fucking house.
like he did just a non-violent if he was a criminal it's a non-violent crime
and they they did like a tactical raid on his house to or to arrest him which is insane is that
chilling effect still there because i know after they got arrested like wallace toshi pulled out
the u.s phoenix pulled out the u.s but they're i think both now back now um and obviously like
trump gave people some degree of confidence that they could build this stuff without going to prison
but do you think that's not enough is there still that sort of chilling effect happening
Yeah, man.
I mean, I was an investor in Mutiny.
I think Matt was as well.
And like Mutiny, you know, the day this happened, like came down, they were like, you know, we're going to be a privacy focused AI company now.
So like they just completely shut down the business and went a different direction because they were planning to make money on CoinJoin implementations.
So, yeah.
I will just say, I will just say, I don't know if that pivot was only because of legal concerns, because if I'm going to make another call, like I think privacy focused AI.
might become even more of a hot-button issue
than privacy-focused financial transactions.
But at the time, I'm not sure that was for, you know.
Yeah, I think there was a lot of disillusionment,
and I'm not going to put words in their mouth,
but I think there was just a feeling that it wasn't,
you know, trying to build a business
that is focused on freedom usage of Bitcoin
is a very hard business to run, period.
There's not a huge market for it.
Most of the successes we've seen in the industry
is financial services, is buy, sell Bitcoin, is loans.
That's where you see the real business opportunities, right?
Like, strike is absolutely crushing.
Companies that are trying to focus on freedom-focused Bitcoin
are having a much harder time.
And then with the Samurai stuff, it's like,
and then so you either completely fail as a business or if you somehow find success Samurai found a lot of success They were very profitable Then you get thrown in jail It like you lose in either situation
And on the phoenix in the wild of Satoshi side, because I think that was a bit of an
overreaction by non-American based companies that thought a very easy risk management solution
was to just remove themselves from the US market, which I think it could even be argued
that that doesn't really help you anyway
because, I mean, they're not doing KYC on users.
So Americans could get around it regardless.
But those aren't privacy-focused wallets.
Like you don't really get,
you're getting no privacy benefits really
from using wallets Satoshi.
It's relatively easy to track,
particularly in their new configuration.
And with Phoenix, like Phoenix sees all your transactions.
So if they are hit with a subpoena or something,
we don't know if they're complying with them or not
to track transactions.
So it's a little bit different.
If you're looking at people working on join market, which is like a direct one-to-one comparison, you know, it's a coin join implementation that doesn't rely on a centralized server, but it's completely open source.
Like there has been a massive chilling effect on that side.
And I think there was a bunch of, there remains a bunch of developers that were more experienced on privacy focused Bitcoin that have just stepped away.
I'm just going to focus on my family and I'm not going to deal with that.
Yeah, that's not good to see.
Like, if you're looking forward, this can be a prediction.
We'll see if it was right or wrong.
Do you think this gets better or worse?
Worse.
You think we're going to see more devs thrown in jail?
I think that the two things that, okay, listen, like the days of us saying, you know, hey,
they're going to ban Bitcoin, that's over.
It's completely over.
They're not going to ban something Larry Fink is all on board with.
So what's the reality of the situation?
The reality is they want to dox you and they want to tax you.
OK, so if you're doing things that prevent the government from doxing and taxing, the
doxing is for the taxing, by the way, the taxing is the big thing because they want to take
your money from you.
If you're doing things that prevent the government from being able to, you know, levy their tax
against you, you're going to come under the eye of Sauron, is my opinion.
And I don't think that that's going to get any better anytime soon.
And I think, in fact, like Matt was alluding to this, the AI world that we're heading into makes privacy a whole shitload worse.
So it's only going to get worse from here.
And I think there's going to be a lot of controversy about anyone who's offering any kind of private AI stuff and, quote unquote, what are they doing with it?
And we can't track them and we can't control them.
I think on the social media side, we've also seen a push towards more KYC and less privacy.
I mean, the UK particularly has kind of been leading the way for that in the Western world.
It's absolutely insane that people are being thrown in jail for tweets.
So I think it probably gets worse before it gets better.
I do think the cat's out of the bag, though.
I think it's going to, you know, I think freedom technology will be there for people who want to use it.
And it's going to be, it's basically impossible to stop.
Now, the one thing on the Bitcoin side that could throw a wrench in all of this, which is non-zero but not likely, is some kind of near-term cap gains policy shift.
if Bitcoin is not subject to cap gains.
And I'm not talking about like,
and this is so unlikely because of the bullshit.
Even the most likely outcome of this
is like a $600 de minimis or something,
which is insane.
It's like you can't even buy groceries with $600.
If they remove that aspect,
then all of a sudden that incentive, right?
that incentive to go after people that want financial privacy gets removed.
And I think this is bigger than Bitcoin.
Like, I think, I mean, I think we should remove cap gains across all asset classes, period.
Right?
There shouldn't be cap gains on gold either.
But the reason this is unlikely is because in a hyperinflationary environment,
cap gains is quite lucrative for the government, right?
They print money, and then you have fake gains that aren't real gains,
but they're denominated in their bullshit currency,
and then they take fucking 20 to 50% of it.
And it's across the whole,
in America, it's across the whole stack, right?
Like the local governments take some too.
See, the thing that I can,
like I've been asking this question
for the entire time I've been doing the podcast,
but like is this future scenario
that you're both kind of outlying,
is that Bitcoin winning?
I don't know if it is.
It's, it's a nest.
I've been saying this for years
and I think I'm right on it.
You know, I don't think I'm right about the price,
but I think I'm right about the,
which is that we are going to have to go through this period of sort of co-option or shadow
prohibition or, you know, ghettoization, like whatever you want to call it, where Bitcoin
enters the traditional system and it kind of appears like we're losing freedoms, but we're,
you know, still maintaining number go up. But those freedoms don't go away. So like they're
intrinsic to Bitcoin and really it's just laws on paper that, you know, it's the problem here again,
is that there's this global cabal that sets the rules. Like whenever you have a revolution of
elites, it's about rulemaking. Who's allowed to set rules for whom? Who's allowed to change rules?
Who sits at the table of power, right? And there's a small club that has all of the money.
They have all of the guns and they make all of the laws and none of us are in that club.
so it's going to take some time as we march forward change you know progress happens one
funeral at a time um it's going to take some time for us basically to get a seat at the table of
power and be able to rewrite the rules to enable more freedom and i think that if you're in bitcoin
it's a long journey it's a long bet and if you think that you're you know yeah like we had a
year this year okay who gives a fuck like i'm not i'm not buying gold i'm not going into tech stocks
I'm still here. I'm going to be here for the foreseeable future. And I will be here during
the shadow co-option period. And, you know, there'll be an old version of American HODL,
gray hair, who will tell you like, I'm glad I went through it, son. And now we're sitting here,
you know, with more freedom and, you know, whatever. I think that it's a necessary part
of this whole thing because Bitcoin has to enter into the traditional system
in order to continue to succeed. If Bitcoin remains as outside capital forever,
it never fulfills its mandate. Yeah, I mean, this is just Bitcoin growing up. I think, look,
the success of any freedom technology, whether that's Bitcoin or something like Tor or message
encryption or private AI, the success is always a small subset of users. It's just the ability for
anyone to decide to take that path if they're ready to take that path. But the problem is,
the core problem is that it requires more personal responsibility. And people don't want to take
personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is more difficult. If you can live your life
without taking personal responsibility, then other people deal with your shit for you. And then if
it's not that bad, then people are just going to take that path. I think it's important for us to
give people the tools and the education available to them so that they can choose that path. But
like I said, I think success is like, I've said this in the past on your show, like I think success
This is like zero to 5% of people using this stuff.
And I just want to reiterate on the financial privacy aspects specifically and where it relates to Bitcoin is I think people don't realize it is all downstream of tax policy.
Because tax policy is why the U.S. government wants to track every financial transaction, whether that's income tax, pretty much everything except property taxes and tariffs is why they want to track every transaction.
Sales tax. Sales tax is the government sitting in between you and the person you're buying something from. And if they can't track every transaction there, then they'd be worried that they're not collecting all of their taxes.
So one of the most optimistic things on the financial privacy side that Trump has said was early on, he said he was going to slash taxes across the board. We just haven't seen that.
And that was one of the reasons I was cautiously optimistic about tariff policy, is because tariffs are actually a tax policy that does not require financial surveillance on citizens. It just requires financial surveillance at the borders when stuff enters. But we haven't seen that.
And unless we see that, which is still, I think, very unlikely, there's going to be a war on financial privacy, period.
Even though most people need financial privacy not to avoid, it's not to cheat on taxes.
Like, that's not the reason.
One thing I've been thinking, especially after I had marks on from OpenSecret, and I do think that private AI might open people's eyes to privacy before anything about financial privacy even enters their equation.
Like, I think when people see how much data is being stolen from AI and how that can potentially be used against them, I think that's going to be like a sliding doors moment.
you'd think that with a lot of other things um but i the yeah the main the main use case of ai
regardless of the chat stuff right like chat gpt is tracking everything you do and they're gonna
harvest that data but like the main use case of ai at scale right now is surveilling people
right you take you take all the data that that the governments and and companies already have
and you run it through an llm it's great at parsing through that data and giving you actionable
insights on that data. I think it's kind of questionable if that's going to be, you know,
what shows people the light. I think maybe, yeah, I think what we see is we see data leaks happen,
compromises happen, people realize the need for privacy, but it's a smaller subset that do,
right? The overwhelming majority do not actually, they're the proverbial frog boiling in the pot
slowly
then they don't
actually get shocked into
moving away from it.
Matt, I know you've got
a hard stop coming up soon-ish.
Can we do something?
I got 40 minutes. Oh, I thought you had 10 minutes.
Okay, cool. Should we do some predictions
for next year? The one I really want
from you, Matt, is
what year will we hit 250k
by conference day?
I said 200k by conference day
and that was in 2021.
Okay, so when will we get that?
Honestly, it was mostly,
originally it was mostly to troll the engagement accounts.
We just made fun of Tom Lee.
They all do this, right?
Samson and his Omega candle.
They do it every fucking cycle.
It works.
Yeah, I had enough of it that cycle.
So in all caps, I was saying 200K by conference day.
Now where I will put my hand up
is I thought we were going to at least hit 100K.
I think it was like $35,000 during the conference.
So I was way the fuck off, like hand up.
That's on me.
But who knows?
Maybe we never hit 200K.
Maybe gold becomes the reserve currency of the world.
Gold is always the play.
I just, I really, look.
Hoddle nailed this earlier,
which is like,
our freedoms seem to be constantly eroding,
particularly in the digital world.
But at least we were soothed by number go up.
I do not like the scenario
where our freedoms are getting constantly eroded
and we don't have number go up as well
so I'm hoping
I'm optimistic and hoping
that we see 200k next year
that would be nice
I'd be down for that
I'm all in on Bitcoin and then some
so that would be ideal
but I don't pretend to have any fucking idea
it doesn't have to be price predictions
but anything you want to put your neck on the line
and claim for 2026
HODL
um yeah a million a million a coin of course no uh so i you know sentiment is shit sentiment is
something worst i've ever seen it honestly and yeah i i don't think sentiment was this bad during
ftx at least not amongst the bitcoin faithful i was at a uh i was at a bitcoin beefsteak um
you know, at 15K Bitcoin, right?
Like 16K Bitcoin.
And this was after the FTX implosion
and vibes were high, actually.
There was, you know, like people were playing guitar
and like it was like, you know,
we were having drinks.
Everybody was like,
there was like a calm energy of we're going to win.
And now there's this energy,
even amongst like OGs I know,
that's like, this is fucked.
We should just sell all our shit and just be rich.
fuck all this you know I mean that's like the I'm just being honest and uh some of the more
hardcore guys I know are not thinking you know like so like you know I know some people who are
really you know up there OGs big whales and they're not thinking that but it's the guys in
the middle range who are thinking that it's like the eight figure guys not the nine or ten figure
guys and I've never seen that before and I think there's just a lot of like fatigue like hodler
fatigue. And I get it because this year has been just a slog. It's just been really shitty. But
again, like F like with FTX, like every it's there's magic. There's this magical thing that
happens when the, you know, the ball drops in New York and there's a new year and it sort of
etch a sketches the previous year from your memory. And it's like, boom, we're on to 26.
And so with that in mind, I don't know, man, I just have this instinct where I kind of want to
fade everybody and just say that 26 is going to be bullish as fuck but i said that last year and
the year before so i might as well just stay consistent and be like i'm bullish i'm always
bullish i'm a permable if you ask me what's going on that's what you're going to get from me so you
know i think the sentiments make sense to me like when ftx collapsed like i think there's two things
that play into that it's one that you're thinking well thank fuck i wasn't on ftx i didn't have any
these shit coins but then also i do think you have that sense of everyone's wrong and we're right and
we're going to be proven right and like you kind of just dig in at that point whereas this year
it's just been boring nothing's really happened with the price like it's gone up from the start
of last year sorry the start of this year to the absolute peak is like 25 grand it's like that's
not a very exciting year in bitcoin considering the starting point look i would say gun to my head
I agree with HODL.
My family's all in Bitcoin.
If I wasn't bullish for next year,
if I thought we were entering
a two-year bear market or whatever,
I would downsize significantly.
I will also say, though,
I've never successfully done that ever.
So I'm right there with HODL
that I'm just always bullish.
I think this year,
with sentiment,
it's really interesting.
I've been thinking about this, too,
because it does feel that way,
which is crazy, by the way,
because we are fucking right.
Bitcoin's $88,000.
Let's be clear here.
And we've been very loud about it
for a long fucking time.
I've been loud about Bitcoin
since $1,000 or something,
like $900.
It's a fucking insane run that we're on.
Is one, gold.
Gold ripping really kicks a lot of us in the nuts.
It kicks me in the fucking nuts.
I mean, what Hodel was saying is like,
like shift being happy on Twitter and stuff
while we're in this doldrum,
it really sucks.
And silver, right?
Like is Bitcoin silver to silver to silver?
Like that sucks.
Like what the fuck is that?
So I think that hurts.
I think the second piece is,
you know, after 2017,
so like, so Ethereum was born
in I think like 2014, 2015.
2017 was the big Ethereum run.
And there was all the ICOs and a lot of us thought we were crazy.
We were sidelined and people were buying $100 million penthouses in Toronto and shit with their Ethereum gains.
And then we were right.
Everyone got wrecked and we were right about that.
And a beautiful Bitcoin-only, Bitcoin maximalist culture got born in 2017-ish.
After 2017.
After Bcash, after Ethereum ICOs.
We had a good run.
There was a very strong community there.
It was global.
We got rich together and we got poor together.
Treasury companies changed that whole ballgame.
Different people are getting rich and different people are getting poor at different times with different bags.
And you just don't have the camaraderie of getting rich and poor together.
To me, that was the final nail in the coffin of the good times of the Bitcoin-only culture.
It's just over. We don't have that anymore.
It was going to end anyway, I think.
You know, like everyone says you don't know the good old days until it's behind you.
But that was the nail in the coffin.
The nail in the coffin was people going leverage long on a stock that was already leveraged long on Bitcoin and everyone doing it to different stocks.
And this is not something that was only retail.
Like people did it in size.
Like we saw OGs come in in size and seed a lot of these treasury companies.
They got wrecked.
And they're all in different bags, right?
Everyone's got different bags.
And that's, I think, what we're feeling right now.
I think that's 100% right.
I've not really heard it summed up like that, but I totally agree with that.
I'll put my neck on the line.
I think 2026 is going to be like turbo bullish.
I think sentiment being shot right now is like a good sign.
I think Trump's going to juice the fuck out of markets going into midterms.
I think like government picking winners, like it's picked AI and data centers.
I think Bitcoin could potentially be one of those winners that the government picks.
Do you think we're going to hit an all-time high in gold terms?
I don't know what that is.
I don't know what that would pass at.
That's all that matters.
Do you know what that would be?
It's much higher than we're at right now.
Yeah, it's a lot higher.
I don't know, but I think we'll get significant all-time highs next year.
I saw someone posted, and I did not verify it,
but it sounds right and it kicked me in the nuts,
that gold added 21 million Bitcoin in market cap in the last five days.
in five days.
That's a big goal.
The full Bitcoin market cap.
Yeah, I don't know if we'll get to like new
all-time highs versus gold, but I think it's going to be a good year.
But you're going to have to come up with a new meme huddle.
It's kind of bad
that we're all bullish, isn't it? Should I go the opposite
direction? I'm bearish as fuck.
This is the most bearish.
I shot treasury codes and now I'm eating ramen.
I'm dying over here.
You need this year to be bullish.
This is probably my most bearish, what Bitcoin did in like
six years if this felt like a bit of a therapy session um all right guys anything else you want
to talk on before we wrap up let me think oh yeah okay hodling gets harder as you go there's a false
perception that hodling gets easier as you go bullshit it gets harder it gets harder every time
and the reason why is because you know i've said this the the most important meme in bitcoin is the
the one with the guy with the shotgun in his mouth.
And it's like, Bitcoin hits 1,000 and he's like, yes.
And then it's like, Bitcoin drops to 10,000.
It's like, he's worried.
And then it's like, Bitcoin plummets to just 100,000.
He has a shotgun in his mouth, ready to blow his brains out.
That is the experience of hodling.
And the reason why it gets harder as you go
is because in the beginning,
you're actually not losing that much money,
you know, in nominal terms.
But later on, you're losing a lot.
Because like if you bought Bitcoin at $200, well, nowadays the Bitcoin price fluctuates $200 like fuck every single.
Right. So like you're losing your entire initial investment or gaining your entire initial investment every second. And that will happen for people at $88,000. It doesn't sound like it will, but it will because when Bitcoin's it, you know, whatever, 2.6 million versus 2.7 million, are you going to notice? Like not really. And it's going to do that all day intraday. And so the thing is, you're going to quit your job. You're going to become a Bitcoin rich person. You're going to retire. And then you're going to lose, you know, these large sums of money.
every day. And what you're actually losing is like peace of mind, time with your family,
you know, experiences that you could have, things you could do. And so that's the reason why it feels
bad emotionally, because you're giving up pieces of your life for what? At some point, you actually
have enough money to live a good life, the kind of life that other people envy in perpetuity forever.
You have what they call generational wealth, right? But there are people in Bitcoin who have
generational wealth who stick through for longer. And you have to have a bigger why as to what are
you sticking around here for. And to me, my why is so that we can attempt, I don't know if we're
going to be able to do it, but attempt to create a better world when all is said and done, a world
with more freedom. And that only happens once the number's gone up a lot. We get a seat at the table
and we allow Bitcoin to sort of do its thing from a legal perspective. And that bet will take my
entire life. And so I'm here for that bet. And in the meantime, I have to kind of live a little more,
you know, monk like from time to time and be like, you have less attachment to what comes and goes
like, you know, I'm saying like, I have less attachment to things and experiences and whatever,
and just focus on the small things and be great grateful Like I think the times like this in Bitcoin again this sounds like we at the bottom of a bear market the way I speaking Yeah I know Times like this in Bitcoin are time
or it's time for gratitude and sort of look around
and take stock of what you have and the relationships you have
and what's important to you
and spend time with people you love, etc.
Again, it really sounds like we're at the bottom of a bear market
when I'm speaking this way,
but that's how it emotionally feels.
So I'm just going to say it like it is.
Do you think that's why we saw this like 80k Bitcoin sell from that OG because hodling
got too hard for him?
Did he did you think he lost his why?
Oh, oh, this is another thing.
I don't think people know about this, but a lot of OGs moved to Puerto Rico in 2015.
And then those coins got seasoned this year and they didn't have to pay any cap gains
on it.
So they fucking divested.
Like that's part of what happened.
Interesting.
Yeah.
If you lived in Puerto Rico for 10 years, your cost basis effectively went down to zero
and you didn't have to pay cap gains on it.
or you got to reset your cost basis at the market buy or the market sell.
So I think some of that was these OGs.
And I don't want to dox anybody or anything,
but like I've heard some of these large sales were boating accidents
and that the OGs still have a shitload of coins,
but they wanted a way to like be defensible and say like,
no, this is the reason I'm rich or I'm a billionaire
is because I sold all my Bitcoin.
But they still have Bitcoin because how could they not
if they believed in it for this long?
So it's crazy to think about,
but like the people with 80,000 coins might have 200,000 coins.
I'd never heard that Puerto Rico take.
There you go.
Some alphas close out the show.
Odell, anything before we close out?
I mean, I will say those whales that sold above 100K
was a pretty good trade.
Even if they paid cap gains, they're in the black right now.
And the other piece here by the way on the on the first of all we have that every every cycle Just the numbers are bigger this year because everything gets bigger as time goes on
And it's been a narrative forever,
like, oh, the original people are selling out.
And that's why it's always so hilarious
when people say you got lucky holding long-term
because most people don't.
It's the hardest path.
It's always the hardest path.
But I think another piece here is like, look,
like no matter how you cut it,
Trump and his family and his friends and whatnot
grifted like crazy on top of Bitcoin and crypto.
I mean, Trump coin, that was earlier.
If we're going to do a year in review,
this all started with Trump coin and they had Melania coin.
And I think it left a really sour taste in people's mouth.
And so if Vance doesn't win the next election,
there could be a reckoning.
And I could see why large holders would want to be, as Hodel said, in a defensible position going into that potential outcome.
There could be a whipsaw reaction.
That's what we see happen all the time in politics, but particularly in modern politics.
It just feels like we're whipsawing back and forth over and over again.
But look, my analysis has always been very consistent.
I think this is a long-term game.
This is a grind.
I think the best path and the hardest path is to stay humble and stack sats and not chase easy wins that you think are easy that you're just going to lose all your money on, which is usually some kind of leverage wrapped up in something else that you don't think is leverage.
You think it's just smart financial planning or something like that.
On the positive side, I think this has been a very good year in terms of fundamental Bitcoin value.
It's easier than ever to use Bitcoin in a freedom-oriented way.
it's easier
you have way more tools available to you the businesses in the space are starting to really become real businesses We seeing some juggernauts being born basically
The one that I'm constantly in the trenches with is Strike,
and it's just been insane watching that company go from a small startup
to what I expect to be a fintech juggernaut.
you know, mentioned in the same circles as Robinhood and the big banks and whatnot.
But look, and the development side, I think development side strong, we're getting more
Bitcoin developers on the open source side. I think BPI has been very strong. Best policy
we've had in America on Bitcoin since we started. So there's a lot of reasons to be positive.
Basically everything except the price.
price
which is good
I think is good
even though you know
the price is the most
important metric
so I'm optimistic
I'm cautiously optimistic
people should stay
on stack stats
and
don't take your foot
off the gas
let's go
our year in the view
wrapped
we'll definitely do this
I mean I'll speak to you
both before then
but we'll definitely
do this next year
and I would take
a sizable bet
that will be higher
than 88k
it's bad
I probably
I wouldn't take
the other side of that bet
someone's got to fade it
Let's fucking go.
Go on.
You've got to fade it.
Hold on.
I can't.
I'm the most bullish person here, man.
All right.
Well, we're all fucking bullish.
And let's go.
Thank you, guys.
I'll speak to you both soon.
Cheers.
Thank you.