Nakamoto’s Next Phase with David Bailey

Welcome to Galaxy Brains.

Welcome back to Galaxy Brains.

As always, I'm your host, Alex Thorn, head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy, Bitcoin

not zero.

We have a great episode for you this week.

David Bailey, CEO, founder of Nakamoto, founder, creator of Bitcoin Magazine, the Bitcoin

Conference UTXO Management, David is our guest.

It's a great interview.

I always love talking with David.

He's got such a long-term history in Bitcoin and what a privileged and serious position

that he holds as the proprietor of the Bitcoin conferences, Bitcoin Magazine.

And now Nakamoto, and we'll talk with David about the combination that has finally closed

where Nakamoto now has brought in BTC ink, which owns Bitcoin Magazine in the conferences

and UTXO Management, the asset management firm.

One of the first, I think maybe even the first debt to successfully combine with operating

businesses is that the future of the Treasury company model will debate that with David.

We'll also talk to him about the looking back at President Trump's first 18 months of

Bitcoin and crypto policy.

And it's a great conversation with David.

I know you'll enjoy.

I'll also preview the Bitcoin conference that's coming up next month in Vegas.

Of course, we'll check with our good friend, Bimnet, a BB from Galaxy Trading Bimnet,

feeling pretty bullish about Bitcoin here.

I know you'll love to hear from him and before we get to that, I need to remind you to

please refer to a link to the disclaimer in the show notes, note that none of the information

in this podcast constitutes investment advice or an offer recommendation or solicitation

by Galaxy or any of its affiliates do by or sell any securities.

Let's hop right into it with Bimnet, a BB.

Let's go now to our friend Bimnet, a BB from Galaxy Trading, as always, Bimnet, welcome

to Galaxy Brains.

Thanks for having me.

It's a Fed day.

It's absolutely.

I don't feel like a Super Bowl this time, right?

It's not.

This feels like a preseason NFL game that has no starters in it.

Because Chair Powell is a lame duck now, basically, right?

Absolutely.

Because the president has named Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair.

He hasn't been approved by the Senate yet.

He's not been confirmed by the Senate.

But in either case, Jay Powell's term ends like in a month or two, right?

I believe it ends in May.

And ends in May.

So it's mid-March, so in two months.

And separately, this Fed is not expecting to cut.

And for transparency, usually we record after the FOMC meeting in presser today, we're

recording slightly before, but we don't expect any cut today.

Correct.

Or hike.

Or hike.

No activity.

No movement on rights.

Is there something that people are watching the Fed specifically to talk about?

So this is one of the quarterly meetings where they publish their summary of economic projections.

And so you'll see kind of an updated view of what folks at the Fed are thinking in terms

of the unemployment rate, in terms of inflation figures, and kind of where they're expecting

rate policy to settle through the rest of this year and next year and terminally.

I don't think this is a relevant Fed meeting.

I do think that the story and fixed income, though, is pretty huge.

Just taking a look around the world.

You are expecting a significant amount of hikes over the next like 12 months, basically.

Hikes.

Hikes.

Yes.

50 basis points of hikes priced into their curve.

Australia has hikes priced into their curve.

They just hiked recently.

New Zealand, I think, one year out, has like almost 70 basis points of hikes baked into

that terminal part of the curve.

And yeah, and basically what's happening is oil is moving so much.

And net gas as well, depending on where you are.

And the prices of commodities essentially are forcing people to think about what inflation

is going to be on a go-forward basis.

And so you've seen a dramatic move higher in breakeven inflation rates globally.

And so to give you an idea, the US one year breakeven inflation point is I think 5.17.

Wow.

Right.

And the two year inflation breakeven point is like 3.3 or something, 3.2, something elevated.

It's very elevated.

And obviously breakeven are very correlated to oil prices.

And so you're at the point now where central bankers genuinely have to worry about inflation

again.

Right.

And their only policy response mechanism is hiking rates.

That's right.

And the question is, like, is that a correct response?

Right.

Because in certain ways, you can view higher commodity prices as effectively attacks on folks.

Right.

If you're using more of your discretionary income to pay for heating or to pay for your

transportation or the cost of goods is going up because the transport cost is increasing,

then that's effectively like attacks on you.

Right.

Right.

And you're going to get, I mean.

So we have to talk about oil at some point.

Yeah.

But right now, like Brent is trading at 109, right?

And you're getting close to levels where you actually see demand destruction.

That's right.

And so if this, or moves closure, like continues, one, you'll have insane supply chain

disruptions, like of all sorts of things that aren't just like energy.

I mean, yeah.

Well, because so many products are built with petroleum, like enormous number of products.

Or like byproduct.

So I mean, like plastics, though, like a whole bunch of stuff.

Almost everything is a bit petroleum in it.

I spent a weekend reading about sulfuric acid and how it's like super crucial to like

extract it.

Like helium.

Helium for, uh, uh, that's used in the semiconductor production.

That's right.

That's right.

There's like all sorts of massive like supply chain implications.

That's right.

Again, I'm not, I am a supply chain, uh, like fair weather fans, like, yeah, you're not

a expert in that market.

Yeah.

I will say that the people that are the experts at supply chain stuff, like they are very

concerned.

Yes.

Like they on a scale of one to 10, I would say it, uh, probably well north of eight.

Yeah.

Uh, would be my guess.

And so, you know, the market's kind of stuck in between this place where like the experts

on the supply chain stuff are just like, oh my god, this is like going to get like a

really worse.

Uh, it's a lot worse than the evergreen was a boat that was stuck in the Suez Canal.

Yeah.

That times some amount, it's like a lot bigger than that.

A lot bigger than that.

And that was a problem.

That was a problem.

Yeah.

So, so it's, it's, but if you look at stocks, for example, and like the S and P 500,

like it's really not down that much, right.

And it just feels like there's, uh, a general like complacency in the market again.

Like maybe tech earnings don't get impacted by like huge like supply chain disruptions.

Like that's possible.

Right.

Um, and they're still out.

You're still expecting like, you know, north of 10% like earnings growth in the U.S.

And so the fundamental story like hasn't really changed, uh, but there's this big risk.

There's huge risk and you're, and you feel like the risk assets aren't necessarily pricing

that risk yet.

Correct.

Yeah.

Um, and, and really like, I, I think your barometer for wanting to be long risk is, do

you see a potential solution to the Iran U.S. Israel conflict?

And do you see that solution happening sooner or later, right?

And right now, like, I don't see, uh, a path to deescalation in the near term, I

don't either.

I could be wrong.

And I'm, of course, I hope I'm wrong.

Of course.

Of course.

I genuinely hope that we find some way where people can just like chill out or moses open.

Right.

And we don't want.

Of course.

Of course.

But like, I agree.

It's not, it's, there's not a lot of evidence that that's close.

I mean, today alone, um, you know, they're apparently a petrochemical plant.

Uh, was, was struck in Iran.

And that's what the Iranians are claiming.

And they then launched counter strikes against, uh, GCC, uh, member, like, or, or production

studies.

Yeah.

Uh, yeah.

And if any of that gets knocked out or has to be rebuilt, that takes years, potentially,

I mean, honestly, even just turning them off because there's less demand and you can't

ship it, just turning them back on.

It's not a Bitcoin mine that you can turn off in three minutes.

I think there was like some aluminum plant that was like turned off the other day.

And like, if you turn it off, like, properly, I think it takes like six months to turn

it back on.

Yeah.

Right.

Uh, and, and so like, there's a, a big like potential of like a massive supply chain

disruption.

What's really worse though is the nations that can't afford the, uh, spike in, in oil,

right, particularly nations that, uh, have to, like, think about this if they're not

big producers.

Yeah.

If they're huge, like, net import, I'll give you an idea.

I think this weekend, I read that Australia, uh, has like 15 days of, like, jet fuel in

their reserves, like, they are one of the worstly managed, like, nations in terms of oil.

Yeah.

For like a developed market.

Yeah.

Right.

But like, take like the Pakistan's of the world, the Egypt's of the world, like, they're

paying, like, they don't have dollars, right?

So they have to like pay a higher price when dollars, like, appreciate.

Yeah.

And so in theory, they're getting a double whammy of dollars going bid, because it's

risk off and oil, price of dollars going, correct, and they've got like dollar debt, right?

And so it's like a really toxic mix of, of circumstances and, and like, those places

are like hurting.

Yeah.

Obviously, the US is insulated.

We're net energy producer.

We have the dollar.

We produce fertilizer.

We have the dollar.

We're a great producer of dollars and oil.

Correct.

That's true.

That's true.

And so like, you won't necessarily feel it here, your people in the US are certainly feeling

it at the pump.

Yeah.

But outside of that, like, you were pretty insulated, but you go to like some of these

other places.

And it's much more dire and urgent.

And it gets much more dire and urgent, like every day that passes.

Right.

Every day that it does not resolve, correct?

It is a very tricky situation.

And the other thing that creates uncertainty is that it's exogenous to the market.

It's like not something that like, you know, a good research paper can solve or like a

change in investment style, right?

We're totally beholden to the actions of these sovereign nations that are currently in

a conflict.

And so it's like, you know, can it get resolved?

Like, and by the way, even if all parties want it to resolve, still really hard to resolve

conflicts like this, not clear.

You know what I mean?

Like there's conflict spiral, escalatory behavior that things can be misinterpreted, right?

And like it's actually, even if you want to get to the table, which it's not even clear

that the parties do yet, it still could be hard to resolve.

So it's a very tricky situation.

Let's talk about Bitcoin a little bit.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Because Bitcoin has been trading really well through this uncertainty and conflict.

And I mean, at the moment, as we record, you can see over the block clock over my shoulders

at 71,000 ish.

But we've been over 75 even now, which was a significant move from the 76, which was

a significant move.

Of course, off that February 5th, bottom of 60K, we've up, you've updated, you know, obviously

the audience knows that you'd been bearish at much higher prices.

Feels like most of the juice has been squeezed out of the short.

Like where are you feeling now?

I think Bitcoin trades incredibly well.

It's screams of a market that basically got to a seller exhaustion kind of point.

And I think, you know, like the fact that you couldn't break down, especially on that

like day where real potentialation, like almost 3% oil was at $120 a barrel.

And like you really couldn't break lower.

And when things can't go lower, like they have to go higher almost by definition.

And so I think like Bitcoin, like trades really well.

And if you think about it in the context of like where capital can hide right now, like

it's not in precious metals anymore.

Like, you know, gold was off a ton today, you know, so silver and a bunch of other precious

metals.

And then, you know, in fixed income, like even front end fixed income is selling off because

you're now pricing in hikes across, you know, a ton of curves, right?

So you can't hang out in bonds, like equity markets, like feel a little, you know, jittery

and they're, you know, elevated by some standards.

And so like in that context, I think Bitcoin looks really, really good.

And it's also like not a crowded owned trade.

Yeah.

Right?

And so it has a really healthy setup.

And I think if you're bullish this market and you were genuinely trying to, if you

thought that, you know, equities are going to rip higher and there was a resolution of

the middle east conflict, et cetera, like Bitcoin is, and actually, like even some of

the olds are probably best positioned to like rally must have already had their problems

around.

Correct.

And to be honest, like the, you know, the, the debt buying has been like reasonably

aggressive because of this, you know, the, the stark paper.

Yeah.

The preference.

I was going to say.

The story, actually, I think we're going to write about it this week in our newsletter,

which is, you know, the headline, micro strategy buys Bitcoin is not really a story these

days.

But I'm pretty sure the amount that they announced, which is over 1.5 billion from last

week, they announced on this Monday, March 14th, is the second largest weekly buy in their

entire history in a, in a bear market.

Wow.

I think it's, it's in the top five, I, you know, let's make sure to get the number exactly

right when I actually write it down.

But again, that's almost all of it funded by these preferred securities.

A lot of it is still the rest of your, I thought it was over a billion, though, was from scratch

of, in the end of 1.5, you're saying like, that's a new engine that he's created over

the last year or so that was not there.

So now it's not just ATMs and converts and he hasn't done converts in a long time.

Yeah.

It's just quite interesting.

Like he's out of here.

I, I, I mean, I, I think deep down, I feel like one day we're going to think about

Sailor is like one of the smartest people ever in history with the most amount of courage.

Now the question is like, when does that happen again?

And so my view is like, you know, I think like Bitcoin North of 80, like, is not unreasonable.

Like I don't think Bitcoin is shortable right now.

Like it's, there's not, there's no juice to squeeze out of it right here right now.

I think if you wanted to position yourself a little bit more defensively, I think above

80K.

That's probably, you know, much more of a two-sided market where there's potential to go down.

You know, also some potential to go up.

But in theory, I'm kind of thinking like Bitcoin's like looking pretty good.

And in terms of like, I just want to make it clear, like long term, like if you are not,

if you're the type of person to not check your portfolio for like six months at a time

or a year out of the time, like these aren't awful levels to buy.

Like yes, it could be lower.

But like in my head, I'm like, what's the difference between like 70 and 40 if I'm going

to hold it for like a gazillion period like a really long time?

You made this point.

If you're a long-term bullish, and we are long-term bullish, it's just, it's just noise.

Yeah.

But like tactically here, like it looks okay.

I agree.

I agree.

And it's had a lot out of it already.

And you know, it'd be interesting.

I think if, you know, Hormuz goes really bad and hurt long and the thing that's going to hurt

all markets.

It's hard to think that Bitcoin will, you know, be an opposite in that market.

But like, yeah.

But nonetheless, like again, it's already, you know, one of the things we saw was when

the first attacks were happening by Israel and the US that weekend, Bitcoin traded pretty

well through that weekend.

It was oil perps on hyper-liquid that ripped.

Yeah.

And it's kind of because the way I was thinking about it was like, I think all the macro

weekend warrior tourists who used to sell Bitcoin over the weekend on headlines like that.

You're already sold.

Yeah.

They don't have any Bitcoin to sell probably.

They've been selling, right?

Right.

And it's also just like, how do you play it, right?

Like, no, you have crude.

You have like equity, like equivalents, uh, the trade 24, seven, and so like you're not forced

to use it as a proxy.

I'll Bitcoin on a weekend because there's nothing else traded.

Right.

There are other things going on.

There are other things.

And they're better.

And we're coming.

Well, they're more precise as well.

Correct.

There's more coming.

Okay.

Hormuz is shut down.

We're bombing like oil things.

Like, yeah, buy oil.

Right.

Not like a third-order derivative.

That's right.

That's right.

And so like, I think it's a healthy market.

I think it also make it healthier for Bitcoin overall because it can start to be the reasons

for owning it now start to be more fundamental to Bitcoin.

It's not as a barometer for 24, 7, 365 risk, right?

You buy Bitcoin for self-sovereign non-government issued money reasons, not, you know.

So I think that ultimately gets healthier.

And of course, we're talking about hyper-liquid as the venue, but there will be 24, 7, or

at least 24, 5, like both CFTC and SEC are talking about this, like whether it's through

tokenized securities or other way.

So it actually probably gets easier to trade risk around those weekend moves in the future

as we go forward.

Yeah.

Also, yeah, the periods where the CME is closed.

Right.

The 5 to 6 windows.

There's going to be more.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's inevitable that we just go to 24, 7.

Everybody has an interest in 24, 7.

I know.

Everyone makes more money.

Except for us, they want to go home on the weekends and put in the world.

I just need to clone myself.

I know.

It's agents on it.

Correct.

FimNet, Agentic, ABB.

Thank you so much, my friend, as well.

Have a great week.

Have a great week.

Let's go now to our guest, David Bailey, CEO of Nakamoto, David.

Welcome back to Galaxy Brands.

Hey, Alex, thank you for having me back on.

Yeah, we had, you know, we did a great conversation around before the presidential election, I think

sort of even before President, then candidate Trump appeared at the conference in Nashville

in the summer of 2024, that then they like cited that MPR reporter like cited our conversation

in their story.

You remember this?

Yeah.

And I think by the time the next conference happened in Vegas in 25, that story that they

had like an audio.

I forget what the podcast was, but those like these guys that do these in depth journalism

and they were citing our interview the last time from previously.

So I was always chuckling about that.

We got a couple topics I'll talk about.

I want to ask you about, we'll start with the president and the administration.

You were obviously very involved in the president's Bitcoin journey.

You know, without giving all that, you know, can go back and learn about that.

That's well documented, but of course, the president gave his seminal Bitcoin speech,

the Bitcoin superpowers speech at the Bitcoin conference in 2024 in July, 24 in Nashville,

right?

So, and since then, he's now been president for, I guess, what, 18 months or so, how would

you rate the president and the administration on Bitcoin policy so far?

Well, before we jump into that, first off, it's always funny.

Thank you for having me back on the show.

I'm wearing my knock mode hack because you're sporting your amazing, uh, a galaxy hat,

um, which, you know, to this day, I'm convinced is one of the best brand decisions made

of the entire industry list in the name galaxy. It's great name.

Yeah.

But, uh, we, for so many years, we've been trying to get people to listen to us.

That, you know, it's a little bit weird when you have investigative journalists that are like, you know,

actually listening to every single word and pulling it apart, you know,

those, you know, sell their political stories. And so, um, yeah, it's funny.

Going from like, uh, irrelevant, so you can't get anyone to listen to now having people,

you know, uh, listen to the things that aren't even set.

Exactly.

Uh, in terms of the president, uh, first off, you know, you have to kind of set what

is your grading yardstick? Like, how would you measure performance by, and I think

if we're measuring performance by, uh, success and impact relative to any other

political administration that we've seen so far, you gotta give them a plus.

I mean, it's just like, like, uh, you know, I think one of the challenges that you have

with Bitcoin is that, you know, what drives people's interest in large degrees,

the price of Bitcoin. And so the price of Bitcoin becomes the yardstick for people

measuring success. And so if the price is down, then people are going to be cynical

or skeptical of the success that has been had.

But if you think about the change that has occurred between the last

administration to this one, beyond just the executive orders, the partners,

the, the, the ending of the politic, politicization of the SEC or our financial

laws, um, you have the SEC that's taken a complete 180 turn.

I mean, I don't know if you've had a chance to read through the new guidance

they came out with yesterday, but it's just unbelievable how much this is,

this has changed. Right. Um, you have the financial institutions and the, uh,

uh, Wall Street, uh, being given the guardrails to participate in this,

in this market. Um, you have the banks being told they can't debank us.

They have to give us access to the market. You have, um, Bitcoin and crypto firms

getting master Fed accounts for the first time in, in history. Um,

we are in a, a heated industry, the industry battle with the banking system,

which, you know, I, I actually kind of find even their defense of that whole

dynamic about interest on stable quints, um, very telling, you know, if you're,

if your response of why we shouldn't have it is that it could cause capital

flight and, you know, destabilize the entire financial system.

That's not probably something you want to be saying, you know, I mean, uh,

uh, uh, we should be amplifying that message like, hey guys, like this is how fragile your

money is. Not just that. It's also a clear indicator. They're literally saying

that like the stablecoin rewards might be such a good product that it collapses

their crappy product. It's like, yeah, no, I mean too good to allow.

If your response to like why we can't allow Uber is like, think about the devastation

in the taxi industry. Like that. Yeah. Not a good sales pitch. You know, that's

right. So, uh, uh, so we have, we have the clarity act. Um, and then I,

you know, I think, uh, um, uh, uh, more broadly like this

administration has removed the taboo of governments being able to embrace

Bitcoin as a tool for them as well. And so, um, you know, I would say there's

so many positive things that have been done. I mean, even, even companies getting

access to the public markets. I mean, I think about how many IPOs there have been

there will be, you know, right? All of these deals were frozen, uh, under

previous administrations. So I think really it was just Coinbase went public

and they happened to do it in 21 just weeks before Gensler took over. It's

almost like if they hadn't done it probably before Gensler was confirmed. It's

almost like if they hadn't slipped in there, they probably would still have

been private until the Trump administration. I think they were the only like

crypto firm that managed to get public in the quote Gensler era, but it was

actually weeks before Gensler took over. You can imagine that they, even they

probably wouldn't have been able to do it if they hadn't slipped in there before

Gensler's confirmation. Yeah, and I mean, so I think I think they've been

incredible and the present has been in his administration have been such

willing dance partners on the other side like they do want to work with us.

I think the challenges that we've had are, um, there's been a myriad of

challenges too. And I think like that's also, you know, uh, uh, the

opportunity that's been left on the table or still exist on the table for

us to go and grab. Um, you know, first off, I think the price being down has

definitely, um, uh, reduced our political capital and our political

leverage that we have as an industry. And I think, um, you know, at the end of

the day, we're kind of we're seeing the extents of how far our political

activity can get us how quickly. And so like the banks are pushing back

really hard. And the banks still have, you know, a lot of say, there will

be a come a time where the banks push back really hard and no one cares.

Um, so, you know, there will be a time where, you know, instead of just

authorizing a strategic reserve, we're also, you know, spending the

political capital necessary to fill the strategic reserve with newly acquired

Bitcoin. Like there, there are, this is a beachhead for Bitcoin in the

political system. It's, it's really not a mission accomplished.

It's, it's like mission mission begun. Um, so that's like my general, my

general view on it. Uh, I think, uh, things have been surprised by is like

still how resistant the Democrats are to Bitcoin. I thought there would be

more of a capitulation. And, you know, I think in general, it's just

challenging because it's hard to identify who exactly the leadership is of

the political, the different political parties. So I think that's, that's,

that's been a challenge. Yeah. I agree with that by the way that, um,

it's, it's, the Republicans really just didn't quite win hard enough. So

like, even though you knock out like, um, Sherrod Brown and get Bernie

Moreno, which is like probably the biggest, like in Congress, the single

biggest Bitcoin victory, which was a big one. Like still it's like 53,

47 in the Senate and, and what, like two vote majority in the House,

like, and I think that's part of the reason why they haven't

capitulated as hard in Congress, the Democrats. It's just, I think that's

one issue. The other issue, I think, is the, um, perceived conflicts of

interest around the Trump family. And, you know, I, that's more of a

political question. I think that it can be, you know, your family members

are entirely their own independent people. And, um, they should be free

to go and conduct business and be transparent about what they're doing.

And I think that the, the Trump family, at least the parts that I interact

with that have done that. But, um, I think that that's, that's challenging.

Um, and then, you know, I think the other big challenge, and I think

this is a challenge the Trump administration has dealt with, is like,

when we got, when we built the coalition around Trump, it was driven

by multiple prongs of the stakeholders, like, uh, industry interest,

uh, user and retail interest, like, you know, it was, it was a broad

space movement. Once you get into the negotiation room, and like

the, the, you know, let's say you've won, who gets to negotiate the peace

treaty or, or the, the, you know, the, the treaty of her size, um, that

is the corporate interest. And the corporate interest priorities can, can

be divergent from the, uh, retail users. But at the end of the day,

our power base, like, yes, our, our, our financial capital matters,

but our power base comes from our ability to turn out voters and, and, uh,

impassioned single issue voters. And so in so far as we don't achieve

the right things to mobilize the retail user audience, um, uh,

the Trump admin is kind of solving for the wrong problems. So, or not

wrong problems, just they're approaching them with maybe a distorted

priority set because they're talking to one group of constituents,

rather than all of the constituents. And so that's not really a, I mean,

I don't know how what else the Trump admin could do differently than what

they're doing on that side. But I, I think that's really from our side as

an industry, us like not necessarily telling them what they need to hear,

but what we want them to hear. And, um, you know, if there was one thing

that I think would be the most needle moving with the base, it's that

US treasury announcing like, hey, like we're going to start, you know,

DCing a billion dollars a quarter into into Bitcoin and, and building

this reserve. That is the single most impactful thing they could do to

mobilize voter turnout. Yeah, you're right. Don't care that much about

clarity. Yeah, I agree. The, the, the complex regulatory issues are

not like, you know, they're not sexy for the American voter or for the

Bitcoiner. Whereas, as I was going to ask you, I mean, what is the state,

this I feel like for Bitcoin voters has been a disappointment, the,

the strategic Bitcoin reserve, we know it officially exists, but they

haven't told us how much they have. And they apparently haven't yet found

budget neutral ways to acquire Bitcoin, right? Like, is that, has

it been a disappointment thus far in your mind?

A disappointment, you know, first off, like, just to reframe a little bit,

the fact that we're even here having the discussion, you know,

like, this was so far, like, left field, like, I mean, we thought

this was an idea that needed another decade plus to even be seen as

credible. So the fact that we're here, having this discussion, like,

hard to be disappointed by that, you're just going to have the right kind of

zoom out a little bit. In terms of the fall through an execution,

you know, I think, you know, first off, I think the fact that we don't

know how much Bitcoin we have or that we haven't started a, a program

yet, like, we've identified budget neutral ways to acquire Bitcoin.

So that has actually been figured out. I think it demonstrates how big

of a shit show it was before this initiative even started.

Like, then finding out how much Bitcoin we have. I mean,

right. You know, I'm not, I think it was all over the place, right?

There was like ledgers and like DOJ storage lockers and stuff.

It's a train. It's a train. And you don't even have, you don't even

have the, the buy-in and the, you know, the constructive support from the

different bodies of the government, because the incentives are not aligned.

You know, these government, like, these different agencies,

they want to retain the Bitcoin that they have, that's their money.

They're not wanting to hand over to the federal government or to the people,

like, that's bullshit. So there's kind of like a misalignment of interest.

And I think there's also massive, massive failures of fiduciary

responsibility in terms of cussing this stuff. I mean, I think made

clear by the fact that one of them, the United States is vendors to cuss

to the Bitcoin, the son of the CEO stole the money and ran.

And like tweeted about it and stuff, like, was on Snapchat and blah, blah.

Yeah. If you're the D thing, it's just like embarrassing for the reputation of America

that that, that, that's the state of affairs.

Right. And so I think like cleaning it up was more complicated

than anyone understood. And then I think the other thing is that,

you know, this is one of the realizations I've had is like,

accomplishing big things within the bureaucracy of the government.

It doesn't just require leadership buy-in.

It requires downstream buy-in from the people who actually do the things

that are often not political appointees, they're, they're career people.

And if career people want to, you know, grind down and stall out and slow down

and not be constructive participants, they have the full capability of doing that.

And so at a certain point in time, I'm not going to say that the administration

doesn't have the power to get it done. It just, it's like almost like the capability

to get it done. Like, how do you make people do things?

And the way you answer that question is like, what do you fire them?

You tell them like, you do this thing or you're done.

And okay, but like now, this thing, which is a, you know, in the scheme of

all political priorities, getting the SBR stood up, it has gone from, okay,

you know, this is a thing we'd like to do to like, now we're firing downstream

career staff because they're not doing it like this is becoming the top priority thing.

So, so it's just like, I think it's a, it's a, it's an issue of political

priority and, you know, having, even, you know, with the Trump administration,

it's not just the president, it's his cabinet that are probitcoin, which is like

incredible, but it's not, the cabinet's not enough. It's like you need their

chief staffers and, you know, their downstream organizations to also be bought

in and that's going to take time and it's going to take, it's going to take

more than a president saying, you know, a great political opportunity.

It's going to take buy in that Bitcoin actually matters for the future of the

country.

I think that's very well said, David. And you're right, it's a giant ship.

There's sand in the, or there's sand in the gears. It's, it's hard.

Right. You can't just, you know, have the president and his appointees.

So I, I agree. I think you characterized an assessment really well.

It's harder. It's also harder legally, I think is another issue is like, can

the, does the government actually have the legal authority to divert Bitcoin

into this thing?

If you like, that's the work that, that's a problem with the capital question

because the, the legality of what, what I've come to realize also about

government is that legality is not a real thing.

It's like, it's like, you know, legality is in the eye of the beholder.

And it's like, how much do you want to fight for your perspective on legality?

It's like, if you want to invade Venezuela and arrest the president, you know,

you just read that legal, well, kind of legal.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, yes or no, was, was, you know, I'd be like, so it's just,

it's like, how much political capital do you want to spend?

And we've gotten in a very outsized capital invested into our ecosystem

versus what we've returned back.

And I think it's going to take time for us.

If we want 10 times more political capital, it's going to take time.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Let's shift gears.

We'll talk about Nakamoto.

You guys are a Bitcoin company.

You just finished the M&A process and the combination to bring in BTC,

Inc., and UTXO management into the Nakamoto family.

Congratulations on that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Even I've seen and worked on corporate M&A, especially for a public company like Nakamoto

is, you know, very complicated.

That's stuff, very complicated.

And for the audience who may not know, although they probably do BTC Inc.

is the parent company of Bitcoin magazine, the Bitcoin conferences, Bitcoin

for corporations, maybe some other stuff I'm forgetting.

And then UTXO management is an asset management firm that you operate.

So you were the CEO of both, I was certainly of Bitcoin Inc. already,

but now all of that under the Nakamoto, where do you guys go from here?

I mean, now that you're one of the only Treasury companies that actually has

operating businesses under it, which I find quite interesting.

I actually think we're the first that is endemic to the industry.

Yeah.

So that's right.

So, you know, I've had so many.

Yeah, how do you view this energy now that you guys are all sort of under one reason?

Well, I think, I think it's super cool.

I'm very excited.

I mean, I'm very excited to see how these,

that having the operating companies that are endemic amplify and create

what's the right term?

Well, I'll use, I'll use Taylor's term amplification of our Bitcoin balance sheet.

And I think that there are a lot of concepts that have been thoroughly

explored by private equity and private credit that

have really not been explored yet in an intellectual sense,

as it relates to Bitcoin Treasury companies.

And so everyone's kind of like building their model around the

sailor approach, which the sailor approach is a brilliant and genius approach,

but it's not the only approach for ultimately how to grow a Bitcoin Treasury.

And there's all sorts of old school evaluation methodologies and ways to value

income and weight of value durability on income and just, you know,

lots of ways to assess what the actual book value of something is,

and to go and execute those strategies in the public markets.

And so I'm, it's fun to get kind of get a chart a little bit of a different way,

and explore that.

But I think there's so much ground there.

I guess blue sky to explore that I think as we make progress,

there's going to be more people coming behind us that are also going to take

this operating company approach.

And I think it's going to get very interesting.

Yeah, I think that's right.

I think sailor, it's clearly working.

In fact, I believe last week what they announced on Monday.

So we're recording on Wednesday, March 18th.

So I would have been Monday, March 16th was actually sailor second largest buy

at like 1.5 billion in a bear market, supposedly.

So whatever Michael sailor is doing, it's working for micro strategy.

I think that's very clear.

I don't think it can be totally.

He's in a pretty privileged unique position.

One, because he's so good at it.

But two, because like he is the like flag bearer, the biggest one.

I'm not sure that many others can replicate what he's done.

And so I, I've thought that most treasury companies or digital assets,

you know, that's they're also called it.

You know, when you fold in the broader crypto ecosystem that has these as well,

we'll have to adopt true operating business models, most likely,

because they won't be able to solely do what sailor has been doing.

And so I feel like that's a trend we're going to see continue, most likely.

And you guys are sort of at the forefront of that.

It does feel to me like you guys, I mean, the Bitcoin conference is one example.

It is still the premiere, you know, IRL convening for the Bitcoin community has been now for, you know, 10 years.

And so that seems like a pretty strong flywheel of a media and events business promoting Bitcoin,

like alongside of a treasury company.

So it's one of the most logical tie ups.

Yeah, and you know, that's probably like I would describe the past year.

You know, when we set out to build Nakamoto, like the, the, the milestone that we were working for.

And it was like a two-faced, two-faced approach was like merging these operating companies,

having operating income.

Once you have operating income, that gives you a lot of optionality of what to do with your balance sheet.

It just opens up a lot of possibilities.

Yeah.

And so we just got there.

Like that's like this kind of almost like phase one complete.

And so now that we have actually gotten the transaction done, it's all about integration.

And how do we bring the businesses together in a way that amplifies each other's value?

And this is like the first time in 14 years that all my businesses have all been owned under the same legal structure,

the Capp table, you know, incentives.

I've always had malaligned incentives where I've been trying to get different parts of my businesses to work together.

And it's like because they don't have the same shareholders, et cetera, it's, it's challenging.

Yeah.

So, but now we've been spending a lot of our time on integration.

And it's, it's a lot of fun.

It's all more fun than, than managing, you know, working through capital markets.

Yeah.

And so, you know, what is the integration?

It's like, okay, well, when we bring all these businesses together, how do we want them to operate and function?

What's our, what's our operating management style?

What is the compounding flywheel that these businesses build together and how do we crystallize and define it in such a way that we can we can develop very clear north stars that we can use to drive our M&A strategy going forward because like these two businesses are just the start we want to build a complete portfolio of Bitcoin companies providing

different sources of proprietary data on Bitcoin, different perspectives on Bitcoin, vertical integration of our Bitcoin stack.

So we want to have a methodology that really helps us identify what's next and we have a pipeline of opportunities so it's really about prioritizing what matters to us.

And so, yeah, when you look at the flywheel, it's like, okay, well, there's really kind of like two things that we're really trying to, let's say, strengthen right now.

One is, you know, we want to capture all this data across all of our businesses. We want to integrate all that data into one common back in and we want to have the most context and the most proprietary data on Bitcoin than anyone in the world has.

Like we want to be the number one holder of the most context and insights about Bitcoin.

And so what's interesting about having a media company, especially a conference is like, we have real world people, real users that we can authenticate and meet space that we interact with and we are able to, you know, model and create, you know, a forecast from or analyze, you know, activity from.

And it's like real authentic data, whereas like in today's age, I mean, I don't know about you, but my, my social media slowly becoming just bought replies for everything.

Yeah, slop is a lot of slop out there.

It's like, how are you supposed to, you know, learn about what Bitcoiners want or who they are or what they need.

If 75% of your data set is actually just like AI, you know, slop bots, just posting.

So it's like, we actually have real authenticated verified users across our product.

And, you know, we also have not only do we have great data that no one else has going back 14 years, I mean, going back to the beginning of Bitcoin.

I mean, you got the tendee list from Bitcoin 2019 in San Francisco, right?

I mean, you've got going back all the way, you know, all the way.

I mean, I actually uploaded my cell phone the other day to, to, to Claude, like a back cell phone.

And it had all my text messages going back to 2014.

Wow.

And 440,000 text messages.

And it was like, oh my gosh, this is like, so we now you can query your own agent to look into your past message.

Hey, what did I talk to, you know, Alex about 10 years ago or whatever?

Oh, yeah.

That's fast.

How many text messages you send per year?

This is the trajectory of your communication growth.

This is who you're spending most time with.

The years are social graph.

Here's who the relationships you're neglecting relationships that you're spending time like it's.

There's security issues with giving it access to stuff like that.

But that is a fascinating use case.

I also have set up by the way a whole open claw set up on building.

You know, personally, we're also building a lot here.

I'm assuming you guys with all this data, you're probably.

We're I'm down the rabbit hole.

I mean, I'm like a five coding like every day.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's like, you know, we either, we either.

Deal with the implications of AI for the rest of the history of the business.

And we're fighting against the tide.

Or we just embrace it and lean into it and make it work for us.

So that's what smart view is lean in.

That's what smart businesses are doing.

And I think you can't obstruct.

It's you're going to get, you know, taken for a ride by this thing.

And I, you know, as a professional researcher, I'm building a giant research platform for this scraping like Pacer dockets and government economic data and social information, right?

So that I can just query my, you know, we're making bots and like I've got ingestion scripts for like almost everything I can come up with, right?

Just because I'm going to be 10 times as good at research as other as my competitor is my goal using this as like an amplification of productivity.

Well, if your moat is the context that you have that no one else has.

And then like that's what's going to make your AI agent spit out the best results and most accurate insights.

Well, then it's all about having that context.

And if we can have context, no one else has, then you don't want to plug your research product into our context.

So it's like, uh, that's interesting.

So I think about that from an M&A perspective, what businesses are sitting out there that have huge proprietary data sets that like maybe aren't even functioning businesses.

I mean, it could be acquired.

Yeah, just as an example, not that they're not functioning, but that they have this data set. People didn't realize you remember, Niantic, the guys that make Pokemon go.

I don't know if you saw the story a couple of weeks ago.

But apparently they have the consequence of all the millions of people that used played Pokemon go means they have like street level high quality video and pictures of like everywhere on earth.

And now that's a proprietary data set. They're selling to like robotics companies so that like like I think the first thing they mentioned was robot delivery companies because like they know like the current status of like every sidewalk in America.

And I was like, I mean, the way people are monetizing their proprietary information is so fascinating now.

Well, you know, if you take the perspective that Bitcoin is going to be the global reserve currency of the world and that one day the entire little economy will operate off of Bitcoin, then to know who the Bitcoiners are and what they want and what they need is to know who the people are that have money and what people with money want and need.

And that is a very valuable thing to know.

And so yeah, I think if there's one place for us to drill deep on owning a proprietary data set, it's on that.

And so yeah, I think it's super interesting. But the other thing that we're looking for also is things that give us strategic compounding value over time.

So for example, like we want to have the best distribution channels possible.

We want to be able to buy new businesses, plug them into our flywheel and instantly expand their revenue by plugging them into our distribution.

So, you know, those are some of the things that we're thinking about is like, okay, if we buy this business, they come with licenses.

Does that mean that those licenses can then be repurposed across the portfolio of companies so that we can go speed to market much faster.

Or there's a lot of ways to just think about what gives us this compounding flywheel.

And when you think about what is the purpose of a treasury company, we're trying to deliver convexity to our investors.

We want the upside to be dramatically greater than the parallel downside.

And so when you own operating companies, that's fundamentally what an operating company gives you.

It gives you continuous optionality. It gives you the ability to launch new products that have unlimited upside.

But their downside is shutting them down. Their downside is, you know, right.

It doesn't matter whatever you see them with.

And so that's, that is convexity. And, and I think the more optionality are operating companies can create.

The more we can monetize that optionality, whether it's either directly through cash flow or whether it's monetizing it through the public markets and the markets reacting to whatever business or cash flow or income stream that we're generating.

And so, yeah, like my job is kind of be a chaos agent of like creating optionality, you know, and, and creating these asymmetric convex outcomes.

That makes a lot of sense. And, and especially as sort of a treasury company 2.0, which feels like where we are now, because so many launched last year and like really like last June to September.

There were so many, I mean, hundreds, not just in Bitcoin, but across the, you know, crypto.

I feel somewhat responsible for it because it's like, you know, when Sailor did it, it was like, okay, you know, Sailor's the genius. Like, of course, he did it.

Like, you know, that doesn't apply to anyone else. When we did it, it was like, oh, wow, anyone can do this.

So, so I feel like, you know, when we went live, there was like a dozen of us. And then, you know, by the time we actually closed our transaction and went public, there was hundreds.

And I think it got definitely a little bit too wild.

But I also think like, you know, a lot of people don't know what they've signed up for.

And, you know, I, I'd even include that myself in that, in that category in the sense of like, okay, you know, we, we were doing public companies, but we're like, okay, you know, we want to bring an operating company in.

Let's just do an M&A deal.

You know, it's related party. And so people assume that related party means like, oh, that's going to be easier. It's going to be a friendly transaction.

You know, I had no idea until going into it like, you know, how unfriendly a related party transaction is.

How difficult. Yeah.

It's very difficult. And like, it was, it was, there, you know, there was a lot of factors that played was very challenging to get closed.

And so, you know, there's a lot of these treasury companies that like now they're, they're, they're playing as like, let's go find operating companies to acquire when we've talked to tons of them that are attending to do that.

But it's also like, not as easy as it looks to get an operating company like just because you have the money and just because you have the target.

There is a lot of distance between there and it being an actual done deal closed, you know, wrapped.

And so we'll see which teams have the ability to execute.

You know, I think some of them are obvious, some of them are less obvious at this point.

But we'll know, I think by the end of this year, like, which ones are able to operate in any market conditions, they can find opportunity.

And I would bet on those companies because those companies are the ones that are going to be positioned to consolidate.

And everyone else is going to be under litigation.

You're sitting on your hands and your stock is getting torpedoed.

And you have no plan to articulate or execution or follow through your shareholders are going to sue you.

And like, that's not fun.

And so, like, people are going to like be like, OK, like, I'm out, I'm out on this.

I think the, yeah, and the, you know, the frothiness of launching the treasury companies last summer, you know, obviously a lot of the public market has punished a lot of those stocks.

Obviously, Nakamoto, you know, not an exception there punished more than anything.

Yeah. But like, I think you're totally right.

Like, it is now about adapt to survive, right?

And because like Nakamoto as well, but many of them have a good balance sheet or a lot of assets.

And you got operating companies that generate good revenue that have extensibility across the rest of your business.

I think those that don't that aren't sailor basically, I really believe he may be the only,

but there are some jurisdictional things. I think meta planets, another good example where they they have a sort of a unique advantage in a similar way that sailor does.

But the vast majority will have to figure out how to do these complicated things over either building or buying businesses that actually do stuff.

So I think that's what's so exciting.

I think about your, your combination is that you're really the first one that I've seen actually have an interesting like complimentary M&A transaction succeed.

So I think you have to go that route. You're not not everyone can be Michael sailor, you know?

Yeah. And, and, and you know, it's also interesting like having access to the public markets. It, it gives you so many possibilities that you can just make happen.

I mean, for UTXO, for example, that's an asset manager we've operated since 2019 is one of the best performing funds in the world over that time period.

And I think net of fees since inception, we've done something like 60% returns or something like even this year we're beating Bitcoin by like 30%.

So, um, she probably put a disclaimer. This is not financial advice and I am not promoting returns or whatever is or not audited gap financials is just David recalling.

I agree. That's fine. We have this great asset management business and the biggest weakness that we've had in the business is like the operators of it.

We don't know Bitcoin. We don't know the markets. And it's like any other experienced operator running an asset, a asset manager who has a track record of beating Bitcoin over six years by 60% annually.

Um, like they should be managing billions of dollars. And so like when you have a platform like a public company plus the track record to bring the possibilities of what open up really grow.

And so like we want to grow UTXO to a billion dollar asset manager like how, like how quickly can we get to a billion in AUM and it, you know, would have been a grind to get there as a private company.

I think as a public company, we can do it much faster.

So, yeah, and I think also on these preferred structures, I think that we're still watching that play out. I think that there is it's like I'm I'm a

thinking sailor for the free, you know, uh, uh, build in public and let everyone kind of watch. Yeah. So the free education is giving us all, but, um, you know, it's very interesting.

I've actually we've been pitched quite a few different preferred, you know, we're really still just assessing what the possibilities are out there. But we've seen some very original unique designs that are fundamentally different than what is out there.

And so I actually think the design universe of of preferred converts, um, uh, some of these things that sailor has already done, but people maybe are focused on cloning him exactly.

There's a design universe that's much larger there. And maybe there could actually be fundamental improvements on the design that could give one of these companies.

Um, a much wrap much more rapid growth trajectory than what it took sailor to get to where he is. Like, you know, like STRC has done incredibly well, very fast. I mean, so I've been out in the market for what, uh, a year.

Hey, yeah, in nine months. I'm not sure. Yeah, about maybe it called a year. Yeah. And he says you'd seven billion on it. And he's able to, I think the vast majority of the buy that they announced this week that, which I, again, I believe don't hold me to this, but I, we were checking. I think it might be the second largest weekly buy in all of microsriders history in a supposed bear market.

I think was mostly funded with proceeds from STRC from stretch, um, which is incredible. Yeah, fascinating. Right. Previously, like through most of the recent micro strategy history, he's been doing it through converts or from at the money offerings of MSTR stock.

But now he's got this other engine running as he describes it like an engine watching his development has been fascinating. Right. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, and so I think like for someone to create an STRC competitor, but that has a different design characteristics.

The fixed income universe that this is going after is so large and so broad and has so many different types of participants in it that I think someone could launch something similar, but different and get $10 billion of AUM under that product and one year time. I think that he's opened up that possibility. And so he walked, he walked so we could run.

Yeah, exactly. So I'm excited to see that, but it takes people, you know, people are so, uh, what's the term, uh, deferential to, um, sailor, like, like, you know, uh, yeah, like we, we follow behind in in his shadow.

And, you know, I think sailors trying to encourage people like, okay, you know, go and sprint ahead and design as many things as possible and, and, uh, so I think people need to bring more creativity to the table. I can't just be sailor being creative.

Yeah, fascinating. Um, before we wrap, let's talk about this upcoming Bitcoin conference, BTC 26 in Vegas, the last week of April, uh, at the Venetian, which was where it was last year, which was quite fun. I really had a great. I, I'd never really been to Vegas.

I think I went once for, um, a micro started conference, but I was there, like, for 36 hours had a really fun time. Um, I'll be there, of course. And, and I think I'm speaking, although I'm not quite sure about what yet, but, um, I'm super excited. I've gone to every, but the formal Bitcoin conference since 2019, um, I guess the where I'll start is, you know, well, just what, what are you guys excited about specifically for this year? Like, and maybe another way of asking the question is like, again, last year we were on the, um,

the Cusp of Valhalla this year, it's more deflated than last year, like, but of course, you guys have been throwing that conference across all market, all market conditions. Like, what does the vibe feel like for, uh, you know, a boy stress pro Bitcoin conference in 2026?

Well, you know, you still have to act like you're, you're depressed. So that way, you know, a misery wants company. But, you know, to your point, I mean, we put on Bitcoin 2019, the price of Bitcoin was like $6,000.

You know, uh, uh, and we've, we've handled every different flavor of it. Um, you know, it's not going to be as boisterous as last year. I mean, we'll see, we'll see what it's like.

Uh, I think the major trend that's developing a narrative point, narrative arc is AI and Bitcoin. And I think that that is, uh, um, you know, it sounds so cliche to say that. Like, you know, I, I don't want that to be the case.

But it's like, it's just reality. It's like open clause change the game. AI agents can use Bitcoin. Like, you know, that's a play for us. And if, well, I saw that, that you probably saw that Bitcoin policy Institute study that, uh, you know, the, our friends grant and David and team over there released about an empirical study showing, you know, cross nine thousand queries and written very unbiased and at each of the different frontier models. And the net is that they basically choose stable coin.

So they can't really go and buy coins for spending and Bitcoin for saving. Um, specifically like buy a wide margin like. And so they are, they not only.

Uh, can spend and use Bitcoin, but they want to. It appears like, which makes a lot of sense, right? Cause the digital substrate upon which Bitcoin operates is obviously native to AI, right? I mean AI needs a, a digital platform to operate on.

And that was one of the big features that we said in the future this will come. And like this is really that. And you know, and I think even on the stable coincide, like they say they'll do stable coins now.

But just wait, like as soon as the internet, like digital payments landscape is as fucked up as the fiat landscape.

Why is your AI agent going to want to use USD stable coin if it means every Russian vendor, every Chinese vendor, every Iranian vendor, you know, all of a sudden it can't do commerce with their agents online.

And you know, I don't think we're at the stage where all of these governments that have spent thousands of years investing into controlling the money supply are going to be like, hey, AI agents in China.

You know, Taliban launch your AI agents and they're going to be using USDC or USDT like I they're not going to be chill with that. So you're going to have the same politics brought into the digital realm that exists in the physical.

And then that's going to make it a mind field for agents to be able is going to just inject so much inefficiency in agents being able to frictionlessly do business with other agents that it's better for the agents to just use Bitcoin amongst themselves.

And then as they interface with you, maybe it's like a user to agent interface might be stable coins, but agent to agent. It's like why why would they introduce that?

Yeah, it's a fair point. That's quite interesting, right? The non sovereign global permissionless nature does also apply here, right? And is is very germane to the AI even in transacting, not just in saving.

Yeah, and I mean, and once the AI can start colluding, you know, the obvious game theory play is for AI to collude corner the market on Bitcoin only use Bitcoin.

And then it's like who works for who now? Like if the AI has the majority of the Bitcoin, it's like they're the biggest shareholders in the economy or the wealth of humanity.

But yeah, I think I think AI is like the is the interesting newest topic to sure, you know, my focus at the conference, which has kind of been a role change for me this year is like, how does Nakamoto fit into the conference?

And you know, I'm wanting to make Nakamoto's brand. I want I want Nakamoto to be the world's most globally recognizable Bitcoin company.

And so I want Nakamoto to be investing and supporting and driving the things that move the entire industry and entire intellectual space around Bitcoin forward.

And so, you know, I want to do more orange pill, the president of the United States, you know, I want to do more orange pill fortune 500 companies.

And so how can we use the conference as a platform for Nakamoto to be able to push that agenda forward and and, you know, use it as a chance for Nakamoto to show what it's doing every year to drive forward adoption.

And then I'm also taken on like a personal project. Have you been heard about Deal Day? No.

Well, so I'm made and needs to catch you up to speed on this, but I have decided that we need to have an investment banking conference for Bitcoin as well.

And so we're strapping on like this is a year one beta, but we're strapping on a one day private event the day before the conference.

That is we're calling Deal Day and it's for companies that are either newly public or in the process of going public to meet with underwriters investors that would want to participate.

And so, you know, there's such a bridge still between crypto native and tradfi Wall Street, like I see it every day because like now my life has transitioned to only talking to crypto native people to like I'd say two thirds of my life now is talking to the tradfi people.

Yeah. And so the the chasm is still like massive. There's only a handful of people that can speak to both markets. You're one of the few people that can speak to both markets.

And so one chasm, by the way, I agree.

And so, you know, like the going through the process of I'm going to call it the ringer of going public.

We've learned so much about how the game is played in terms of from Wall Street and how issuers are churned and burned and used and abused and like, you know, what things you should or shouldn't do, what are, you know, what's true and what someone lying through their, you know, smile to you, you know.

And so I feel like we're in a unique spot to be able to help bridge those two worlds as more companies come behind us and go public of these are the people you should work with. These are the people who shouldn't work with, you know, like these are the mistakes you should avoid.

And for us to like facilitate that conduit. And so we're starting at this year.

We're going to have, I think we have something like 15 companies participating that are planning to go public, which is insane.

And we had investment banks and an institutional capital who were attending the conference or who do deals with us separately that are going to participate.

So we'd love to have Galaxy there. And yeah, we should, we should be there for sure. I can't wait. I think that's really interesting. Again, another step back, a sign of the times.

My goodness, like the idea that you could even have 15 companies that do Bitcoin stuff about going public, how far we've come. That's the other thing just before we wrap, like, I mean, this bear market, you know, which technically if you use like a 20% drawdown as the metric, it surely is one, but I'm sitting here looking at Bitcoin at 71K as we record this.

Like that is also a sign of the times. Yes, not it's not that bad. And you know, what's your just the overall vibes. How does this compare to like the, you know, the conference in 23 was just a few months after FTX collapse and SVB went down and stuff and silver gate and whatnot.

You know, 2019, you're right was like, we hadn't, we were not back and eventually took another 18 months for Bitcoin to retake its prior all time high at that point.

Like, how do you, what are the vibes like, you know, there's also, especially with you traversing the chasm between crypto native and tradfi, a lot of people talk about this delta between institutional sentiment, which has like never been more bullish and retail sentiment, which is still, you know, bearish.

How do you characterize this bear market, David, overall?

So I would agree with that that that divide and sentiment, though I am of the suspicion that the sentiment on.

I've developed the view that institutional capital follows retail capital and so it's like sharks following minnows, you know, they need that's what they feast on.

And so, and like liquidity is life, you know, like that's like that's where you have to play.

And so I think institutional sentiment trails the industry or retail sentiment and if retail is depressed a year from now, institutions will get depressed a year from now because they're, they're, the dollars they see is really the fees they're going to make on all the retail.

So, you know, but I do, there is definitely a divide and there's definitely a more sophisticated view from the institutional crowd of like, hey, like the drum beat of inevitability marches, marches forward.

I think this, this cycle has been, I mean, we've seen it all, I've seen it all since I've been in Bitcoin, so like, you know, I wouldn't even say, this is that fundamentally unique.

But what's different between this cycle and like the 2023 2022 is like, it was so easy to identify catalyst for the sell off.

And here the catalyst is not clear.

And so, and, and the price didn't appreciate to the point where like it matches other past market cycles.

So I think what's interesting right now what we're about to discover is like, Bitcoin didn't have his blow off the top, which I'm, I'm going to go ahead and guess is because

if there's not something really bad behind the scenes that happened, it's because of how big the derivative market has gotten around Bitcoin and just like there's just too much liquidity available for the blow off the tops.

But that should also, if that's the case, the flip side should be true as well, which is like we can't have the 70% drawdowns 80% drawdowns because there's too much liquidity at the bottom.

And so, we're seeing that kind of play out, you know, when we hit the $60,000 range, that's basically like the high of the last cycle.

And typically that's a pretty fun like important level in general, like if you go back to history of Bitcoin.

Yeah, so, you know, either the market recovers here.

And I think we're kind of in like a new normal dynamic.

Or if the market holds the patterns of the past and it goes lower, well, we kind of have to reconcile like, why do we have the same amount of downside, but not the same amount of upside.

So I think those are like those are new dynamics at play and there's uncertainty from those dynamics.

And whenever there's uncertainty, people generally are risk off. And so that's like, but the flip side is uncertainty can play the other way too.

If if things are uncertain, but they they go in a way that is like, okay, we start heading back up in the price of Bitcoin and this is not playing out any other pattern.

Well, now it's like, okay, new normal, what's the thesis of how to play and invest, go forward from this from this moment.

So, yeah, I think there was a time for Bitcoin or rally to it would be when there's war and solvency crisis is credit crisis is liquidity crisis is like if Bitcoin rallied here, you're very interesting.

But yeah, I think I think sentiment is rough. I think sentiment is going to stay rough and sentiment will come back when you know, the beatings will continue until the price of Bitcoin comes back.

Well said, David Bailey, the CEO of Nakamoto. Thank you so much for coming back on Galaxy Brains David.

Yeah, Alex, thank you for having me.

That's it for this week's episode of Galaxy Brains. Thank you to my guest David Bailey CEO of Nakamoto and our good friend Bimnet of BB from Galaxy trading.

Everyone have a safe and happy week and we will see you next time.

Thank you for listening to Galaxy Brains, the weekly podcast from Galaxy Research.

I'm Alex Thorn, head of firm wide research at Galaxy. Follow me on x at Intangible Coins, follow Galaxy Research on x at GLXY Research. Read our written reports at galaxy.com slash research and don't forget if you like Galaxy Brains to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms like YouTube Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more.

We'll see you next time.