Welcome to the Bitcoin Playbook, where we discuss proven strategies for using Bitcoin
in your business. I'm your host, Josh Friedemann, and this week, Trey Sellers and John Gordon
are joining me for another Roundup episode. Today, we're going to be talking about the
recently signed into law Genius Act, the UK potentially selling $7 billion of Bitcoin
and Trump Media purchasing $2 billion. Here are John and Trey.
Guys, welcome back to another Roundup episode. The biggest news in the last couple of weeks probably is Trump signing into law the Genius Act.
This is something that allegedly keeps CBDCs from becoming a thing and also provides just a lot of regulatory clarity for people, institutions, Wall Street, etc., who are wanting to get into Bitcoin.
So let's have a little bit of discussion on this. Trey, first of all, any thoughts on the Genius Act?
I think there's been a lot of discussion around whether or not stable coins can act as a entry point for Bitcoin and Bitcoin adoption.
I think that's probably true to some degree.
And it remains to be seen exactly what the implementation details of all of this will actually be, though.
So, you know, when I think about stable coins in the way that they have been used in the
past, it very much is like cash, with the exception that, you know, it's issued from
Tether, typically speaking, maybe USDC.
But it can be frozen and it can be censored.
It just kind of typically hasn't been because Tether has been a little bit at arm's length
from the law, a lot of this is meant to bring them into the fold and make a legal framework
that allows for a stablecoin industry to flourish and allows for the banks to come into some
stablecoin issuance as well in a way that doesn't compete with their business and the deposits that
they have. There's a few kind of surface level benefits to using a stablecoin, which is that
generally they run on more public infrastructure. There is some censorship
properties available to the companies that run these like Tether. They can kind of freeze funds.
And then of course, the US Treasury, because they are backed typically by treasury bills,
cash like instruments that are short duration in order to maintain that peg that they've got
and be able to fulfill any redemption requests, that does put a choke point for those companies.
such that if the United States government went to tether or went to circle with USDC and said,
hey, we don't like what you're doing. We're going to freeze these assets that you have,
these treasuries that you're holding and reserve for the stable coins. There is that choke point
there. So, you know, it's kind of, it kind of is meant to be cash, like dollar cash, like,
but the actual implementation of that gets a little bit hairy when you it's digital in nature,
because it can be censored in a way that physical cash actually can't.
But it obviously has the benefit of being able to travel across the internet in a way
that physical cash can't.
So there is a lot of use case here for dollar exposure that can flood across borders, that
can broaden the dollar network and make it bigger and more liquid.
And then I think a secondary effect of this, which a lot of these lawmakers seem to be harping on, is that it can provide an additional boost to demand for U.S. treasuries at a time when they absolutely are needed.
Now, the one caveat that I would say to that is that, again, these are typically short duration treasuries, right? They are bills. They need to be bills because these are, in effect, kind of like demand deposits where, you know, if you were to back tether with long duration assets like 30 year bonds, now all of a sudden you're introducing interest rate risk.
and the balance sheet or the underlying assets become a lot more volatile.
Like, look what happened when Powell raised rates a few years ago.
Long duration bonds just tanked like 25% in very short order.
That puts a lot of pressure on Tether's ability or Circle's ability to actually meet redemption
requests when people want to exchange their USDT or USDC for actual real dollars in the fiat
financial system. So while it boosts bill demand, that's great, but it doesn't actually solve the
problem in my view, and maybe I'm not thinking about this the right way, but it doesn't actually
solve the problem that the US government has, which is how do you create demand for long duration
debt? How do you create demand for 10-year bonds and 30-year bonds? This does not really address
that because you need to back it with short duration assets. I hadn't really actually
thought of that. And I guess part of it is that I haven't really seen what Tether's buying when
it comes to their treasuries. Is it basically, if nation states don't step in, there's really not
going to be a lot of relief for the United States? Is that the thought there? Yeah. I mean, Tether's
one of the largest buyers of treasuries in the world. And it's also the most profitable business
per employee, I believe, in the world. They made $13 billion in operating profit last year in 2024
and have a significant Bitcoin stack, gold stack, as well as the treasuries. Why is there such a big
use case for stable coins globally is because the dollar still serves as the global reserve currency
and people around the world have challenges in opening up USD-denominated bank accounts,
depending on where you are and where you live. To be able to access dollars that Tether is able
to take in that interest rate from those short-term bills, as Trey is saying, those T-bills,
and that interest is not passed on to the user or individual, right? Because the value they're
getting is access to immediate dollars, which likely are more stable than their currency,
but is not more stable and not also solving the problem of the debt that the US has.
And if I understand it correctly, John, I think that by design, the Genius Act does,
it prevents the stablecoin issuers from providing yield on those stablecoin balances,
which in my mind is just a way to placate the banks to say, hey, these are not like directly
competitive with your business of, you know, bringing in deposits, paying a small amount of
yield on those things so you can attract those deposits and then lending long or whatever,
If that's what banks are worried about, which I imagine it is because they need to attract
deposits in, this prevents them from competing on that front.
That's correct.
Yeah, they're not allowed to pass on some of that interest to users like you may have
seen in traditional bank accounts in the US.
So the stablecoin markets that is about $250 billion today is projected to grow significantly.
So I think this bill is very much a regulatory capture kind of bill and trying to establish
and we've seen circles since going public recently.
Their stock price has gone up.
I mean, the US company is wanting to get sort of a cut of the pie there in a growing market
that is potentially very profitable because you don't pass on that interest to users in
many ways.
So I think there hasn't been a huge demand or need for stable coins in the US because
we have Zelle, we have PayPal or Venmo or whatever else you want to use.
or just your JPMorgan Chase account for sending dollars along.
So I think it definitely remains to be seen how useful or impactful this would actually be in the U.S.,
maybe more globally.
It enables U.S. companies to get more involved, whereas Tether is not domiciled in the U.S.,
headquarters in El Salvador and elsewhere,
and have been getting closer to kind of the D.C. and policymakers.
So certainly seeing a place for them here.
And you're seeing, I think, that censorship, the lack of censorship resistant is very telling.
And while we did get an anti-CBDC act, the centralized or privatized stablecoins can very
much become CBDC-like in terms of the ability to turn off your access to money.
And that's why as Bitcoiners, I think we realize, and our stablecoin are sats, right?
We have 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist.
And there's going to be more and more issuers of stable coins, which this provides clarity
for.
Yes, there's a framework for it to sort of make it legal where it may have been a gray
area before.
So you may have JP Morgan coin or Citibank coin or all these different stable coins coming
out.
But ultimately, as a Bitcoiner, I don't see a lot of utility or value there, at least
to start.
I mean, we'll see if businesses, if you can shrink some of the merchant fees and other
things that we know come with, say, credit card payments, maybe there'll be more adoption.
But at least for now in the US, I think we won't necessarily see the immediate impacts
from this act in the short term, but certainly a lot of jockeying and positioning for slots
two, three, four, five, maybe in the pecking order of the stablecoin market and being able
to capture more of that global demand. Well, I wouldn't expect that stable coins
would compete with credit card networks because you're talking about two different fundamentally
different things, right? It's credit versus actual cash. So it might be more going after
the cash market, cash payments market or debit cards. That's more of an appropriate competitive
thing there. One other thing that has kind of crossed my mind, there is historical corollary
that might be important here, which is back in the 70s, the US financial system was facing a lot of
headwinds and interest rates were skyrocketing. And essentially, that means like, hey, we need to
find some source of demand for debt. And the petrodollar system was put in place with Saudi
Arabia and the Middle East to basically implement a way to create some like entrenched dollar
demand, entrenched treasury demand.
And that worked very, very well and has really enabled the current dollar system to proliferate
and expand in the way that it has such that it's so much more widely accepted and so much
deep, so much deeper in terms of liquidity.
And rather than saying OK well the Genius Act and stablecoin adoption as I was saying it doesn inherently create demand directly from the fact that these stablecoin issuers would need to be holding short duration assets there or historically have been doing that
But the broadening of the US dollar network, especially in a global and digital environment and world that we live in,
does have secondary ramifications that does drive incremental treasury demand and all the way out the yield curve.
So I think like that's a historic corollary in that we might be moving away from the traditional petrodollar and more toward a crypto dollar.
Or perhaps you have these now it's like dual mechanisms for USD support, which is the petrodollar plus the crypto dollar.
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business thrives in the Bitcoin era. So you mentioned earlier the fact that Tether, for
instance, they have a bunch of T-bills that are backing their stable coins. What happens, I guess,
with the crypto dollar? Is there less long-term debt that's tied to the dollar system? Or I guess
like, would you move towards more of an emphasis on the short term debt? If we had more of a
crypto dollar, less of a petrodollar? Well, it's, it's, it's still a problem for the US government
that so much of the maturity, so much of the debt that's outstanding has been rolled toward the
short end of the curve. Eventually, like as rates rise, they have to, they have to renew that debt
refinance that debt at greater and greater yields. Now, if they're able to get yields low for an
extended period of time like they have in the past, like Trump is trying to do, at that point,
they would be very smart to refinance that debt out the curve to 10-year, 30-year debt so that
more of the debt that the U.S. holds and owes is locked in at a lower rate over time.
And that can buy them more time to kind of kick the can down the road and allow for the
fiat system to continue.
But, you know, that's real.
And it's really the driving force for why Trump is harping on the Fed so much.
And it's not just Trump, right?
You're seeing percent.
You're seeing like all these people come out of the woodwork and say, Chair Powell needs to go.
Rates need to go down to 1% or half a percent or something like this.
And the reasons that they're citing are very explicitly that the debt is too big and we need to be able to service it.
And so if they were to lower rates down there and still were continuing to issue bills instead of longer term refinancing into longer, longer duration, you know, notes and bonds like that would be a massive strategic error.
Why wouldn't you do that?
I guess the only thing that might prevent you is if nobody wants to actually buy those 10-year
yields and 10-year bonds or 30-year bonds, perhaps that you're just not able to roll that much debt
out the curve. I guess that's possible. Yeah. I mean, would that lead to a scenario where the
United States holds all of this long-term debt and then is issuing a bunch of T-bills to stable
coin providers? I'm trying to think like what that would even look like. Yeah. I mean, right now,
Well, and Trey's emphasizing the right point, which is the crux of the matter,
that the 10-year, 30-year yields have been sort of stubbornly high. And even if you
and the Fed funds rate lowered on the short term, you still potentially have market forces
keeping those rates elevated if you don't have sort of this fundamental demand for the
longer duration 10-year, 30-year bonds to drive down yields. And the US has $9 trillion worth of
debt that's rolling over this year. And that's where every point that has to be rolled over at
these relatively higher, more elevated interest rates, that's extremely expensive for the US and
just adds to the debt burden down the road. And we're adding what a trillion dollars in interest
expense, paying a trillion dollars a year, adding a trillion dollars in interest expense,
adding a trillion dollars a year. I think it was every 100 days. Maybe now it's even faster with
the passing of the big, beautiful bill. So yeah, the problem's not going away. And I think all the
harping, and ultimately where we're driving towards, where the Fed isn't really independent,
maybe there's this, they feel like they just might merge the Fed and Treasury completely,
where there's been very much in cahoots always, but essentially monetizing the debt,
having full yield curve control, kind of like what Japan has done for the last few decades.
And we're seeing some of that unravel now as well with having debt to GDP ratios in the 250%
range, whereas we're now in maybe the 120% range, which is still very elevated and above,
you know, we're around where we were maybe in World War II before coming around to Bretton
Woods.
So, yeah, I think coming back to the Genius Act and stable coins, there will be some demand
for the treasuries, but will it be enough to make up this difference?
You know, I don't think so.
So another interesting thing that was not really passed into law, but thanks to Trump's executive order, we now have, I guess, well, nothing set in stone.
But theoretically, people will have access to purchasing Bitcoin through their 401ks.
Trey, you've been talking about how some people already have access to this type of thing.
But I'd be interested to know kind of what your thoughts are.
Do you feel like money is going to be rushing into Bitcoin now?
Do you feel like people who have been wanting to buy Bitcoin but haven't been able to because their money, their retirement's captured in 401ks?
Or do you feel like if people wanted to buy Bitcoin, most of them have at least some level of exposure by now?
Well, the way that 401ks work typically is that you have a plan that is provided by your employer.
And typically that plan has a certain set of investments that are pre-selected for you as a menu that you can choose from.
And most of the time, it's a range of equity index funds, bond index funds, target date portfolios that mix equities and bonds according to your age and your projected retirement date.
They may have some commodity-type funds that are broad-based.
And it's very vanilla, and it's very limited in scope.
There are solutions out there that companies like Fidelity provide as a 401k provider where
you can essentially move the assets that you've got within your 401k out of that selection
boxed mechanism that is the default for people and into a more self-directed environment where
you can choose from basically anything that Fidelity provides. So you can right now, if you
have that available to you, it's called brokerage link, by the way, if you're able to, and that's
what it's called in Fidelity. I don't know if there are other providers that do it. You can move
assets away from that traditional menu. You can buy things like the Bitcoin ETFs or strategy or,
basically any of the equities that Fidelity offers on an individual basis, and you can manage it that
way. And it's still part of your 401k. It's just more self-directed as opposed to choosing from
this menu. I think what this is all referring to is that menu, that sitting there right alongside
the S&P 500 fund and the International Equity Fund and the International Bond Fund and the
long duration bond fund and the target date fund, whether you're retiring in 2045 or 2050 or 2055,
right next to that at the bottom is going to be cryptocurrency fund. And you'll be able to choose
some portion of your 401k to be allocated in that direction.
Who knows, it probably will be limited to a certain portion of that, like they probably
won't allow you in that, you know, pre pre selected menu to put 100% in there. And it's
probably I imagine going to be a fund that will, you know, as a guarantee, underperform Bitcoin,
because it will include Ethereum and all this other garbage that's in there. But it will be
there for people to select. And maybe they choose 5% that they put in there. But what that's going
to do is that, you know, it's going to create this flow of automatic funds, automatic investments
that flow in the direction of Bitcoin and the other cryptos that are included in that option.
Who knows, maybe there will be just a Bitcoin only selection. That would be nice. But that's
like passive new money that comes in every other week as people get their paychecks. It's something
that people typically just set up and forget about it, perhaps for years and years. And there's $9
trillion apparently out there in 401ks that do not have access in that limited menu to be able
to buy Bitcoin. So if that becomes one of those line items, some portion of that is going to start
getting directed into it. They would be like kind of an immediate switch from, hey, I'm, you know,
50-50 equities and bonds, and I'm going to go to 45-45-10 or something like that.
And then any future flows that are coming in from the new contributions into 401ks would
also flow in that 45-45-10 type of framework there.
So it just creates this passive demand for Bitcoin, regardless of price, regardless of
what's going on in the market.
It's just things that people tend to just set and forget.
Yeah.
John, I know you work with a lot of businesses. It's probably worth at least bringing it up to
the business owners about this opportunity, because for a lot of business owners who want to
help give their employees access to Bitcoin, sometimes you can give bonuses and things like
that But the 401k is just a bedrock for a lot of people financial future This is probably something worth bringing up to clients as you have conversations with them Yeah absolutely I think taking away any additional steps or hurdles where Trey said you know in an employer plan there usually a way to do this
But you'd have to be a little more savvy, know what you're doing and really want to get more Bitcoin exposure.
So any way that people can get even some allocation to Bitcoin through their 401k here in a much easier fashion in the set it and forget it way.
I think is a great value add. Business owners that I'm working with tend to be smaller employers for
now. So maybe they do have a bit more self-directed vehicles, but they're certainly in the Bitcoin
merchants want to get their employees as much Bitcoin exposure as they can,
specifically in tax advantaged ways. So I think this 401k is huge. We're launching at Sound HSA.
I think we'll fit that bill as well to have a health savings account where you can save in
Bitcoin. So Trump making this executive action, I think seeing where that flows into some of the
big banks that enable these accounts with the biggest employers, that's where it's going to
make the big impact, right? The McDonald's and Boeings of the world and the big Fortune 500
companies that have massive payrolls where everyone is flowing through these programs
and may and probably are not orange-pilled yet or really thinking about Bitcoin and that even they
can say, oh, I can get 10%, even as Trey said, and start to get more people, more Americans
getting exposure to Bitcoin is, in my mind, a huge win.
Because in the scenario that we just described of really monetizing the debt, what happens?
The currency gets debased, gets devalued.
Everything continues to get more expensive.
Inflation runs hot again, like we saw in the valleys and then another peak later in
the 70s in that corollary.
So the more people that have exposure to at least the Bitcoin price action, it's still
going to sort of be pay for Bitcoin in this way.
You know, we hope there's actual, you know, keys further down that are being held.
But it's a stepping stone and a starting point for at least to see and help people on their
Bitcoin journey.
And think about the secondary effects of this as well, right?
The direct effect is more people are buying Bitcoin via their 401k.
The secondary effect is all of the people that work within that infrastructure of providing the 401ks, answering questions about it, whether people call in and say, hey, how does my 401k work or whatever?
All of those people now have to have some level of awareness or education about Bitcoin in order to answer questions, in order to help the people who are asking questions about it.
and inevitably some portion of those people are also going to say well great i now have some bitcoin
education and understanding sounds like something i might want to get some exposure to myself right
and then they go out and buy bitcoin and then the people who are buying bitcoin in their 401k
over time will tend to you know overperform the people who don't right or outperform the people
who don't and they're going to look at that and be like oh well you know maybe i won't just buy
this in my 401k, maybe I'll buy some outside in my IRA and in my, you know, with my regular
paycheck and my regular brokerage account and in, um, you know, and some portion of those people are
going to buy it and put it into cold storage. Right. So like there's this waterfall effect
that happens and there's this educational broadening that happens anytime we get some
of these new developments, it's all positive rising tide lifts all boats. We should definitely
be applauding this. All of the particulars of how exactly all that plays out is, you know,
who knows, right? But the downstream impacts of these types of things is just to further solidify
the access points, the education, and the adoption levels that people have available to them. And
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management for Bitcoiners by Bitcoiners. So Bitcoiners will remember maybe late 2023 or
sometime in 2024, the German government sold approximately 50,000 Bitcoin. And at this point
in time, it's a massive loss. They would have made a whole bunch of money or their purchasing
power would be significantly greater if they had just held on to it. People have mocked them and I
believe deservedly. However, the UK is looking to sell even more Bitcoin now, potentially bailing
out Germany from the greatest nation state fumble of all time. I'd love to hear your reflections on
UK and the potentially $7 billion sale of Bitcoin. Yeah, I can't remember who'd give proper
accreditation on Bitcoin actually what I saw, but it's Bitcoin on the brink of bailing out.
British Chancellor, sort of a play on the 2009 initial block that Satoshi put in.
I think that was Adam Back.
Okay, yeah, thank you.
So Adam Back tweeted that out, and I think very fitting for this, because it's hard for
politicians to now look at Bitcoin than if they've seized it, and it has increased in
purchasing power to help bail them out and pay for whatever programs they want to pay
for using those profits, sort of taking profits on the Bitcoin they have instead of holding
it in the long term in the strategic position from a sovereign wealth perspective that we
saw Germany already lose out on at least another 2x.
We have the US here with a FOIA request recently, and the US Marshall is holding about 29,000
Bitcoin when there's an expected 200,000 Bitcoin.
Some of that might be held by other agencies and so on.
So that still remains to be seen.
But from the UK perspective, it would be a significant sale, but again, something that
I think the market would absorb.
Maybe you'd see a short-term dip, and it would just be sort of their loss with Brexit.
You get out of the EU, and now if you're selling your Bitcoin, man, it wouldn't feel great
to be in Britain right now.
So rough.
But that's, I think, decisions that whoever's kind of holding those keys and at the top
of some of these political structures are going to find it expedient for them to sell
Bitcoin right now to maybe support them in the very short term. But as we know, in the long term,
it's going to not look great in retrospect. I love it. I want individuals and companies
and private people to own Bitcoin and governments to not own Bitcoin. They will. You can't stop them.
It's fine. But I think we should celebrate any time a government makes the dumb mistake of
selling Bitcoin at the inflection point of adoption that we're at, right? Like it should
be celebrated 100%. I also think, you know, we've seen what happened with Germany selling their
Bitcoin. The price kind of tanked a little bit. We're a little bit later in this bull market.
And it feels like nothing can really push the price down at this point. So if they do come
through and sell 70,000 or 60,000 Bitcoin. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens
with the price and how easily the market is able to absorb it. What we didn't have when Germany was
selling it was strategy and all these other Bitcoin treasury companies and all the other
like corporate adoption that we've seen since then, just there as a steady bid underneath the market,
scooping up as much Bitcoin as they possibly can. So it's very likely that this $7 billion worth of
Bitcoin, the 60,000 Bitcoin could be absorbed fairly harmlessly in the market from a price
standpoint. And then now you've eliminated yet another overhang of potential supply that's out
there that would, you know, otherwise be something that the market might be worried about coming on
and taking the price at some point in the future.
So that could create some kind of reflexivity or kickoff point for the price to move on its next leg drastically higher.
We'll see.
Yeah. As much as if a nation state is going to hold Bitcoin, I would rather it be the United States than any other country.
That said, I do agree with you, Trey.
And I would like for the United States to have the most Bitcoin because its citizens and private entities own that Bitcoin.
I feel like that would make us a very powerful and more independent country.
I don't know how it's all going to shake out.
And I know that if the United States wants a lot of Bitcoin, the government will be able to purchase it because they can print as much money as they'd like.
But I think it'd be super cool to have a country that has the most Bitcoin because its private citizens own it.
And as we know, Bitcoin has the potential of separating money and state.
And you're right that River just put out a great report that 40% of Bitcoin is held by
Americans, according to their estimates.
So to see further distribution out of the hands of from seizures in other nation states
into real economic activity and people paying for goods and services in Bitcoin and really
having a proper cost of capital.
So that's a really great, could be a great movement here.
So yeah, many nation states are mining, as we know.
I think the other report out of the Bitcoin Policy Institute Summit would recommend people
to check that out.
It was about one in six or one in seven countries has some exposure to Bitcoin, whether it's
mining it on their own or having legal tender laws or just having some that they've sort
of seized.
And so, yeah, I think seeing that sees Bitcoin distributed into the market, absolutely net win.
And we'll see that Bitcoin continues to be money for everyone.
Anyone can opt into this network.
So certainly the game theory plays out when you can just print your currency and buy it.
That's the speculative attack that Pierre Richard wrote about over a decade ago.
We're certainly seeing it play out to some extent and probably will continue to heat up if the U.S. now.
And the last story, next story we want to talk about and Trump media buying some Bitcoin, but maybe front running as a nation state buying some Bitcoin.
Yeah I mean that that the next topic and it probably be the topic that we finish on today But you know there at the beginning of the week there always a flurry of Bitcoin buying announcements by various companies And the biggest one this week has been Trump Media with their billion purchase
And I think that is a perennial question.
Like, is Trump Media, are the Trumps front-running the U.S. government, or do they just really like Bitcoin?
And there's probably a little bit of both.
But it definitely leads to, especially if the United States government buys significantly in the next year or two, then it does raise a lot of eyebrows and certainly doesn't help, I guess, the political positioning of Bitcoin when it comes to right-left politics.
$2 billion.
That's a pretty big purchase.
I think that it's funny that they find this approach, which is kind of brazenly in the face of all of this other stuff that they've been doing to be politically expedient or they just don't care.
I do. I do agree with you.
I think it's it's pretty interesting that that they're not worried about the political ramifications of that.
or maybe they are bullish on Bitcoin
and are not too worried about the strategic Bitcoin reserve
actually ever amounting to anything.
And so they think there's not actually going to be any backlash
because the US government won't buy any Bitcoin anytime soon.
So I don't know, maybe it's a combination
of that kind of political calculus that they're doing there.
I'm certainly not very bullish on the SBR.
I feel like it's already been pretty long in the tooth. All of these other efforts around Big Beautiful Bill and the de minimis exemption and all this other stuff was kind of stripped out of there.
The Stablecoin Genius Act and some of the other things, clarity and what have you, are being passed.
But it's not like that is no way in my mind representing some kind of big momentum toward the U.S. government coming in and buying Bitcoin.
I feel like with that executive order, they had all the firepower they needed to at least buy something.
and they haven't done so.
And there's plenty of neutral, you know, budget neutral ways that they could have done some
of that.
So and then I just I just think like actually passing the Bitcoin Act, actually passing
something through the legislature that would put the U.S. government in a position to legally
buy Bitcoin as a reserve asset is just so beyond the pale.
I just don't I just don't see it happening.
call me a bear but uh i i call it more realistic than anything i think these days it's more uh
variations of of bulls i don't see a whole lot of bears out there these days and there are a couple
people saying that they think you know we've topped out but a lot of those were before are
the most recent high so there's a lot a lot of bulls out there the question is just how high
i don't think we need it either by the way yeah i don't think the price needs it to move higher i
I don't think adoption needs it to continue to expand.
You know, private corporations and private individuals are finding enough value in Bitcoin
without having Daddy Trump and the US federal government coming in and buying it.
And as we were just discussing, it's probably better that they own less and private individuals
have the opportunity to own more.
So it's going up either way.
like you just have to decide as an individual or as a company, whether or not you want to have a
good strong piece of that going up and that adoption, or you want to wait a little bit
longer and have a much smaller piece. And, you know, so. John, any thoughts?
Yeah, no, I agree with all that. And, you know, the thing I'll add, though, is that Lummis did say
at the BPI summit that for whatever reason, the order of operations was what we've seen
around the stable coins getting past kind of those acts being the focus first and then moving to SBR.
So she did say the timeline would be probably early next year that they're really able to tackle this now heading into a recess and whatnot,
but still before midterms.
So, you know, I think that I think around now they needed to deliver some kind of report,
at least that the executive order put out on those different budget neutral ways that we could be buying Bitcoin,
whether it's revaluing some of the gold or.
I think that's tomorrow, right?
Yeah.
Is the deadline for that?
Yeah, something this week.
So it could change.
I think the BitBond's proposal by Andrew Hohns is awesome, to help pay down some of the debt
over time by getting more exposure to Bitcoin.
But I agree, we don't need it to happen.
But I think other countries, or at least bigger companies, should probably be acting on an
assumption that it does happen.
Because if it does, then that's just going to make price go even higher.
And if it's sitting in a place that we can actually audit, unlike Fort Knox that we were supposed to get audited here, that hasn't happened if the gold is actually there.
The verification of Bitcoin, cryptographic proof, I mean, all of it lends itself to being a perfect reserve asset.
So it's a pretty tight window, John, that you're talking about, right?
Like, yeah, just now past Genius Act, if this is the order of operations, midterms are in November of next year.
Like a year from now. Congress is in full blown reelection mode.
Yeah, for sure.
And so, like, I don't know.
I mean, you could probably look up what the historical bill passing rate is leading into a midterm election.
But my guess is that it would be pretty low.
And especially something as controversial or perhaps inflammatory as the Bitcoin Act would be just feels like a very low probability.
So it feels like the window is when they come back from recess.
I don't know when that is, up through maybe the end of spring.
I think it's important to look at whether or not the U.S. government is telegraphing things, though.
And maybe it's not the government.
But, you know, for instance, on Sunday, Trump posted this best Bitcoin explanation ever video.
Very true.
And so those are the types of things that if they're...
But then Trump media went and bought $2 billion worth of Bitcoin that they announced today.
So maybe it was related to that.
Yeah, it definitely could be.
And it's really hard to know for sure.
That said, I would expect if the United States government is going to try to pass something like the strategic Bitcoin reserve bill,
where the government can actually purchase the Bitcoin in a way besides the executive order,
then there would be some preparation.
So it's not just like this weird for the average American, like what in the world did we just do?
You know, there's there's some some preparation in place.
So I don't know.
I think probably that's a good point.
They were preparing people for the Trump media buy more than trying to prepare U.S. citizens to buy Bitcoin.
It's just interesting to think about.
I could go either way, but it sounds like, Trey, you think the SBR is not going to happen in a massive way.
At least the United States buying Bitcoin.
And John, it sounds like you're a little more positive.
I'm short the SBR.
I'm a bear.
Put it on record.
I think.
John, how about you?
I think this window is very tight.
And heading into midterms, who knows what's going to happen there?
But it's certainly a decent chance that the Republicans lose the House or the Senate as part of that.
That could turn over.
And if that happens, good luck passing anything, let alone something like this.
Yeah, I think there's still a window.
It is tight.
I think it could happen.
I think the first stage is just being clear from top down how much Bitcoin the U.S. actually holds to start.
Is it 200,000 Bitcoin?
And then would they want to get to a level where the Bitcoin Act gets to 1 million Bitcoin that the country is buying?
Maybe there's somewhere in between that at least maybe it's half a million Bitcoin.
And now you at least as a U.S. have more than strategies holding right over at 600,000 Bitcoin.
So they're almost at 3% of supply.
Can we get to 5%? The supply is still a pretty ambitious target. But I mean, man, it just feels
like there's so much sort of waste and money just sitting around that no one really knows where it
is or what's being put to use. So there's certainly budget neutral ways of doing it.
But I agree. It kind of has to happen really quick and continue to be the focus. And they got
Crypto Week as a focus. It seemed like there was almost going to be a little mini uprising,
and then there wasn't.
So if there's other omnibus bills and they're able to sneak some language in there,
or not sneak, but just have, usually things are snuck in.
But if it's not snuck in, I think most Americans maybe won't really realize.
But I do think it still would be in the best interest of Americans.
Is it better than individuals buying and putting Bitcoin in cold storage?
No.
But it still, I think, puts us in a position where the dollar has less likelihood of collapsing
in the very near term.
So, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, so I would say
that if the Republicans have four years,
then I think there's probably a better chance
than not that the U.S. purchases Bitcoin.
But to your point, Trey,
politics is politics
and who's in office matters.
And if Congress goes to the Democrats
and we have four years of Trump against,
you know, two years of Trump
against the Democrats,
then I just don't see anything like that happening.
And that said, yeah, go ahead.
One last thing,
and then you can close it out.
I actually hate this line of thinking
because it's very like doomerish and whatnot.
But like some people speculate,
oh, strategy's got 600,000 Bitcoin.
There's, you know, BlackRock has X amount.
There's all this Bitcoin that is within the US jurisdiction.
And if the US government decides it wants to,
it can just come in and commandeer that like 6102.
It's all held at Coinbase.
We know exactly where it is.
You know what I mean?
And so you could just take that in.
I tend to dismiss those types of Doomer takes because I think they're overly reactionary and don't pay enough respect to the actual rule of law that we have in the U.S., which which I think is, you know, still for the most part in decent order.
That said, think back to 2020, think back to COVID and think back to some of the executive orders and some of the things that were being floated in terms of commandeering private industry to develop PPE, to point it in certain directions, to address the COVID quote unquote crisis in a way that would, you know, tell the American people, hey, we're doing something about this.
like we're addressing this.
Those types of crisis,
Those types of crises create opportunities for the government to do things that they otherwise wouldn't be able to do.
And in an event where there's some type of like run on the dollar, so to speak, or run on treasuries, and they need these assets for themselves and they don't already have it, maybe they are able to pull something like that off.
and for better or worse the people in the federal government think about themselves as kind of all
powerful to some degree so maybe they don't think hey we need to buy this bitcoin and have it to
protect ourselves against china getting it or russia getting it because we already have it
within our jurisdiction if there's ever an emergency we could just 6102 that stuff well
hopefully that's enough to get a sailor to take it take strategies bitcoin into cold storage that
said, yeah, we need to go and wrap up for today. So maybe John, then we'll go to Trey. Where'd you
like people to go to keep up with you and your work, reach out, find out more about what you're
doing, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. You can follow me on X or Noster at the Bitcoin Yogi,
or check out soundhsa.com or satoshihelp.com to learn more what I'm doing at the intersection
of Bitcoin and healthcare. Yeah. And you can find me on X at TS underscore HODL and check out my
newsletter on financial independence and Bitcoin. It is firebtc.substack.com.
Great. Thank you guys for your time. We'll talk again in a couple of weeks.
Thanks guys. Enjoyed it.
Thanks.
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 or John or Trey, you can find those links
down in the show notes. Be sure to check out FireBTC as well as soundhsa.com. As always,
keep building, keep growing. And until next time, keep living and leading well.
Thank you.