The Coexistence of Bitcoin and Traditional Finance

[00:00:00] Speaker A: I want to tear this thing apart. Why won't this thing work? How could something that's just computer code online, how could that be broadly recognized as money and have value? What I found myself doing is sort of engaging in all these intellectual exercises, experimenting with it. You know, I remember sending bitcoin when it was worth basically nothing and just trying to experiment, like, why wouldn't, why will this system break? And the real goal, Mark, was not to become a bitcoin aficionado. It wasn't to be, you know, a die hard bitcoin cultist. That the goal was to say, okay, well this isn't going to work, but something somewhere down the line could work. But the problem, much to my surprise that I realized, is that, wait a second, this actually could work as a base layer money system. There's a lot of kinks we need to get out. There's a lot of challenges that it needs to overcome. But my mind attacks something and tries to pick it apart until I can convince myself of the truth of it. When I did that with bitcoin, my reaction was eventually like, I actually think this might work. This might get us to where we want to be as a better, superior, base level money system. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Hello, welcome to the Money Adjustment. I'm your host, Dr. Mark Kramer, D.C. i am a chiropractor who loves investing and trading. Are you interested in what's moving markets and your money? Great. Let's get started. [00:01:16] Speaker A: Well, I'm a commercial litigator, so I have a full service national litigation practice. We have local council we retain to help us get pro hocked into any state where there's a litigated dispute. Generally I focus on litigated disputes in the bitcoin and broader crypto space. So if you have a breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, some sort of high stakes litigation, we also do some regulatory work in the bitcoin and broader crypto space on X. I'm at Joe Carlisari. I tend not to talk as much about legal matters on X because obviously my clients wouldn't appreciate if I'm discussing a whole lot of their, you know, their business on, on Twitter. But I do talk about economics, which is a passion of mine, something I studied for decades. So if you want to larp about macroeconomics, please feel free to reach out and have good conversation and good discourse. I do believe very fervently that bitcoiners are amazing people. They're forward thinking, they're innovative, they're willing to cast away dogma and they're really willing to challenge you. [00:02:14] Speaker C: We say in, in, you know, the bitcoin community, we have a saying, TikTok, next block. You know the mathematical equation, the perfect math behind bit is that it's perfectly predictable, right? Every, you know, if you look over any period of time, on Average, you know, 9 minutes and 48 seconds, whatever it is, there's a block created. Tick tock, next block. We know exactly how much Bitcoin will be created today. We know at what time approximately it will come. Everything about Bitcoin is perfect math. It's open source. Anybody can go and audit the code, anybody can go and audit the blockchain. They can verify that everything that that's in the perfect math is coming true. It has, since its inception, it's been perfect. You can't say that about the dollar. Nobody has any idea what the supply of the dollar is going to be. Nobody knows what the Federal Reserve is going to do. No one knows the treasury is going to do. The volatile asset here is the dollar. [00:03:10] Speaker A: I consider myself a student of bitcoin, far from a master. I'm trying to figure out how does this work alongside a decaying, unstable fiat system. And people hear that and they say, well, you know, it has to destroy. It has to, you know, overtake it. That may be true, but you could have a 50 year or a century where they live alongside each other, coexisting. And what does that look like? What are the political implications of that? Where you have this, you know, pure solid asset next to something that is sort of the key decaying and becoming increasingly volatile and erratic. [00:03:43] Speaker B: This is a good transition for where I was actually going to start and go is because it makes me think about my conversations that I have with Dark, much like you. He's someone that speaks and really understands in depth what the potential is of the asset class. And I think that's why the conversations between the two of you are so interesting. And I think one of the things that you illustrated by what you just said is something that I've been playing in my head. I'm like, where do these guys actually. [00:04:14] Speaker C: Disagree when we run out of bitcoin? When there's. You can't actually find somebody to lend you Bitcoin. What happens to IBIT? What happens to the other ETFs, what happens to the COMEX, the futures, what happens to the perks on all of these exchanges? Coinbase Finance, bybit cracking, like just go right down the road, right? Like they. There are derivatives trading everywhere. Deribit, which Coinbase just bought gigantic options exchange. This is again ginormous complex of derivative exposure to the underlying asset of Bitcoin. And at some point bitcoin will become hard to borrow because just you can't continue to grow in an asset that's infinitely scarce. Those two things are antithetical to each other. So what I'm suggesting is we are running headlong into what will be the next big inverse, big short. [00:05:10] Speaker B: So in preparation for this, I actually went through and watched some previous podcasts that you had done, and you actually have a nice body of work. There was many to choose from, so I thought that was really cool. And I've always been impressed with you on spaces. When I've heard you talk, I was like, wow, this guy is just really articulate. And I feel like he makes his points very well. I could just really follow your train of thought. [00:05:36] Speaker A: Thank you, I appreciate that. [00:05:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then when I was listening to the podcast, I was like, man, I'm a fan. I really am. I was. Yeah, I really am. I think one of the things that I appreciate about your approach to the whole bitcoin space is that you really, you really are open minded to the vast majority of people that may or may not be interested in bitcoin at this time. So it has less of an evangelical nature to it and more of a. Let's just kind of think this through for yourself as an individual. If someone who cares about their money and growing wealth and preserving capital and all of that kind of good stuff and like, let's just think that through. And I saw you last night on Gary's debate, like, it was like his first one. And I was just, I was one of those guys in the chat, I was like, oh my God, this, this is fire. I. I was really loving it. [00:06:35] Speaker A: So, yeah, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed that debate. So for your audience, we had a, like an hour long debate with a few really smart folks about the. Whether for newbies, we should be talking about self custody or for custodial, custodial solutions or ETFs. And, and the messaging Gary had assigned me, I didn't even actually get to pick. He assigned me the role of arguing why, you know, it's okay, you know, for the training wheels crowd when they're getting involved initially, that we shouldn't be so over emphasizing self custody. We can work them to that role eventually. But at the outset, we want to get as many people on board and interested and into bitcoin as possible. That should be the Objective. And I happen to agree with it. Regardless of the fact he assigned me to make that argument. I happen to agree with that. I think that makes a lot of sense. [00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it worked out that you got that argument. And I. And I have to agree with you too, just from the way I came into it, because I've actually been following Bitcoin since 2008. And it's just more of. Was just like an intellectual curiosity about it and I didn't really have any skin in the game until 2020. And then it was Mike Novogratz made his case on cnbc and I was like, wait a minute, there's something really happening here. This isn't just something on the fringes that, you know, like some kind of mania. Yeah. So. So in 2020, I took a position on Coinbase and I was just like, you know, throw a little bit of money at it and see what happens. And, you know, in 2020, that was. Happened to go through the having cycle. I think I watched some YouTube videos and started to educate myself and like, try to try to like, started learning about the cycles. And I took. I think I even took a course at the time, you know, because. Yeah, because they were. Yeah, I just one of those. Because I think people who are already in the space knew it was a good time to start marketing their courses because they were going to start getting attention from people that weren't as familiar in the space. [00:08:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a bull market and that's generally when you see a flurry of that type of stuff. But. But, you know, it's interesting because before you entered the space and before you started investing in bitcoin, I would guess that you had heard a lot of the FUD that we always have to push back against. Right. Like used for drug deals, used for illicit activity, no real economic value, that it's a Ponzi, all these things. But one of the things that I noticed when I was talking to newbies about bitcoin, even back as early as 2017, is that they had these horror stories about, well, what if I get hacked? Or what if I lose my custody? What about that guy? I've heard so many newbies that have no bitcoin talk about the guy who had a bitcoin on a computer that ended up in a landfill. That story, whatever. [00:09:13] Speaker B: That's when you started saying it. That's what I was thinking. [00:09:15] Speaker A: Yeah. A lot, A lot of people new to bitcoin seem to attach to that story. So because of that, what they do, they anchor towards this Thing, well, oh, now I have to have this asset that is so difficult to deal with, and I could lose it, and it can get stolen and it can get thrown out, and then I lose all my money. And people, I think that is. I actually think that that has deterred a lot of people. So the ETF has been great for those folks because they're like, listen, I don't need to manage my keys right now. I can have somebody else do it. I can still get exposure to bitcoin. But fascinatingly enough, I know some folks that have bought the etf, but now, because of their ETF performance, has done so well over the last year, they've actually transitioned to cold storage bitcoin. So again, it's kind of get your feet in, get comfortable, understand it, study it, and then move on. [00:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that you said that, because that's actually where I'm at right now. Because I have bitcoin, I keep it on multiple platforms because that's, for me, a way of diversifying it. When I say, I have some on Coinbase, I have some on Square, I have some on Venmo, it's like I just have little pockets where I keep a little bit of bitcoin, and then I trade around the derivatives as part of the bull market cycle. But the more I listen to the spaces and the more I hear you guys talk, and to your point, I'm like, I need to get some on cold storage. I really need to have the actual bitcoin experience, because thus far, I've been treating it like a lot of people do, like, it's a technology play, it's a tech stock. It's some kind of. It's like another stock, but it's in technology or some version of that, whereas the actual technology is still in its infant phases. Because when I start to appreciate what it's like to actually have a wallet. So there was a conversation yesterday where they were talking about cold storage, and a concern that I had was, man, the technology changes every few months. I don't want to buy a wallet. And then the wa. I can't get access to my bitcoin because the wallet doesn't function anymore. It's like an old. Like, I have an iPhone 2 or something, and now I can't get my bitcoin. And when I upgrade my iPhone, sometimes things happen and I get nervous because I'm like, oh, now I'm logged out and my authentic. My authentication app isn't, you know, working properly. [00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So I mean, that. That's A deterrent for a lot of people. I think they get, they get nervous about it. But for me, what's, what's fascinating is that I don't think people have thought out the progression something would need to take to become a global money. People analyze it all as the, the current status quo. They say, well, bitcoin's not really used in medium of exchange purposes, not really used in everyday commerce. You don't buy a coffee with it. How many times have we heard that sort of fud? But for me, like, think about it, Mark, like you need to go through a progression. If you're going to have some sort of successor to the legacy system, you need to first get it in the hands of billions of people. You need to first get billions of people comfortable storing value in it. Then you need to get people. Finally at that point, you have to have a technology layer, technology stack that allows it to be used in everyday commerce. We have not even satisfied the first requirement, which is getting in the hands of billions of people. If you can't get that, that store of value component up high enough, if you can't get it where everybody in the world is comfortable and actually prefers to hold Bitcoin, you're not going to get to the second layer of that progression. And the problem we have is a lot of tradfi and a lot of regular people, they only see it as the here and now. They say, well, because it's not used as a medium of exchange right now, that it can't ever succeed. And what you need to do if you're, you know, visionary, if you're trying to look to the future and try to understand future trends, is you need to understand. Well, that may be the case now, but down the line, if we get this into the hands of billions of people, why wouldn't they use it as a medium of exchange? Why would they continue to swap back and forth between dollars and other currencies and other fiat currencies. To me, it makes a lot of logical sense if you think of it that way. Think of it as a long hundred year progression of bitcoin where we are at on the trend. And unfortunately, most people don't think that way. They think about the here and now or maybe the next few years and that's it. [00:13:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly and that vision excites me and I imagine you too. I listened to some of your prior podcasts and got a chance to hear a little bit about your story. And maybe for my audience, you'd like to give your background your introduction into bitcoin. [00:13:35] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So really my bitcoin journey started mostly in college, even before bitcoin was created. When I was in college, I studied philosophy, political science and economics. I became just really fascinated trying to understand markets. Markets. And the reason I became fascinated in understanding markets is it started with an interest in politics and political science, which at its core, I think politics and political science are sort of like surface level philosophy. And then when you dig deeper into philosophy, you try to understand, I think, how we are going to order our lives together. You know, Aristotelian sort of mean work, golden mean. That was always put out there. And you need to figure out, like, how do we order our society in a scarce environment with distribution of resources, distribution of talents, distribution of economies. And to me, like, that led me to economics. Like, I generally thought of philosophy as very esoteric. And then if you needed a pure application of how we should order our lives together, that's really economics. Economics, I think in many ways is the underpinning of the political conflicts we have. I think it's the underpinning of most political systems. You always have like a view towards economics. Whether it's on the left. You have the command and control type, you know, very authoritative state type ideas, or you have the more laissez faire, free market, capitalist type ideas on the right. That tends to be the main divide. All of that is to say, when I was studying these disciplines, at the core of a lot of the conflict, you get into the discussions of money and what is money. And I've been studying money long before I was studying Bitcoin. And then bitcoin comes along and purports to be new money. Really, when I was in law school and what I did is I looked at it and said, okay, I think I have a pretty good grasp on the economy. I think I have a pretty good grasp on monetary systems. I want to tear this thing apart. Why won't this thing work? Digital money that somebody invented out of nothing. I think that's the natural reaction people have. How could something that's just computer code online, how could that be broadly recognized as money and have value? And what I found myself doing is sort of engaging in all these intellectual exercises, experimenting with it. You know, I remember sending bitcoin when it was worth basically nothing and just trying to experiment, like, why wouldn't. Why will this system break? And the real goal, Mark, was not to become a bitcoin aficionado. It wasn't to be, you know, a Die hard bitcoin cultist. The goal was to say, okay, well, this isn't going to work, but something somewhere down the line could work. And that fascinated me, right? I was trying to figure out what could work in this dynamic. But the problem, much to my surprise that I realized is that, wait a second, this actually could work as a base layer money system. There's a lot of kinks we need to get out. There's a lot of challenges that it needs to overcome. But my mind attacks something and tries to pick it apart until I can convince myself of the truth of it. Which, when I did that with bitcoin, my reaction was eventually like, I actually think this might work. This might get us to where we want to be as a better, superior, base level money system. Which made me really, quite honestly fall in love with the asset, become really interested in constantly studying. And I, I still am surprised and study bitcoin all the time. I, I consider myself a student of bitcoin, far from a master. I'm trying to figure out how does this work alongside a decaying, unstable fiat system. And people hear that and they say, well, you know, it has to destroy. It has to, you know, overtake it. That may be true, but you could have a 50 year or a century where they live alongside each other, coexisting. And what does that look like? What are the political implications of that? Where you have this, you know, pure, solid asset next to something that is sort of decaying and becoming increasingly volatile and erratic. [00:17:04] Speaker B: I love that because I feel like this is a good transition for where I was actually going to start and go is because it makes me think about my conversations that I have with Dark, who I don't want to get into too much of whatever's happening on X. I don't take some of that stuff too seriously because I don't know how much is just fodder and, you know, or what transpired. But much like you, he's someone that speaks and really understands in depth what the potential is of the asset class. And I think that's why the conversations between the two of you are so interesting. And I think one of the things that you illustrated by what you just said is something that I've been playing in my head. I'm like, where do these guys actually disagree? Because you look online and you think there was some kind of big contention between the two of you and, and when I was investigating it myself, just preparing for this, like, I feel like. And I'm just going to feed off what you just said Dark may have a position where it needs to overtake the system. Like he's said, I've heard him say it before, they can't coexist. They, they exclude each other by nature. So at some point one has to take over from the other. Whereas what I'm hearing from you and I, and I think I'm kind of leaning in this way certainly at this stage is that they're, they're going to coexist for at least the foreseeable future. And that coexistence, I think this leads into one of the, what is actually the hot topic debate, which is Dark's thesis, which I, to Dark's credit, I'm not a quant, I'm not a trader. I am a trader, but I'm a retail trader. This is like an aside with you. You, you are professional, you have other work that you do. I'm a healthcare professional. Like trading is just something that much like yourself. I think it's an intellectual exercise for me. It just keeps me engaged in what's happening and in the market and it's keeps my interest in a certain way. But that's a digression with regards to like Dark. He has a certain knowledge and a certain expertise in the area and he has a certain kind of understanding of the traditional finance system and what the potential. So, so like I'm going to make Dark's argument even though like I can't make it as effectively as he can. But this is what I've interpreted from what he said. Bitcoin is such a unique asset. The traditional finance people haven't fully appreciated the, that at some point because of its limited supply, there's only 21 million. And then you can break down how there's, you know, 5 million we're going to write off because of people who've lost it in the landfill or whatever the story is behind that. And now there's people that are staking claim and then you can look on the blockchain and see where a certain allocations are. So there's this fundamental principle that again, I don't want to make his argument. You can go online, you can look at what his argument is. [00:19:57] Speaker A: But yeah, go ahead, let me help you because we don't need to make sure. [00:20:00] Speaker B: Yes, please. Thank you. [00:20:02] Speaker A: Let's start at the base layer for people. [00:20:04] Speaker B: Okay. [00:20:04] Speaker A: And I like to, you know, I'm a trial lawyer, right. So I have to make it simple enough, I have to make it clean enough so that you know a person with a 9th grade education can understand it. And one of the things you'll run into, Mark on Wall street is that they're profoundly good at making very simple things seem very complicated. [00:20:22] Speaker B: Right? [00:20:23] Speaker A: They purposely use opaque language to try to confuse it. Derivatives, perps, swaps, future. At their core, all of these things, you know, they are, they're contracts. That's all they are. They're agreements. Like if you enter into a OTC over the counter agreement, okay, you agree to do this or you agree to do that or that, or they agree to be exposed to this. You're placing bets, you're going into the casino and you're placing bets. Some people win in casinos, some people don't. It's a little bit of a difference. And I'm trying to oversimplify because there's regulation involved and there's sort of, you know, classic rules that are put in place that are tried to curb too much excess. But at the end of the day, you're betting in some way or another when you place any of these trades. Now you have bitcoin. Okay? Bitcoin is finite, right? Meaning there's only a certain amount of bitcoin. Now the vast majority of bitcoin as we know, is out there in the domain. It's already been mined, it's already in the space. There are millions of Bitcoin that are traded on exchanges. So at any given time they're, they're there in the exchange, in the exchange world, right? They're on, on exchanges, they're traded. There's a lot of volume of trading in bitcoin back and forth and back and forth. And it's traded by leverage players. This currently exists right now. What does that mean? It means that certain people are trading with money that is not theirs. They're on leverage, they're borrowing money in various different ways. There's mark to market leverage. There's all different types of agreements. Anything under the sun. The reason that's important, why it's important to understand this sort of setup and start by this, is that if you're a retail participant, you want to understand why did Bitcoin jump $4,000 and then fall $2,000. What most of the time is happening most of the time is there are big levered entities where there's a moment of volatility and they are forced sellers. There's also situations where there are forced buyers who have to cover depending on how the market moves. Okay? It's very simple and logical when you think about it. If you're underwater, in a position, if you're short the position, okay? And it moves against you. You have a short squeeze, right? That is forced buying, so the price can go up. The reason that's. That matters is because on all of the major regulated markets and all of the known, known markets, which is really tiny, I mean, we're talking, you know, less than 50 billion. And I think you were. I saw some back and forth with you and Dark about this, where he acknowledged, it's like, it's nothing. It's like 50 billion, okay? Whoop dee doo. That's. That's really nothing. Those positions, when they're mo. When you're moving offside, they are forced to buy, which will cause those short squeezes. It will cause the price to rip up, okay? But what you tend to see happening in most short squeezes is that after the price moves up, those people that were short, they are in fact going to close those positions. Someone taps them on the shoulder at a regulated desk, they say your risk is offsides. Or maybe it's the clearinghouse or the exchange or any entity that is giving them that extra money. They say, you need to close this position now. We're not going to take a hit on this anymore. You're already underwater. You need to post collateral. That's like in the big short, where, you know, Michael Burry is just sitting there frustrated and upset because the position's moving against where he thinks it's going to go. If you don't post the collateral, you lose. We're not going to lose. That's your bet that you've taken. That's the. That's the known market. It's a very tiny market. Now, what Dark has said and others have said, and I don't want to just attribute it to him, they said, well, there's this hidden short out there. There's this opaque, over the counter derivative market that we don't really know about. We don't really understand it's out there. [00:23:46] Speaker C: That's true. [00:23:47] Speaker A: Right. The problem is with the argument is that what he's basically saying is that there's no hard evidence of this. We don't know it's there. I just think it's there because of other assets on Wall Street. Now, I can tell you, while that's possible, what you're basically telling people is that, you know, there may be a boogeyman under your bed. We haven't really looked. We can't really look, but just trust us, there's a boogeyman under there. To me, that's a little bit implausible. I like to look at hard evidence and there's no hard evidence. And I think even he has conceded in many occasions that there is no hard evidence for this. So it's just, you know, in my world that's what we call speculation. It's an assumption. There's no real record of that, you know, and I would ask why, why you're having all these in a market where, you know, there's still, you know, futures markets, there's CME markets where, you know, they showed sort of a lack of interest in many respects for some of this, these hedging products. Now can we have over the crown derivatives predominate down the line at some place? It's possible, right? But there will be clear indications and the main indication will be that bitcoin size and scope gets massively bigger, okay? Significantly bigger than the couple trillion dollar market cap it has now, which is nothing in the global scheme of things. That's the entire bitcoin market cap. In the global financial system, it's relatively an ant. There are individual tech stocks, individual tech stocks that are bigger. Okay? So to me, to make some argument that this will cause systemic collapse, I think that carries a lot of water If Bitcoin's a $20 trillion market cap or maybe a $50 trillion market cap, something massive. But these comparisons that people have with the 2008 financial crisis, you're talking about a marketplace of all mortgage backed securities that was rotten and toxic, causing systemic risk to major global financial systems. And what, what I know, and I think, you know, things have changed since people that were trading 20, 30 years ago is that after the 2000 financial crisis there was a whole host of reforms where they tried to segregate trading, investing, hedging activity from traditional banking activity, okay? They tried to separate these things out and they do stress tests and whole variety of regulations to make sure that we don't repeat that. Now can it happen? Sure. But should we, should we scare people into think that there's this hidden short out there of 300 billion or 500 billion in the Bitcoin marketplace without any evidence, to me that doesn't seem like a strong argument. And then the one final thing I want to emphasize in a short squeeze, okay, people look at it from the people that are exposed, they say, well, those firms that are exposed on the short squeeze, they're going to lose a lot of money, right? Like in the Gamestop thing, they were saying Citadel or other entities, they're exposed. Those hedge funds are taking it on the teeth and really getting. Getting hit. But what you don't realize is that in the bitcoin complex, Mark, there are people that are gonna make a lot of money on that. On the other side of the trade, there are funds, there are firms, there are Wall street analysts that are gonna make another ton of money on the position that's long. Okay. In a marketplace, you have to balance out for every long. There's a short, Right? So somebody out there, if they're on the right side of the trade, they're gonna be wildly profitable. If bitcoin rips up to $500,000, somebody's gonna take it on the teeth. The question is always this. It's not whether somebody wins or loses. The question is, is the game so violent and moving in such a degree that the house, that the casino itself, to use the analogy, I use that that's what falls apart. And I submit to you there's almost no evidence for that claim that. That Dark and others have put forward. [00:27:11] Speaker B: Okay. My head went to a lot of different places, and I really try to, like. [00:27:16] Speaker A: I'm sorry. [00:27:17] Speaker B: No, no, no. I love it. I love it. It's. I have the same experience with Dark. The knowledge is. Is just so much. But. But let me. I do. A couple things came to mind that I imagined when I heard from Dark that I would imagine would be his counter arguments. That's why I'd love to have you guys both on at the same time. If I could moderate. [00:27:37] Speaker A: Happy to do it. I can make them anytime. Yeah, I'll come on anytime. [00:27:41] Speaker B: So, like, these are the two things. One is, you said there's tech stocks bigger. And I think, like, I could hear Dark's voice in my head saying, yeah, but they're not finite in supply. That's the unique thing. No one's ever seen an asset like bitcoin before. [00:27:54] Speaker A: Okay, can we talk about that for a second? Just that, that one. [00:27:57] Speaker C: You're going to get to a point sooner rather than later where the available bitcoin that's available for loan shrinks to the point that the options market can't function. And you end up in the gamestop scenario. But it's much worse than the GameStop scenario because there is no solution. It's a problem that without a solution, you can't turn around to the bitcoin CEO and say, I need more bitcoin, because there is no bitcoin CEO and there is no more bitcoin. Right. And Wall street has never seen a $2 trillion asset that they can't print more of never, none, zero. This is the first time. So we have this options market which is growing by leaps and bounds every day it gets bigger. More risk management, more hedging, more institutions, more trading desks are getting involved and they all need the ability to short bitcoin. [00:28:57] Speaker B: Okay, let's just talk, okay, let's just. [00:28:59] Speaker A: That one issue, okay? The finite nature of the asset does make it more susceptible to short squeezes. However, the problem with that argument is that at a certain point the market clears. And what I mean by that is, at a certain point, if I were to tell you right now, are you going to sell some of your Bitcoin for $500,000? You may say, joe, no, I won't. Okay, next bid, 600,000. Are you going to sell any Bitcoin for 600,000 mark? No, Joe, I'm not going to sell it. What about seven? What about eight? What about a million? At some point the supply comes onto the market. We saw this in 2017, because in 2017 Bitcoin went from 4,000 in a few weeks all the way up to 19. And guess what you saw? Massive inflows of OGs selling coins at 19,000. They're saying, I can get $19,000 right now. And you have the equilibrium. Okay? The fact that a price squeezes up does not mean that there's not going to be supply coming to market. So in many ways the fact that it's fixed is irrelevant. It doesn't matter because that supply is out there somewhere and some price will clear it. Maybe it's a million, maybe it's 2 million, maybe it's 3 million. But at some point somebody's going to lighten up on their bitcoin at that point. Unless you think that the, the vast majority of bitcoin market will sell with no price. And I don't believe that. I think that's not the case. [00:30:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting. I actually heard you do this exercise in spaces with Grant because you used Grant as an example and you're like, grant, let me tell you how much would, would you sell your bitcoin for? This much? Would you sell for that much? And I think Grant's answer was like, well, it doesn't solve my problem. I have, you know, a different problem than that. But then you did get to a number. It's like, I would have to think about that. That's an interesting point. With regards to the limited supply, the other aspect that you said that triggered in my mind was the counterparty risk. You said, one person loses, but on the other side of that, one person wins. So Dark's counter to that when, when I recall our conversation was that the counterpart, that's the risk is the counterparty is good, does makes good on their bet versus if they go bankrupt or the somebody defaults, then that counterparty isn't there to pay you. It's like a counterparty risk. Am I not interpreting that correctly? [00:31:13] Speaker C: So we have got ourselves into a pickle, to say the least, we being the global financial community. As a bitcoiner, I wanted bearer assets and I didn't buy the gld. I bought gold bars, I bought gold coins, I bought silver coins. Along comes bitcoin and you realize, wow, this is a bear asset that is so much, so far superior to gold and silver. So I began to buy Bitcoin in 2013, right? And I've told that story in previous, in our previous podcast. So, so look, you know, this, this story, the inverse big short, you know, let's coin the term the knock on effects. I think people get the fact that bitcoin can be number go up, but they don't understand is that it become, it can become a systemic problem literally overnight. Like in a, in a matter of weeks, right? You could be going from number go up to banking system go down, right? Because they just can't handle the losses that they would need to take in order to cover their shorts and counterparty failure. Again, you end up back in the same situation we were in an 0809. But multiply it by infinite factors and remember that while Lehman was an unbelievably catastrophic situation, it was local, it was localized, they were able to contain it. Wall street was able to contain the problem. This is different. This is a global asset. Whether you're in China or the US or Europe or South America, you have access to bitcoin, right? Banks have access to bitcoin. People are writing loans against bitcoin. There are all of these different things going on in the bitcoin world, in the bitcoin complex that I don't know how the system deals with systemic risk that comes from what, what's invariably going to happen at some point. So that's why I've been ringing the, sort of ringing the alarm bells on this subject. And you know, look, I get a lot of pushback because a lot of bitcoiners and very brilliant people, like some of the original cyber funks, they, they think they can debunk the paper bitcoin narrative. They view it as a narrative, right? But as a guy who Spent my career on Wall Street. I ran a self clearing broker dealer, right? So I was a DTCC member. I was an OCC member, right? I understand how this plumbing works. So the same way they understand the plumbing of Bitcoin and the exchanges and the difficulty adjustment and the miners and all the different little components that go into, you know, even, even the ultimate minutiae of Bitcoin, now I have that same understanding of financial markets and specifically derivatives markets, right? And I can tell you that without a freely available to short and an extremely liquid underlying asset, you are going to get to a point of full lockup, especially as this thing grows, right? And look, you know, you can deny it, you can not get it. You can just look at the perps and look at the Comex and look and just add that all up in your head. But that misses the point of all of the upstairs derivatives, over the counter derivatives, private contract derivatives. [00:35:15] Speaker A: No, you're exactly right. And I will tell you this is true in every market right now if I. So let me give you an example, okay, from the tradfi world, okay? If I'm short Apple stock and Apple's ripping, I can short it on margin. And many people do in like lots of retail, short various stocks and do different things on margin. What ha, what happens at a certain point when you're in a leveraged position, when you're borrowing money, when you're in some sort of position where you're, you're, you're writing something or writing an obligation that you don't have, what do they do? The other side says I need you to post collateral. Think of the big short. You know, Michael Burry, we're going to liquidate your short position. Unless you post collateral, you lose because you're on the wrong side and the market's moving against you. You have to post. That happens all the time. Dark references. These OTC desks, okay, the OTC desks have a very good handle on who they're writing derivatives with, okay? They don't do it with random people off the street. They vet them, they understand who their exposure is. That's part of the due diligence, part of the risk assessment. Are there occasionally times, Mark, where you miscalculate, where you get into a contract with an entity that's insolvent? Yeah, that happens, right? Guess what? We've built that into the model. We've tried to figure out what is the exposure there. And the idea behind it is that through three or four levels removed, you have to make a judgment. Is this person money good. Is this someone we should be riding the derivative with or is this some a position we need to close and it's a dynamic thing. What do I mean by that? I mean by that is if you are short, if you're naked short, as Dark likes to claim, and there's this big hidden short and all this Wall street short, what do you need to do to reduce your risk? You need to then go long. Okay, you need to put an offset position on. You don't need to close the underlying contract. You can hedge by doing another thing that is the other direction. So you gamma neutral effectively. So this happens all the time. And the notion that people would just sit in a giant naked short position, which I've heard him say many times, and just get squeezed until they're bankrupt, is in my opinion illogical. That's not how people think. When people are putting on positions, you know, you have to make a judgment. These are not idiots. If you're trading OTC derivatives, you're not a and you see this huge freight train of bitcoin running higher. Do you not think they're going to try to do some activity to hedge? And what will the hedging be? The hedging will push the price up. What will that do? Once the price is at a certain level, it introduces supply and equal. It's an equilibrium. So the market itself is designed to mitigate these things that he's talking about. And the fact that something is finite does not. All that means is that it's going to take a little bit more of a, a coaxing to get those old coins into market. And that's why I did the exercise of like 4005-006007-00000. You have to coax supply out. So what, what, what, what number? This is the thing you should think about. If this thing is a runaway freight train and there's a shortage of supply on exchanges, what number would would coax out additional supply? I can tell you that 100k in November, December last year, that coaxed out a lot of, a lot of supply. We saw exchanges and OG selling come into the marketplace. So this argument that even OG people, people that have been in Bitcoin for, you know, 10 plus years, that they're never going to sell, I just think is without support. I won't say illogical, I just, I just think it's a very poor argument because at some level it will clear. It's the same for any market. The fact that it is finite does not change the dynamics of market Supply and demand. From the simple standpoint that there's coins out there that someone wants to make money from and they. And they will take. They'll shave off 5%. If you had all the OG hodlers shave off 5%, that's significant supply coming to market. [00:38:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense to me. Did you. Did you happen to see Dark's tweets today about the. No. Yeah, well, he had discussion with ChatGPT where he made his case. I bring it up because, again, I want to bring it back to where I do feel like you guys see a lot of. There is a lot of actually common ground because I've heard both of you acknowledge that there is a scenario where some of this can happen. The result of that scenario. Maybe that's where you guys start to differ. Do you. Can I pull it up for you a minute and just read the part that I think is interesting? [00:39:30] Speaker A: All right. [00:39:30] Speaker B: I don't want to take up your time with me trying to find this. So the gist of the argument was it had something to do with clearance. There would be something in the clearance at the end when the. I don't know if it would be in the futures or the. This is where the language is. Is beyond my pay grade. There would be something they could do with like the paper side of it. The. The. The futures that. That they could settle it out through the futures and the purpose. That's why I wish you actually saw the tweet. [00:39:58] Speaker A: Let's just talk about that for a second. [00:40:00] Speaker B: Okay, sure. [00:40:01] Speaker A: The CME futures, there's this argument out there that, well, if the price starts to rip, there's not enough bitcoin out there to buy for people to cover. The problem with that is that the CME futures are cash settled. They're not bitcoin settled, they're cash settled. Now, the people writing those contracts, they're probably hedge with some spot. They have to be. Otherwise I think it is. They're in a real dangerous spot from a risk management standpoint. But the futures are cash settled, and that's a ton of the leverage that's built up in the system is built in the futures market. The a lot of the quote unquote derivatives, including the OTC derivatives, I know this for a fact because I've seen them. They're not settled in bitcoin. They're paper bets on top of bitcoin that if the bitcoin price does this, you wire this cash. That's not limited to just seemingly futures. As you know, the major US regulated Futures market for bitcoin. The Seami futures are cash settled, meaning that you can close positions with cash, not bitcoin. Right. And the argument that he's made many times is, well, wait till all these people decide to take physical delivery of their bitcoin. Well, they can't. They can't take physical delivery. It's cash settled. And the OTC trades are similarly. I won't say all of them because we don't really know, but we know that at least a significant portion of them, because I've seen the contracts, they state cash settled. So how are you going to get into this situation where people are demanding cold storage bitcoin when they're not contractually permitted to make such a demand? And by the way, if you are out there writing OTC trades, if you are a desk and you're not, again, you're not a moron. Right. I know you know that there's a lot of smart people, quants that are in markets, people that know the bitcoin market, people that assess the risk. What do you think they're writing into those, those agreements? What do you think they're writing into those OTC traits they're accounting for with whatever the cost to hold those positions is. They're accounting for the situation he's talking about. They're making that determination. They're not morons. Okay? [00:42:04] Speaker B: Right. [00:42:05] Speaker A: And we shouldn't assume people that are sophisticated in these markets that they're just, you know, completely oblivious to this fact. It's not just, I mean, you've got people that have, have traded derivatives for, for decades that are behind these desks. So I, I just. A lot of people go back to when genius failed, and they go back to these examples where people make, get. Get it wrong in those situations. Most of the time, what happens is a single firm or an entity or an individual loses a lot of money. They lose a lot of money. It becomes systemic when you generally have everyone on the wrong side of the trade. Everybody. Okay, now why is that different from now? Because you've got an increasingly large pool of Wall street capital that is not short bitcoin. They're long bitcoin. So what does that mean in the, you know, the fit of the survival of the fittest? You have a group that is very bullish, very bearish. The bearish folks, the shorting folks, they could take it on the teeth. You have another group of people, by the way, Mark, they're agnostic. You see this with microstrategy. They don't care if the Price goes up or down, they're neutral. They're in a neutral position where they're going to make a money on the spread. We saw this in the bitcoin futures market. We saw people that, you know, were negative on the futures and positive on the spot or vice versa. Right. You have that, that carry trade that you can capture. Okay. That is a different dynamic that I think he's not accounting for. You don't have everybody on one side of the trade. You have an equilibrium. And can people get off sides? Yes, but it's altogether different to say that it is of a size and scale of which would cause systemic risk, some sort of collapse of the fiat system. To get to that point, you have to have a bank or a lot of systemically important banks be so offside, in a position, be so derelict on their position that yeah, that, that could, that could threaten their entire cash flow. And what would happen in that situation would be that the Fed would come in and bail them out. They'd bail out the financial obligation, the cash obligation. They don't need to, they don't need to give them the bitcoin. They needed to give them the ability to make good on their financial, or, excuse me, their, their, their cash obligations. That is the, that's what would come in, in such a situation. But we're nowhere near that. In the real estate crisis, you had contagion throughout the entire banking system because the entire real estate industry was predicated on these bad, crappy loans, the ninja loans. No income, no job. You know, every stripper gets, gets three mortgages. The whole thing well documented by the big short. You had that dynamic in there where everybody was on the wrong side of the trade. And even within the same institution, they were on, on the wrong side of the trade. You remember there's a famous scene in that movie where they talk about how within Morgan Stanley there were people that were betting against each other. So you know, in terms of collecting on your shorter, making good on your position, you're going to have to be able to acquire, acquire the protection from yourself, which is never going to work. Right. That's not going to net out. But my point is that like we don't have anything like that in the bitcoin market. There's no basis for this daydream, I would call it about all this hidden leverage. Hundreds of billions of dollars of naked short. I mean if you want to fantasize about things, I could think of far more realistic things that could send bitcoin skyrocketing higher than the big short or whatever he's calling it. Big long. Excuse me. [00:45:20] Speaker B: Oh man. I kind of want to go with you down that road. Can I give you my lay person just as it's like simple terms and then you can really, you can dig into it. Please do. Simple minded. I think to myself, scarce asset, Bitcoin. This scenario where you can't borrow against it and all of what we discussed and then I think paper, just the paper, all of the contracts and all of the jargon and things that, that are beyond my understanding. There's this coexisting phenomenon that's happening. And that was your initial argument. It was like there's a coexistence. It's the one scenario. It's like Bitco does what it's wanted to do. Or maybe if I just for lack of better term, the evangelical aspect of it where it's like we're going to take down the system where it's just going to be Bitcoin and Fiat's going to be worthless because we. [00:46:10] Speaker A: Can we. Can we talk about that for a second? [00:46:12] Speaker B: Yeah, please. [00:46:13] Speaker A: Do I have to push back against some of this? Take down the system? Because I don't think there's any support in the original bitcoin. I talked about this yesterday on Gary's podcast, but I want, I want people to think about this. Okay. I don't think there's a whole lot of support for we're going to destroy the tradfi system. I've heard people argue Bitcoin was designed to destroy the tradfi system. I'm going to show you. So if I can share my screen here, I want to make sure I can, you know, going back to 2010. Okay, I'm going to show you Bitcoin talk forums. I don't know if you can see this here. [00:46:48] Speaker B: I can. [00:46:48] Speaker A: This is a post from Hal Finney back in 2010 and I just want to point this out to you. He says that George Seljan has worked out the theory of competitive free banking in detail. He argues that such a system would be stable, inflation resistant and self regulated. He's talking about this and he starts off the post. Hal says actually there's a very good reason for Bitcoin backed banks to exist issuing their own digital cash currency redeemable for Bitcoin. So he's talking about a layer above Bitcoin cash currency that's above Bitcoin. Then he writes, I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin to be high powered money that serves as A reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. So the idea that Bitcoin can't coexist with some type of cash instrument that is not Bitcoin is rebutted by Hal Finney. So if you think you're smarter than this guy, go ahead. But people like, people that are making that argument like dark, I don't think they've thought this through. He says most bitcoin transactions will occur between banks. See that? Not between individuals. This is Hal Finney second. He received Bitcoin from Satoshi by the way, saying most Bitcoin transactions will occur before between banks to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be rare as well as bitcoin based purchases are today. So he's telling you right here, Mark. [00:48:13] Speaker B: Yes. [00:48:13] Speaker A: That the system is not going to be Bitcoin, only the one and only true money. You're going to have Bitcoin banks, you're going to have Bitcoin lending, you're going to have Bitcoin function in my view very similarly to you, to how the treasury market functions. That's the key. Like you have a base layer collateral money at the bottom and then you have a secondary layer. So if you're saying, well, you know, bitcoin can't coexist with the dollar, well then you're basically saying, Hal Finney, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't, you don't understand Bitcoin, you haven't done your homework. Study Bitcoin. Hal Finney, because that's what he's basically saying. [00:48:47] Speaker B: So this is where my mind goes, I think, okay, that's when we had gold as the reserve and gold was, was the hard money. And then we had the paper on top of the gold, but we saw what happened with that system. So then my mind goes, great, Bitcoins is the second coming of gold and we're going to muck it up just like we mucked up gold. [00:49:07] Speaker A: I mean, no, I think it's a, it's very different. Okay, so gold couldn't function as a base layer money technologically. What banks could not transfer it as easily. So there's a technological impediment that they move to paper in many respects. And you wanted governments to have the more ability and control and you know, remove the, the, the aspect of, you know, the fiat money. You know, they wanted to be able to print the fiat money. [00:49:28] Speaker B: Fungibility, would that be fungibility component? [00:49:31] Speaker A: So there's a lot of, there's both technical and political reasons. But what I believe is, and I think you, from my understanding, your view is somewhat aligned with this, is that you know, you, you favor the private sector. The private sector tends to be the better allocation of resources and that is no different than the commercial banking sector. I believe banks will eventually say, rather than having treasuries as our underlying collateral, we want to hold Bitcoin and that's more flexible, it's more consistent with what we want. The issue then becomes in an era where banks are risky and go too far and lend too far and become too big to fail, there is no bailout for the banks. At that point, there's no one to come in and say we're going to give you more bitcoin to shore up your balance sheet. Banks are penalized. And this is the most exciting thing about Bitcoin for me, the fact that if banking moves to bitcoin as the base layer level, there's a disincentive for malinvestment. I think that because we've constructed this system where big banks are too big to fail and really we need a government to step in. Banks engage in a lot of risky behavior they shouldn't otherwise engage in. And because of that we have really pernicious effects in society. We have consequences because of bankers mal investment. You will have a disincentive of that with bitcoin because they know there's nobody on the other end if something goes wrong that's going to be, be able to bail them out. There's no one that can shore up a balance sheet that is underpinned by Bitcoin. They may have a fiat dollar bailout, but that's not going to restore them to where they were with their bitcoin holdings, which to me is huge improvement for society. [00:51:03] Speaker B: I love that actually. I love, I love that you landed there because I think to myself that's where there's a lot of agreement is what you describe as a mal investment. And I think the last place that I landed with Dark was your government spying on you, but you being able to spy on your government. Forget the word spying, forget the hyperbole of it, but the idea of that we could peer review each other and there is transparency in the interaction versus the goal doesn't have the same level of transparency that a bitcoin blockchain would have. [00:51:36] Speaker A: Well, yes. You know, let's just talk about this for a second because there's a discussion that's sort of related with the proof of reserves. Okay. And what, what Dark has said in Many occasions that Jack Mallers has changed the game with his proof of reserves for 21 capital. Again, respectfully, I fundamentally disagree with that and here's why. If I tell you I have X amount of bitcoin, I have a thousand Bitcoin, you may say, oh, your balance sheet's good. Why would you ever say that? Because basic accounting shows you have your assets and your liabilities. Showing proof of reserves for someone's assets tells you absolutely nothing about their liabilities. And Michael Saylor said this recently. I think he was speaking at the bitcoin conference or somewhere near that. He made the comment like, look, just knowing what somebody has in terms of bitcoin, it doesn't tell you that that bitcoin's not levered a thousand to one. And I haven't, you know, borrowed money all over town and I owe all this money to everybody else. I mean, look at ftx, look at all these entities. Like they can have some assets on their books. They could have some, you know, shares or some bitcoin. Showing you what they have doesn't tell you what they owe. And to really get an accurate portrait of something is you have to know both sides of the equation. You have to know what basically their, their bitcoin to liability ratio is. That's, that's why it's always a ratio, just like gdp. I can't stand the people that just show the debt chart that goes up and to the right. Well, what about the productive capacity? What about the income generation in the United States? You have to show a ratio. You have to say debt to gdp. You can't just show the debt. That's meaningless. Who cares what the debt is? If Argentina had the US debt, they'd be in a way worse position than the United States because the United States has a massively bigger economy. You have to show both sides of the equation. [00:53:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I've heard you say that in spaces too. And that was one made sense to me. That makes sense to me. I would like two things. One is share how people can reach out to you or what people might reach out to you for. [00:53:28] Speaker A: Well, I'm a commercial litigator, so I have a full service national litigation practice. We have local counsel we retain to help us get pro hocked into any state where there's a litigated dispute. Generally I focus on litigated disputes in the bitcoin and broader crypto space. So if you have a breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, some sort of high stakes litigation, and you want very strong Competent representation, me and my firm. I think if we can't help you, I definitely know many people in the space that I can refer you to and assist you. We also do some regulatory work in the bitcoin and broader crypto space. So I'm happy to talk to you about those issues again. You know, feel free to reach out if I could be of help or refer you to the right person on X. I'm at Joe Carlisari. I tend not to talk as much about legal matters on X because obviously my clients wouldn't appreciate if I'm discussing a whole lot of their, you know, their business on Twitter. But I do talk about economics, which is a passion of mine, something I studied for decades. So if you want to larp about macroeconomics, please feel free to reach out and have good conversation and good discourse. And if I can be of help to you, always, you know, reach out. I do believe very fervently that bitcoiners are amazing people. They're forward thinking, they're innovative, they're willing to cast away dogma, and they're really willing to challenge you. And I never, I'll just say as a conclusion, I never really take issue with someone saying I disagree with your argument. What I take issue with is when people don't explain why, when people just say, okay, you're wrong. You know, you're a fiat cuck. Okay, great, that's, that's not really helpful. It doesn't like, you know, further the argument. So feel free if you tell me any aspect of what I'm saying is wrong or incorrect or not factual, I welcome it. One of the things we're really blessed on Mark is we have this awesome forum where we can chat in real time about a very complex, you know, changing, quick changing world. And we shouldn't take that for granted. We should really feel blessed that we can do that. Because there were people that existed in human history where they didn't talk to anybody outside their town, like they didn't get news outside their town. That was their whole life. Now we can hear about what's going on in Iran and Israel, you know, thousands of miles away. [00:55:31] Speaker B: I'm just thinking about how you and I have even connected how fortunate we are with the technology the way it is, because I didn't even know how much I was interested in this stuff till I landed in a spaces and heard people discussing and I was like, oh my gosh, where has this conversation been? I really love these conversations and it is such a fantastic community. There's so many different people involved in the bitcoin community and they. Everybody brings like a unique perspective. You have the legal aspect, Dark is a quant. Gary's entrepreneurial. Like we have so many different people. [00:56:05] Speaker A: Contributing to the space and we're going to get more. Right. We know that we're going to onboard millions of additional people. They're going to come from all stripes of life. They're not going to all be the same sort of. I feel like in the early days of bitcoin there's this tight knit libertarian mindset and philosophy and what we're seeing is we're seeing more people come in and there's progressive bitcoiners, all these different groups out there that have a different view. And we need to figure out how we all coalesce around what we agree on, which is that bitcoin is a better base layer. [00:56:35] Speaker B: Money and technology that is an unexpected consequence of this asset class that I think is, is underappreciated is how communal and friendly it really is. It is a. The idea, the concept of even a peer to peer and transparency. There's like a warmth and a welcoming to that and beyond the. I hear it and it just sounds so funny. Number go up. Number go up. You know, it's like caveman. Number go up. [00:57:02] Speaker A: So no, it makes you think about what is the proper system of monetary system, fiscal system, government system, all these things. It challenges all of it. Right. Because it has the money is so fundamental to what we do and what we're pursuits are and everything. And I'm not saying life's only about money. I definitely think the things are more important than money always. But it is, it is integral to our society. I don't think we would have as functioning of a society without a money system that was strong, a credit system that was strong. These things that, you know, guide so much of our decision making. [00:57:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a means of a. And it's a means of exchange and it's a communication. Yeah, I love that aspect. I love. I really enjoyed having you on. Thank you so much. Yeah, it was great for coming on. Yeah. And I, and I. I can foresee us having more conversations like this in the future because. Well, I think there's so many directions to go. [00:57:53] Speaker A: I completely agree. I'll just tell you, my view is that if you can. You're great at this. I'll just, I'll just compliment you. You're very, you're very good at trying to pick apart and sort of analyze it and be objective. About a complex issue where there may be disagreement. And I fully acknowledge there's disagreement with things that I've. I've said. What I think we should try to do is try to figure out, rather than avoiding that disagreement, avoiding that discussion, figure out a way. And I'm not always perfect either, of having a civil one and. And perhaps someone like you is. Is a great voice to sort of moderate some of these discussions and, you know, try to make people stay in line and not. Not go too far outside the box or call balls and strikes pretty fairly. I think that that would be great, and I would welcome that on any subject, not even. Even ones that I'm not involved with. I really appreciate someone like you bringing both sides of any argument. [00:58:42] Speaker B: I appreciate hearing that, and I have a feeling it's going to happen. I can see you and dark on at the same time, and I would really just love to be that centerpiece of, you know, moderation and hear both sides. Thank you again so much for coming on. I definitely want you to stay on because we'll just do a little deep. I don't know why I call it debriefing. I don't have another word for it now, but I hope the audience really enjoyed this episode. I try to bring on guests that I think will bring on a lot of value from the guests that I bring on. I'm so grateful for Joe Calasari Carlassari. Did I say your name correctly? [00:59:15] Speaker A: You got it. [00:59:15] Speaker B: Joe Carlassari. I was actually practicing it a little bit because I was like, Joe Carlasari. It was great. And Joe, I recognize I'm gonna have to do this for myself. You use name a lot. I was like, wow, he just keeps throwing my name in there. He's just making me feel so good. I gotta say Joe more. I gotta throw Joe out there a little bit more. So thank you so much for coming on. I hope the audience had a good experience. I hope we do more of these. The more you comment, the more you like, the more you engage. Definitely check out spaces I. I've actually seen you in, or I've been listening to you in the other spaces, too, the financial one. So outside of just the bitcoin community to get that broader perspective, and we're dynamic, we're beings. We got a lot of things going on. Joe, thank you so much. Audience, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this and we'll see you on the next one. Thank you for watching this episode of the Money Adjustment. If you want more, like, comment and subscribe you can follow me on X arc Kramer until the next episode. Stay healthy and wealthy. I let it run for a little bit, just in case there's anything, but I'll probably. It's 2:45, so we went the full hour, and I'm glad I. Actually, you were. You were 1:45 to 2:15, I think. And I'm like, there's no way I'm going to be able to do Joe in 30 minutes. So I had to. I rescheduled somebody so that we could get the full hour, and I'm glad I did because, well, it was great. I can't wait to see the Nuggets. [01:00:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. I think you asked a ton of awesome questions, and I hope I wasn't too long winded. I think it was great. I really do mean it. Like, I love. And I'm not perfect at it, to be clear, but I do love when we have real discussion. Gary and I was chatting yesterday, and one of the things I was regretting about that podcast we did yesterday with Gary is that I think we agreed on, like, 80% of it with the other guys. There wasn't like a real heated discussion with Simon and Dustin. Like, it was mostly agreement. And, you know, that's. That's not as interesting for people, I think if there's more of a. I. [01:01:27] Speaker B: Hear you in spaces all the time saying, like, come on, guys, let's spice it up. Like, we've talked. What's the bit? What's the bitcoin price going to be? How much do you think it's going to be so boring? 25. I'm like, that is the least year. I was like, I'm with you. It's like, the least interesting aspect of it is just to talk about the price, but it gets people worked up and it gets people commenting and they're in there and they're like, oh, yeah, 200 million by the end of the year. [01:01:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and especially it's kind of sad because there's so much more to talk about. Like, there's a ton. [01:01:58] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. I love what you said about it being an education. Like I said, I've been following it since 2008. I mean, talk about slow learner. I'm just watching it, watching it, and I have all these horror stories and I still do. Like, I need to get on Cold Storage. I talked to Dark about this. I'm like, dark, we got to do an episode where you just get me on Cold Storage. Because I don't want to do It. I don't want to. I don't trust it still, even after all of this. But talking to you guys, I feel a lot more confident. [01:02:28] Speaker A: And I was like, you know, I. [01:02:29] Speaker B: Need to get a wallet, and I need to just start throwing some money in there. [01:02:32] Speaker A: Yeah. You know what you can do, though, is that again, like, I. I don't know why people don't do this, quite frankly, but, like, you can send, like, 50 bucks worth of bitcoin cold storage just to experiment with. Doesn't need to be, like, your entire amount of bitcoin. I mean, the first bitcoin I sent to Gold Storage, it was. It was like, you know, I think it was a quarter of a bitcoin or something. At the time, it was like $50 worth. It was nothing. Like now it's like, you know, $25,000, but. [01:02:59] Speaker B: Right, right. The $10,000 pizza. [01:03:02] Speaker A: I'm just saying, like, you know, you can easily send a small amount that, like, if I lose it, I lose. It's 50 bucks. I could lose that. [01:03:08] Speaker B: You know, I think that scares people, too, is that they have the pizza in their mind. They're like, I don't want to spend any of it because this thing is worth a lot. That's like. It's kind of a dual, Nate. You're, like, telling people to spend it and hodl it. Spend it, but hodl it. So it kind of creates a little bit of a mixed message, but yeah. Do you have a. Do you have a recommendation before you go for the wallet? [01:03:30] Speaker A: Yes. I'm a huge fan of the Trezor for beginners. Okay, so Trezor. Buy it directly from their website. Don't buy it anywhere. It's Trezor. T R E Z O R IO. [01:03:41] Speaker B: I'm gonna do it, man. I'm gonna get a Trezor, and then I'm gonna put some money in it, and then I want to send you some money. No, I'll send somebody. I played around with it through Coinbase. I did it. But it's not the same thing because all of that stuff, not having the keys, none of that. It's not the same thing. And I'm working past some issues. Like I said, just buy it. [01:04:01] Speaker A: Buy it right away, because it can take, like. Like a week or two to get. Get it out sometimes. [01:04:05] Speaker B: All right, cool. [01:04:06] Speaker A: Buy it. Right? For sure. [01:04:08] Speaker B: Thanks again. Appreciate it. [01:04:11] Speaker A: Take care. Bye. [01:04:12] Speaker B: Bye.