The Future of Bitcoin | EBC11

Thank you so much for the introduction. Uh good afternoon everyone. Hope everyone had a great lunch. Uh Bitcoin what an asset class it has been. If we take a look back more than 10 years ago it was trading at almost nothing just a few hundred and now it has a market cap of more than $2 trillion.

And literally everyone is talking about it. Be it like institutions, asset managers, family offices.

I don't think it's on. I don't think I can hear.

You guys can hear me, right?

All okay now. Yeah, you guys can hear me. Perfect. Yeah.

So yeah, I was talking about Bitcoin as an asset class that what a fantastic journey it has been in the last decade or so. uh for for the asset class. I mean, starting at just a few hundred dollars and now a market cap of more than $3 trillion. So, it's it's it's a it's a hell of a journey for sure. But that was about the past.

What we need to do is we need to discuss the future of Bitcoin. And there are different angles to it. Um I hope I had a crystal ball myself to predict the future of Bitcoin, but unfortunately that's not the case. But I do have a bunch of experts who can shed some light on different angles for sure. So without further ado, I would like to proceed with introductions, please.

Introductions. Yeah.

Uh hi. Uh I'm Richard Hodges. Uh I work for Feroh Capital and for KHN. U we uh manage about $100 million of Bitcoin uh options volatility. Uh and we um trade stat um a statistical uh arbitrage strategy.

Jeremy. Yeah. Hi everybody. Uh Jeremy Drier, CBDO at Go Mining as well as uh managing director at Go Mining Institutional. Go Mining.

We are the world's largest retail platform for tokenized Bitcoin mining. We have successfully tokenized ownership over hash rate. Um, so just to kind of quickly explain it, we buy and run data centers for mining Bitcoin and then we've tokenized the mining power that is created in that data center and we've put that into a digital minor format that is purchased then through our app. The user that pes the purchase the digital miner then receives the Bitcoin from our data center. It's no different than if they were mining Bitcoin themselves.

uh the the platform now is expanding more into a Bitcoin ecosystem platform allowing users to earn on Bitcoin, lend Bitcoin, um use Bitcoin because we need to move past the old um digital gold um area of Bitcoin and and get into the actual use case of Bitcoin. So, u we're going to continue to expand that platform uh going forward.

Iden. Hi, my name is Iden Kick. I'm the president CEO of Hive Digital Technologies. We're a global Bitcoin miner. over 2% of the network globally.

We mine over nine Bitcoin a day. We have operations in Sweden, Paraguay, and Canada with about 440 megawws. And all of our energy is hydroelect electricity. We're publicly traded on the NASDAQ, the TSXV, as well as the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Moreover, we're doing about $20 million of annual revenue in AI compute.

We're an Nvidia cloud partner, but we're here mostly today to talk about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. Hive is actually the first publicly traded crypto miner ever. We went public in September of 2017. So we've been through two Bitcoin havings, an Ethereum merge, and we also built our own ASIC minor with Intel in 2022. So yeah, that's the high level.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Michael Ashby. I am the CEO and CIO of Aquant. We are one of the largest multi-manager platforms in digital assets.

So what does that mean? We basically are quant platform and we have about 27 managers and um we are one of the larger trading platforms and so we were born out of a large Bitcoin family office um and run about half a billion dollars in AUM. Thank you.

Well, thanks for the introductions. Michael, you previously have background in in 72 in in in the hedge fund world as well. Now we are seeing tons of hedge funds, asset managers, family offices, high frequency trading firms getting into into Bitcoin trading. In your opinion, in the Bitcoin investment world, where are the opportunities to generate returns?

That's a good question. So, I'm sure everybody here is aware of what happened uh a few days ago with the uh rather interesting weekend or lack thereof. Um, so I guess I'll start there. there's there's still a lot of institutional uh build that needs to happen. It's a very young space and um you see that with most of the trading teams being quite small.

The strategies in traditional finance tend to be quite capacity large but alpha uh poor. In crypto it's the opposite. So you have small capacity but lots of alpha you can make. So what that means is that most of the teams are 5 10 15 people. When you have trading teams that are that small, you can't expect them to have large risk management compliance technology departments.

So what happens when a um a glitch in the system like we saw last weekend? Everybody gets wiped out. And um I think what we're going to see over the next sort of 6 to uh 12 months is the bigger firms get bigger and um the infrastructure will have to get more robust. And so you know it wasn't uh what nine months ago we had a similar incident with another exchange that was hacked. Um we don't have these kinds of incidents in traditional finance.

And so I think to to answer your question what what we see happening is that um some of the larger firms will enter some of the smaller firms will join larger firms and volatility although it's at all time lows will continue to sort of move into DeFi and tokenization

and Aaron taking a different view from the fund management side help us understand because you you come from Bitcoin mining background how visible is Bitcoin mining these days in today's Yeah, Bitcoin mining is industrialized industry right now. um in the sense that for example to bring on our expansion in Paraguay we developed 300 megawatt of green energy bitcoin mining we deployed about $400 million US and that included uh about 18 xahash of hardware which was uh bitmain s21 plus hydro miners as well as the infrastructure which is the containers and in addition to that we did about 100 megawatts of air cooled so it's it's heavy infrastructure we own our own subst station. We we own our own land. So at its essence, it's a data center business. So you you have kind of longtail assets on your balance sheet which you know have a 20 30 year economic life cycle and then the AS6 which is the most expensive part the compute you have to upgrade every 3 to four years.

So the secret to Bitcoin mining and we are the longest standing publicly traded Bitcoin miner in the industry. uh we lead the sector in having the best ROI and the secret is having ROI because what happens is a lot of people get excited about crypto mining. They think it's exotic. They think that you can make a lot of money. But because your top line is very volatile, you have to understand how to mathematically model that volatility and how to mathematically uh deploy your capital and ensure that you get an ROI in about 1 to one and a half years after cost so that for the remainder of the 3 to four year cycle of those AS6, you're actually free cash flowing.

So for example, if you deploy $200 million of AS6 in three to four years, you operate them and then they'll be obsolete. It's by design. It's just how the network works. So you have to make sure that you make back a lot more than $200 million in that 3 to four year horizon. And what happens is your ROI, your profit margins start quite high and then they slowly shrink as time goes on because hash price commodifies.

So for example like just by show of hands how many people in the audience are familiar with the concept of hash price just by show of hands. Um okay not many people but a few guys in here get it. So hash price is basically the dollar that the Bitcoin network pays per day for unit of compute. So right now the network is paying just under $50,000 an exahash a day. So we have 22 exahash.

So 22 * 50,000 we're earning about 1.1 million a day of revenue from the network. But of that revenue, we have many different types of AS6 that are operating. And so each ASIC has a different break even. So a brand new ASIC, an S21 plus hydro right now is operating with a profit margin of about 60%.

an older generation ASIC uh an S19 J Pro. Those came out three years ago. They're running at about a 25% profit margin. Eventually in a year or two the J Pro will become obsolete probably at the next having right and so you know this and you have to model it. So as long as you can understand and deploy, you know, understand this volatility, deploy capital in basically you buy when there's blood in the streets, the the hardest time to expand in crypto mining is when markets are down, but that's the best time, right?

Because ASIC prices are highly volatile. You want to buy AS6 when they've come down in price. So you have to have a strong treasury strategy. Um, by the way, my executive team's here in the front row, so Tim helps me very closely with this. And uh you've got to buy AS6 when they're they're cheap.

So we bought um a large order for 14 bucks a Terraash. That was a one-year ROI and we'll be free cash flowing and and that that's the business of mining. A lot of operators do go bankrupt. You saw in 2022 FTX went bankrupt. Celsius went bankrupt, but that triggered Core Scientific to go bankrupt and um Argo to go bankrupt.

So it can be perilous, but if you're mathematically attuned to the volatility, you can really flourish. And Jeremy, staying on the Bitcoin mining side, how has the institutional interest changed in Bitcoin mining in the recent years and what do you think where are we heading in this space?

So yeah, to kind of understand where we're at and where we're going on institutional side, um you have to see where where we were. So if you look five years ago, you know, the only option of getting involved in Bitcoin mining was to to get involved with the public miners. I'm investing in public miners. Now with the big shift that we've seen say over the last year and a half, two years, um, with ETFs being approved, Bitcoin becoming, can you hear me?

Bitcoin becoming a true institutional asset that is being held at the at the highest levels. Now, we see now a a shift from just holding Bitcoin to mining Bitcoin as well. And that's that's from the lower level all the way down up to the institutional level. And the the way this works is is most institutions are just now getting their their mind around what Bitcoin is and why they should hold it and why they should invest in it. The logical next step of course is okay, how do I get more Bitcoin?

How do I hold more Bitcoin? And the cheapest way, as we know as Bitcoin miners, is to mine Bitcoin because you're going to get it as a at a cheaper price per Bitcoin long term as long as you are efficiently mining Bitcoin. And we we we're starting to see that shift where institutions uh Bitcoin treasury companies they are starting to move on beyond just purching Bitcoin and getting more into okay let's start to mine Bitcoin let's partner with Bitcoin miners let's open up our own mining firm or let's work with a company such as Go Mining who can provide that that mining as a service and give them access to the to the yield coming from Bitcoin mining. And Richard, coming back to the fund management side of it, um, Bitcoin historically has been criticized by traditional financial managers, asset managers that it is too volatile in nature which has improved quite a lot in the recent times where we have seen even in the recent uh dip that happened over the weekend. Bitcoin loss way lesser as compared to some of the other asset classes.

Are fund managers these days well positioned to take advantage of this crypto volatility or Bitcoin volatility in specific? Um the the short answer is no. Um and I'll tell you what why I think that's the case. Um just going back a little bit, uh Bitcoin is often called digital gold. It's a it's a slight misnomer, but there are some similarities in the way that Bitcoin and gold markets trade.

Um uh the similarities are that uh there is a there is a physical market um and there is a paper market derivatives and it's not uncommon for the derivatives market to separate uh for there there to be a price discrepancy between the paper gold and the physical gold. Uh we're seeing that right now in silver silver markets. that um discrepancy can also occur will also occur in Bitcoin. Uh my good friends here mine Bitcoin. Uh the the potential difference between them and gold miners is that if there is a real demand for gold, we can go and mine more of it.

Uh there's plenty more gold under the ground. It's just expensive to get. But in a few years time, no matter how clever these guys are, there there's going to be no more Bitcoin. And uh at that if if that coincides with there being a huge demand for Bitcoin for an inflation uh proof asset or a polit political proof asset the disconnect between the Bitcoin price and the paper Bitcoin price will become essentially infinity. Um now right now uh we started our business 2 years ago uh and we used to get phone calls saying well you're new guys in Bitcoin you're trading options you're a bit weird we'll try you with 50k and see how it goes.

I'm now getting phone calls from hedge funds in the US who say okay our minimum ticket is $250 million. You're one of two teams that we can identify who can even fill in a DDQ. Uh so how about taking some of our money? Uh there is a an avalanche of money about to enter the Bitcoin market and it's going to cause a huge stress uh between the physical and the paper market and I don't think anyone's prepared for that.

And one question to all of you u a lot has been discussed about the digital asset treasury company in recent months as well. We have seen a new wave of people launching that's what they call it. Um in your opinion what are your thoughts on this trend? A and we can ask like everyone can jump on this one and secondly how do we differentiate because if a company's holding for example strategy they're holding bitcoin and there are 30 other companies holding the similar asset. How do you differentiate then among the digital asset treasury companies?

We'll start with you Richard. uh our experience is that uh the way you differentiate yourself is by not losing money. Uh it's uh cryptocurrency uh asset management has evolved very quickly. Um and I I'm by no means the most experienced guy on the panel here, but um uh a few years ago you could get away with making huge returns and taking big losses. and as long as your returns outweighed your losses, you'd survive as an asset manager because people expected volatility.

Uh that has changed uh now that uh Bitcoin is essentially has become an institutional investment uh asset. Institutions are utterly intolerant of loss. Um and the only asset managers who will survive are the ones who can contain losses. Jim.

Yeah. I mean, what we see from the the the treasury companies is not everybody's going to be able to to duplicate the the strategy that strategy is doing with Michael Sailor. Everyone's trying to to, you know, be the next strategy, but I don't think the majority of them are going to work out. Um, if they're not careful with the risk management and they start to overlever with the amount of Bitcoin that they're buying, you know, we're going to see blowups. we're going to see another, you know, FTX style uh blow up in the space because too many people are leveraging up.

But that's not going to stop this direction. I think we're going to see multiple different directions kind of break out of this uh this big push to put Bitcoin on uh in the treasury. You know, the first is going to be, of course, the the micro strategy uh uh gameplay where they're just going to continue to lever up and buy as much Bitcoin as possible, but then the majority of companies are just going to understand what Bitcoin actually is, which is the the best saving asset that there is, and they're going to continue to just hold it on their treasury without having to worry about, okay, I'm going to do this especially to increase my stock price or, you know, raise debt against or whatever. I'm just going to continue to hold Bitcoin because it's better than holding fiat. Um, and then the third option you're going to have is you're going to have new treasury companies who are going to start to say, "Okay, I need to different sorry, differentiate myself from other treasury companies.

And in order to do that, I got to have a different strategy." So, you're going to see uh companies that are trying to produce actual yield on their Bitcoin. Um, you know, we're already in discussions with multiple treasury companies about mining Bitcoin um for the treasury because now they can get access to cheaper Bitcoin over time. Um, because all they care about is, okay, how can I increase my Bitcoin holdings? So, I think it's going to break out into multiple different strategies over time and you know, we're going to be there to partner with those type of companies.

Um, but I I don't think everybody's going to be able everybody who thinks they're going to be able to be the next strategy. I don't think that's going to work out very well.

I do.

So, first and foremost, I'm a Bitcoiner and I were Bitcoin miners. So, [clears throat] I think part of your question was looking at different digital assets relative to Bitcoin. I mean, it's been well well said on this panel, but Bitcoin's, you know, $2.2 trillion market cap. It's by far the largest digital asset.

It's an energybacked currency. So, Bitcoin has real value, right? Like, Bitcoin is really ordained with physics. The input to the system is energy, jewels of energy, and the output is hash rate, which mathematically converts to Bitcoin. And so, that ratio is what changed with time.

And obviously there's scarcity economics that are ingrained in Bitcoin with through the white paper. But that proof of work, we're proof I've I've always been a proof of work guy. I mean, we used to be a big Ethereum miner. We were 6% of the network. We had 130,000 GPUs mining Ethereum.

Um, proof of work is what gives digital assets a true cost to produce and true value. So that being said, I definitely put bit and then when Ethereum went to proof of stake, we got out of that business, pivoted our GPUs to AI, but our our mining business is firmly rooted in Bitcoin. So having said that, you look at all the big players and institutions um and you know, we got a couple really smart fund managers here. I think Bitcoin without question is is the digital asset of choice as a store of value. Moreover, we had a balance sheet at the beginning of the year.

We had 2,200 Bitcoin. So about a4 billion of bitcoin on our balance sheet and we put that to work to scale our business. So we pledged for example $130 million of bitcoin to expand our business in Paraguay. And when we made that pledge bitcoin was $87,000. So today bitcoins at you know1 and we have an option to buy back those bitcoin those 1300 bitcoin at $87,000.

So, we're $40 million in the money on that trade using our Bitcoin to finance the growth in our business. And usually when you think of financing options there there's a cost. It's like what is your cost of interest or you know is is there is there any any other fees in in a structured finance? We because you know our counterparty in this deal believes in the value of Bitcoin. They said give us your Bitcoin now.

We're going to send you the AS6, right? They sent us hundreds of millions of dollars worth of AS6 and they said you can either repay us with cash or keep the Bitcoin. Well, Bitcoin has obviously gone up and so we're 40 million in the trade. So, I think Bitcoin is a very powerful tool and I think uh you were saying how, you know, obviously with modern monetary theory and zero interest rate policy, there's just so much money printing happening globally. We've seen inflation since co nation by nation and just globally like the cost of goods has gone up you know incredibly and I think we're just going to continue to see that right the US dollar is continually going to be printed uh continually devalued the deficit in the US and and all countries right I mean you know American capital markets are great don't get me wrong but I just think that modern monetary theory almost dictates that we're just going to see more and more monetary um printing and everybody's here at the blockchain conference because you believe the same thing.

Um, and so I think Bitcoin is definitely a good store of value long term, but I think with the layer 2, people can use it day-to-day more often for interactions, etc. We're not in the layer 2 business, but I think it's a very cool ecosystem, and I think that gives Bitcoin a more uh practical use case as well. So yeah, Bitcoin

Michael.

Yeah, I guess um to complement what you said and uh the other panelists, um our our opinion is that the regulation is now set up that we'll get new financial products coming in in the next sort of 12 to 18 months. If you look at traditional Bitcoin miners and DAPs, there's very few products for them to pick for to make yield on Bitcoin and to do it in a safe way. So we [clears throat] we believe that that is coming and I think uh as a positive for the digital asset treasuries as well as the miners, they'll have the ability to have a menu of different options to be able to pick from whether it be more um sort of uh unique setups like you described in in financing or having more sort of uh plain vanilla bonds, options, yield type structures. And so I think um that wasn't possible 12 months ago because of regulation. That's now possible.

And so you're seeing a lot of building happening behind the scenes. We're seeing more in DeFi. As DeFi liquidity rises, we're seeing more traditional finance. [snorts] But I think net net will be in a in a world come this conference next year where there's going to be really interesting products that are on the market to be able to provide a quasi or semi-protected yield on Bitcoin. And Michael staying with you where do you see Bitcoin as an asset class in the next five years and the reason I'm asking this by now okay we started with retail side and retail investors start investing in this market so people got to know about it now almost every institution they know about bitcoin and what bitcoin is and we were talking about early in one of the panels as well that how corporate treasury people they are thinking of adding bitcoin just to diversify their treasuries as well.

Where do you see Bitcoin as an asset class as as a fund manager as an investor in the next five years?

Yeah. So, I guess um I I'll make one comment. So, Bitcoin is still not a practical asset when it comes to uh financial infrastructure. What I mean by that is we sit on a lot of Bitcoin. Um our one of our backers is one of the original Bitcoin uh founders and so I have hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin in our balance sheet.

to get leverage on that bitcoin is quite expensive. So I can go out and borrow you you know tether dollar type assets which we need to trade but it costs anywhere from 7 to 10%. That is a fairly high hurdle and a friction cost for us to be able to run our our quant business. So in to frame it in traditional business and if I hold treasuries I can get leverage at 3%. um right now like you know it's it's it's it's 2x 3x the cost.

So what we're doing is working working with the large banks and um financial institutions around the world whether it be New York, Singapore, uh Abu Dhabi to try to get them comfortable to treat Bitcoin as a as a core asset and that part regulatory part then just learning about Bitcoin part the infrastructure custody etc. But I think everybody on this panel will benefit from Bitcoin being more accepted and I do see that happening. It's just taking a long time.

Aiden, one thing I think that is interesting to note right now in the US, the ETFs are valued at about $150 billion. The ETFs between like uh Black Rockck and Vanguard and all the other Bitcoin spot ETFs. So $150 billion of ETFs is roughly 7% of Bitcoin's total market cap, which which is pretty impressive. What's really interesting though is I was in New York a few weeks ago for a roundt and uh advisor a wealth a wealth manager from Morgan Stanley was saying that um and they've got a huge network of retail brokers at Morgan Stanley. they can't actually recommend their clients to buy the Bitcoin ETF or or the spot yet.

So, everybody that's buying the ETF is actually self-directed, which is pretty interesting. So, like that's a lot of So, that's, you know, someone goes to their their financial advisor says, "Hey, I want Bitcoin. Please go buy this uh for me." Or or they do it themselves on their on their Q trade account or whatever. So, I think that which I I didn't really real.

I'm based in Vancouver, Canada, by the way. And so I thought that was a really interesting uh nuance. So I think once uh the big institutions like once Black Rockck actually puts Bitcoin on their balance sheet as an institution or once JP Morgan puts Bitcoin on their balance sheet, that will be a huge next wave of capital because right now they just have these kind of derivatives, right, which is really like the spot ETF. Um and uh when that happens, we'll see I think even more institutional capital come into the sector. Um but uh yeah, I I hope I answered your question.

It's a lot of feedback noise. So um yeah, I hope I answered it.

Yeah, I have a little bit different view on just Bitcoin as an asset class and where it's going. Of course, on the institutional side, it's going to continue to have more and more adoption. um it's going to be held it's the the corporate level at the uh the sovereign level the state level in the US we we see that happening right now but if we look at Bitcoin and and its growth and where it's going you know we have to understand that when Satoshi created Bitcoin he created it as a store of value which we have you know that's your digital gold but also as a medium of exchange which we are still yet to to reach I believe with Bitcoin so I think you know with the the start of the buildout of the layer 2s of the uh BTC 5 protocols on around Bitcoin. We're going to see a major build out of that over the next 5 10 years. And with that, you're going to see a lot of capital rush into Bitcoin on the DeFi side of things.

Um, a lot of the capital that's in these other chains are going to come back to Bitcoin because Bitcoin is the best underlying collateral that you can have. Um, I think there's going to be major growth on that side. When it comes to to Bitcoin mining, of course, that's going to help incentivize us miners as we start to see more and more transaction value being done on the blockchain. um as we get through more h havingings and the rewards are getting cut in half. And then I think the next, you know, Aiden can probably agree with me, the next 5 10 years are going to be amazing for Bitcoin miners.

Um we're competing directly with AIHPC for every site that we try to open. They're willing to fork out more money for energy and with that that makes it harder for the network to grow hash rate wise, but we know where the price is going. So there's going to be a kind of arbitrage opportunity there for Bitcoin miners that I think we haven't seen in the past. Um, and I think it's going to be amazing next, you know, 5 10 years for that.

Richard,

yeah, I I think I um I'm more aligned with Michael on this. Uh, I I I see Bitcoin becoming uh the same as any other very scarce asset uh in that it becomes collateral and only collateral and you only ever move your Bitcoin under pain of death. Um I think the market will be that Bitcoin will be stored in vaults and in custody and will be borrowed against um for liquidity u because the the risk of losing your Bitcoin in terms of your future uh inflation defense is is way too high. And one last question before we close this session. But we have seen recently kind of correlation between Bitcoin and for example US indices and all the other stock markets as well.

Do you see this correlation to continue as Bitcoin evolve as one of the leading asset classes in in the financial world? We'll we'll start with you Richard.

Sorry. uh the the correlation that we have seen recently between Bitcoin and for example S&P 500 or all the major financial indices do you see this correlation to continue?

No, we we've we've seen a I mean we monitor the the way that Bitcoin trades very closely. It's what we do um and there was a sea change uh uh immediately after Trump's election. So Bitcoin stopped trading like Bitcoin and started trading like NASDAQ and right now bit holding Bitcoin or holding NASDAQ uh index is the same trade. However, there will come a moment when uh holding Bitcoin will uh well in in the next dislocation and if it's a dislocation up which I'm sure it will be um they will diverge in a most catastrophic way. And I think this feeds into my concerns in my my first answer, which is that fund managers and asset managers and traders on Wall Street see currently see Bitcoin as a risky play thing.

They have no idea of the um importance of it in terms of defense against wanted money printing. And when they realize that, there's going to be a massive rush for for Bitcoin. you'll see you'll see the price um uh accelerate away like you're seeing in the gold markets at the moment, the silver markets. You'll see that times 10 in Bitcoin. Um yeah,

genuine.

Yeah, just real quick. I I totally agree with everything um that shared here, but you know, it's just it's going to be step by step. It's g it's going to be little by little, you know, we're going to see it kind of look as a wrist on asset when it comes to uh investing just like the NASDAQ, but then overnight it's just going to diverse and take off and everyone's going to be like, oh, why didn't I get a part of that? Hey, we've been talking about it for years. And, you know, I think it's just going to be a certain moment where everyone realize, okay, you know, if you don't have Bitcoin, you're going to be left behind.

Yeah, I think um what we've observed is that Bitcoin is tightly correlated to gold in terms of um you know its movement in the market. Uh administration policy in the US has driven it a lot. Like the Biden administration, Gary Gensler was pretty anti- Bitcoin. So I'm super glad Gary Gensler's gone. He sucks.

He's terrible. And look, the Trump administration, every crypto miner that's publicly traded saw a 52- week high when Trump got elected. So I think with the advent of that and even Trump's sons uh have a Bitcoin mining promotion called American Bitcoin um the rails from a regulatory perspective are allowing I think Bitcoin to um be be more correlated to uh the markets generally but I I wouldn't say it's directly correlated to the S&P or the Dow. Um I I would say it's more tightly correlated to to the gold. But um you know when interest rates are are low and you don't get risk-free yield uh from bonds or whatever then I think people do look at Bitcoin and just crypto in general as a um uh a sort of a better store of value.

But, you know, moreover, I think when you you saw um the last all-time high was in 2021, it was kind of in the wake of um uh COVID, it was showing that people were kind of losing faith in the financial system. And so, you were seeing capital find its way into just the crypto ecosystem broadly. I think this bull market was really uh driven by the new uh Trump administration and and so that's that's exciting. But going forward, I think that just because of the implicit scarcity of Bitcoin, more and more people adopting it, more conferences like this where people are coming to learn about crypto as an ecosystem. And then I think like certain catalyst events, right, that will just drive further adoption.

Um, you know, but in terms of correlation, yeah, I think it's it's really more um almost like the opposite of the dollar, right? like if if you want to have a hedge against inflation, I think people more and more are going to see I hope there's going to be less volatility of Bitcoin price as it becomes more and more institutionalized uh and recognized more and more as a store of value, but we'll have to wait another year to see how that theory plays out.

Yeah, Michael.

Yeah, I guess maybe to support that, I think one of the nuances about um digital assets or crypto in general is that they trade 24/7. So if you're going into the weekend and all of a sudden President Trump decides to kitchen sink and say he's going to 100% tariffs, crypto gets hit hit badly because it's still trading. Everything else is closed. So we foresee a world where most assets become tokenized and most assets trade 24/7. So when that happens, the emphasis on Bitcoin getting hit as a a risk hedge, if you will, will will diminish.

And I think Bitcoin then becomes pure collateral. I do think right now you are seeing it get hurt not because of its Bitcoin just because it's it's easy for them to trade and use as a over weekend overnight hedge or weekend hedge.

Well, it was a lovely discussion. Thanks for your valuable insights and thanks everyone for staying with us. Thank you so much.