The War Just Proved Why Bitcoin Exists

Mr. Arnold, having to be here as always, coming off another great Masters weekend. As we were discussing in the pre here, you know, if we get into World War as it looks more and more likely every day, we we know what we're fighting for as Americans, which [music] is for the the right to sit around on a sunny Sunday afternoon and watch an Irish guy win our most important golf tournament. >> [laughter] >> Two years in a row, shout out to Rory. Hard-fought victory. Thought he was going to give it up. It was. It got interesting there. I thought Rory was going to make a push. I thought Scotty was going to make a push. Not without drama, never without drama with Rory, but he pulled it out. He did. He did. But at least we're not a golf podcast, we're a Bitcoin / I think we're macro podcast now. I think I've gotten some feedback. Some of the brightest minds in macroeconomics globally have been listening week in and week out just to come and get your thoughts, John, because they're they're good thoughts. And as you alluded to, things are chaotic. I was I was away from keyboard. I had my phone. It was my birthday celebration over the weekend, not mine, but somebody in my family's, and I kept my phone away from me all day Saturday. Obviously, yesterday was the Masters. So, I was in bed last night, like, okay, what happened this weekend? It looks like it was a bit chaotic. Ceasefire on off on off. We'll pull up the the first slide that you put together today, which is a reference to the game show Deal or No Deal. Yeah, this was the most concise way that I knew how to summarize the events of the weekend. I feel really good about that in what could be an emerging energy crisis for the world that I lit a graphics card on fire, a GPU on fire to create this totally high-value ad gym. But yeah, here you know, here's here's what we're looking at. Interestingly, my projection for SPY does not look to have proven correct as we're basically flatish this morning despite oil ripping on news of a decision to blockade Iranian ports in the with the Navy, the US Navy, in the Strait of Hormuz in response to talks that lasted I think less than 24 hours between Vice President JD Vance and some faction of the Iranian contingency, and we can get into maybe who they were talking to and and what and what that means, but in any case, that fell through, and so now we are definitively escalating. And not only is is the Strait not going to be open, but we are going to make it even more closed than it was before. So, an interesting Uno reverse card being played here. As always, you know, it's a bold strategy, Cotton, and we'll see how it plays out. But yeah, big big implications this week after the market decided last week with the ceasefire announcement that everything was was Gucci and we were heading back to all-time highs. Yeah, but as we mentioned last week, too, let's not get immersed in succumb to the 24-hour news cycle and the changing of headlines and the ping-ponging of ceasefire no ceasefire deal no deal. Let's look at what's actually happening on the ground. One thing you highlighted this week is that it seems that the oil the balance of power in oil markets is is definitely shifting towards the US, and I saw this map floating around over the weekend, and we see a bunch of ships going around the Horn of Africa. Yeah, so this is a map from I call it on the bottom Rory Johnston, who's a great kind of oil data analyst everyone should follow on Twitter. The president is now apparently following him as he retweeted or or quote tweeted or something on on Truth Social this this map and as evidence that you know, the the US is is winning bigly. But I do think it's an interesting data point showing a bunch of large tankers headed to the US to I was going to say the Gulf of Mexico, but it's now I guess the Gulf of America kind of on on the way in this Caravan to these are empty tankers largely. You can see that cuz there there's no outline in in most of them or it's it's it's an outline with nothing filled in. And you're showing them coming to empty tankers coming to the US to to refuel. And I think it's a combination I think this includes everything from LNG tankers to other types of crude tankers. But in any case, you know, if you scroll to the the next slide, you'll see this is this is anomalous, right? Like it's this is not at least relative to prior few months that you are seeing in the data. That's not just like a snapshot of something that's always happening, but does appear to be a larger erection of VLCCs, which are very large crude carriers, to to the Gulf here in the US. And you know, that's in response to one of the main oil arteries and and LNG arteries in the world, as we've discussed for the last month, getting closed off. So, yeah, I think this is it's an interesting kind of illustration of something that we've been talking about a lot over the past few weeks, which is just this all is, you know, it's a game of relative leverage. And it very much remains to be seen, you know, how durably kind of the US can benefit from from this situation that we're highlighting right here. This is going to have, you know, to the extent that this continues, like, it's not going to be free domestically, right? Like we are a net exporter of most refined petroleum products. I believe we're about neutral, maybe a slight net importer on crude, but you know, we have we do have levers we can pull and and ways that we can benefit from this situation that other net energy importers, especially Europe and to some extent China, you know, don't have. So, this is if if you were if you were Trump, if you were the Trump team looking for ways to respond to, you know, being being down pretty bad in the fourth quarter, right, on industrial capacity, where over the last 25 years China has kind of eaten your lunch on on all these critical industries and they have kind of a chokehold on rare earth minerals, you know, this is kind of a button you have to push, right? Or you you hope you have to hope that you can push this button in some way. You know, whether whether all of this was kind of intentional from day one and we should trust the plan or whether Trump is kind of just fumbling and stumbling into this situation and this is just a natural course of events, you know, I'll let listeners decide on that, but yeah, I think it you know, this this highlights what we've been talking about that the US isn't totally out of cards to play and this is kind of the main card that you would think we'd have to play. And so yeah, it's this this will be a key I think driver in deciding basically kind of who who blinks first here in in the broad, you know, East-West chessboard that that has been set up. Yeah, and it looks like China is reacting to this leverage or some form of leverage shifting towards the US and they're beginning to press the pull the levers that they have access to, particularly in the realm of sulfuric acid exports, which now we're sulfuric acid experts now, but China is apparently curbing exports to sulfuric acid. Uh This is the LNG chart, so obviously Europe's very dependent on our LNG, but China seeing what's happening here, saying, okay, we're going to ban sulfuric acid exports as the Iran war hits supply. As you can see on the right side of this chart, sulfuric acid is a critical input for a lot of critical sort of inputs for metal processing, phosphate fertilizers, phosphates, fibers. Uh and so you could see a strain on those critical materials that could lead to more inflation, particularly in food prices. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's even more than just kind of the inflation impact. You know, as you note, the the figure I show here is 50% of sulfuric acid exports are are used for phosphate fertilizers, and you know, it's important because the ferts market and the the downstream kind of agricultural markets that globally that it depends on that depend on it are already very disrupted from everything that's gone on thus far out of out of the Gulf. There are a lot of byproducts that come out of that region that flow into the ferts market. And so that's already seeing disruption even before this this China announcement. So, that this these export curbs are outright and start in May. China is currently the the largest net global exporter of of these things, and so that's just going to, you know, make make that market even worse potentially if this if this continues and ramps up. You know, so then it becomes maybe a question of the the oil impact is is maybe a little more near term and obvious, and the ferts market impact probably takes a little longer to play out just because of planting cycles and the way that crop yields work and the way that agricultural markets work. So, maybe you don't see the impact of this immediately, but you know, there will be like early pull-forward impacts, and you will see to your point, you know, inflation in a lot of different food prices and also probably curbing of supply in, you know, more marginal regions that, you know, outside the US, outside Western Europe, that are a little more kind of on the cusp and on a knife's edge with food supply. So, this is you know, this is again, if you flip it to to China's perspective, this is kind of what you would expect to hit back, right? You play the cards that you have, and I think it just comes back to the the same question we've been pointing people to over the last month of it's all a game of of relative leverage and who's going to blink first when you when you play these different types of very sensitive cards that are going to affect pretty much every market in the world. Yeah, it's good to get some feedback. It's probably the most uncertain time, John. Just thinking like COVID was very uncertain, but now I think I think the scale of this cuz COVID was we're comparing the supply chain disruptions to COVID. COVID was obviously a black swan, and the world basically shut down to try to prevent the the the virus from spreading, but now the existential threat is is World War III, and you have all these levers being pulled that really sitting back as an observer, it's like, why why are we doing this? Why why are we thrusting the world into this type of disruption right now? And it is incredibly uncertain. And I think what has been interesting to watch throughout all of this, the pull on Bitcoin, is Bitcoin's relative strength in in this environment. It it pumped to 73,000 over the weekend, I believe on Saturday, came off of those highs yesterday, but currently floating, I believe, around $71,800. So, Bitcoin throughout all this has has been reacting in a way which is actually, for lack of a better term, a pleasant surprise cuz it's not selling off the way it has in cycles past when a potential liquidity crisis arises in markets. It's actually acting as a as a risk off asset right now. Yeah, look it's it's extremely interesting and I think, you know, this is still primarily despite our to your point becoming sulfuric acid and BLCC experts. This is still, you know, primarily a Bitcoin oriented show show with a kind of Bitcoin lens but I think all of the stuff all these headlines we've we've pointed out today and in prior weeks around this situation flow into and are are inputs into that that ultimate view about Bitcoin, right? And to that point like as we see a progressively more fractured perhaps multipolar perhaps just kind of disconnected global order where you know, just in time inventory and supply chains just are a thing of the past and nations no longer implicitly trust one another and you know, the you know, the US Treasury market ceases to be kind of the default store value for sovereign reserves and in general counterparties grow to trust one another less and less especially between these different kind of emerging trade blocks, right? Like that is the environment where something like a neutral sovereign store value without a counterparty that can be moved in arbitrarily large size essentially instantly around the world whose supply you know, cannot be arbitrarily diluted by by any counterparty corporate or government or otherwise that's this is the environment where you would eventually expect something like Bitcoin to to thrive. You know, it's still a baby like it an infant a zygote relative to gold which is the other kind of you know, main theoretical beneficiary of an environment like that and so I expect to see gold certainly continue to be the the default way that sovereigns and corporations big international corporations express an awareness of that view as it becomes more and more consensus but I think we've talked about on the show before. I think that only further and further paves the pathway for Bitcoin to gain you know, a progressively larger percentage share of global wealth and global sovereign store value balances over time as that thesis gets gets more and more obvious and more clear and yeah, I mean I think we might have said it in in prior episodes as well but like this is the kind of price action that you look for for like bottom formation in any asset not calling a bottom because like if we wake up tomorrow and Trump decides you know, we're actually just going to unload the nukes on on Tehran like who knows what's going to happen and certainly pray that that does not happen. There are a lot but you know, there are a lot of fat left tails here now that have to be considered so who knows what's going to happen week to week month to month but in general when you see something price and something get absolutely nuked everyone's puking running away from it. It gets out of favor and then like really bad headlines start to hit that should be really scary and you know, the thing kind of does nothing or even goes up a little bit like that's what you want to see for for bottom formation. So I you know, I definitely think if you're looking just at the Bitcoin lens, this is this has been I think a very constructive environment for Bitcoin's fundamentals and and I don't think that's lost on you know, big banks big corporations and importantly you know, sovereigns who are kind of dealing with this. Yeah, and we'll we'll bring it back to to Bitcoin particularly in this environment cuz there's some speculation about how it's being used in the street of Hormuz by by the IRGC but before we get to that I think another shifting back to to the East-West dynamic the levers that are being pulled and I think it's very clear that at least between the United States and China this race to win the AI war is considered existential by both by both governments if you will and I think one of the sort of sub themes of the last week is Anthropic's model Mythos which they have not released. They're actually they've released it I guess to to enterprise clients Google and others in attempt to try to make sure that systems are prepared for when it does get unleashed on on the public because they're positioning it as something that is more powerful than any LLM that's ever existed. There was a report out there that was able to find zero-day bugs in many of the the critical software libraries and operating systems that that exist out there and that people depend on and so Anthropic sounded the alarm bell last week like we think this model is a a step function improvement on Opus 46 and it's too dangerous to unleash and that has caught the attention of the government and there were many sort of meetings on the hill last week about this one of which was Scott Bessent summoning Wall Street leaders for an urgent meeting concerns concerning Mythos and how they should be preparing for it and so you can begin to see a narrative an AI narrative bubbling into the the scene as well. And it looks like we're getting to a point where the governments are saying no these these tools are very powerful and we'll get into what could be happening here. So what are your thoughts on this? Yeah, for sure. I mean I totally think that the basic narrative that you outlined is is all legitimate and potentially like I think that's how it's been generally received in in the media and you know, it's it's not in any way beyond the realm of reality that everything that Anthropic is saying or like leaking out whatever through trusted media sources is correct about Mythos. You know, I don't doubt that like we see it every day AI is making crazy gains and eventually if not already like that will have like meaningful cyber security implications and certainly that flows into kind of if you're trying to you know, pull certain strategic levers against you know, a geopolitical adversary right now, you know, pending further distillation we'll we'll see if that can continue but right now the US does have a lead on the frontier models and so we saw it a month ago or two months ago with the the rift between Anthropic and the turn of war on you know, how the models could be used but this is becoming more and more of a legitimate national security conversation and you know, a a key kind of weapon in the what Washington I think sees as this decoupling to you know, a softer hard decoupling is kind of up to you to think about but I think that's all legitimate. I I I found the story really interesting though this week because it's like when I when I just came across the wire it just kind of didn't fully pass the sniff test for me and maybe it's just after years of you know, being manipulated by every form of being like the most propagandized generation like in in history, right? And so maybe I'm just my tin foil hat's gotten too much use but you know, for for the Treasury Secretary and the Fed chairman so Powell and Bessent to have a joint meeting that was you know, allegedly apparently like an urgent emergency meeting with basically the heads of all the US G-SIBs so the globally systemic important banks. Jamie Dimon interestingly was not there. I don't know if that means anything but in any case you know, City see here City Morgan Stanley Bank of America Wells Fargo all kind of summoned the heads of those banks summoned to and Goldman summoned to DC to have this joint meeting and you see that it's about cyber security and it's like okay, maybe right? Like it's definitely possible that that you know, there's some zero-day in you know, the core elements of like banking tech infrastructure that you know, they need to be aware of and need to you know, quickly find patches for and it's going to have this major you know, it's this major systemic risk to the US and their customers and you know, US financial infrastructure. That's definitely possible but our buddy Matt Dines at Build you know, had an interesting tweet that I feel like you know, really resonated with me over over the weekend. It was aligned with kind of my thinking that if you were if you were going to you know, perhaps leverage Mythos where you have this kind of geopolitical lead right now against your adversaries on something like financial infrastructure you know, might you want to read in the heads of the biggest banks in in your country and I believe also the Bank of Canada was was later kind of briefed on this and brought into brought into the circle. You know, might you want to brief these guys on something that you were about to do or that you wanted them to do, right? And I think and then and then would you not kind of you know, allow the the narrative to percolate that you know, it was just about kind of informing them about cyber security risks. You know, as with a lot of things we talk talk about on the show maybe that's only a 10% or 20% probability but I think the the market was reading it as like a zero, right? Last week it was pretty hook line and sinker type narrative that exactly what was presented was was correct or what was happening and I think it's worth thinking about again as we like consider where we're going in you know, this world that we're heading into the the assets that you want to be allocated to in a case where something like that you know, were to happen and I think even more generally like putting putting the tin foil hat on even more if if I were looking at as the Fed and Treasury if I were looking at the systemic breaks that might be coming down the pipe from everything that we're seeing just like generally in in energy markets and how that flows through to all these other markets to food to metals and mining to AI to government tax receipts ultimately in government finances. If I saw that coming down the pipe I might want to urgently gather all the heads of the G-SIBs and like you know, read them in on hey here's here's what's going to happen. Here's over the next month like what we see coming. Here are the new facilities we might want to put in place. We need to have you guys ready to do XYZ thing and inevitably that meeting's going to get leaked, right? If all those guys are there in that same room at one time. So I might also just want to float the cyber security Mythos narrative as a complete red herring and and redirect from you know, what what what people would otherwise be speculating about you know, this kind of meeting, right? So this is like definitely tin foil hat territory. It's definitely speculative territory but you know, we've seen much crazier things and it's I think definitely not outside the realm of possibility that we're about to hit some sort of like systemically hairy event in you know, Western financial infrastructure or just global financial infrastructure in the next like month and if so like this is exactly the type of meeting that you would expect to see, right? Well, I mean I'm picking up what you're putting down. I'm picking up what Matt's putting down. The whole Mythos narrative it was very very obvious. I mean I think the first day they where they released the research on the zero days and wrote the blog post and said hey, we have this model. We're not releasing it. They actually what do they call it? Operation Glass Wing they they which is giving it to all the enterprise clients so they can prepare their systems like that narrative hit. It was scary but then two days later, somebody released another report like, well, actually, they could have used Opus 46 to get like 80% of the way there, and it's actually not that big of an improvement on Opus 46. And then, I was saying, I don't know if you saw this commentary from some hardcore white hat hackers. They're like, hey, we all know these zero days exist. People couldn't find them if they want to, but it's legal to actually like execute a zero day bug on these critical systems. Like, you would go to jail, you'd be found out. So, like, people have known that these zero days exist, they just don't take advantage of them because it's it's very illegal, and we're talking federal prison. So, it's not as groundbreaking as Anthropic was was making a myth us to be. And then, another meeting that was on I don't know saw I don't know if it was a meeting or just a warning, but I think the Treasury warned about private equity and private credit or ex- exposure to insurance companies or vice versa, insurance players sort of exposure to private credit and private equity, which has been bubbling behind the scenes. I had Nick Nemeth, his young analyst, is diving into this, doing research in parallel with Tom Grober Gober, excuse me, who was on Steve Eisman's podcast about a month ago ringing the alarm bell about insurance's exposure to private credit and the mismatch liabilities that that may emerge there and potential trillion-dollar hole. And so, to your point, maybe there is a liquidity crisis as private credit um I guess bubble popping. There were more redemption gates last week. I forget which fund. Was it Apollo? No, it was it was Carlyle. Carlyle. Yeah. And so, you you have you have this private credit complex that seems to be slowly blowing up. And to your point, like, it would not be shocking at all to learn that MEV was a red herring used to get all the banks in the room to say, hey, this private credit thing's actually pretty systemic. Like, you guys need to prepare. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I forgot to put it on the slides, but yeah, we had it in the the newsletter this past week, but with in addition to everything else going on in global supply chains and all the implications that, you know, can and will have, you know, we've got a trillion-dollar kind of what appears increasingly to be like a slow-moving train wreck in private credit, especially as it relates to the insurance industry's exposure to it. And there was a there was an A.M. Best report that was released over the weekend about how basically diagnosing that the annuity-selling insurance funds are significantly worse off, in their words, than in terms of financial positioning than they were on the eve of the financial crisis because of this private credit exposure. So, yeah, look, I don't know if it was that. I don't know if it was somebody were completely missing or misdiagnosing. But yeah, in in general, I think worth asking yourself, like, does the MEV narrative for that meeting really kind of hold water? And if not, what might it suggest that, you know, that that was happening last week? Yeah. Such uncertainty. Uncertainty, risk, bad credit exposure. Crazy times, crazy times. But moving on, moving this back to Bitcoin, like we're saying, relative strength, and there is a narrative forming in the Strait of Hormuz about a tolls being paid and who's controlling the strait. Obviously, Trump over the weekend said we're going to put the Navy in a print a blockade. But before that, last week, one of the big narratives was that when the ceasefire was on and you had the list of concessions that each side was making for a period of time of a few days last week, one of the concessions was, okay, the IRGC will have control of the strait and will be able to charge a toll for ships making their way through the strait. And one of the narratives that formed was Financial Times reporting that the IRGC is accepting only accepting Bitcoin for payment in the Strait of Hormuz. And many Bitcoiners picked this up. We talked about it in one of the Bitcoin briefs last week. At TFTC, Matt and I covered it extensively on Rabbit Hole Recap last week. But I think um whether or not it was true, I think I think this is a good way to sort of just talk about this cuz who knows? Like we're saying, the headlines are switching every 12 hours at this point, and who knows what's actually happening. But let's just talk about the theoretical, the idea of Iran having control and then only accepting Bitcoin as payment and why that makes sense. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, all all the caveats like that you guys have talked about, you know, apply. Like, maybe he, you know, misspoke, maybe he meant stablecoins, maybe he this guy was just completely making it up, maybe he's not authorized to speak for it. Totally can buy the idea [clears throat] that this would be a really hacky kind of way like what the way they're describing how they would do it. Like, could you ever would that ever sustain? Would they have any ability to to actually enforce anything like this? Like, all those questions are legitimate. Alex Thorn at Galaxy did a really good article last week about that I recommend people read about this and answering kind of questions about its its validity. So, you know, put that aside. But I think it was like it's a very interesting and and meaningful little kind of item in in Bitcoin's history and in growth as it's it's mainstreaming, right? Like that this would be reported, taken seriously, and, you know, legitimately considered by a lot of people, you know, last week well outside kind of the Bitcoin echo chamber, you know, I think speaks to a growing diffusion of awareness, of understanding of of Bitcoin's properties. Um and I think you guys at TFTC did a really good graphic that I I put on the next slide about, you know, what Bitcoin can do as money. And, you know, there's a you of course got all the reply guys who, you know, wanted to score their their Twitter likes, you know, when this this headline hit about how Bitcoin's so slow or it's it's bad for payments or, you know, how terrible it would be for the for Iran actually try to use it. And I I just I like this this taxonomy that you guys put out of the different ways that Bitcoin either natively or with layer-two solutions or, you know, layer three or kind of the application layer, however you want to think about it, for these different use cases, Bitcoin can kind of slot into a bunch of different areas on the spectrum between, you know, the need for very fast, quick, cheap micropayments to something more like your your coffee payments to some something more on enterprise level to finally like, you know, providing money for enemies, right? The the classic meme that is becoming less and less a meme and more and more I think obviously acknowledged for for what it is, which is, you know, Bitcoin as this this neutral asset that is is ideally suited for highly sensitive, large settlements between untrusted counterparties, which is to to our point from the the start of the show today, you know, exactly what we're looking at more and more, you know, whether regardless of what happens with Hormuz. Like, that seems to be the world that we're heading in. And, you know, I think this this week with that headline was a great little kind of test case or or dry run for people to to think through the properties that would make a story like that plausible, you know, in the first place. Yeah, and just to really dig into this, this is something that I I've been saying for probably like five or six years now. Or back when I was working at Great American Mining, it's funny. I've got my my Great American Mining coffee mug today. But for those who are unaware, I helped co-founded a off-grid Bitcoin mining company where we mitigated flare gas using Bitcoin mining in the Bakken. Company started in 2018. Early to the game. But back then, like when I was was close to that that part of the mining industry, it like became very obvious to me. Like, obviously, you have the the function of mining using wasted trend energy to monetize those assets. But then you think about Bitcoin as the monetary good. And always like made sense to me. Like, we'll know that Bitcoin has made it and it is a sort of well-recognized reserve asset, global settlement network when international oil trades are are being done in Bitcoin. And to your point, like thinking about the scale of that type of transaction, you're not going to want to do that through the Lightning Network or probably using any cashment. You're going to want the assurances of protocol-level Bitcoin, on-chain Bitcoin, and the the properties that exist at that level. And I think the main properties are, number one, final settlement that is basically buried in energy in the form of blocks being produced on top of the block that includes your transaction. And then, sort of the the smart contract capabilities of Bitcoin, particularly multisig, where you can you can envision a future where you have international oil trade. You have a buyer who says, okay, I want I want to buy oil from you. And the seller says, okay, I will bring you the oil, but I need some sort of assurance that that you're actually going to deliver the money at the end of the day. So, the buyer puts Bitcoin up in a multisig escrow where maybe they hold a key, the the seller of the oil holds a key, and an impartial third party holds a key. The oil get gets delivered, and the the receiver says, okay, I got the oil, you can disperse the funds to the seller. The Strait of Hormuz toll is not that exactly, but it is a step in that direction. It's not settling the oil trade, it's enabling it to happen in the first place in this in this war wartime in this war footing that we're we're seeing right now. And I I think to your point, it is a validation of something that Bitcoiners, myself, yourself, have been talking about for many years now. And through all all the noise, I think that's one signal, the fact that it's even being considered or talked about. Who knows if it's actually being considered, but the fact that it's being talked about and recognized as a mechanism to facilitate this this particular toll use case between enemies is is a validation of why Bitcoin exists. And on that note, I know we're running long here, this probably be a longer episode, I think juxtaposing why Bitcoin is perfectly suited for this and something like stablecoins is not and dovetailing into the piece that you published over the weekend. Yeah, for sure. You know, you heard a lot about, you know, when when this this headline hit, there was this debate like I was referring to between whether it was would he mean did he mean stablecoins? Did he actually mean include Bitcoin? And I think that whether he did or he didn't, I think there's it brings up a an interesting differentiation, an important differentiation, which is, if if Iran truly wanted to take some form of digital currency for this hypothetical toll booth that I think we all agree probably like isn't going to exist at scale. If any country wanted to do that in an untrusted environment, particularly if they were an adversary of the US, they really wouldn't want to do it with stablecoins, with which are basically, you know, wrappers for the US banking system. And I I wrote a piece digging into that at you know at at great length. You can find it at 1031timestamp.com/stablecoins. Um you know most of it is not uh definitively not about Iran or or the situation, but just kind of going over a taxonomy of where we sit with stable coins and some of the consensus narratives that have emerged around them. I think we're uh the piece and and we at 1031 are directionally aligned with the idea that there will be a future for an an a probably a thriving future for some form form of a digital dollar. Um but I think the there's been a belief that that's going to mean uh significant benefits for public blockchains on which uh these stable coins currently ride. And I think the the essence of the piece you can kind of see roughly distilled in this very complicated table that we don't have to get into, but basically it you know the the thesis is blockchains are not really purpose-built for uh facilitating high volume, especially sensitive uh dollar-denominated commerce or fiat-denominated commerce. Um if you the things that people want out of stablecoin payments are uh you know better suited for just being run on a database. You know centralized very fast highly optimized database, which uh because blockchains don't scale natively, you're going to end up with some form of significant intermediation and you know uh trusted third parties kind of regardless of of what you do. Like that's that's where the incentive skew. That's where the the the technical details ultimately skew and push you. And so in in that case, you know if you're just going to use a database for which for sensitive dollar-denominated commerce, the future I think is going to look very different for what we think of as stablecoins today. And you know the whatever benefit they might see uh is not going to flow through to to public blockchains. And so there's a lot that we're not going to get into today, but recommend people go check that out as they think through especially like what is the future of international exchange look like? You know is is the oil trade going to run on on US uh USD-denominated stablecoins on Ethereum? Um as you think through questions like that with everything we're seeing today, hopefully that piece is is helpful in maybe answering why some of those instincts are are misplaced. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody go read it and on that note too, I don't know if you saw it, but I think a headline hit the tape this morning that the Trump administration is is floating a 1% remittance tax as well. And so that's like just another example of like okay, if they do that remittance tax and people are choosing to do that via stablecoins or the traditional banking system, the likelihood of them having to pay that tax is far higher than if they were to use something like Bitcoin, which can be sent and received relatively pseudo-anonymously. So if you want to route around that, Bitcoin is better suited than stablecoins or the traditional banking system. Which to be clear, we're not promoting or endorsing anyone trying to get around US laws and regulations. Just identifying the likely >> describing the landscape that exist. Agreed. John, this was great. Almost 40 minutes. Our longest one yet, but I think it was important to go as deep as we did today considering everything going on and really ending on your piece, which again everybody should go read. I think I said this over a year ago was my pinned tweet for the better part of the last year, which is I think the noise of this cycle within Bitcoin and broader cryptos, stablecoins, and real world assets, the sig the signal is going to be Bitcoin, um its integration to the energy sector, and its emergence in international commerce. I said that I believe in July of '25. Um and it seems to be playing out. June of '25, I think. So, here we are. Till next week. See you guys.