#553: Preparing For A Dual-Currency Era with Alex Leishman
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We have something coming. And let's say a monter two is going to be like the new standard, I think, for making a decline or crypto abb secure.

That's Alice lishman CEO, a river financial revealing a game changing security feature that could reshape bitcoin custody. But that's not all. River is changing the interest .

from your dollars, and river now a high interest rate, three point eight percent, and you are IT coin daily. Everyone else is just keeping all the interest we are giving IT back to our clients.

Today, alex chAllenges popular bitcoin narratives and shares insights on rivers explosive growth. He also explains what microsoft shareholders need to acquire bitcoin and tells us a reversal opinion about the U.

S. dollar. I believe that were more towards a curci era.

And just when you think you understand where bitcoin payments are heading.

I mean, actually, this is going to be really radical.

This is a conversation you don't want to miss.

You've had a dynamic where money become freer than free.

Let me talk about a fed just gone. Not all the central banks going nuts.

So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, bitcoin is the Victor.

I mean, that's part of the whole case for bitcoin.

If not paying attention.

you probably should be, probably should be, probably, should be probably that alex is. And alex, welcome back to the show. R.

hey, thanks for having me on. It's great to be back to have you back.

Spend a big week for you and else a river getting me between dominated. A yield bitcoin .

interest on cash.

biton interest on cash.

we want to say yield not bit. It's it's not black by no.

there is there is this is the smartest application of this idea that people have been striving for for years now. And the strive for something like this is like to many blow up like five sales list goes on. But IT seems like you guys took something that other companies are doing and benefitting with IT for themselves and then giving to your customers. Start here. And we're got a bunch of all the stuff to talk about two .

but this product is awesome. Oh yeah thanks. Um yeah um there's a lot of confusion just because we're a biton company and we use the word interest.

A lot of people immediately assume, oh like like blocky e where does the yellow come from? So like no actually what we're doing is um know you've always been able to have dollars at river, any bit coin exchange you can have dollars on uh that everyone else is just keeping all the interest for themselves. We are giving IT back to our clients, right? Dollars always have to sit in a bank.

And so what we've done is that all the hard work behind the scenes from a regulatory compliance perspective to be allowed to pay the interest from the dollar sitting on river to our clients. And what we do is we auto convert that daily into a bitcoin. So the interest from your dollars and river now earn a highest interest rate three hundred and eight percent and you accrete the bit coin daily from your cash deposits.

Um and so there is no extra risk. We're just simply now taking the interest that we used to earn on castor posit forever and giving IT back to you. And so um we think that this is the future of banking really um I genuinely believe were moving towards the transitioning period where we are going to live in this dull currency era where people save in bitcoin but still spend in earn and dollars which means people will still have some dollar or cash savings um but theyd much rather earn interest on that cash in a harder currency .

yeah I mean this is if you look at tether century, what they were doing is issuing their stable coin and then having liquid reserves predominated held in U. S. Treasuries, U. S. Treasury notes, particularly short term debt. And then that's what everybody he's been basic loading tether for, for last two years as the fact that they have been able to a mass this this large treasury to back there are stable coins and they have just been spinning the yield that they're getting from the short term notes into bitcoin in other assets and reading insane profits as a as a product of that strategy. And river is decided going to something similar, but we're going that the customers .

benefit as well. exactly. yep. And behind the scenes it's a fully fd I C insured bank account, two hundred fifty thousand dollars of fd sc insurance per user um and the cashes managed very conservatively by our bank partner. Um almost all of IT is just kept at the federal reserve and turns the federal funds are rate. So um it's not even being land out for corporate .

loans .

and things like that.

yes, but it's this way of very vella, but bring something the market that has been lost for for decades now, which is you have cash in account, you actually get interest on that.

That's an idea that's become farm to become a foreign concept in the world of banking more broadly, not even just within big coin um but IT is possible to to make sure your customers are actually getting a benefit from this and then the whole using the the interest that you crew from holding IT at the fed, just gaining the fed fund rate on top of the capital in the account in putting into back where anything is um going to be a gear shift that like I tweet IT out earlier this week, like I think you guys are onna set a standard where customers are going to be gin to demand this, where they recognize the the yellow on U S. Dollars isn't as appealing. Partial of its three point eight percent and inflation that real inflation that six, seven, eight percent, whatever that may be. Um you you want to make sure that you're a growing interest into an asset that actually preserve value throughout time.

absolutely. And you know if you look at the what your effective interest rate would have been if you had earned interest coin interest on your cash over the last four years, who is substantially higher than the base interest rate? Um and you know some people say, well, you know I could just take I get an interest in my regular bank account and then take that interest and then by bitcoin with IT, but the reality is people aren't doing that.

And also a cool thing about this product is you're accruing IT daily. So we're kind of like, you know, you're getting the bitcoin each day before the end of the month in a Normal bank, bitcoin start, your interests paid up at the end of the month, so you don't even get that cash. You know throughout the entire month were buying bitcoin on your behalf day by day throughout the month. So you get to kind of get some of that bitcoin early.

IT has A D C, A strategy. Nowhere in even tween you saying this is A A sly round about way to specular attacked dollar. What let's to get into the dynamics of that. Think about IT applied um at scale, yeah at scale.

right and you know we're the first wants to do this in the U S. But we won't be the last. I think that a lot more people will launch this and hopefully down the road, even more traditional firm. There's trillions of dollars in savings accounts in the united states for both individuals and and businesses. And you if if we can get that transition over to earning interest in bitcoin, you end up with this interesting dynamic where you have this basic base demand ah just sort of sucking up the bitcoin supply.

And the integrate dynamics are also interesting because when interest strates go up um there is more um there's more interests being generated in these accounts and so that's more bitcoin being purchased um IT interest rates go up. Uh when that happens, typically you see sort of more pressure on the bitch coin Price uh because there's a bit of an inverse correlation between interest rates and bitcoin Price. But now we're basically uh, taking that increase in interest rate in in the uh planning IT back into the bitcoin.

Um in the reverse of this is you know when interest rates go down, the coin tends to pump well. Um yes, when interest rates go down, now you maybe earning a little bit less and interest on on on that cash, but the the the interests you have in a bitcoin is pumping. So your effective interest rate uh, has gone up. So it's a kind of cool dynamic there. IT makes IT .

makes you wonder that gives now that to that because it's again, it's so simple. It's almost like you've opened up pandora box because the the way businesses have been Operating traditional banks and even businesses in our industry that do this, they just been keeping all the yield. Now you guys again open pen doors box and to know we're going to share IT with our users, it's their cash.

Um of course, you guys are taking a little rip in getting some benefit of benefit from IT too. But I think really holding the rest of the industries feet to the fire, the broader commercial banking systems feet to the fire and saying this is the way you should work and we're actually going to bring IT to the market. Um IT will be interesting to see how people react to that over time. I think people like you imagine, I think people in the industry will launch similar products um at some point in the near to the medium term. But um does this send a signal to the market outside a big coin like you should be getting the yield?

yeah. And and just to clarify, that were actually not taking anything we're passing through as much as we can. Technically, we made IT around number three point eight. I think maybe technically like behind the scenes, we're getting like a few bibs higher than that, but we just wanted to make IT a clean three point eight as the posits grow at river. Um will unlock higher rates. Um so uh actually we'll just you know assuming like kind of we hit those， uh those of those cash deposits will just be passing that back through to our clients.

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Why why this product right now is you guys are very particular about, I know you, a CEO founder of river. Here you must be apple, about how you're building your business as officially as possible and being very. Particular about the product that you offer your clients.

Why this product? Why now was our demand? Um is this product something of is IT something that you wanted surprise your clients with?

IT was a surprise. There was no no one asking for this product. This was an example of us synthesizing sort of the vibes of our clients, right? And really trying to understand what do people really, truly want want.

It's sort like of a hundred four quote, like they asked people what they want. If I ask people what they want, they would have set a faster horse. This was I really trying to think about, okay, like what is a magical thing we can build that people on't even asking for um that they would really want? And so we have pretty secret.

We've been working on this quite a long time because actually behind the scenes, that seems simple. There's a bank account behind the scenes for every for every client. This is real regulated banking. Uh and so um you know getting over tea cross and I dated to make that happen was was a lot of work and you know we have you know great big partner.

It's been really great to work with them um but uh really what we realized was we're anging this era people want bitcoin cash fans but also we we also saw that people had a lot of dollar savings still yes, on twitter might seem like nobody touches dollars, but in reality, like the vast majority of people still have a dollar savings account and a cash buffer. Especially if they have families, they have often up to a year of cash just in case even if they're really big, big win beevers. And so we we saw that and we would like, you know what, we should help these people. Um we should build something that helps serve the need of, yes, I need this cash predictability in my life because that's the way the world still Operate. But I also wanted to put like I also want to get keep earning bitcoin um and we saw that we could put these building blocks together to make this happen.

And I think the number one question i've seen from people react to the launch of this product is this is awesome, is what how do you expand the products weed on top of this? Because you can imagine a scenario which people have their cash baLance on river. They're getting the big the interest into bitcoin, developing a stack and then they they don't want to interact with another institution. They just want to do everything from ever affect of my cash, erin, interest in bitcoin from that. Why just do everything here is that I want to take .

this yeah direction. And this one step at a time might seem like we should do people to put the switch on and all of a sudden world like for fiat banking sweet takes time to do those things properly and safe. So um you know it's we're taking a step by step um and so you know in the on our road map is being able to have a account routing numbers inside you ject deposit into here um and then you know we really want to help me.

People need to be a way to pay their bills directly from the river account so you know our vision for the future is for forever uh um and for society. We believe that were entering this dull currency era like I described earlier. So what we're building is the financial application for that future um for this next phase of our monetary system.

And so we want to be that APP where you can keep your bit coin and your dollars. We want to be the most um you um trusted and transparent a financial institution in the world. And we want to give you the financial services you need as we transition to this to this new world.

Let's talk about this new world, this dual currency world because I i've been talking to Parker, i'm just record of a Parker about this uh, extreme story value for a big coin. I think that as many people taking different sides may be not different sides, but there's a spectrum of how spectrum believes in terms of how long this dull currency system exist.

Is that something where we have bitcoin and dollar living side by side for many decades and people save bitcoin and spend dollars for the majority of our lives? Or um doesn't happen quicker. I guess someone i'm trying to get as like how long you think this period of the the dull system where people are pronouns, saving a bitcoin and spending in .

dollars exist I think IT less quite a while and I always possibly wrong. I'm not um you Parkers are extremely gifted or like macro sort of um analysts in this stuff. And so I I love I love to listen to that episode in here. He says.

I'm much more of like just looking at sort of what I see in the business and what I see sort of like on the grounds there's some interesting data points of sort influences this uh this opinion for me um one was spending time argentina um so I spent a decent about the time down there and as I think a lot of people listening, no their currency is really, really bad and there has been for a long time the inflation argentina is insane. It's like a hundred more percent a year. It's showed out a little bit with the recent president, but nonetheless it's still like a total disaster.

You think the U S. Inflation is bad. I mean argentina, you know the Price is change every week. Uh uh and so um so OK so why is that interesting? So if you look at argentina, uh so the currency is totally uh impossible to say that you can't put a business treasury in the argentinian peso.

You can't have a savings account in the genti any expectation that that preserves its value even month to month. However, um everyone still transacts in argentinian pacs. And so despite the currency being terrible, all the transaction at least day to day commerce is happening in PaaS because IT is so sticky IT has also the power of the state sort of pushing this.

But just the protocol of society is so sticky that even when the currency is trash, people still use IT to turn to act, and they just save the other things and and sort of swap into IT when they need to spend IT, and so and swap out when they earn IT. And that influence, kind of my thinking a lot, and is possible that that analogy just won't map to what's happening in the us. But I just try to have this time that even if inflation continues to really pick up in the us, people are still shopping at the girls. We start with dollars. They're just they're .

just not saving in much. Yeah, that's I guess the big question is how fast, if at all, the inflation of the dollar we materialized IT? Seems like IT is if you look at the feds, right, cut in long term, bond yells they are going in the direction that you would not assume that they would go in if were going to a cut, a regime moving forward.

And then you look at the national death approaching thirty six. Bralia doesn't seem like spending going now. Obviously trumps talking a big game about um fixing up the tax code, increasing terrorist.

Yesterday people are saying is he's out there campaigning that that he wanted to eliminate the income to ask, which would be incredible. The accommodation ation of of tax changes would be highly inflationary though, unless he pulls hovey er male, he goes a foire across the board. But he's also been posting that's a big question on the first gone to solve IT here.

But that does the lift trump number one get selected, brings the new administration. Do they have the Mandate to our the facilities work throughout throughout the federal government? Democracy actually initiate spending cuts that would that would make that tax regime not as inflationary a possibly could be.

Yeah, well, I think it's going to depend on a lot of things. I think IT depends on if if they can win congress, if they can, in senate, house and White house, then where maybe talking about some real things happening. I'm by no means you extremely well versed in the inside out of, you know how things work in D.

C. When IT comes to what you can just unliterary cut from in the executive branch, what you can, I know is very hard to fire federal workers. Maybe there's some loops. I think really, though the difference is time around is that trump is gonna have a team that's way sharper and has learned a lessons from the past in his past administration.

I think he's gonna fewer like sharks trying to sabotage his administration from the inside, but I think is gonna equal or more resistance from, you know, the rest of the the swamp. And so the question is how how effectively will they be able to navigate that? And there's this bigger things like politically, you know they're like just if you do the math, there has to be cuts to military and and entitlement spending. There has to be. So even if they control all the house and the White house, can they make those changes and win an election two years? Um um that's an open question.

Yeah and that's is such a fascinating in time to be life. I'm sure anybody could say this. Any point in history truly is right now when when you look at the jx position of the bloated and ineffective, inefficient federal government with the private sector in the united states. Now, like looking at space sex, catch that that fifty story rocket out of the air. I mean, you mentioned military spending that's going to be cut.

You look at mom, anti war have been, objectively, countries need be able to defend themselves and when you look at companies like Andrew in what palmer lucky is doing to to drive down the cost of being able to produce the military equipment necessary to protect yourself and even go on the attack if you need to and um you just like what we're doing in big way, like the private sector in amErica IT seems like if we were allowed to just rip through all the red tape and not not to worry about the bureaucratic mess and the federal government was actually thinking about spending, making each dollar they spend go as far as possible. The private market is producing solutions are in a cost effective way. And I am cautiously optimistic that if trump gets in, we could see this new american renaissance. People realize that that people actually solving problems in the private sector. And you have a in administration in a team that recognizes this as well and tries to the private sector solving a lot .

of these problems. Yeah, I mean, I think what has to happen is there has to be a convincing plan for the american people to see that we can spend the less and get more right. Anyone who's around a company knows that there is a world where you get big and bloated um and actually move, get a lot less done and spend a lot more than if you small and lean.

And what we see, what the space axes these guys can launch mass to orbit for a hundred x less a thousand times less per kilogram than the U. S. Government ever could have possibly dreamed of.

And they have a way less money. Um uh and so like what if we applied that thinking to the military or to entitlements, right? Um all of this spending like if if you look at like the culture and dc IT glorifies inputs and outputs, I voted for this many billions of dollars to the military.

I voted for this many billions of dollars to this foreign country. I voted for this many billion of dollars to health care. And like, why are we celebrating inputs? We need to move to a culture of celebrating results. And when you do that, you start to realize that like you actually um you can often get Better results when you spend ten times less.

Yeah now was in the end last year and there was a fund focused on defense attack and they're explaining the cost efficiencies of companies like Andrew um in that defense tax base and there like we could literally cut the military budget by ninety percent and get more done.

get more outputs. That's the red the the reality of the situations. You could probably cut both military and health care spending by ninety percent and make amErica safer and healthier.

That's that's .

actually like a true statement.

I agree. I think the hardest thing to to actually get to that that a place where were enacting change that enables that to happen is narrative with the public. Because public sees cutting military health care spending by ninety percent, they say, oh, that they they in condition with a propaganda to focus on the inputs that they they believe that you need billions, billions and trillions of dollars now to actually facilitate economic activity that leads to um goods and services in these particular sectors. And that's another thing that make me cautiously optimistic because I do think the propaganda, the margin return on the propaganda is weakening significantly. And if it's if I would argue that I may not even be positive anymore, may have reached the point in time where the marginal return on propaganda efforts from the entrench swap are are, are negative when people are beginning to realize maybe not everybody, but I do think there is the vibe shift, if you will.

happening. I mean, in a way, what we're seeing really, if you if you step back, is we're seeing the fall of the old culture. Dislike assif ed, slow moving corporate government on that values input that values more social signal and credentials.

Then actual results. And what's happening is the silicon valley type thinking from a business perspective. Now you know the political thinking of silicon valley is also shifting IT was very woke, but now that's changing um that mentality that silicon valley brought to software has jumped into hardware and is now starting to jump in.

And these these players who are early out silicon valley people are now becoming some of the most powerful people in the world and there this is almost like the new sort of power shift, right, like this cultures kind of fighting the old culture. And so we'll see if that continues to work if trump wins and and elan must truly does become this ZARA of cost cutting. Um you we'll see you like this transition is real. The rains are being handed over to the silicon valley type thinkers ah do you .

have to says to the black pillars who are who are afraid of this? We don't want elon having this much effect on the government. We we don't want Peter tile types having this much effect on on the economy. They are they are going to leverage their positions of influence and power now that they're closer to the government to to benefit themselves.

Yeah I mean, look, I understand the skepticism um but one we can let perfectly be the enemy of the good too I think you actually look at elan's actions.

His values are about as close as aligned with a freedom oriented foundational american architect you know as you can get without being like way too piggy um so look I mean I think it's easier to set around and and like pontificate and read like philosophy and say like you I want my perfect sort of like thing and but this is what we have. And um I think it's pretty obvious which you you know like what the future looks like if the existing people stay in power. And I think that the future with elon types running things is the way Better than what we have now.

Yeah, how do you think big when we gets you into this conversation? Because obviously been watching this play out the Better part of the year. Now the people that have come behind trump for this, Peter til jd.

Vanes, obviously his vice president on the ticket and the line, all this is happening. And it's a silicon valley archives pe that is coming in really driving a narrative in helping people realize that we can do things Better. Obviously, trump was at the pick in conference and saying we're going to do the bitcoin a act in put a coin the treasury reserve, but still enough.

You're reading this as well to reading IT similarly as well. But IT seem like bitcoin isn't like as part of a focus. I just watch everything that's going on in that that area of the discourse right now. I always like just leaning in a little bit harder to bitcoin because bakin can accelerate everything you're trying to do.

Um you know my take is like I don't expect trump to ever get bitcoin. Um I think .

i'm talking about like the people behind him like musin teel and j events. And obviously there they're very this publicly that posture positively in regards to big claim. But like i'm looking out like you should have this as like a bitcoin as an intro part of trying to achieve all these goals you are talking about because it's just jet fuel pon ent tended on on everything you're trying to do.

yeah. I mean, I think that if you look at what they're trying to accomplish, it's logical that they're not bringing IT up too much. I don't know what they actually believe like they have done inside like I think they're that antibiotic um but like this is a political game and they will be gain nothing by talking a lot about bitcoin.

I'd like IT does not increase their chances of succeeding in this election and so and in fact, like IT probably makes them look more out of touch to the average american to keep to be talking about the average person states cares about if you care about billing your already probably you're not you probably not undecided, right? So um they're focusing on the things that the average person who's like the on the fence cares about, which is economics and immigration, trying to draw the trying to explain to the american people this connection between sound money in the problems today. I think there will be a time, I think where that happens, we've come a long way and that being mainstream discourse but I think for the like for the demographics you wants to influence in a presidential election um it's just way to still academic sounding.

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hole Better product .

than with their selling IT really is but it's being on the products and selling like agree with you probably is a bit too out there and unnecessary to be forcing bitcoin to the front now. And I do think that they understand back going to an extent. I think a lot of them were confused by crypto l as well. But I do think over time as what i'm getting out is, I think a product like the like, the interest product that you just launched give IT like if that could build out its adoption by my riber users and then you develop a track record and you guys, which you've done historically, very transparent with your reports and how your users are interacting in using interacting with, using river, like we get a year, two years of data, people using this interspersing account, and you're able to say, here's much they would have had in cash. Here's so much big when they stacked and how much that big queen's worth that's gna be, oh my god, why why is that everybody doing .

this moment exactly? Um and I think you know I think that A I think the from the advantage point we have and that a lot of bitcoin, twitter, mrs, is like you have to meet people. 韦 雷尔， right? If you want to, if you want to orange, call more people like you have to meet them where they are. We've got a few people sort of like criticising us because you're so big.

you're big .

dollars and like who would ever have a dollar? And it's kind of it's like that's fine to have an opinion, but you'll never run a business, right? Like you're you'll never be able to like win people over like you have to take people. By the hand, meet them where they are. This is a start on the journey to bit coin.

What were trying to do is like we're going to lower the barrier entry, right? So like now all of a sudden when people ask what's river, I don't even need to say you need to take a large unk of your cash and buy bitcoin less thing that's really confusing to you that you still don't quite understand. I can say if you deposit cash and driver that cash is super safe and you just earn bitcoin with IT, um it's like lowering the barrier entry for more and then they oh always so they have a little bit IT.

I didn't have to pay for IT. Um and now of us that they can start learning more, they can start playing around with IT. Um and so um you know I think so like this like super hard court ethos where you forget where you were when you started, right? A lot of people forget kind of where they were mentally when they first got into big coin. And they think .

everyone should just jump to the end of the story. Yeah, what worked at the back test data show.

what do you do that test? Oh o of like the the numbers yeah yeah um IT showed that the effective interest rate is like the teens, if you like, over over like last four years. No IT depends on how you do the analysis. Like if you turn this interest ate, that's what would have been if you like there there was A A period over like a year or two where there was a zero percent interest rate more or less. So you know they just wanna know much bitcoin then, but it's it's like drastically Better than any sort like money market or same as account you could have possibly had.

Yeah that's that's what I think is really onna be the flipping in the switch moment for a lot of people just seeing the data there. And if you have friends using a product like this, they use for a couple years. And O, B, I parked a hundred grand in this account.

And over time, I accumulated every year. I came later, four thousand dollars for the big. In a year later, the big quins worth eight thousand dollars yeah so and I didn't make .

the cut for launched, but were launching a calculator for doing exactly this. So you'll be able to back test any amount, any take time friend you write on our website. And so that'll be launching soon, hopefully.

Yeah, that's that's only one of multiple products of you launches. We last to talk to in the other big one was last month or two months ago out this point that proved reserves massive props.

Thank you. Yeah, we we wanted to do a lot of people think I think from that long, I think we invented the concept of proof reserve, which not the case. I think we're kind of doing like the apple playbook, like takes something like that technically existed in a user unfriendly way before and make IT really like tight and like super user friendly and design first.

And so that's the way to the proof reserves. Um we wanted to like like I said earlier, our vision is to be the most trusted financial institution, the world, and to do that we have to be transparent. And so with proof reserves, we prove every month that are assets that we control, the bitcoin our custody exceeds the liabilities, the bitcoin that that we own clients um and we're pushing and we open source our code that does this.

And we tried to make IT as easy as possible for people to understand how this works and diversified themselves. And we know the reason we open source that too, is to try and push the rest of the industry. And I ve only had mutio exchanges reach out to ask, like, you know, how we did this and get some more insights into like what are the Operational implications and things like this.

So hopefully we see some more people doing this. And really what we want to do is I want to move the industry forward to so that we don't start getting into world with paper bitcoin. I want to proof reserves now so that all the other bitcoin changes don't start getting tempted through forces, maybe political forces or economic forces, to create bitt going at the thin air and starts walking down the slip slop.

But I think with the emergence of the etf in more recently, the options on this etf, the products like for the reserves is, is desperately need to keep keep people in check as that's regally. When options get launched in, people see what you can do by by leveraging those financial tools. That's when you start to see the paper products come in the market.

Yeah um and you know this made a splash. We can keep making a splash. We got some of the biggest companies sort of paying attention to listen. So hopefully we can make some changes there and and get get these guys on board um because I think is really important for the industry.

I do as well. And speaking, a big companies making this flash that was last twelve to sixteen hours on twitter has been about microsoft board having A A resolution um at the next shareholder meeting about assessment of whether or not they should um put big coin on their bounced invest in bitcoins how they have IT worded think that's poor wording, poor framing should be incorporating bitcoin into there corporate treasury strategy.

But nonetheless one of the largest companies in the world is officially asking shareholders to wait whether or not microsoft should put big win on the baLance sheet, which is pretty massive. And bringing IT up to because another thing that you guys have belonged ed research report about businesses holding backlog and that was was full of some rich data. Um obviously you guys are catering to maybe i'm wrong, but I think predominated to a different sector of the business market. But businesses are accumulating bitcoin, particularly businesses that don't need to go through a shareholder vote to get IT on on the baLance sheet.

Yes, one hundred percent. And you know I think this is a big thing, the fact that the shareholder voters is happening at all and believe the details are it's a vote to analyze whether they should. And so but still, it's a start basically what I think we're at this interesting point here where today, we've seen a lot of businesses accumulating bit in for the treasury buying bitcoin.

Um we serve largely small medium sized businesses anywhere from sort of like entities like trust to Operating companies, construction companies, real estate firms, cleaning companies, plumbing companies buying bitcoin for their treasury. And what all these companies have in common though is the run by, uh, what I call an orange pill dictator. If you look at every company that's bp IT going, they are run by an orange pilled dictator.

So really um um you know these companies buying bitcoin has just been downstream of the the owner becoming orange pilled. And so so sort of business aren't working to bit going today has really just been an extension of likely the individuals becoming orange build. So that's a very like quickly growing trend um and what we see and so what still hasn't happened is the companies like the microsoft of the world by bitcoin like these run by committee businesses, these like behemoths that have no founder anymore, there is no dictator, there is like political forces and it's all very like kind of know who's really running everything.

And so um you know the big companies, is that about big one? Tites still are run by the architect you know of elan. You love my eal sale. You have jack dorsey. And so we're at this transition period really who's gonna the first CFO at one of these like run by committee companies uh to say the first principles of the macro environment are different. Now what worked before for treasury management is not onna work going forward because the dollar is fundamentally changing and we're entering this door currency era who's going to be the first CFO to have the balls to say that um and put their career on the line for that uh because that's typically not what the CFO role gets selected for as people who are you know uh willing to make big yeah uh so um that will happen at some point. Ah the question is when when and who is he going to be?

Do you have any ideas of when in who IT maybe hi honest.

I don't I don't I think it's going to be I think it's gonna one person does IT and then the dominos fall right? Um and I really have no idea on what company that could be and is that the CEO or is that the CFO that's more important for this decision at one of these big companies? Maybe both. Um but the CFO probably has to .

be on board yeah no, it's interesting about this shareholder proposal assessment that seems like we dive into IT looks like someone of an activist shareholder who has a sizable chunk essentially forced IT on the docket and that many people take them in like this is gimmie by zella bit winner who owns a lot of microsoft ck and is trying to like use IT as as a marketing tool.

But I don't think that should be underscored networks to be understated. I think IT is being understated like that in IT of itself. We're talking about like a fast that whether you recognized IT or not, like IT or not, think it's a gimp or not, these people exist now in this bitcoin activist investor. H trend I think is going to accelerate um significantly. And so whether it's a CFO deciding to to make the bold move to to easily advocate for putting bitcoin on a large corporations treasury or not, I think the emergence of this bitcoin activist investor should not be taken lately.

Um totally. And I think what we've seen since twenty, twenty was three, twenty, twenty or so. You know vita was still this thing where we were kind of just mean like we believe in IT, but who like we were all kind of nobodies right in the grand scheme of things.

You know we had our own thing going on and then all of a sudden like like important people started becoming part of this and some of us became more important. And um you know next thing we know like the potential next present of the united states is at the bitcoin conference talking about bitcoin, the U S. And like all these means we you know people on the .

internet .

kind of like you know wouldn't really know the single work are is real now. And so marram ves matter, incentives matter. And I don't think there's any slow down this train at this point here.

Why is IT train doesn't up mean that that leona y goes a two ways in the increase in the debt riding that trains not gna stop up in the bicol mean is not going to stop and IT is crazy. I've said as many times the last few months this this year's the quin conference was in a ship moment and I think was particularly because we alive our hr. Just pack six hundred people. And then we met. I were reflecting like the first live orage are we did at the big coin conference in two and nineteen.

IT was clearly on picnic e benches, in a parking garage like on the roof and garden 3Frances go。 And I I think as an industry, we should really take a step back and appreciate how far we've come in such a short that's five years like going from the top of a parking garage and a picnic bench to this conflict and assure with the president saying that is to put bitcoin on on the united states treasury, it's insieme fascinate that it's not only we appreciate IT, but we should use that as a as a checkpoint and think forward like what can happen in the next five years. And I think what we're seeing now are there is microsoft having to um have show shareholders way whether or not they should even assess to put a big win on on the baLance sheet or the U S M.

Talking about IT, like I think that's a product of we're trillion dollar market. Now I had James check on from check on chain earlier this week. And I think that it's one thing I took away from that conversation is that we've stayed over a truly dollar market cap for for quite some time, an amount of time where it's not been Normal ized bit as a truly dollar asset. Now um it's not in in the middle of a blow off bull top work IT touches a trillions in his to go back down IT seems like a cemented itself as a trillion dollar asset and that just psychologically has people thinking differently about IT totally .

and it's got to these important institutional stamp of approval. So like the black rocks stamp are like the powers that be have almost like gone. okay. Well, I can't OK with this now.

And as much as I think inherently we're sort of like anti authoritarian or are certainly skeptical of this kind of stuff in bitcoin land, that's been a really big needle mover for just institutional adoption. Um on the other side of things I see now, like the type of clients we see, it's like these aren't necessarily like twitter, the bitcoin cypher, punk people anymore. It's like um you know mothers who instinctively stand something's kind of not right with the system and uh feel like they needs a bitcoin.

Maybe they can exactly explain how the feed works or you know they couldn't like spit out inflation numbers in self like that. But they they they like deep down inside their instincts, them like something kind of off. Like this big one thing is like it's scarce.

Like this is what I should be doing. There is something there that just like kicking in in people's heads and it's no longer this sort of you know narco capitalist but really like plugged highly online thing anymore. It's be is bigger than .

that now yeah and that I mean, speaking to aversion to institutions and much larger pools of capital coming in, in government to the fact that we're truly another market at if you want the Price to go up, like the amount money you need to come in, it's significant if like, and it's not going to be from your wage cock dc air looking for like retail gottest to this point. And now they were at a truly and establish as a truly dollar asset going up into higher strategy sphere is going to take these large amounts of capital like or not.

Yeah, I think that's largely true. Um but I also still think this a lot left of the retail demand to unlock. You're right about her of just the market anonymous s in the need for the big money, but there's still a lot of retail left to come to this thing.

yeah. What do you think this cycles like? I feel bullsh right now you bullish h i'm .

pretty bullish preti. I'm always blish ed, but look what I officially love like another six months to get more stuff built yes. Um uh what we've seen interestingly is so we had the big Price run up in february and march and those like march was a huge month for us.

But and then in the Prices just sort of like kind like stayed you know in the fifties to sixties. And but what you seen just like sustained high business like the boringness of the market over the last eight months, h seven months hasn't slowed down. The people serves coming to this is just at a new elevated rate.

And so that's an interesting observation. And I think that means like the people showing up now are, I think they're more like permanently here. And I think we're really just like starting to just get like mainstream society coming into this thing. So i'm very bullish.

I am as well. I am as well talking about like preparing for the bull market from a company infrastructure perspective, that something I love falling you on twitter because you are again manic about making sure that you build the technical architecture of your company as efficiently as possible. You're obsessed with this code based licker. What is going on with the lix er and how how does that enable you guys to to scale when the ball market comes?

Let's the programing language we use and it's programing language is built on this kind of platform from the nineties called the early open telecom platform, is about by ericson to power high availability phone systems. And what somebody realized about ten years ago as you could build really great internet software in this thing because it's meant to basically be highly reliable and support lots of sim multi ese people using IT.

And so um I kind of realized that early on that this would be like the perfect tool to build A A A bit when company on. And that turned out to be quite true. And IT allows us basically you without getting too technical, IT allows you to use your compute resources much more efficiently than a lot of programing languages for this kind of software.

And IT also allows us and what that allows us to do is to keep everything in one place. So you don't need to build this expLoring like set of systems. I need to talk to each other, which is much harder to maintain.

You can kind of have everything in one place. And so that allows us to keep things simpler and move faster and be more secure. Um and so what I really push on the simplicity. But in terms of like what's left to build to keep preparing for new levels of scale, it's a lot of automation. It's a lot of like that iceberg beneath the surface.

Um you know the reason we're not shipping a new feature every week is because I would say like fifty to sixty percent of our development time is building stuff behind the scenes to keep everything running well and safe. There is lots of systems that we need to keep upgrading around payment processing, automation, fraud detection, uh, tooling to help our customer service Operate more efficiently and serve large amounts of clients. Uh all that kind of stuff is like serves like this big iceberg and eat the surface of the water and the the the river APP. Uc is like the tip of the iceberg for what's actually going on behind the scenes. So there is always more to build there, but we have some core features coming down the road.

You want tears, any here, 我 觉得 hot .

is a hot is something。 We have something coming and a mother too, that's gonna make. Um it's going to be like the new standard, I think for making a uh a bit coin or scritto APP secure uh going to be I think a real game changer for security and make keep you safe from pretty much any attack you can imagine. And so um that's all all ties for now. Have a new name for IT too, but i'm going to give the name.

I like that teeth. I like that teeth that makes people comfortable. And now I think again, it's observing you build this company be as transport in public about IT. I love your luxor tweet. And you think about that if this wave of retail is coming in, historically, each new wave is bigger than the last. And we've seen companies like coin base, I mean, the easier wanted pick on because they continually fucked up like once this wave comes that their systems can not handle IT. I think having a focus on building simple systems that can scale is extremely important if you're if you're looking to be there when when these waves are coming.

Yeah no, I never worked at coin base and I don't have like super detailed insights into you know how their systems Operate. But I do have a hunch that a lot of the issues that they face is because they overcomplicated things.

What is what is one thing, prediction idea that you have that you think most people disagree with in our industry?

H, I guess .

I think my most horrendous .

opinions are one sort of around the two currency era. I think that commerce, primarily days in dollars for the foreseeable future. I think that a tram presidency that effective in gains in the financial health of the U.

S. Government, which is still a big T V D actually like makes that even longer a and so I think that's just a reality. Um so and I think that IT doesn't mean we should never keep building cool like big well that stuff and keep trying to make big work as a media movie change.

We absolutely should, I think that do the important to be raggedy and realistic and understand time frames. Um I think the living network is a great B2B uh cus todian to cus todian uh rea l um II d on 't thi nk it' s the ans wer for sel f sov ereign p t o p u h tra nsactions. I think we need something different.

Um so maybe that's another one. I think noster is cool ah I think there is like I think I see IT as the back up to twitter um and I think that I will stay that way unless twitter if twitter continues to be run by the line. And so I think this world maybe have its time, you know, in the sign if if that changes.

But i'm kind of sceptical about that in the near future. But I could be wrong. I would love to see no thrive, and i'm glad to exist. So I think those are my most horrendous opinions.

To p to p payments is anything people are working on right now. Do you think is purpose fit for that particular case outside of lading?

Um absolutely. I mean, look, look, actually this is going to sound really hard to objectively the best p to p payments experience today is either on tron or some like shit coin chain. Sending dollar S, K, Y, C.

Free internationally is what the vast majority of the world once, and it's by far the best U X. today. And there's no like liquidity lockup s or anything like that.

IT just works is IT centralized, yes, but it's just IT works, you know and like that all people care about at the end of the day. Um they don't care about the ideology hind um so like that not really an objective truth. The question is like can we get big coin? I could um and we should try.

Uh e cash is I think I really like cash. You and these like infected and these e cash projects are really cool. Um I think there's still big open questions. There's like both a so pragmatic regulatory perspective. These things are technically centralized and so will they be able to scale and serve lots of people without getting shut down um open question um but I think the bigger thing is the bigger thing holding the coin back as a medium of exchange, just economic.

People don't wanna get people don't want to use bitcoin to transact like I think the thought experiment is let's say we had a perfectly self zero fee weight, a transact bitcoin p to p with like no central resistance whatsoever with bitcoin be a popular transactional currency today. I'm sceptical honestly, i'm skeptical. Um I think like the dollar is still like the global unit of account that the people still want to transact.

Will that be the case river? No, that will end someday. And we need to be ready for that and we need to keep building for that future. Um but and and maybe that's an e cat. Maybe that looks like e cash, maybe that looks like a combination of e cash lightning, you centralized eastover ans, and it's all just kind of working in syria. Sis, and there's no like silver bullets, self sovereign ship resistant rail but like the emergence sort of like group of these things effectively gets people that um there's arc uh which I think is another like T V T project of what this is succeed. Um so yeah that's my take on IT.

Yeah I say about ark. I think the demo for second, which is building there, their asp, their um they're up protocol and talked ox's burg a lot about IT he seems to be holy. Commented that the combination of archon lightning could significantly increase user experience and improve the user experience from lighting, particularly channel management.

China management is the biggest hurdle for lightning to scale in a way that that makes IT easy for individuals to read the benefits in the same way that the B2Be use cas e is rea ping IT rig ht now. China management just needs to be automated in um something that people don't only meant to think about. I think that the people building are are pretty convinced that that is solution to, to make that possible. Then we need I mean then they say like if you really take IT to its further positive extreme, you need needed something like confidence a bit coin.

Yeah and you I ve admitted air not fans say super close to the governance um debate. I I need to do more reading on that um because you know if you know if IT turns out that you know we really do need cabinet to scale bit calling, then that's an important conversation I have I just need to do the reading to really understand.

If that's the case, I do as well. I need to deeper that let's send IT with a some inspiration or we're gona win. Are you aldama stic?

I'm optimistic.

Are we getting mand? Are we getting Mandarins? Are we getting a Better future?

What's that mean?

But it's a book that basically says we're going to go into our deck crisis and things .

are going to interesting OK, but I sure hope not. I view bitcoin as a way to bring back institutional trust. And I think that I what I might hope for is that bitcoin helps helps lead to Better and healthy institutions both in the united states and globally because IT shifts the baLance of power back to something decentralized back to the people um and IT IT deletes some of this your corrupting assif ying power that central banking has given the government um and you know I want to live in a country where I can trust the institutions.

I want to live in a country with effective institutions um I don't want to live in a mad max situation. And so my hope is that politically we win. I hope that big coin helps accelerate that political culture shift and the economic sort of macro o monetary shift to to keep these institutions in check. And so I very much think we're gonna. I won't be building this if I didn't and you know i'm going to keep acting is if that's the case .

while you're crushing IT her. I mean, the last three months of alone, you guys have a brought very valuable products to market. Very excited for um this cash interest product in the bitcoin.

I think it's a game changer. Like a said earlier, it's going to set a standard. It's a forcing function to force others to to provide this to there are customers which will benefit everybody in the long run.

Proper reserves talked about for the Better part of a decade now. I think fidelity wrote their paper on IT like literally ten years ago at this point. And you guys are bringing them to market and the type of picking company you want to see that what you're building, mister leash men, setting by leading by example, enforcing everybody to come with you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. It's if we have a long we have a lot left to build, we have a long way to go, but we are gna win.

We are going to win piece of africa. okay?