Transcript 0:00 All the metrics are broken. Price earnings doesn't really matter quarter to quarter. You got to look at a five-year trailing PE in order to understand a Bitcoin treasury company. 0:08 The gains on Bitcoin is the revenue itself. 0:11 If there is that underlying business that's profitable, if it's, you know, Tesla or GameStop or whoever that can then buy more Bitcoin with that profits, then they should have a higher MNAP because they're able to acquire more Bitcoin. 0:22 What happens when people realize that these companies have the most pristine collateral, the best collateral ever? Like, they have the money. Like, give me money so I can buy better money. 0:35 On a rolling one-year basis, MSTR has outperformed the Mag Seven stocks on every single day over the past year. That's just a fact. 0:49 [upbeat music] Welcome back to Bitcoin Season Two. We're talking Bitcoin Treasuries with the Bitcoin Treasuries guys, Ed and Tim. Welcome to the show, Ed and Tim. Thank you, Charlie. Thanks for having us. 1:03 So it is a big summer for Bitcoin treasury companies, digital asset treasury companies broadly, call them CATs, call them Bitcoin Treasury Cos. 1:12 You guys both, like, doubled down on covering the space this summer and the past year. Uh, what are each of you up to and focusing on right now? Yeah. 1:23 We're, we're, uh, neck deep in our September seventeenth Bitcoin Treasuries Unconference. Uh, I recently left Strategy, and the first call was to Tim, said, "Hey, Tim, uh, what are you up to?" 1:36 He said, "I'm so glad you left Strategy. I [chuckles] I'm doing a conference in six weeks." And I said, "Well, I, uh, I'm into, uh, torture, a little bit of masochism, and let's see if, uh, we can pull this off." 1:51 Yeah, same. [laughs] Pretty much planning the conference. But, uh, no, it's fun. 1:56 Uh, the, you know, the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast was kind of a accidental thing that I put on an orange tie at the right time, um, and that turned into digital conferences, and that's now turning into a 2:10 real life conference. So we're really excited to be able to really be together with the whole community and, you know, of... 2:18 Ed goes to seven thousand conferences a year, but for us mere mortals, like, it is really just a special time when everybody's together. 2:26 And the space is growing to where it's kind of almost, you know, unless you've been around for a long time, y-you kind of haven't met everyone, so it's great to just shake someone's hand and, and, and really be in the room and be able to feel like what's going on, not just through your screen on your phone. 2:42 So yeah, really excited. It's like Batman or Bane, where nobody cared who I was until I put on the tie. Uh- [laughs] 2:50 Oh, okay, so, so let's, let's-- I'm just, I'm gonna throw a question at you like, you know, we're recording this on, uh, Saturday, uh, the thirtieth of August. And, um, as of right now, MicroStrategy is down. 3:03 Now, this has caused to ruffle some feathers online. I see some people complaining about it on Twitter, whatever. 3:11 But I think maybe to frame this conversation, like, just what, you know, what's going on with MicroStrategy being down right now, and then what does that indicate like for the treasuries market broadly, do you think? 3:23 Yeah. Before, before we answer that, Tim, do you wanna give the disclaimer? What you're about to hear may be amazing, but it's not financial advice. Back to you, Ed, Ed or- This is not financial advice. 3:34 This is three guys sitting, you know, armchair ripping about, you know, our thoughts on the market. Yeah. 3:40 And l-l-look, for those listeners that are listening after September seventeenth, what an amazing event that was, huh? Unbelievable. 3:48 The, the, the shock, the, the celebrities that showed up, the, the lasers, the, the, the smoke, the, the balloons. It was just wow. I mean- Orange people... 3:59 if you weren't there, I mean, you've probably heard about it, you missed it. So anyways. You know, it, it, it-- I don't think anybody knows the answer to your question, which is kind of cool, right? 4:11 It, it, it's, it's always been that way in Bitcoin. That, you know, people that have been in s... I, I bought my first Bitcoin in two thousand and eleven, really didn't dive into it till maybe fifteen. 4:20 And so that seems like a long time, and I don't know what I'm talking about. Someone who's been in Bitcoin a long time has not been in it for forty years. They didn't learn from their grandfather and their grandfather. 4:31 And so it is a bunch of opinions. There's not a lot of accountability, and the people that kind of seem to know what they're talking about rise to the top a little bit, but no accountability. 4:40 So the ideas of institutional money, retail money, uh, what is causing, you know, different coins or bitcoin or the stocks to move up and down i-is, is just obsessing people. 4:54 And, um, I've come to the point, yeah, it just-- when you think it's going one way. 4:59 I've come to the point where I just don't trust my feed, and, and whatever my feed says is always wrong, so I've become a complete contrarian investor. 5:08 So when my feed is telling me, uh, Sailor's going bankrupt and, and, and, uh, the treasury stocks are going to zero and stuff, I'm throwing more money in just 'cause I don't even trust my feed or myself anymore. 5:18 The counter feed indicator. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. What do you, what do you... What's your, what's your take on the pulse in the market right now, Tim? I just 5:27 think it's super entertaining when, like, the biggest debate right now on X over the past day or two is, uh, someone posted about Fong buying a million dollars or so, or ten thousand dollars, whatever the number was, of some preferred s- uh, strategy stock. 5:47 And then, uh, so then you have people saying, "Is that even newsworthy or is it a slow news day?" But then when you actually look at the document, it's not Fong, it's like his kid bought it. 5:58 So it's like, [chuckles] like is it newsworthy? And then if it is newsworthy, it's not even always correct, right? 6:06 So do your own research.The reality is, I thought a post from James Van Straten a couple days ago was interesting. He said, "Strategy has always led Bitcoin." 6:16 And like on the day, it was just some snapshot of strategy stock being up much more percentage-wise than Bitcoin. And it's like, well, you know, these things are volatile. 6:27 I think what people are starting to learn is they're like super volatile. So, [chuckles] 6:32 you know, if something's down ten, 20, 30, 60, 70%, maybe that's not the, the best time to like really go out the risk curve to like, uh, options or I, I-- you know, make your own decisions. 6:45 But it's like, yeah, it's volatile, so that's what we know. Yeah. It's like, uh, "Hey, Suitcoiners, welcome to Bitcoin. It's volatile. Nothing's changed." 6:55 Um, so I hear this, you know, I, I haven't done this treatment as much on this podcast, but like about like the why of Bitcoin Treasuries, um, they're Treasury companies. 7:07 And like I hear this claim like there's a lot of money out there that like nes- can't necessarily buy spot BTC, it's locked out. I'm not like familiar with like, 7:16 uh, where this money is, what it looks like, who these people are. Um, like, uh, uh, 7:23 why are, why is, uh, why are certain entities, I would say maybe more the institutional investor types, why are they buying these Bitcoin Treasury companies? 7:34 So in certain jurisdictions, in certain countries, in certain corporate or institutional mandates, you can't buy Bitcoin. I mean, 7:46 some percentage of retail investors through their [chuckles] Vanguard or whatever, uh, they, they can't buy Bitcoin, but they can buy MicroStrategy, and they may be able to buy other, uh, Bitcoin equities. 7:59 So I think that's been, uh, like an obvious answer for quite some time, continues to be. Um, 8:08 I mean, and even reflecting on my own journey a year or two ago when I, when I said, "Hmm, the Bitcoin volatility is just like it doesn't feel the same. I need more." [chuckles] Right? 8:20 So then you have leveraged Bitcoin, and I think that's just a natural for someone that's very comfortable with the volatility of Bitcoin and, and wants that performance that maybe they had four or five, six, seven years ago. 8:33 I think that makes a lot of sense as a progression. Yeah. It's, it's the unlocks, right? I mean, going back to 2011 where, you know, I 8:41 put a credit card into a Japanese website, you know, to, to, to, to-- um, I don't even know if I bought it or not. I think it was sitting there on a spreadsheet. 8:50 And then you got Coinbase, and then you get, you know, 100 exchanges. And then you get... I mean, my neighbors, I, I present them with options. I say, "You can do Coinbase." 8:59 And they're like, "Nah, that sounds complicated." "Okay, you could do, uh, uh, Unchained." It's like, "Uh, I don't need that much." "You can do River." "That sounds pretty simple." "Or you can do the ETF." 9:08 And so it's, it's unlocking it to all kinds of different markets. Uh, you know, even the Bitcoin ATMs is an unlock, but it's a sad unlock when you look at, you know... But people use those ATMs like crazy. 9:19 So unlocking it to more and more markets, and in this case, the Treasuries is, is unlocking it to principally the fixed income markets, which is the, the $4 trillion unlock. 9:30 So how much are you guys, um, when it comes to like bitcointreasuries.net, I've got it pulled up here. Like how much are you guys actually like participating in figuring out how to track these entities? 9:42 'Cause, you know, I've spent my time in like trying to make sense of, you know, wide data sets and try to like standardize them, and I, you know, while I don't know all the esoteric stuff that goes into like TradFi filings and standardization, like I feel like even if we just look at Bitcoin Treasury companies, like it's kind of hard to com- you know, it, it can be hard to compare them apples to apples on a spreadsheet. 10:09 Like what goes into this? What like... Tease this out for me. Like what, what are some like things that are, that, that kinda make it difficult to like equivocate, you know, company A, B, and C together? 10:21 Although that's- Yeah. Yeah. 10:22 As y- uh, uh, um, as you know, I, I was in the, the L2 space for a while, and, uh, the guys at Bitcoin Layers were just trying to compare all the L2s, and it was just this, this impossible task. 10:32 And, uh, Rizzo and NVK are over at bitcointreasuries.net, who we partner with very closely to, uh, to try to do the same thing over there. 10:40 Um, I, you know, I, I hope I'm not, uh, uh, front-running anything, but they're coming out with kind of a scoring system. You know, even before I was trying to say, how do you... how can we measure these all? 10:52 How can we compare them? And there just ended up being like 28 different metrics on, you know, leadership team and where they're getting their debt and doing all this. 11:01 Uh, so I think probably the best way to try to understand that and, and get your head around what the difference of them are, is to come to New York on September 17th to the Bitcoin Treasuries Unconference NYC. 11:15 [chuckles] Uh, and no, seriously though, it's like you have to meet the guys, you have to hear their story, hear their story. Some of them have really good stories. 11:22 They're, they're, you know, Simon is a genius in the way he presents it. Um, but, you know, some others are, are struggling with their story. 11:30 Um, others are just taking a pure New York approach and, and raising money, and that could work as well. So it's, it's, it's in progress. Yeah. 11:38 On the scoring system, uh, like I wonder if there's a great way to score the operating business, right? Like per industry, 11:47 what is the average or median or whatever word sort of multiple for valuing that, and how does that play together with the Treasury? 11:58 You know, I saw a post a day or two ago that was, "Hey, all of our data is kind of user community driven. It's pulled from the community." 12:08 I mean, like make sure to dive deep a- a- and, and be aware that like-This information might be the best information available at the time, but doesn't mean it's all correct. 12:21 And so I think that's-- there, there's a lot of great work to do, and I think we're gonna look back on this time and just be like, "Wow." Like, [chuckles] 12:34 I don't think we even know what a Bitcoin treasury company is and, and, right? Like, Ed, I think you talk sometimes about a couple different buckets, right? 12:43 Just having Bitcoin on your balance sheet, and that's great, versus a, like, a, a levered Bitcoin equity actually doing the strategy. And then how does that... Right? 12:53 What's the best-- what's the ideal Bitcoin treasury company? Does it have a native Bitcoin sort of service, uh, or product or both? And is like all of the digital delivery and distribution the best? 13:08 Can make a-an argument that it is. So what does all that look like? 13:12 And I think we've seen a few things hit the market where it's like they, they kinda nailed that and, uh, those companies may or may not have the same name as the, you know, current president of the United States. 13:23 I mean, i-if you really do look at the, at the, at the presentations, it's like, like, uh, cell phone service, digital, digital media. Like, 13:33 some of these ideas are like, take the person or the, or the entity, or the, the politics out of it. It, it's interesting for me to just think about. Yeah. 13:42 You, you, you know, you have the, the extremes of ones that th-there is no real underlying business. They're just using a ticker, um, you know, kinda like the REITs, right? 13:51 Where it's just that's all they are is, is just a real estate investment trust. 13:55 Uh, and then the other extreme, you have, uh, Tesla that is a small, small percentage of their treasury holdings, but they're both Bitcoin treasury companies. 14:04 And a-at the end, what they're doing is, is protecting their, their melting ice cube, you know? 14:10 And so w-if it's, if it's a company that's just an all-in treasury company, they're, they're, they're buying Bitcoins, issuing shares, great. They're protecting their personal ice cube from melting over time. 14:20 And then a Tesla on the other end is saying like, "Yeah. We've noticed the ice cube is melting, and we're gonna protect that a little bit." [upbeat music] Hey. Will here with Blockspace Media. 14:32 Did you know that we have individual feeds for all our shows? If you're watching the Mining Pod, Bitcoin Season Two, or the Court Show, be sure to check out the individual feeds. 14:41 You can find them on your podcast player of choice, whether that be Spotify, Apple, YouTube, et cetera. Just type in Blockspace Media and you'll find all our shows pop up. 14:49 Or just type in the individual show name, like the Mining Pod or Bitcoin Season Two. Be sure to hit that subscribe and give us a five-star rating so we can continue to bring you the best content in Bitcoin. 15:03 We saw like the mining public company narrative start in '20 and '21, and some of these companies put Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Like, they put a lot. 15:11 And, um, even today, right now, I would say, um, you know, mining companies, they say Marathon's got a lot, CleanSpark's got a decent position. 15:21 Like, the mining businesses are some of the, you know, best Bitcoin capitalized businesses out there, but yet they don't seem to, for some reason, be like a part of, like, the Bitcoin treasuries conversation. 15:34 Um, why do you guys think that is? Like, the revenue generating, is Bitcoin denominated? What's your read on, like, why the market seems to really like 15:43 the, like these other type of Bitcoin treasury companies and maybe not [audio glitching] They were at first. I mean, at first, they were spending the Bitcoin they were mining, right? 15:53 And then they saw what Strategy was, was doing and said, "Wait a minute. Let's keep the Bitcoin we're mining. 15:57 We'll issue shares, you know, we'll do ATM to pay the bills, and then we can, you know, become a full HODL company." And, and so they made that transition, uh, probably later than they could have, right? 16:09 And so they're, they're, they're stacking. 16:11 Uh, I, I actually was on a one-hour call yesterday talking to a guy about this, about why the mining companies lost their, their appeal, you know, why everybody's over into the more traditional treasury companies and why the mining... 16:23 And, and there really isn't a, a great answer for that. 16:26 In case of Mar, they pivoted to be an energy company to get more institutional investment, and they've done that, but then they kinda lost the retail market a little bit. So, uh, are the mining companies good businesses? 16:37 Absolutely. Are they well-run? Absolutely. Do they have twenty-year plans? Absolutely. But that doesn't always lead to, to retail hype. 16:46 So, uh, having Bitcoin in the balance sheet as a mining company should get that same kind of, uh, multiple that other treasury companies have, but there's something that's sticking in the investors' minds that's not leading to that, that hype. 16:59 Yeah. I totally agree on the messaging, the media, the, the narrative, because you see the result of Saylor hitting podcasts for five years straight. Half a decade of podcasts, and you can get there. 17:17 But how many other Bitcoin treasury executives are going to do that, uh, or need to do that, right? Maybe that's an open question. Uh, the aspect of you look down the list of these companies, 17:30 at least half of them, probably three-quarters of the companies in the top one hundred, I'm just making up numbers, not financial advice, 17:38 they, they haven't even really publicly said anything as far as like trying to be in the media or even tell their story. So is that, right? Maybe that's a different bucket. 17:47 It's a leveraged Bitcoin equity, or it's a Bitcoin treasury company with or without leverage, whichever bucket it's in, with no, no, uh, storytelling or narrative around it at all. 17:59 And then what happens if Tradfi six months or six years from now goes, "Wait a second. 18:05 We value like a lot of these public equities at like thirty x book, so maybe we should start valuing all these treasury companies at thirty x book." Well, right now they're trading at like less than NAV, [chuckles] 18:18 so one or two NAV, right? It's wild. It's really wild to think about.And to Ed's point, anyone that's an expert, well, you could be an expert since Bitcoin was invented, but that's about it. 18:30 And it's kind of silly, right? We're all learning, uh, hopefully every day. 18:35 Yeah, you know, [clears throat] it's very clear we're in, like, this narrative creation moment and this narrative discovery period, but this is the question, like, hanging over all our he- over all our heads is, like, eventually, 18:47 sometime in the future, is it one year? Is it twenty years? These things have to transition to being, like, real businesses or, or do they? Um, I don't know. This is an open question. 19:01 You guys don't have to answer this, but where is your head at when people, you know, ask like, wh- when are these gonna turn into actual revenue-generating companies? What's your thought or response to this? 19:12 Why are they not revenue-generating companies? Do... Right? The, the-- I mean, Strategy has proven that with their last two, uh, uh, quarterly earnings. I mean, the, the gain on the Bitcoin is revenue. 19:24 Uh, this is one of the topics at the conference that, that, you know, I think, um, Ben and, and Jeff are really gonna focus on, is that all the metrics are broken. You know, you, you, you... 19:34 Price earnings doesn't really matter quarter to quarter. You gotta look at a five-year trailing PE in order to understand a Bitcoin treasury company. 19:42 So, um, if the underlying business is, uh, existing and profitable, such as Strategy, uh, five hundred million in revenue, I'm gonna round, seventy-five million in profit, okay, great. That's an underlying business. 19:57 But it used to be a big part of MicroStrategy, and now it's this minuscule part of Strategy. And, and so when you say, "When does it become a real revenue-generating business?" I, I don't know if it has to, right? 20:10 The, the, the gains on Bitcoin is the revenue itself. 20:15 If there is that underlying business that's profitable, if it's, you know, Tesla or GameStop or whoever that can then buy more Bitcoin without profits, then they should have a higher MNAP because they're able to acquire more Bitcoin outside of, uh, uh, 20:29 creative, intelligent leverage. Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll kinda double down on that, that, 20:35 uh, Jeff Walton had a post, uh, within the past week that was like, "Look, Donald Trump is actually known for being able to raise money and do deals with a negative net worth." 20:46 What happens when people realize that these companies have the most bankable, the pristine collateral, the best collateral ever? Like, they have the money. Like, [chuckles] "Give me money, so I can buy better money." 21:01 [chuckles] And then twenty-two hours ago, right, on the Strategy handle, on a rolling one-year basis, MSTR has outperformed the Mag Seven stocks on every single day over the past year. That's just fact. 21:17 And, and d- d- don't worry. One or more of these Bitcoin treasury public companies that you see on Bitcoin Treasuries Net is gonna screw it up bad. You know? 21:28 Custody problem or bankruptcy of the underlying business or, or, or, or... And it's gonna affect them all, right? The, the... 21:36 I'm not gonna come up with the, uh, uh, the, the saying for that kind of situation but, you know, the-- when one of them that happens, the rest are gonna get some of the stain. 21:45 And, and we'll go through that, and then we'll push on to the next step. Yeah, it's funny. 21:49 Like, yeah, seasoned folks like you and I, Ed, like, we know something's gonna break, and, and the entire industry will get a black eye and, and- Again. Yeah, again. Yeah. 22:00 Yeah, it-- Yeah, it's like my fifth black eye at this point, so it, you know, just par for the course. [chuckles] Exactly. I'm taking punches left and right. 22:08 Um, so, you know, it's, it's funny because we, we keep bringing up Strategy. I don't hear other, like, treasury companies' names dropped into... It does-- One of my favorite questions is like, okay, so 22:21 to what degree is it Strategy versus other treasury companies? Is this a winner-take-most, winner-take-all, winner-take-some? How much of it is, like, zero sum? 22:32 Like, I'm kinda curious, like, is, is Saylor leading a pack or is he trying to, you know, carve out, uh, the, the, the long-term market winner? What are your thoughts here? Winner took three percent so far. 22:46 [chuckles] Yeah. Um, each one of these, uh, treasury companies is getting a piece of the pizza. 22:53 And in a traditional indus- industry, if you were talking about the tire industry, there's only so many tires that are needed. Um, but in this case, the pizza is Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is growing so fast. 23:08 Just imagine that pizza on the table is growing so fast that everybody's pizza, pizza, piece of pizza is growing. And, and so it's not a competitive landscape, and I think that's why Saylor... 23:17 One of the reasons why he is so, uh, um, generous and, and, and helping with his time and it's because he knows the pizza's growing and everybody's piece is growing. 23:27 It's interesting because it, you know, e- it's not even, like, my full-time focus, but I can tell that, like, the meta for, like, what the next play in the treasur- or in the treasury strategy, not Strategy treasury, but just the s- the strategy of doing Bitcoin treasuries, like the meta's shifting really quickly. 23:45 Um, and Saylor's leading it, issuing different types of preferred stocks, but, like, what would you guys say the meta is right now, and where could you see it going? 23:56 Like, what are the next competitive edges you think that these treasury companies could deliver or offer to try to attract, uh, more capital? I, I, I think it... 24:06 And this is, this is, this narrative or this kind of explanation has been, uh, floating around for, you know, maybe a year or more now, but I think the, the reality of the companies being able to tell the story, okay, that's there. 24:26 But-These are largely what have been deemed zombie companies. But what happens, as Ben Workman would say, when you actually have a growth company adopt a leverage Bitcoin treasury strategy? 24:40 Like, I think that's one of the next iterations that people are gonna be like, "Holy smokes." Um, maybe that's Bitcoin native, maybe it's not, but I don't think we've really seen that yet. Ed, do you disagree? 24:56 No, no, no. The-the-the-- I, you know, I hate all these phrases we come up with. You know, it's like, oh, it's early and, and this and that. 25:02 But the, the fun part is always that we've had so many brilliant minds in this space. 25:06 You go to-- I, I mean, I s- we all say this, that we're, we're the stupidest person in the room, and we all feel like we mean it, you know? 25:12 [chuckles] It's like especially when you go to, uh, uh, OP Next, another fantastic conference. Um, I, I'm definitely the dumbest guy in the room at OP Next. It is, it is humiliating. 25:23 But, um, y-you know, whether it's nothing stops this train or, or now M... I can't wait till M NAV compression goes away. That one's just, ugh, it grates on me. 25:33 Um, but we'll come up with these thought leaders who just kind of are powering through this, powering through this and go, "Ah, here's, here's what it is." 25:41 Um, you know, the other thing that I like doing is when this new thing comes up, when... Like ordinals. Go back and search for the word ordinals on the Google way back machine three years ago. 25:51 You'd get like a mathematical concept, yeah. Like on Wikipedia or something. Yeah. Rehypothecation was a word five years ago, but then on the Google way back, it just goes through the roof. 26:01 And so we've got really smart people thinking about it. Sometimes these words stick, sometimes they don't, and, and we'll, we'll just keep chugging along. 26:09 But to think that we're gonna reach some point of stability on understanding Bitcoin and understanding its peripheral markets is, is, is a pipe dream. 26:17 It's just this is, this is the rollercoaster that just doesn't ever come to the back to the station. 26:24 So I have a delicate question I'm gonna throw at you guys, and you can duck and weave or you can answer it head-on, take it wherever you want. 26:31 But there was a [chuckles] there was a BitMEX report recently, um, I think last week or two weeks ago, um, looking at these DATS, the digital asset treasury companies. 26:41 They expanded it to all crypto treasury companies, where they looked at like the management fees and the, the like, the take by the folks who are spinning up these companies. 26:54 Um, they could be pretty, pretty large, like percentage of like assets, assets under management. What are your guys' thoughts about this? Is there, is, uh, is, is... 27:05 Are, is the industry getting maybe a little over its skis or over exuberant or, um, is this a way that the companies can differentiate themselves? Uh, what are your thoughts on this? 27:16 Did you see, did you see that report, Tim? No, but I mean, I think the obvious thing that comes to my mind is it's the new SPAC craze, right? It's like the new shiny thing. And, uh, you know, 27:28 I just saw Jeff Park post that, you know, within a year or however, what-whatever length of time, all of these alternative coin asset DATS treasury companies are going to say something like, like the smart ones will say, "Uh, we're gonna allocate ten percent to Bitcoin." 27:49 And you've already seen it. I mean, because it was two, three, four months ago, you already forget that Polkadot and something else said like, "Oh, we're gonna put some of our treasury into Bitcoin." 27:59 Well, people, right, as soon as like the announcement goes by their ears, they've already forgotten about it, and, and myself included, right? You can't really hold this in your brain. 28:07 Maybe chat or, or some other AI can. And it's like, y- that's already happening. It's gonna happen more. You wanna build your house on sand, to quote Matt Cole. But it's like, yeah, Bitcoin's where it's at. 28:20 Y- if you're gonna go out the risk curve, yes, short term, if you're a trader, maybe that makes sense, but I just see it all coming back to Bitcoin the way it, it has every single cycle. 28:34 You guys got, you know, you've, you've plugged the, the conference a bit here coming up in... By the time this comes out, it'll be what? 28:40 I think fourteen, fifteen days, uh- You're talking about the one on September seventeenth in New York City that you can find on Luma? I'm talking about the one on September seventeenth in New York City, yeah. 28:49 Bitcoin Treasury Unconference on Luma. That one? Yeah. 28:52 So I mean, but, uh, you know, I'll kinda, kinda round out this conversation by asking you guys, what are you most excited to hear people talk about at your conference? 28:59 Like, what kind of speakers are you excited to have lined up? What kind of conversations are you eager to platform? Um, 'cause you guys are in the business of programming this. 29:07 This is the definitive conference for treasuries. What are you excited for to see? Yeah. 29:13 The, the, the-- I think just a couple days after Tim announced it, uh, he got a DM from Saylor saying, "You know, I wanna be a part of this." And, you know, we had a call, and we thought about it. 29:24 We were, you know, weighing the options, and we told him, "Okay," you know. Ed said, "Be respectful. Respond immediately." [laughing] I, I said, I said, "Tell him, tell him, "No thanks, we got Gladiator." 29:38 But, uh, well, that was a joke. That didn't go through. Um, no. So I mean, of course. You know, that was, that was thrilling. 29:44 And, you know, he's going to do a keynote at the beginning, then we'll have him on two separate panels, uh, one of them with, uh, uh, Brian Dixon and Mark Moss. 29:53 Um, I'd have to pull it up here, but, uh, we're gonna have one on, on M NAV and all the, the metrics that are out there. We're gonna have one on, uh, proof of reserves with Adrian Morris. 30:03 We're gonna have one on, uh, self-custody, whether that's actually an option. We're doing this in foreign markets. Why is it different than the US? So I mean, we're doing this town hall format, which is 30:15 kind of because we feel like people are, are-- have a little presentation and panel fatigue. Um, and, and so we'll have a small stage in the front surrounded by tables and chairs. 30:28 The thought leaders will get up and-Give their thoughts on the topic for fifteen minutes, and then we'll have mics in the audience where people will, you know, get to make comments. 30:36 That's gonna be incredibly risky, but we're gonna figure out how to pull that off. Um, we were thinking about having a gong, a huge gong. And then like forty-five seconds, somebody just goes, gong, and we cut their mic. 30:47 But, um, yeah, it's gonna be a, a format that you haven't seen in Bitcoin, which will be super cool. And, uh, we'll get some debate going on these topics because that's all we can do right now is debate. 31:00 I, I just don't know anybody that could get up in front of a crowd and talk about Bitcoin treasury companies and be authoritative about it. 31:07 You know, when, when you go to Up Next, you got brilliant minds who are doing incredible research on, on the protocol, and you're like, "Okay, this guy's legit." You know? He's gonna tell us where he's working on the... 31:19 But nobody can say that in, in the bit- in the treasury world. Yeah. Ed, do you wanna talk about Adrian? Not Adrian Morris, although we, we, uh, highly respect his [chuckles] his work. Adrian Pruitt. 31:32 I mean, for me, it's like when you get Bitcoiners together and you just do things, like that's what this event's gonna be. It's like everybody's there 31:42 because we're so intrigued, we're so, you know, do your own research, not financial advice. 31:48 We're so invested [chuckles] in Bitcoin and the ecosystem that, like, we were on a call with, with other people on the production side of the business, and they literally said to Adrian, "I, I cannot believe that you're on this call, that you're an Emmy award-winning producer and that you're going to like, produce a Bitcoin event." 32:11 Like, this is effing awesome. Yeah. Like, so I-- We're, we're pretty excited. [chuckles] Yeah. 32:17 It's gonna be like the boom cameras and reverse angle cameras and so, you know, it's gonna look like a, a, a, like an MTV Unplugged meets a, a town hall and, and it's gonna be pretty sweet. 32:28 But, uh, with the whole point of showing the interaction between the thought leaders on stage and the people in the crowd and, uh, um, the topics were actually selected by, uh, by the attendees. 32:40 I, you know, I was inspired by, um, um, Tabcon who puts all their content on GitHub and lets the, the actual attendees vote on what gets on stage. And so I took twenty topics. 32:51 I sent out a survey, they all voted, and those are the, the seven that made it. Crowdsourcing the content for the conference, very good idea. I'm a huge fan of that. 33:00 Guys, it sounds like vibes are very high, as Steven Lubka would say. Um, the, the exuberance is palpable. Um, we know that there will be trips and hang-ups ahead, but, uh, heads held high. We know this is Bitcoin. 33:15 Any last words before we wrap, wrap up this conversation? Yeah. We will be selling, um, the only merchandise we'll have is we will be selling paper Bitcoin at the show. 33:24 [laughs] So if you wanna buy a, a, a Bitcoin, we will be selling them. It's like about what? Fifty bucks a, a sheet of Bitcoin. So- [laughs]... paper Bitcoin will be available. 33:33 Uh, now, um, you know, for the, for those listening after the date, I'm sure you can go and find the live stream and watch it and, and support our wonderful sponsors. You know, we do have a, a bunch of great sponsors. 33:44 We've been selling tickets. But this is one where you're gonna wanna say, "I was in the room." Um, you know, very few, uh, conferences like that. 33:52 You know, twenty twenty-one Bitcoin conference in Miami was one of those, "I was in the room" kind of events, right? Um- That was my first one. That was my- Yeah. Bitcoin event. 34:01 That was a good one for, for it to be your first one. Yeah. 34:03 You know, but nobody, nobody that watched it on, on the, the replay understands that when Bukele announced it, the, the crowd was so loud you couldn't hear the rest of what he said. Mm-hmm. Right? 34:16 And, and I had tears coming down my face. My twelve-year-old son sitting next to me. He's like, "Dad, what's going on?" I'm like, "Oh, crap. I got my son into a cult." 34:23 [laughing] You're not wrong, but also it was a great time. Yeah. But yeah, this is gonna be one of those, you need to be in the room when this happens. 34:31 And if you're in the space, I mean, if you're an investor and you're trying to figure out which of these treasury companies, you're gonna be able to meet these people in person and shake their hand and say, "Which one of these do I trust?" 34:40 If you're a service provider, if you're, you know, looking to be an investment banker or a lawyer or, or a, a custody agent for the treasury companies, you need to be in the room. 34:48 And if you-- Most-- First and foremost, if you are a treasury company and you've got a story to tell, you need to be at this event telling your story because there's going to be literally hundreds of millions of dollars of investment money in that room trying to figure out which one of these treasury companies to put their money into. 35:05 At least. I'd say billions. But yeah, I- Yeah. We hope, we h- w- You know, we think, we hope that this event will be certain things. We don't know. 35:15 All we can do is try to coordinate things, put things together, put everybody in a room. I mean, I remember from twenty twenty-one in Miami, right? Like, just seeing Max Keiser introduce Michael Saylor, right? 35:28 This is my first conference, keep in mind, right? And to see Jack Dorsey, when he was still the CEO of Twitter, when it was called Twitter, be on stage and, and like, the big moment for me was w-when he said, "Look, 35:41 working on Bitcoin is the most important thing I could do with the rest of my life, and if I need to leave Twitter or Square or something else to do that, I'm going to do that." I was like, "That's interesting." 35:52 I mean, I even remember now here just thinking about, I mean, there was a, a protester and he just sat there and very calmly said, you know, "Let her, let her speak. Let her say what she wants to say." 36:02 And then he responded to it. And it's like, those are the moments that like, uh, you can't like, stage manage or choreograph something like that. I mean, maybe you can, I don't know. 36:12 Um, so it's like, those are the moments that like, when you're in the room, you're like, "Uh, that's wild," right? It's how many years later, you still, still remember those, those moments where you're like, "There 36:24 might be something to this." And so that's what we're hoping to create. 36:28 And I think the live stream, you know, what is, is the next level because then you have a couple hundred people in the room, but you have, you know, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds thou- of thousands of people also experiencing it at the same time and, and obviously can watch it. 36:43 Yeah. We- Well- Should we, should we go ahead and do it? Should I make the special announcement? Yeah, I'm gonna do it. Screw it. 36:49 We will have a special session, um, I think for the first time in the Bitcoin world, uh, Pleditor will be joining us on stage. [laughs] Uh, Pleditor- Yes, the unique Pleditor. Yeah. The famed critic. 37:02 Pleditor has agreed to come and, uh, do just a, a session on stage and just let people kinda go, go at him or they. And, uh, no, Pleditor is not coming. 37:13 Maybe- I guar- I guarantee you Pleditor's listening to this seething under his, his collar's getting hot. And shout out, Pleditor, we love you. Come on this podcast, I wanna rip with you. 37:23 So- But you know, we don't know either. Maybe Pleditor will be there, right? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe Pleditor's Saylor's alt and he's- [laughs]... manufacturing, manufacturing, uh, controlled descent. 37:34 Boys, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for coming on Bitcoin Season two, and I will eventually cross paths with both of you IRL sometime in the future. Peace. Thank you, Charlie. 37:46 [outro music]
