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Okay, first things first, I want to talk about orange juice.

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We're seeking to build a company that has a Bitcoin treasury

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rather than a Bitcoin treasury company.

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This is a permanent capital company that buys and holds businesses

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and then intends to retain part of the cash flow into a Bitcoin treasury.

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Companies that go through this process,

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one, we're not flipping them, we're holding them,

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and two, instead of levering them and kind of making it

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so that they're one mistake away from failure,

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these companies were already running great

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and now they become part of a diversified set of companies.

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I still think individuals owning their own coins is the best type of Bitcoin usage

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and using it for money.

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But I think...

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I do want to talk about the general cyclical nature of Bitcoin

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and sort of where you think we're at.

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I would be surprised to see us break anywhere below like the 50s.

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They're all like diamond hand psychopaths at this point.

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That's how you start getting a floor in most likely.

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Lynn Alden, welcome back to the show.

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Always good to talk to you.

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I think we've got a lot of stuff to unpack.

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So excited to have you on here as always.

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Happy to come on as always.

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All right.

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Well, so, okay, first things first.

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I want to talk about orange juice

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because this, I think, is a breath of fresh air

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in the, quote, Bitcoin treasury space,

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given that what you all are doing is not really a Bitcoin treasury play

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in the sense that we've become accustomed to it,

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but rather just companies making money and then saving in Bitcoin.

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A novel concept, apparently.

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But can you talk about that a little bit?

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What is it you guys are doing?

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You got orangejuice.com.

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We were just talking offline.

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What a great domain snipe on that.

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What is Orange Juice and sort of what is the core thesis behind this?

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Yeah, good question.

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And I think you already actually described it well, which is that we're seeking to build a company that has a Bitcoin treasury rather than a Bitcoin treasury company.

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You know, there's space for pure plays.

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It got very crowded and very kind of, you know, euphoric.

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It's obviously been some crash outs.

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We've actually been working on this since early 2025.

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Okay.

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And we kind of explored a couple of different formulations, like going straight to public or building in private with an intention to eventually go public in a number of years.

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One thing we saw, because we kind of saw the behind the scenes action on some of the Bitcoin treasury space or even just the broader digital asset space by the end of it.

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I mean, they were bringing altcoin treasuries to market.

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And a lot of the investment bankers, they were just very kind of mercenary-like in, you know, you have an idea.

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It's like, let's get this to public.

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Let's flip it.

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Let's get traders in it.

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And, you know, they have no intention of caring about the long-term vision.

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Anything that complicates the message, like, oh, you want to do something other than just a pure, like, digital asset treasury.

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And, you know, it's like, so we were very kind of conscious about the control we wanted over the company.

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Because if we're seeking to buy companies from founders that put a lot of work into them, they don't want to sell to something that we say, you know, for example, might have minimal control over and not be there in a year.

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So we wanted to do it right from the start.

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Basically, the thesis with Orange Juice is that, even just put Bitcoin aside for a second,

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one of the hardest things that people can sell is a business.

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Because it's a large thing that only a few types of entities can buy.

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You know, rich people or entities, basically.

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Two, everyone's unique.

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And it's an illiquid market.

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and the biggest kind of filler of that gap

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has been private equity funds.

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And so what they do is they go out

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and they buy a company,

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like, you know, it depends on the type of PE fund,

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a kind of small to medium company,

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even a kind of sometimes a failed large company,

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they'll buy a company

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and they will generally gut the expenses.

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They will generally lever it up

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and then they will try to flip it

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back out into the market in some capacity,

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either find a strategic buyer or IPO, depending on the size of what we're talking about here.

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And historically, we look at the statistics, companies that emerge from that PE process have higher than average failure rates.

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And it's often because of that leverage.

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There's also cases where people would say, you know, I really like my veterinarian clinic.

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And then it just went to shit all of a sudden, you know, and you look back and say, well, basically what happened is a private equity fund bought it.

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people that don't care anything about animals are just looking at the spreadsheet here and

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they're now they're just cutting staff cross-selling you know veterinarian like pharmaceutical xyz and

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just because it's good for numbers um which can work in the short term i mean p funds have this

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kind of roughly a three to seven year mandate let's say they have a 10-year fund life some

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portion of it's raising capital some part of it's kind of winding down the fund there's that middle

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period where they're really, you know, for a given opportunity, they're trying to get it,

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spend a couple spend a few years on it and flip it And so they don care about the longevity of that company They care about maximizing near returns for their shareholders

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And so you can have good people with a bad incentive structure.

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And there's a market for it.

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I'm not saying like all PE is bad.

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There's a market for buying companies and figuring out what to do with them.

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It's better than if there's just no opportunity to offload a business

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other than your kids running it or strategic.

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Basically, you need some liquidity for that.

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but it's not a one-size-fits-all thing.

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The rare alternative is permanent capital,

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which is some entity or person buys it saying,

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I actually like this company.

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I want it to run similarly to how it's already running

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and maybe around the margins help improve it.

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Maybe a lot of founders,

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they've been running it a certain way.

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We say we want to keep it running like that,

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but maybe more capital could help it grow a little bit more.

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Maybe, you know, we can update your technology backend or something.

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You know, there's ways to improve it.

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And the incentive structure is just different because you're not optimizing for, you know,

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a flip, you know, kind of a three to seven year flip.

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You want to hold it for 10, 20 plus years.

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I mean, there's no exit for that in mind as long as it's still in a category that exists.

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You want to hold it indefinitely.

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The biggest example, this is Berkshire Hathaway.

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you know, Warren Buffett's company, you know, they're, they're known for owning public stocks

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as well, but they actually buy dozens of whole businesses and just hold them indefinitely.

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Um, and you know, they're backed by the fortress balance sheet of the parent company.

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Uh, and, and they're allowed to keep running, like imagine that.

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Um, and so what Orange Juice seeks to do, uh, and that we, what we raise capital to do,

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and we're not a fund, we're, we're a company.

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That's the thing.

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We're, we're a permanent capital structure.

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There's no end date.

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There's certain situations where a fund makes sense.

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Like EgoDeath Capital, we run venture funds because a startup, that's a different ecosystem.

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But this is a permanent capital company that buys and holds businesses and then intends to retain part of the cash flow into a Bitcoin treasury.

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So the business, like you will own these businesses and then basically have one overarching Bitcoin treasury for them. Is that correct?

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Yes, the parent company level will hold that.

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In addition to any sort of financing we use,

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because we want to maintain a very strong balance sheet

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with assets compared to liabilities,

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but you can make use of financing to acquire businesses

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or basically it's around the margins.

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If you have a bunch of collateral,

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high-quality businesses, some Bitcoin,

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you can short-fee a currency to do that,

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and that'd be at the parent company level.

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And so companies that go through this process,

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one, we're not flipping them.

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were holding them, and two, instead of levering them and kind of making it so that they're one

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mistake away from failure, which is often the case in post-PE, these companies were already

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running great. And now they're part, you know, the way we kind of intend this to go is that they

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become part of a diversified set of companies with a strong parent financial balance sheet.

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So, you know, if one company runs into a seasonal issue or a challenge of some sort,

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it's backed up by the cash flows of the other companies and by the, you know, the hopefully

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is the strong financial situation of the parent company.

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It's super interesting and I'm curious too,

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as much as you can say about it and feel free to shut me up

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if you're not at a place to talk about this now,

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but I mean you mentioned you wanna buy

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obviously like cash flowing businesses, right?

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Is there, are there specific verticals

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that you guys are looking in, specific types of businesses,

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specific sizes even that you kind of have benchmarks for?

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Or is it sort of an open field in terms of look,

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we're just looking for businesses that make money

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And it could be a dentist or a veterinarian, or it could be, you know, some sort of a software, you know, business.

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Like, do you guys have kind of a specific format that you're looking for, or is it pretty open?

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So great question.

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We have certain metrics that we're looking for.

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So there's a size category that we're looking for, kind of that one to 10 million EBITDA range.

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Generally speaking, they're going to be lower, multiple, lower growth types of businesses.

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because that's how you get a lot of cash flow for your money

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is by you're buying that lower growth business

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because when you buy a mature business,

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maybe not a huge growth prospect,

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but it's a healthy business and you buy it at the right price

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and then you're retaining your earnings in Bitcoin

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or using it to buy other similar companies,

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it can put you in a pretty good space.

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Generally speaking, we obviously want to buy AI-resistant businesses,

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things that might not have explosive growth,

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but we don't want them to be going away tomorrow either.

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So we don't want to buy value traps and things like that.

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Generally speaking, we don't want to buy

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super capital-intensive cyclical business.

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We don't want to buy a copper mine in XYZ

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with 10 years from now, it might make a lot of money.

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So just more consistent cash flow types of businesses.

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And the main variable we willing to sacrifice is growth because we get growth from reinvestment into other businesses and into our Bitcoin treasury And in terms of industries

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we're kind of industry agnostic,

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especially when we start out.

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The way we expect this to go

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is that the early acquisitions we make,

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one of the key themes will probably be

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that they're business owners

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that happen to understand and like Bitcoin

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and that have an interest in having their company

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kept together rather than sliced up and diced and sold out to the market with a higher than

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average failure rate.

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And part of the incentive structure for that is that when we look out to buy companies,

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we can buy them in all cash and financing.

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We also, we intend to have an option where, you know, because a lot of business owners,

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they're selling for a variety of reasons.

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A common thread is generally that they want liquidity for some reason.

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Maybe they are looking ahead and their heirs don't want to run this business.

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They wanted to go do something else or they want to diversify or they want liquidity, whatever the reason may be.

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But they don't always want to stop working at that company.

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They might want to keep doing what they're doing, but with that diversification or that liquidity kind of extracted from it.

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So they're not just the sole owner anymore.

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And they kind of have now a long-term plan for what happens with the company when they're no longer around to run it or no longer desiring to run it.

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So we actually have an option where we can keep the operators on.

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And instead of buying it 100% in cash, we can offer some of our orange juice equity to the business owner so they can continue to be a partial owner in their own business and other businesses that we acquire.

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and obviously that would work better if the business owner happens to like bitcoin because

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you know the company's intending to have bitcoin on its balance sheet once it has acquisitions under

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its belt uh so we generally think that early on companies that meet our size and and just other

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you know quality uh metrics we we intend especially given our audience we've already had pipelines of

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companies looking to sell to us they're generally going to be bitcoin aligned early on we then we

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expect that as we've gotten a couple you know a handful of acquisitions under our belt and

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hopefully we have a demonstrated, you know, decent execution and returns and all this,

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that we can appeal to a broader business seller space that might not care or know anything about

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Bitcoin, but they see this permanent capital structure as an alternative to what their other

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options are. And so once we have acquired a number of companies, there's a decent chance that we

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would then focus more on a vertical to say, okay, we got this company and this company,

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and they clearly work together.

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So if you buy a third company,

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we can really bridge that.

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It's kind of like there's certain games

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or depending on how your opening hand goes,

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you develop a strategy from there

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rather than starting out with a strategy.

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And I think that's how we're approaching it

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with the difference being

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that we do have that early strategy,

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but it's less vertical specific

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and more owner type specific

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and size specific and quality metric specific.

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Again, super fascinating on this.

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Are you geographically constrained at all

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in terms of acquisitions?

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Like are you looking at just North America, for example, or are you guys looking global?

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So we initially are starting with U.S. businesses, which is a pretty obvious it's a pretty big market.

232
00:13:38,546 --> 00:13:42,386
There's there's nothing that would in longer term prevent us from going international.

233
00:13:42,606 --> 00:13:56,306
And if anything, in some international markets, you can buy a similar quality business at a lower multiple just because it's a less liquid market or you're taking on a little bit of, you know, just local jurisdictional risk.

234
00:13:56,306 --> 00:13:57,946
which will vary by company.

235
00:14:00,006 --> 00:14:01,666
You know, one of our leading investors

236
00:14:01,666 --> 00:14:03,986
has very strong ties in Mexico.

237
00:14:04,246 --> 00:14:05,546
That's, I think it's another market

238
00:14:05,546 --> 00:14:06,866
that we'd be looking at.

239
00:14:07,086 --> 00:14:09,946
But our initial approach is the United States

240
00:14:09,946 --> 00:14:11,606
and hopefully expand from there.

241
00:14:12,766 --> 00:14:14,046
Yeah, definitely makes sense.

242
00:14:14,146 --> 00:14:15,046
And did I hear correctly,

243
00:14:15,106 --> 00:14:16,766
did you say you are looking like

244
00:14:16,766 --> 00:14:19,546
that the goal is to take this public as well

245
00:14:19,546 --> 00:14:21,766
or this will remain like private?

246
00:14:22,486 --> 00:14:25,246
We intend to go public in a number of years.

247
00:14:25,246 --> 00:14:29,526
Obviously, that's very, you know, it's market dependent, it's execution dependent.

248
00:14:30,126 --> 00:14:50,226
And the reason for that is because, like I mentioned before, we anticipate using our equity as part of the currency of kind of keeping and retaining highly incentivized owners, you know, prior owners of the companies that are, you know, maybe continue operating it and become partners with us, you know, shareholders with us.

249
00:14:50,226 --> 00:14:57,106
and that is a you know you want to have a destination in mind for when that equity might

250
00:14:57,106 --> 00:15:02,026
be liquid for them uh you know they're getting part of their payout in cash and and you know

251
00:15:02,026 --> 00:15:07,366
their remaining part they they might want to eventually sell that as well down the line um

252
00:15:07,366 --> 00:15:12,106
so yeah we do intend to eventually go public at that point that'll unlock similar things that you

253
00:15:12,106 --> 00:15:16,406
see with bitcoin treasury companies but again not in that pure play approach so we'd have an

254
00:15:16,406 --> 00:15:18,986
you have better access to capital markets.

255
00:15:18,986 --> 00:15:21,906
So there's, there's, it can be times where you can, like,

256
00:15:21,906 --> 00:15:24,766
like we get investors reaching out now saying, can I invest in the, you know,

257
00:15:24,766 --> 00:15:26,046
fortunately when you're a private company,

258
00:15:26,046 --> 00:15:29,286
you're looking at a credit investors who can invest.

259
00:15:29,886 --> 00:15:42,609
But being public gives you a bigger investor pool that can participate It gives you more liquid you know options It gives you generally speaking you going to get lower costs of debt as well

260
00:15:42,609 --> 00:15:44,069
when you need to deploy that,

261
00:15:44,209 --> 00:15:45,809
you know, want to deploy that strategically.

262
00:15:46,109 --> 00:15:47,989
So we think there's multiple advantages to going public,

263
00:15:48,069 --> 00:15:49,569
but obviously you have to reach a certain scale

264
00:15:49,569 --> 00:15:51,168
for that to make sense.

265
00:15:51,729 --> 00:15:54,409
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309
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right? This to me seems like a more low time preference play just on multiple levels,

310
00:19:48,889 --> 00:19:53,349
because you're not just trying to sort of, let's say, you know, use various forms of financial

311
00:19:53,349 --> 00:19:57,769
engineering to, you know, to acquire Bitcoin and hope that people are going to pay you,

312
00:19:57,769 --> 00:20:04,149
you know, a multiple on whatever your, your asset value is, but you're actually having cashflow.

313
00:20:04,149 --> 00:20:08,269
And like, I feel like cashflow is something that's a lot of Bitcoiners may, may look at this as like

314
00:20:08,269 --> 00:20:11,889
some like fiat thing but it's like well if for anyone that runs a business you know that cash

315
00:20:11,889 --> 00:20:15,389
flow is like kind of the it's kind of the thing right it's kind of what allows you to keep the

316
00:20:15,389 --> 00:20:20,289
lights on and keep your employees paid and everything else so i i find it super just

317
00:20:20,289 --> 00:20:24,188
fascinating and one other aspect of it i wanted to explore a little bit was you mentioned the ai

318
00:20:24,188 --> 00:20:29,089
resistance piece so is is the thesis here to really go after let's say for lack of a better

319
00:20:29,089 --> 00:20:34,609
word like brick and mortar type stuff or let's say things where people are actually either building

320
00:20:34,609 --> 00:20:41,889
things or doing like things that are outside of the software realm essentially uh in general i

321
00:20:41,889 --> 00:20:46,929
i wouldn't rule out software as ai resistant in some categories uh but yeah in general uh we're

322
00:20:46,929 --> 00:20:49,968
looking at a lot you know a lot of real world businesses i mean the other the

323
00:20:50,011 --> 00:20:55,211
the veterinary clinic is not far off kind of the meme in the PE space is you know you you get out

324
00:20:55,211 --> 00:20:59,431
of New York and you go roll up a bunch of HVAC businesses in the Midwest or something and HVAC

325
00:20:59,431 --> 00:21:05,491
is kind of the meme um but yeah basically like businesses with with recurring customers uh that

326
00:21:05,491 --> 00:21:11,691
are doing a real world thing that is beneficial uh that has uh some degree of economic moat like

327
00:21:11,691 --> 00:21:17,831
the cash flow is durable it can't just dry up you know next month um uh and just generally speaking

328
00:21:17,831 --> 00:21:19,611
what you're sacrificing is growth.

329
00:21:19,971 --> 00:21:21,771
So you get a low multiple cash flowing business,

330
00:21:21,891 --> 00:21:22,631
but that is durable.

331
00:21:24,171 --> 00:21:26,091
And in terms of long time preference,

332
00:21:26,311 --> 00:21:28,691
basically during that whole period

333
00:21:28,691 --> 00:21:30,671
while all those kind of companies were coming to market,

334
00:21:30,771 --> 00:21:31,611
those treasury companies,

335
00:21:31,791 --> 00:21:36,271
it wasn't hard to just rush something to market

336
00:21:36,271 --> 00:21:37,511
if we wanted to go like that.

337
00:21:37,631 --> 00:21:38,751
I mean, the reason we took so long

338
00:21:38,751 --> 00:21:40,511
to actually come to market with this

339
00:21:40,511 --> 00:21:41,731
is we really wanted to do it right.

340
00:21:42,451 --> 00:21:44,291
And we've even structured it so that

341
00:21:44,291 --> 00:21:47,811
of all the founders of the company,

342
00:21:47,831 --> 00:21:55,571
company, none of us are taking a salary, except for the one managing partner that's running it

343
00:21:55,571 --> 00:22:01,471
day to day. So one of us is actually taking a salary, the rest of us are not. And we've structured

344
00:22:01,471 --> 00:22:07,731
the liquidation preference so that we can't even cash out our equity unless early investors end up

345
00:22:07,731 --> 00:22:11,631
doing well. So obviously, there's risks to anything, including this. But there's really

346
00:22:11,631 --> 00:22:19,271
a scenario where we benefit, but our investors didn't. And that was pretty important to us,

347
00:22:19,391 --> 00:22:23,891
is to structure this longer term. And then even like you mentioned, orangejuice.com, I mean,

348
00:22:23,911 --> 00:22:30,031
that came out of the founder's capital before we even raised the funds. We injected our own time

349
00:22:30,031 --> 00:22:36,231
and money into this for 15 plus months or whatever the exact starting date was. And it was all about

350
00:22:36,231 --> 00:22:40,851
every single step of the way. It's like, we could make this shortcut and get this out,

351
00:22:40,851 --> 00:22:42,211
or we could do this and get this out

352
00:22:42,211 --> 00:22:43,511
or we could do this and get bigger

353
00:22:43,511 --> 00:22:44,351
or we could do this.

354
00:22:44,431 --> 00:22:44,891
And it's like,

355
00:22:45,551 --> 00:22:47,611
when you're asking business founders

356
00:22:47,611 --> 00:22:51,051
who build something for 10, 20, 30 years

357
00:22:51,051 --> 00:22:53,691
to find a buyer of their business

358
00:22:53,691 --> 00:22:55,151
and they're not flipping to PE

359
00:22:55,151 --> 00:22:56,651
so they actually seem to care about,

360
00:22:57,231 --> 00:22:59,011
you know, maybe wanting to still run it

361
00:22:59,011 --> 00:23:00,311
or maybe, you know,

362
00:23:00,851 --> 00:23:02,471
just wanting things for their employees,

363
00:23:02,571 --> 00:23:04,151
maybe wanting their community to still be good.

364
00:23:04,591 --> 00:23:06,411
They like that idea longer term

365
00:23:06,411 --> 00:23:07,891
or they want to continue to participate

366
00:23:07,891 --> 00:23:09,471
in the upside with, for example,

367
00:23:09,571 --> 00:23:10,591
the equity of the parent.

368
00:23:10,851 --> 00:23:14,171
it's important that a bunch of founders

369
00:23:14,171 --> 00:23:15,491
didn't just rush something to market

370
00:23:15,491 --> 00:23:16,851
in a structure that was kind of,

371
00:23:17,251 --> 00:23:18,711
what was available at the time

372
00:23:18,711 --> 00:23:20,691
rather than tailor-made for it.

373
00:23:20,931 --> 00:23:23,111
In terms of founders,

374
00:23:23,331 --> 00:23:26,071
if the founders didn't own controlling stakes

375
00:23:26,071 --> 00:23:27,751
and making sure that the company keeps operating

376
00:23:27,751 --> 00:23:28,931
as its intended structure,

377
00:23:29,111 --> 00:23:30,231
there's risks to that.

378
00:23:30,231 --> 00:23:33,191
So we kind of did our best

379
00:23:33,191 --> 00:23:34,091
to kind of bring this to market

380
00:23:34,091 --> 00:23:37,911
in kind of the low time preference way.

381
00:23:38,611 --> 00:23:40,191
The other kind of angle with AI

382
00:23:40,191 --> 00:23:45,671
is that we are, so that, you know, we're currently hiring after we made our announcement.

383
00:23:45,931 --> 00:23:53,251
And one of the positions, basically the CTO, when we acquire a company, we're going to help

384
00:23:53,251 --> 00:23:58,251
them with an AI strategy. Because, you know, a lot of us are, a lot of us that are terminally

385
00:23:58,251 --> 00:24:02,891
online, especially on Twitter and elsewhere, just founders and tech or whatever, they work in

386
00:24:02,891 --> 00:24:08,951
finance. We're like way into AI as a general rule. There's a long tail of people that just,

387
00:24:08,951 --> 00:24:13,071
we're still in that kind of actually early adopter phase for AI,

388
00:24:13,331 --> 00:24:15,511
not in terms of like people who've ever used AI,

389
00:24:15,631 --> 00:24:17,051
because that's a pretty big percentage now,

390
00:24:17,171 --> 00:24:17,891
but it's like,

391
00:24:17,931 --> 00:24:21,231
are you actually making your business more efficient with AI?

392
00:24:22,011 --> 00:24:23,491
And if you are a little bit,

393
00:24:23,731 --> 00:24:25,931
like what can you do to make that more so?

394
00:24:25,991 --> 00:24:26,911
And not in terms of, again,

395
00:24:26,971 --> 00:24:28,351
like the PE hack and slash,

396
00:24:28,411 --> 00:24:29,011
we come in,

397
00:24:29,351 --> 00:24:30,711
replace all the humans with clankers

398
00:24:30,711 --> 00:24:32,091
and, you know,

399
00:24:32,151 --> 00:24:34,931
like you have that thing where like the business sucks now

400
00:24:34,931 --> 00:24:36,871
because it's like you can't get a person on the phone.

401
00:24:37,231 --> 00:24:38,591
Instead, it's like,

402
00:24:38,951 --> 00:24:41,991
You know, there's so many small and medium businesses.

403
00:24:42,151 --> 00:24:46,351
It's just the founders not had time to implement an AI strategy,

404
00:24:46,851 --> 00:24:49,591
figure out what back-end costs can just be simplified

405
00:24:49,591 --> 00:24:54,791
so that you can grow more while hiring slower.

406
00:24:54,891 --> 00:24:56,451
It doesn't mean firing your staff necessarily,

407
00:24:56,551 --> 00:24:58,791
but it just means doing more with what you have.

408
00:24:59,751 --> 00:25:03,431
Having AI figure out where you can maybe find new revenue, for example.

409
00:25:04,211 --> 00:25:06,551
There's a lot of things that can just be automated or improved

410
00:25:06,551 --> 00:25:07,471
and made more efficient.

411
00:25:07,471 --> 00:25:10,951
kind of the upsides of AI while minimizing the downside.

412
00:25:12,251 --> 00:25:15,251
And so one of our approaches is, you know,

413
00:25:15,991 --> 00:25:17,471
when you bring in a company,

414
00:25:17,931 --> 00:25:19,211
the couple of things you can do,

415
00:25:19,291 --> 00:25:20,411
you can streamline the backend.

416
00:25:20,951 --> 00:25:22,071
If you buy a couple, you know,

417
00:25:22,071 --> 00:25:23,371
if you buy a handful of companies,

418
00:25:23,411 --> 00:25:24,831
you can unify the backend.

419
00:25:25,151 --> 00:25:26,531
At least certain backend systems

420
00:25:26,531 --> 00:25:28,691
can benefit from economy of scale,

421
00:25:29,251 --> 00:25:31,371
as well as having, you know,

422
00:25:31,971 --> 00:25:34,391
professional AI people that actually know

423
00:25:34,391 --> 00:25:35,971
how to apply that to a business,

424
00:25:35,971 --> 00:25:38,771
not in a way that you want to flip it in three years,

425
00:25:38,851 --> 00:25:41,971
but in the same way you want to run it for 20 plus years.

426
00:25:42,831 --> 00:25:45,631
And so that's actually one of the services or value adds

427
00:25:45,631 --> 00:25:48,191
that we intend to do with the portfolio companies that we acquire.

428
00:25:49,651 --> 00:25:53,251
I mean, it makes a ton of sense just because these are also,

429
00:25:53,251 --> 00:25:56,391
you know, the types of businesses that you're looking at

430
00:25:56,391 --> 00:26:09,248
that are going to be more let say AI resistant are also sort of necessarily the ones that maybe haven implemented too much AI yet Because again they are like AI resistant from their own business model perspective because of the nature of the work that they do

431
00:26:09,568 --> 00:26:17,548
And they're probably more likely to have not implemented any sort of, you know, AI driven optimizations, automations, whatever, you know, whatever it may be.

432
00:26:17,548 --> 00:26:25,128
and I'm curious too I mean the timing of this feels quite appropriate just given the fact that

433
00:26:25,128 --> 00:26:31,068
we're about to like the boomer wealth transfer is very real a lot of boomers built businesses over

434
00:26:31,068 --> 00:26:38,708
20 30 40 years and as you said not every boomer's heir wants to take them over they don't always

435
00:26:38,708 --> 00:26:44,208
again want to have it hacked and slashed by PE and so this seems like you guys are pretty well

436
00:26:44,208 --> 00:26:48,508
positioned right now? I mean, I'm trying to think of other companies. There are obviously other

437
00:26:48,508 --> 00:26:52,568
companies like Harris Computer comes to mind in the software space that does sort of this,

438
00:26:52,568 --> 00:26:56,868
you know, permanent investment. They're not trying to hack and slash. It's decidedly not PE.

439
00:26:58,328 --> 00:27:03,468
But I mean, is there a lot of competition right now for what you guys are trying to do? I mean,

440
00:27:03,488 --> 00:27:07,168
obviously not in the Bitcoin treasury space, but just more broadly.

441
00:27:08,288 --> 00:27:12,088
Yeah, we have a number of comparables, but it generally is a pretty small market.

442
00:27:12,088 --> 00:27:17,128
uh berkshire hathaway is the most well-known one um there's a company called illinois toolworks

443
00:27:17,128 --> 00:27:21,688
um which is a uh it's worth tens of billions of dollars it's a publicly traded company for

444
00:27:21,688 --> 00:27:25,848
for many decades and they're an engineering company that specifically acquires other

445
00:27:25,848 --> 00:27:30,008
engineering companies in a strategic sense folds them into their parent company and just does that

446
00:27:30,008 --> 00:27:35,848
dozens and dozens of times over decades um uh there there is a handful of software companies

447
00:27:35,848 --> 00:27:41,368
that do that uh there is a an ai play that will buy companies and and do that ai strategy i mentioned

448
00:27:41,368 --> 00:27:45,168
but they're marketing that angle a lot more substantially than we are.

449
00:27:45,408 --> 00:27:47,448
You know, it's kind of like we're the AI experts that are going to go in

450
00:27:47,448 --> 00:27:48,388
and do that.

451
00:27:48,468 --> 00:27:49,568
That's kind of how they're marketing that.

452
00:27:50,928 --> 00:27:53,988
But so there are, basically there's enough examples

453
00:27:53,988 --> 00:27:55,708
that this can be a very successful model,

454
00:27:56,068 --> 00:28:02,388
but it's a very uncrowded, unused space in large part,

455
00:28:02,468 --> 00:28:05,848
I think because it's that long time preference approach.

456
00:28:06,248 --> 00:28:08,828
And then also there's two major,

457
00:28:08,828 --> 00:28:13,188
one like there's a demographic trend which you mentioned and there's another one so the demographic

458
00:28:13,188 --> 00:28:18,008
one uh and you know this is part of our research when setting this up is that exactly like you said

459
00:28:18,008 --> 00:28:25,648
due to demographics a lot of business owners are in their 50s or 60s um and you know that some of

460
00:28:25,648 --> 00:28:29,888
them are just are looking to eventually get liquidity maybe not right now but they want to

461
00:28:29,888 --> 00:28:34,788
have a plan for five ten years down the road if not now uh and that's where that even that hybrid

462
00:28:34,788 --> 00:28:38,208
approach can make sense you know getting liquidity but continue to working on what you've built and

463
00:28:38,208 --> 00:28:44,148
what you're the expert at um uh and so there's there's a huge amount of that and then two so we

464
00:28:44,148 --> 00:28:49,428
just ended this 40-year period of falling interest rates just just you know higher like lower lows

465
00:28:49,428 --> 00:28:54,248
and lower highs of interest rates we've ran you know pre and during covid you hit pretty much rock

466
00:28:54,248 --> 00:28:59,368
bottom uh and you know we're in this well you can't predict the future per se but we're in the

467
00:28:59,368 --> 00:29:04,008
sideways to up interest rate pattern now we're you're no longer declining just deep past zero or

468
00:29:04,008 --> 00:29:11,308
anything. And there's actually like private equity is running into issues because, you know,

469
00:29:11,348 --> 00:29:16,828
their whole model was a lot of its financial engineering because the parent, the fund is

470
00:29:16,828 --> 00:29:22,488
closer to the Cantillon printer than the small businesses. So they have better, they have cheaper

471
00:29:22,488 --> 00:29:29,588
cost of capital than Ma and Pa HVAC in Ohio, right? So they come in, they buy it, they can

472
00:29:29,588 --> 00:29:32,948
finance it better, they can combine it with their larger scale and they, you know, they have all

473
00:29:32,948 --> 00:29:37,068
these tools that they can do and that works really well when interest rates just keep going down and

474
00:29:37,068 --> 00:29:42,128
down and down but when they're not anymore that model runs into some headwinds it doesn't just

475
00:29:42,128 --> 00:29:47,148
stop working but it just it's some of the magic goes away uh so there's actually a lot of uh pe

476
00:29:47,148 --> 00:29:51,328
companies that like i mentioned that three to seven year flip like a lot of them were kind of

477
00:29:51,328 --> 00:29:55,748
like on year seven and they're like guys like uh what where are we going to do with this like

478
00:29:55,748 --> 00:30:00,968
company we gutted and like what do we do now uh because i'd say there's there's too high a ratio

479
00:30:00,968 --> 00:30:06,008
of flippers and not enough places for those companies to permanently end up unless they're

480
00:30:06,008 --> 00:30:12,208
big enough to go public. Which again, companies that emerge from PE have a higher than average

481
00:30:12,208 --> 00:30:15,768
failure rate. So even public is not always the best approach, but that's what big companies can

482
00:30:15,768 --> 00:30:20,608
aspire to. But especially in that smaller space, if there's too many flippers and there's not

483
00:30:20,608 --> 00:30:27,248
enough permanent buyers, you get distressed sellers that might have still a fine business,

484
00:30:27,248 --> 00:30:29,448
but they just have to get it off their hand.

485
00:30:29,528 --> 00:30:30,768
It's like a overstock sale.

486
00:30:31,768 --> 00:30:32,708
And so we,

487
00:30:32,708 --> 00:30:34,328
we think that will benefit us that,

488
00:30:34,388 --> 00:30:34,548
that,

489
00:30:34,548 --> 00:30:34,888
that,

490
00:30:34,888 --> 00:30:35,108
you know,

491
00:30:35,108 --> 00:30:35,308
there's,

492
00:30:35,528 --> 00:30:37,208
there's just plenty of these,

493
00:30:37,628 --> 00:30:40,908
they have a time sensitive bomb attached to what is otherwise probably a

494
00:30:40,908 --> 00:30:41,568
decent asset.

495
00:30:42,408 --> 00:30:42,968
And if,

496
00:30:43,028 --> 00:30:44,268
if we're time independent,

497
00:30:44,568 --> 00:30:44,828
you know,

498
00:30:44,828 --> 00:30:45,668
we can go out and say,

499
00:30:45,748 --> 00:30:45,948
well,

500
00:30:45,988 --> 00:30:47,008
we'll take that off your hands.

501
00:30:47,008 --> 00:30:48,248
We're going to get a pretty low multiple,

502
00:30:48,828 --> 00:30:48,948
you know,

503
00:30:48,968 --> 00:30:50,508
we're going to pay a pretty low multiple from them.

504
00:30:50,588 --> 00:30:50,828
But if,

505
00:30:50,828 --> 00:30:51,008
if,

506
00:30:51,008 --> 00:30:52,368
if someone's a distressed seller,

507
00:30:52,528 --> 00:30:53,808
it's a buyer's market.

508
00:30:54,048 --> 00:30:56,648
So that's what we're looking to,

509
00:30:56,648 --> 00:30:56,928
uh,

510
00:30:57,248 --> 00:31:04,368
to do. The other, I think, kind of brilliant piece of this just to me is looking at this,

511
00:31:04,408 --> 00:31:08,328
you know, you're mentioning, okay, yeah, we're going to be buying these companies. We're not

512
00:31:08,328 --> 00:31:24,784
really looking for we not looking at their you know their explosive growth potential We looking at their steady cashflow right But then you still have as part of the umbrella you still have that explosive growth potential because of Bitcoin Is that basically the thesis It like have steady

513
00:31:24,784 --> 00:31:31,884
cashflow and get your overall growth because you have an incredibly fast moving. Sometimes it goes

514
00:31:31,884 --> 00:31:35,124
down. Yes. Most of the time, you know, it goes down or sideways, but when it goes up, boy, does

515
00:31:35,124 --> 00:31:39,644
it go up? Like, is that, is that the idea basically? Like, Hey, let's be steady and stable in the

516
00:31:39,644 --> 00:31:45,084
present, knowing that if our thesis with Bitcoin is right, which we believe it is, that takes care

517
00:31:45,084 --> 00:31:50,504
of the growth part of the equation. That is true. I would actually answer this in two ways. So I

518
00:31:50,504 --> 00:31:55,664
think even putting Bitcoin aside, you can actually, it's unintuitive, but you can achieve very strong

519
00:31:55,664 --> 00:32:01,604
returns with low growth if you're buying at the right price. As an example, if you go out and buy

520
00:32:01,604 --> 00:32:06,304
cash, like let's say companies with no growth, and you go out and buy them for five times earnings,

521
00:32:06,304 --> 00:32:14,424
uh so you're you're buying a 20 earnings uh yield basically uh if you buy one and then you you take

522
00:32:14,424 --> 00:32:18,704
that earnings yield you accumulate into another one and another one and another one you're actually

523
00:32:18,704 --> 00:32:24,944
internally compounding at a 20 rate of return compared to the stock market at say 12 right now

524
00:32:24,944 --> 00:32:28,884
that's obviously that that's blank sheet of paper great math i mean you have to account for some

525
00:32:28,884 --> 00:32:35,164
companies are going to fail so you're going to run into frictions so on and so forth um and kind of

526
00:32:35,164 --> 00:32:39,364
one of the magic sauces of PE is, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll find a buyer, you know,

527
00:32:39,404 --> 00:32:45,344
they'll buy something for maybe six times cash. Uh, and then when they, they got it, they, they do

528
00:32:45,344 --> 00:32:48,764
all this and they kind of are able to kind of spruce it up. They might be able to get it out

529
00:32:48,764 --> 00:32:54,684
of their hands for eight times cash or whatever the case may be. In addition, there's like a

530
00:32:54,684 --> 00:33:01,404
liquidity premium, right? So, so like, what is a company that has five dental practices worth

531
00:33:01,404 --> 00:33:07,184
in say, you know, Michigan or, you know, wherever that is.

532
00:33:08,024 --> 00:33:10,444
That's a very specific business

533
00:33:10,444 --> 00:33:12,944
and a buyer is taking on a lot of risk

534
00:33:12,944 --> 00:33:14,404
by just buying that business.

535
00:33:14,644 --> 00:33:15,384
And so, you know, it's,

536
00:33:15,724 --> 00:33:17,864
but if you were to look into a company

537
00:33:17,864 --> 00:33:20,364
that has 10 of those types of businesses

538
00:33:20,364 --> 00:33:22,464
across different verticals,

539
00:33:22,464 --> 00:33:25,024
an investor might be more comfortable

540
00:33:25,024 --> 00:33:27,324
paying a higher multiple for that collection of businesses

541
00:33:27,324 --> 00:33:30,244
because that's a diversified, larger,

542
00:33:30,244 --> 00:33:33,184
more resilient type of business as a whole.

543
00:33:33,284 --> 00:33:35,444
The sum of the parts is better than any one part.

544
00:33:36,064 --> 00:33:39,224
So we generally expect that there's a multiple expansion

545
00:33:39,224 --> 00:33:40,304
that comes from that.

546
00:33:40,384 --> 00:33:41,684
So if you buy a bunch of businesses

547
00:33:41,684 --> 00:33:43,504
for say six times cashflow,

548
00:33:44,424 --> 00:33:47,984
I think the market will be more likely to assess that

549
00:33:47,984 --> 00:33:50,104
as higher than six times its cashflow

550
00:33:50,104 --> 00:33:51,904
because the collection of those businesses

551
00:33:51,904 --> 00:33:53,304
is a more stable thing,

552
00:33:53,544 --> 00:33:55,564
especially when the parent company has good finances,

553
00:33:55,564 --> 00:33:57,884
it has access to cheaper cost of capital

554
00:33:57,884 --> 00:33:59,684
because of its larger scale,

555
00:33:59,684 --> 00:34:01,764
than those smaller businesses had.

556
00:34:01,924 --> 00:34:03,964
They're able to bring in the top AI talent.

557
00:34:05,104 --> 00:34:07,304
They're able to bring in the top financial talent

558
00:34:07,304 --> 00:34:10,284
in a way that those individual pieces could not do.

559
00:34:11,044 --> 00:34:13,264
So one is just even putting aside the Bitcoin component,

560
00:34:13,464 --> 00:34:16,204
if you execute well, which is the harder part,

561
00:34:16,264 --> 00:34:17,364
but if you execute well,

562
00:34:17,364 --> 00:34:19,964
you can generate very strong returns

563
00:34:19,964 --> 00:34:23,104
from low multiple, low growth businesses.

564
00:34:23,344 --> 00:34:24,624
Like the Illinois Toolworks I mentioned

565
00:34:24,624 --> 00:34:27,424
outperformed the S&P 500 over a multi-decade stretch.

566
00:34:27,424 --> 00:34:36,844
I mean, right now with, say, semiconductors going vertical, probably if you take a five or 10-year snapshot, it's not as much as, you know, kind of the Nasdaq in that slot.

567
00:34:37,344 --> 00:34:48,564
But during the course of its lifecycle, it's done very well, for example, and it's a company no one ever heard of because they just keep doing what they do well over and over again and just operating like an efficient machine.

568
00:34:49,164 --> 00:34:52,324
Now, the Bitcoin treasury component gives us a couple options.

569
00:34:52,324 --> 00:34:58,364
And the way I generally phrase this is when you're buying businesses like this, you generally need some sort of edge.

570
00:34:59,344 --> 00:35:03,084
And for PE funds, their quote unquote edge is that flipping aspect.

571
00:35:03,264 --> 00:35:10,864
They're like our edge is that we're so short term focused that if we just keep doing this over and over like a mercenary, if we're really good at it, we can generate excess returns for our shareholders.

572
00:35:11,184 --> 00:35:19,124
If you're Berkshire Hathaway and you're buying them to hold indefinitely, you're like near the source of the Cantillon printer.

573
00:35:19,124 --> 00:35:22,204
You have like the lowest best debt in the world.

574
00:35:22,324 --> 00:35:23,584
They have their insurance float.

575
00:35:24,204 --> 00:35:26,104
And a lot of people outside of the finance space

576
00:35:26,104 --> 00:35:27,364
don't know how powerful that is.

577
00:35:27,804 --> 00:35:30,424
But by having huge insurance companies,

578
00:35:30,544 --> 00:35:32,664
they have the best source of debt in the world.

579
00:35:33,904 --> 00:35:36,064
In addition to their traditional bonds,

580
00:35:36,104 --> 00:35:37,984
they're so big, they're a fortress.

581
00:35:38,644 --> 00:35:40,464
So they have the lowest cost of capital.

582
00:35:41,444 --> 00:35:44,364
So they can have that really long-term time preference

583
00:35:44,364 --> 00:35:46,284
because they have that just structural advantage.

584
00:35:47,824 --> 00:35:49,524
And something like Illinois Toolworks,

585
00:35:49,664 --> 00:35:51,824
their advantage is they're the best in their niche.

586
00:35:52,324 --> 00:35:59,264
They're the biggest and best at tucking in various tooling and engineering companies into a conglomerate of those things.

587
00:36:00,684 --> 00:36:05,924
And what our edge is that we like Bitcoin and we think Bitcoin's going to keep appreciating.

588
00:36:06,404 --> 00:36:16,644
And we think that much like how adding sound money to an individual balance sheet makes that balance sheet better and improves your finances, we think that adding it to most types of companies makes it better.

589
00:36:17,744 --> 00:36:21,164
And it gives us kind of a counter-cyclical approach.

590
00:36:21,164 --> 00:36:32,260
So one is we have all these in theory once we get to the future we made acquisitions we have these kind of lower multiple lower growth businesses hopefully resilient cash flows

591
00:36:32,860 --> 00:36:34,940
We always have the option of acquiring

592
00:36:34,940 --> 00:36:36,920
more and more businesses we intend to do.

593
00:36:37,300 --> 00:36:39,260
But in addition, by collecting it

594
00:36:39,260 --> 00:36:40,880
into that scarce liquid asset,

595
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:43,480
we're building that fortress balance sheet

596
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:45,920
that can't be duplicated and can't be printed.

597
00:36:47,780 --> 00:36:50,540
At certain times, it can be used as collateral

598
00:36:50,540 --> 00:36:53,540
to get lower costs of financing.

599
00:36:53,780 --> 00:36:55,180
I mean, all speaking equal,

600
00:36:55,240 --> 00:36:56,320
if you have a collection of businesses

601
00:36:56,320 --> 00:36:58,000
or you have a collection of businesses

602
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:00,780
and you're backstopped by a big Bitcoin treasury too,

603
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:02,400
borrowers are going to,

604
00:37:02,500 --> 00:37:03,900
lenders are going to look at you and say,

605
00:37:03,980 --> 00:37:05,840
well, that other one's a lower risk

606
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:08,420
because they got financial assets

607
00:37:08,420 --> 00:37:11,140
and they have a diversified set of operating cash flows.

608
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:12,840
So if they want to borrow a little bit

609
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:13,880
to make the next acquisition,

610
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:15,500
then pay it off over the next six months.

611
00:37:15,940 --> 00:37:18,440
And it's a low leverage ratio.

612
00:37:18,440 --> 00:37:23,200
why wouldn't we lend to them at a pretty low efficient rate?

613
00:37:24,100 --> 00:37:25,940
And so we think that will give us an edge

614
00:37:25,940 --> 00:37:26,940
and it gives us options.

615
00:37:26,940 --> 00:37:28,880
Like if Bitcoin is in a bear market

616
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,920
and we think it's in the bottom decile

617
00:37:31,920 --> 00:37:33,720
of sentiment and valuation metrics

618
00:37:33,720 --> 00:37:36,860
and fast money's out and it's mostly in strong hands

619
00:37:36,860 --> 00:37:39,080
we can lean more into accumulating Bitcoin

620
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:40,080
for a period of time.

621
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:43,780
On the other hand, if Bitcoin just had a really big run

622
00:37:43,780 --> 00:37:45,840
and it's euphoric and it's really high

623
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:49,940
and our, let's say, our business seller pipeline

624
00:37:49,940 --> 00:37:51,200
happens to be very strong at the moment,

625
00:37:51,240 --> 00:37:52,860
we can lean into buying more businesses

626
00:37:52,860 --> 00:37:55,780
and reinvesting cash flow that way.

627
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:57,480
So we have the kind of latitude to make

628
00:37:57,480 --> 00:37:59,980
what are hopefully counter-cyclical decisions

629
00:37:59,980 --> 00:38:01,500
around how to deploy capital.

630
00:38:03,060 --> 00:38:04,500
And, you know, it's funny because, I mean,

631
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:06,720
like before I was into Bitcoin,

632
00:38:06,860 --> 00:38:07,760
I was into value investing.

633
00:38:07,940 --> 00:38:10,440
I've been into value investing for 20 years.

634
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:12,460
So it's really cool to kind of marry those two together,

635
00:38:12,460 --> 00:38:18,980
you know kind of the the the low multiple low growth business um with a with a you know kind

636
00:38:18,980 --> 00:38:24,600
of the bitcoin kicker attached to it so we think it's a good combination i'm glad you brought up

637
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:29,160
the bear market piece because that was one of the things i wanted to ask you about is this seems like

638
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:35,920
in contrast to the uh let's say the pure play treasury companies which we are we have seen i

639
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:40,700
mean we have seen a lot of capital get absolutely incinerated um in in a lot of those right like

640
00:38:40,700 --> 00:38:46,240
they are down bad as the as the kids say I don't know if the kids still say that or not you know

641
00:38:46,240 --> 00:38:52,540
that's I'm probably dating myself there but this seems like okay as you said you guys are you know

642
00:38:52,540 --> 00:38:57,860
you have the cash flow these businesses are not dependent on the Bitcoin cycle it's not like you're

643
00:38:57,860 --> 00:39:03,540
buying Bitcoin businesses that are also negatively affected when Bitcoin takes a dip or an extended

644
00:39:03,540 --> 00:39:08,820
bear you're buying businesses that are immune to that and so you will continue to have that cash

645
00:39:08,820 --> 00:39:13,080
flow. You're well positioned to be able to buy Bitcoin, as you said, during the lows or, you know,

646
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:19,220
buy businesses when it's high. But it just seems like this, and again, I'm kind of contrasting this

647
00:39:19,220 --> 00:39:26,460
with the pure play treasury companies. It seems like that, I don't know, let me ask it this way.

648
00:39:26,980 --> 00:39:32,400
Do you think that we're going to see a continued sort of a breakdown for a lot of these treasury

649
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:36,540
companies? I think let's set aside micro strategy, because at least in my opinion, I think it's,

650
00:39:36,540 --> 00:39:41,820
you know, it may have been hit pretty hard by all this, but also like they just, they just have so

651
00:39:41,820 --> 00:39:46,720
much Bitcoin. Like they just have, and they still make what 500 million a year in, uh, in their

652
00:39:46,720 --> 00:39:51,200
operating business. So technically, you know, there's still a cashflow, a cashflow in business,

653
00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:57,480
but do you think that these treasury plays, the pure play treasuries sort of either fizzle out

654
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:03,040
or do we just get new versions of them every cycle that spin up, you know, raise a bunch of money,

655
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:06,460
buy a bunch of Bitcoin and then kind of drop out?

656
00:40:06,680 --> 00:40:08,160
Or what's your feeling on that?

657
00:40:08,660 --> 00:40:09,260
Yeah, it's a good question.

658
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:12,800
I think there's a space for some pure place in,

659
00:40:13,260 --> 00:40:15,100
you know, if you're the leader in your market,

660
00:40:15,240 --> 00:40:17,080
so whether it's the US or Japan or Brazil

661
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:19,720
or, you know, a handful of pretty deep capital markets,

662
00:40:20,060 --> 00:40:21,140
if you're the leader at it,

663
00:40:21,260 --> 00:40:23,500
like liquidity is a economic moat.

664
00:40:23,620 --> 00:40:24,840
It's a network effect.

665
00:40:25,620 --> 00:40:27,480
So if you have economy scale,

666
00:40:27,580 --> 00:40:29,860
if you have better capital access, better liquidity,

667
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:32,860
you do have a kind of a defensible advantage.

668
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:34,620
assuming you execute reasonably well.

669
00:40:35,260 --> 00:40:36,780
So there's a market for it.

670
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:40,600
I think the long tail of lower quality ones,

671
00:40:41,260 --> 00:40:42,740
my expectation is, I mean,

672
00:40:42,860 --> 00:40:45,800
some of them you see return capital to shareholders.

673
00:40:46,580 --> 00:40:48,920
We might see mergers or acquisitions

674
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:52,620
where a company's trading perpetually below MNAV.

675
00:40:52,720 --> 00:40:56,060
It's bleeding out cash because it's paying its executives

676
00:40:56,060 --> 00:40:57,040
and it's not making money.

677
00:40:58,260 --> 00:40:59,980
A pool of capital can come on

678
00:40:59,980 --> 00:41:02,120
and just buy that for 70 cents on the dollar

679
00:41:02,120 --> 00:41:03,480
and kind of put it out of its misery

680
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:05,980
and attach it to something

681
00:41:05,980 --> 00:41:07,780
that doesn't have that bleed attached to it.

682
00:41:08,020 --> 00:41:11,780
So I think there are consolidations

683
00:41:11,780 --> 00:41:13,660
that are likely to continue happening to some extent.

684
00:41:13,980 --> 00:41:16,140
I don't think that the scale that we saw

685
00:41:16,140 --> 00:41:17,660
will repeat in every cycle.

686
00:41:18,200 --> 00:41:20,460
I think we can kind of learn from the altcoin space

687
00:41:20,460 --> 00:41:22,720
that you get this really big hype cycle

688
00:41:22,720 --> 00:41:25,320
with a new idea, whether it's ICOs,

689
00:41:25,720 --> 00:41:27,720
whether it's DeFi, whether it's NFTs,

690
00:41:27,900 --> 00:41:28,980
the meme coin cycle.

691
00:41:28,980 --> 00:41:33,320
And, you know, the echoes from that in next cycles,

692
00:41:33,500 --> 00:41:36,460
they do happen, but they're not anywhere near the initial size.

693
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:39,960
Because now people, I think, are wise that if you're buying

694
00:41:39,997 --> 00:41:42,357
buying a tertiary treasury company,

695
00:41:42,977 --> 00:41:44,297
there's no like edge there.

696
00:41:44,417 --> 00:41:45,937
There's no, you know,

697
00:41:45,977 --> 00:41:48,797
you don't want to buy like the sixth biggest,

698
00:41:48,797 --> 00:41:50,997
you know, treasury company in your market

699
00:41:50,997 --> 00:41:52,677
that just not really doing anything different.

700
00:41:52,777 --> 00:41:54,977
It's just kind of a more levered version of something.

701
00:41:54,977 --> 00:41:57,657
So I think that while,

702
00:41:58,297 --> 00:41:59,077
I mean, much like how strategy,

703
00:41:59,077 --> 00:42:00,517
I mean, strategy has been through two cycles

704
00:42:00,517 --> 00:42:02,157
and, you know, any,

705
00:42:02,157 --> 00:42:04,777
the other ones that survive through this bear market

706
00:42:04,777 --> 00:42:05,497
and get to the next one.

707
00:42:05,557 --> 00:42:07,277
I mean, I think there will be another period

708
00:42:07,277 --> 00:42:08,597
where they have positive MNAVs

709
00:42:08,597 --> 00:42:09,677
and they're issuing some equity

710
00:42:09,677 --> 00:42:12,537
and capital says, hey, owning levered Bitcoin

711
00:42:12,537 --> 00:42:15,437
that doesn't really have like a callable date on it

712
00:42:15,437 --> 00:42:16,597
is pretty interesting, right?

713
00:42:16,677 --> 00:42:19,497
So more capital can flow in and they can issue more equity

714
00:42:19,497 --> 00:42:22,377
and issue more debt or preferred to buy more Bitcoin.

715
00:42:22,857 --> 00:42:26,317
But I don't think you'll see that explosive just flourishing

716
00:42:26,317 --> 00:42:28,997
of all these companies coming to market

717
00:42:28,997 --> 00:42:31,657
because I think the market is, they know where that ends.

718
00:42:33,137 --> 00:42:35,937
And I mean, it's funny because early on

719
00:42:35,937 --> 00:42:37,637
when strategy bought Bitcoin,

720
00:42:37,637 --> 00:42:50,537
They held these conferences like Bitcoin for Corporations, which is the shocking idea that a company that has nothing to Bitcoin might just put Bitcoin on the balance sheet.

721
00:42:51,957 --> 00:42:56,037
And they're advocates for companies doing that.

722
00:42:57,137 --> 00:43:02,577
And I think that's where the real market is, at least in this space.

723
00:43:02,577 --> 00:43:07,257
I still think individuals owning their own coins is the best type of Bitcoin usage.

724
00:43:07,637 --> 00:43:08,797
and using it for money.

725
00:43:08,977 --> 00:43:12,037
But when we're talking about, you know, companies with Bitcoin,

726
00:43:12,657 --> 00:43:15,337
I'm more interested in companies with a Bitcoin treasury

727
00:43:15,337 --> 00:43:17,317
than Bitcoin treasury companies,

728
00:43:17,517 --> 00:43:20,577
other than, again, the handful of leaders that are, you know,

729
00:43:20,577 --> 00:43:22,997
able to kind of maximize the economy of scale and liquidity

730
00:43:22,997 --> 00:43:25,357
and execute it really well.

731
00:43:26,897 --> 00:43:29,677
Yeah, it's companies with a Bitcoin treasury

732
00:43:29,677 --> 00:43:33,777
versus Bitcoin treasury companies is a nice little turn of phrase there.

733
00:43:33,777 --> 00:43:36,337
And I think that that ultimately makes sense, right?

734
00:43:36,337 --> 00:43:55,337
I think for for most people, at least, if you believe that Bitcoin is going to do what we all think it's going to do, if you have that conviction, well, then you necessarily need to believe that eventually every company, like from the biggest to the littlest mom and pop is going to have some Bitcoin on their balance sheet because it's just the prudent thing to do.

735
00:43:55,337 --> 00:44:16,117
Like, of course you need, like, yeah, you need Bitcoin just like, you know, currently, you know, you need some cash and, you know, you need some other assets on there. And so like, I think it just, it naturally follows that. Yeah, we're going to see that, uh, the early, like you guys are obviously kind of a early mover or first mover in this particular blending of kind of old school fiat.

736
00:44:16,117 --> 00:44:19,237
and I don't say that as an insult in this case,

737
00:44:19,257 --> 00:44:20,637
just for lack of a better expression,

738
00:44:20,777 --> 00:44:21,877
but, you know, like this sort of

739
00:44:21,877 --> 00:44:23,557
fiat world acquisition strategy

740
00:44:23,557 --> 00:44:26,077
without the private equity hacking and slashing

741
00:44:26,077 --> 00:44:28,437
paired with, hey, let's just own

742
00:44:28,437 --> 00:44:31,737
the only provably finite asset in the world as well

743
00:44:31,737 --> 00:44:33,437
and use that to our advantage.

744
00:44:33,597 --> 00:44:35,357
So, I don't know, I like it.

745
00:44:35,357 --> 00:44:36,757
I think it's a refreshing,

746
00:44:37,037 --> 00:44:39,717
like very refreshing change of pace

747
00:44:39,717 --> 00:44:41,657
from what we've seen in the treasury company space.

748
00:44:42,357 --> 00:44:44,257
Wish you guys all the best with it.

749
00:44:44,277 --> 00:44:45,937
You've got a great, great team there.

750
00:44:46,117 --> 00:44:55,177
So, yeah, have we drained orange juice enough? Have we drank enough of the orange juice? Because I do have some other questions as well. But I wanted to make sure we hit this hard because it's fascinating.

751
00:44:56,017 --> 00:44:56,517
I think we have.

752
00:44:56,577 --> 00:44:59,817
I think the last point I would make is that the cool thing is a lot of small companies

753
00:44:59,817 --> 00:45:00,657
are already doing this.

754
00:45:01,197 --> 00:45:04,737
Just companies that have a Bitcoin treasury that are not Bitcoin treasury companies.

755
00:45:05,077 --> 00:45:10,057
And for example, River will frequently say, here's a list of companies we onboard.

756
00:45:10,137 --> 00:45:10,797
They will say the names.

757
00:45:10,897 --> 00:45:15,557
We'll say, hey, we onboard a dental practice, a veterinary clinic, a trucking company.

758
00:45:15,717 --> 00:45:17,357
They'll put out tweets like that.

759
00:45:18,757 --> 00:45:23,097
And I know firsthand a lot of companies that just in the private sector, they're doing

760
00:45:23,097 --> 00:45:27,177
something unrelated to Bitcoin and they hold some Bitcoin on the balance sheet. So, you know,

761
00:45:27,197 --> 00:45:33,097
we're looking to make that happen in a larger collection and then bring it to public markets.

762
00:45:34,357 --> 00:45:42,077
We think that's where the there is compared to just trying to do a pure play at this point,

763
00:45:42,137 --> 00:45:47,917
if you're not kind of already the leader in that space. And it's going to come down to execution.

764
00:45:48,257 --> 00:45:51,437
I mean, there's risks and everything, but, you know, we're in this for the long haul.

765
00:45:51,437 --> 00:45:54,977
and we want to do what's good for Bitcoin

766
00:45:54,977 --> 00:45:58,597
and what's good for companies and their communities.

767
00:46:00,037 --> 00:46:01,437
Well, I love it.

768
00:46:01,477 --> 00:46:03,697
I've not drank the Kool-Aid, but I've drank the orange juice.

769
00:46:04,217 --> 00:46:06,477
So yeah, big fan of it.

770
00:46:07,377 --> 00:46:09,097
Switching gears a little bit,

771
00:46:09,177 --> 00:46:11,837
you mentioned the counter-cyclical nature

772
00:46:11,837 --> 00:46:14,097
of what you guys are going to be doing with orange juice.

773
00:46:14,097 --> 00:46:18,517
And I do want to talk about the general cyclical nature of Bitcoin

774
00:46:18,517 --> 00:46:20,297
and sort of where you think we're at.

775
00:46:20,297 --> 00:46:25,017
I will not ask you for price predictions or for exact dates or anything like that more so just

776
00:46:25,017 --> 00:46:31,877
general gut vibe check on you know I talked to folks like James check with checkmate at check

777
00:46:31,877 --> 00:46:37,057
on chain and I talked with Michael Sullivan as well who's doing some really cool sentiment analysis

778
00:46:37,057 --> 00:46:41,617
and they sort of combine that together to put together this awesome piece called peak apathy

779
00:46:41,617 --> 00:46:46,057
which was really interesting so we did a pod about that and they're both basically looking at

780
00:46:46,057 --> 00:47:02,333
different sides of this equation but one with the on metrics one with the sentiment analysis and both of what they seeing seems to be pointing to nobody cares about Bitcoin but the on stuff is showing us that we probably in at least the bottom range

781
00:47:03,173 --> 00:47:08,033
And I'm curious if you think that we are, if that is indeed a fair analysis,

782
00:47:08,193 --> 00:47:11,973
like if we're a couple of points either way from wherever this bottom is,

783
00:47:12,533 --> 00:47:16,073
and if going forward we still continue to follow like this.

784
00:47:16,073 --> 00:47:20,513
the four-year cycle kind of looks pretty intact right now, right? Like it looks, you know, for

785
00:47:20,513 --> 00:47:25,233
whatever it's worth, it looks like it's holding. Do you think we maintain that going forward?

786
00:47:25,653 --> 00:47:31,593
And do you think we're sort of in that bottom range now? Or do we, does it go down to 40K,

787
00:47:31,693 --> 00:47:37,053
20K, negative, negative zero, like Peter Zeyhan or whatever Zeyhan said back in the, back in the

788
00:47:37,053 --> 00:47:42,293
day? What's your kind of gut, gut check on all of this? Yeah, good question. I mean, I think they

789
00:47:42,293 --> 00:47:45,533
did great analysis. That's generally how I look at it. I think, and also I think they take a

790
00:47:45,533 --> 00:47:50,953
healthy approach of instead of trying to bottom tick the absolute bottom, it's basically trying

791
00:47:50,953 --> 00:47:56,013
to identify the probability that you're like in the lowest decile, roughly speaking. I think that's

792
00:47:56,013 --> 00:48:00,113
the healthy way to do it. Basically, like, are you in an accumulation zone or are you in a

793
00:48:00,113 --> 00:48:05,773
distribution zone or just kind of a void zone? And I do think we're in the accumulation zone.

794
00:48:06,773 --> 00:48:11,573
And I, you know, I, when we hit that kind of February low and we're recovering from that for

795
00:48:11,573 --> 00:48:17,073
while. I kind of had like a base case that that might be the low, but it wasn't super high

796
00:48:17,073 --> 00:48:21,193
conviction. We ended up, you know, some months later, like that helped for a number of months,

797
00:48:21,273 --> 00:48:26,853
then we hit a slightly lower low, the 58k gang, you know, kind of came up on us. So, you know,

798
00:48:26,873 --> 00:48:31,293
we hit a slightly lower low. And, you know, it's not with high conviction, but I'm again,

799
00:48:31,293 --> 00:48:37,353
I'm kind of treating that like that might be the low. But it's more of that broader scope of are we

800
00:48:37,353 --> 00:48:42,593
in what is, I think, a bottom-y type of area, rather than trying to say that we absolutely

801
00:48:42,593 --> 00:48:44,913
won't get a lower low than we already got.

802
00:48:45,353 --> 00:48:50,633
I would be surprised to see us break anywhere below the 50s, personally.

803
00:48:50,913 --> 00:48:54,513
I'm not saying it can't happen, but I would be generally surprised if that were to happen.

804
00:48:56,533 --> 00:49:01,033
So I generally think that the downside, at least the reasonable downside, in my view,

805
00:49:01,113 --> 00:49:05,293
is somewhat capped, whereas I think there's still plenty of room to the upside for the

806
00:49:05,293 --> 00:49:05,833
next cycle.

807
00:49:06,373 --> 00:49:07,913
As far as the four-year cycle goes,

808
00:49:08,013 --> 00:49:09,153
I think that fundamentally,

809
00:49:09,393 --> 00:49:11,073
there's really no reason to believe in it

810
00:49:11,073 --> 00:49:13,753
in the sense that the halving cycle

811
00:49:13,753 --> 00:49:17,553
in terms of how much that's affecting new supply

812
00:49:17,553 --> 00:49:19,173
coming to market is now so minimal

813
00:49:19,173 --> 00:49:20,933
compared to earlier cycles

814
00:49:20,933 --> 00:49:22,813
where it represented a much larger percentage

815
00:49:22,813 --> 00:49:24,033
compared to existing coins.

816
00:49:26,193 --> 00:49:28,793
But obviously, it's still intact from a price standpoint.

817
00:49:28,973 --> 00:49:31,533
It might be psychology still matters.

818
00:49:32,133 --> 00:49:34,193
So not to say that it won't for sure happen

819
00:49:34,193 --> 00:49:34,893
on four-year cycles,

820
00:49:34,893 --> 00:49:38,033
but I wouldn't look to that as like a driver per se.

821
00:49:38,553 --> 00:49:42,853
I think a much bigger factor is basically what can get inflows in

822
00:49:42,853 --> 00:49:48,613
and what price levels do existing OGs start to sell some of their coins?

823
00:49:49,033 --> 00:49:50,373
Because that's kind of the limiter.

824
00:49:50,533 --> 00:49:53,893
People often, I mean, they point out correctly that Bitcoin is scarce

825
00:49:53,893 --> 00:49:58,213
and there's the whole meme of exchanges are running out of Bitcoin and stuff.

826
00:49:58,373 --> 00:50:00,213
But if you go up enough in price,

827
00:50:00,633 --> 00:50:03,713
you unlock liquidity from otherwise strong hands

828
00:50:03,713 --> 00:50:07,593
that have maybe been holding for one, two, or three or more cycles.

829
00:50:08,673 --> 00:50:11,013
And they might have a family now compared to what they had

830
00:50:11,013 --> 00:50:13,873
when they bought it for seven raspberries.

831
00:50:14,493 --> 00:50:16,753
And they want some liquidity,

832
00:50:16,913 --> 00:50:19,013
and they are distributing some of their coins.

833
00:50:20,373 --> 00:50:24,853
And so I think it's more about has Fast Money exited?

834
00:50:25,513 --> 00:50:27,793
What does the remaining holding profile look like?

835
00:50:27,793 --> 00:50:30,993
Are they all like diamond hand psychopaths at this point?

836
00:50:31,093 --> 00:50:33,113
Then that's how you start getting a floor in most likely.

837
00:50:33,713 --> 00:50:38,173
And then how can you rise above that is getting some external capital want to come in again.

838
00:50:38,633 --> 00:50:40,273
And it generally feeds off on itself.

839
00:50:40,373 --> 00:50:43,053
So sometimes just stop going down is like the early phase.

840
00:50:43,633 --> 00:50:50,533
And I mean, a funny example is like, say, Latin American bank stocks or just Latin American emerging market stocks.

841
00:50:51,113 --> 00:50:54,573
Eventually, just like so much capital for a long time just flowed out of that.

842
00:50:54,673 --> 00:50:56,193
Emerging markets have these really big cycles.

843
00:50:56,773 --> 00:50:58,013
So much capital flowed out.

844
00:50:58,213 --> 00:51:01,313
But it kind of hit to the point where the multiples were super cheap.

845
00:51:02,193 --> 00:51:03,953
They had really positive real interest rates.

846
00:51:04,993 --> 00:51:06,753
Things just kind of weren't getting worse anymore.

847
00:51:07,593 --> 00:51:09,393
And so some investors say, wait a second,

848
00:51:09,733 --> 00:51:11,793
I'm a value investor in that I can buy that bank

849
00:51:11,793 --> 00:51:13,113
for like four times earnings.

850
00:51:13,893 --> 00:51:15,773
Maybe I'll put a small position in it.

851
00:51:15,933 --> 00:51:18,113
And then it starts to not go down anymore

852
00:51:18,113 --> 00:51:19,653
and then maybe starts to go up a tiny bit.

853
00:51:19,653 --> 00:51:22,333
So then you get chartists and momentum traders.

854
00:51:22,533 --> 00:51:23,113
They come in and say, well,

855
00:51:23,213 --> 00:51:24,853
that actually looks like a pretty good chart.

856
00:51:25,173 --> 00:51:26,913
So they jump in, the chart gets better.

857
00:51:27,033 --> 00:51:29,633
So then it starts going up and up and up.

858
00:51:29,633 --> 00:51:34,493
and similar things happen with bitcoin this the first step is just it kind of just doesn't go down

859
00:51:34,493 --> 00:51:39,113
anymore all the people that would sell you know a lot of the pools of capital that would sell just

860
00:51:39,113 --> 00:51:44,353
are gone so it's just it's just people that are like ride or die and then it just stops going down

861
00:51:44,353 --> 00:51:49,533
like you mentioned peak apathy uh and then that starts to be noticed and people accumulating

862
00:51:49,533 --> 00:51:55,093
taking more coins off the market uh some people see that the chart is is not half bad and that

863
00:51:55,093 --> 00:51:55,933
gives you know the

864
00:51:55,933 --> 00:51:56,733
momentum traders come

865
00:51:56,733 --> 00:51:57,953
in i think the other

866
00:51:57,953 --> 00:51:59,653
thing is that um there

867
00:51:59,653 --> 00:52:13,189
is that of course that quote like bitcoin the fastest horse to paul tudor jones uh and in recent years AI has been the fastest horse And so it like if you not first you last kind of

868
00:52:13,549 --> 00:52:21,429
Like, it's like, of course, all these funds and investors in the world are allocated to AI, and Bitcoin becomes an afterthought.

869
00:52:22,349 --> 00:52:28,449
Now, the AI, like the semiconductor industry alone is now like a $20 trillion market, basically.

870
00:52:28,449 --> 00:52:34,009
uh it's hard you know it's easy and like the crazy thing is like that that number was like

871
00:52:34,009 --> 00:52:40,369
in the market lows of 2022 that was something like 2 trillion so like 10x that that like market

872
00:52:40,369 --> 00:52:46,109
like basically when you when you add like nvidia amd the memory stocks uh some of the semiconductor

873
00:52:46,109 --> 00:52:52,729
equipment makers you can define the bucket but if you get a pretty broad bucket you can have this

874
00:52:52,729 --> 00:52:58,789
a set of companies that went from you know two or three trillion to to 20 trillion uh and it's a

875
00:52:58,789 --> 00:53:04,929
lot harder to go to 40 trillion and then 80 trillion from there right so uh not to say that

876
00:53:04,929 --> 00:53:12,269
that trade's totally done but i think the the explosiveness is done um and as that starts to

877
00:53:12,269 --> 00:53:20,269
just run into just you know lull of large numbers um bitcoin's over here cheap uh still functioning

878
00:53:20,269 --> 00:53:25,449
still doing what it does uh and i think that's that's what kind of eventually sparks the next

879
00:53:25,449 --> 00:53:32,649
the next run i'm curious too because you know you mentioned a lot of this capital going into

880
00:53:32,649 --> 00:53:38,629
ai and just related uh related industries right for the past couple years and you know i've seen

881
00:53:38,629 --> 00:53:44,269
a lot of people make the argument that look the reason that bitcoin is suffering so much right now

882
00:53:44,269 --> 00:53:48,689
is for that for that exact reason that you know that nobody cares about bitcoin again the capital

883
00:53:48,689 --> 00:53:52,929
chasing other things but at the same time we had from a bear market perspective at least so far

884
00:53:52,929 --> 00:53:58,469
i can correct me if i'm wrong but i believe we've still had less of a severe drawdown than any prior

885
00:53:58,469 --> 00:54:03,249
cycle so those two things are and i don't know if they're you know those are not like mutually

886
00:54:03,249 --> 00:54:07,589
exclusive per se like i do think that obviously like it's true that people really don't give a

887
00:54:07,589 --> 00:54:12,309
shit about bitcoin right now uh even though it's you know bargain bin prices and people have very

888
00:54:12,309 --> 00:54:17,429
much been piling into the ai trades um or just you know you look at the spacex ipo and how much

889
00:54:17,429 --> 00:54:24,169
capital floating around that. But do you think that those two things are related? Like,

890
00:54:24,669 --> 00:54:30,269
was Bitcoin dampened by the liquidity flowing into these other areas? Or was it just that,

891
00:54:30,469 --> 00:54:34,649
you know what, there's a lot of liquidity sloshing around out there, wasn't necessarily

892
00:54:34,649 --> 00:54:44,909
a zero-sum game? Do you see what I'm getting at there? Was Bitcoin suffering because of AI froth?

893
00:54:44,909 --> 00:54:50,449
or is it just that look we're kind of heading into a bear anyway and somehow the bear wasn't

894
00:54:50,449 --> 00:54:54,849
actually as bad as the bear could have been so you know take uh count your blessings while you can

895
00:54:54,849 --> 00:54:59,789
good question i think i mean it is a growing pie but i think the pie is still in competition

896
00:54:59,789 --> 00:55:05,349
um and so i do think a lot i think that you know the presence of ai as explosive and large as it

897
00:55:05,349 --> 00:55:14,009
was uh was a competitor for for the marginal dollar going into bitcoin um uh and um

898
00:55:14,909 --> 00:55:19,829
More broadly, I think, I mean, to some extent, the Bitcoin treasury companies took off some of the froth, right?

899
00:55:19,929 --> 00:55:25,769
So at the peak, instead of Bitcoin maybe hitting 200K, you had, you know, like strategy at three times MNAV.

900
00:55:25,869 --> 00:55:27,909
You had, say, Metaplan at eight times MNAV.

901
00:55:28,249 --> 00:55:31,369
Some of the ones that barely own Bitcoin at like almost infinite MNAVs.

902
00:55:32,229 --> 00:55:36,749
The chart we've all seen where it's like you're a SPAC and then it goes vertical and then you kind of melt for the next few years.

903
00:55:37,909 --> 00:55:40,769
So that's where like a lot of the kind of blow off top portion was.

904
00:55:40,769 --> 00:55:43,069
I think what made this Bitcoin cycle disappointing.

905
00:55:43,069 --> 00:55:47,829
so on one hand it is good that we didn't have as big of a draw at least so far we didn't have as

906
00:55:47,829 --> 00:55:54,269
big of a drawdown and percentage wise uh but you know say in the 2017 cycle if you go up 20x

907
00:55:54,269 --> 00:55:58,429
you know it's fine to have a 90 drawdown because you're still higher than where you started

908
00:55:58,429 --> 00:56:05,109
if you only went from say 16 to 125 you know it's a small it's a smaller up cycle especially when

909
00:56:05,109 --> 00:56:09,989
you compare to the prior high if you go you know you peak at 69 you roll over to 16 then you go up

910
00:56:09,989 --> 00:56:15,329
to 120, you know, it's like less than a doubling from the prior high.

911
00:56:16,049 --> 00:56:20,289
So it's not one of those cycles you, I mean, it'd be really bad to have a 95% correction

912
00:56:20,289 --> 00:56:22,509
when you've only doubled from the prior high.

913
00:56:22,629 --> 00:56:25,949
So I think the bear market was kind of in proportion to the bull market.

914
00:56:26,309 --> 00:56:32,869
And I think what has disillusioned some investors is that now two cycles, you had this more

915
00:56:32,869 --> 00:56:35,449
of a rounded top rather than a blow-off top.

916
00:56:35,449 --> 00:56:39,089
and just the overall ratios were not as explosive

917
00:56:39,089 --> 00:56:40,189
as some investors thought.

918
00:56:41,369 --> 00:56:43,609
And, you know, I think there's different reasons for that.

919
00:56:43,689 --> 00:56:45,989
I mean, I think the 2021 was crowded

920
00:56:45,989 --> 00:56:48,449
because you had altcoins, you had just,

921
00:56:48,749 --> 00:56:50,689
I mean, everything Cathie Wood was investing in,

922
00:56:50,689 --> 00:56:55,389
all these kind of like SaaS companies,

923
00:56:55,909 --> 00:56:58,449
like the kind of the unprofitable,

924
00:56:58,529 --> 00:56:59,909
but like high growth stuff,

925
00:57:00,429 --> 00:57:03,409
all that was just going vertical with Bitcoin.

926
00:57:03,409 --> 00:57:06,189
so it does eventually crowd it

927
00:57:06,189 --> 00:57:06,889
when there's tons of

928
00:57:06,889 --> 00:57:08,029
at least temporary options

929
00:57:08,029 --> 00:57:09,809
I also think this cycle

930
00:57:09,809 --> 00:57:11,229
Bitcoin is

931
00:57:11,229 --> 00:57:23,266
and this is like a long term or short term thing in the long run Bitcoin should benefit from the broader alt coin space kind of melting away um because it it noise and and uh just it competition for

932
00:57:23,266 --> 00:57:29,546
capital uh but in the near term uh there was no altcoin season this time really that the narratives

933
00:57:29,546 --> 00:57:36,166
kind of exhaust themselves you went from icos to defi to nfts uh to just straight up meme coins

934
00:57:36,166 --> 00:57:41,126
like just kind of admitting there's no there there uh and then even that you're past that now

935
00:57:41,126 --> 00:57:45,966
uh i guess the latest one was the treasury companies where that you know if you're not

936
00:57:45,966 --> 00:57:52,566
the leading one you kind of also ran in a way um uh and it's kind of like they exhausted their

937
00:57:52,566 --> 00:57:58,926
narratives um and that kind of whole air is gradually stagnating and there is some cross

938
00:57:58,926 --> 00:58:05,546
ownership with bitcoin um there is marketing spend that you know in many ways hurts bitcoin

939
00:58:05,546 --> 00:58:10,286
because you you know you pull retail into other things rather than bitcoin but when that whole

940
00:58:10,286 --> 00:58:15,806
thing's booming and the money's flowing, Bitcoin probably in the near term does some benefit from

941
00:58:15,806 --> 00:58:20,766
it. Whereas when the whole thing's melting, Bitcoin has to hold up despite all that structure

942
00:58:20,766 --> 00:58:25,906
falling apart around it. So I think it's a combination of AI is taking off, crypto is

943
00:58:25,906 --> 00:58:32,286
melting. Bitcoin's this good thing that's not currently the fastest horse, but it's a super

944
00:58:32,286 --> 00:58:39,486
valuable thing. It's the best in class of what it does. I think it's still very small relative

945
00:58:39,486 --> 00:58:40,726
of this total adjustable market,

946
00:58:40,846 --> 00:58:42,586
meaning that there's still a long-term

947
00:58:42,586 --> 00:58:44,466
appreciation potential there.

948
00:58:45,486 --> 00:58:47,566
And I think it's hard to thread that needle

949
00:58:47,566 --> 00:58:48,706
in the near term.

950
00:58:50,046 --> 00:58:52,406
The investment case is a lot of what I just said,

951
00:58:52,466 --> 00:58:54,286
which is not the shortest elevated pitch.

952
00:58:54,406 --> 00:58:56,726
Like, hey, it's not going to go as fast as the eye of stuff,

953
00:58:56,846 --> 00:58:58,026
but you actually own it.

954
00:58:58,906 --> 00:59:00,586
And unlike this broader crypto thing,

955
00:59:00,626 --> 00:59:03,346
it's not fake decentralized or super low liquidity

956
00:59:03,346 --> 00:59:06,686
or changes through hard forks all the time.

957
00:59:06,686 --> 00:59:13,446
And, you know, it's like the case is more nuanced when it's not just like, hey, it's the best chart for the past five years. Buy it.

958
00:59:14,966 --> 00:59:20,406
The crypto side of things is pretty interesting to, you know, to watch that dumpster fire.

959
00:59:20,506 --> 00:59:28,186
And I think at least just personally, what I noticed was around the same time, all of the biggest crypto exchanges also implemented.

960
00:59:28,186 --> 00:59:36,666
And I'm talking like Robinhood, Coinbase, Gemini, and probably others implemented prediction markets like at the same time.

961
00:59:36,686 --> 00:59:39,406
and I have to imagine that took,

962
00:59:39,626 --> 00:59:40,826
because it's like, well,

963
00:59:41,366 --> 00:59:43,246
we'd already gotten to the phase where it was meme coins.

964
00:59:43,386 --> 00:59:44,546
We were just admitting that there, you know,

965
00:59:44,566 --> 00:59:45,366
there was no there there.

966
00:59:45,746 --> 00:59:47,306
But then it's like, well,

967
00:59:47,386 --> 00:59:49,406
why not just even cut out that part

968
00:59:49,406 --> 00:59:50,646
and we'll just go straight to the gambling?

969
00:59:50,786 --> 00:59:52,026
Like, we don't even need to pretend

970
00:59:52,026 --> 00:59:54,806
there's a blockchain innovation happening here anymore.

971
00:59:54,946 --> 00:59:56,806
So why do we even need the token?

972
00:59:56,966 --> 01:00:00,066
So I'm curious, do you think that that is a fair thesis

973
01:00:00,066 --> 01:00:02,866
that the prediction market kind of hype right now

974
01:00:02,866 --> 01:00:06,426
has sucked any remaining wind out of the crypto sales,

975
01:00:06,426 --> 01:00:12,806
let's say i do yeah yeah i think so i think the ai trade the prediction markets um you know anything

976
01:00:12,806 --> 01:00:18,126
that has that either gambling component or is just like in ai's case pretty fundamentally growing

977
01:00:18,126 --> 01:00:24,926
sucks the wind out of it kind of leaves crypto is kind of like player's player melting ice cube

978
01:00:24,926 --> 01:00:31,966
um spacey outside of bitcoin outside of stable coins um it's just it's there's not a lot of

979
01:00:31,966 --> 01:00:36,706
they're there and i think the markets kind of realized that uh in a in a zero rate environment

980
01:00:36,706 --> 01:00:42,526
um you know it was able to kind of it just kind of caught investors in tension for a while

981
01:00:42,526 --> 01:00:47,886
but now that there's physical stuff to build again uh and there's some some degree of cost

982
01:00:47,886 --> 01:00:53,026
of capital uh the market doesn't really want to be in that that long tail of of altcoins and

983
01:00:53,026 --> 01:01:01,066
everything yeah and i can't blame them uh i speaking of rates i do want to get your take on

984
01:01:01,066 --> 01:01:09,146
kind of what you expect, what your thesis is for our cabal of banker bureaucrats at the Federal

985
01:01:09,146 --> 01:01:16,426
Reserve and what they may do next under Warsh's leadership there. Obviously, it's so far just sort

986
01:01:16,426 --> 01:01:21,766
of been status quo for the most part. I mean, Warsh has talked about his favorability towards

987
01:01:21,766 --> 01:01:27,686
different metrics for looking at inflation, like that trimmed mean PCE and things like that. I think

988
01:01:27,686 --> 01:01:35,426
He was also the one who mentioned that all of this stuff that we're seeing right now with AI is going to be a very deflationary or disinflationary force.

989
01:01:36,286 --> 01:01:39,126
Interesting things to hear out of a Fed chairman.

990
01:01:39,646 --> 01:01:40,906
Where are you at with this?

991
01:01:40,966 --> 01:01:45,286
What's your current thesis in terms of do we continue to just kind of tread water?

992
01:01:45,726 --> 01:01:52,486
Do we, in fact, get more kites, hikes, excuse me, if we start to see inflation prints coming in hotter and hotter?

993
01:01:52,486 --> 01:01:59,526
or do we sort of, let's say, massage the metrics, change the basket, hedonic adjustments, et cetera, et cetera,

994
01:01:59,706 --> 01:02:02,906
and find a way to cut rates down again?

995
01:02:04,066 --> 01:02:04,646
Yeah, good question.

996
01:02:05,066 --> 01:02:11,346
The short answer is that, I mean, to some extent, he's trying to not be super clear because,

997
01:02:11,346 --> 01:02:13,846
and this is part where I would agree with the new chairman on,

998
01:02:14,266 --> 01:02:18,466
is that when the Fed is just always giving information about what it's going to do,

999
01:02:19,166 --> 01:02:22,126
it's almost like the tail wagging the dog.

1000
01:02:22,486 --> 01:02:26,726
And so they're just doing less forward guidance in general.

1001
01:02:26,726 --> 01:02:29,946
And they make a decision and they give some degree

1002
01:02:29,982 --> 01:02:33,522
of expectation what they're going to do, but then just make decisions. The market just has to work

1003
01:02:33,522 --> 01:02:38,082
around those decisions that are just always trying to manage the exact thing that they're going to do.

1004
01:02:39,222 --> 01:02:46,682
In general, the Fed has a tendency to look through energy-driven inflation because their tools are

1005
01:02:46,682 --> 01:02:52,782
mainly around getting banks to lend more or getting banks to lend less. There's less they can do about

1006
01:02:52,782 --> 01:03:01,222
fiscal dominance. There's less they can do about oil shocks. And their kind of tools are somewhat

1007
01:03:01,222 --> 01:03:06,302
limited. So when you have rapid money supply growth and that's contributing to inflation,

1008
01:03:06,682 --> 01:03:10,522
they look at that and say, well, let's try to raise industry rates to slow down bank lending

1009
01:03:10,522 --> 01:03:16,282
and make housing more restrictive and all that. Warsh is already on the record right now saying

1010
01:03:16,282 --> 01:03:20,362
that the housing market is restrictive. Obviously, inflation is still above target.

1011
01:03:21,242 --> 01:03:22,442
They're watching the Middle East.

1012
01:03:22,602 --> 01:03:24,462
That's where you get that energy risk.

1013
01:03:25,542 --> 01:03:28,702
Right now, money supply growth in the U.S. is not above average.

1014
01:03:29,642 --> 01:03:31,442
It's kind of in the ballpark of average.

1015
01:03:32,882 --> 01:03:35,422
The issue is they really don't have the deflationary offsets.

1016
01:03:35,522 --> 01:03:38,682
They don't have the globalization offset that they did for a long time.

1017
01:03:38,762 --> 01:03:41,922
They don't have the other offsets.

1018
01:03:41,922 --> 01:03:45,862
The Middle East war is not helping the inflation situation.

1019
01:03:46,002 --> 01:03:47,262
It's kind of this recent bump.

1020
01:03:47,262 --> 01:04:02,282
So what Warsh might have done if you had this kind of Schrodinger's outcome of what if we didn't attack Iran? What would Warsh have done over this kind of first year in office versus what is he going to do now? Because we have these higher sticky inflation prints because you have energy inflation.

1021
01:04:02,942 --> 01:04:06,742
My general assumption that he's kind of neutral to slightly hawkish for a bit,

1022
01:04:07,402 --> 01:04:11,502
where he's not looking to cut right now because you have above target inflation.

1023
01:04:14,422 --> 01:04:18,242
But inflation is now off of its official year-over-year highs.

1024
01:04:18,882 --> 01:04:21,342
So May was a higher year-over-year print than June.

1025
01:04:21,922 --> 01:04:24,982
That might reverse if the Estrada Hermosa is closed again.

1026
01:04:25,142 --> 01:04:28,922
So we'll have to see what happens when we get July and August figures in and all that.

1027
01:04:28,922 --> 01:04:31,622
but I think right now

1028
01:04:31,622 --> 01:04:33,682
is in more of the credibility building phase

1029
01:04:33,682 --> 01:04:35,422
and they've reiterated

1030
01:04:35,422 --> 01:04:36,662
that they want to get inflation down

1031
01:04:36,662 --> 01:04:37,722
so I think in the near term

1032
01:04:37,722 --> 01:04:39,422
it's kind of signaling

1033
01:04:39,422 --> 01:04:41,002
that they're not going to be super hawkish

1034
01:04:41,002 --> 01:04:42,882
but that they're kind of leaning toward neutral

1035
01:04:42,882 --> 01:04:44,582
to maybe a hike or two here

1036
01:04:44,582 --> 01:04:46,522
depending on what happens

1037
01:04:46,522 --> 01:04:47,522
with some of this other stuff

1038
01:04:47,522 --> 01:04:49,582
but I wouldn't expect much more than that

1039
01:04:49,582 --> 01:04:50,542
on the hawkish side

1040
01:04:50,542 --> 01:04:51,982
on the balance sheet side

1041
01:04:51,982 --> 01:04:53,562
I've been in the gradual print camp

1042
01:04:53,562 --> 01:04:56,402
really since kind of autumn of last year

1043
01:04:56,402 --> 01:04:58,722
which is that the balance sheet stopped going down

1044
01:04:58,722 --> 01:05:03,822
they kind of ran into their functional limit not their absolute limit of how much they can

1045
01:05:03,822 --> 01:05:07,582
reduce the balance sheet under current kind of bank regulatory conditions but they got pretty

1046
01:05:07,582 --> 01:05:15,022
close they're now gradually increasing it I as a base case I expect that to continue

1047
01:05:15,022 --> 01:05:22,422
just gradually expanding the base money supply now Warsh has historically been a hawk on the

1048
01:05:22,422 --> 01:05:25,942
balance sheet ever since 2011 because he's actually been on the Fed before he wasn't the

1049
01:05:25,942 --> 01:05:30,442
chairman, but he's been on the Fed before. And he's been a hawk on the balance sheet. Now,

1050
01:05:30,962 --> 01:05:34,742
some of his remarks recently has actually been kind of dovish on that, which he's like, okay,

1051
01:05:34,742 --> 01:05:38,822
I'm a hawk, but we're going to, you know, it's a committee. We're going to make sure banking

1052
01:05:38,822 --> 01:05:42,382
partners are well aware of what we're going to do. We're not going to surprise markets. Everything's

1053
01:05:42,382 --> 01:05:46,982
going to be, so he's easing the market to make sure that they know he's not like an ideologue on

1054
01:05:46,982 --> 01:05:53,042
this. And so I think that they're going to make tweaks around the margins to, you know, maybe

1055
01:05:53,042 --> 01:05:57,762
all else being equal, I think he'll probably grow the balance sheet slower than Powell would have,

1056
01:05:58,002 --> 01:06:04,182
which already would have been slow, in my view, at least in this kind of post-2025 and present

1057
01:06:04,182 --> 01:06:11,622
and forward environment. And most of the tools he has at his disposal is to try to find ways to get

1058
01:06:11,622 --> 01:06:17,382
banks to hold more treasuries. So it's like you're almost like you're doing QE either on the central

1059
01:06:17,382 --> 01:06:24,442
bank side or the commercial bank side by kind of easing their restrictions to let them circulate

1060
01:06:24,442 --> 01:06:27,602
their existing liquidity a little bit more get a little bit more fractured reserve in there

1061
01:06:27,602 --> 01:06:34,382
and so i think that that he's more likely to have say a flat to up balance sheet

1062
01:06:34,382 --> 01:06:43,782
and i still kind of lean toward the mildly up direction okay i mean i i agree on the like that

1063
01:06:43,782 --> 01:06:48,282
seems to be trying to do as much credibility building as possible right now, given, I think,

1064
01:06:48,362 --> 01:06:53,002
the narrative from folks on the other side of the political aisle was that this is a Trump puppet.

1065
01:06:53,562 --> 01:06:56,762
He's just coming in here to do Trump's bidding. And if he came in and was just like, all right,

1066
01:06:56,842 --> 01:07:02,362
rates to zero, like, no, money printer go burr, that probably wouldn't have looked too good.

1067
01:07:02,802 --> 01:07:10,302
So, you know, it makes sense. I'm curious if we know that Trump wants to juice the, you know,

1068
01:07:10,302 --> 01:07:32,102
He wants to squeeze the juice. He wants to see that money printer go bird. This is just speculation, but do you think that it ends up getting a little bit contentious as it was with Powell at the end, where he's like, you're not doing enough. Inflation's down. We should be lowering rates. Do you think we kind of reach ahead there again?

1069
01:07:32,822 --> 01:07:33,802
I think it's possible.

1070
01:07:33,942 --> 01:07:51,945
I think he will at some point probably try to find areas to blame where possible But I think I would expect less than against Powell you know when you when you you have two years left in a term it different than uh and wars isn going anywhere anytime soon uh so that different than powell as he kind of

1071
01:07:51,945 --> 01:07:56,705
nearing his exit trump already knows he's not going to reappoint powell so he's able to criticize

1072
01:07:56,705 --> 01:08:04,685
him more um criticizing such a recent uh pick would be a challenge um and yeah i'm on the record

1073
01:08:04,685 --> 01:08:06,225
into like my reports where I was like,

1074
01:08:06,285 --> 01:08:08,485
you know, Warsh is not going to be a puppet

1075
01:08:08,485 --> 01:08:11,365
in that kind of more direct sense.

1076
01:08:11,465 --> 01:08:14,005
Like I think partially where the market got that concern

1077
01:08:14,005 --> 01:08:17,525
was Stephen Myron, who was appointed,

1078
01:08:18,065 --> 01:08:19,305
you know, for a period of time,

1079
01:08:19,725 --> 01:08:23,285
he came in with like dovish outlier dot plot stuff.

1080
01:08:23,465 --> 01:08:24,285
Like, you know, the whole,

1081
01:08:24,445 --> 01:08:25,945
the rest of the Fed would be in one direction,

1082
01:08:26,085 --> 01:08:27,165
he'd be like the super dove.

1083
01:08:28,225 --> 01:08:30,825
And so, and I wouldn't necessarily,

1084
01:08:30,825 --> 01:08:33,065
like, you know, he made his own case for rates

1085
01:08:33,065 --> 01:08:35,625
and he had a case before he was appointed and after,

1086
01:08:35,725 --> 01:08:36,585
and it was what it was.

1087
01:08:36,985 --> 01:08:39,025
He wrote that paper on trade,

1088
01:08:39,125 --> 01:08:41,205
which was, I think, a pretty good paper.

1089
01:08:41,345 --> 01:08:43,085
So it's not to throw him under the bus,

1090
01:08:43,185 --> 01:08:45,625
but he was just objectively an outlier

1091
01:08:45,625 --> 01:08:48,065
compared to the rest of the Fed on rate policy.

1092
01:08:48,825 --> 01:08:50,885
So I think some part of the market thought that.

1093
01:08:51,625 --> 01:08:53,485
But I think that Warsh is more of like

1094
01:08:53,485 --> 01:08:57,545
the Secretary-Treasury Besant type pick,

1095
01:08:57,965 --> 01:08:58,705
Besant pick,

1096
01:08:59,165 --> 01:09:01,325
not necessarily like a Trump pick per se.

1097
01:09:01,325 --> 01:09:03,285
So it's kind of like that camp of the administration.

1098
01:09:03,485 --> 01:09:05,385
There's always kind of multiple camps within an administration.

1099
01:09:05,985 --> 01:09:14,765
I think this is more of like the camp that kind of was like, you need a credible guy in here to run this and make sure the markets feel like it's credible.

1100
01:09:14,905 --> 01:09:16,605
So I think that's the direction they went in.

1101
01:09:16,905 --> 01:09:24,665
I think also Trump picks people like this that have a TV, you know, they have a reasonable charisma score.

1102
01:09:25,245 --> 01:09:31,045
They're not bad on television because it does in some ways reflect the administration in a visual sense.

1103
01:09:31,045 --> 01:09:50,605
So I think the combination of he got the approval of kind of his finance guys is really not someone that anyone would object to on, you know, from inside the industry, like inside the banking industry, inside this, there's really no one saying that this is not a qualified candidate.

1104
01:09:50,605 --> 01:09:56,005
So, yeah, I think that it's possible that he'll get aggressive toward him.

1105
01:09:56,945 --> 01:10:00,925
But I think it's just going to be kind of business as usual with the Fed for a while.

1106
01:10:01,625 --> 01:10:11,665
And if he does get aggressive toward him, I think they're going to kind of just shrug it off and just kind of just tunnel vision on we're trying to, you know, get inflation down.

1107
01:10:11,665 --> 01:10:15,865
we're trying to xyz and there's going to kind of tunnel vision kind of like how powell was doing it

1108
01:10:15,865 --> 01:10:20,465
for most of the end they're just kind of like just kind of almost pretending certain certain

1109
01:10:20,465 --> 01:10:25,105
attacks aren't happening i'm curious what you think about just the uh

1110
01:10:26,385 --> 01:10:32,945
technology's deflationary as uh our friend jeff booth has done a great job of trying to make

1111
01:10:32,945 --> 01:10:40,425
people understand ai seems to be extremely deflationary uh on on many levels and perhaps

1112
01:10:40,425 --> 01:10:45,165
a, you know, I don't know if it's a novel way per se, because technology is always deflationary,

1113
01:10:45,245 --> 01:10:51,225
but it seems like it may accelerate the productivity gains that accrue to society.

1114
01:10:51,545 --> 01:10:58,385
Do you think there's a risk of the Fed still assuming that we're in an old world when the

1115
01:10:58,385 --> 01:11:01,145
world is actually changing faster than they'll be able to react to?

1116
01:11:01,225 --> 01:11:04,525
Like the Fed's always by nature a bit reactionary, right?

1117
01:11:04,965 --> 01:11:07,885
Like they're not typically not proactive, right?

1118
01:11:07,885 --> 01:11:11,165
They're looking at, they always say, you know, we're looking at the data and we're making our decisions.

1119
01:11:11,825 --> 01:11:13,585
But what's your read on that?

1120
01:11:13,725 --> 01:11:25,145
Is there a, like, is the risk there pretty large that they really miscalculate this and things, prices start dropping a lot faster than they can handle and they're still operating in kind of an old world mindset?

1121
01:11:25,405 --> 01:11:26,345
Or what are your thoughts?

1122
01:11:27,585 --> 01:11:36,785
I mean, I think that, like, to the extent that you get faster than average deflation, I think they're always able to cut and they're always able to print.

1123
01:11:36,785 --> 01:11:45,725
And it's always harder for them to stop high inflation than it is to reinvigorate inflation, especially with the fiscal situation is what it is.

1124
01:11:46,505 --> 01:12:01,325
I also think that the worst, they're kind of on record, at least the chairman is, is saying that, I mean, they are paying attention to momentum, which is that if you have inflation that's above target but falling, that's a signal versus just what is the number right now, right?

1125
01:12:01,325 --> 01:12:04,225
So I think they are looking at that.

1126
01:12:04,865 --> 01:12:10,645
And so all technology is, you know, basically most technology is deflationary.

1127
01:12:10,885 --> 01:12:20,505
There are certain periods of time where you have like a Cambrian explosion of technology, which is more deflationary than other times, either in tech like stagnates for a period of time.

1128
01:12:20,505 --> 01:12:25,945
uh and so for example late 1800s in the u.s like when you had just railroads and electrification

1129
01:12:25,945 --> 01:12:29,945
and you know just all all this stuff kind of hitting hitting around the same time that this

1130
01:12:29,945 --> 01:12:34,785
industrialization electrification everything and eventually factories in the early kind of 20th

1131
01:12:34,785 --> 01:12:40,705
century that was just a massively deflationary time from technology standpoint um and then we're

1132
01:12:40,705 --> 01:12:46,525
you have other people like in in post-war japan you just had this massive productivity boom just

1133
01:12:46,525 --> 01:12:59,828
this is a very organized tech focused situation that was just massively deflationary in a good way And you know right now China a deflationary force because they built out all this excess industrial capacity

1134
01:13:00,648 --> 01:13:02,988
So they're able to just spin out cheap

1135
01:13:02,988 --> 01:13:05,108
and increasingly reasonably quality cars,

1136
01:13:05,768 --> 01:13:07,528
which is a very deflationary force.

1137
01:13:07,628 --> 01:13:09,148
Like here in Egypt, my background's different

1138
01:13:09,148 --> 01:13:10,288
because I'm in Egypt right now.

1139
01:13:11,468 --> 01:13:12,988
You know, every year,

1140
01:13:13,128 --> 01:13:15,828
the percentage of Chinese cars on the road is going up.

1141
01:13:15,868 --> 01:13:17,008
And it's partially because Egypt

1142
01:13:17,008 --> 01:13:18,868
has this very inflationary money situation.

1143
01:13:19,988 --> 01:13:26,268
So the number of hours it takes an Egyptian to buy like a Volkswagen compared to five years ago is generally more hours.

1144
01:13:27,008 --> 01:13:31,828
So a Volkswagen is more out of reach than it was five years ago for many families here.

1145
01:13:32,348 --> 01:13:33,648
Same thing for a Hyundai.

1146
01:13:34,788 --> 01:13:37,348
Hyundai was pretty popular here and still is.

1147
01:13:38,148 --> 01:13:46,928
But the rise of Chinese cars comes along and says, hey, you can get a similar quality for half the price, two thirds of the price.

1148
01:13:46,928 --> 01:13:51,888
and five years ago it might have been you know the quality difference would have been bigger and

1149
01:13:51,888 --> 01:13:56,108
over time the same thing happened when honday for example hit the market it's like oh that's the

1150
01:13:56,108 --> 01:14:00,428
cheap one and after around they go through a couple reps and now they're actually you know

1151
01:14:00,428 --> 01:14:06,228
decent cars chinese cars have done that so that's a deflationary force in a good way it says okay

1152
01:14:06,228 --> 01:14:10,528
you might not be able to buy that that volkswagen for the same number of hours but with the same

1153
01:14:10,528 --> 01:14:15,668
number of hours you can buy a chinese equivalent which is you know 90 is good in some case depending

1154
01:14:15,668 --> 01:14:16,768
what model you're looking at.

1155
01:14:18,008 --> 01:14:20,908
And so, yeah, you have that kind of period of time

1156
01:14:20,908 --> 01:14:22,848
where you have more rapid tech deflation.

1157
01:14:23,248 --> 01:14:24,808
And I think AI is that right now.

1158
01:14:24,868 --> 01:14:25,888
Now, the interesting thing is

1159
01:14:25,888 --> 01:14:29,748
it's not yet really showing up in those broad data, right?

1160
01:14:29,748 --> 01:14:35,448
So on an anecdotal scale, I mean, I'm in the venture space.

1161
01:14:36,028 --> 01:14:38,768
So I see how our portfolio companies are implementing AI

1162
01:14:38,768 --> 01:14:40,848
and how much they can do more with less.

1163
01:14:41,808 --> 01:14:44,008
I see other businesses from other verticals say,

1164
01:14:44,008 --> 01:14:50,968
you know we're hiring so much slower because you know just like our legal bills are way lower

1165
01:14:50,968 --> 01:14:56,408
it solves this it solves this it solves this uh the bat you know the the amount of code we can

1166
01:14:56,408 --> 01:15:03,308
write per employee just like exploded um uh but it's not slowing up with like nationwide data yes

1167
01:15:03,308 --> 01:15:07,488
like that i think that goes back to many companies are still pretty slow adopters

1168
01:15:07,488 --> 01:15:11,548
not in terms of say give you know giving the equivalent of chat jbdc their employees but in

1169
01:15:11,548 --> 01:15:16,488
terms of how do we actually run our business leaner that there's still a really big percentage

1170
01:15:16,488 --> 01:15:22,348
of the economy that hasn't gone through that funnel yet uh and the build out of ai is at least

1171
01:15:22,348 --> 01:15:26,988
temporarily inflationary i mean when you're when you're fighting over power and you're ironically

1172
01:15:26,988 --> 01:15:32,628
fighting over like chinese parts like transformers uh to to get the power into the into the type it

1173
01:15:32,628 --> 01:15:39,008
needs to be and all that and and so that's that's inflationary replenishing missiles is inflationary

1174
01:15:39,828 --> 01:15:43,648
So building out all this physical stuff is kind of temporary inflationary.

1175
01:15:43,828 --> 01:15:47,088
And that's coming before we've really seen a lot of the deflationary impacts.

1176
01:15:47,688 --> 01:15:50,268
But yeah, in the longer run, this is a productivity boost.

1177
01:15:50,828 --> 01:15:53,728
And I think that at least the Fed chair is kind of considering that.

1178
01:15:53,808 --> 01:15:56,028
I mean, like you said, that was one of his narratives for a while.

1179
01:15:56,088 --> 01:15:57,048
And I think it still is.

1180
01:15:57,788 --> 01:16:03,068
If he's looking for ways to be dovish, that's the narrative that they're probably going to latch on to,

1181
01:16:03,148 --> 01:16:04,768
which is that we expect tech deflation.

1182
01:16:04,768 --> 01:16:15,268
So even if we have these other inflationary areas, maybe we can not be as hawkish as, you know, they, I think a lot of times they do try to find ways to be a little bit on the dovish side.

1183
01:16:15,268 --> 01:16:21,208
they all their finger just naturally wants to go towards that you know that big red print button

1184
01:16:21,208 --> 01:16:25,348
they can't help themselves i want to be conscious of your time here and one thing i want to just

1185
01:16:25,348 --> 01:16:31,528
make sure we we get into before we wrap is also on the ai side but as it relates to sort of the uh

1186
01:16:31,528 --> 01:16:37,268
the geopolitical nature of open sourced versus closed source right now which i think is really

1187
01:16:37,268 --> 01:16:44,508
fascinating we recently saw kimmy come out of china it's open source uh you know open weight

1188
01:16:44,508 --> 01:16:54,828
I know there's various classifications there, but you contrast that with what's happening in the U.S. with these very much walled off frontier models from open AI, from Anthropic.

1189
01:16:55,528 --> 01:16:58,708
And I think a lot of people are looking at this and scratching their heads a little bit.

1190
01:16:58,748 --> 01:17:03,668
Like, hold on, I thought like the U.S. was supposed to be the one that was more open and, you know, those commies over there, they were not.

1191
01:17:04,148 --> 01:17:10,228
Can you break this down for people, at least like what you're seeing and sort of if there's an apparent contradiction there?

1192
01:17:11,228 --> 01:17:11,988
Yeah, good question.

1193
01:17:11,988 --> 01:17:14,168
I mean, you can have a whole podcast on that subject.

1194
01:17:14,168 --> 01:17:17,788
I know, I shouldn't have said it for the end, but I wanted to make sure we got in a little bit.

1195
01:17:17,788 --> 01:17:28,408
Of course. Yeah, I think, so I'll start with the U.S., that in general, when a country enters fiscal dominance, it generally becomes less of a free market, in a sense.

1196
01:17:29,328 --> 01:17:31,368
They get more toward industrial policy.

1197
01:17:32,948 --> 01:17:44,008
You know, we have, like, J.D. Vance was talking about Hamiltonian type of politics, you know, going forward, which historically, like, would be more on the, maybe the center left of the political spectrum.

1198
01:17:44,008 --> 01:17:48,088
right so they're kind of different flavors of that somewhat more top-down

1199
01:17:48,088 --> 01:17:53,608
approach and you know so we have that kind of industrial policy I mean we have

1200
01:17:53,608 --> 01:17:59,248
like the the government's taking really big shares of certain companies and is

1201
01:17:59,248 --> 01:18:16,071
a little bit more forceful at telling companies what they can or can do and so that interesting there also just in general the AI companies themselves i mean that this is a whole rabbit hole there but they kind of hype up ai fears um but what

1202
01:18:16,071 --> 01:18:19,451
we're often trying to do is build a regulatory moat around themselves like once you're the winner

1203
01:18:19,451 --> 01:18:24,891
you want to kind of pull up the the ladder behind yourself and make it hard to to kind of follow

1204
01:18:24,891 --> 01:18:30,411
and i think what was revealing is like you know they were hyping up fable and and how dangerous

1205
01:18:30,411 --> 01:18:33,551
it could be but as soon as Kimmy came out they were like actually Fable will make it way more

1206
01:18:33,551 --> 01:18:38,391
accessible uh to our subscribers than we were going to before it's interesting what money can do

1207
01:18:38,391 --> 01:18:45,071
um and with China so I mean there are people that like study China for a living and are like really

1208
01:18:45,071 --> 01:18:50,611
their pulse on the on the culture there uh I I studied to I studied like their engineering side

1209
01:18:50,611 --> 01:18:56,611
more so uh than than to their political side with a you know a handful of key to political decision

1210
01:18:56,611 --> 01:19:01,291
points they made, for example, when they purposely wanted to invest less in real estate and more

1211
01:19:01,291 --> 01:19:04,851
toward industrial policy. That's a really big pivot that they made and are still making.

1212
01:19:06,491 --> 01:19:12,171
One of the things that they might be doing is that they know that if they make AI very cheap

1213
01:19:12,171 --> 01:19:17,291
and accessible, then the rest of their economy has access to very cheap and accessible AI.

1214
01:19:18,631 --> 01:19:23,931
And China's killing it on cars. I mean, now they're starting to do like, they're working

1215
01:19:23,931 --> 01:19:25,651
on like vertical rocket landings.

1216
01:19:25,911 --> 01:19:28,091
You know, they're ramping up their semiconductors.

1217
01:19:29,771 --> 01:19:32,351
They're, I mean, they generate tons of electricity.

1218
01:19:32,351 --> 01:19:35,551
So they have really good kind of foundation

1219
01:19:35,551 --> 01:19:38,051
for data center growth and all that.

1220
01:19:38,151 --> 01:19:40,011
And you can service a lot in the region.

1221
01:19:40,871 --> 01:19:42,231
So I think they're,

1222
01:19:42,591 --> 01:19:44,631
I assume that they're strategically realizing

1223
01:19:44,631 --> 01:19:46,371
that this is an edge that's working for them

1224
01:19:46,371 --> 01:19:47,351
and it's taking market share.

1225
01:19:47,691 --> 01:19:49,651
And you have a situation where, you know,

1226
01:19:49,711 --> 01:19:51,851
someone will write code with Claude

1227
01:19:51,851 --> 01:19:55,651
and it'll save them time,

1228
01:19:55,851 --> 01:19:57,371
but like a human code,

1229
01:19:57,511 --> 01:19:59,291
it'll inadvertently introduce some bugs,

1230
01:19:59,891 --> 01:20:00,651
security risks,

1231
01:20:00,891 --> 01:20:01,731
and then you go and say,

1232
01:20:01,811 --> 01:20:03,431
hey, Fable, can you fix these security risks?

1233
01:20:03,511 --> 01:20:04,691
It's like, actually, I can't do that.

1234
01:20:04,751 --> 01:20:05,871
That's a cybersecurity threat.

1235
01:20:06,191 --> 01:20:08,531
So it's like, you can't fix the bugs you introduce,

1236
01:20:08,791 --> 01:20:10,031
like the security things you introduce,

1237
01:20:10,071 --> 01:20:10,631
you can't fix,

1238
01:20:10,671 --> 01:20:11,391
and it's like, yeah, no.

1239
01:20:11,791 --> 01:20:12,511
So then it's like, well,

1240
01:20:12,571 --> 01:20:13,871
I'll go pay Kimmy to do it.

1241
01:20:14,331 --> 01:20:16,511
So Kimmy fixes the things that Claude did,

1242
01:20:16,511 --> 01:20:18,571
like Kali on Twitter,

1243
01:20:18,991 --> 01:20:20,591
probably Anastasia is pointing this out a lot.

1244
01:20:21,851 --> 01:20:26,451
And that's, I mean, it's an upside down situation we find ourselves in.

1245
01:20:26,951 --> 01:20:34,631
It kind of blows open the decelerationist camp that's like, you know, hey, we need to slow down AI development.

1246
01:20:34,831 --> 01:20:37,291
And then China just kind of like does its thing.

1247
01:20:37,391 --> 01:20:37,931
And it's like, well.

1248
01:20:38,151 --> 01:20:38,891
Leroy Jenkins.

1249
01:20:38,891 --> 01:20:39,211
Yeah.

1250
01:20:40,291 --> 01:20:42,951
So, I mean, I think it's, yeah, I think that.

1251
01:20:42,951 --> 01:20:55,851
And as soon as that happened, we saw a pretty big call from, say, a bunch of VCs that has the administration's ear saying, hey, this current approach is going to shoot itself in the foot.

1252
01:20:55,931 --> 01:20:57,191
So we'll see how they adapt.

1253
01:20:57,751 --> 01:21:09,891
But that's my current model of understanding that China seems to see that allowing AI to be kind of cheap and accessible benefits their other industries.

1254
01:21:09,891 --> 01:21:14,391
you know anything else they're doing all their back ends are getting more efficient any code

1255
01:21:14,391 --> 01:21:20,491
they write is able to be cyber secure because they can have ai help them with that so i think

1256
01:21:20,491 --> 01:21:25,811
they realize that do you think there's an antagonistic piece to it too meaning like

1257
01:21:25,811 --> 01:21:32,571
everything you said makes sense but also from a hey let's try and destroy the the moat of these

1258
01:21:32,571 --> 01:21:37,111
frontier model companies that have had all this capital pumped into them because we also know

1259
01:21:37,111 --> 01:21:41,111
simultaneously like i don't know how much you've looked at the some of the research that people put

1260
01:21:41,111 --> 01:21:46,371
out around who has been funding these anti-data center campaigns and like a lot of it looks like

1261
01:21:46,371 --> 01:21:51,611
it might be trickling back to china do you buy into that do you think there's some good evidence

1262
01:21:51,611 --> 01:21:55,671
for that and you know how much like is this a two-pronged approach where it's like

1263
01:21:55,671 --> 01:22:02,671
try and reduce the moat that these big frontier uh u.s companies have while simultaneously make

1264
01:22:02,671 --> 01:22:07,771
the U.S. population averse to data centers, you know, not in my backyard type of thing.

1265
01:22:08,511 --> 01:22:12,511
It's possible. Kind of like how if you're selling a lot of gas to Europe, you might want to have them

1266
01:22:12,511 --> 01:22:18,131
like not want to build a lot of their own gas or nuclear, right? For example, you know, there is

1267
01:22:18,131 --> 01:22:23,271
precedent for that kind of thing, like that kind of like strategic, you know, kind of playing around.

1268
01:22:24,031 --> 01:22:32,411
In general, I think that China is more focused on kind of defense in a way. Not to say that they're

1269
01:22:32,411 --> 01:22:37,151
not doing that but i think they're more focused on like they're they're it's like if they're going

1270
01:22:37,151 --> 01:22:42,771
to steal ip anyway it's like why not have that ip be pretty decent right so um you know the ai

1271
01:22:42,771 --> 01:22:46,311
companies are going out stealing everyone else's ip and then china's like nice model you got there

1272
01:22:46,311 --> 01:22:52,511
uh yeah you know we'll kind of copy it um uh i think that and again i mentioned before like the

1273
01:22:52,511 --> 01:22:57,971
20 trillion dollar like semiconductor company uh metric kind of rough rough order magnitude i mean

1274
01:22:57,971 --> 01:23:02,051
But if you add the private market valuations of open AI,

1275
01:23:02,051 --> 01:23:06,811
anthropic, kind of the AI portion of SpaceX

1276
01:23:06,811 --> 01:23:09,771
and then the AI portion of Alphabet,

1277
01:23:09,771 --> 01:23:12,751
you're talking like a trillion a piece, really.

1278
01:23:12,751 --> 01:23:16,371
So it's not, I mean, after a few trillion,

1279
01:23:16,371 --> 01:23:19,951
they kind of add up, but it's not as though that 4 trillion

1280
01:23:19,993 --> 01:23:24,153
like a kill shot for the U S I think the ironic thing is like the AI models

1281
01:23:24,153 --> 01:23:26,253
don't have a giant moat really against each other.

1282
01:23:26,333 --> 01:23:28,613
I think that there's just, there's just low switching costs.

1283
01:23:28,873 --> 01:23:32,953
That's not where the moat is. The moat is in semiconductors. Um, uh,

1284
01:23:32,953 --> 01:23:36,533
the moat just maybe to some extent is in hyperscalers and especially the ones

1285
01:23:36,533 --> 01:23:40,853
that have really, you know, the long-term energy contracts and, and all that.

1286
01:23:40,853 --> 01:23:46,093
I mean, that, that's where I think the moat is, uh, more so. Um, and you know,

1287
01:23:46,093 --> 01:23:50,113
when the best models are only a handful of months ahead

1288
01:23:50,113 --> 01:23:53,393
of cheaper open source models,

1289
01:23:54,053 --> 01:23:56,213
that's a really hard moat to sell.

1290
01:23:57,093 --> 01:23:59,913
So I think that it's less about disrupting that per se

1291
01:23:59,913 --> 01:24:03,313
and more just saying, hey, we're going to keep building data centers.

1292
01:24:03,453 --> 01:24:07,193
We're going to keep getting any IP we can.

1293
01:24:07,393 --> 01:24:10,113
And we're going to keep, you know, kind of just make a model

1294
01:24:10,113 --> 01:24:12,733
that's almost as good for much cheaper.

1295
01:24:12,733 --> 01:24:20,213
um and it's it's it's you know i think they they want that competitive advantage um but yeah i think

1296
01:24:20,213 --> 01:24:24,473
there certainly could be foreign influence on on data center stuff kind of like how you can have it

1297
01:24:24,473 --> 01:24:30,713
on energy stuff and and all that a last related question and a somewhat briefer one but do you

1298
01:24:30,713 --> 01:24:38,153
think that this the to the ai arms race playing out the proliferation also of open source in these

1299
01:24:38,153 --> 01:24:43,533
models, do you think this is ultimately something that is more individually empowering?

1300
01:24:43,533 --> 01:24:47,153
Like as the yeah, where there's a lot of stuff going on at the nation state level, we can

1301
01:24:47,153 --> 01:24:50,213
theorize as to the intent there.

1302
01:24:50,213 --> 01:25:05,358
But does this ultimately all just kind of serve to benefit the individual citizen in any country Because once open source is out there it like the genie doesn go back in the bottle that how i view it yeah i think that the open source part is really important uh and i mean

1303
01:25:05,358 --> 01:25:10,118
and there's you know there's obviously the just in like china's ironically helping with this but

1304
01:25:10,118 --> 01:25:15,038
even just more broadly for example they're like the href for example has focused on say okay

1305
01:25:15,038 --> 01:25:20,918
you recognize obviously that ai can be dangerous like if a government uses it for like big data

1306
01:25:20,918 --> 01:25:23,518
of big surveillance backed up by AI.

1307
01:25:23,698 --> 01:25:25,558
I mean, even my novels touch on that, right?

1308
01:25:25,618 --> 01:25:26,898
So Stolgard Incident, for example,

1309
01:25:27,018 --> 01:25:29,698
touches on, in that fictional world,

1310
01:25:29,778 --> 01:25:30,658
they've already done that

1311
01:25:30,658 --> 01:25:32,138
and they ran into problems because of that.

1312
01:25:32,198 --> 01:25:33,778
So they actually dialed it back a little bit

1313
01:25:33,778 --> 01:25:35,578
and it's like a contentious spot

1314
01:25:35,578 --> 01:25:36,598
that it finds itself in.

1315
01:25:38,118 --> 01:25:41,478
And so, you know, obviously AI can be used for harm,

1316
01:25:41,718 --> 01:25:43,298
you know, kind of get a database and everything,

1317
01:25:43,478 --> 01:25:44,798
kind of the whole Palantir approach

1318
01:25:44,798 --> 01:25:46,478
and, you know, can do all that.

1319
01:25:47,538 --> 01:25:49,678
But it also empowers people

1320
01:25:49,678 --> 01:25:50,678
and basically says, you know,

1321
01:25:50,678 --> 01:25:54,838
that the overall cost of starting a business

1322
01:25:54,838 --> 01:25:56,998
obviously depends on the type of business,

1323
01:25:57,118 --> 01:25:59,758
but basically if these tools are cheap and abundant,

1324
01:26:00,538 --> 01:26:03,358
you really have a lot of tools

1325
01:26:03,358 --> 01:26:05,918
to just change your situation in life

1326
01:26:05,918 --> 01:26:09,358
globally across borders and all that.

1327
01:26:09,438 --> 01:26:10,818
I think that that's really powerful.

1328
01:26:12,098 --> 01:26:13,338
So it's less about,

1329
01:26:14,038 --> 01:26:15,558
there's all the talk about

1330
01:26:15,558 --> 01:26:17,578
kind of permanent overclass or underclass.

1331
01:26:18,658 --> 01:26:20,458
It's more like it really works

1332
01:26:20,678 --> 01:26:28,298
awards the combination of ability and willingness to use all these tools versus the either the

1333
01:26:28,298 --> 01:26:32,058
inability or the unwillingness to use those tools and that's how you get that i think that really big

1334
01:26:32,058 --> 01:26:45,282
diverse separation of outcomes um uh because yeah the tools are incredibly powerful and i think it would be a problem if they were somehow centralized in a handful of companies But I think just economically speaking

1335
01:26:45,802 --> 01:26:47,122
the moats just aren't as good

1336
01:26:47,122 --> 01:26:49,242
as companies that rely on network effects.

1337
01:26:49,342 --> 01:26:51,042
You know, it's really hard to make a Twitter clone

1338
01:26:51,042 --> 01:26:53,502
that actually has users, for example.

1339
01:26:54,262 --> 01:26:56,222
But it's much easier to just,

1340
01:26:56,482 --> 01:26:58,262
your own weights of, you know,

1341
01:26:58,322 --> 01:26:59,822
AI is competing with that other company

1342
01:26:59,822 --> 01:27:01,622
and both ones are running an arms race

1343
01:27:01,622 --> 01:27:02,782
and they're always like months apart.

1344
01:27:02,782 --> 01:27:07,662
that's a that's a narrow narrow moat and i think that's a good thing i think that the ultimate

1345
01:27:07,662 --> 01:27:13,082
beneficiary then is is the businesses and the individuals that use these tools and and especially

1346
01:27:13,082 --> 01:27:17,282
when they have access to private versions i mean not not every company wants their business seekers

1347
01:27:17,282 --> 01:27:24,522
stolen by the ai companies i think it's important to have kind of private alternatives yeah no uh

1348
01:27:24,522 --> 01:27:29,662
amen to all of that i've kept you a little bit over time so i do apologize orange juice.com

1349
01:27:29,662 --> 01:27:31,582
people should go to

1350
01:27:31,582 --> 01:27:32,882
it's lynnaldin.com

1351
01:27:32,882 --> 01:27:33,322
is your site

1352
01:27:33,322 --> 01:27:33,942
if they want links

1353
01:27:33,942 --> 01:27:35,002
to everything correct

1354
01:27:35,002 --> 01:27:36,762
and then people should

1355
01:27:36,762 --> 01:27:37,602
check out the Stolgard

1356
01:27:37,602 --> 01:27:39,282
instant either read it

1357
01:27:39,282 --> 01:27:41,682
your genetic engineering

1358
01:27:41,682 --> 01:27:42,582
sci-fi thriller

1359
01:27:42,582 --> 01:27:43,762
as I believe it's

1360
01:27:43,762 --> 01:27:44,442
technically listed

1361
01:27:44,442 --> 01:27:45,402
in the categories

1362
01:27:45,402 --> 01:27:46,562
Carl and I did

1363
01:27:46,562 --> 01:27:47,642
the audio book for it

1364
01:27:47,642 --> 01:27:48,862
was really glad to see

1365
01:27:48,862 --> 01:27:50,202
some of the solid feedback

1366
01:27:50,202 --> 01:27:51,122
on that just today

1367
01:27:51,122 --> 01:27:52,642
shout out to Brad

1368
01:27:52,642 --> 01:27:54,462
for the kind words

1369
01:27:54,462 --> 01:27:55,362
but anywhere else

1370
01:27:55,362 --> 01:27:56,222
you want to send people

1371
01:27:56,222 --> 01:27:57,202
anything else that you want

1372
01:27:57,202 --> 01:27:58,242
to bring their attention to

1373
01:27:58,242 --> 01:28:02,562
No, that's it. I think that's a good list. And I would double click on the fact that the

1374
01:28:02,562 --> 01:28:07,422
audio book narration was incredible. I think you and Carly did an amazing job. And I'm not just

1375
01:28:07,422 --> 01:28:24,707
saying that because it my book but just objectively the approach that was done was special because you use the advantages of being a husband and wife that can work together on this and both being in the field It a really special product that really kind of came together And

1376
01:28:24,707 --> 01:28:29,207
I wish you and Carla the best of luck with everything.

1377
01:28:30,287 --> 01:28:34,447
Thank you so much, Lynn. And thank you to everybody who tuned in on Noster for this

1378
01:28:34,447 --> 01:28:39,227
live. And thank you for the zaps. They're very much appreciated. And I appreciate all of you guys

1379
01:28:39,227 --> 01:28:42,427
joining on the sovereign side of social media.

1380
01:28:42,647 --> 01:28:44,507
So, Lynn, thank you as always.

1381
01:28:44,687 --> 01:28:46,487
Best of luck with Orange Juice.

1382
01:28:46,587 --> 01:28:48,267
I'm really excited to see what you guys do with it

1383
01:28:48,267 --> 01:28:49,847
and looking forward to talking to you again soon.

1384
01:28:50,747 --> 01:28:51,087
Thank you.

1385
01:28:58,087 --> 01:29:01,187
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode

1386
01:29:01,187 --> 01:29:02,807
of The Bitcoin Podcast.

1387
01:29:03,467 --> 01:29:05,827
Remember to subscribe to this podcast

1388
01:29:05,827 --> 01:29:07,407
wherever you're watching or listening

1389
01:29:07,407 --> 01:29:11,747
and share it with your friends, family, and strangers on the internet.

1390
01:29:12,107 --> 01:29:18,427
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1391
01:29:18,847 --> 01:29:22,287
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1392
01:29:22,287 --> 01:29:27,127
and find this podcast on X and Instagram at titcoinpodcast.

1393
01:29:27,267 --> 01:29:29,827
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1394
01:29:29,827 --> 01:29:34,627
Head to substack.com slash at Walker America to get episodes emailed to you

1395
01:29:34,627 --> 01:29:38,427
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1396
01:29:38,967 --> 01:29:42,527
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1397
01:29:43,027 --> 01:29:47,867
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1398
01:29:48,767 --> 01:29:51,187
Until next time, stay free.