Whales are selling. There are OG whales that are
selling. I guess anything is possible.
The US government is extremely large does.
The US government still have that Bitcoin.
What's going on there? Not every coin that the US
government may or may not control at the moment is.
Did they sell the Bitcoin? Looking at the addresses in
various cases and then we look at that address, see that it
moved to a new place and now it's just Long story short, I
don't know what to tell you like people like you know, this is
what drives so many to look for the next Bitcoin, right and and.
The most bullish cycle ever bro like.
Feels like, you know, the beginning of a true, like second
or third act for Bitcoin. Your life won't be better than
your parents, that you may never, you know, reach the
American Dream. And as far as I'm aware, there
have never been centralized companies with publicly listed
equities whose sole purpose is to use leverage and dilution to
acquire a commodity. They're safer than IC OS in that
sense. The amount of people that are
taking self custody is actually going on a downward trend.
Should people buy be buying spot Bitcoin these days if
MicroStrategy is going to outperform if yeah, welcome to
another episode of simply Bitcoin IRL.
Today I have a very special guest.
I have the head of firm firm wide research, Alex Thorne in
the house. How you doing, Alex?
I'm great, Nico. Good to be here, man.
Good to be back. Just an exciting time.
It continues to be exciting. You know, I don't know, I guess
say this every time, but this market gets weirder and weirder.
Bro, it's so weird. I mean, this cycle, you know
what I've been saying? I've been saying that like this
cycle from like a price action from a from a news perspective
has been the most bullish cycle ever, bro.
Like the president is like, hey, look, I own, you know, I'm like
one of the biggest treasury companies now.
You know, he's saying like I want to make Bitcoin.
I want to make, you know, the United States a Bitcoin capital
of the world. Like it's all the stuff like all
the treasury companies sailors like taking over finance,
creating his own central bank and then the price action is
like. I agree.
I mean insane levels like billions being raised and
deployed and seeing ETF flows. But I mean you are seeing whales
are selling. There are OG whales that are
selling, you know, people. Who are they?
Are those way I don't know. I think you know one of the the
whales that recently moved these 80K coins.
I think Sani is one of the best. You know, from time chain index,
one of the better Bitcoin on chain analysts said it's one of
the last 10,000 BTCUTX OS that's not attributed.
So you know, maybe we're through the whale unknown whale era.
Maybe it's now those guys, if they're cashing out, they're
cashing out into MicroStrategy or ETFs or Metaplanet or CEP or
all right, you have a whole new, IT feels like, you know, the
beginning of a true like second or third act for Bitcoin now,
like it's a whole different scale and, and type of market
participant 100. Percent and the the price action
reflects that right. You can see that it's
institutional money buying, it's smart money buying.
It's not retail because you don't see these kind of
parabolas like kind of, you know, mania phase.
Yeah, perhaps we haven't reached there yet, but it's been this
like kind of slow trickle, right?
They don't want the price to go up 20% when they're buying half
a billion dollars, right? So, you know, I I think they're,
they're deploying it strategically.
Now. I don't know if you saw that
post by Willy Woo, but Willy Woo, you know, very famous
analyst in the community and he basically, I don't know if he
was trolling or, you know, boating accident, lol.
But you know, you basically said I don't, I don't have any
Bitcoin right now. You know, there's more return
potential in investing in Bitcoin startups.
And that leads me to my question, which is like, should
people buy, be buying spot Bitcoin these days?
If MicroStrategy is going to outperform, if Metaplan, it's
going to outperform. Like if you're a traditional
investor, you know, if you see what MicroStrategy has done over
the last 24 months, you know, what would you tell them?
I would say that you need to own Bitcoin in terms of buying it as
an investment. I think you always have to be
reconsidering your theses. I think there's an easy 10
bagger here in Bitcoin still over the next, you know, 5 to 10
years. I don't think that's crazy at
all. When you look at things like
gold parody or you know, obviously like the supreme
scarcity that that is only getting more scarce.
It's transition in a multi polar like sort of geopolitically more
complicated world. I think it will transition more
into a gold like asset, but that also means people will probably
start to get more gold like returns rather than, you know,
the, you know, 10,000 X that you got when you invested in the
crazy Internet money that no one had ever heard of, right?
I mean, it's maturing. This is sort of natural.
I do think like, look, if you, if you, you know, savvy
investors want to beat an index, right, whether that's the S&P,
if you're an active say equity hedge fund manager or something
else, I think it's reasonable for professional investors to
try to beat the price of Bitcoin.
I don't think most people will long term.
If you look at its, you know, compounding will growth rate
over many years, it's hard to beat that.
It's certainly hard to beat it with like index funds, but I do
fundamentally think there was a large amount of upside left in
BTC before it becomes a gold like widely adopted asset.
But but even beyond that, if you're not an investor, if
you're a person, whether that's a legal person like an entity or
an individual, you need to own Bitcoin yourself because you
can't, you know, you get no censorship resistance buying
shares in a treasury company. You can't send it or use it,
can't send it cross-border. You can't hold it in a multi
sig. There's this the actual features
of actual Bitcoin are unfortunately not replicatable
by treasury companies, right. Those are equities.
You own shares in a company that itself does something in in the
case of, you know, something like strategy that something is
own and acquire more Bitcoin, but you you don't have access to
that Bitcoin. You can never withdraw that
Bitcoin and recall like that you to get the full feature set from
Bitcoin, you actually have to not only own it directly own
spot Bitcoin, but own, you know control the keys to it.
So I, I would encourage everyone to build a stack so that you
have that lifeboat freedom money that Bitcoin is so famous for
providing. And then I think from an
investment standpoint, every savvy investor is always
reconsidering their theses and what they own.
And is there something better to own?
You know, the most aggressive investors will look at
something, let's say they make 50% in a year, but but there was
another bet that they could have looked at or passed on that made
75% in the year. A lot of the most aggressive
investors will be upset with themselves for that, right?
So there may or may not always be a better investment, but if
in my mind, from a risk return standpoint, Bitcoin is still a
very good investment even at these levels from, you know, 119
K. Yeah, and and and let's you said
something really interesting. I kind of want to double back
and focus on that aspect, which is, you know, the fact that you
still see, you know, this 5 to 10 X opportunity within the
decade. But I mean, like compared to
Bitcoin's early days, you know, that's, that's not really that
exciting. You know, me and my Co host and
we, we host simply Bitcoin every single day.
I mean, like every weekday. And we're like kind of joking
around. We're like, dude, are we just
like cheering on like gold and the SNP?
Cause that's what the price action movement feels like.
So, you know, I think a lot of people that are getting into
Bitcoin recently, you know, they're, I don't think they,
they see it as much. I don't think they see the, the
upside as much as, you know, perhaps in the, you know, when I
got into the 20/16/2017 era or you know that even the 2021 era
was, you know, I think we got like A5 or 6X in a year.
So what are your thoughts on that?
This is what winning looks like, I guess is what I would say.
Look, I mean the S&P 500 is up 13.1% year to date in 2025 on
July 22nd. Bitcoin is up year to date.
Sorry, that was one year. It's up 6.8% year to date.
The S&P 500 year to date in July 25 bitcoins up 27% year to date.
So I mean, you're looking at something to get those, you
know, 10,000 X like, well, I'm sorry, you and I shouldn't have
been playing Halo in 2010. We shouldn't have been playing
counter Strike, right? And I mean, it's I don't know
what to tell you. Like people like, you know, this
is what drives so many to look for the next Bitcoin, right?
And, and you know, low, but like Bitcoin was a low cap untested,
you know, like the tiny little thing in back then to get those
games, you had to have significant vision and still
pretty good size. Like, I mean, I, I bought
Bitcoin pretty early in 2012 and 2013, I think, and I didn't
really have any money. I didn't buy a lot of Bitcoin.
Even if I still had those Bitcoin, which I don't would
because I sold them at some point back then, it still
wouldn't be the games. I mean, you'd have to either be
mining as a true hobbyist before there were any tutorials or or
anything at all in the community was a couple 100 people or you
had to put pretty sizable money in for an average person and
hold it for 1415 years, right. I mean, it's there's a very
small number of people that fit that category.
Like, and I I think the stories of them, they drive people to
look for these penny stocks that can thousand X.
You know, you see people say, well, it's $0.10, but if it goes
to $10, well, yeah, OK. That that's always been true.
Very tiny number of people ever hit a return like that in their
lives, right. I think the vast majority of
people should be looking for good investments that go up with
a variety of risk profiles, right?
And you can take a big risk if you want.
That's fine. But you know, there is, I think
part of the reason that is particularly younger people
these days are looking for these astronomical gains.
It stems partially from a deep malaise in the economy among
these younger generations that that, you know, a sense that our
lives will not be as good as our parents lives, that we won't
make as much money. The average age of a home buyer,
the median age I think is 39 now in the United States versus
something like the 20s, you know, couple decades ago that
that your life won't be better than your parents, that you may
never, you know, reach the American dream.
And in that spot, too many, I think are enticed by gambling.
Look at the rise of sports gambling is a great example.
These low cap longshot bets. They would rather gamble and
and, you know, risk it all to to get it all because the idea of
long term investing and hard work just doesn't seem fair in
the way the economy has become constructed, right?
Decades of crony capitalism and you know, you know, bailouts and
money printing have led people to gamble rather than learn
about saving and hard work and the savings technology that is
Bitcoin. I think that's where a lot of,
you know, low cap crypto gambling in the trenches stems
from. Is this deep seated malaise
among millennials and Gen. Z?
This, not this nihilism just based on the fact that they got
the short end of the stick, you know, 2008, you know, they don't
have the opportunity to their parents have.
And you know, they're they're looking for a quick way out,
right? Yeah, that's a very fantastic,
fantastic point. Another thing I wanted to bring
up to your attention to Alex, which is I don't know if you saw
this chart, but another thing that worries me a little bit
with the rise of all this institutional, institutional
money coming in is I don't know if you saw this chart, but
essentially the amount of people that are taking that is taking
self custody is actually going on a downward trend.
It's not going on an upward trend.
And this wasn't the case until the introduction of the ETFs in
January of 2024. And then of course, the
MicroStrategy stocks, right? What's your take on that?
Because I think like if, if most Bitcoin is not held in self
custody or at least transparent custody, where you know, El
Salvador, you can see their reserve, Tether, you can see
their reserve. I think you, I think the risk of
paper Bitcoin starts to increase over time.
And there's also a tremendous amount of centralization of
custody of Bitcoin. A lot of it is in Coinbase.
I think it's like 9 or 10 out of whatever ETFs.
They all have their Bitcoin with Coinbase.
I think Sailor has his Bitcoin with Coinbase, so it creates a
honey, honey, honey pot. And then not only that, like,
you know, do they really have the big one?
They say they do, right? So what's your take on that?
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think that look, but
the highest level, I don't think it technical technologically
matters. They're proof of work coins like
Bitcoin. The Who holds the asset and
where it is doesn't necessarily determine or directly determine
governance control over the network the way it does in a
proof of stake asset. But you know, a couple points
you were making. I mean, when it comes to people
holding large amounts of coins in centralized entities,
institutional entities, whether it's BlackRock or Fidelity or
Invesco or Strategy or Metaplanet or whatever these
things are, they do have some influence over the network.
You could imagine in the case of a contentious hard fork, they,
you know, have have some amount of what we call fork choice
selection, right? They could say, you know,
BlackRock were to say, let's say there was a fork, another, you
know, block size war or something.
They could say, listen, guys, us and all our investors in our
fund, we're going to consider, you know, fork XYZ, the real
Bitcoin like that, that could be very impactful.
And it it does matter, but it's it's a sort of intangible, It's
a soft form of power. They can't directly tell
everyone upgrade the way that you could if you controlled an
enormous amount of a proof of stake network.
I do think it's sad to see that self custody isn't on the rise.
I mean, this is a core feature of Bitcoin in my opinion.
This is holding your own keys gives you self sovereignty.
It it distinguishes it from all forms of digital money that
exist, even stable coins under the new genius Act, which was
just signed into law, which I think they they are an
innovation on digital dollars because you can't even self
custody, you know, digital dollars say you have to use a
banking app or a fintech app or there's no way to like take self
custody and you can take self custody of the stable coins.
But of course, those are freeze freezable and feasible by the
issuer, either at the direction of the government or anyone else
or themselves, whereas Bitcoin is not.
So Bitcoin is that ultimate step of digital sovereignty.
And you only get it if you hold your own keys.
It's never been easier to hold your own keys.
So it is sad to to show the improvement in the UX of self
custody. It's still that we have had over
many years. It's much, much easier today
than it was two years ago, 5-10 years ago to see it, you know,
but with real capital and entering a lot of you know what,
not just institutional investors, but a lot of you
know, older people that have brokerage accounts or investors
and invest in other things that want some exposure to Bitcoin.
The ETFs are so easy, like the UX for an an existing investor
in things to buy the ETFs is better than buying spot and
sending it to self custody. So I, I, I, one of the things I
hope is that you'll see the brokerage firms, especially in
the, in the big banks, especially as we get more
clarity out of the US federal government's treatment of
digital assets broadly see them start to offer more spot
products so that it actually becomes possible.
Fidelity offers spot Bitcoin, but you can't yet withdraw.
And I'm I'm certain that they will eventually add the
withdrawal. It's kind of like the pathway.
These often go right, Robin Hood and PayPal both started with you
can buy and sell, but you can't withdraw yet.
And then maybe if it is still easy for mom and pop or
institutional investor to buy spot through their existing
brokerage relationship, they can then also learn about self
custody and they may realize, you know, I think you're going
to have Bitcoin in sort of every everywhere that you have money
and investment. So you're going to have, you
know, bank Bitcoin. You might have 4O1K Bitcoin.
You know, if in, you know, retirement fund Bitcoin, you
might have brokerage account Bitcoin and and what I hope is
that people learn and at least have some, you know, under the
mattress Bitcoin, right, at least some.
You should always have some that's that's actually using the
network. And I get that, you know, for
people in the Bitcoin community on on on X or, you know, at at
conferences, like it's sacrilegious in some cases to
not store your own keys or even run your own node.
But if you want, you know, for Bitcoin to to win and reach the
promised land of wide adoption, you're going to have Bitcoin in
every every possible way that it could exist.
So it's on us, as you know, influencers, educators,
researchers to continue explaining the benefit of self
custody and that that, by the way, includes to the
institutions, right. You talked about, you know,
micro strategy, not doing proof of reserves, like not only
should they do proof of reserves, but they should
probably custody their own coins at some point.
And I would think any governments has decide to have
strategic reserves should also be self custodying as well.
Yeah, absolutely. And then self custody and making
the reserves public, like making that address public, there's no
reason as to why you shouldn't be doing that.
And that also builds a great deal of trust and it's taking
advantage of of the open Ledger system.
Like this is this is where gold failed, right?
You know, we, we have to take, I'm not saying it's not there,
but we have to take the government's word for it that,
you know, all that gold is at Fort Knox, right?
You know, it's like trust me, Bureau kind of system where, you
know, we have this open Ledger protocol where you don't have to
do that anymore. Question for you, Alex, are the
cycles dead? Is is, you know, is or is it
just evolving now that, you know, bitcoins definitely grown
up. It's definitely it heading into
the institutional era. Are these traditional four year
cycles that we've seen throughout Bitcoin's lifetime?
You know, are they still in tax? Good topic everyone's been
talking about. I think back until last winter
when the ETFs launched, I think a lot of people, you see the
passive flows in the ETFs and, and, and how they unlock capital
had a lot of people wondering that.
And I, I, I think, I think there is some truth that the cycles
will not look the same as they did in the past.
I think that is right. I, I think there will always be
business cycles in credit and, and monitor as long as it
certainly as long as we have Fiat currencies, you know,
there's always credit expansion and credit retraction.
And, and that is also sort of a natural human tendency.
We tend to get really excited, do a bunch of stuff or make much
of investment or build a bunch of things and then we usually
get over our skis a little bit and then have to pull it back
and then everybody calms down again.
And then you got right like that's kind of a natural human
behavior even outside of economies, like, you know, even
working on your house or buying, working on your car, whatever it
is like we tend to sort of overdo it and then pull it back
and then get comfortable again. So we will have cycles.
I just don't think that, you know, obviously, to the extent
that that cycles were driven by Bitcoin issuance, right?
The having cycle, I don't think those really matter that I don't
think they really probably have mattered for at least maybe one,
but maybe even 2 having cycles cause.
Right in an in an absolute basis, the production and net
Bitcoin instruments daily or weekly monthly, yearly, whatever
time for me to look at is so minimal at this point compared
to the daily transacted volume on the network or the traded
volume globally on exchanges and OTC as to be basically, you know
unimportant, right. So I don't think it's would be
driven by the having, I do think that you get people who take
gains, then they look with those gains for the next investment.
And so the intra crypto cyclicality, right where it used
to be like Bitcoin all time high December 2017, ether all time
high January 2018, a bunch of low cap all coins did stuff and
then everything you know, goes to 0, not just Bitcoin didn't go
to 0, but most other things did. And then you restart that.
I, I think that still happens in microcosms in this market.
You, you've kind of had it the last couple weeks with ether
running, you know, 30% last week alone.
But I still don't think that you're going to, I think those
are all so dampened. I think, you know, capital in a
Bitcoin ETF is not like Bitcoin held on Polonia X in 2017, where
it's very easy to trade the Bitcoin for an old coin, right?
Like these new pots of capital are stickier, right?
Whether it's strategy or these other treasury companies or the
ETF. So less likely to rotate than in
past years, the investors are more mature, less likely to be
enticed by the next quick game that they could get the Bitcoin
having's are a de minimis effect.
And now you have these passive bids, right.
And if you start seeing certainly if you start seeing
governments get involved or you know people earnestly doing it
in their retirement accounts, which has been a passive bid for
US equities for years, right. Like that should all dampen
volatility in the cyclicality. So I, I don't have a grain, it's
not a firm yes or no Nico, but I, I do think the cycles, if
they exist, will look a lot different.
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I I think you that is a is a good answer because it, it,
there's a lot of nuance required to answer that question.
It isn't just a yes or no answer.
It's it's you have to you have to give the contacts.
So I did enjoy that answer. So my second question is did I
completely lost my friend of thought?
So I'm going to look at my notes.
OK, here we go. So oh, OK, I remember now.
Do you think that the do you think that the Bitcoin ETF Wow,
this is such a I love asking this question.
You think that the Bitcoin ETFs are the Iclas?
I don't think the ETFs. No, sorry, not ETFs, I
apologize. The Bitcoin treasury companies.
Man, and you know, it's a good question.
I would say first, it's a very good question there, you know,
without giving a, I'll give a nuanced answer in a second, but
I think shorthand it is fair to say that yes, they possibly are.
They're the mean coins of last cycle, the IC OS of the NFTS of
21 and possibly the IC OS of 17. It, it is an investment fad.
It is novel. It is totally novel.
There's never been, I mean, we're tracking over 120 digital
asset treasury companies. I don't know if Bitcoiners are
aware, but it's not just ether. I mean, there's a Chinese
limousine company doing an XRP strategy.
I saw there's a new Dogecoin strategy.
So there's a bunch of these. As far as I'm aware, there have
never been centralized companies with publicly listed equities
whose sole purpose is to use leverage and dilution to acquire
a commodity at scale. Never heard of that.
So it's new, just like those were new.
I think it could be drawing demand from spot Bitcoin.
I think that's possible. On the other hand, a lot of
these are buying spot Bitcoin, you know, and I will say, unlike
the ICO, if they're publicly listed, U.S. companies generally
publicly listed in any credible jurisdiction.
But let's talk about US equities.
They do come with significant disclosure and oversight regimes
that are meant to protect investors.
So unlike IC OS from 2017, when a white paper alone could let an
issuer raise a billion dollars with basically no promises and
no standard for disclosure, that's not how publicly listed
US equities work. So they're, they're, they're
safer than IC OS in that sense. And they are a fad.
And who knows will they be here to stay?
I, you know, I think certainly some will make it through and
become long lasting. I, I don't think strategy is
going anywhere. You know, with the Bitcoin ones
in particular, you wonder, you know, who else can cross that
chasm and last. But hey, some of the things,
some of the projects that raise IC OS are also still here.
Not certainly not all of them, but not all of them you know
didn't launch and or disappeared or were outright scams.
They might have resulted in projects there or block chains
you don't think are useful, but some of them do exist so.
I I I saw the link, CEO or sheet to the wrongs of Trump at the
White House the other day. I have no idea what link.
I mean, I would say not that I, I without passing judgement one
way or another on the project and project, it does exist.
It did launch. It didn't rug.
It might not be good. I don't know a lot about link.
I don't know if it's a great investment or a bad one or
anything like that. But like another one, Cardano,
which you know, I happen to think is a mostly useless
blockchain. It did launch it.
It is a real blockchain. There are it does operate right
like so you know, even if you end up thinking that they're not
good investments, they doesn't mean they're all scams, even
though many IC OS were literally scams, right.
Like where people, you know, delete the white paper right
after raising and disappear on the Internet, right.
Like that is very unlikely to happen with the treasury
companies because they are well at least the ones that are in
the US and going and trying to be publicly listed companies.
They're highly regulated, right. So I would say that's a key
difference. But I think from the investment
standpoint, like I have to think just surely many of these will
fail, right? Or they will fail.
I think a lot of them will fail to actually raise the money that
they've announced they're trying to raise.
And so they won't even really launch, I think is a
possibility. Also, I do think though, even
letting I, you know, I did some of the comparison, direct
comparisons between the two. But even setting that aside, it
does feel like if we just think about like, you know, hype
narrative, like I think about like IC OS in 17, NFTS were a
huge hype narrative in 21, meme coins in 24.
Like this does kind of feel like the 25 like hype narrative in
broader crypto markets. And I mean, you, you have to
give credit separately, not maybe blame too for the
explosion of them. But Sailor has has grown a
behemoth and he's found a way to tap pools of traditional capital
and steer them towards Bitcoin investment in ways that I think
will will honestly be studied for decades.
Right. I mean truly a a feat of
financial engineering to achieve a specified end.
That has never been done and I I don't think many will be able to
successfully copy it. Yeah, I, I completely agree.
And and and it seems like he's created a product to target
every pool of capital, right. Like it's like one for the
bonds, one for, you know, like the old investors, one for like,
you know, people that just are holding cat like there's a
product for every single thing, which is absolutely fascinating.
So I agree the financial engineering there has been, you
know, absolutely crazy to say the least.
I just want to get your thoughts on this because I don't think
we've I don't think you've come on the show.
I. Think it was on this year I
think. It's been a while since you're
on the show, but so, yeah, so it's a totally different world.
We won, right? Which is massive because last
year we were like under attack. Our industry was under attack.
November was a big victory. And many Bitcoiners, you know, I
remember calling this out when it became apparent as soon as
they arrested the samurai wall of developers, I said, like,
guys, listen, let's be real here.
It's probably not a good idea that Biden wins another
election. And then I remember that tweet
blew up, which tells me that it was everybody.
It was on everyone's subconscious mind, but no one
wanted to say the quiet part out loud.
And then a couple weeks later you have Trump on the campaign
trail basically saying no CBDC's and everyone's like, yeah.
And then he's like, you guys like that no CBDC's.
And I remember I was telling my Co host AFTI, I was like, all
right, dude, like probably like two or three weeks, he's
probably going to say Bitcoin. And then he goes to Libertarian,
you know, convention. He's like, all right, if you
vote for me, I'll end Operation Truck Point 2.0.
I'll free Ross and Bitcoin and everyone's like I'll keep
Elizabeth for new game and conference bitcoins.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Yeah, it was.
It was hilarious. It was hilarious.
The guy's a character and we haven't talked.
We haven't talked since then. So like, bro, like this is a
totally different world. The executive order, the
strategic Bitcoin Reserve. They're supposed to be something
that came out today, by the way. I don't know.
Yeah, I don't. I know if it.
Doesn't come out. Enormous amount of talk about
that. The Presidential Working Group
report also, Nico, I mean, an enormous amount has happened,
OK, like the banking regulators, the Fed, the FDICOCC, they've
largely rescinded their antagonistic rules.
The OCC rescinded their Biden era stuff that prevented banks
from touching blockchains at all, touching Bitcoin,
custodying it. They just put out guidance for
bank risk managers, all three together saying how to custody.
And it's literally a checklist for yeah, like it is a risk for
a bank's risk manager to say if you demonstrate to us that
you're doing these things, then you can custody Bitcoin.
And that's that's normal for a risk manager to need to know
what to cover and how to design their custody program or
whatever the product is so that when the bank examiner comes,
they'll have done it right. So important steps there.
SE CS done an enormous amount on, on a variety of things.
They said mining pools are not securities, right?
Your interest as a miner when you send, you know, your, your
hash shares to a mining pool does it does not count that
relationship between you and the pools.
Not a security. They've said tons of other stuff
too on mostly like crypto related, but tons, tons coming
out of the SEC Yeah, you had the presidential working group which
ordered the government. That's an executive order on, on
like the second or third day of the presidency that orders the
government agencies across the government to look at like every
crypto related policy that may or may not be within the
regulatory jurisdiction, decide if it's good or bad, if it
should be changed, if there's some that aren't, don't exist,
but should exist, and then go ahead and make those changes.
And, and, and it also ordered a conglomerate of those agencies,
sort of led by the Treasury Department to write this big
report, the Presidential Working group report on digital asset
markets that is due from that working group to the White House
today, on July 22nd. It doesn't mean that the White
House will release it today. In fact, I expect they'll
probably publish it next week before the end of the month.
That's going to have a giant pile of recommendations of
government policy as it relates to Bitcoin and digital assets
across the the gamut. And then obviously they have the
strategic Bitcoin Reserve executive order, which I mean,
that really went a funny way. You remember it was that weekend
and Trump tweeted that ADDA, XRP and Seoul would be included in
the reserve and he hadn't even said Bitcoin yet.
Dude, and, and I remember and I was, I had some like I had some
like sources like in DC and they were telling me what was going
on in the backroom, Alex. And it was basically the Ripple
lobby was like putting a tremendous amount of pressure on
on the Trump administration. And like I was just and I
remember I was getting these texts like Nico, retweet this
from the simply account, like you have to put attention to
this. And it was it was the Ripple
guys like trying to buy themselves into the room.
But what I find absolutely hilarious is master stroke,
right? Like a strategic Bitcoin reserve
and in a digital asset stockpile.
And then you see Brad Garlinghouse and like the the
corner, the corner side of the table when he had it.
So it was just incredible political maneuvering by the
Trump administration. I mean, we got everything we
wanted. And well, that was it was almost
like that, you know, there was a Politico story that also went
behind the scenes after the fact and explained some of how that
that ripple thing got added and the seemed like they overplayed
their hand and it backfired significantly.
You even had a cataloguing that day on that Sunday and Monday,
you had Brian Armstrong come out and say it should be Bitcoin
only. You had major like crypto
executives that certainly have interests outside of just
Bitcoin saying, OK, wait a SEC, XRP and Adda and Seoul like this
has gone too far. And it was the backlash that I
think resulted in the strong language we got.
That was because, remember, what we end up getting in that
executive order is a prohibition on the government ever selling
its Bitcoin, right? And then an order to parts of
the government treasury, mostly to develop strategies that are
budget neutral to get more Bitcoin while simultaneously
saying that the the digital asset stockpile everything other
than Bitcoin that the government has.
They should try to keep it, but they don't have to.
They're not prohibited from selling like they are with the
Bitcoin, but they are prohibited from buying.
So it's like Bitcoin ended up getting exactly what it wanted
for the strategic reserve and really everything else is
technically in a sell only mode at the US government.
They can get more through civil asset forfeiture or criminal
penalties and stuff like that, but they can't buy it and
they're not prohibited from selling it.
So it went from like, wait a SEC, it's going to be like
Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Soul and ADDA on a Sunday to that
Thursday. I think Thursday night when they
released it, it was like, oh wait, it's Bitcoin only and
everything else like could be sold.
Yeah, dude, it was, it was like the art of the deal, you know,
because I went through like emotions, you know, like I was
like, oh, this is such a bad ass.
And then I was like, it's Bitcoin only.
Like, yeah, orange man, orange man.
Good. But yeah, I remember that.
Like it was, it was, it was so cryptic.
You know, it was like, it was like he's not mentioning
Bitcoin. But now you look back in
hindsight and you could tell he did it on purpose.
Right, I don't know, I. Don't know if he prompted it on
very very well. I'm not.
It does look like art of the deal.
I think it could also just be like wildly overplaying your
hand from, not from Trump, but from the, you know, the Alcorn
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Check out leaden dot IO today. So another thing too that came
out recently and shout out Lola Litz, which is apparently the US
government doesn't have as much Bitcoin as originally believed
that. It seems like they sold a lot
during the last days of the Biden administration, which a
lot of us were actually suspecting they were doing.
But we don't know this for sure. This is only data coming out of
US Marshall's office or what not.
But what's your take on that? I'm sure you have more you've
done more research on this specific topic, like did they
sell the Bitcoin? Does the US governance still
have that Bitcoin? What's going on?
Elegance, right? I think that the commonly
accepted crypto market view of how much Bitcoin the government
probably has is about 200,000 coins, right, which is billions
of dollars. And that that list that is based
on on chain attribution, that is mostly related to looking at the
addresses in various cases that the government says they from
which the government says they seized coins and then seeing
where they move them to. And if they haven't moved since,
right? So like, you know, if Alex is
under arrest and they put in the thing that we seized, Alex is
like, you know, BC1Q, whatever Bitcoin.
And then we look at that address, see that it moved to a
new place and now it's just inert there.
We assume that new place is the government, right?
And you Add all that up and it still looks like hundreds of
thousands of Bitcoin. I got to give Lil elites
credits. Great piece of journalism, but
it is what you said. It is what the US Marshals Asset
Forfeiture Division says that it holds or owns, I should say, so
that it controls, right? It's a list of addresses that it
controls. the US government's very big, OK.
Not everybody, not every coin that the US government may or
may not control at the moment is in the possession of the US
Marshals Asset Forfeiture Division, right?
And part of me thinks that she asked there because David Bailey
had put out a bounty for that specific thing, right?
Like, he didn't say how much Bitcoin does the government
have. He said how much does the US
Marshals have was the actual bounty.
So I, I, I think the, you know, the US Marshals are not the US
Treasury Department. I think one of the reasons
people, we, we still haven't seen the coins move.
Almost none of from those addresses that people think
belong to the government, they haven't moved.
So if you believe they were sold, I think the idea is that,
well, if the government say, let's say some of those
addresses are at Coinbase and the Coinbase is holding it for
the government, Coinbase, just like you know, coins are
fungible. So Coinbase can sell those coins
on behalf of the government while actually just delivering
other coins and not moving the coins, right?
Delivering other coins to the buyer by re ledgering them
internally could be done so they could be sold.
To be clear, we don't know exactly what has or hasn't been
sold. But I would caution, I don't
think the government went from 200,000 coins under its
possession to what 20,000 is what Marshall says at all.
And I think there are also 93 US attorney districts, right?
Those are the, the law, the criminal lawyers for the, for
the Department of Justice, right?
There's the Southern District of New York and the Eastern
District of New York and the whatever, right?
They're all over. Like they have a level of
autonomy. They don't when they arrest, you
know, a criminal and find Bitcoin on a Ledger or a cold
card, they don't, they're not required to instantly send it to
the marshals either. So I think the the process of
gathering the coins for the reserve itself is
technologically and logistically complicated.
And it's also legally complicated because there are
civil asset forfeiture laws there.
The government is not necessarily free to do whatever
it wants with things that it confiscates as as part of
criminal investigations or as the proceeds of crime.
So it's possible that maybe the Marshals holds a lot more, but
in the context of setting up the reserve and doing legal analysis
and every little piece of coin that might be there, the
Treasury might have said, Hey, these like 80,000 coins that
you're holding, those are going to be ours.
So those are no longer in your control, although we choose at
the moment not to move in one chain, right?
So you, it, it is even possible that the 28 K that the marshals,
it's possible that they've identified is every coin that
won't be part of the reserve. And that the others, they, they
didn't say, here's every, you know, key key that we've ever
held the, the keys to. Here's every UTX that we were
held the keys to, right? It's possible that by the time
that I think that the snapshot is what, March 31st.
So like that would be pretty quick after the SBREO came out,
which I think was like March 6. But it's possible that Treasury
said, look, those hundred, maybe they had 128 and Treasury said,
hey, actually those hundred, we've done the work and those
are ours now, but don't move them.
We don't want to move them yet. So like it, it really, I don't
actually think it tells you much.
I guess the Long story short about how many coins the
government actually possesses or how many coins will or won't end
up in the strategic reserve. But it is a fantastic, I think
we know that, you know, the Marshall's asset forfeiture
division has only those, you know, somewhat about 30,000
coins. I just don't think it tells us
that they sold, and it doesn't really help us in figuring out
where the which part of the government thinks it controls
which other coins. And so I heard a rumor, and let
me know if you believe it's true, but I heard the rumor that
basically during the Biden administration, Janet Yellen had
all the US government's Bitcoin on a cold card in her desk.
Is that? True.
I did not hear that. I have no idea.
I don't, I don't think it's true.
I would guess it's not true, I think, but there had been for
sure there had been Colt ledgers and evidence lockers around
those federal prosecutors offices.
Like that's what I'm saying even just like finding all the coins
that the government supposedly has like is not a the US
government is extremely large. I doubt Janet Yellen herself was
holding them in the Treasury Department.
But I guess anything's possible. It would be a funny image.
And that's I'm just like imagining that in my head, just
like her pulling it up, like putting in her pen, like, oh
man, I I got the pin wrong. You have the words.
We've lost some Bitcoin anyways, So what do you think is the
current state of the lightning network in second layers?
Because we all know that this Bitcoin can't scale on the first
layer. What do you think the current
status of, of second, second layer solutions are?
What do you think about light network?
You know, there's fediment, right?
You know, there's liquid, right? There's a couple, you know,
different types of solutions and stuff.
And then there's like I would say, which kind of connects to
that question, which is like, is Bitcoin actually being used as
money right now? Because I, I, I see it really
being used as a commodity, you know, as, as like this, you
know, thing that you know, to use sailors where it's this
pristine collateral, this encapsulated energy.
But is it actually being used as money?
And I believe it was Jack Dorsey that tweeted out like, if
Bitcoin isn't used as money, it is a failure.
It is being used as money. It's not probably the the
circulating supply of all coins, which is like 19.8 something
million at the moment, not the majority of those coins are
being used as money. But you know, I've seen it used
as money. We know about it being used as
money and really we mean medium of exchange, right?
Like to buy and sell goods and services.
But there's no doubt that it's uses digital gold as a sort of a
global non sovereign scarce digital asset as an investment
or store value is the dominant narrative in Bitcoin world these
days. I don't know if it needs to be
used as a medium of exchange to be long term successful.
I do think it's possible you end up with, you know, Fiat stays
around forever and maybe governments never succeed in
getting rid of it. But Bitcoin becomes the the
gold, the alternative, right? Like for for, you know,
millennia you've had gold. There've obviously been times
when governments issued their Fiat on the gold platform,
right? But we've had an untethered
paper only no backing Fiat regime since I guess you could
say the 70s since the, you know, US halt to the convertibility of
the dollar to gold. But in some cases that you could
say longer and, and, and certainly, you know,
historically monetary regimes have shifted between hard and
sound money, you know, hard and sound money to soft and Fiat
money back and forth. The the Romans themselves like
debased and rebase their currency multiple times across
their empire's history. So I think it can exist next to
Fiat money and be very successful as store of value,
which by the way, a store of value that's gold like, but
digital transferable self custody bowl, all of it in size,
right. So like it is kind of like gold
with wings already. It could.
I don't agree with Jack therefore, that it must be used
for wide amounts of day-to-day medium of exchange to be long
term successful. I don't agree with that.
I think it can be long term successful without that.
I do think it is being used for that, not at the scale that it's
being used to store a value. When it comes to the state of L
twos, I think lightning is. It's never been easier for me to
run. I'm running C Lightning right
now on my umbrella. You know I'm not.
I'm still. Are you balancing channels?
Not really and I'm not using it that often.
I just have a couple like nice channels with, you know people I
know that are and I haven't had to, I don't use it enough or
push enough coin down the channels to really need to
rebalance that much. But it is it is not easy to be
clear and I and I do prefer to use, you know, a combination of
like a semi custodial wallet like Phoenix with like, you
know, a brokerage like River as my on and off ramp in and out of
Lightning. Like that's so convenient.
It's so I, I, I literally just have money on, on, on Primal and
I just like, and I'm just like, you know, whatever this is my
lightning wallet. Yeah.
And I don't care if it's completely custodial like it's
just it's. Like yeah, cuz you're not like
your life savings on there. It's like walk around money
kinda. Correct.
And then if you want to do the same thing but with with self
custody, lightning dude, the hoop.
Is very hard, I agree. The Hoops.
Well, and lightning like lightning capacity, sorry,
though the number of transactions on lightning has
been declining, but the size has been going up.
That's which is interesting. It makes me think that it is
maybe this is sad to a lot of lightning, like real true
lightning believers, but maybe it is more custodial lightning,
right, sending in bigger size settling right?
Or it's the network also being more resilient.
I, I don't know. I, I don't think I think
lightning is extremely useful. It's I think it's by far the
most decentralized L2 across the entire crypto ecosystem.
It is not even an L2 right? I mean, it's, it is a network of
overlapping bilateral payment chances that happens to form a
network. It's not even there's no, it's
not stateful. There's no coordination across
the network, right? You can't even get a good view
on the data on what's happening on the network unless you
yourself have a highly connected node, right?
So it's extremely decentralized and I think that's very
powerful. And other networks like Etherium
have have looked at payment channels and as a, as an L2
scaling methodology and rejected them because, for example, you
can't like run a smart contract that's stateful across the
entirety of the network on a, on a payment channel L2.
And because of that, they sort of halted all advancement in
payment channel research, whereas I think the Bitcoiners
have shown that Lightning can and, and these bilateral payment
channel L twos can be very, very powerful.
And you know, now, if you have like, I, I haven't seen it used
yet and I don't know a lot about it, but like the taproot assets
protocol that could see like tokens on these networks, such
as stable coins could, could revolutionize them.
But I will say it is not that widely used.
Also, you know, you said that we know L twos need to be used.
I mean, Bitcoin fees are like almost nothing.
And right now, my gosh, we've got a whopping 18 megabytes in
the public mempool for you've seen for there been days and
days over the last couple months where there's literally not even
a full block of pending transactions at the mempool.
So like, you know, I think if it if the mempool becomes really
clogged and transactions become really expensive, then yeah,
that will create further incentive for more L2
development. But at the moment, like there's
not a huge need. I mean, frankly, like which I
think could be problematic. Part of that's probably because
a lot of people rather than even buying on a crypto exchange or
whatever Poloni X in 2017 and withdrawing the self custody,
they are buying ETFs and they are buying treasury companies.
And those to the extent that they hit the Memphol, they hit
in big batch transactions, not in many small ones, you know, So
I, it, it goes also to the, the spam and arbitrary data dispute
about, you know, opera turn. And like, it's just ironic to me
that we're having that debate when like, the man pool's empty,
like spam, it's barely being transacted on at all.
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15% off anything on the store. Yeah, I completely agree.
What? What do you?
What do you it's, it's, it's fascinating too, because a lot
of people put a lot of hope on lightning, right?
And then a lot of people also put on one of one of my favorite
things is I, I would say it's favorite because it, I find it
fascinating, which was basically like Bitcoiners had this
preconceived notion that you were going to see this wide
adoption of Bitcoin specifically in developing countries that had
high inflation. But what you saw instead was
this viral adoption of USDT of stable coins instead, right?
Which is like completely contradicting what Bitcoiners
originally believed because they're like, Oh my God, this
Bitcoin fixes this thing where people are just like, you know,
like they, they wanted something that didn't have the volatility
that Bitcoin had. So they can kind of Live Today,
live day-to-day. And then there's also the
educational component, right? Because if you're in Latin
America, you know, like I'm originally Venezuelan, like, you
know, you get $100 bill, like that's, that's like, you know,
that is the, you're on top of the world, right?
So if you can have that in digital form, you know, you're
in a good spot, right? What is the most contrarian or
unpopular belief you hold about Bitcoin right now?
Oh man, that's a good question. Most contrarian on.
Well, to the point that I would just boot you off the show if I
hear it. And my God, well, I mean, end
the recording. End the recording.
I see. I mean, I, you know, I'll riff a
little bit on your last point. I mean, I think stable coins are
an incredible innovation. I think they really are
powerful. I think the world wants dollars.
They they have for a long time. And I think, like I said this
before, but you know, you could self custody dollars for the
first time ever once now. I mean, now that we have stable
coins, obviously the issuer for like Tether or circle like and
and certainly any new ones that emerge under this genius act
framework, the the issuer can freeze them and and kill them.
That's true. Like we know that then it's not
as it isn't digital cash the way literally physical cash, the
$100 bill would be. Nobody can, you know, reach in
from afar and burn the dollar under my under my bed, right?
But oh, and similarly, they can't steal your Bitcoin out of
your address. And so it's not as good from a
censorship resistance standpoint, obviously as Bitcoin
or physical cash. But it is a lot better
potentially self custodying a stable coin than having a
balance on a fintech app, right? I mean, it is better than that.
And that is very interesting to me.
I think you're going to see. The.
Global remittance firms, the Western unions and the trans
trans unions and they're going to come under significant
pressure from stable coins. I think their margins, the cost
of moving dollars over borders is basically going to 0, whereas
it's very high today. It's one of the most expensive
and tricky things to do is move money across borders.
Here's a Bitcoin specific one. I do think Quantum will be a
threat to Bitcoin. I don't know when I think and by
the way, not just Bitcoin, you know, we can take solace on the
fact that actually EVM based change are significant, like
like Aetherium are significantly more at risk actually than
Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is that would be at
risk. And it's not just Satoshi's
coins in the case that quantum cryptography became
cryptographically relevant, meaning that you could
successfully, you know, run Shore's algorithm and, and, and,
you know, break ECDSA. It is potentially all coins when
you go to send them, because in Bitcoin, when you sign a
transaction and put it in the men pool, you reveal the public
key. So even if you know, the reason
we say like Satoshi's coins are uniquely vulnerable is that
they're largely in pay to public key addresses where the public
key itself is sitting there on the chain, right.
So you could, I could right now task this computer at trying to
brute force the cryptography from that on that public key and
derive the private key from it. It would take, you know what
like, you know, as many years as there are grains of sand in the
universe, right? Like so possible, technically
possible, so unbelievably difficult as to be, you know,
infeasible. The ideas with a quantum
computer capable of, you know, step change function, more
amount of computation, many step changes that that length of time
could shrink to a very small amount of time.
But that's why hashed addresses address formats on Bitcoin.
The NNH right paid a public key hash paid a script hash paid a
you know, whatever they are the public key pass through a one
way hash function. And there's not even really the
contention in quantum research that they could reverse a one
way hash function to then find the Bitcoin key public key to
then brute force. So those are safe in when
they're inert. But even from those hash address
formats, when you go to spend, you reveal the public key.
And the idea is that even the again, assuming that we ever get
a quanta, A cryptographically relevant quantum computer, the
distance between needing a year to brute force something, you
know, you could just spend forever on the Satoshi's public
keys are available. So like anyone could be brute
force trying to brute force them.
Right now you can't really brute force a hash public key address,
but when you go to spend, they will sit there in the men pool
until they're confirmed. And so you could imagine that
the if we get to that point with cryptographically relevant
quantum computers, that the the time, oh, it takes a year to a
month to a week to a minute to break.
Like once you make that key breakthrough, you have to
basically adversarially assume that they will get so good that
they could break it instantly in the men pool.
So we really need something better as a solution.
And there are solutions being worked on by many Bitcoiners and
Bitcoin developers that that exist.
So while I say I do believe it will be a problem at some point
in the future, Bitcoin can also upgrade.
There's, there's interesting new hashing algorithms and, and
address formats, as well as really interesting commit reveal
scheme that Taj Dridja, the original white paper author of
Lightning proposed last week in in at Presidio Bitcoin.
So there are solutions, but I do think it will matter.
And don't ask me when because I don't think it's soon, but I
also have no idea. But it's not it's not that soon
when the two big questions obviously are when and how do we
fix it? I'm pretty encouraged after
going to this Quantum Bitcoin Summit at Presidio Bitcoin last
week that. Oh, tell me more.
How did the solutions are isn't as scary as I had thought?
It's not. It's not, but it has to be a
hard fork. Yeah, it it may the the commit
reveal scheme. Yeah, it it's not clear if it
has to be a hard fork yet. It's not clear it does have to
be some kind of fork. Probably there might be ways to
do there's, there's a new signature scheme called Sphinx
Plus that Lalu from Lightning Labs, right roast beef proposed
has advocated for. I don't think he's the original
creator of it. That's compelling.
Don't ask me to explain it in detail.
I am not a cryptographer, but it it it's compelling.
Some of those currently those schema require very large
signatures. So you could be looking at
either a block size increase to implement them or just many
fewer transactions per block, right?
So lowering the transaction, the TPS of Bitcoin in order to
accommodate that. But those could one day also be
reduced. You know, we don't know.
And then this commit reveal scheme is like, it's sort of
like a break glass in case of emergency.
There is a way where you could create a proof where a system of
proofs where you first broadcast a proof and then later broadcast
the coins. So and, and, and I think Taj is
going to put something out on this soon.
And, and so we'll see. I'm also planning on running a
big paper on this over the next month or so to explain like what
my understanding is of the current state of the problem and
some of the top solutions being proposed.
I don't think you're no one really knows when
cryptographically relevant quantum computers will happen.
Maybe governments do, but if they do, it's classified.
I think one thing worth pointing to is that the US government
mandates that U.S. government agencies be off classical
cryptography by 2030. So that's 4 1/2 years.
That's not 20 years. So I think it will be relevant.
I don't think it's a reason to buy or not buy Bitcoin today.
But I do think that the corner should be, look, even if it
doesn't happen, why not work on potential solutions for it?
That's sort of my viewpoint anyway that maybe that's
contrarian, I'm not sure. It seems to be coming more
popular right now these these. I I would say that the tether
for anyone who who understands stable coins, it is contrarian.
I I'm on your camp, by the way. I love them.
I think they've like basically changed the world of anyone
that's living in developing country.
Like the fact that you have access to dollars like literally
gives you a new shot on life. I think it is contrarian because
I think a lot of bitcoiners expected that to be Bitcoin, but
at fundamentally like what in in my mind, I'm like, dude, aren't
you a free market Maximus, bro? You know, like the free market
is selling you something, right? And I think stablecoins are a
stepping stone towards Bitcoin because it gives people access
to digital wallets and then they're just one step away,
right? And I think anyone that adopts a
digital dollar, you're going to come to the realization very
quickly that we've come to the realization in the West that
inflation sucks. Like if you're coming from
double digit inflation and you're switching to a
stablecoin, you're like, wow, this fixes everything, but over
a couple over, you know, a couple of years, you're going to
start to feel the inflation of the dollar.
And then of course, this is where Bitcoin comes in.
So I, I, I see it as a Trojan horse.
I think the genius act was incredibly positive for the
industry. So I completely agree with you
there. Now regards to quantum
computing, I, I just, I don't know enough.
What what I do know is that, you know, it's like the way that the
computer is like built essentially.
It basically allows it to, allows the binary to be in a, in
a, in a quantum state. So it basically it's able to
guess numbers a lot faster than the traditional.
That's basically what I know. To be fair, I don't want to put
myself out as I'm neither a cryptographer nor quantum, a
computing expert. I am a Bitcoin researcher and I
attended that this conference in in San Francisco last week for
the purpose of learning what people are thinking and working
on, not because I'm myself contributing to the quantum
research. And I will say there is, I also
am told and and witnessed and told by a lot of smart people
that they, they're not close at all.
I think the the issue is they have made a couple breakthroughs
that make it plausible that there could be the additional
breakthroughs that one day lead to the cryptographically
relevant quantum computer. So like it's not close in like a
linear standpoint, right. And, and, and also point out
that some very smart actual cryptographers I know, like
Peter Willa, like Bob Miguelrath, are not concerned at
all and don't think will ever happen.
So, you know, to me, I think it's fine.
I, I, I certainly don't want people to think that I'm
spreading it like FUD very much the opposite.
I do think it could happen. And so bit corners.
I mean, a lot of people like to say, well, surely the nuclear
launch codes are like Wall Street are like at risk too,
like, you know, as some kind of the argument, like it's like a
what about ISM argument? And I say, well, yeah, I mean,
anything that uses cryptography, if this happens could be at
risk, right? But surely it's somebody else's
job to work on the nuclear launch codes and Wall Street.
That's not our job. Like that's somebody else's job.
But like, if you care about Bitcoin and you own Bitcoin,
then maybe it is your job to get involved and think about how
solving it. So I I think the nihilism in the
face of what could be a big deal is also very short sighted and
and not helpful. So I'm very supportive of people
thinking about all different types of threat models that
could impact Bitcoin, including Quantum.
Gotcha. Well, if you have any final
thoughts for the audience and what you think don't want to
hold you to it, but you know what do you think where where is
the price of Bitcoin at the end of the year and what are your
final thoughts towards anybody who.
Yeah, in December of 24, I said in published research saying
that it could hit, it would hit as a prediction 185 K U.S.
dollars during Q4 of this year. I still think that's very much
in play. I'm not really.
I was asked if I would adjust that.
I'm not adjusting it. I think that's bullish and also
fair. I think look, I think to me,
I've been dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin for at this point
years and and I view it as a savings technology with extreme
sovereignty properties as well as transactional capabilities.
And I think that's just an unbelievably powerful thing.
I think when you compare it to other digital assets, it is the
best single asset. It's not the most composable
network, right. There are others that have more
features, but I, I think, you know, when you look at it and I
and I say this and, and, and someone, you know, we write
research about all crypto markets.
You know, I think there are interesting things you can't
really do stable coins on Bitcoin.
Sure, you could do something like the Omni network like
Tether used to like stable coins broadly are not happening on
Bitcoin and that I think that's OK.
I think it's, it's great for Bitcoin to be focused on the
sovereignty store value, a censorship resistance properties
of its asset like BTC. The asset is a revolutionary
asset that I think everybody should know about, should
consider whether they want to own some of.
And I think particularly as you go into this, I mean, we are
certainly I think through in my view Pax Americana, right.
It was that it's like 91 fall of the Soviet Union to like, I
don't know, maybe like 911 or 2010 somewhere after maybe after
the great financial crisis. But today, I think it's now very
clear with how the world is treating our debt and, you know,
declining demand to use U.S. dollars and things like
international trade settlement and sovereign wealth funds that
we are probably in a more multi polar world.
The dollar is absolutely still the best, you know, of the
worst, which are the all the Fiat currencies.
But I, I think demand for debt is waning.
I think stablecoins can help, you know, continue and maybe
grow dollar dominance relative to the others.
But it does feel like the cat is out of the bag.
The world is going to be more and more ready over time for a
global decentralized, non sovereign, digital scarce
commodity money like Bitcoin. And I think, you know, 16 years
in now to this Bitcoin thing and Bitcoin still 60 plus percent of
the entire crypto market. And that's with 10s of millions
of coins having been launched. So I just encourage people,
even, you know, friends of of mine who are interested in other
digital assets, clients and counterparties of Galaxy will
not be surprised to hear me say this.
I say this all the time. Surely you must have considered
a Bitcoin position if you're already deep down the altcoin
rabbit hole. I do think there are other
interesting things happening crypto, then it's not all scams,
but I think you're crazy if you're, if you're not already
owning Bitcoin before you look at the rest of the stuff in this
market. That's what I'll say.
I'll leave it there, Nico. Well, Alex Thorne, thank you so
much for joining me on Simply Bitcoin IRO.
I really, really appreciate it. Guys.
You can find more about Alex, go give him a follow on Twitter if
you're not already doing so. It's intangible coins at
intangible coins. Alex, thank you so much for
joining me. Thank you, Nico.