0:02

Those two cases, Mt. Gox and

0:04

Bitfinex, laid the foundation for the advisory

0:07

work I did, for example, on Celsius.

0:10

Because in the Mt. Gox case, although

0:12

90% of the Bitcoin was missing,

0:14

and creditors got about 10% of

0:16

Bitcoin, because it was held for

0:18

that entire decade, obviously, it

0:20

became a multi-billion dollar recovery. But

0:24

the biggest decision was when creditors fought early

0:26

to keep the Bitcoin and not sell it. They

0:29

pretty much made the recovery. Well, if you

0:31

don't get... They're doing dollarize.

0:33

Yes, so they dollarized the claim, which is

0:35

a bit scammy. So you only get 10%

0:37

of your Bitcoin back. But

0:40

the Bitcoin was worth so much more, because in

0:42

the whole bankruptcy, they got to ride the

0:44

upside. Oh, I remember it was so

0:46

long ago. All

0:52

right, everyone. Good

0:55

morning. Good afternoon. Good

0:58

evening. What is up? I'm your host,

1:00

Charlie Schramm, and you're listening to another epic

1:02

episode of the Charlie Schramm Show, where together,

1:04

you and I, we get to dive deep

1:07

with some of Bitcoin and crypto's most influential

1:09

leaders to truly understand how this movement

1:11

came to be. And I'm really excited

1:13

today. We have a special guest. He's

1:16

been on the show, Simon, I think once

1:18

or twice before. I forget. Yeah,

1:20

we've done a couple of shows together. Yeah, we've

1:22

done multiple shows together. Simon is a

1:25

big Bitcoin OG. He's been around the

1:27

crypto world for a really long time.

1:30

He's written a phenomenal book called Bank

1:32

to the Future, and has released, I

1:34

think, multiple iterations of it. And you're

1:36

the CEO and co-founder of bank to

1:38

the future.com. I'm seeing pitches

1:40

across all the time now across my

1:43

desk, you know, private equity companies that

1:45

are democratizing finance offering like secondary shares

1:47

on private companies. I'm like, Simon did

1:49

that 15 years ago. These

1:52

companies are not pioneering. That's what Bank to the Future

1:54

kind of has been doing. So Simon,

1:56

you took it upon yourself to be the

1:58

leader of the decentralized. Five Celsius Predator

2:01

Community and I know him personally

2:03

of the creditor of the Voyager.

2:05

When Fcx Voyager celsius and collapsed.

2:08

Voice or we never had a good community

2:10

representation or anything. So I thank you for

2:12

doing that and I think I'm not really

2:14

sure how things are working. Have a assert

2:16

that what is the update on all like

2:18

the collapse of the bankruptcy because I was

2:20

out of the coin day last week and

2:22

someone on the panel with me and he

2:24

was like yeah, no one will still get

2:26

involved and crypto because we're all still burns

2:28

from all the Stx celsius like Voyager, her

2:30

bankruptcies or I feel like everyone's condoms getting

2:32

almost whole at this point, right? So.

2:35

The As as he said them because

2:37

we've been funding companies them right in

2:39

the early days of bitcoin by the

2:41

queen bases, crack and bit stamp it's

2:43

in axes. Ripple Labs

2:45

circle. Brought. same.com many others.

2:47

we kind of at the end of or

2:50

seven to ten years where you know whether

2:52

you're accessing so we had oversee the idea

2:54

of a queen base but also companies we

2:56

invested in be done about one hundred different

2:59

deal with where people could invest in many

3:01

of those companies. About ten of them have

3:03

gone on to be multi billion dollar unicorns

3:05

and others have done well and others actually.

3:08

We had a few scams and I am

3:10

one of those was Celsius. Celsius

3:12

Sam Muszynski came to us.

3:15

You. Know he completely lied about everything

3:17

about his company and the he

3:19

actually had lost. It was in

3:21

twenty Twenty. And the heather

3:23

and are invested in the seed round.

3:26

And. He wanted to pull together his his

3:28

customers of what he didn't I lost

3:30

as that. he just took over the

3:32

trading desk and we didn't find this

3:34

out until the whole examiner. Oh wow

3:37

and we only found out like is

3:39

three years later he took over the

3:41

trading desks when sure, Bitcoin crated like

3:43

a sixteen million dollar bad, frayed. And.

3:45

Then later created a multi billion dollar

3:48

whole. So. In a the financials

3:50

and ever produced arena whole time. He

3:52

was it another mount oxide the situation yeah

3:54

but the know there's no half but there

3:56

was like just a bad trade when so

3:58

early on when decline with little bit cheaper

4:01

at a ballooned into like a larger amount.

4:04

A was worse cause I'm in A. He

4:06

created a token to fill the whole pizza

4:08

call of clients' money and on top six

4:10

hundred million dollars of our money than he

4:12

acts as it is token and he took

4:15

all of his money out of the platform.

4:17

Say he's facing up to one hundred and

4:19

fifteen years of what he did was there

4:21

is. It was a lot worse than my

4:23

God which I put down. see kind of

4:26

incompetent operations in a yeah I am when

4:28

he no, no, no one could operate in

4:30

exchange. Then there was the only real one

4:32

side. I. See them as different

4:34

things for different reasons, but bring in

4:36

back to the bankruptcy conversation. Actually, it

4:39

was the mountain goats lesson. And

4:41

another one we were involved in which was

4:43

bit snacks and twenty six scene. Where.

4:45

They lost a hundred and twenty thousand

4:48

behind They were hacked and those two

4:50

cases mangold some bits. The next laid

4:52

the foundation for the advisory work I

4:54

did. for example, on Celsius because in

4:56

the Mouth got case. Although.

4:59

Ninety percent of the bitcoin was missing

5:01

and credits has got about them said

5:03

the bitcoin because it was held for

5:05

the entire decade. Obviously. It

5:07

became a multi billion dollar dollar

5:09

recovery. But. The biggest decision was

5:11

when crisis as for early to keep the

5:14

bitcoin and not seller and that pretty much

5:16

made the recovery. And will have

5:18

you ever there is a dollar as.

5:20

Yesterday dollarized the claim which is a bit

5:23

scam money for you any gets him said

5:25

you a bitcoin back but the bitcoin was

5:27

worth so much more because. In. The

5:29

whole bankruptcy got. They got to ride the

5:31

outside. On number was so

5:33

long ago. There. Was another one we

5:35

bit. snacks were an issue. Once you hit

5:38

a hundred percent hold you have an issue

5:40

because the with my uncle the reason it's

5:42

at ten years as cause once everyone could

5:44

be made one hundred percent whole everyone comes

5:46

along and season says well I'm next in

5:49

line. I'd like my these set of ones

5:51

bitcoin an old say the outside and in

5:53

the shareholders com long as they settled the

5:55

bitcoin and I would say the outside. and

5:58

so you end up in this mode year

6:00

opportunistic legal battle. And so with

6:02

Bitfinex, we got out before it

6:04

was 100% whole. And

6:07

that's pretty much what we did with these

6:09

bank proxies with Celsius. So

6:11

because we exited before it was 100%

6:13

whole, and we had the dollarized claim,

6:15

which was basically he lost 75% of

6:19

our Bitcoin and crypto, but the price suddenly

6:21

makes up the difference. And so you've got

6:23

to get out in enough time in between.

6:25

And so I took the lessons of Mt.

6:28

Gox and Bitfinex and really

6:30

pushed in the courts. We have to

6:32

get out now, there's no time for

6:34

procrastination, and the judge listens. And so

6:36

we had a much, much better outcome

6:39

than say, BlockFi and FTX that just

6:41

sold all the crypto right away. It

6:43

was a really bad situation. So I

6:46

want to pause right there and introduce

6:48

Enrico Ruboli, who is the driving force

6:50

founder and CEO of Mintlayer, a Bitcoin

6:53

layer two sidechain that's enhancing

6:55

Bitcoin's capabilities. Rico, welcome

6:57

to the show. Hi, hi,

6:59

everyone. You also actually

7:01

you are a lead developer at

7:03

Tether and was involved back in

7:06

the day at like one of

7:08

the part of the development team

7:10

that was merging from when Tether

7:12

was actually on Mastercoin and migrated

7:15

over to Ethereum, which is now pretty much

7:17

where, you know, USDT pretty much exists. But

7:19

back in the day was on Mastercoin. So

7:21

it was like kind of the early days.

7:23

But Simon, I want to bring it back

7:25

to you for a second, because while I

7:27

was introducing Enrico, I had a question. Alex

7:30

Maschinski kind of did the same

7:32

thing that Bitfinex did. But the

7:34

differences with Bitfinex is when

7:36

Bitfinex launched their token to fill the hole.

7:38

Well, Bitfinex was a hack, first of all.

7:41

But with the Bitfinex situation, it was

7:43

a debt based token that they launched

7:45

to prevent them from having to go

7:47

into bankruptcy to fill the creditors claim

7:50

they launched a token to fill that

7:52

gap. But everyone knew about it. And in

7:54

fact, all the investors who bought it made a

7:56

lot of money that token is like made a

7:58

lot of people money over the years. everyone

8:00

who in that Bitfonetics hack was made

8:02

whole, but what Alex did was he

8:04

was the one who fucked up, but

8:06

he also then had the good idea

8:08

of launching the token. But then because

8:10

there was no transparency from the beginning,

8:13

all the agenda of the token and all

8:15

the backroom dealing and everything had to, it

8:18

was always going to be lying, lying, lying,

8:20

lying all the time. It's such

8:22

a different situation because we want debt-based

8:24

tokens. Bankruptcy tokens is cool. It could

8:26

prevent years of bankruptcy

8:28

courts and lawyers from taking money.

8:31

Yeah, let me tell you

8:33

the difference. The difference is Celsius

8:35

was launched with the sell token

8:37

and Majinsky would lie

8:39

to his customers and

8:42

ask them to drain out their

8:44

retirement funds, take all of their money,

8:46

put it into Celsius. He would lose

8:48

more and more and more of client

8:50

money, but then he would use it

8:52

to pump the price of the sell

8:55

token so that he could fill the

8:57

hole because when he's reporting his balance

8:59

sheet, he's saying, we've got an

9:01

asset worth $3 billion, which

9:03

is a sell token, which needed to

9:05

be discounted like 90% for liquidity because

9:09

you could never sell that token.

9:11

So it was a deliberate fraud.

9:13

And then he would use that

9:15

in order to enrich himself, sell

9:18

his tokens. But all of the

9:20

Bitcoin and ETH and everything coming

9:22

in was loss-making

9:24

and he was paying fake yield

9:27

that had no relation to whether

9:29

they were making yield or not. So

9:32

it was a Ponzi that

9:34

was filled with by valuing

9:36

a fake token without

9:38

discounting liquidity. Now Bitfinex,

9:40

they were a solvent exchange and

9:42

120,000 Bitcoin got hacked. So

9:46

they said, we owe our customers $72 million.

9:49

We can't give them Bitcoin debt because we

9:51

can't have this increasing debt every time the

9:54

price of Bitcoin goes up. So they said,

9:56

we owe you $72 million and we'll be

9:58

back. give you 72 million

10:01

tokens, you can keep those

10:03

tokens and we'll repay you a dollar in

10:05

the future if you believe in us. Or

10:08

you can just sell it to someone else and it crashes

10:10

to like 30 cents and someone says,

10:12

yeah, I'll buy a dollar's worth of debt

10:14

for 30 cents. I believe

10:16

that Bitfinnax can fill that hole. And

10:19

then they stabilize the price by allowing

10:21

people to convert. You can

10:23

buy a token for 30 cents and

10:26

convert it for a dollar of equity on banks of

10:28

the future. So they could get a

10:30

company that was valued at 200 million for like

10:32

an $80 million valuation company, or they

10:35

could keep the debt, or they could

10:37

sell off the token. So it was

10:39

just giving them options. And then eventually

10:41

they pay down all the tokens, 55

10:44

million was converted to debt. The price

10:46

of Bitfinnax shares on our secondary market

10:48

went from 30 cents to $16. And

10:50

then they paid out all of their

10:53

profits as dividends. So the difference was,

10:56

one was a pump and dump fake utility

10:58

token to hide a

11:00

hole. The other was a security token,

11:02

a traditional financial product that you could

11:05

trade using the Fats, but it was

11:07

actually built on top of... I think

11:10

it was built on top of Omni. That was

11:12

the Omni days rather than the Ethereum days. Yeah.

11:14

I think it was internally in the platform at

11:16

the beginning. The

11:18

Bitfinnax token, the BFF token. No,

11:21

it didn't. I think,

11:23

yeah. I mean, everyone was trading it on

11:25

Bitfinnax, but then you could take

11:27

the token over to banks of the future and

11:29

convert it to a dollar of equity. And it

11:31

was minted on the blockchain, I think. These

11:33

were like early real world assets. That was

11:37

the first security token. And

11:39

it was an incredibly successful

11:42

security token. It also... You

11:45

know the whole Crocodile Wall Street thing that

11:47

came out later? They minted the

11:49

token, it gave people entitlement. If the 120,000 Bitcoins

11:51

are ever found in the future, you can

11:55

have some of them. So it's a recovery right

11:57

token. But the DOJ is holding on to them

11:59

right now. we're going to find out whether.

12:01

Oh, that's cool though. Yeah. Yeah. So they

12:03

might come back. Thank you for giving me

12:05

my segue into real world assets, by the

12:08

way. And I love that the term of

12:10

the 2024 term for security tokens is like

12:12

RWAs, but I like it better. And we

12:14

are seeing like tons of companies that are

12:17

tokenizing, especially like private shares in, in startups

12:19

and companies like space X and stuff like

12:21

that, that we all want you see like

12:23

retail products around that. We're seeing like

12:25

tons of company do real estate token based products,

12:28

pledging assets, like being able to pledge your Bitcoin

12:30

for mortgages. Even you're seeing a little bit of

12:32

that on chain, which is kind of cool. But

12:35

I really think like bankruptcy debt base,

12:37

all these types of products that can

12:39

bring the transparency of above board is

12:41

my favorite thing, but Enrico, why do

12:43

you think people are going to launch

12:45

these things on top of Bitcoin? So

12:48

Bitcoin is the hardest money we

12:50

have. Right. So is I like

12:52

to think of, you know, putting

12:54

together things that makes sense. Right.

12:57

So Bitcoin makes sense. Real world

12:59

asset makes sense. Gold makes

13:01

sense. My opinion. They

13:03

need to stay together. Right. So it's, they

13:05

need to stay in a, in a, if

13:08

you want a decentralized platform, they need to

13:10

say in a, in a platform where they

13:12

are all exchangeable one each

13:14

other. So I think Bitcoin

13:16

is the highway, right? The main highway where

13:19

all these things needs to transition and move.

13:21

Yeah, I think so too. I was like,

13:23

actually asking chat GPT this morning, like now

13:25

that the Bitcoin ETF is approved, what is

13:27

Bitcoin? Is it, is it money? Is it

13:30

a commodity? I'm not really sure what it

13:32

is now. So I was kind of like

13:34

trying to figure that out. Tell

13:36

us about mint layer and why you guys started it in

13:39

the background. You've been on our show before actually, now that

13:41

I'm remembering, I think like a year and a half ago.

13:44

Yeah. We've been in the show and actually

13:46

after you came on the show, our fun

13:48

drew adventures invested in, in mint layer a

13:50

couple of years ago. So that was really

13:52

exciting. I can't tell you how many of

13:54

the projects of people we came on the

13:56

show. We ended up like meeting and, and

13:58

either investing in or. introducing to other

14:01

VCs in the space? Yes,

14:03

in a long time, we spend

14:05

a lot of time building. So

14:09

the main reason is that what I just said, right?

14:12

So I wanted to take what

14:15

makes sense and put those all together.

14:18

And I wanted to

14:20

find a solution that allows

14:22

the Bitcoin chain not to

14:24

be congested, not to be

14:26

touched, because we know that

14:28

the space on chain is

14:30

scarce. We

14:32

need to use it carefully, right?

14:34

Well, yeah, every time. We need

14:36

a secondary lane for these things.

14:38

And I think what was missing

14:41

was a secondary lane with the

14:43

same characteristic of Bitcoin, so same

14:45

structure, same model, and a

14:47

way to make it easy for things

14:51

that are issued on the

14:53

secondary lane easily with main

14:55

currency. Every time

14:58

you see ordinals or you see

15:00

some popular Bitcoin-related NFT or something

15:02

that clogs the main chain, it

15:04

always ends up clogging the main

15:06

chain. How will this be different, though?

15:10

Ordinals are existing because of SegWit,

15:12

right? So SegWit is splitting the

15:14

block in two parts. And basically,

15:16

you pay the fees only for

15:18

the first part, the one megabyte

15:20

limit, right? So

15:24

this is where the scarcity comes

15:26

from. And ordinals are

15:28

putting the data on the other

15:30

side, paying just for the part

15:33

that is on the main

15:35

side or an hybrid from

15:37

that. It's fine. As

15:39

long as the transaction is valid, I

15:41

think it needs to go on. There's

15:44

no way to filter out all these things,

15:46

right? You can just keep filtering

15:48

and filtering. There will always

15:51

be a way to do that.

15:53

Yeah. With

15:55

main player, we did a separated

15:58

lane for those things. In

16:00

Mint layer we have specifically, you

16:03

mentioned the NFT, right? So we

16:05

have an NFT standard, so it's

16:07

built in. It's not a smart

16:09

contract that you have to deploy

16:11

or something. It's a built-in feature

16:14

of the sidechain. Only the assets

16:16

need to be somewhere else, right?

16:18

Obviously, again, if someone

16:20

comes on the Mint layer chain and

16:23

put an image, a picture there,

16:25

there's nothing we can do to prevent it. The

16:28

standard is made like this, like

16:31

the picture is supposed to be

16:33

somewhere else. I think the NFT

16:35

is a property certificate for this

16:38

property, right? So the picture of

16:40

the image or the media, right?

16:42

It doesn't matter if you have

16:44

a million copies of that, what

16:46

the matter is the certificate in

16:48

terms of valuing that.

16:51

Yeah. On that note

16:53

though, a lot of regulations

16:55

would require these real

16:57

world assets to have, for

17:00

example, you do KYC on all the

17:02

token holders. You have features like that

17:04

built in, so you can almost create

17:06

gates around if you wanted to do

17:08

regulated tokens or smart contracts

17:10

that did mortgages or something like

17:12

that, or even bankruptcy and debt-based.

17:14

You can obviously create a token

17:17

and ensure that it's

17:19

only traded between people. That

17:22

is the KYC by the

17:24

issuer. So this is one

17:26

of the things that can, one

17:28

of the main regulation component

17:31

of security. This is

17:33

absolutely possible. So you can issue

17:36

already from the, we are

17:38

improving that, but already from

17:41

the start of

17:43

Mint layer, from

17:46

the mainnet, the first version of the mainnet,

17:48

you can already do that.

17:51

Simon, you're in the UK right

17:53

now? I'm in a little island called

17:55

Isle of Man. I had to leave you with it. Oh

17:57

yeah. I love Isle of Man. Do people care about

17:59

that? the Bitcoin ETF right now in the US?

18:02

The ETF is massive

18:05

news. Because you said

18:07

UK, UK actually made it where you

18:09

can't actually put the Bitcoin ETF in

18:12

certain retirement products. So

18:15

yeah, they actually made that

18:17

happen. UK is kind of in

18:19

the middle of implementing their

18:21

rules and regulations around crypto

18:23

assets called the financial promotion rules is something we

18:26

have to comply with now. I

18:28

think we're tying a few

18:30

topics together. So the whole

18:32

concept of trying to create

18:34

tokens on top of Bitcoin has been something

18:36

we've been trying to do for what, 2012,

18:38

I think was the

18:41

whole when everyone got excited about it. And

18:43

then you had some of those early tokens,

18:45

which was Tether, and then the security token

18:48

for the Bitfinex side.

18:50

And then obviously, Ethereum was

18:52

funded by Bitcoiners because it

18:55

needed a new kind of way of doing things.

18:57

The problem is that

19:01

nobody has successfully managed to recreate

19:03

Bitcoin, despite everyone trying. The only

19:05

thing that emerged as a commodity

19:07

that didn't have the founder known

19:10

and wasn't connected to an individual

19:12

with the perfect inception at a

19:14

time when no one cared about

19:16

speculation and price was Bitcoin, which

19:18

makes Bitcoin Bitcoin today. And

19:20

so when you see the Bitcoin ETF today,

19:23

you have this ecosystem of

19:25

there's miners, there's node operators,

19:27

there's developers, and then a

19:29

bunch of people are going

19:31

to, for probably tax efficiency

19:33

reasons, buy a wrapper where

19:35

they can buy Bitcoin as

19:38

a stock. And

19:40

then they can put it in a retirement

19:42

product, which is tax deferred, which brings in

19:44

an incredible amount of money into Bitcoin. Because

19:47

the whole concept of Bitcoin was you can

19:49

own it. But when you own it, it's

19:51

not the most tax efficient way of doing

19:53

it. So you have an ETF, which is

19:55

another way of bringing in tradFi. But

19:58

where Bitcoin becomes interesting... is

20:00

if we're going to eventually get this whole

20:02

layer, and we've been trying for decades, over

20:05

a decade, to try and get there. And it's

20:07

still not there. We had these free-use cases as

20:10

well. We will get there. We had stable

20:12

coins. A quick side bar, but when

20:14

we were investing in private

20:16

equity, we invested in two companies.

20:18

One was Exodus and one was

20:20

Coinbase. When Coinbase went public, trying

20:22

to distribute all of these shares

20:24

when you're a private equity investor

20:26

to hundreds of investors that we

20:28

had and get the money

20:31

around through brokers, transfer

20:33

agents. There were seven different

20:35

middle people to try and get these shares.

20:38

Everyone takes their car. And

20:40

the process ended up taking about eight

20:43

months. And so in that time, the

20:45

original founders were selling all their shares

20:47

on the market. The price was crashing. And

20:49

it just took so long to get the

20:51

shares to the other investors

20:54

because of this highly inefficient

20:56

mechanism when you're dealing with

20:59

cross-border international stock transfers

21:01

through so many intermediaries. Yeah,

21:04

Exodus, they did a public offering, and

21:06

they did it all through their app

21:08

and through their wallet and on a

21:10

blockchain. And it was dead easy to

21:12

just distribute everything. It happened all smoothly

21:14

and on time. So the

21:16

use case is there because I've experienced

21:19

it firsthand. But there's

21:21

a massive amount of regulations in the middle

21:23

and lots of things. So when you're

21:25

thinking about, here's where I think it gets

21:27

interesting with doing it on top

21:29

of Bitcoin. Think when we go into ETFs.

21:32

So because you've got this different proof

21:34

of work network with Bitcoin, yeah, we

21:37

may get lots and lots of Bitcoin

21:39

custody to a Coinbase through ETFs, but

21:42

they won't control the network. Think about

21:44

Ethereum, for example, or a proof of

21:46

stake network. Well, when they're all in

21:48

ETFs, the owner of the

21:50

stake controls the network. So

21:53

essentially, when Ethereum does an ETF, you're going to

21:55

have these nine different providers

21:57

who are all competing to control the network.

22:00

network, and it just becomes a layer

22:02

of bank because exchanges own most

22:04

Ethereum right now. All the founders, they've got

22:06

the free mine. So eventually,

22:09

all the ETFs and financial

22:11

institutions, now they control

22:13

the network. And so

22:15

that's a very different thing to building

22:18

on top of Bitcoin, which has this

22:20

property that nothing else has been able

22:22

to replicate since, even if a

22:24

bunch of it ends up custody that

22:26

Coinbase threw an ETF. The

22:28

beautiful thing is like almost the Bitcoin

22:30

ETF has proven why proof of stake

22:32

is not sustainable in the long term

22:34

because that wealth will inherently try to

22:37

amass. Like physics tells us

22:39

that energy like tries to come

22:41

together. And that's what ended up,

22:43

you know, could end up happening within the...

22:45

It'll be funny to see what happens if

22:47

an Ethereum ETF plays out. Enrico, I want

22:49

to ask you the same question. Like you're

22:51

out in Dubai, headquartered out there. What are

22:53

people saying about the Bitcoin ETF in the

22:55

US? There are several point

22:58

of view, right? So Bitcoin can be

23:00

like the centralized network

23:03

can be... It's a lot of

23:06

things. One of the things that Bitcoin is,

23:08

for example, is this limited number of pieces,

23:10

right? So 21 million, that's it. And

23:13

obviously, when you have one

23:15

of these that some of

23:17

those that are held by

23:20

a third party like an exchange

23:22

or in this case, an ETF,

23:25

it's different, right? So you

23:27

are not holding the key,

23:29

right, for your Bitcoin. And

23:32

this might

23:34

be an issue, but I don't think that

23:37

everybody in the world will be

23:40

able to manage Bitcoin directly because

23:42

of the complexity, because managing the

23:44

keys, riskies, some people don't want

23:47

to do it and so on.

23:50

So is this an additional way

23:52

to get access to this portion of

23:55

21 million shares? Yeah.

23:58

And this is another point of view. is not,

24:00

it's not a... I

24:03

think people will own both. Just another way

24:05

of looking at that. I think people, I

24:07

think it'll be a both situation. I think

24:09

people will own both and play with both.

24:12

It's like, if you have a gold ETF,

24:14

if somehow like I inherited like a million

24:16

shares of the gold ETF, I'm not going

24:18

to sell it for tax reasons,

24:20

right? But maybe I'm going to go buy some gold

24:22

because I want to play with it, knowing that I

24:24

own some large amounts. I feel like the large amount

24:26

of the Bitcoin ETF, you're going to want to own

24:29

some Bitcoin and just play with it and be a

24:31

part of the economy, just because you need

24:33

to understand the asset that you're investing

24:35

so much into. No one would be

24:37

dumb enough to just put all this

24:39

money into a Bitcoin ETF and not

24:41

truly understand what Bitcoin is and so,

24:43

or listen to the show. Simon, any

24:46

final thoughts? Yeah, I

24:48

do think tax is the conversation. So I

24:50

don't know where you are in what, Charlie,

24:52

still in US or you. But

24:54

if you're in the US, you really

24:57

need, as we move to the

24:59

next phase of regulations, everything

25:01

you do on exchange, the data goes to

25:03

the tax authorities, every

25:05

way you engage in this

25:07

ecosystem, because there's a ginormous money

25:09

grab for all the tax agencies that are riddled

25:11

by debt at the moment. We are

25:14

in the age when it was really uncertain and

25:16

no one really knew how to deal with tax.

25:18

In the past, they fixed their

25:20

issues at some point and that

25:22

really becomes the conversation now. I

25:24

think both of us leaving Dubai

25:26

and Isle of Man more tax

25:28

efficient jurisdiction, self-ownership is much more

25:30

preferred than giving custody to someone

25:32

else, because we're already in a

25:35

tax efficient setup. And so tax

25:37

really does become one of the

25:40

conversations and

25:42

the ability to have both just means you

25:44

get to hear the different

25:46

types of people. And there is

25:48

large pockets of money that

25:51

can only buy shares. They wouldn't be

25:53

able to self custody through their corporate

25:55

structure yet. I

25:57

think we'll get there. I Don't even think... They

26:00

in I don't know stick to what they know which

26:02

is. A shower? Just everything's

26:04

clear for them. Live. Receive as

26:06

coming on the So today, Simon Dixon Something

26:08

to the Future and Rico Rivoli for men.