{ "episodeId": "SLP740", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "freddie_new": { "name": "Freddie New", "role": "guest", "tag": "FREDDIE" }, "guest_2": { "name": "Guest 2", "role": "guest", "tag": "GUEST" }, "guest_3": { "name": "Guest 3", "role": "guest", "tag": "GUEST" }, "guest_4": { "name": "Guest 4", "role": "guest", "tag": "GUEST" }, "guest_5": { "name": "Guest 5", "role": "guest", "tag": "GUEST" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:01", "start": 0.9, "text": "Hey guys, we're here at the Freedom Tech Summit here in Prague. I'm here with Freddie from Beehodl. Some of you may know him also from his work with Bitcoin Policy UK. Freddie, give us a quick update, what's the latest on Beehodl?" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "00:13", "start": 12.75, "text": "So latest biggest piece of news is the launch of our LSP service. we announced that when we went to market and very excited that it's now actually live. We are available on Amos Magma, big step for us. first week we had around twenty-four million," }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "00:29", "start": 29.44, "text": "sats We were looking at about one point six, Bitcoin actually deployed into the LSP already. So that's the addition of a, a second business line to our initial routing business. So we're very excited about that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:41", "start": 41.37, "text": "Excellent. And so for listeners, the, the idea is, you know, people are setting up Lightning and there's now this conversation around earning actual yield in the Lightning network from, obviously routing payments. And so this is an, this is a nascent industry, isn't it? Like as we were saying be- just before, it's like you can kind of Zeus, yourselves, LPWD, and that's about it, right? Or there's not that many guys who are really seriously looking at this? Exactly right." }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "01:08", "start": 67.99, "text": "Probably the best comparator for people to think of is the very, very early days of the internet. in the same way as there were not very many ISPs at the beginning, there aren't many LSPs at the moment. so getting in at this stage is super exciting for us if you're at all interested in payment technology, yeah, of any kind." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:24", "start": 84.3, "text": "Yeah, fascinating. And, and then just kind of on the treasury company side of things, any updates there on like," }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "01:31", "start": 91.08, "text": "you know, the yield operations? Fantastic. So the, as I said, we went to work, we went to, we went to market with our first, business language, which was the Bitcoin. Yeah. And, River's data shows that, you know, between, so you know, between sort of two and nine percent yield, we're regularly getting about six percent on the deployed capital, which is fantastic. So in the treasury context, we went out We've bought Bitcoin with that, we're not sitting on a hundred and sixty-six Bitcoin in our treasury. Key for us is the fact that we actually use our Bitcoin, so we self-custody, we have proof of reserves on our website, and, the self-custody process is absolutely key, not just for transparency, but because we're actually using the Bitcoin to make payments, to route those payments, and really to facilitate the network. That's it, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:15", "start": 134.87, "text": "And so I guess it's almost like, there's two hats you can sort of wear, because on one side" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:24", "start": 144.08, "text": "Bear market right now, so maybe it's not as, easy to raise that kind of capital. But, on the fiat side of things, what are you seeing there in terms of interest in the market, this kind of thing?" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "02:37", "start": 157.33, "text": "Well, you're completely right that it's fair market, and you and I have been in the game for long enough to know that these things always pass. the traditional media, I think we're still in the learning phase there. So treasury companies, we gotta remember a very, very new ET strategy is, is only five, five or six years in, in term, in term of our treasury strategy, and we're even newer still. We haven't even been public for a year. In terms of actually adding to our treasury, we kept a lot of dry powder back. We had ourselves been in a lot of the long time, we thought about it coming, and that has enabled us to be pretty flexible. We've got a very strong balance" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "03:13", "start": 192.76, "text": "Actually to, to keep buying Bitcoin at a lower price point since the crash of October last year." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:18", "start": 197.94, "text": "Excellent. And so, yeah, I guess that's always the challenging aspect of like, how long do you think the bear market is gonna go and how do you kind of position the business? Because, I mean, none of us knows, you know, when the bear and when the bull comes. But how do you, how do you position for that?" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "03:31", "start": 211.26, "text": "Conservatively in terms of looking at cash management, to be honest, so I've been in startup work, it, both in Bitcoin and, and outside the industry for a long time. Absolute key for anyone working a startup, as you all know, is how much runway you have and what your burn rate is. So we've kept our costs low, so our burn rate low, and we ensured that when we went to market, we had a long enough, a long enough cash pile, we thought to get us through a bear market out the other side laughing." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:55", "start": 234.61, "text": "Yeah. And I think we're A bit more neutral to supportive of, of treasure companies, as you know, I think some of them will succeed, some won't. But some people are sort of seeing it like, \"Oh, they're sucking up, you know, you're taking people who are buying treasure company equity instead of buying Bitcoin, they should just be buying Bitcoin and this kind of thing. How are you seeing that or how are you addressing that?" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "04:18", "start": 257.83, "text": "Well, I'd never disagree with anyone who recommends other people buy Bitcoin. That's why I'm in the industry and that's why I think it's important. The, I said before, the key differentiating factor for me with Binance was that this was a company which was really focused on something I care deeply about, which was those unscriptable payments, yeah, and being able to be a part of a company that was acquiring Bitcoin and using that in the network to ensure those payments can continue to be made. And like I said before, we Almost revolution in payments and being able to get my foot in on the ground floor in that kind of revolution has been massively exciting." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:52", "start": 291.89, "text": "Yeah. Now turning to the UK, give us a bit of a sense of, you know, the regulatory, the policy landscape in the UK. How is, how are things there?" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "05:00", "start": 300.14, "text": "I think since we last spoke, I'm a bit more optimistic. I was pretty down the last time we chatted. the FCA came down very hard on the definition of Bitcoin, you remember? They classified it as a restricted class market investment, which means that companies in the We don't advertise, it's very, very hard for them to reach new customers. A lot of them have seen their onboarding funnel absolutely drop off since those regulations came into place. But the intel I'm seeing now is that the SEA Probably shot its foot too far and actually exceeded the remit, a lot of the industry pushed back against that definition. What we're seeing now is actually in response to some of the consultation, work that we at Behold have also done, which we've, I've continued in our professional corporate capacity, they are beginning to pay attention to some of the things we recommended. For example, there was a, there was a suggestion floated that no credit should be allowed to, to be used in order to purchase Bitcoin, and they've actually backtracked on that. You will be able to use bank cards, you will be able to use lines of credit to purchase Bitcoin, and that was we, we, we lobby very, very hard on that. Beehodl has a, seat on the, the advisory board for the Ulster Parliamentary Group for Crypto and Digital Assets, and we continue to attend meetings, to put our case and our understanding of the industry in front of MPs and Lords, and hopefully we'll continue that pressure. and move things in a more positive direction than I sort of expect." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:23", "start": 383.47, "text": "Yeah, and I mean, I colloquially I'd sort of heard that some businesses were either exiting or putting less focus on the UK just because of the regulatory environment. How true is that now, or is that shifting? I, unfortunately, I think that's still the" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "06:36", "start": 396.05, "text": "case. We've got to remember that the UK, on its own, is a comparatively small market. So you have, obviously, the United States, the behemoth on one side, and you've got Europe where MiCA, yeah, might be con-convert its regulations on perfect. Yeah. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:51", "start": 410.8, "text": "All right. So, so when it comes to the, different products that can be offered, w-what, where are, where is kind of the low-hanging fruit for the UK?" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "07:03", "start": 422.95, "text": "That's really interesting one To be honest, simply being able to advertise your services to sell Bitcoin will be fantastic. Bitcoin-backed loans are currently being offered, for example, by CoinCorner. That's, that'll be a new, a new piece of the market that could be really interesting. And of course, we've got to remember borrowing, taking a Bitcoin-backed loan when the price is low is actually healthier than when the price is high. You're much less likely to get margin call if you take a Bitcoin-backed loan at sixty" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:30", "start": 449.75, "text": "than at one hundred and twenty. Yeah, yeah. I guess the other one, In the UK, I think it's" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "07:36", "start": 455.71, "text": "p-possible to be, our tax year ends in April, and so it would be arguable that you'd see some selling pressure in the run up to April in order to tax loss harvest. To be honest, you mentioned lowering the fruit, for us the easiest one and one that we're, we're certainly lobbying for, Freddie, would be to recognize that where Bitcoin is used in payments, it's CDT exempt, so there's no capital gain charge. One of the biggest blockers to Bitcoin as a payment in the UK is that every time you send it, right" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:04", "start": 484.43, "text": "Being, et cetera, yeah, which is frustrating. But, look, I mean, we're, we're low right now, but, I, you know, I, I think we're, we're gonna grow up. So where, where do you see a, a sense of optimism for Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "freddie_new", "time": "08:17", "start": 497.0, "text": "I'm always optimistic in terms of its ability to function as a, an uncensorable money. And for me, I always ask a couple of questions, you know, does the, does the flood in the market, does the, does, does the, does the worry about the People to change the rules. If neither of those things are true, then I don't worry." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:39", "start": 519.0, "text": "Well, yeah, we've got, we've got some, interesting updates here from Freddie. Thank you, Freddie, for your time. Thanks so much, Stefan. Thank you. Hope you see it again. Hey guys, we're back at the Freedom Tech Summit. I'm here with Nick Faro, aka UTXO Club. He is the CEO of Frost Snap, which is an interesting Bitcoin self-custody multisig technology using Frost, right? And the, that what they've What, what feels like a multisig experience for the user, but it's actually single sig on chain, but using, you know, fancy cryptography. So, give us kind of the update. I know you've been working on Frosthapp for a while now, but kind of where are things right now with Frosthapp?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "09:18", "start": 558.1, "text": "Yeah. so we, we started shipping devices, in October last year. so we've got a bunch of happy people who now have their life savings outside of their home. so it's really a big problem that we saw You know, Bitcoiners, you know, really going all in on Bitcoin and then having their life savings, you know, stored at their house and they can spend it in two minutes, it's not only risky like on their, for themselves and the fact that, you know, you, you maybe you just make a stupid decision, like someone says, \"Oh,\" you know, Stephan messaged me on Telegram and says, \"Oh, I need, you know, quick, you know, ten thou-- you know, one Bitcoin to buy some mining hardware or something,\"" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "10:00", "start": 599.8, "text": "and," }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "10:04", "start": 604.04, "text": "you know, good position to be in. And the second part of that is, physical attacks against Bitcoiners have been rising a lot, so that was a problem that we saw, and we've, we've been addressing. and we've-- So we've, we've got that out there. So super easy multisig, you know, no multisig, multisig footguns such as descriptor backups and such. And now we're sort of just improving the, the system overall, doing things like, remote signing, remote keygen, and all the That make a really good, you know, Bitcoin wallet and, and multi-signature experience. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:37", "start": 637.47, "text": "So walk us through, like, have you got a, a companion app for Android, iPhone? Yeah. and then you plug in the device. Yes. And you can generate the key, and then you have to do the, kind of that initial setup. So talk us through what does it look like now for the setup and the signing" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "10:53", "start": 653.35, "text": "aspect. Yeah. So you, you plug, three or more devices into your phone, and, and they connect in a daisy chain." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "11:04", "start": 663.54, "text": "So they're, they're double ended USB-C, and so you can, closer, just so you can see it, so you can, you can connect them in a daisy chain. So you connect three to your phone, and then you open the Frosthapp app, and you can, name each device, choose your threshold, which is a, a trade-off between, redundancy and sort of, theft resistance. So, you know, if you've got, a four or a five, it's, it's, you need to To, you know, coerce you to steal your Bitcoin, they're gonna take you to a number of places. Or if you have a lower threshold, you've got more redundancy, so you can lose more devices and, you'll still have access to your Bitcoin. So yeah, we support, Android, Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. iPhone is, in the works in the background. We're gonna see what we can do there. And yeah, so that, that's, that's pretty much the, the, the basis of it. And, give people" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:00", "start": 720.0, "text": "an idea how much do the devices cost and what's the normal setup there." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "12:03", "start": 723.28, "text": "So at the moment they're two hundred thousand sats per device, but you can find discou- discount codes, pretty widely available. Got it. we actually You know, if you, if you get three or five, the, the cost per device is the same, and, one reason for this is we actually wanna learn, from users what multisig like configurations they actually, you know, suits them, and that's really useful information for us if, if people are buying four devices pretty often, that's like, actually, you might not expect that so often, usually it's, you know, three or five or seven, but actually surprisingly, maybe they need some backups for redundancy, yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:45", "start": 764.99, "text": "exactly, maybe they're gonna Yeah," }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "12:47", "start": 766.93, "text": "exactly. So that, that information is really, really interesting for us. okay. And then" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:52", "start": 771.53, "text": "tell us a little bit about the signing component. Like, let's say, you know, let's say I'm in Dubai and you're in Melbourne, can we sign" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "12:59", "start": 779.2, "text": "together or how does that work? We have this, remote signing feature on a developer branch, so it should be ready in the next, I would say, a few months. It's coming. It's coming. Okay. Yes, and we, we do, I think last time we spoke, actually, Been, been implementing this over and over and over, and one of the really nice features of this is it's not dependent on Frostrap, as a company, so, everything's open source, you can, you know, plug and play different relays to do that communication over, and, and you know, it's, it's very sovereign. Gotcha. And so," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:37", "start": 816.54, "text": "in terms of the users, who, who does this make sense for? Like as an example, it could be you're a high net worth hodler, it could be you He doesn't wanna have all the keys in one location. now, just give us a sense. So for now, we don't have remote signing, yeah. But currently, does that mean you have to kind of go around and get your signatures? Yes. So as an example, you have two of three, maybe you have one at home, one in a, you know, in a vault, and one in another. Yes. So you've got to do like a get one signature and then go to the next and then broadcast it. Yes." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "14:10", "start": 850.24, "text": "And the FrostSnap app is managing all this? Partial signatures and then combines them into a, a, a complete signature that you can then broadcast your transaction." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:23", "start": 863.13, "text": "And those partial signatures, I mean, it's not technically a PSBT. No, no, sorry, yeah, it's kind of, it's a, it's a similar term, it's, it's loosely like that, but it's not actually technically a PSBT. Right, correct, correct," }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "14:33", "start": 872.64, "text": "correct, correct. regarding the, the, the users of, Frostrab, yeah, predominantly at the start, it has been, you know, are pretty hardcore Bitcoin In a way that, yeah, it is inconvenient by design. You, you don't want to be able to spend, you know, your life savings in five minutes. Maybe you should have to go and visit multiple places, and eventually maybe contact remote people and, and you can s- if, if we wanna get to a point where there's policies on that, another really interesting one that, I think is actually very underexplored in Bitcoin, especially in Bitcoin multisig is, really multiplayer Bitcoin and, and especially for families. So, you know, having, I have a key and, you know, my girlfriend has a key, and then we can, you know, have sort of like a joint account together and, and sort of build wealth together, build our Bitcoin, savings together. And I think that, that's something that I think has been quite under-addressed in Bitcoin, and I think it's, you know, it's very important for," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:36", "start": 936.43, "text": "Some of the different trade-offs of, like, let's say, if you were to just, just do multisig today, not fro- non-frost style, you can maybe, you can do different device types, and it's kind of just different trade-offs because, yeah, and now, yes, you would pay more on fees and you have to think about Descriptor backup. Things in a different way, yeah, you have to make sure you've got your descriptor backup. Yeah. So then, in the Frost case, how does the, I guess, what's the equivalent of the descriptor backup? Is that like a, a cloud backup or what are you doing" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "16:06", "start": 966.06, "text": "there? So, so because, Frost, the, the group, the wallet just has a s-- like a single master public key, unlike Script multisig where you have like multiple public keys or multiple extended public keys, because we have like a single public key that can be, restored by Threshold of devices, so if you visit two devices, two-- if you've got a two of three and you visit two devices, you learn that, that, that public key again, and it's just, it's the same as like a single signature wallet descriptor. so you know how like most wallets, if you've just got twelve words, you plug in the twelve words, and you have, if you've got the right script type, it will just use the, the standard, you know, descriptor path. so we have that, that-- that's how we can not But, so it's not crucial for recovery. I see. And then," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:58", "start": 1018.28, "text": "as an example, I know this is another benefit in the Frost system where you can do a key rotation without- having to go and change over every, every device, you can literally just spend and like, kind of hot swap into a new setup. Can you just talk us through a bit about what, like, how that works?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "17:15", "start": 1035.44, "text": "Yeah, so this isn't something that we've implemented yet, it's been on the roadmap for quite some time and it's like a theoretical possibility and you will- All, all the, research is there. so what it would look like is, say you've lost- There's a few different variants of it, but if, say, I've" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "17:35", "start": 1054.69, "text": "Two devices with, with a third new device and, and re-re-enroll that third one to replace the one that I've lost. And you can also," }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "17:45", "start": 1065.12, "text": "you can rotate those, those shares to make them, incompatible with the one that's lost or stolen. Yeah, to kind of invalidate the old" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:52", "start": 1071.76, "text": "setup and move into the, to migrate into a new setup. And I guess this is a bit theoretical for now, yeah?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "17:56", "start": 1076.25, "text": "Yeah, I mean, all the, all the research is there. The, the, the important thing that we want to get right is the nice user And one of the things is we would like it to be in as few rounds of, of travel as possible, right? Like reducing the interactivity. Yeah. So like, exactly. So it'd be like, if-- it'd be pretty annoying if you had to like go around your devices like three times or something, because you, you know, the idea is you never really want to bring them into one place, 'cause that, that's sort of your-- That would be your most vulnerable moment, is you know, your life savings in one place again. so yeah, all the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:35", "start": 1115.45, "text": "What do you think most Bitcoin hodlers don't understand about Frost and Frostnap? Like, what's kind of" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "18:41", "start": 1120.84, "text": "a common misconception? that's a good one. a pretty big one is that people who are getting interested in multisig, they really want to do, multi-vendor multisig, for very good reasons. You know, they want to not have any single point of failure on one, hardware company or, or one, one service. with Frost, you can actually get pretty much all the benefits It's a multi-vendor multisig, with, without needing the multiple vendor, we actually do this by including the phone or the laptop, yeah, in all the sensitive stages of, of the device's like operation. So when you're creating the multisig key, the phone actually contributes randomness verifiably, in a way that even if all the devices were evil, you would still not be able to, have a, a private key that has been, contrived to, to be known to an attacker, and, and we also do that during signing as well, preventing attacks like dark skippy. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:41", "start": 1181.1, "text": "Okay. now I guess the other thing is obviously this is a relatively new hardware wallet, you've been working on this for a little while, but people sort of wanna see it battle tested for a while. Or as, as an other, as another example, sometimes these devices fail, right? Like if the new hardware wallet just came on the scene, sometimes you get this device failure kind of issue. So how do you handle the device failure cases? Is If one of your devices fails, you can, you know, and then also, do you do like health checks every six months or that kind of idea?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "20:12", "start": 1211.55, "text": "Yeah, great questions. so Eventually we would love to get away from having, seed word backups for each device. It's like a pretty annoying UX thing, having to write down words. You know, it's not too bad, anyone can learn how to do it, but, to start out with, we, we do have, seed word backups. This one I, I don't think's a real wallet, so you can, you can check that out. so we have a frost backup cards. And so if, if I, you know, broke a device or I lost a device, you" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "20:45", "start": 1244.99, "text": "Alone. Gotcha." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:47", "start": 1246.63, "text": "Yeah, so I mean, it's interesting, it's, it's new technology, it's really like advanced stuff. let's leave it there. Where can people" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "20:53", "start": 1252.92, "text": "find you online? Yeah, I, I just say we've, we've been going for a few years now, Stephan. We've been, we've been working on this since about Twenty twenty-two, we started working on the frost implementation, and, we-- it is, it is a point where it's really robust. So, I would encourage people to check it out and, and, you know, if you, if you're interested in battle testing it, please do. we've got a bunch of, a lot of users now. you can find us at frostnap dot com or frostnap tech, on X. and yeah, that's the best place to find us. Thanks." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:25", "start": 1284.96, "text": "So, thanks very much. We're at the, Freedom Tech Summit. Tony gave a great, a great talk about stable channels, so tell us, just give us a quick update on the stable channels wallet that you're building. Sure. So" }, { "speaker": "guest_3", "time": "21:39", "start": 1298.87, "text": "stable channels is a concept to take the, evident success of stable coins that we've seen in the crypto ecosystem, but try to, take the aspect of bringing dollar-based stability to Bitcoin-only solutions, and this is what stable channels does. It lets users, have a self- custodial lightning wallet on their iOS or Android device, deposit Bitcoin in, and then choose to peg a portion of that Bitcoin balance to a dollar amount. And the way we handle that is by matching that user up with a service provider who is willing to provision that stability to the user and then take the extra volatility on the user's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:19", "start": 1338.92, "text": "behalf. Interesting. And so I guess at the start, you are gonna be that service provider, and then later maybe other people could also be the stable, the stability- The provider, as you said, you have a stability provider and a stability receiver. Correct. Receiver. That's correct. And just, I guess for listeners, you might be used to the idea of having, let's say, stable coins, or you may have heard of, let's say, stable Sats, but this is a Bitcoin form of this. And I, I guess just so people get a sense of what the product could look like, it can look like basically a Bitcoin wallet that people may be used to today, but the idea is actually you have a slider. So can you explain" }, { "speaker": "guest_3", "time": "22:58", "start": 1378.38, "text": "Deposit, Bitcoin into their Lightning wallet, which runs on their phone, and then at the top of the application, they'll have essentially two balances on a slider bar where you can move it back and forth with your finger so you can customize your, BTC versus USD price exposure. So for example, in a bear market, some users might want to be, more allocated towards Bitcoin, maybe like, you know, eighty percent allocated to Bitcoin to twenty percent, dollar exposure And then as the price rises, maybe the user wants to take some profit per se and maybe wants to be more like, you know, fifty percent dollars, fifty percent Bitcoin, and it's an easy way for users to fine-tune their Bitcoin price exposure in an easy, easy-to-use" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:47", "start": 1427.14, "text": "application. I see. And, as you were mentioning, technologically, you are using the LDK stack from Spiral, and you said you have LDK and, mentioned this concept of LDK server Which would be on the service side. So can you just talk a little bit about the stack there?" }, { "speaker": "guest_3", "time": "24:01", "start": 1441.39, "text": "Sure. So, the Stable Channels wallet architecturally uses the same, technological design as the Phoenix wallet, which I think is one of the best self-custodial, Lightning wallets out there. And the Phoenix wallet connects the end users who are on their device with an LSP or a Lightning service provider. And so in the Stable Channels, case, we're running that Lightning service provider and also provisioning the stability on be- behalf of the users. And as you mentioned, Lightning Development Kit has, recently come out with a new, piece of software called LDK Server, which makes it easier to run LSPs, gives more, more data-rich, APIs for, those who want to run their own LSPs, and we plan to, implement that and, release it as an Umbrel application as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:55", "start": 1494.61, "text": "Yeah, so I think it's really fascinating because, I mean, as you were mentioning in your talk, and, I mean, this is uncontroversial, but there's massive, massive product market fit for stablecoins. I think last-- you mentioned in your, in your talk, I think it's about a quarter of a trillion dollars worth of, let's say, market cap or demand for the big stablecoins, right? USDT, USDC, and, and many others. This is a new form or a new way to do this kind of thing. Using Bitcoin and using the Lightning Network and potentially opening this up to more users who might not have otherwise been using Bitcoin on chain, because I guess the point, so people understand as well, is that you have this wallet and you can close it, you can close out your position on chain, right? It's a self-custodial" }, { "speaker": "guest_3", "time": "25:36", "start": 1536.14, "text": "wallet, so the user has custody of their Bitcoin at all times, and the way we maintain the stability is by frequently updating the user so that they maintain stability at a given price. Price. And as you mentioned, you know, crypto enabled stability is an enormous use case, and I think that as Bitcoiners, we can be more creative about how to bring that, stability use case to more" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:59", "start": 1558.76, "text": "Bitcoin-only rails. Yeah. So I think it's a fascinating project, and, I think more people should take a look at it. And I know you've been building on this for like, for a, a couple of years now. give us, give the audience, a, an idea where to find it and what, what to expect here. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "guest_3", "time": "26:14", "start": 1573.99, "text": "check out stablechannels dot com where you can get in touch with us. And, stay tuned for the version one point o release of Stable Channels, which will have some of the latest capabilities, Lightning payments in and out, splicing In US, USD and Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:32", "start": 1592.2, "text": "Excellent, thank you, Tony. Thank you. Hi guys, we're here at the corporate day as part of BTC Prague. I'm here with Andre Dragoshe from Bitwise, as a head of research for Europe, isn't it? Exactly, gotcha. So, yeah, give us some kind of where we are. I mean, obviously right now everyone's feeling down, it's a bear market, but, I know you've been doing some research, what can you share? So I" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "26:53", "start": 1613.01, "text": "think everyone's waiting to buy the dip, right? Yeah. Waiting for the cycle bottom? I think, so as far as my personal opinion is concerned, I think we're not quite there yet. Yeah. I would, so what I'm looking at is- Move it up a bit. Yeah. Go, keep going, keep going. So what I'm looking at is, bottom probability model." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:11", "start": 1631.22, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "27:13", "start": 1632.89, "text": "and it contains, more than twenty indicators, evaluation indicators, also untrained indicators like percent of supply and profit, entity profit. And so on, but also things like the MVRV ratio and so on. Yeah. it has started ticking up, right? That's the good news. So, so is that like" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:32", "start": 1651.98, "text": "a" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "27:32", "start": 1652.06, "text": "momentum or a MVR-- So," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:34", "start": 1653.79, "text": "sorry, refresh us" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "27:35", "start": 1654.55, "text": "on MVRV again. So, MVRV is like market value to realizable value? Right, right. It's one of the key valuation metrics, on-chain valuation metrics, but I- I mean, it's just one of many, metrics in that model. The model tries to classify, bottom cycle, cycle bottoms based on previous cycle bottoms. So, so it learns based on past" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:57", "start": 1677.32, "text": "data. And as" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "27:58", "start": 1677.84, "text": "you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:58", "start": 1677.94, "text": "said, realized value. So this is like tracking the coin when that UTXO last moved, as a ratio, right? Of, of those market values. So it's tracking the value" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "28:06", "start": 1686.16, "text": "to realized value. So realized value in that context is like the cost basis, the average cost basis of all coins. Gotcha. Yeah. Exactly. And so, but yeah, the interesting part is, that probability has increased, yeah, but I think we're not quite there yet. It doesn't look like the, the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:22", "start": 1702.15, "text": "bottom." }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "28:22", "start": 1702.49, "text": "I don't think we have seen the bottom." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:24", "start": 1703.97, "text": "So basically, you would say we're kind of, we're in the zone, but we're not like the bottom. So for you, we have it. So sixty K wasn't the bottom" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "28:30", "start": 1710.14, "text": "for you, you think? Yeah, I, I, I think there's more downside left. I used to think that we actually saw the bottom, bottom during Right, valuation indicated us back then we're already in the lowest ten percent percentile, right? Yeah. And we're back in this kind of zone. Yeah. but that being said, I think because of correction risk in the stock market and so on, and there are various reasons for this, I think we might see more downside. The question is where's like the potential bottom? I mean, many people they look at the two hundred-week moving average, right? Right. Which is like, like, six, six, six, one, yeah, six, one, K. Okay, right, which is, and we're about where we are now, right? Yeah. But like even during previous cycle bottoms, what, right, we've reached these levels, right? Yeah. Not, not for, for, for a long time, but, I think there's definitely potential for more downside, even below the two hundred-week moving average, and that I think many people tend to look at realized price, right? The, the average realized price runs fifty-six K, and I think the ultimate level is probably around forty-eight K Where the long-term holder realized prices. Gotcha. So you think that could, that the potential bottom is like the bottom if we, if we saw more downside in equities, which I think is quite likely, just there's some, there are some signs of hurting going on, and especially in" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:57", "start": 1796.67, "text": "semiconductor stocks. Gotcha. So as I'm reading you, then you're saying it's like, there's a chance we go down further to like fifty K-ish, but that would be like the bottom, exactly," }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "30:05", "start": 1804.72, "text": "kind of thing. I, I, that being said, I think a lot of bad news" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "30:13", "start": 1813.26, "text": "Growth, yeah. But even if we had a recession, yeah, right, it was rather unlikely. Of course, if you have salt market, then you'll probably have a recession. But if, even if we had a recession, I think that's already been, been priced into Bitcoin. Gotcha. Yeah. You can show this, in a quantitative way as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:30", "start": 1830.0, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "30:30", "start": 1830.16, "text": "So I think" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:31", "start": 1830.8, "text": "downside at these levels is rea- is relatively low, yeah. And of course, if you're kind of looking one or two years out You know, getting some now is generally gonna be a good idea. now let's talk a bit about the treasury companies aspect of it, 'cause we're here at the corporate day. Any of-- Is any of your analysis looking at the treasury companies? And obviously many of them are down from the high. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "30:50", "start": 1850.17, "text": "what," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:50", "start": 1850.39, "text": "what are you" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "30:51", "start": 1851.05, "text": "thinking on those? I think the elephant in the room is obviously fresh, right? It's trading below par. Yeah. I mean, it is somewhat connected to the fact that yields have started going higher because of sovereign bond risks, right? Because of the rise in inflation, because of energy prices and so on, straight off a moose, essentially. Yeah. And also sovereign debt risk in Japan and so on. And so I think the relatively high dividend yield of, of Strats has become less attractive, right? And then relative sense, gotcha. Like relative sense, gotcha. Relative sense. And so either they postpone Bitcoin, right, because it probably won't trade above par for a short time, right? They just postpone or they continue the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:35", "start": 1895.49, "text": "dilution on the MSDR or the issuing of MSDR." }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "31:39", "start": 1898.58, "text": "Exactly. They continue dilution on MCR or they wait for yields to come back down, right? interesting. I think, until this is, this remains unresolved, I think the marginal buyer, which is MSER, and they have been the marginal buyer, right? Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:53", "start": 1913.13, "text": "But I, I thought they were, maybe-- Obviously they're a big buyer, but then I thought it was also ETFs are also a decent chunk of the volume, in terms of, you know, buying volume." }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "32:02", "start": 1922.15, "text": "So I think, as far as twenty twenty-six is concerned we saw around hundred seventy thousand bitcoins being bought by both, treasury companies and, Bitcoin entities. Yeah. And, ETF buying, et-ETP, it has actually experienced an outburst, right? So they're, they're net sellers of Bitcoin, right, this year. And so much of the heavy lifting has been done essentially by treasury companies and in particular, yeah, right. So I, I, I agree, like ETPs, they're more like pro- Yeah. And they tend to be more correlated with price action, also like, on chains, but also deltas on exchanges, right? They are like the key influence, influential variable, right? But I think in terms of buy and sell, it's been all about trading" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:51", "start": 1971.15, "text": "companies and investors. Yeah, I see. Okay. So, what do you, what's your kind of outlook for the rest of the year, and into early next year?" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "33:01", "start": 1981.22, "text": "So I think, this will be the year of the bottom, right? We'll probably bottom between now and most likely October, right? I think many, the cons- Are you a four-year cycle? I mean, the consensus is that we bottom around October because of the halving pattern. But it's not essentially like three hundred and sixty-four days to the two? Yeah, it tends to be sometimes less than that. Like a zone, let's say, yeah, in the next few months. But I'm not actually a believer in the halving cycle because various reasons, because institutional demand has So much bigger, gonna make the halving deficit, yeah. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:34", "start": 2014.04, "text": "are you saying four year cycle, but not because of the halving, or just like cycle, but not four" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "33:39", "start": 2018.96, "text": "years? No, I do, I think, because this has become somewhat consensus that we'll bottom around October, I think the market will front run this." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:47", "start": 2027.07, "text": "Got it. Right. So you think we actually can bottom before that and then, but also, do you think it's, you know, maybe less likely case is a V-shaped bottom, like a quick up, and more likely case is like a slow up?" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "33:59", "start": 2039.32, "text": "We're still waiting for that catalyst, right? We've seen the bear, right? I think a lot of bad news already priced in. The question is, what's the positive catalyst that will ignite the new bull market? Is it, I don't know," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:10", "start": 2050.39, "text": "is it the end of the Iran war? Is it clarity act? Is it just kind of people learn to DCA again? I think usually it's some" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "34:17", "start": 2057.03, "text": "kind of quantitative easing. Gotcha. Yeah. I think it's some kind of-- Like, does Kevin Walsh come in and lower the rate? Right. Come, it comes in and there Pivot and ease monetary policy. Yeah. Are you looking at like the AI stuff? Obviously, SpaceX is a big thing and all these. Exactly. And I think the, the upcoming IPOs they could be catalysts because, I mean, we're talking about, I, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX bonds at the same time. Okay. SpaceX will be much earlier, but we're looking at around, I think two, three, four trillion potentially in IPO, market cap, right? And that, that does suck" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:56", "start": 2096.35, "text": "liquidity out of the system. And so you buy that idea that a lot of the attention and money has gone to those three, upcoming IPOs, and therefore maybe that's less buying volume for Bitcoin, but you think once that process plays out, you think Bitcoin can come back, like the volume can come back to Bitcoin. Yeah, I think" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "35:13", "start": 2112.58, "text": "there might be some kind of capital rotation, right? But it's, I, I do think that both stocks and Bitcoin can profit in such an environment, but there's more pain first, right? You need more pain for- Like contribution to e significantly" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:27", "start": 2127.27, "text": "and" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "35:27", "start": 2127.41, "text": "then" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:28", "start": 2127.87, "text": "what about this notion of productivity gains, like are people seeing productivity, like real productivity gains from AI and is that gonna drive, like, this kind of positive deflationary aspect? Or on the other hand, you're hearing like the Uber CEO said they blew their token budget in a few months and maybe people are trying to argue there's not enough ROI from AI. Where are you at on AI productivity?" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "35:48", "start": 2148.22, "text": "I think usually CapEx boom and increasing, the, the econ- economists call this Capital intensity," }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "35:56", "start": 2156.14, "text": "right? The" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "35:57", "start": 2156.83, "text": "more capital per capita you have, the more productive people are in general, right? Yeah. But if you have an increase in CapEx per capita and capital intensity, usually it should lead to the kind of productivity increase. You don't really see it in the data yet, right? In, in terms of output per hour, right? Probably contributing like fifty basis points to GDP growth, right? No, it's not much, right? And so, I mean, that could increase going forward. But, I'm actually more concerned about the CapEx spending itself, right? That it's overdone or too much. Yeah, because usually, the, the amount of CapEx in terms of GDP is already close to, I think, eight percent, nine percent. I think it was BCA research, they, they published like, a very long-term kind of chart where they showed CapEx spending in terms of GDP. Yeah. And it's the highest by far. It's like, it's higher than like the car boom in the 192 It's higher than the railroad boom of the 1870s, right? So I guess it, it kind of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:00", "start": 2219.73, "text": "implies that we're expecting very big productivity growth from this thing. So if people put in all this money but don't get enough of a productivity gain," }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "37:08", "start": 2228.09, "text": "I think the risk is of course, that people misallocate capital. I see, right? That's what your concern is for now. Yeah. Exactly, because they're investing so much, because they anticipate so much demand. If that demand doesn't come, right? Then there's some kind of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:23", "start": 2242.62, "text": "misallocation. Yeah. Are we in kind of like an era of VC subsidization, just like the early years of Uber, and some of these, you know, companies are charging you like a flat subscription instead of charging the full board, you know, token API rate? Is that like a kind of a false- Subsidy or false sense of productivity that people are getting from some of these AI tooling if they're not paying the full rate?" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "37:46", "start": 2265.77, "text": "Exactly. I mean, we can already see that there's some, that demand there, right? You can see it in DRAM prices, they're going up. You can see it in token expenditures, like the, the time series on token expenditures for LLMs. you can see it in things like GPU rental prices that are going up. So demand is that even accelerate, there's been a slight deceleration in GPU expenditures more recently. But like the overall trend still probably, and I think, as long as this doesn't really turn decisively to the downside, I think that trend will definitely continue. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:22", "start": 2301.91, "text": "Okay, so I guess summing up, we've spoken about a lot of things, but I guess loosely speaking, you think there could be more pain to come, but we're kind of already in a bottom zone. and we're waiting to see what that next catalyst is for the next leg up. any other kind of closing thoughts or what people can look out for?" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "38:39", "start": 2318.61, "text": "Yeah, I think, Bitcoin's potential is still there. I mean, we are- this trade-off of a move situation is actually one of the biggest catalysts ever on a global scale. Yeah. Right? Bitcoin being used, as a global, cross-border payment medium, right? And so," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:59", "start": 2338.81, "text": "I mean, the potential's" }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "39:00", "start": 2339.73, "text": "still there, right? We, we do have some question marks like Quantum Res that still remain unresolved, right? And, maybe the competition with gold, the renewed competition with gold on a global scale, yeah. But I think, in terms of value, it's definitely there, right? Already. So I think it's, it's a very interesting, interesting play right now." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:21", "start": 2361.38, "text": "Excellent. Alright, well, that's Andre Dragos from Bitwise. Thanks for joining me, Andre. Thank you. Hi, guys. We're here. We're back at Bitcoin Corporate Day, part of BTC Prague 2026. I'm here with my friend Sam Callahan. Sam is at Orange, which is a Bitcoin trading company in Brazil, well known for also for his research and, writing in the space. yeah, give us a sense of where things are at and, I guess, yeah, any updates on Orange as well. Obviously, I" }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "39:51", "start": 2391.02, "text": "We are buying the dip. We just did a first of its kind debt transaction with Itaú, Itaú Asset Management, which is, the largest, financial institution in Latin America, bringing them into the Bitcoin fold. So it's the first time they've done a Bitcoin backed loan, five year maturity, with the proceeds primarily used to buy more Bitcoin. And so they were-- they bought the whole thing on the other side of it. So we're bringing in a large financial institution into the Bitcoin market. We're using the proceeds to buy Bitcoin. And over fifty percent off its all-time highs, so this is, this is when you wanna take on leverage in the cycle. Yeah. so our leverage ratio is still pretty low. So what is the leverage ratio roughly? depending on the price, it's around twelve to thirteen percent. Gotcha. Yeah. So pretty low leverage ratio, and that's, you just gotta be careful with how you position the leverage, to your overall balance sheet. Our Bitcoin balance sheet's large, well, about thirty-seven hundred-ish, about thirty, almost thirty-nine, almost thirty-nine, And so we, we're buying this dip, and this is what we're supposed to do as a public company with access to capital. not many people individually can get a five-year maturity loan with zero cash burden. and what is the, like, the interest rate on this? And all in with the FX hedge, you're looking at it like eleven percent, and now we can choose to do, dynamic FX hedging, to remove all the FX risk from that. But given where, interest rates are, in Brazil, they're his- Historically very high compared to the US, and then the BRL has been really strengthening against the dollar, over the last five years. And the loans in BRL? The interest is in BRL. Yeah. So like, we can choose to take a position in that BRL may, weaken against the dollar, over the next five years, and our cost of capital will actually come down over time." }, { "speaker": "guest_3", "time": "41:42", "start": 2501.57, "text": "Interesting." }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "41:42", "start": 2501.97, "text": "But we can also just hedge it all out, and our all-in costs are around eleven, yeah, around eleven percent, and so we're betting that Bitcoin's gonna" }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "41:52", "start": 2512.0, "text": "we're willing to make because you look at historically how Bitcoin's performed. Yeah, yeah. Go on, go on. how Bitcoin's performed after fifty percent corrective multi-highs, four or five year returns, and where we are in the cycle, the adoption trends we're seeing, you know, our view is that Bitcoin could outperform that cost of capital and then it'll be accretive for shareholders. So we're, we're cooking over at Orange. We're just doing what we were meant to do, which is increase Bitcoin per share for our shareholders." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:18", "start": 2537.91, "text": "Yeah, and I think There are different elements, there are different caveats we have to make. Obviously, custody, dilution, execution are risks, but fundamentally it comes down to, do you believe Bitcoin Kaga is gonna be, you know, greater or much greater than the cost of the capital, right? Like, if you believe Bitcoin is gonna do thirty percent per year on average for the next ten years, but the cost of capital is, you know, a fraction of that, then I, I think maybe that's a point where it's maybe not so well understood or it's kind of, it's difficult to grasp. Yeah, you, you, you see" }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "42:52", "start": 2572.06, "text": "that? I mean, that's pretty much, when you break down, so when people criticize strategy, for instance, like, \"Hey, how are you gonna, how are you gonna fund these dividends of an eleven and a half percent?\" Really, when it boils down to it, it's just a fundamental disagreement of what Bitcoins can be over the next five to ten years or into the future." }, { "speaker": "guest_4", "time": "43:13", "start": 2593.15, "text": "Now," }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "43:13", "start": 2593.29, "text": "there's reasons to believe that it, it can, can perform twenty-five, thirty percent a year, and I think when people say, like, \"Hey And over the next ten years, people are like, \"No, that's crazy,\" 'cause they think about returns on, you know, the Nasdaq or the S&P 500, twenty-five percent a year, that's those crazy returns. Now we know that Bitcoin's done more than historically, but even looking into the future, at twenty-five percent, you're looking at a Bitcoin price, by twenty thirty-one, around like" }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "43:43", "start": 2623.15, "text": "two hundred forty, two hundred fifty thousand, you know, to me, I'm like, \"That's, I don't think they can do that.\" A hundred fifty thousand, might be a little bit different based on Bitcoin's price right now, but around there, that's doable to me by twenty thirty-six, and that's twenty-five percent cash. If you're, if you're issuing a security that pays a fixed dividend of eleven and a half percent, you're using the proceeds to buy an asset that appreciates at twenty-five, the business is in that spread, that's where the business model goes, and all the residual return goes to the mSCTR common shareholders. That's really what the bet is. the whole thing doesn't really That over a long period of time. Yeah. Now, really what strategy and Bitcoin treasury companies are doing, or is just trying to manage Bitcoin's volatility, there's a belief that, yes We have conviction that Bitcoin will appreciate over time, that Bitcoin adoption will continue, but we have to manage the capital structure to withstand Bitcoin's short term" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:40", "start": 2679.95, "text": "volatility so that you don't have to" }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "44:41", "start": 2680.77, "text": "sell" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:41", "start": 2680.97, "text": "at the wrong time. That's kind of the key thing, because if you're over-levered, then you can get wrecked at the bottom or, you know, these kinds of-- like, you can fall into a bad situation." }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "44:49", "start": 2689.09, "text": "And then custody is important too, like Freddie said, there's, there's, there's more, there's different risks compared to holding Bitcoin in self custody. Yeah. The Also, like, you're, you're, it's protocol risk. Like, if Bitcoin fails, then you're not gonna do well. But you remove counterparty risk, remove debase risk, things like that. But when you, when you buy equity in a Bitcoin treasury company, you're moving the risk from the protocol more to the management team and their ability to execute and secure the Bitcoin, because they could make" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:21", "start": 2720.85, "text": "management missteps. I mean, we've seen some treasury companies that started but then ended up selling their coins, right? Because maybe the structure was wrong or the management weren't as committed to" }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "45:32", "start": 2731.92, "text": "We gotta understand like the risk trade-offs between holding Bitcoin, spot Bitcoin in self-custody versus owning an equity versus owning a preferred equity that's supported by Bitcoin. You know, they're different risk profiles with different rewards. So another topic that is probably" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:46", "start": 2746.01, "text": "interesting, because a lot of people, I think people who come from like just Bitcoin and they're maybe not as keen on treasury companies, they see it like, \"No, you should be financing out of operating, income only and not out of the financing component.\" But I think maybe that's part of the- The dis-- the, the difference in the, in the worldview where, you know, maybe in their view they see it as like, you should only be, you know, you should primarily just be doing it out of operating income, not out of like borrowing or financing. How do you see that difference between kind of focusing on the operating income aspect or operating income side of the house versus the financing, ability to, you know, buy more Bitcoin now using financing?" }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "46:25", "start": 2784.88, "text": "Well, I'd say that at Orange BTC, we're focused on both sides. I don't think either one's I think if you're on that other side of the, the, the camp who thinks, \"Oh, it should only be operational, you should only use cash flows.\" I mean, do you not believe in any types of leverage or any kinds of debt whatsoever? We live in a debt-based system. I mean, it's almost like, you know, don't hate the player, hate the, hate the game kind of thing, because if you're a large public company with a large balance sheet, one of the benefits that you have is better access to capital and, and cheaper cost of financing, That base system is structured. It's really the Cantillon effect, in action. A large public company with a big balance sheet can get access to the money transfer better than an individual who's not as wealthy. I mean, you're way down in the spectrum. And so I think if you're not using all the tools available to you to acquire more Bitcoin, especially at this stage of Bitcoin's adoption cycle, if you're not utilizing, debt to turn around that's not in fiat that continues to be devalued, turn around and buy Bitcoin and appreciate it, I don't think you It's available on behalf of your shareholders. So I think, I think the company is gonna take different approaches, but I see nothing wrong with, borrowing in fiat to turn around and buy and appreciate an asset that's, that's been going on, not just in Bitcoin treasury companies, that's, that's just been going on in the markets for a very long time." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:52", "start": 2871.8, "text": "Yeah, I mean, in one sense- Different generations have used different things, like generations older than us that might have used property as their way of leveraging on something, and maybe Bitcoin is an opportunity for, you know, newer entrants now to actually generate some wealth. so I guess closing thoughts, any kind of outlook going forward, you know, for the rest of this year or into next year?" }, { "speaker": "guest_5", "time": "48:14", "start": 2893.56, "text": "Look, I think right now Bitcoin is-- there's been a lot of headwinds, it's been a lot of, it's been a lot of fud, to be honest with you. I think there's a lot of the conversations that I have, you hear a lot about theoretical tail risks like the quantum fud, you-- there's a lot of macro uncertainty, so I think that's actually a big part of what's going on here in terms of the weakness with Bitcoin. I think there's concerns over the strata horus lasting longer, than the market expects Oil prices staying high, which causes, pressures on sovereign yields, which causes pressure on risk on assets like stocks and Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin could be sniffing out some kind of stock market correction, and in that case, we could see Bitcoin even going a little bit further down from here before the liquidity is injected. but, you know, I have to say that right now the sentiment's pretty poor. It seems to be carving out a bottom around the sixty K. it's, it's difficult to pick absolute bottoms, you know, when Bitcoin's down at these levels and sentiments at these prices, it's typically a good long-term entry. And really, when you think about long-term entries, you gotta think about fundamentals. I always focus on the fiscal picture because that is the main driver of economic conditions and inflation. So you look at, hey, are they still spending? Yes, they're still running two trillion dollar deficits. That's GDP still above, the deficit's about six percent. And so that's not gonna change. And so the reasons to hold something that is resistant against the basement hasn't changed. So don't focus on the price, focus on the fundamentals, zoom out, and for the reasons why you hold Bitcoin hasn't changed. So that's kind of what I've always think about, and I think that's what anybody who's a long-term investor or holder of Bitcoin should focus on instead of just looking at the price fluctuations because this is That's what Bitcoin does." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:09", "start": 3008.81, "text": "Thank you. Yeah, that's, Sam Calahan from Orange. We check, put the links in the show notes, of course. Sam, thanks for joining me. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it." } ] }