FULL VIDEO: A Mind Blowin' | Ross Stevens & Michael Saylor Discuss #Bitcoin

hi

i'd like to welcome ross stevens who's

the founder and ceo of stone ridge

holdings group

which personally met which manages more

than 20 billion dollars in alternative

investments

around 2015 as they started to

personally own a lot of bitcoin

they couldn't find a custodian who could

satisfy their level of fiduciary

standards

that began a journey that is now naidig

the new york digital investment group

which ross founded and is executive

chairman of

today nida manages over 6 billion

dollars of bitcoin

all for institutions and it's a full

service

vertically integrated bitcoin only

financial services firm

ross started his career at goldman sachs

working for fisher black

after earning his phd in statistics and

finance at the university of chicago

writing his dissertation under the

direction of nobel prize winner gene

fama

ross did his undergraduate studies at

wharton and ross is the chairman of the

stevens center for innovation and

finance at wharton

which he founded more importantly

ross is a friend of mine he's been an

important partner

and a trusted guide to me

and to various members of

microstrategy's leadership team

as we navigate our own bitcoin journey

so

please help me welcome ross and ross

thanks for joining us today

i'm really excited about this

conversation i am too michael thank you

very much

it's a pleasure to be here and like each

of the many conversations you and i

have i'm sure i will enjoy and look

forward to this one

okay so let's get right into it in a

sense

let's do it this whole conference is

about reserve assets

it's not about property plant and

equipment or

other parts of a firm's business

strategy or balance sheet

it's about reserve assets you and i are

both ceos

we have a lot we need to focus on we

have a lot we need to decide every

single day

why should we even care about reserve

assets

well i think a ceo has two jobs

right executive but also capital

allocator the first one is is obvious

the second is more important capital

allocation

is a ceo's most important

job i think all of us ceos work in

in capital allocation in fact we

specialize in it

whether we're good at it or not we

specialize in it and said differently

whether or not we choose it

capital allocation chooses us and i

would say a capital allocation

framework for a ceo used to be one thing

which is how do we turn our liquid

assets into

illiquid assets and how do we turn our

illiquid assets back

into liquid assets you know are we going

to buy something

are we going to sell something are we

going to fund a business are we going to

close the business what's changed though

is that it's now

also about our liquid assets

as their own thing your cash reserves

because what used to be safe and not

volatile it's no longer safe and it's

highly volatile

well why is this framework so relevant

now

i mean it's always been relevant i mean

what's relevant is the urgency

uh what's new is the urgency what's new

i think is the outsized role of central

banks

in all of our lives and the role of

central banks on corporate

balance sheets i mean cash is now a

liability

no longer an asset and i think that has

profound

long-term implications for corporations

i mean we can go back

and start a lot of different places but

we can go back i mean one of my favorite

federal reserve sort of central bank

persons

is hayami governor hiyami from japan

he's not a name you hear

a lot about now but he led the boj in

the year 2000

and he joined right out of college

post-war 1947.

it's hard to imagine japan back then but

there were any hyper inflation imagine

japan in a hyperinflation

and those hyperinflationary years when

he was out of college left an indelible

scar

on hiyami understandably and as he was

rising through the ranks of the boj

he was known for repeating the phrase if

you debase the currency you debase

the country in his internal meeting so

that was he was a strident

anti-inflationist now we think about

japan back in 2000 right it's ten years

after the bubble burst

their benchmark rate basically their fed

funds had gone from eight percent to

to zero and given hayami's personal

background his anti-inflationary stance

he thought free money was nuts

right so he decided to do something

about it now that he was finally in

charge

he took the radical step of raising

rates

25 basis points i mean pretty radical so

he made it he made money

slightly non-free okay

but he didn't just do it it's really

what he what he said he kind of had this

speech and he thundered risk

must be priced risk must be priced which

is really academic jargon for saying the

market

must determine the price of money not

bureaucrats

so what happens right very predictably

first of all the prime minister goes

ballistic

he says this is just unacceptable it's

an unparalleled display of independence

of the central bank as if that's not the

entire point of central bank

independence

and what happens in markets the nikkei

gets crushed

drops 20 percent the politicians

predictably in japan

freak out and they demand a return to

zero

and seven months later hayami

retreats he completely capitulates and

moves the rate back to zero and

probably not surprisingly soon

thereafter he's out of a job right so

that

we can think about the journey starting

there let's fast forward 18 years

december 2018 let's talk about our own

country

and what i think is the greatest

reversal of monetary policy

in our country's history and i say that

when i measure it based on the

swiftness of the reversal and the impact

of the reversal so we're december 2018

fed meeting day the markets are down 8

for the month so

nerves are frayed and powell comes out

of the meeting

and he says the balance sheet runoff so

coming out of qe

it's on automatic pilot

and with those two words the market just

loses its mind

it just drops five percent trump says

he's gonna fire him

and things kind of go ballistic at that

point and i don't know if you know this

but

fed policy is that the day after a

meeting nobody in the fed's allowed to

talk publicly but the day after the day

after they are

and at the very first opportunity that

powell has to walk

back his remarks he saves space into it

himself but he trots out

williams who's the fed president of new

york and williams says

plans are not promises we will reassess

the data

the market knows exactly what that means

and it rockets up 15

in the next month so like kayami

complete capitulation

ayami took seven months pal took two

days right

let's do one more let's fast forward to

last march

the ecb christine lagarde is in charge

let's talk about march 12th to be exact

and she is president when spreads on

italian bonds so what they are

essentially over over german bonds

they're blown out and she says her

version of risk must be priced she says

her version of

automatic pilot remember what remember

what she said

she said and i quote we are not here to

close spreads

are you sure christine the markets go

ballistic

um during the press conference spreads

keep widening and widening out

um she actually doubles down she says

it's not the function or the mission of

the ecb to close spread she kind of

thunders that

spreads bloud even more and do you

remember what happened

complete capitulation except it didn't

take regard

the seven months it took ayami or the

two days it took

powell two hours it took her two hours

in the press conference

two hours after the speech she

completely walks back

her comments with the quote i am fully

committed to avoid

any fragmentation all is is okay

it turns out she was there to close

spreads after all and in fact her

capitulation was

so complete that the ecb took the

unprecedented step

of revising the speech with

the conference afterwards they've never

taken the remarks of a press conference

and appended them

to the speech i think what i take away

from these stories is that

a central bank can control the supply of

their money

they can't make their people value it it

seems like hayami

powell and lagarde each felt they had no

choice

what's this tell us about central

bankers

well i mean i don't know i mean the

sequence of hayami

powell lagarde it makes me think of the

great philosopher of modernity

mike tyson oh yeah yeah he was the best

at philosophy um and his most famous

phrase was

everyone has a plan until they get

punched in the face i love that one

i think of it often i think of it often

too and i've been punched plenty of

times

um i mean these bankers they got punched

in the face really hard

and they felt pain and they felt fear

because they're human

you would have and i would have also

they got scared

they retreated i think though what it

really tells us

about the world is that these central

bankers

as well intentioned as smart and as

really good as they are

they're just up against forces far

bigger than themselves

i think it tells us the economic choice

they'd like to make of short-term pain

for a long-term gain it's just out of

scope for them

i think it tells us that their choice is

short-term pain for economic catastrophe

and certain political extinction so

they'll just keep printing i mean

they're just going to keep printing and

that just makes corporate reserves kind

of the point of the conference just

riskier and riskier and more valid what

it really tells us though i think is the

system itself

is the problem the system is so over

levered

so dependent on free money that's just a

little huff

and a little puff and the whole thing

gets blown down

can i tell you just one more one more

story okay okay

so let's let's go back to jerome our guy

right last march

um he's learned the lessons of mike

tyson's wisdom he doesn't want to wait

to get

punched in the face and you know the

markets start to fall

some people start to lose some money and

powell's view

through his actions not his words

through his actions is that

no level of pre-crisis irresponsibility

no level of overborrowing irresponsible

over borrowing

no level must be allowed to have

consequences

the new fed mandate is not price

stability it's not

full employment the new fed mandate

again through his actions

not his words is let's decouple risk

taking

from the consequences of risk taking the

new fed mandate is let's finally once

and for all

institutionalize moral hazard so

to foam the runway for this this new

this new mandate what does he do

jerome goes out and he starts buying

securities at a scale the world has

never

seen or imagined was possible he starts

buying about a day's worth of u.s

gdp a day's work so i'm gonna put that

in

human terms all the work

all 350 million of us do we wake up in

the morning

we get our kids to school we go to work

all of the work of

all of us you know i picture jerome kind

of getting to his desk

gets the keyboard out and just like

control p click

all americans collective daily labor he

he just prints

now as i said i don't question central

bankers are well intentioned i strongly

believe they

are but humans are not supposed to have

that kind of power

over other humans um you know in the

same way that a

stock certificate is is titled to

company

capital money is title to human human

time

michael i mean people sacrifice their

time for money

which enables us to trade our time for

the time

sacrifices of others that's how it's

supposed to work

so a tool that can command human time

the central bank keyboard control p that

keyboard steals time

and it steals time from from some

particularly

and most powerfully the non-asset owners

the most vulnerable and it redistributes

that time

to others most notably the existing

asset owners it adds rocket fuel to

wealth inequality

and it leaves the fidelity of the signal

content of prices just in tatters

now i i think mark march 2020 that was

the wake up call for me that

you're a very sophisticated macro

economist

i was oblivious but that was like the

massive

jolt of of some kind of macro

shock that caused me to stop and decide

that maybe i needed to take an interest

in uh in all of this and what you know

what you've described is pretty sobering

i didn't really know the history

uh like you do but um

you know it's it's clear now the

challenges that central bankers face

and uh it's pretty clear that we are

over

levered as an economy so

um i guess the question is what's

bitcoin got to do

with any of this and what's bitcoin got

to do with corporations

i mean a lot i mean in my view kind of

everything

um i can start with the conclusion i'll

i'll work backwards

um okay i like that give me the answer

yeah i'll give you the answer the answer

is bitcoin is not

volatile that's that's the answer

and let me explain okay

learning bitcoin is like at least to me

it's like

for me it was like learning a foreign

language you know you live in spain for

a year or you live in

france for a year and at some point you

get you get good enough it takes some

time but with immersion you think

in spanish right you think in french

something clicks for you you make that

you make that switch you're no longer

thinking

like how do i say where's the barber in

spanish and doing that english to

spanish translation in your mind you

just think the question

in spanish i now

think in bitcoin okay it's taken me

eight years of morning study you are

much faster

than me you know i'm a slow learner but

i get there it's taken me eight years of

morning study and a lifetime of of

of lessons studying the markets but i

now think in bitcoin and it's it's very

freeing

and through that lens of thinking in

bitcoin bitcoin is not

volatile fiat is volatile the price of

college is volatile in fiat

keeps getting cheaper in bitcoin the

price of prime real estate

very volatile and fiat keeps getting

cheaper

in bitcoin the price of all of my

long-dated

denominated liabilities like a mortgage

or retirement or we do a lot of work

with insurance companies they're

long-dated fiat-based liabilities a

death benefit for life insurance

contracts or annuity payments

those are extraordinarily volatile

in fiat and they each getting keep

getting cheaper

in in bitcoin and so to understand

really what's going on and why this is

happening i think we need to ask

ourselves two things

one like what is money like what is it

and why is bitcoin an excellent money or

even is it an excellent

money so so so so what's money money is

technology

it it it is and it always has been

technology whether it was seashells or

salt or cattle

it's always been technology it's

technology for making

our wealth today available for

consumption

tomorrow and virtually all of us you

know americans

um we just take for granted that there's

a sharp line of distinction

between what's a money and what's not

but that's false

there's not a line of distinction in

fact throughout history various monies

plural have always co-existed

along a continuum of soundness meaning

good money to to kind of bad money and

they've always been subject to

competitive network effects

like any comp competition in fact

english language and language for humans

in general that was the first

network and money was the second um it

also means that

that given enough time

at any given time including right now no

money is

absolutely the best money on all

dimensions there are always trade-offs

some are better some are worse some are

better at this some are better at other

things it also means that all money is

is is temporal

no money has ever been or ever will be

forever including bitcoin bitcoin will

not last

forever it may last 100 years or 250

years i mean maybe forever for practical

terms for everybody at this conference

including you and i

but it will it will not last forever

because money is just a good

like any other good but what makes what

makes

money as a good unique among all goods

is that we value it

not for its own sake but for its

prospective

exchange utility which means we hope the

vessel whatever we

choose to store our money in

we hope that vessel keeps its value long

enough

so we can trade it in the future for

stuff we actually want right nobody

actually wants green little pieces of

paper nobody actually wants bitcoin

nobody actually wants bitcoin either

what we want

those things to do is to hopefully

allow us to trade them for things in the

future we actually want a vacation a

college education

property whatever right so

it's not that we want the money we don't

want the money we want what the money

can do for us in the future what we can

trade it for

so so then why is bitcoin

excellent money well i think that's for

everybody to make up their own mind i'll

tell you how i think about it though

there's really two

primary dimensions that i think money

should be evaluated on

sale ability across time and sellability

across

space so sellability across time just

means will the money keep its

value through time or will it depreciate

um you know the oldest fiat money that's

in existence today

is the british pound and 371 years ago

when

the modern british pound started it was

equal to one

pound of silver one british pound bought

you one

pound of silver today do you know what

one pound of silver buys you in terms of

british pounds

i'm guessing that it buys you more than

one british more than one

a little bit 174. so you used to buy

one for one now a pound of silver buys

174 british pounds

and the key here is to understand what

changed

and what did not change okay the silver

itself

did not change 371 years ago it weighed

a pound

today it weighs a pound 371 years ago

the silver had certain chemical

properties

it's got the same chemical properties

today

the silver did not change the fiat

changed it depreciated more than 99

so silver crushed fiat i hate the 99

number i i just hate that one yeah i

just didn't want to take it out to that

many decimals

but you know it's 99.7638129 i don't

know it's it's it's a lot it's basically

worthless right relative to silver

but you know people talk about gold what

about silver versus

gold and the reality is gold has been

far better and far

more reliable it's much better store

value than silver because it's scarcer

and it's got a much lower supply growth

gold grows at about two percent a year

silver grows about 20 30 a year so

gold is a much better money than

silver but let's compare it to bitcoin i

mean gold still does grow

you print through mining you print gold

at about two percent a year and bitcoins

on an asymptotic journey to zero percent

inflation per year so two percent a year

roughly times 50 years

and gold essentially depreciates

completely

versus bitcoin so bitcoin will be worth

far more than gold in the future once it

clicks for people

that gold is printed at a much higher

rate and that compounds

much higher 100 a year but that

compounds over 10 20 30

40 50 years but there's another property

of gold that makes it weak relative

to bitcoin and in fact this is a

property of bitcoin that makes bitcoin

truly unique

among any money in history which is that

bitcoin is the first store of value

ever in which its supply is entirely

unaffected

by its demand you know if we take

the example of gold to prove this point

if gold went to i don't know

100 000 bucks an ounce it's up 50 x

overnight

you and i know what's gonna happen

tomorrow morning the miner's gonna get

to work very early right now

you and i would drop the phone and start

mining right we're gonna start mining

we're gonna look around our house for

gold we're gonna melt it down

we're gonna drive up the supply we can't

skyrocket the supply but we're going to

drive up the supply we're going to drive

up drive down the price of gold

if during the course of this

conversation people really feel like

bullish on bitcoin and bitcoin goes to a

million i'm saying that with a smile

what's going to happen in supply of

bitcoin nothing

nothing nothing that's incredible

that's incredible bitcoin is the first

store of value in human history

where its supply is never can never will

never be affected by

any amount of its increased demand so

the conclusion is that bitcoin is better

at being gold than gold because it's

more sellable across

time now the other characteristic about

money that's really important is

sellability across space like can you

move the money around the world

efficiently

and this is another place where gold has

a really

acute flaw it's just hard to transport i

mean if you get paper gold except you're

back in sort of fiat land and all the

problems of fiat

gold is just hard to to transport and

this is where fiat for all its flaws and

fiat's doa

but for all its flaws fiat really shines

here you can move it around the world

and it's sort of an internet

world where network power is is

everything

this ability to sell across space is

is critical however i want to

clear up a pretty common misperception

which is that bitcoin is slower than

fiat the reality is the opposite

bitcoin moves much faster across space

than fiat the key though

is to compare apples to apples final

settlement and in final settlement

there's no comparison bitcoin increases

our capacity

for final for example international

settlement by

500 000 transactions a day and completes

the settlement

with finality in about an hour you know

in international settlement you're

talking two three four five days seven

days it can be a month

depends on the two countries you may not

you may not get there

and even within a country like ours

michael don't confuse

the speed of your visa payment with its

final settlement because it's not

finally settling when you go to

starbucks and buy coffee with your visa

card no final settlement occurs what

actually happens

is your bank and starbucks bank

they have some credit risk to each other

for two or three days

usually it's fine but sometimes with

disastrous results

and then there's final settlements

bitcoin

settles every hour and it's a bearer

instrument it's the first ever

electronic

bearer instrument so credit risk is not

a concept

we said earlier that bitcoin is better

at being gold than gold

what we're saying now is bitcoin is

better being fiat

than fia it's more saleable across space

and because it's not

debt like fiat it has no credit risk so

the conclusion is that bitcoin is the

best

money we have maybe it's the best money

we ever we've ever had

and that's why i've learned the language

that's why

i now think in it okay

i get it it's pretty clear when you say

it that way

bitcoins just better money but it's not

only money

and i obviously agree with you however

i have a related question even if we

agree

that bitcoin is better money it comes at

a cost

bitcoin's use of energy how do you think

about that

i mean i think about it a lot um

and i think that you know if people take

nothing away from our conversation i

hope they take

this part away about how i think about

bitcoin's use of energy

um let's start with some facts okay

bitcoin consumes a ton of energy

the the amount of energy that bitcoin

consumes you can think about it as the

sum of all the mining equipment

in the world and there's no you know

there's no central registry for for

mining equipment so you don't

really know exactly but i think an

excellent estimate is about

10 million humans worth of energy so

it's enormous

and in a warming world how can this be

good

well let's set some context like what is

the problem of energy what are we

solving

it's never been its scarcity we can

produce tons and tons of energy

it's always been our ability to channel

the energy geographically that means to

move it

where it's needed most and before

bitcoin that was always where

humans lived we needed to move the

energy to where humans lived

but bitcoin's mining energy it's just

solving a different problem

solving a math problem not a

transportation problem

and because of satellites and wireless

internet connections

a math problem can be solved anywhere

so bitcoin mining can be located

anywhere and you know the long-term

implications of this i think

are are world-changing so so for example

bitcoin can make monetizable

isolated energy sources all over the all

over the world i mean think about

waterfalls or running rivers we can

create dams

in places that are you know now entirely

untapped because they would be cost

prohibitive

to move that energy to the electric grid

near where residential or commercial

uses would be possible just it's just

cost prohibitive

so here's the key insight as bitcoin's

price

rises it's high enough now but as it

continues to rise

bitcoin mining will be the most

profitable use of energy in human

history

that does not need to be located near

human settlement

to operate that's a big deal

bitcoin is going to fundamentally change

the economics of

energy and that's because with bitcoin

mining we've got a highly profitable use

of energy that's

location in dependent we've never had a

highly profitable use of energy

that was location dependent now now we

do

and since fossil fuels they're already

too expensive for bitcoin mining

um i think the only i mean i think

confidently the only long-term

profitable

bitcoin mining will be powered by clean

energy so so imagine a future just just

imagine

where bitcoin mining firms unsubsidized

and i think that's key

are in extraordinarily isolated

locations

i don't know let's visualize a waterfall

powerful waterfall in a

population free part of an african

country that's destitute

people living in abject poverty and we

can easily connect that waterfall

to the bitcoin network we can build the

energy infrastructure

to monetize the local clean energy

source

for bitcoin mining but once we've got

the infrastructure let's extend it let's

build roads let's build houses let's

build schools let's build

let's build let's build human settlement

let's move humans there

and i think the net result will be more

and more of humanity

clustering around cheap and cheap is key

clean clean as ke2 energy sources

historically

our challenge with energy has been to

move the power to

the people bitcoin will allow us to move

the people

to the power now you think about the

world's major population centers i'm in

new york you're in miami think about

tokyo

or paris or london they developed where

they are

geographically because of natural

seaports or trade routes or water rays

waterways the placement of those cities

had nothing to do with energy because

they're all free energy right they were

all pre-fossil fuels

with more and more of the world's

population now able

in the future with bitcoin to congregate

around abundant energy and this is the

key with extraordinarily low marginal

costs of production

that's the part that matters because

cheap energy

in the natural form equals human

flourishing that that's an equation

cheap energy equals

human flourishing and we can we can sign

all the climate accords we want we can

add our name to anything we can we can

virtue signal whatever we want sign them

all

right they're all irrelevant they've

been irrelevant they will be irrelevant

what's relevant is this

because when you have people with a

profit motive

and for the first time ever we have a

huge pull

towards clean energy with a profit

motive that's when things

change so from my perspective beyond the

the revolution and monetary policy that

bitcoin already represents

bitcoin also represents the biggest

catalyst the world has ever known

for the development of abundant clean

cheap

energy and therefore you know one of the

biggest catalysts the world has ever

known

for human flourishing it's going to take

a decade or two

but that's one of the things that

bitcoin can do

you know i never really thought about it

that way before it's really pretty

amazing i mean

manufacturing money from clean

energy sounds like a better idea than

manufacturing aluminum

from clean energy a little bit a little

bit

you got to imagine a lot of countries in

the world that have shut in stranded

energy

and they have and we know you can't move

electricity more than 500 miles so

if you could actually literally make

money off of stranded energy you could

you can tap into your natural resources

in order to move into the 21st century

i think it's fascinating yeah yeah may

take a decade or two to realize the

vision

but you know given the way uh the

economics of mining works

especially as bitcoin's price rises

i think the energy vision makes perfect

sense

it's and it's inevitable okay so

big idea big idea ross okay

going back to bitcoin itself and your

firm

stone ridge what what is what is stone

ridge doing with bitcoin and

let's break it into two questions um

what are you doing

as a steward of your own firm's

resources and

what are you doing to help others see

what you see

well um our own resources you know what

are we doing

i mean i don't know if you can read the

books in the back there's a lot of tele

books we like tele

so i'm going to rephrase your question a

little bit which is

ross don't tell me what you think show

me what's in your portfolio

that's a that's a telephrase um

our reserves are now in bitcoin

now it's been true since 2017 and other

than what we keep you know for

convenience for salaries and

and rent and things you know cash we

need like fiat

our liquid reserves are in bitcoin um so

so how did we get there

you know i think i think great questions

are underestimated

um and i think we got there through a

great question

that our team asked which is what do we

have to believe to be

true to move to the bitcoin standard

what do we have to believe

to be true to move our reserves from

fiat into bitcoin

and our answer was that if we allow

ourselves to focus only on

point-to-point risk meaning

point-to-point in time from today

until our long-dated fiat liabilities

are due and remember we're corporations

so theoretically infinitely lived of

course we're not

actually infinitely lived but yes we

have salaries in rent

next week but we have salaries and rent

in 10 years and 20 years and 30 years

too so we can think about

those liabilities if we just think about

point-to-point

the only thing we really have to believe

is that over the next 10 or 20 years

that the dollar will depreciate

relative to bitcoin and i believe that

i have no idea what the dollar is going

to do tomorrow

next week next month next year but i

have a high degree of confidence and i

voted with my dollars not

certainty but a high degree of

confidence

that the dollar will depreciate versus

bitcoin over the very long term

as it has eighty percent depreciated in

the last

two years as it has thirty percent

appreciated

so far this year so this insight

allows us to ignore us dollar volatility

along the way

focus on point to point focus on end

state economics now

like anything in life a point-to-point

perspective doesn't make it a risk-free

perspective but it is our perspective

and the net result

is has been and i believe will be

enormous

competitive business advantages

certainly relative to other

firms in our sector and financial

services i mean for us everything is

getting cheaper

right so paying rent paying salaries

m a recruiting it's just

it's all cheaper and the stock market's

making new highs every day

for us everything's on sale right so

abstracting from stone ridge though if

you take company a and company b

in the same industry one adopts the

bitcoin standard and what does not

you know just think about the macro

environment as the money printer goes

bur or if it continues to i think it

will as credit creation just continues

to explode

you know as real rates on riskier and

risky assets continue to go negative

when we cross the rubicon when real

rates on corporates went negative

recently

you know consider the implications for

the dollar in one year and two years and

10 years i don't know

lower a lot lower

certainly versus bitcoin that's that's

my versus the end versus europe i i

don't know but certainly

versus bitcoin remember at the very

beginning we talked about

every ceo's most important job capital

allocation the decision of whether and

how

to adopt the bitcoin standard

i believe that will be the single most

important decision every ceo makes

in the next 10 years the most important

decision

whether they realize it today or not and

i acknowledge well under one percent

would acknowledge that's going to be the

most important decision they make in the

next 10 years but it will be

and whether they actively make it or not

they make it they make it

with high consequence okay

so the second part of my question um is

what are you doing to help others see

what you see

well um for a while we were trying and

nothing was actually happening i

i recently learned how bamboo grows it's

pretty

to me it's pretty fascinating it spends

its first five years

building an extensive root system

underground and

basically doing nothing visible and then

it explodes

90 feet in the air in six weeks that's

that's bamboo

it's not a terrible analogy to nydic

stoneridge's bitcoin subsidiary

you know we started in 2017 we put a

great team together we had a bunch of

capital

we worked and worked and worked you know

we laid our root system

um we operated largely well we operated

in stealth

it's true that we operate in stealth but

it's almost as if it didn't matter that

we operated in stealth because

no institutions really cared and it

wasn't for lack of trying we could be

knocked on a lot of doors

we were just too early we were just too

early but you know we kept it our craft

we built our root system we thickened

and strengthened the roots

um and we worked quietly you know out of

out of view which is our style the firm

you know has had a no press policy since

its inception in 2012.

but if you fast forward to today nydig

is a full service

vertically integrated bitcoin only

financial services firm the first

billion during that dark

challenging five years it took 1200 days

to

raise that first billion first billion

is always the hardest first billions

always the hardest

1200 days the last billion took six

six one a year ago we had 25

institutional clients

today we have 280 institutional clients

we've got a pipeline

in the onboarding process of 96 we can

put

75 institutions through the pipe a month

that's our current capacity

we've got over six billion dollars

in bitcoin now between what's in the

door and what's committed from

institutions and we are vanguardizing

this asset class best product best price

and as we scale we're driving prices

down down down our pricing today is

70 lower than it was a year ago

and by the end of the year michael i am

confident we'll have over 25 billion

dollars

of bitcoin i've just got this order book

i'm not guessing i see what's happening

okay 25 billion dollars um

yeah that's astonishing growth and it