#1502 Jack Mallers | Bitcoin Could 400x From Here!

Jack Mallers is the Founder & CEO of Strike. This conversation was recorded at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation we evaluate nation state adoption of bitcoin, what happens when US starts to accumulate bitcoin, how bitcoin can help Americans, operating on a bitcoin standard as a private company, bitcoin cycles, regulation, Wall Street, and what Jack thinks the future of bitcoin looks like.========================Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/========================This episode is brought to you by Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR), a global leader in Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing for AI. Led by a seasoned management team, Bitdeer is driving innovation with its proprietary SEALMINER ASICs for Bitcoin mining and has a massive 2.5 GW power portfolio across three continents. Learn more about Bitdeer at www.bitdeer.com========================Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Created by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, Polkadot empowers users to build decentralized applications with ease. Backed by industry leaders, making it a preferred choice for big names, Polkadot stands out as a leading choice for investors seeking a reliable, future-proof solution in the growing world of Web3 technology. Learn more at https://polkadot.com/.========================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/========================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 0:54Speaker 02

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• 1:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by NASDAQ listed Bitdear. They trade under their stock ticker BTDR. They're led by a seasoned management team. Bitdear is a global leader in Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing for artificial intelligence, and they are backed by technological innovation and a massive 2.5 gigawatt global power portfolio. Recently, Bitdear launched its own Bitcoin mining ASICs named the Seal Miner to target what Wall Street analysts project to be a multi-billion dollar annual market. Their proprietary Seal Miner ASICs are redefining efficiency and performance, and they are backed by the industry's most advanced chip roadmap with two more groundbreaking models set to launch in 2025. To learn more about Bitdear's cutting-edge technology and business, visit their website at bitdeer.com.

• 2:40Anthony Pompliano?

  That's B-I-T-D-E-E-R dot com. Go check out Bitdear today. Today's episode is brought to you by Polkadot. Polkadot offers secure, scalable, and decentralized blockchain technology that perfectly aligns with the needs of innovative projects. It was developed by Gavin Wood, one of the co-founders of Ethereum and the creator of Solidity. Polkadot aims to build an internet where users have full control over their data and their applications. Polkadot offers tons of unique features, a shared security model, along with the new auction model and significant implementations like ASIC banking. Given these characteristics, it's easy to understand why Polkadot is gaining more and more traction in the cryptocurrency world. Some people even are talking about it as the AWS of Web3.

• 3:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, companies such as Mythical Games, Astro Network, and over 50 other independent blockchains with hundreds of applications already leverage Polkadot's technology to power their platforms. If you're looking for a reliable, scalable, and cutting-edge solution, Polkadot seems to be the top choice for industry players. Go check them out today at polkadot.com. This thing on? What's going on, guys? How are you?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  I'm the only guy in here without a collar. You'll have to excuse me, man.

• 3:53Anthony Pompliano?

  I thought you got dressed up.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  I look good. I think I look good. How are you?

• 3:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm great. What I want to talk to you about is, um, Strike is probably one of the best well-known Bitcoin brands around the world. Uh, we've had a lot of people talk about what's going on in the United States. Uh, you were instrumental in helping El Salvador, uh, become the first Bitcoin country to start acquiring Bitcoin, mining Bitcoin. Uh, you've spent a lot of time all around the world, talking to many of these world leaders. How do you evaluate where we are with kind of nation-state adoption of Bitcoin?

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Um, I think El Salvador situation, um, as remarkable and impressive of a story it was, I think it was unique. Um, they didn't have their own currency. Um, so I think of money as our time and energy in an abstracted form, right? Like everyone in this room, you wake up, you do something valuable for the world and in return for that, you get money. So money in a funny way is your time, your energy, your effort, your labor, your work, right? And El Salvador didn't have the ability to print that. That's a powerful thing. If you can print time and energy, right? And so they didn't have their own currency. They were destructed after a civil war. They were the one of the most violent places in the world.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  And so I would say it was very unique in the type of leader and the type of macroeconomic situation they were in being on the dollar. Adopting a new currency wasn't as, uh, jaw dropping as if someone with their own central bank and their own ability to print money.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Um, so it doesn't surprise me that there wasn't any fast follows. I think, uh, that story being replicated is actually harder than what meets the eye. I think Naive is a tremendous leader and he made it look easier than it actually is. But I would say that, um, You know, being the world reserve currency is not a sustainable position. Just in like Triffin's dilemma, I'm not speaking biasedly as a Bitcoiner, I'm speaking factually. You know, I think a neutral reserve asset is natural. And so I've always said that it wouldn't surprise me after El Salvador was able to prove out that this is practical and feasible and they were able to ride both a bull and bear market, that the United States as someone who's next to legitimize the asset makes

• 6:11Speaker 03

  a ton of sense because it's pro-growth, it's pro-technology, it's pro-industry, it's pro-energy, it's pro-a lot of the things that both the new administration has campaigned on, but us as a country, I mean, freedom, open networks, freedom of speech, freedom of property rights, right? And then on top of that, we have a world reserve currency problem where we import real stuff and we export not-real stuff. And that's part of being the world reserve currency. So I don't know if that's the answer you're looking for, but I think it's all kind of playing out pretty rationally.

• 6:40Anthony Pompliano?

  When the United States starts to accumulate Bitcoin, how do you view what happens after that? Is it just a mad dash? Every country in the world says, "Oh, my God, we are behind the ball, we've got to go and acquire this as well," and Bitcoin goes to $1 million? Or is there some other path that you see?

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think what we're living through right now, I would describe as the unwind from World War II, or the world wars generally, right? I would say, just to remind everyone, not that you don't know, but the world was decimated, right? And the US was in a strong position. And the global relationship came about as the US effectively saying, "Hey, we'll help you guys get off your feet. I'll tell you what, you can produce stuff for us and we will export you, the new world reserve currency, to kind of get you back up on your feet. You need a customer, you need someone to import your goods and services. And also, if we produce stuff locally in the US, we'd have no one to export it to because you guys are decimated, crushed, and poor."

• 7:44Speaker 03

  And so you've seen all these markets importing real stuff into the US, all the stuff we need, oil, food, right? All the stuff that we all consume. And we get two-car garages, and we get the big flatscreen TVs, and in return, we distributed the new world reserve currency, which was the US dollar. Okay, that worked and was very kind of us in a biased American way. You know, obviously, we get our advantages from that. But I think where the world is now is like, okay, cool. Uh, thanks for helping us get back on our feet. Now what? Because we don't want to give you guys real stuff to consume and have amazing lives in exchange for this piece of paper you print.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  And, uh, you see Russia, you see China, they don't want to continue to buy our debt. Uh, the amount of treasuries that they are investing in is going down. They're talking about BRICS. I don't think that's an actual threat or anything we'll see in practice, but it's a rotation away from the dollar. No world reserve currency has had any staying power because you have to operate in a deficit. You have to export your currency and import real stuff and it's unsustainable. You're importing goods in debt to give out a piece of paper. And so where I think we are is in the very early innings, and Bitcoiners get excited,

• 9:09Speaker 03

  and I'm one of the ones most guilty for that, of a rotation back to neutral reserve asset for the world. And if the United States acknowledges that Bitcoin carries those properties, even in a minor way, but says, you know, listen, the story of humanity is engineering a better world. And this Bitcoin thing looks like it maps very well to that thesis and story of our species, and it carries the properties that are necessary to transition to a neutral reserve asset. I think that's a huge deal in the grand scheme. I'm talking centuries of evolution of the geopolitical and macroeconomic relationships between the most powerful nations in the world.

• 9:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk a little bit about the pain that the average American family is in and how you, who has a business where you are interfacing with a kind of retail, everyday citizens as your user, see their lives changing once they begin to start to adopt Bitcoin.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, listen, again, the US is in a position where they have to debase and weaken the currency. It is implied in the current state of the US dollar. You know, you've seen this iterations, like you have 1933, we're going to confiscate your gold. Then you have 1971, screw the gold standard, we're going to give ourselves the ability to debase and weaken the currency as needed. We're not going to be governed by the laws of Mother Nature. And so it's pretty implied that the purchasing power of the dollar over a long enough timeframe is only going down, no other direction. So what does that mean for... The reason there's

• 10:53Speaker 03

  such a large wealth gap in America is because you either own assets or you don't. When they weaken the dollar, that's good for assets. That means real estate's going up. That means your stock portfolio is going up. That means the Miami mansion on the water is going to go from being worth $1 million to $100 million. And that means, you know, someone hardworking and lucky enough can acquire it, to only Ken Griffin is going to be able to buy it. That's because of a weaker dollar. And so what you have is a very binary divide in the country. You either can afford Manhattan real estate, beachfront real estate, large assets that are expensive and are usually passed down generationally and have some advantage, or you're more paycheck to paycheck savings account, you kind of have a Robin

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Hood stock portfolio, and you're punting some stuff based on following pomp on Twitter. And it's that category of America that's growing, because it's very hard to outpace the amount of currency that the US has to issue. And so let's say, if real... You know, listen, inflation, just to be clear, is not 2% to 3%. What they're measuring it in is 2% to 3%, but the government doesn't know what you want. If you want to live in Miami in a nice house, it's not 2% to 3%, it's 20%. Put it another way, if you're not getting a 20% raise every single year, you cannot make progress towards owning a nice house

• 12:17Speaker 03

  in Miami, period, or Manhattan, right? And so the ability to outpace that, and the ability of folks that are grouped into working as hard as they can but getting less out of life. So, yeah, I mean, it's terrible.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  And then just to end on a more positive note, you know, not everyone can get Miami Beatty Real Estate, not everyone can get Manhattan Real Estate, not everyone can get access in Silicon Valley to the new Facebooks and the new Nvidia's of the world, but everyone can get Bitcoin. And it's the best performance of all of these. Anyway, I've outperformed Ken Griffin by doing nothing but buying Bitcoin. And so that is the most empowering part is that everyone can be an asset holder, an owner of property and actually gain benefit from a depreciating currency and protect their ability to have a better life tomorrow than they do today.

• 13:09Anthony Pompliano?

  A lot of people that we've talked to over the last couple of days have talked about the public companies adopting the Bitcoin standard and putting Bitcoin in their treasury. Strike is not only a great Bitcoin brand, it's not only a fast growing kind of user platform, you also have Bitcoin on your balance sheet and you and I know each other well enough at this point that I'm pretty sure every time you make a decision, it is denominated in Bitcoin, including like, what do I eat for lunch today? What have been the pros and cons? And what have you learned about operating with that Bitcoin standard as a private company?

• 13:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I got my comms team, which is just a beautiful, awesome, hardworking woman named Lavinia back there. And we debate all the time, Strike's a private company. And so people don't know, but it's, I would assume it's one of the most profitable Bitcoin companies in the world. I mean, we operate well over 85% gross profit margins. We've got some of the highest EBITDA margins in the world, even in the public markets. So we are a business that is like MicroStrategy, we're just in the private sector, but we sweep all of our cash flows into Bitcoin. We hold the minimum amount of cash reasonable as a business, as a person, as an individual, I own zero US dollars. And so it changes

• 14:24Speaker 03

  everything in a really fundamental principled way because as a company, you know, listen. If the cost of capital is the dollar, it's effectively zero. And you've got excess amounts of venture and people willing to just throw cash at you. And it's very hard to make decisions. You know, well, what are we supposed to do with all this money? Let's turn on Instagram marketing ads. Let's launch a hundred products. Let's open a nice office in New York City. And you're burning capital because the cost of capital is zero. Right? It can't get any worse than holding dollars because that's just bleeding to death. So you might as well just punt on whatever this employee has a cool idea. Yeah, go work on it. All of a sudden, if we introduce our treasury asset and the way we measure capital

• 15:05Speaker 03

  in something that's compound annual growth rate is 60% over the last 10 years. When an employee comes to me and says, I have an idea. I say, how good of an idea? 61% every year? Good? Because if not, get the fuck out of my office. Sorry. And that's built a really good culture. Our growth rate is astounding. Our efficiency. So when I talk about things like EBITDA margins, gross profit margins, we run a tight ship. And, you know, I'm a Midwest founder that was raised in the Chicago pits by traders. But also, our governance and our culture is imposed by Bitcoin. And that's the real cost of capital that the world didn't have before.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  You know, you were racing against growth. Companies were doing stock buybacks. And now, all of a sudden, what Michael's doing at MSTR, what we're doing at Strike is imposing, you know, real physical constraints and cost of capital that, you know, make humans better and make decisions easier to make.

• 16:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk about the cycle, right? You've got a business where, I'm an investor in Strike, so I've seen the financials. They're very good. But as you build your business, if these four-year cycles persist, how do you insulate yourself from seeing your balance sheet shrink by 80%? Because the price of Bitcoin is contracting and then it's expanding. And there's this cyclicality that I think people say to themselves, it sounds great to be exposed to Bitcoin when the price is going up. Well, if I'm also got my entire company's balance sheet in Bitcoin on the way down, that doesn't feel as good. And so how do you guys think about that?

• 16:40Speaker 03

  So at Strike, being profitable is a moral imperative before a financial one. The way we think about it is, you know, producing more value for the world than you consume from the world. Is being a good person or a good company. It's quite literally in the financial sense, making the world a better place. So I have a rule at my business. I will never run Strike unprofitably because we're taking advantage of the world or advantage of how easy money is or advantage of overinflated venture markets because of COVID. And so we principally believe that we are here to do more for the world than we take from the world.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  And then for that reason and purpose, we're never at risk. We're not levered. There is no counterparty risk to us blowing up. Bitcoin can go down as much as it wants. It doesn't matter. And on Bitcoin's volatility, you know, Satoshi, if I wasn't a founder and CEO of Strike, I would be a Bitcoin historian. I've been in Bitcoin for 12 years. I love being a part of its story and reminiscing on the early forums. And there's a, someone was asking Satoshi about the volatility. And he said, you know, if we wanted a more stable value, we can make the currency units dynamic.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  We can change how much Bitcoin should exist based on trying to achieve a stable value. If we want dynamic price, meaning it's going to bounce around a lot, we should fix the currency units. And he was being a little humble and joking, but the point is if you're going to give the world an absolute scarce asset, the only provably fixed asset in the history of our species, and you're going to give it global free market access, it's going to be volatile. And where there's risk, there's reward. If you look at Bitcoin's sharp ratio, it's greater than the MAC7, than the S and P 500, than gold. And so as a business too, we accept that.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  I firmly believe that any attempt to restore harmony in society rests on the renewal of personal responsibility. And so us as a business, we're not reliant on Jerome Powell. We don't care about what Marc Andreessen is going to start investing in. We take a personal responsibility. Responsibility to be ethically and morally profitable because we want to be good for the world. We want to make progress in the world. We want to be making the world a better place. And we accept the risks of being in this industry because we understand the reward. And we're happy to be here. We're happy to embrace that volatility because if you take it away, then I don't think we can change the world. The upside isn't as high, right? There's a correlation there. I don't want to,

• 19:29Speaker 03

  you know, run a bakery or a business that's a little bit more mundane, you know, I'm, I want to play in the big leagues. I want to change the world and.

• 19:37Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you view the new administration and their support for Bitcoin and what they should do?

• 19:45Speaker 03

  I hate politics, man.

• 19:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Got them.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  I mean, what do I think they should do?

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Or what? I mean, listen, what did I tell?

• 19:58Anthony Pompliano?

  If you were president for the day, what would you do?

• 20:00Speaker 03

  No, I mean, we could go back, rewind time a bit. What did I tell another president to do? I told him, listen, governments aren't designed to be good at engineering consumer products. So I was very against the Chivo wallet, for example. What do you want? You want Jack Dorsey, you want Michael Saylor, you want these guys to come build stuff for your citizens. Jack Dorsey is going to be way better at building stuff than you are. So give favorable regulation, favorable tax treatment. Allow them to invest back into your country, right? Look at what Tether is doing.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  Tether has probably invested more in El Salvador because they've gotten favorable regulation and favorable tax treatment than if they were trying to claw pennies out of them with over taxation, right? So pro regulation, pro growth, or pro favorable regulation. Pro growth, be reasonable in, you know, Trump's talking about tax cuts and ways to inspire growth. And then I think that you want to align incentives with the space, buy some. Everyone in this room knows that your relationship with Bitcoin is different as soon as you own a little bit. And so I think just making the United States a Bitcoiner,

• 21:21Speaker 03

  at the very least, aligns with the industry that's arguably the fastest growing and creating the most wealth. I mean, let's be clear, in 15 years, Bitcoins created $2 trillion worth of new wealth. A lot of that's in this country and at current growth rates, it's going to be tens of trillions of dollars over the next 10 years. So that would be, that was my suggestion to Naib. You're going to attract the most profitable company in the world per employee and probably in the history of our species in Tether. You've got Block and Square interested in El Salvador. You've got Michael Saylor meeting with El Salvador and that's because of their stance. And then own some, become in line and incentivized with the space. Put some skin in the game. I would say the same thing to Trump.

• 22:02Anthony Pompliano?

  ETFs are now popular. Plenty of people who did not own Bitcoin, their first interaction is through these ETFs. There's a financialization of Bitcoin that's happening and it feels like there's a little bit of a trade-off. Maybe the ethos and the reasons why you bought Bitcoin may not be present when this new class of Bitcoiners coming in because of that financialization. But you need those people if you want the ever-elusive mass adoption. How do you think about this trade-off of we want as many people to have exposure to Bitcoin as possible, but you also don't want to have the dilution of the message of the ethos and the values of Bitcoin?

• 22:38Speaker 03

  Listen, Bitcoin is a permissionless network. I can never understand for the life of me when certain Bitcoiners are like, "Someone kick BlackRock out." Who elected you the president of Bitcoin, moron? So it's what Bitcoin in the eye of the beholder. And so I welcome Wall Street. They're trying to solve very specific problems. The bond market, not good. The long-term viability right now of those instruments, not good. It looks like the United States and Trump are going to get their weaker dollar and finance reshoring and do what they need to do at the expense of those buying these

• 23:23Speaker 03

  long-duration instruments. So what is Wall Street doing? Larry Fink's trying to sell people what they need, which is a way to retain purchasing power and actually be performant in real terms. If you do the math on like a 6040 portfolio versus like a 5545 with a little Bitcoin or a 60355, you can look at the graph. It's like just a little exposure to this thing goes a long way for the biggest financial market in the world, which is like bond market treasuries. And so that's fine with me. Would I want to broker my access to Bitcoin through Larry Fink? Yeah, no thanks. I don't own any ETFs. I also don't own MSTR. As much as I love Saylor,

• 24:07Speaker 03

  like, I'm cool, man. I don't know you that well. So I own my own Bitcoin. But that's fine. And the free market will like figure these things out in the meantime. So I think it's great. I think it's great. Bitcoin's like universal acid. Somehow, it seeps into areas that you never would have expected and it conquers it. And, you know, Wall Street's no exception.

• 24:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I continue to say that Larry Fink is the CMO of Bitcoin now. And one of the things that maybe you and I have experienced over the years, I love you, but it's a different messenger than you. As good looking, as charming as you are, sitting in an empty women's closet on television, compared to Larry Fink going on TV and saying, oh, Bitcoin's going up because it's a flight to quality. You know, he just carries a little bit different gravitas with them. Talk a little bit about the, not just the maturation of the asset, but also the message and the messenger. And so much of Bitcoin now is Larry Fink is actually really, really important to bring in a whole new group of people. Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller were really, really important to bring in all those portfolio

• 25:21Anthony Pompliano?

  managers in 2020. And just kind of like, it feels like the ground is changing. And you're saying, hey, I'm welcoming all of them. But where do you see this kind of continuing to evolve? And does that mean that the voice of what I would consider kind of a native or hardcore Bitcoiner is still important?

• 25:37Speaker 03

  Let me tell you guys a story. So I dropped out of college in 2012. I like, didn't even get a credit. Lasted a little under 30 days, I think.

• 25:50Anthony Pompliano?

  That doesn't even count as going.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. I visited, extended visit. But I got charged tuition for it. The point of the story is, when I got home, my dad is the one who got me into Bitcoin. And he was like, I'm, I'm really excited about this thing. I really don't want to ship you off to another university and have to handle another bill. You know, you wasted enough money. How about you take a look at this thing with Mino's Bitcoin? At the time, the only real credible place to buy it was exchanges like Mt. Cox. And he said, I don't trust this exchange. Even the way the price moves, it looks like they might have liquidity issues.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  I mean, he's a smart guy, obviously. In 2013, Coinbase was founded and became accessible. And it was, the investors behind Coinbase were folks like Marc Andreessen. And as soon as my dad saw Marc Andreessen and Silicon Valley back Bitcoin, that was enough credibility to be like, alright, I opened us accounts, let's start stacking.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Point in the story is there has been, over the last 12 years in my experience and 15 years in Bitcoin's experience, there are moments of credibility that matter a lot. Now, Silicon Valley leaning into Bitcoin, as you know, for all of us, especially 10 years ago, Silicon Valley is the best at tech. They're the best at understanding this stuff. If they believe in it, it makes me feel less crazy. Alright, let's open an account because we don't have to wire money to Japan. Right? And I think it's the same. I mean, Bitcoin's growth story is similar. You know, instead of me and my dad, a college dropout and a retired trader, it's, you know, the biggest portfolio managers in the world, but it's the same thing. Okay, if Larry did the work to put his reputation on the, on the line.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  I'm not going to get fired. Same thing, right? And so I think it's, you know, another version of this story is when the CME Chicago came out with the first futures product. When the CME listed Bitcoin futures, it was equivalent at the time of the ETF. It was, oh, wow, the CME is, you know, the most liquid, some of the largest volumes in the world in financial markets. If they did the work to put their reputation on the line, this thing's legit. And then Bitcoin went from $200 to $20,000. So I think it's another chapter in its story. I don't take offense to it. I love, I love Uncle Larry. He can be the chief marketing officer. There's no problem. And again, as a Bitcoiner, Bitcoin, you know, Bitcoin is an ego test.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  You know, you have to sacrifice the idea that more control and bigger ego is correlated to success. It's when you realize this thing's bigger than me. And I can only play my small part is when you maximize the opportunity, I think. So, you know, I think an experienced Bitcoiner has no ego. And I don't take offense to Wall Street having an interest at all.

• 28:58Anthony Pompliano?

  My last question for you is Bitcoin, when the white paper came out, the title was a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. And there's a lot of people who see Bitcoin now being more of a store of value. And they think it's hard to see, you know, kind of a medium of exchange and a global reserve currency and hyper Bitcoinization. Given everything we know today, what do you see as the future of Bitcoin? Does it end up just being a store of value? Does it end up being the global reserve currency? Just kind of paint us that picture, you know, 20, 30 years from now, where you see us going?

• 29:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think at Strike, we, we take on this attitude of being humble, as I was just alluding to, and saying like, we don't know. People that subscribe themselves, the responsibility to predict the future are assholes. Sorry for the language, but like, nobody knows, you know? Part of being human is you can't change the past. You don't know the future. You, we all share in the moment that we call now. And so, you know, we take that approach as a company and we're super customer focused. What I can tell you guys, based on running Strike, is product market fit is in what people are calling store of value, but is really, you know?

• 30:11Speaker 03

  Humans own about $900 trillion worth of stuff right now. That's currency, real estate, art, collectibles, precious metals like gold, right? $900 trillion worth of stuff. It's estimated that about half of that is monetized. Meaning they own the stuff, they own the house, they own the art, they own the precious metal. Not to consume it, not to live in the house, not to look at the art and be like, oh, I love this art, but because they're trying to store wealth, they're trying to preserve value, they're trying to get a sell it later. So that means the market opportunity to store wealth, store value, persist value you create for the world today and bring it to tomorrow is about 400 to 500 trillion dollars.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  And that is where product market fit in extreme demand is from Larry Fink, from the bond market, from the treasury market, from retail consumers, from those living paycheck to paycheck. That's the product market we see in strike. And the payment stuff, I would say less so. I would say less so. So when people say, you know, can Bitcoin go higher than 100K? Well, the way I think about it is right now Bitcoin's about one and a half trillion dollar in market cap, it's going after a 400 to 500 trillion dollar opportunity. And that's in purchasing power terms. So in dollar terms, that'll go up as the currency weakens. So I think Bitcoin still has a 400 to 500X left in it. And we see that as a company, we onboard institutions, businesses, retail, we support all, we support the dollar, the pound, the euro.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  So we see the same demand globally, the same growth prospects globally. And that's where the product market fit is for us. So we're interested, is it March yet, like products like lending? We'll get into that. And then the currency stuff is just growing at a slower pace. And I don't think there's enough demand in product market fit. And I don't think the size of the opportunity is as big relative, if that makes sense. But, um, but we'll see. And I think, uh, I think Bitcoin's going to grow to hundreds of trillions of dollars in market cap. And there's going to be a lot of opportunity for all of us to share in that.

• 32:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Ladies and gentlemen, Jack Mallers.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Thank you, guys.