A lot of times we see gold leading Bitcoin.
We should expect that Bitcoin is going to catch up to gold at some point here in the near future.
So another piece of news is that American Bitcoin is now listed on the NASDAQ as ABTC.
That is Eric Trump's company.
There are other people involved, but everyone knows it as Eric Trump's company.
Every fiat currency that's ever existed that is not backed by sound money has gone to zero.
We're also making Bitcoin more accessible with the launch of Bitcoin payments on Square.
Bitcoin is integrating itself into the financial system, is subsuming Wall Street.
Everybody bends the knee whenever they start to understand how Bitcoin can benefit them.
He essentially said there's going to be a massive debt issue that we have in the next three years.
All of a sudden, we're printing too much paper currency and there's a collapse.
The new gold all-time high.
It has some people spooked.
There's no world in which we get massive global Bitcoin adoption where these types of things don't happen.
So people should just be happy for having another expanding or broadening the surface area with which Bitcoin is able to impact the world.
Welcome back to another Roundup episode.
Today, we're going to be talking about gold's new all time high.
A recent report that came out talking about how quickly businesses are stacking Bitcoin as well as some more activities that the Trumps are up to.
Trey, I want to hand it over to you first.
the new gold all-time high.
It has some people spooked.
It has other people elated
that finally their bets from years ago
are paying off.
What are your thoughts about gold?
Oh man, can you imagine
holding gold from the tippy top
of wherever it was years and years ago
and you're finally vindicated?
You've lost a ton of purchasing power,
but at least you hit that all-time high
and now maybe you can sell a little bit of it.
I think like gold,
typically is just showing that there's excess liquidity in the system.
It is showing that the people who run the global financial system are still boomers,
and those people control a very large chunk of capital out there.
That if that wasn't the case, you'd see a lot more of that going into Bitcoin.
I think a lot of times we see gold leading Bitcoin. And so we should expect that Bitcoin is going to catch up to gold at some point here in the near future.
And, you know, I think that gold in and of itself is something that people buy when there's a lot more uncertainty in the traditional financial system.
And that's generally true for hard assets and for non-sovereign assets like gold and Bitcoin.
is that when trust is questionable, you want to go to as low of the stack as possible. And
in historic terms, that has been U.S. Treasuries. But we're not really seeing that. Yields are not
coming down, which means they're not really these excess buyers of U.S. Treasuries. Now,
certainly we're not in the midst of some kind of liquidity crunch or liquidity crisis. And that's
the real testing point for U.S. treasuries. If we go into some type of liquidity crisis and you see
this big move in treasury yields lower, that indicates that people are rushing to the lowest
level of the fiat stack. But if they are leaking out into the lowest level of the non-fiat stack
being gold and then ultimately Bitcoin, that tells you that they're starting to
kind of lose faith in or trust a little bit less the inner workings of the fiat system.
And they're looking to eliminate some counterparty risk. They're looking for ways out of the kind of
interconnected credit based system that is out there and and hedging against some potential
downstream impacts that are coming from all of the debt that's been layered on and all that.
Like you would think that on the cusp of the Fed about to lower rates, start lowering rates again, people would start to try to front run that a little bit. And you're just not seeing it, you know.
And so what we might be seeing soon is that Powell and the Fed start lowering rates and, you know, Fed funds comes lower. The two year treasury comes a little bit lower. Three month bill comes a little bit lower. But the the long end of the curve stays elevated or even goes higher as people start to price in even more inflation.
Inflation numbers are still higher.
The stock market is still basically at all time highs.
Gold is screaming new highs and the Fed is about to start cutting rates.
I mean, we are truly in weird, uncharted territories and it's going to be so exciting to see exactly how all that stuff plays out.
So I saw Ray Dalio, I think it was just today, post a response.
I don't know. This was at the top of my X feed.
I don't know if this was the case for many other people on Bitcoin Twitter or other type of finance-related Twitter.
But Ray Dalio was saying that he had done like a written response to the Financial Times, and they had misrepresented what he said.
And so he posted their questions and his full answers on X.
And one of the things that he said – and I want to be careful here because I'm not going to quote it because his whole issue was he was being misquoted.
But he essentially said there's going to be a massive debt issue that we have in the next three years, give or take a year or two. And so it sounds like he feels like the debt problem is about to kind of hit this point where there's no getting away from it. People have talked about it for a long time. It's interesting hearing something like that coming from someone like Ray Dalio.
Do you remember what his rationale for was that and putting that type of timeline was? Because I don't know, like I see these warnings and I think I saw that on my ex feed and quote tweeted it with narrator.
no, we didn't or no, we aren't, you know, like I typically am fading these warnings of extreme
collapse and the whole house is on fire type of thing. I think that the system as it is designed
is actually very anti-fragile, that they're always able to pull a rabbit out of a hat and that it's
very difficult to say that any given point in time is of this time is different type of timeline.
Now, that doesn't mean that the system doesn't evolve and change and take new dynamics into play.
Right. We're seeing that with the stable coin stuff and the Genius Act and all of that. But,
you know, to think that there's some kind of imminent upheaval of the entire system.
And on the other side, we're just going to go back to hard money. I just,
do not see that happening.
I could be wrong.
You know, I've been wrong in the past,
but like, you know, the trend is your friend,
I think, when you're thinking about like
all of the levers that nobody even thought
in the past that people could be pulling
and they're able to pull them and get away with it.
I, you know, it never seems to amaze me,
but they are able to do it.
I agree with that.
I think the thing is every time
they pull a rabbit out of the hat,
it quickens the demise.
You know, it's one of those things
where it's another,
it's just one more shoe to fall.
And I think that at some point it'll come.
I don't necessarily think it'll be.
I certainly don't think it'll be in the next year,
which seems to be what Dalio was suggesting.
What is the snowflake that causes the avalanche?
We don't know, right?
But I agree with you, right?
Like anytime these episodes happen,
whether it's cutting Russia off from Swift
or the way that they are reacting during COVID
or name your intervention, BTFP,
it is an emperor has no clothes type of moment. And yet people still are buying treasuries. They
may not be buying as much as they are, and they may be buying a little bit more gold, but it's
not like the treasury market is hitting, you know, some type of liquidity crisis every other day and
yields are just screaming higher because it's totally out of control. You know, and there are
a lot of other issues in the world that seem like they're in more dire straits than the U.S.,
And that's where the dollar milkshake theory comes into play, right?
It's like the dollar still is the global reserve asset and currency in the form of U.S. treasuries and actual dollars.
And when push comes to shove, other countries and other financial systems are in a subordinate position to the dollar such that when there are crises there, those people need to come up with dollar for dollar denominated debt.
And that puts a bid under the dollar system and and weakens those those foreign systems and foreign currencies to the benefit or to the strength of the dollar.
Now, there are downstream effects of a broadly strengthening dollar, which we could get into.
But but that certainly doesn't portend the end of the dollar system in any kind of like imminent timeline.
John, we've spoken entirely too long. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the gold all-time high or many of the other things we've talked about so far.
Yeah, no, it's super interesting. And I think, you know, having read Delio's book on the longer debt cycles, I do agree that the current system is not sustainable.
And while the dollar has been underpinning the system, you know, since Bretton Woods and really in 1944, we went off the gold standard in 1971.
And every fiat currency that's ever existed that is not backed by sound money has gone to zero.
So while the other fiat currencies, I definitely agree, will fail first before the dollar, there needs to be kind of a return to sound money, I think, in order to kind of backstop this system.
And while the system's worked for a while, you're seeing the cracks in that, as you mentioned, Trey, people in countries, central banks, aren't just going back to treasuries.
They're actually buying gold.
They're buying a significant amount of gold as countries due to the weaponization, financialization of the dollar, access to the dollar.
And other demands such as stable coins or even from the U.S. fiscal perspective of tariffs are not going to make up the gap in terms of the deficit and the debt that the U.S. is facing.
So even the way the dollar is used in global trade continues to decline.
I think Balaji posted a really interesting chart on that this week as well, where the dollar underpinning continues to decline, if you look at it over the last couple decades.
So I think there will be some kind of gradual replacement of the dollar as the global reserve currency.
Can the dollar still continue to exist?
Maybe.
Can you have a transition?
But I think this decade now, and as you mentioned, kind of where we're set up from a money printing perspective starts to look a lot like the 1920s looked in terms of, you know, a lot of gold being owed.
If you look at the chart with the Waymar Republic right against gold you kind of have the stability and then boom gradually Then suddenly all of a sudden you printing too much paper currency and there a collapse
So also not saying it's imminent either and we don't want it to happen tomorrow, of course.
But at the same time, I think we're seeing what happens when you have a spend beyond restraint and countries coming back.
And that's being reflected in the gold price where it was stable for a couple of decades.
And now we're doubling almost in the last year and in the last few years and well over $3,600 per ounce.
So we'll see if the U.S. can revalue their gold and have a little more free money to spend on whether that's buying Bitcoin or doing something else to try to stabilize the situation.
But I think as more of these treasuries get issued and we're rolling over more debt at
higher interest rates, it starts to, that interest debt on expense continues to weigh
being over a trillion dollars a year.
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I'm increasingly thinking I'm curious what you guys think here, that the growth like we might actually be able to outpace the inflation and the debt growth and all of that with actual growth.
And that would come from the AI and robotics revolution that I think like feels like it's kind of right around the corner, you know, like within that, if, if, if the U S can keep things going, if, if they can keep stitching things together over the next five to 10 years, which I think is, you know, that is the trend.
Um, could they get a bailout from just general growth and productivity increases that, that come from these new technologies?
Yeah, I mean, I think growth and productivity never fall equally to everyone. My concern there is that the wealth gap would continue to widen and maybe the productivity increases faster than inflation, the growth increases faster than inflation. But would the average person be better off? Maybe the answer is yes. My concern would be that the answer is no.
So, yeah, and that's really Jeff Booth's thesis and, you know, the price of tomorrow and that we've had a massive growth in technology, but we haven't seen the fruits of those labor in the fiat system.
As you mentioned, Josh, being distributed, it tends to concentrate at the top and ultimately inflation outpacing and stealing from the future at a pace faster than we can continue to innovate.
So if AI really, and we have this growth trend that the Treasury and the government administration is definitely relying on in terms of their playbook now and hoping for it can outpace.
And that as we monetize the debt, we can keep growing the overall economy.
If more people are put out of jobs because AI is coming for their jobs and they don't hold real value to spend, or if the dollar continues to debase, that's where moving over to free market money, deflationary money like Bitcoin,
we actually see the prices of goods and services would fall under that system.
And if you're holding some Bitcoin, you're pricing things in Bitcoin, you're able,
even if you aren't able to work as much, well, okay, I have some money and I can
live my life and consume food and a house or whatever I need to do.
So I think the housing part might be the first shoe to fall, where they were hinting at a
housing crisis being emergency being declared at some point this fall, because the affordability
is so rough for the average American. So I think that's also really important to follow because so
much value in the U.S. and globally has been put into real estate, put into homes as the store of
value. But now that's being, that's pricing out the younger person and the median age, average age
of a home buyer continues to grow. And that's like the underlying unrest where rent becomes,
you know, the gap between buying and renting continues to grow. And it just, it creates a
gap for younger people to try to know that, okay, if I'm working harder, I'm saving more money.
Am I actually going to increase my quality of life? And so far that's still been, has been no.
So I don't know if AI or think that AI can necessarily bridge that gap for us without
more of a transition onto in more businesses and people adopting Bitcoin as sound money.
Isn't, isn't there a demographic trend that helps with the housing affordability issue though,
right? I mean, I know this is not like a right around the corner type of thing,
But the general arc of of something that that Elon Musk talks about a lot, which is demographic problems of the population kind of going down.
And now all of a sudden, you know, there are a lot of, you know, previous immigrants to the U.S. that are no longer here, no longer coming into the country.
That should have, I would think, a meaningful impact on general housing prices.
But then just as the older folks, as older generations die off, as the boomers retire, downsize, whatever, over the next 20 years or whatever, you would think that that would put some type of downward pressure on prices to the extent that housing inventory and supply can start to catch up with that and put a lid on things.
there's a whole lot of other implications that come from that potentially playing out as well
right like i'm not saying that it's some kind of like bailout but but perhaps there's an
equilibra uh equilibrating function that that just naturally happens from this other trend that's
that's coming over the top yeah i'm really bullish on bitcoin and ai i don't know what ai
and fiat would look like.
I guess, you know, going back,
John and I just shared a little bit.
I'd be curious to know, Trey, what you think.
Do you think that it's more than likely
going to be a net positive
for people all along the wealth spectrum
for, you know, as AI continues to expand,
as there's new productivity gains from AI,
will that go to the lowest on the economic scale?
some people argue that it might actually help those people because they tend those tend to be
more like blue collar workers that are operating more with their hands and doing things that you
know it's much harder to replicate the work of a plumber for instance or an electrician with the
use of robotics and i'm not saying that that won't eventually start to replace some of those jobs but
You know, the places in a home that your fingers and hands can get into are just things that robotics, they'll probably get there, but it's going to take a little while.
There's a natural constraint on the development of robotics in the real world that doesn't really exist in the intellectual world, so to speak, or the conceptual world that the current AI tools really exist in with the LLMs and the image generation and video generation and all of that.
So there's an argument to be made that actually the AI boom that we're seeing over the next 10 years actually benefits more blue collar people by having their jobs or their work more protected against being replaced by AI than others.
Um, now I guess the counterpoint to that is that, okay, well now there's all these other
people who may be losing their jobs and going down to compete with them.
So, you know, at that point you, you just get this kind of compounding effect of a deflation
in terms of, of general wages.
Um, but you know, generally speaking, there will be some upheaval and, uh, but, but a
rising tide in terms of things getting cheaper does lift all, all boats.
but that doesn't mean that the transition isn't going to cause a little consternation
across different groups of people. So switching topics, river.com is a place where many people
like to buy Bitcoin. They come out with some great reports. They've just come out with one,
I think earlier today as of this recording. So I haven't had that much time to delve into the
content, but here are a few things I'd love to, you know, there'll be a number of things I talk
about here. Just pick up on one or two of them for some further discussion. But according to their
report, businesses now hold about 1.3 million Bitcoin, which is about 6.2% of the supply,
which is up 21 times since January 2020. That does include treasury companies, of course.
The 2025 year-to-date inflows are $66.9 billion, which is already $12.5 billion versus all,
12.5 billion more than all of 2024. Bitcoin treasury companies account for 76% of purchases
since 2024 and 60% of reported business holdings buying about 1400 Bitcoin per day.
In Rivers' client survey, the average business allocates 22% of net income to Bitcoin with a
median of 10% and about one third now keep 50% or more of the treasury in Bitcoin. So I think
that's really interesting obviously that's going to trend towards companies that like bitcoin because
they are surveying their own clients but what are your thoughts on some of those stats yeah i'd i
love to see this report um i use river personally and for my business uh now with sound hsa it really
helps operating as a company on a bitcoin standard if you're paying contractors even receiving
investment and holding that in bitcoin so it's awesome to see the the volume they mentioned over
3,000 businesses that they're serving right now. And so I think with the growth, as you mentioned,
about 6% and a huge growth out of the total Bitcoin supply, you know, some of that's coming
from companies who are sats flowing and have a, you know, profit flowing business and saving in
Bitcoin. Others are a bit more of the speculative, you know, Bitcoin treasury companies, maybe
levering up, taking on some debt and buying Bitcoin. But we've seen that playbook work,
you know, so far for strategy and the number of companies with at least 10 Bitcoin, you know,
it continues to multiply So it certainly interesting to see across industry spectrums as well where they seeing those sorts of businesses And actually the top one that they list is real estate which we were just talking about now So that makes sense in
terms of where the values kind of already been held in a big part of the market. You know,
Bitcoin finance, Bitcoin services, services and hospitality, finance, healthcare is a little bit
further down the list. You know, that's an industry where I've been helping businesses and we're
seeing, I think we'll be slow, but continue to see more adoption. But overall, these are, I think,
really instructive data points that River's sharing, which is awesome, and to understand
these flows and how businesses are thinking about using Bitcoin as a strength to strengthen the
balance sheet, have a look at how cycles are playing out. But I think we have seen the
volatility of Bitcoin dampen significantly in the last year and a half, almost two years since the
ETFs came into existence. And you just have larger pools of capital coming into Bitcoin and sort of
stabilizing or buying up any of these dips or downside where we may be seeing some bigger whales
sell 80,000 Bitcoin, sell 35,000 Bitcoin. And the price really hasn't dipped to the extent that we
might've seen or expected when Bitcoin was less than a $2 trillion asset. So, you know, we started
the chat talking about gold, but I think what we see here is businesses aren't necessarily adopting
gold. I think central banks are adopting gold as a backstop, but businesses are adopting Bitcoin
because it's digitally native, because they can interact and really speed up the cash flow of their business,
settlement time, lowering transaction fees with the Lightning Network as well.
So this is, you know, I think for anyone out there that wants to learn about what's happening on the business side
or they have a business that they want to start accepting Bitcoin or saving in Bitcoin,
this is a great place to start. And there's just awesome resources out there.
And, you know, starting with, you know, River also shows proof of reserve.
So I think that's really important, you know, from a custodial service, but being able to lend a hand to businesses that you can really build that trust in the industry. And then I think ultimately you want to be able and look at graduating towards a collaborative custody or multi-sig solution as you start to hold more Bitcoin as a business or maybe like in their deeper holdings, right?
It's something, okay, I really don't want to touch this for my operating flow.
I might need to tap into it, but here's more of my operating expenses and my saving.
And maybe, Trey, you can get into that more in terms of what Unchained is providing, because we're also using that at Sound for kind of more of our deeper holdings in terms of collaborative multi-sig setup.
But it's certainly from a global perspective, too.
This isn't just a U.S. phenomenon.
The report has a lot in there about other countries where you're seeing Bitcoin treasury plays, but also just Bitcoin adoption in business.
So this isn't just limited to the U.S.
We're seeing this really Bitcoin being adopted as global money.
Yeah, I mean, that's awesome trend.
I love seeing businesses adopting Bitcoin treasuries as opposed to Bitcoin treasury companies coming into play.
I think that's the growth that we want to see.
hopefully we'll start to see the ratio of those things even out a little bit more where we get
more businesses actually adopting Bitcoin as a treasury reserve and then integrating it into
their operations and perhaps their payment systems and receipt systems from suppliers and that kind
of thing especially for people who are doing international business I definitely see that
happening on occasion for clients of Unchained. And, you know, when you get to a level when you
are securing large amounts, of course, as you're saying, John, like you definitely want to make
sure that you are thinking very carefully about the custody model that you've got.
And multi-sig and collaborative custody is a great way to approach that.
But I think like the growth of Bitcoin or companies that adopt Bitcoin is going to happen kind of behind the pace that individuals start to adopt Bitcoin.
Because, you know, the majority of the jobs out there, the majority of the businesses that are out there are owned by individuals, maybe single individuals or partners or groups, small groups of individuals.
And as those people as individuals and for their own personal net worth decide that they value Bitcoin and start stacking for their own net worth, that ultimately translates into businesses.
So I don't know if that was part of the report, but I'd be really interested to hear how many of these businesses also have individuals as clients that overlap there.
Right. And it's probably a very, very high overlap because people come to it from an individual standpoint.
And then they're like, oh, well, I should do this for my business also.
So we'll continue to see that trail as global Bitcoin adoption and awareness continues to trend higher as well.
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So another piece of news is that American Bitcoin is now listed on the NASDAQ as ABTC.
That is Eric Trump's company.
There are other people involved, but everyone knows it as Eric Trump's company.
They did a stock for stock merger with Griffin Digital Mining.
I don't know if we have a whole lot to add here,
Other than the fact that this makes Bitcoin a little more mainstream for people that are in the political realm and especially who follow the Trumps.
But I also think it's really interesting. We've seen so many, at least to me, unique ways of creating new entities and relationships with companies within companies for the purposes of stacking Bitcoin.
It's been very educational for me as someone who doesn't have like a traditional finance background to see all these different ways of companies combining together for the sake of acquiring more Bitcoin.
Yeah, we continue to see the financialization of Bitcoin and all of these different structures from the traditional financial world come to bear on Bitcoin as an asset, right?
Like bringing Bitcoin into the fold.
And the question that's been thrown out there is like, which one is subsuming which, right?
And I think that's an apt question.
I don't think that Bitcoin can be subsumed by Wall Street or whatever, right?
It can't be overtaken by it.
And so the reverse must be true, actually, that Bitcoin is integrating itself into the financial system, is subsuming Wall Street. Everybody bends the knee whenever they start to understand how Bitcoin can benefit them. And Wall Street's just doing what it does best, which is to financialize things.
So there's no world in which we get massive global Bitcoin adoption where these types of things don't happen. So people should just be happy for having another, like expanding or broadening the surface area with which Bitcoin is able to impact the world.
Absolutely. The Bitcoinization of finance and also leveraging current system to get more capital into a capital intensive business that is Bitcoin mining.
And as we've seen the more and more public miners, some of them, you know, really growing a lot in the last cycle, some kind of bellying up when the price came down.
And now, again, to load up on the best miners, you need access to capital.
And so I think having another publicly traded company here, you know, and with some major players, it makes sense.
You know, we still have that trend.
I think we're going to see more decentralization in mining again, where we've seen more centralization, whether that's moving to the home or more open source models, rigs like Proto from Block being made in the US.
And you're going to have more, you know, less of the big players.
But at least for now, it's very much become an industrialized industry.
you need to be closer to active generation power sources or stranded wasted energy.
So there's a lot of that in the US.
So seeing American, you know, ABTC, American Bitcoin mining company going public on the
NASDAQ, I think is, you know, that strengthens Bitcoin at the end of the day.
There's more capital coming into mining Bitcoin and strengthening the network.
So it'll be interesting to see.
And you mentioned the way they went public is a little unique, but it's more of, hey,
this is TradFi's way of getting access to capital.
So we'll see how that translates into, you know, ultimately stock performance.
But it's more miners being plugged in to the Bitcoin network and strengthening.
So it's good to see.
And further solidifying the Trump family into Bitcoin.
And, you know, you can look at the headlines and you can look at like the Trump name on
Bitcoin and what they've been doing, which is as, you know, very much been embracing
it and been, you know, open arms.
But the fact of the matter is, like, that means a whole lot. You know, like, think past this first layer here. All of the people in the Trump administration, they obviously are watching and are close to what Trump is doing. And they, in most cases, will find it in their best interest to kind of follow along and do similar types of things.
And, you know, all of the people within that apparatus, as they start to adopt Bitcoin in whatever form they're taking, as they get a new vested interest in its success, now all of a sudden Bitcoin has many more proponents for protecting it from attack and for solidifying it in a progressive manner throughout the economy and the structure of the financial system.
So, you know, this is all good. But regardless of what you think of the Trumps, if you like Bitcoin, like this is is helpful to it.
Bitcoin is an open network, right? There's only going to be 21 million Bitcoin. Everyone gets to
make that decision. And prior administrations could have made that decision. Bitcoin has been
around for 16 years and it had generally been, you know, an environment that wasn't friendly
to Bitcoin business. Now it very much is. And maybe things swing back in a few years if,
you know, certain executive orders don't stick. But I do think this is absolutely a signal,
as well as the media company that already out there for the Trumps that have been buying Bitcoin you could argue maybe this is even more beneficial than just a Bitcoin treasury company for media It actually mining So it contributing even more to the network
But certainly as we stand here with an executive order
of a strategic Bitcoin reserve could be a massive signal
because yeah, it would kind of pump their own bags.
But at the end of the day,
it's anyone holding the Bitcoin network.
So it's not like this is an exclusive thing
that you can't just go and buy Bitcoin
or you want to gripe about,
oh, why are they doing this?
It's unfair.
When you have plenty of other politicians
that are getting very rich off of insider trades
and doing things all the time.
So like at the end of the day,
Bitcoin has a game theory in place
and it's in your best interest, you realize,
to get in as soon as you can.
And so just playing off of that trade,
but it's certainly an important,
it's not something to undervalue
because that is the apparatus right now
for at least the next few years.
One more quick treasury company point
or piece of information.
The Winklevoss twins,
they've just announced. They're the ones behind Gemini. Some people may have purchased some
Bitcoin there in the past or be aware of it. Their new credit card has made quite a few waves,
but they're apparently launching a treasury company called Treasury based in Amsterdam.
Are you guys of the opinion that it makes sense or is beneficial for different regions or maybe
specifically certain countries to have their own treasury companies to give local people
or people within that nation, Bitcoin exposure beyond just the ETFs or whatever their equivalent
might be.
Yeah, I think there's a jurisdictional arbitrage that may be available in certain jurisdictions
that entrepreneurs are going to take advantage of.
And we saw that very clearly in Japan with MetaPlanet.
We've seen that in Brazil and Hong Kong as others had popped up.
And then, you know, I don't know anything about Amsterdam's legal structure or financial structure to know whether or not there is some type of arbitrage that could be closed there and profit to be made. But, you know, wherever those opportunities lie, I think people will step in to try to fill that gap.
I still think it remains to be seen whether or not these are actually profitable arbitrage situations, though it is still super, super early. Over the past six months, we've seen the premiums that people are paying for these treasury companies collapse to basically nothing.
I mean, MSTR is like going toward one MNAB.
I'm not saying that they're going to get there, but, you know, it's well below even where I thought it would go.
And, you know, things like MetaPlanet, you know, at one point, people were all bullish at a 9x multiple, a 9x premium.
and I remember tweeting something like,
guys, just make sure you know what you're buying here
because buying it a 9X MNAD is probably not going to work out.
And it hasn't.
It's like collapsed under two.
And so, you know, it's just, it's kind of a dangerous game.
And when it's one of those things where, you know,
the old saying, when the tide goes out,
you see who's swimming naked.
And not all of these treasury companies
are going to make it for sure.
So will the Dutch have a new vehicle to access Bitcoin? I guess it sounds like it. But is that going to actually be beneficial to them versus the other access points that they have to buy Bitcoin? I just don't know. But, you know, I guess remains to be seen.
yeah i think we're seeing there is definitely the demand and across different nations and
different capital markets for this bit planet launched in korea you have um sander anderson
and sweden they just hit a thousand bitcoin at h100 they're actually like a longevity healthcare
company um that's been active in adding more bitcoin to a to a healthcare business so i think
you know it's interesting that the winklevi are launching in yeah outside the u.s i mean as it
relates to the u.s markets gemini is also filing for an ipo um to go public and they've been around
for a long time one of the biggest exchanges in the u.s you mentioned the credit card earning some
bitcoin rewards on all of your spending so they're itching here i think right after labor day to go
public and it's again just access to capital markets continue to scale up operations they're
huge on-ramp for um uh for for cryptocurrency broadly but you know particularly for bitcoin
and they've been they were the first ones to apply for the etf right over 10 years ago and now that's
finally come to fruition and sometimes it takes time to see more of these changes but no i think
there might be a saturation point in these different countries though of you know how many
bitcoin treasury companies can you actually have where you don't just see the m nav sucked back
down to one or below one because it just doesn't you know there's just not enough demand or it's
spread too thin across different companies so definitely wary um but at the same time as coming
back to the river report there's a lot of good data in there and just public companies buying
bitcoin that gets to the custody how who's actually holding the bitcoin there are layers of
counterparty here we might see more centralization and it will matter who actually holds the keys to
that bitcoin not just say oh my company has it so that's gonna i think also become even more
important you know as we get further and these trends continue to play out since we're about
five years in now. So it's going to keep going. And one final thing, we've heard news that Square
is going to begin accepting payments over Lightning, that Lightning was going to be a
default option in Square terminals. We didn't hear a lot of additional details, or at least I haven't
for a while. I've heard some murmurings, but just I think last week, Square launched a product
roadmap. And so I want to read a little bit from their product roadmap just to kind of close the
loop on what hopefully will be a continuing story, but at least kind of hear some information
coming from the source. We're also making Bitcoin more accessible with the launch of Bitcoin
payments on Square. This initiative goes beyond payments offering a built-in Bitcoin wallet and
the ability to automatically convert a percentage of card sales into Bitcoin, an easy way to build
savings over time with Bitcoin conversions. And they have a couple of footnotes. One of those
footnotes says the Bitcoin payments on Square feature is subject to change and may not be
available in all locations. At present, this feature is not anticipated to be available to
sellers that are located in New York State or outside the US, which is interesting because
previously I thought I'd heard that it was going to be launching in New York. So good news there.
Exactly, exactly. So I think people are just kind of spreading some rumors and don't really know.
But to me, that's really encouraging. And especially giving people the opportunity to
turn card sales into Bitcoin is a great feature as well.
Yeah, my understanding, and hopefully that roadmap confirms it, is that they would be
turning the this function on by default so the default when you go to your square terminal will
give you like pay with bitcoin i'm guessing a type of of a option next to i want to pay with a card
or i want to pay with cash and then and then you have to opt in if you want a certain portion of
that converted to bitcoin which i think is the right approach right like you don't want to force
people to be buying bitcoin if they don't want to but it is nice to set the default where that
Bitcoin option is going to be available. I'm really excited to try it out. I've been kind of
looking at it. Whenever I see a square terminal, I kind of perk up and say, oh, maybe they've rolled
it out here. And then I kind of like dig around to see if it's an extra payment function. And I
haven't seen it yet. So hopefully we start seeing that roll out here pretty soon.
Yeah, it's coming. And I think it's a huge signal to the market and business owners don't want to
add extra processes or steps to already busy businesses in terms of frontline staff education.
So I think just going and making it another option within turning on Bitcoin payments for the 4
million businesses that have square terminals is massive. You need to meet companies and people
where they are. So continuing to make that push, I think technically it's been feasible for a while.
It's more of, hey, is there enough demand? Are there enough businesses? And then ultimately
consumers who are going to use this to make it, you know, worth worth the while. And I do think
that they're continuing to make progress along that front. And, you know, for me in the healthcare
space, we were at a healthcare conference last week and talking to one of the bigger direct care
provider or software companies and saying, hey, there are actually customers here that want to
accept Bitcoin. So far, we've had to adopt this separate platform, but we would love it to be
integrated in your platform. You know, can we talk about that? And they're open to it and it's
going to take some time, but it needs to come ultimately from the customer, right? Who is this
business's customer? Can they integrate it into their process as seamlessly as possible? And so I
think BlockSquare is really leading the way to show what that can look like for retail businesses,
but then particularly for other major industries where you have a dominant one or two software
player that could integrate something like the ZapRite API, right? To say, okay, I can have
Lightning and Bitcoin payments alongside what I'm already doing or another open source tool that you
might want to plug in instead of having to adopt something separate. Now, all of a sudden, you turn
on Bitcoin payments for millions of businesses or thousands of businesses and they can take advantage
of that or not. Right. Yeah. They might leave it off. They don't want to touch it now. But if you go
to your favorite coffee shop and you see that they have a square terminal and you know that this is
being rolled out, you know, try to find out who's the business owner. Who can I talk to? Let them know
that this is going to make a difference for you
to choosing their coffee shop over another coffee shop.
And I bet you they'll perk up and say,
okay, we should just, if it's literally one click
and I can make it an option, why not, right?
And you don't even need to hold the Bitcoin
if you don't want, but as they learn about Bitcoin
and realize that there's a growing consumer set,
we talked about Steak and Shake earlier this year.
And really, I think we saw a 10% growth in sales
when a lot of the other big chain restaurants
are struggling that made a material impact
in their sales from really the marketing perspective.
So definitely an important story in tech to continue to track.
The New York thing is still shocking.
The Big Apple and the BitLicense and the laws in New York
have made it really difficult for businesses to interact with Bitcoin
as a medium of exchange.
So I'm hopeful that that will hopefully ease up soon.
But good luck if you're in New York.
I think it's still probably an uphill battle.
So yeah, good.
Thanks for bringing that story to the foredraft.
I think it's really important.
For sure.
Well, let's go ahead and wrap up there for today, guys.
Trey, maybe you can close this out first.
And then John, any final thoughts?
And where can people go to keep up with you and your work?
Final thoughts.
So I just want to add one more thing on the square thing, which is that most people, for
better or worse, think of money in a transactional medium of exchange type of framework, when
actually the core use case for money is to relieve uncertainty for your future spending and what you
want to actually purchase in the future. That is that store value mechanism. But
If I can go up and pay for a set of beers, you know, at the local brewery with my buddy sitting next to me, that shows them the use of Bitcoin in a way that you can't just talk about it.
Right. And so I think that's extremely impactful.
And I'm excited to be able to have the opportunity to do that.
You can find me on X at TS underscore HODL.
And then make sure you subscribe to the newsletter fire BTC at dot substack dot com.
this week I am talking about my little experiment which I don't know if you can see behind me here
which is a BitAx that I set up and how the the post that I put out on X went like absolutely
viral and so just a little explainer about what a BitAx is and you know what what the benefits of
solar mining actually are and fun little piece coming up very cool love it well I'm running a
BitAx too so excited to see your piece and I think it's an important aspect of the decentralization
of Bitcoin mining over time
and a great educational piece
for someone to get into Bitcoin
and learn about it.
You can find me, John Gordon,
at the Bitcoin Yogi on X and Noster.
You can follow some of what my company's doing
at soundhsa.com and satoshihhealth.com
integrating Bitcoin into healthcare.
We just ran a really fun challenge
where you could earn 10,000 sats
for 50,000 steps.
We had several hundred people
completing the challenge last week.
So look out for some more opportunities
to earn some sats
and get connected
on the Lightning Network.
So yeah, looking forward
to being in touch with you all.
Thanks so much for listening.
Great.
Guys, thank you so much for your time.
We'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Thanks, Josh.
Well, friends, it's a wrap.
Thanks so much for listening
to this episode of the Bitcoin Playbook.
If you want to reach out
to either me, Trey or John,
you can find those links
down in the show notes.
And be sure to check out Sound HSA
and the Fire BTC sub stack.
As always, keep building, keep growing.
And until next time,
keep living and leading well.
Thank you.