Speaker 1: The best thing that meme coins did for us is
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Speaker 2: They're trying to disrupt your ability to earn yield on
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Speaker 2: on DeFi.
Speaker 1: It will be a fight to the death and probably theirs.
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Speaker 2: welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward,
Speaker 2: and joining me today is Bill Barhd who is the
Speaker 2: founder and CEO of Abra. Bill, great to have you.
Speaker 1: Good to be here, Tony, Good to see you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Bill, I thought of you in getting you on
Speaker 2: the pod because you've been in this market for a
Speaker 2: very long time and I certainly want to get your
Speaker 2: expertise and your plethora of knowledge to weigh in on
Speaker 2: what's happening with bitcoin. Obviously we're seeing a bit of
Speaker 2: an uptick here at the beginning of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: But I wonder if you can go back to Q
Speaker 2: four and what happened in October or was that the
Speaker 2: top of the market for bitcoin.
Speaker 1: It was not the top of the market, but by
Speaker 1: top of the market, I assume you mean like some
Speaker 1: kind of cycle. I don't think so. I think I
Speaker 1: think it was a confluence of a lot of things
Speaker 1: all happening at the same time, and then it was
Speaker 1: exacerbated by some issues that finance had that they've apparently
Speaker 1: rectified since with you know, with some exchange pricing and
Speaker 1: some oracle issues that led to some cascading selling. You know,
Speaker 1: it's crypto, right, soah, it just it never just drizzles.
Speaker 1: It always has to pour. So so yeah, I can
Speaker 1: talk about the liquidity issues and other things happening and
Speaker 1: expectations and you know why gold was leading, and we've
Speaker 1: seen this before. It looks a lot like twenty twenty. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you look at what happened
Speaker 1: back then going into twenty one, gold led the rally,
Speaker 1: and then going into later that year, you know, crypto
Speaker 1: took over first Bitcoin, then Ethereum, and then all time
Speaker 1: and epic run. So so it feels era similar. You know.
Speaker 1: Maybe people are a little concerned in the in the
Speaker 1: broader macro sense about what Supreme Court is going to
Speaker 1: say about tariffs, but I don't think it really matters
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. The Fed, the Fed's
Speaker 1: got a print nobody. I shouldn't say nobody, Uh let me,
Speaker 1: let me be more precise. Demand for long dated treasuries
Speaker 1: is probably going to fall this year, which means that
Speaker 1: the Fed is going to have to accelerate quantitative easing
Speaker 1: in order to get long term rates down. That's my
Speaker 1: kind of base case. That, combined with the treasuries that
Speaker 1: are already buying, the lower interest rates that we're seeing
Speaker 1: will probably push push rates lower and dramatically increase the
Speaker 1: money supply, which will really have an outsized impact on
Speaker 1: tech stocks. Crypto. I think all coins, particularly the l
Speaker 1: ones I shouldn't say alquins, the l ones are going
Speaker 1: to have an epic year, in my opinion, certainly have
Speaker 1: a you know, better year than last year, which couldn't
Speaker 1: have been any worse. So actually that's not true. It
Speaker 1: could have been worse. But but but I guess if
Speaker 1: you're holding a large bag of l One's, it probably
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like it could have been worse. But trust me,
Speaker 1: it could have been a lot worse. But I think
Speaker 1: that's in the past now, and I do think we're
Speaker 1: going to see liquidity driven run where value catches up
Speaker 1: to price or price catches up to value is more
Speaker 1: accurate in this case, just based upon the available liquidity.
Speaker 1: I think you're going to see stimulus checks from this administration,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. You know, they're talking about confiscating thirty
Speaker 1: million barrels of oil to the benefit of both the
Speaker 1: American and Venezuela and public, which is obviously meant to
Speaker 1: you know, push rates down to basically create a forecast
Speaker 1: of GDP growth because there's more cheap oil in the system,
Speaker 1: you know. So everything points to all of the things
Speaker 1: that were teed up in twenty twenty five leading to
Speaker 1: you know, more money in the so called system in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. And our base case, like I said,
Speaker 1: is we end up buying a significantly higher percentage of
Speaker 1: our debt than we have the last couple of years
Speaker 1: because of you know, higher rates and the desire for
Speaker 1: FED to shrink their balance sheet. That's in the past.
Speaker 2: Now, so Bill, we know history doesn't often repeat, but
Speaker 2: it does rhyme. There are a lot of people who
Speaker 2: are saying, what Tony or Bill, what about the four
Speaker 2: year cycle? What about the number of days and that
Speaker 2: took place around October? What about the bearish divergence on
Speaker 2: the weekly chart of the monthly mac D flipping red.
Speaker 2: So I wonder if I would get you could get
Speaker 2: your perspective on that, because you have these two things
Speaker 2: on a scale. Here. I agree with you. On the macro.
Speaker 2: All these things set up and it looks like twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: but yet the charts are screaming, you know, certain things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So four year cycle is a tough one because
Speaker 1: there was a few things that were happening at the
Speaker 1: same time. There was a fed cycle right where you
Speaker 1: could basically look at a long term chart of long
Speaker 1: term interest rate and it looked like a precipitous path
Speaker 1: to zero, right, And we all thought, well, rates can't
Speaker 1: go below zero. And during COVID we saw that, you know,
Speaker 1: effective rates could go below zero, just like bond price.
Speaker 1: Oil prices were negative for hot minut So so that
Speaker 1: that's over now, okay. So that that four year cycle
Speaker 1: died when we printed twenty five percent of the money
Speaker 1: supply in eighteen months. We didn't know it at the time, sure,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean we'd never lived through it before,
Speaker 1: no one had or no one alive had, and and
Speaker 1: and so we didn't know. Right now we know, Okay. Second,
Speaker 1: I would say as it relates to bitcoins four year cycle,
Speaker 1: which to a degree overlapped with the money supply issues
Speaker 1: and treasury cycle that I mentioned. I was never a
Speaker 1: huge believer. You couldn't deny that there were a few
Speaker 1: data points that clearly said we were in this kind
Speaker 1: of you know, sine wave cycle based upon the havings,
Speaker 1: but the samplings were just too small, right, and and
Speaker 1: and and so I didn't really care so much about that.
Speaker 1: I really cared more about the fact that you had
Speaker 1: limited supply. Uh, you had effectively a deflationary asset that's
Speaker 1: being priced in an inflationary asset. When you have those
Speaker 1: things and you have reasonable, reasonable demand, and you're continuing
Speaker 1: to price something in the inflationary asset, which is the dollar,
Speaker 1: the price of the deflationary asset has to go up
Speaker 1: over time. It just does, right, And and that has
Speaker 1: to but but but by all viable measures, it's going
Speaker 1: to go up over time, and that continues to play out.
Speaker 1: That is that has been my core thesis for why
Speaker 1: bitcoin is my personal beta uh and and anything I
Speaker 1: do in l One's those are venture bets for me,
Speaker 1: those are long term bets. They could go up ten x.
Speaker 1: This year, they could go up five x over the
Speaker 1: next five years. It's all good. Those are venture bets
Speaker 1: based upon a core thesis that I have around the
Speaker 1: value of of of block space plus smart contracts, you know,
Speaker 1: plus decentralization in the new economy. That's that's my personal thesis.
Speaker 1: And that's different from sound money, where bitcoin it becomes
Speaker 1: my personal beta, you know, now and certainly forever more
Speaker 1: until something better comes along, which I doubt is gonna happen.
Speaker 1: So so a long winded way of saying, I don't
Speaker 1: put a lot of stock in the in the in
Speaker 1: the bitcoin based four year cycle. Never really did, and
Speaker 1: I've said that, you can go back and check back
Speaker 1: check me. I've said that many times. I did put
Speaker 1: a lot of stock in the in the four year
Speaker 1: treasury market driven cycle. But but clearly the the Fed
Speaker 1: killed that, you know, and and there's others that believe
Speaker 1: I'm not you know, enough of the weeds in in
Speaker 1: fixed income anymore, but but I you know, others believe
Speaker 1: that the cycle has just been extended by a year
Speaker 1: and that the you know, government had hoped that they
Speaker 1: would be able to uh reset know, long term borrowings
Speaker 1: or mid term borrowings at better rates, but they couldn't
Speaker 1: for myriad reasons, and that it's going to happen this year,
Speaker 1: come hell or high water. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is the economy is slowing outside
Speaker 1: of AI, especially right pretty much everywhere outside of AI,
Speaker 1: the economy is slowing dramatically. You're you're still seeing lingering
Speaker 1: layoff effects of the high interest rates post COVID hangover.
Speaker 1: Everybody points to AI for that. I don't believe that's
Speaker 1: AI driven at all. I think it's just a hangover
Speaker 1: of of FED drinking the balance sheets. And like I said,
Speaker 1: this administration is doing everything it can to to kind
Speaker 1: of you know, cataract that with whatever tricks or tools
Speaker 1: it can bring to bear off of the shelf that
Speaker 1: it has tag. No taxes on tips, you know, no
Speaker 1: taxes on Social Security payments would never made sense anyway
Speaker 1: because you're double dipping. But but but but the point,
Speaker 1: but the operative point being it's more money in retail
Speaker 1: and and our economy still retail driven at the end
Speaker 1: of the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So you believe that, you know, people have
Speaker 2: to kind of update their mental model. They've been so
Speaker 2: used to the small sample size of having for your cycles.
Speaker 2: But it was the primary catalyst was liquidity or even
Speaker 2: the ism, and that has been delayed to your point,
Speaker 2: so risk assets or you know, bigcoin, all coins and
Speaker 2: so forth, even you know, you look at the rustle
Speaker 2: two thousand and all that has been kind of slowed
Speaker 2: down a bit. It wasn't a great year in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. But as those the liquidity and the ism
Speaker 2: and those things pick up, you'll see those assets follow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I accept that. You know. Look, the hardest everything
Speaker 1: you said makes a lot of sense to me. The
Speaker 1: hardest word in there, ironically is the word we. So
Speaker 1: so who is we? Right, Because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you get it. You're masterful at simplifying this
Speaker 1: for you know, people who are like not in the weeds.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is is almost no one is
Speaker 1: in the weeds, and so it makes sense to us.
Speaker 1: We get it. You know, we're we're knee deep in
Speaker 1: this price expectation. But for the average investor, if you
Speaker 1: don't have a long term view, which is at least
Speaker 1: five years, you're you're not doing yourself justice and you're
Speaker 1: you're basically going to create a lot of heartache for
Speaker 1: yourself unnecessarily in my opinion, and if you can't look
Speaker 1: at it from that perspective, mean longer term you need
Speaker 1: to write size your allocations in this world. And so so,
Speaker 1: while I agree with everything you're saying, because Bill's knee
Speaker 1: deep in the weeds, Tony's knee deep in the weeds,
Speaker 1: some of our cohort is the average listener may not be.
Speaker 1: And and my message to them is, look, you know,
Speaker 1: have a longer term view. Everything should be five year
Speaker 1: minimum unless you're unless you're really good at trading and
Speaker 1: speculating and you can get in and out of day
Speaker 1: training and all that stuff. I you know, I do that.
Speaker 1: I don't do it anymore. It's too hard, it's too stressful.
Speaker 1: It's not even worth it if you look at the returns,
Speaker 1: it's just not worth it. Right, So, so have a
Speaker 1: five year, you know, maybe even longer time horizon and
Speaker 1: accept the fact that you know, we're spending a trillion
Speaker 1: dollars to service the debt and which is now bigger
Speaker 1: than I believe in our defense budget, and it's getting bigger,
Speaker 1: which means more money printing. And so I don't want
Speaker 1: that to be the truth, but it is the truth.
Speaker 1: And so if you have a long term perspective on that,
Speaker 1: anybody who can afford risk on assets, tech stocks, crypto
Speaker 1: is basically getting leverage on that system. It may be
Speaker 1: at the expense of other people who can't, but honestly,
Speaker 1: right now, as a wealth manager, that's not my problem.
Speaker 1: My problem right now as a wealth manager is making
Speaker 1: money for my clients and helping my clients make money,
Speaker 1: and that's how they should do it in my opinion
Speaker 1: as their fiduciary. Right I'm not giving investment advice here,
Speaker 1: but when I'm talking to my clients, that's what I
Speaker 1: tell them, right And as an American for everybody else,
Speaker 1: I hope our government gets a shit together, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to do.
Speaker 2: You think somewhere in the future, Bill, they're able to
Speaker 2: use this technology bitcoin, blockchain to help solve all that
Speaker 2: fiat currency issue that there's With the combination of AI
Speaker 2: and maybe quantum, they're able to figure out something where
Speaker 2: they are not current continuing the debasement cycle over and over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 2: You know, I was.
Speaker 1: I was having breakfast with Peter Diamanis as a good
Speaker 1: friend of mine. Good day Peter's really in knee deep
Speaker 1: in the AI world. He was just coming back from
Speaker 1: the interview he had done with Elon and we had this
Speaker 1: long discussion about the intersection of crypto and AI, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, explaining that most of the people who are
Speaker 1: knee deep in AI right now don't understand where decentralization
Speaker 1: fits in because they're building data centers the size of
Speaker 1: an end right so so, but the reality is is
Speaker 1: that the future of agentic Web or Internet, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is decentralized. And if you have an intelligent conversation with
Speaker 1: an artificial intelligent bot about conducting transactions, the last thing
Speaker 1: it's going to want to do is conduct transactions and
Speaker 1: using an inflationary asset if it's holding that asset for
Speaker 1: more than a week, because by definition, it's losing value
Speaker 1: at an exponential rate the longer it holds the asset,
Speaker 1: which in English means you don't want to use dollars
Speaker 1: if you're a smart AI bot. Now, I realize that
Speaker 1: this is a core thesis for Circle and tether and
Speaker 1: others going forward, but I'm sorry, but it's just not
Speaker 1: going to happen.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It may in the short term for ephemeral transactions, meaning
Speaker 1: transactions where it doesn't matter. You could trade in baseball
Speaker 1: cards or dollars or whatever because you're in and out quickly.
Speaker 1: For certain types of you know, supply chain or factoring transactions,
Speaker 1: that'll those will be dollars for a very or CNY
Speaker 1: for a very long time. And that's fine. But those
Speaker 1: were already dollars. That's what I'm saying, right, So, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about future businesses that don't exist that are going
Speaker 1: to be enabled by the agentic Internet, which is going
Speaker 1: to be infinitely bigger than today's economy, driven by robotic
Speaker 1: and all the exponential technologies that I'm that I'm excited about,
Speaker 1: and crypto plays a central role there. And you're going
Speaker 1: to see a plethora of digital assets enabled by these
Speaker 1: systems that are deflationary by nature, Bitcoin being the most
Speaker 1: important one. I think Bitcoin could play a significant role.
Speaker 1: I think Solana and seuey aptos, those type of currencies
Speaker 1: could actually be used for ephemeral transactions themselves because they're
Speaker 1: inherently deflationary.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I get the narrative of the maxis about why you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to do that, and I don't agree with it.
Speaker 1: But I get it. But I don't think the bots
Speaker 1: would agree with them on this. I think I think anyway,
Speaker 1: the long winded way, the long new point I'm making
Speaker 1: is that I think that there's this coming economy that
Speaker 1: people don't understand yet that is so massive, uh, that
Speaker 1: integrates all of this exponential tech, robotics, AI, self driving cars,
Speaker 1: you know, home automation, all these things are going to
Speaker 1: be fully integrated into our lives with an AI, you know,
Speaker 1: a set of brains. And I think there's going to
Speaker 1: be lots of them, like lots of parallel matrixes that
Speaker 1: we have to integrate with. And and crypto is kind
Speaker 1: of the hard line into those those matrixes. And and
Speaker 1: I'm here for it, you know. And and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's so early in understanding that you know, even like
Speaker 1: the most scalable blockchains we have now are just scratching
Speaker 1: the surface on the scalability. We need to facilitate transaction
Speaker 1: processing for those types of systems. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: thank god that we have these next gen l ones
Speaker 1: now that I you know, they're they're awesome.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. So you know, we're talking about the
Speaker 2: outlook for this year you know, going back to the
Speaker 2: thesis of central banks do going to continue printing more
Speaker 2: liquidity and so forth, and not guaranteed, but we expect
Speaker 2: risk assets and these projects and all these things to rise.
Speaker 2: You mentioned l ones. Uh, there's also a big narrative
Speaker 2: of privacy if you get your thoughts on it, you
Speaker 2: see it as the next big trade and and what
Speaker 2: are some of the ones you're primarily focused on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, uh, that's a really astute comment. I think
Speaker 1: I think privacy is going to have its day. Uh,
Speaker 1: so to speak, the Sioux announcement was very interesting. Obviously,
Speaker 1: z cash had an epic run in December. You know
Speaker 1: that that was remarkable just given the nature of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, retail excitement, the lack of retail excitement for
Speaker 1: for z cash for years effectively, right, and and you know,
Speaker 1: just a few a few tweets pumped the price because
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you know, privacy is a narrative,
Speaker 1: it's a thing, right, And so the irony is is
Speaker 1: that you know, for me as somebody who came and
Speaker 1: stayed for the decentralization and for you know, the self
Speaker 1: sovereignty and you know, the personal agency that you know
Speaker 1: that that the crypto model enables and smart contracts enable.
Speaker 1: Uh so alarady with Bitcoin. Of course, it's cyronic to
Speaker 1: me and that this is happening now. But I think
Speaker 1: you know, I I but direct to your question like that,
Speaker 1: the Sioux announcement was huge to me, you know, but
Speaker 1: but I think you're going to see everyone looking at
Speaker 1: this hard right like ethereums, you know, Metallic Batallics actually
Speaker 1: had some really interesting commentary lately because kind of in
Speaker 1: a it's almost like he was in a cave, you know,
Speaker 1: big Bear in a he's a skinny run but but
Speaker 1: but you know, big Bear in a cave sleeping for
Speaker 1: for a couple of years. But but some of the
Speaker 1: stuff he's been writing I actually strongly agree with. Now,
Speaker 1: he's backed himself into a corner with poor technology decisions
Speaker 1: over the years, but I think they can undo that,
Speaker 1: and I think they can fix that. But but I
Speaker 1: agree with the thesis of what he's saying. I think
Speaker 1: he gets z K at a fundamental level. I think
Speaker 1: most of the l one you know, core devs get
Speaker 1: z K and related text at a fundamental level. It's
Speaker 1: my background. I mean, I was on the SSL team
Speaker 1: in Netscape and you know, so that's been a passion
Speaker 1: of mine since I was a kid, you know. And
Speaker 1: and so I didn't really have the terminology and the
Speaker 1: lingo like I do now because of crypto, mostly to
Speaker 1: explain all of this in a way that the non
Speaker 1: techies can appreciate. But when you have technology that enables,
Speaker 1: you know, a true libertarian self sovereign model that acts
Speaker 1: as a you know, a sanity check or you know,
Speaker 1: a liberty check almost on government policy run them UK,
Speaker 1: which it has for the last several years, you have
Speaker 1: to be excited unless you're just unless you just just
Speaker 1: clearly don't get it, or you have no viable assets
Speaker 1: or believe you're never going to have any assets. And
Speaker 1: that's the biggest problem that we face as society today
Speaker 1: is there's a percentage of the West right that believes
Speaker 1: that they're never going to be able to participate whatever
Speaker 1: that means. And that's crazy. It's not crazy that they, well,
Speaker 1: it is crazy that they believe that, because it's not true.
Speaker 1: I think we're about to enter an age of abundance
Speaker 1: the likes of which humanity has never seen. Right, the
Speaker 1: last bashion of the rate of poverty in this planet
Speaker 1: has been going like this, right. You know. Now, now
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of socialists would would have
Speaker 1: you believe that that's not true. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you can see on my screen, but I'm making a
Speaker 1: very you know, pretty much a straight line down. And
Speaker 1: you know, on the on the chart, on the line chart,
Speaker 1: not a lot of chart that basically shows where poverty
Speaker 1: is going, right, I meaning people that live on less
Speaker 1: than let's say ten dollars a day. We used to
Speaker 1: call it ten. I think they've raised it. But regardless,
Speaker 1: the poverty rate has fallen significantly on planet Earth.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time in Haiti. Everybody's walking
Speaker 1: around with an Android phone in Haiti, the poorest country
Speaker 1: in the Western hemisphere.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, so my point is, like, you know, we have
Speaker 1: a different set of problems going forward, right, how do
Speaker 1: you basically give people hope that the abundance that's coming
Speaker 1: is going to affect them. Now, Crypto will play a
Speaker 1: part in that to keep hard in that. But you know,
Speaker 1: if if people believe that they have no money left
Speaker 1: at the end of the year, there's nothing that VISA
Speaker 1: can do to give them hope so that they go
Speaker 1: out and spend more on their visa car right right,
Speaker 1: and and and so you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm making sense, but like I just have this into
Speaker 1: it that the biggest challenge we're going to have is
Speaker 1: is that people are losing hope that they're going to
Speaker 1: participate in this abundant future that's coming. And and maybe
Speaker 1: because they don't focus on it enough. Maybe because then
Speaker 1: the online narratives are so negative. But that's that's it.
Speaker 1: Just it just blows my mind because anybody who pays
Speaker 1: attention should be like, Wow, this is like literally the
Speaker 1: greatest time ever to be alive, except for like next week, right,
Speaker 1: which is going to be even better, you know, And
Speaker 1: and and so I think that the pendulum is clearly
Speaker 1: swinging towards decentralization as it relates to like financial services.
Speaker 1: It is not swinging towards decentralization yet as it relates
Speaker 1: to other types of technology, because they're too expensive and
Speaker 1: there's no easy way to build decentralized robots and decentralized
Speaker 1: car fleets and you know, decentralized medicine yet. But I
Speaker 1: even think that's coming, and and so we have to
Speaker 1: we have to give people it's incumbent upon anybody who
Speaker 1: wants to participate to give everyone else hope somehow. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, and as a libertarian, that's a tough one
Speaker 1: because I usually like to think that people will act
Speaker 1: in their own self interest and then that will create
Speaker 1: a better economy. But you know, we've we've we've dug
Speaker 1: this bit of a hole for ourselves, those of us
Speaker 1: who are believers uh in tech, and and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how we're going to get out
Speaker 1: of it, but we will.
Speaker 2: So. But from a larger perspective, bily, is it kind
Speaker 2: of the ebbs and flows of human civilization and money
Speaker 2: and how currencies handle, right. I mean, I think as
Speaker 2: someone I'm a millennial on the older side, seeing two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, seeing two thousand and one, you know
Speaker 2: what happened nine eleven and so forth, those things were
Speaker 2: really impactful, not just culturally and society, but financially well.
Speaker 2: To your point, the technology is in the works here
Speaker 2: to bring us out the ebb and flow, right, so
Speaker 2: it start trending higher, so to speak. Yeah, So.
Speaker 1: A tough question. It's a great question. Tough question because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things happening at the same time,
Speaker 1: I do believe in the thesis that we are in
Speaker 1: this kind of late stay empire, you know, for turning model.
Speaker 1: I've read house books, I've read you know, pretty much
Speaker 1: all the interesting books that I can find on this topic,
Speaker 1: and it does make sense, right, And nine to eleven
Speaker 1: events do kind of point to a modern version of
Speaker 1: what happens in a late day empire when you look
Speaker 1: at similar events, and it's just more dramatic because we
Speaker 1: didn't have you know, jet planes the size of a
Speaker 1: football field that you could fly into a building in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, right, I mean, it's crazy. So so
Speaker 1: that's different this time. But the idea of a late
Speaker 1: stage empire is not different. The idea of the pendulum
Speaker 1: swinging right is not different. The fact that we have
Speaker 1: computers and machines that have the IQ of a PhD
Speaker 1: in every subject, every subject is new. We didn't have
Speaker 1: that last time. Well, you know Napoleonic Wars or you
Speaker 1: know Dutch East in the Empire, they didn't have that
Speaker 1: collective intelligence. That doesn't mean that we're going to be smarter.
Speaker 1: It just means we could make for all and we
Speaker 1: can make dumb mistakes faster I don't know. I hope not,
Speaker 1: but I do think we're going to be smarter. But
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's like who's the next empire anymore? Right,
Speaker 1: the rise of China is inevitable, but I don't think
Speaker 1: China is going to be the global empire the way
Speaker 1: the US was. You know, I kind of have this
Speaker 1: grow It's it's almost like the next empire versus the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's not even about the US. The best thing the
Speaker 1: US can do, being forty trillion dollars in debt, is
Speaker 1: enable global exponential technological growth where we play a central role.
Speaker 1: That's the best thing that we can do for our
Speaker 1: own self interest, which I think happens to align with humanity. Right,
Speaker 1: So so you know, maybe, and there's the answer to
Speaker 1: your question. But but basically what I'm getting at is
Speaker 1: I think that, yes, this is played out before. I
Speaker 1: think the cycles may be broken for a few reasons, meaning,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not going to look like just the
Speaker 1: next wave. Like Dalio talks about the cycles of generations
Speaker 1: and you can't deny the history. But there's you know,
Speaker 1: I'm always weary of it's here's why it's different this time.
Speaker 1: But anyway, here's why it's different this time. And I
Speaker 1: do think it's Hey, you know, we do have machines
Speaker 1: that have collective intelligence that is a PhD level and everything.
Speaker 1: Now we have the ability to move ourselves in real
Speaker 1: time anywhere in the planet that we want. We have
Speaker 1: relatively abundant energy. The vast majority of the planet lives
Speaker 1: above the poverty level now for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: and it's getting better. We're about to enter a new
Speaker 1: age of exponentially growing abundance. And like I said, the
Speaker 1: biggest challenge we have is is that a significant portion
Speaker 1: of the population either doesn't see it, feel it, or
Speaker 1: believe it. And maybe it doesn't matter. You know, it
Speaker 1: used to not matter because everybody died ironically right now, ironically,
Speaker 1: one of the side effects of what's coming is is
Speaker 1: that people are going to live a lot longer. Now.
Speaker 1: This relates to money, because if you look at how
Speaker 1: empires inflate their currency to deal with their poor policy making,
Speaker 1: it happens to coincide with life expectancy because it's the
Speaker 1: easiest way to hide what you're doing. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you have a lot of money and the government
Speaker 1: is inflating prices by inflating the currency to effectively erode
Speaker 1: the purchasing power at six seven percent a year. But
Speaker 1: you're going to be dead in twenty years or twenty
Speaker 1: five years. The pain isn't really acute. It's annoying, right,
Speaker 1: but it's not like acute for most people because either
Speaker 1: one you don't have any savings, or two you have
Speaker 1: more than enough. And so the fact that they're taking
Speaker 1: a bunch away via artificial money printing, it's like I said,
Speaker 1: it's aggravating at worst. If we start living to one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one hundred and forty, that's not going
Speaker 1: to be the case anymore. You can't have a stable
Speaker 1: monetary system based upon a currency whose value you're eroding
Speaker 1: by seven percent a year. They'd be rioting in the streets.
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street gave us a sense that people were
Speaker 1: starting to get it to some degree. They couldn't explain it,
Speaker 1: right if you act ask the average person, why occupy
Speaker 1: you know, like, you know, we're getting screwed, right, they
Speaker 1: screwed us, but they saved the bankers, and that's that
Speaker 1: was true. But I'm giving you the real behind the curtain,
Speaker 1: Like you're getting screwed because they're eroding the value of
Speaker 1: your money, and you're blaming the billionaires. The billionaires are
Speaker 1: just able to make levered bets on the erosion you
Speaker 1: are not. That's the difference. It's the system that's fucking you,
Speaker 1: it's not the billionaire, right. And and so that will
Speaker 1: be acute when we start living to one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty hundred and forty right, And and so there's this
Speaker 1: confluence that And it's funny because you know, I was
Speaker 1: having this I mentioned is talking to Peter the other day,
Speaker 1: and and you know, he's his big spiel is longevity, right,
Speaker 1: and so the two are coming together. He's a huge
Speaker 1: bitcoiner and client of AB and so we talk about that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, what's going to happen when his clients start
Speaker 1: living to one hundred and forty right? He says, well,
Speaker 1: they're going to do what you're doing. Their bita is
Speaker 1: going to become bitcoin because there's no way they're going
Speaker 1: to hold assets priced in dollars or even dollars itself. Right.
Speaker 1: So so you know, yeah, I think I think there's
Speaker 1: a real chance that that cycle is broken for all
Speaker 1: of these reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to your point, you know, I imagine like with
Speaker 2: these AI agents and AI and you know, coming at
Speaker 2: us from all directions, it will be on your phone,
Speaker 2: it'll be companies are going to have their own AI versions.
Speaker 2: You have that collective knowledge, like you said, the higher
Speaker 2: IQ some wisdom. So maybe we don't have to kind
Speaker 2: of go through that cyclical pattern of the common failures
Speaker 2: of pitfalls of human nature. Some of that could be mitigated. Plus,
Speaker 2: you have decentralization with blockchains and hard assets like bitcoin
Speaker 2: that could help take some power away from the likes
Speaker 2: of the banking cartel and things like that. So for sure,
Speaker 2: so to your point, some of those things are alleviated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I mean I I everybody was tripping over
Speaker 1: themselves about this DTCC announcement from a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: right where they got I guess, permission to offer tokenized
Speaker 1: shares through their settlement system. I may be saying that wrong,
Speaker 1: but I think that's more or less what the announcement was,
Speaker 1: and to me, that's ridiculous. I mean no offense to DTCC.
Speaker 1: I think they have to do what they're doing because
Speaker 1: they need to justify their existence. But you know, the
Speaker 1: whole purpose of decentralization is to eliminate the need for
Speaker 1: them to exist, right, just like it's you know, I
Speaker 1: think Visa and look, I have friends at these places.
Speaker 1: I know, sorry as everyone, but you know, Visa Depository,
Speaker 1: Trust Bank of America. The best thing that could happen
Speaker 1: as a result of decentralization and smart contracts is that
Speaker 1: you all no longer need to exist, and nobody wants
Speaker 1: to use your products anymore, right, and just it's not
Speaker 1: a knock and the system. It's just true, you know.
Speaker 1: And and so stock trading is going to fundamentally change
Speaker 1: in the next thirty six months, where you have natively
Speaker 1: issued equities via smart contract tokens, meaning they're not tokenized
Speaker 1: versions of existing shares, those native you know, tokenized equities
Speaker 1: will be twenty four to seven borderless, and you'll begin
Speaker 1: to see the value of international or domestic I should say,
Speaker 1: securities regulators diminish, right, And so the question will be, okay,
Speaker 1: well if I have the equivalent of an S one,
Speaker 1: you know, how do I see that? Well, it'll be
Speaker 1: on chain and the market will police itself over time.
Speaker 1: You love courts to adjudicate, but that's where this is going,
Speaker 1: you know. So you're going to see I think a
Speaker 1: massive movement towards towards traditional finance, moving into DeFi. And
Speaker 1: it started with dollars. Of course, we stable coins and
Speaker 1: you know, yield products, and the next generation is equities.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: We announced a synthetic dollar at the Salona conference, which
Speaker 1: is our first push into enabling exposure to real world assets.
Speaker 1: We wanted to do it in a way where it
Speaker 1: eliminated the need for exposure to the banking system as
Speaker 1: best we could, which is why we went up the
Speaker 1: synthetic dollar based on Salon UH, which I think is
Speaker 1: just a killer model because you get the yield uh.
Speaker 1: You you know, you get you know, you get a
Speaker 1: stable dollar, and you can do it via you know,
Speaker 1: neobanks because a lot of them are based on Salana
Speaker 1: now UH. And you'll see us do more and more
Speaker 1: in this area, in equities, in in fixed income, in
Speaker 1: real estate, and I think figuring out how to natively
Speaker 1: tokenize these things or stuff is is the the big
Speaker 1: prize from a trad FI perspective, and and that enables
Speaker 1: new businesses from old world assets, which is awesome. The
Speaker 1: even bigger prize is the AI, the crypto integration into
Speaker 1: AI UH for the agentic Internet. There's no other way
Speaker 1: to do transaction processing for the agenic Internet that makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. None and at scale? Right, and and
Speaker 1: so why would you want an off switch? Why would
Speaker 1: you want to use an oracle database for an AI
Speaker 1: agent that somebody can control? Makes no sense? I shouldn't
Speaker 1: you know? There probably aren's is where it does. But
Speaker 1: for the vast majority of applications, to me, leveraging decentralized
Speaker 1: systems make more sense. So I think the future in
Speaker 1: both areas is of you know, twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: equities trading no borders, agentic internet, you know on twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven no borders. It's super interesting to me, Bill.
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on the banks. They're fighting back,
Speaker 2: they're trying to disrupt, you know, exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: With stable coins, you're able to earn yield on crypto
Speaker 2: platforms like Abron and other platforms. They're also trying to
Speaker 2: push back on DeFi I mean, I saw the letter
Speaker 2: from Citadel to the SEC. So they're trying to fight.
Speaker 2: I hear the lot their lobbying hard and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's fight to the death, I mean, and it will
Speaker 1: be a fight to the death and probably theirs, and
Speaker 1: I don't you know, I'm not trying to be facetious
Speaker 1: or like, you know, just just look in the new
Speaker 1: world order that's coming. Certain arcane business models and structures
Speaker 1: don't make sense. We are operating with securities rules that
Speaker 1: pre date radio, yeah, or television maybe, but maybe radio,
Speaker 1: but certainly television. Never mind the Internet and AI and
Speaker 1: mobile phones and crypto smart contracts that I won't know
Speaker 1: off switch and no borders, and so that's crazy. The
Speaker 1: best thing that meme coins did for us is they
Speaker 1: showed us how trad fi can work. In other words,
Speaker 1: when when Trump introduced the meme coin, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: done it if I was him. I realized it wasn't him,
Speaker 1: it was other people that were using his name. But whatever,
Speaker 1: I still wouldn't have done it. But put that aside.
Speaker 1: It was the most scalable transaction processing launch ever and
Speaker 1: I'm including Visa in that, Okay. It showed us that
Speaker 1: we can use this stuff to build scalable platforms. So
Speaker 1: now if you're going to build a stock based system,
Speaker 1: neobank system, you have to look at Solana, you have
Speaker 1: to look at suey Apto's Algoran and all these platforms
Speaker 1: because they do scale now right right, and and so
Speaker 1: and they're moving more and more along the path of decentralization,
Speaker 1: which is what we want, you know, and and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you have to basically be bullish on that
Speaker 1: migration of old world stuff to new plus the enablement
Speaker 1: of the things you can't do today, which is that argentic.
Speaker 1: You know, we all have bots running around the internet,
Speaker 1: you know, doing things for us.
Speaker 2: But Bill, there's an interesting dichotomy because you have these
Speaker 2: banks adopting crypto. You know, just yesterday I heard Morgan
Speaker 2: Stanley filed for bitcoin and Solona ETFs today. I think
Speaker 2: they meant to file for a theorem. You got Vanguard capitulating, right. Uh.
Speaker 2: But yet they want to tweak certain things. So on
Speaker 2: one hand, we're tokenizing, we're launching stable coins, we're launching
Speaker 2: ETFs custody. The other hand, Congress, we need you to
Speaker 2: roll back some of the Genius Act items. Is that
Speaker 2: weird or just just a control thing?
Speaker 1: It's the same. Look, it's all a fight to the death.
Speaker 1: I think I think you're going to see every bank
Speaker 1: try to basically become DeFi friendly, smart contract friendly, right,
Speaker 1: they're going to try to make their wealth division look
Speaker 1: more like ABRA. You know, we're going to use vaults
Speaker 1: and all these fancy things to let you hold crypto
Speaker 1: and do bitcoin based lending like we do. But they're
Speaker 1: not going to be crypto native. They're still going to
Speaker 1: be operating under those FDICOCC rules. And as the current
Speaker 1: generation of teens and twenty something takes over the wealth,
Speaker 1: they have no interest in that boomer shit none. They
Speaker 1: want to hold their money in stable coins or crypto.
Speaker 1: They don't want plastic. They just want to point the phone.
Speaker 1: They want instant on credit.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Why should I have to apply for a credit card
Speaker 1: for a femeral transaction? Right, I hold all these assets.
Speaker 1: Just give me credit when I need it against the
Speaker 1: value of those assets, and if I don't pay, you
Speaker 1: take it out of my assets. Right, That's that makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. Right, And that's bitcoin collateralized loans. Today
Speaker 1: we use them for big purchases, but in the future
Speaker 1: it's going to be small purchases. And so there's this
Speaker 1: changing of the guard from a an ownership perspective that's coming,
Speaker 1: and it happens to be coming at the same time
Speaker 1: of all this other stuff we talked about around you know,
Speaker 1: ownership in this exponential age, which is a problem. But
Speaker 1: still there's this you know, fifteen is trillion in wealth
Speaker 1: that's about to be moved from you know, people who
Speaker 1: are you know, retiring, dying into you know, the next
Speaker 1: generation who are in their thirties and forties, and then
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to move down into people who
Speaker 1: are in their teens and twenties now. And and like
Speaker 1: I said, it's they're just not going to operate. They're
Speaker 1: not interested in your bitcoin ETF. They're not They're not
Speaker 1: interested in your you know, money market product, you know
Speaker 1: paying or CD paying one and a half percent. They're
Speaker 1: just not right. And so they're interested in crypto, they're
Speaker 1: interested in smart contracts, they're interested in these you know,
Speaker 1: prediction markets, they're interested in games. They don't believe in
Speaker 1: the dollar based economy anymore. It doesn't work for them,
Speaker 1: even if they come from wealth, it doesn't work for them.
Speaker 1: They don't get it. I mean, they think it's just
Speaker 1: the dumb things that the boomers did when they did it,
Speaker 1: and it's not like their thing, right, And I talked
Speaker 1: to my own kids about it. It's like they understand
Speaker 1: that they have to operate in that world, but they
Speaker 1: think it's stupid.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting, Bill, because there's just the human element
Speaker 2: to this, Like there's saying nothing new under the sun,
Speaker 2: but just just different times of different technologies. Right. So
Speaker 2: maybe the same thing was happening to a certain degree
Speaker 2: in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, and that
Speaker 2: Nustrial revolution would horsem buggy to automobile candles and lambs
Speaker 2: to electricity and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't there, but you know, I can understand
Speaker 1: people saying, hey, why do we need this? You know,
Speaker 1: my horse gets me there. I can't. It's very hard
Speaker 1: for me to fathom that when you see a light
Speaker 1: switch go on the first time and it's light in
Speaker 1: your house that was never light in your life, that
Speaker 1: that's not like, oh my God, thank God for this.
Speaker 1: But who knows. I don't know. I actually have read
Speaker 1: a little bit about Edison and those times, and you know, ironically,
Speaker 1: it was like I think it was JP Morgan himself
Speaker 1: who was financing Edison and a lot of those things
Speaker 1: because he wanted to be the first to have the lights.
Speaker 1: He literally financed a lot of it to make sure
Speaker 1: that the wiring that they were laying made its way
Speaker 1: to his homes and his buildings in New York City
Speaker 1: because it was a show up thing, right. He wanted
Speaker 1: to be the one who could basically flip the switch
Speaker 1: in his home when people came to visit a night
Speaker 1: because everything was candles before, right. So, but you know,
Speaker 1: it made its way to everyone, and I think this
Speaker 1: is the same. But I think, yeah, we are. We
Speaker 1: aren't an endgame now, and I think it may take
Speaker 1: ten fifteen years. I don't think it's going to be
Speaker 1: as abrupt. Maybe. I think at some point all this
Speaker 1: stuff is just going to be the way finance works
Speaker 1: and it will have crept up on everyone and there'll
Speaker 1: still be a bunch of banks. I mean, look, that's why,
Speaker 1: you know it all makes sense when you when you
Speaker 1: line up the stars. Why was Elizabeth Warren so hell
Speaker 1: bent on killing our space? Why because we looked at
Speaker 1: her funny, because you know I called her names online. No,
Speaker 1: because her goal is to socialize the banking system and
Speaker 1: basically you know, preserve you know, socialist heedgmenty under you know,
Speaker 1: a unified city bank or chase whoever it is. The
Speaker 1: anoint and one ends up being and that's not reality.
Speaker 1: The reality is is the pendulum is swinging towards decentralization.
Speaker 1: They've basically lost before the battle even started. It just
Speaker 1: was a very expensive, multi year detour which costs me
Speaker 1: a lot of gray hair, and we are where we
Speaker 1: would have been anyway, minus the gray hairs and all
Speaker 1: the money we had to spend on lobbying and also
Speaker 1: the crap that we shouldn't have had to spend. But
Speaker 1: the outcome is going to be the same either way.
Speaker 1: Banking systems will be replaced with DeFi right credit will
Speaker 1: be replaced with smart contract based loans, leveraging tokenized assets
Speaker 1: or bitcoin as collateral. Right smart AI agents will use
Speaker 1: smart contracts to process transactions. And it was going to
Speaker 1: happen regardless of what they did the last or tried
Speaker 1: to do to us the last three or four years,
Speaker 1: and some of it was self inflicted, of course, but
Speaker 1: independent of that, when more or less where we were
Speaker 1: going to be anyway, in my.
Speaker 2: Opinion, Yeah, I often say that disruptive tech always wins,
Speaker 2: Like the incumbents will fight tooth and nail, but eventually
Speaker 2: the technology always wins. Throughout history that's been proven. And
Speaker 2: on that note, we got the Market Structure Bill in
Speaker 2: this Senate markup apparently it is happening next week or
Speaker 2: the vote for the markup. What are your expectations do
Speaker 2: you think that gets past this year? And what do
Speaker 2: we see after that? Do we see a lot of
Speaker 2: m and as and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's actually a fairly because of the nature
Speaker 1: of this set of legislation. It's actually a little complicated
Speaker 1: because you have two different bills in the Senate. You've
Speaker 1: got the ag Bill, which is commodities because commodities and
Speaker 1: commodity features are regulated as an agricultural service historically in
Speaker 1: the US. And then you have the Banking Committee, which
Speaker 1: oversees the securities industry and those who have to be
Speaker 1: integrated and reconciled, and that hasn't started yet to my understanding.
Speaker 1: They're talking, of course, and kudos to David Zachs for
Speaker 1: facilitating a lot of that and pushing this as a
Speaker 1: key item in the president's you know, agenda. But that
Speaker 1: integration has to happen, and it will, and I do
Speaker 1: believe it'll be difficult to get done this year, but
Speaker 1: I do think it'll be close but I think they will,
Speaker 1: and I think if you think about the time that
Speaker 1: it takes all the other things that are going on
Speaker 1: with you know, now midterm election cycles coming up, it's
Speaker 1: going to be tough, but I do think they'll get
Speaker 1: it done. They have to push hard to get this
Speaker 1: integration done of the two bills.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, absolutely, fingers crossed they can get it done
Speaker 2: bill because it would be really great for the market.
Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned if you and folks at Abro
Speaker 2: launched these synthetics, stable coin, anything else you want to highlight,
Speaker 2: did you guys have launched or what's on your road
Speaker 2: map this year?
Speaker 1: Sure? So we do have a bunch of announcements this year.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a fun year for us. We've been
Speaker 1: working on some awesome stuff. We had a great year
Speaker 1: last year. I mean we're you know, the government really
Speaker 1: put us through the ringer along with everyone else for
Speaker 1: a few years, so it was tough. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're fully back where we relaunched our our services under
Speaker 1: you know, an Secria umbrella ironically, and you know, we're
Speaker 1: one of the largest, if not the largest kind of
Speaker 1: wealth advisor in the crypto space, facilitating yield big Bitcoin, Ethereum,
Speaker 1: Salona back loans that businesses blot for us. You know,
Speaker 1: our clients have a vault model now where everybody gets
Speaker 1: their assets in a segregated vault. They're not on our
Speaker 1: balance sheet, So each client is more or less operating
Speaker 1: under their own personal balance sheet using this separately managed
Speaker 1: account crypto. We call it vaults, but you know in
Speaker 1: traditional equities they call it SMAs or separately managed accounts.
Speaker 1: And it's just the way people who dig in want
Speaker 1: to use crypto, right, I mean, if you know anything
Speaker 1: about what we've been talking about for the last few minutes,
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, why would I want to basically operate
Speaker 1: if I believe in the ethos of decentralization, why would
Speaker 1: I want to leave my assets on a centralized exchange.
Speaker 1: That's on the exchange is balance sheet that is literally
Speaker 1: orthogonal to everything we've been talking about for the last
Speaker 1: twenty minutes. Whereas with the abermodel, now I basically retain
Speaker 1: title to my assets, I can basically guarantee that I
Speaker 1: can see those assets on chain. If ABER goes away,
Speaker 1: I get those assets back. So it's if I don't
Speaker 1: understand the tech and I'm scared of cold storage, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to use DeFi anyway, So cold storage isn't
Speaker 1: really that helpful. Abra and the Abram model is the
Speaker 1: right way to do this unless you're a PhD in
Speaker 1: computer science and you're comfortable, you know, doing all that
Speaker 1: stuff on your own, right. So so our clients are
Speaker 1: just not going to do that right and so so
Speaker 1: so anyway, you know, we're managing you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions now via that model, migrating other parts of the
Speaker 1: business to that model, launching a new mobile app later
Speaker 1: this quarter if if we get it done out this quarter,
Speaker 1: might be early next quarter, but I'm I'm we're pushing
Speaker 1: for this quarter. And it's killer because it's the first
Speaker 1: app I've seen that will allow you to access that
Speaker 1: vault model with a consumer like experience. So for our
Speaker 1: high networth family office clients still have like a Robinhood
Speaker 1: like experience, but they're getting their own Vault. I've never
Speaker 1: seen that before, right, So that's where this is headed.
Speaker 1: There's other stuff where we're announcing soon I can't give
Speaker 1: away legally, but but yeah, I mean, we've come a
Speaker 1: long way to you know, a little bit of a
Speaker 1: cecuitous route, not necessarily self inflicted to everything self inflicted
Speaker 1: because it's our choice to be in this business, I suppose,
Speaker 1: but independent of that, it's not self inflicted. But we're
Speaker 1: still here, and I've never been more excited about our future. Forebra,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we have some very happy clients
Speaker 1: right now, so that's all it's all about.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. But I look forward to having you back
Speaker 2: on as these new features get launch, and that's exciting.
Speaker 2: So I'll be looking forward to that and retweeting and
Speaker 2: sharing the news and all that. So thank you so much, Bill,
Speaker 2: I appreciate you.
Speaker 1: Thanks Sonny. I appreciate you and everything you do. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of all the interviews you do. And
Speaker 1: you know, listen, I've got a few small number of
Speaker 1: podcasts listening regularly. This is one and so just you know,
Speaker 1: keep doing God's work. It's all good, awesome, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much,