Why Bitcoin's price stayed flat after ETF approval: Grayscale outflows explained

Vance Crowe [00:00:08] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Well, if you're watching this, you can see that I'm back in the old studio in the basement of my house, and that is because St. Louis, Missouri, was whacked with a giant ice storm right before we were supposed to come into the studio to do this interview with David Oran, longtime listeners of the podcast, know that David is becoming a regular on the podcast. I have him come on to talk about economics, Bitcoin, and really just how to think about finances. Today's podcast is gonna be an interesting one. The first two times that David and I have been on, we've talked about the basics of Bitcoin. I've tried to make it as open and inclusive as possible, trying to make it so anybody that had never really experienced Bitcoin at all could participate. We're not gonna do that anymore. Now we're gonna use David's expertise and my deep interest in the subject to actually go deeper and have conversations about Bitcoin that are a little bit more uncommon. The only way you can find these podcasts normally is if you're deep in the rabbit holes of Bitcoin. So I'm trying to bring a deeper level of these conversations to you expecting that if this is something that interests you, you can go back and do the beginning things. I was told a couple of days ago when I was talking about doing a more advanced version, that I should direct people to something that can help them get on board with Bitcoin. And I can tell you that the person that I turned to when I was trying to figure out how do I get my wallet set up, how do I do my nodes, was a guy that goes by BTC sessions.

Vance Crowe [00:01:44] So if you're interested in diving a little bit deeper, you wanna learn from somebody, you wanna try and figure out, how do I take that first little bit of Bitcoin I have off of the exchanges and put it in a wallet? I would recommend him. I don't know anything about his political values or anything like that, but his ability to explain how to do this is great. We're gonna go to the interview with David in just a moment. But the other day I was talking with a woman who lives with another grandma in the house of their children, of their grandchildren, and she was talking about how she wanted to do an interview, but she was a little bit intimidated to do it on her own. So she asked if she could bring the other grandma somebody that is living with her, but she didn't grow up with to do a legacy interview. She said, I know we won't be able to go into everybody's long detailed history, but it just feels so much better if I had somebody with me. And my answer to that is, of course, we can capture the memory of your grandparents or of two people that have grown to be friends in their older age, as a way to capture both of them to make you feel comfortable and to be able to express ideas so that future generations know your family stories. But also remember you as this vibrant and bright grandma that wants to make sure that her grandkids, who she's living with now, and may not get to hear their her stories later. So we wanna capture all of that. So if you're interested in doing a legacy interview, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. All right, without further ado, let's head to the interview with my man, David Aki.

Vance Crowe [00:03:16] David, welcome back to the podcast.

David Oransky [00:03:19] Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be back.

Vance Crowe [00:03:22] Well, we were planning on doing this in the studio, but pretty massive ice storm out there, so it's, it's good that we were able to go back into our COVID bunkers and figure out how to do this online.

David Oransky [00:03:32] Yeah, it's been a cold winter icy one today.

Vance Crowe [00:03:35] So the first thing I wanted to talk about with Bitcoin is something we were talking about in our December episode, which is, and the ETF was launched and there was a lot of anticipation among Bitcoiners that now money was going to be coming flooding in, it was gonna be coming in in the tune of millions, if not billions of dollars. And that this was going to create what they call the God candle, meaning that the, the price of Bitcoin just skyrockets way up. That didn't happen. The price remained flat. What the hell, man? Where is our God candle?

David Oransky [00:04:10] Yeah, well, there was not even just one Bitcoin ETF, there was 11 that were approved, one of those being grayscale Bitcoin trust, which has been, you know, an ETF proxy for, for years now and been trading, but has always traded at either a big premium or discount. And so that one was approved to be converted. And then there was one other Bitcoin futures ETF, that was approved to be converted to a spot, and then basically nine brand new Bitcoin spot ETFs. And so if we ignore price for a moment, these were actually probably the most successful ETF launches in history. They've only had been trading for like six days and they've already, the new, the like nine new ETFs have already attracted like over $3 billion worth of assets in a matter of days. Like that's actually huge. The thing that is maybe working against it is about 2 billion have flowed out of grayscale Bitcoin trust. So we're still net, you know, a billion or so new inflows into these products. But there's been a lot of cell pressure from GBTC and we can speculate as to why that is. I mean, it's basically been locked up for years. So there's a lot of investors that have been waiting for these gates to open. If you wanted to get out prior, you were taking a, a pretty significant haircut, you know, at times up to 50%. And so there's probably a lot of people that have been waiting. There's also potentially a lot of hedge funds or arbitrage, you know, speculative investors that don't actually care about Bitcoin. They just saw the opportunity of, hey, here's this product that looks like it's gonna get approved. It's still undervalued.

David Oransky [00:05:42] In fact, there you can, there's a huge discount in gray scale. And as that once it gets approved, that discount will should go away or mostly go away, which is exactly what's happened. So there was a lot of likely a lot of investors that were buying grayscale Bitcoin trust with the intention of flipping it once the ETF is approved. And so I think that's what we're seeing right now. There's also some speculation that a lot of GBTC holders are, you know, they got wrapped up in a lot of the FTX and various, you know, crypto bankruptcies that happened, you know, a year or two ago, and that they're having to liquidate, you know, to raise money for the bankruptcy state. So there's certainly ought to sell pressure coming from that side. But in terms of the ETF launch in general, it's actually been really successful and I think is only gonna grind higher in terms of new flows, which ultimately is very bullish for Bitcoin. You know?

Vance Crowe [00:06:28] Yeah, the, I think for me, this is a pretty big education because people talk about, there's two phrases that get kicked around a lot. There's buy the rumor, sell the news, meaning like, Hey, when people are starting to talk about that this might happen, that's when you wanna buy. 'cause the price run ups gonna happen. And then when the news happens and new buyers come flooding in, then you get to sell off of that. And then there, there's also like this idea that things are all priced into the market already. If you can anticipate months beforehand that, that this ETF is going to be approved, then people are already considering that in their investment strategies. And so when, while a lot of people were toasting the night before, just, you know, going out to the bars and partying the next day, it was actually really lackluster price action. What, what, you know, whereas in Bitcoin, it has been, you know, you could see days where it would make swings of three, five, $7,000 and that day was basically flat. And, and actually it ended down a little bit.

David Oransky [00:07:31] Yeah, we're down since, you know, since that point. I mean those two, those two points you brought up, the buy the rumor, sell the news, and you know, our markets, you know, generally efficient kind of go hand in hand. The reason there's that saying, you know, buy the rumor, sell the news, is that if you expect an event in the future, people act now to try to, you know, take advantage of that and move the market ahead of the event. And that is kind of demon, that's what markets are supposed to do. Like markets are always trending towards efficiency of being able to, you know, price in information that gets contained in the price. That's ultimately what's and, and appears that's what happened. I think the expectations that there would be a lot of new demand as a result of these ETFs is in the long run going to be true. You know, the people that can act quick are just some probably small retail investors that have been eagerly waiting to, you know, add, you know, these Bitcoin ETFs to their Roth IRAI think the, the real excitement here, and I think people just had the expectation that would happen right away, and in reality it's gonna take a few years, is that you get, you know, brokerage firms and investment advisory firms and just, you know, strategy models adding Bitcoin in a, you know, very small location of their portfolio. And if that does end up happening, that's significant new demand for Bitcoin that maybe hasn't existed before, but it hasn't shown up yet. And a lot of that's gonna be, it's gonna take weeks, months, years for firms to get comfortable to add Bitcoin. You know, initially there'll be the early adopters that can kind of get this through due diligence more quickly and are willing to take a little bit more career risk.

David Oransky [00:09:04] And then you're gonna have a lot that are gonna wait till the writing is on the wall before they even, you know, consider this an approachable subject with their clients. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:09:12] I mean, we were talking before the show, you said something that really blew my mind, but I think is probably quite accurate, which is if you're a retail investing advisor, you're a guy at Edward Jones or Merrill Lynch and this stuff just got approved, you cannot be just picking up the phone and calling every single one of your clients because it would be very difficult for you to prove to regulators that you have done the due diligence that you knew what the difference between each one of these different companies was. That you understood all of the risks, that you understood the rules as they were written by the, the regulators. And so there's a lot of people saying, Hey, I need to have documented evidence that I've spent the time to put the effort into this. And a lot of that's gonna start with an organization, a big organization's legal department, and then it's gonna cascade down and be like, well, when's the next time we're getting together for our annual conference to explain things? And then after that, you know, who are you laying this out to? And, and how if you're not a true believer in Bitcoin, are you going to come up to speed enough to be able to explain it? And when you gave it to me that way, I realized like, oh, there may be millions and billions of dollars sitting on the sideline, but actually they're not even in the stadium yet. They're, they're like just queuing up at the, at the edge of it.

David Oransky [00:10:28] Yeah. The people that are waiting for, you know, the advice or the recommendation from their, you know, advisor to go buy Bitcoin, they're gonna be waiting a while. The people that are buying now are the people that say, I want this. And they're instructing their advisors or their brokers to go buy it for them. And when you think about like a bigger firm, it's gonna take, you know, one or a few people that get Bitcoin are excited about Bitcoin trying to convince, you know, their higher ups and their investment committee to consider it. And then eventually you get that, and then it's gotta go through compliance and legal, and there's gonna probably be all sorts of disclaimers of things that people have to sign off on. And it's not surprising, I mean, this is a, although Bitcoin's been around for 15 years, it's a very new asset for Wall Street. You know, this isn't just like a new wrap or a new ETF of a way to buy, you know, an index fund. And yeah, you've got your due diligence on the product structure, but no one's questioning are, you know, are stocks a valid investment? So to do the due diligence on Bitcoin, you first have to make the case that it is, you know, rational to add an allocation of Bitcoin. And that alone is gonna be a feat for many people to be able to justify that. It is so outta consensus with mainstream Wall Street that you're swimming against the currency, you first have to justify that bitcoin's even a worthy investment. And then you still have to go through the due diligence of the individual products and say, all right, which ETF are we gonna recommend? Which one are we gonna use? There's, you know, effectively 11, but I think nine of the ones that people are excited about, I don't, I don't foresee that many people using grayscale unless they're really just using it as a trading vehicle, the fees are just way higher than all the other ones.

David Oransky [00:12:02] But of the, you know, nine new ETFs, like, there's a lot of similarities, but there's also some differences in terms of how they're cued and, and, and prices are, they're probably the two biggest ones. But if you read through the prospectuses, there's some, some nuances that, you know, are different and may help sway it one way or the other for people.

Vance Crowe [00:12:19] Yeah. Let's talk about grayscale a little bit. And until this all happened, I knew Grayscale was out there, I knew they had accumulated quite a huge bag of Bitcoin, but isn't until I saw the charts of, of like, who owns what Bitcoin. And you know, normally you don't know who owns what Bitcoin, but when you're a publicly traded company, you have to announce these things, right? And, you know, the US government holds a lot of Bitcoin, you know, thousands outta 20,000 Bitcoin or something like that. Well, grayscale owns like 600,000 Bitcoin. It, it's, it is just a massive group. And when the ETFs came out, BlackRock, the Fidelity, all these other ones, they were saying, Hey, we're gonna charge you 0.2% on that trade. And, and grayscale was, what were they, 1.5%, something like that.

David Oransky [00:13:08] They used to be 2% per year. So they were charging 2% to management fee, but that was on the net asset value. So remember for most of the last few years, grayscale has been trading at like a, you know, 20 to 50% discount. And so the value, if you wanted to go sell that gray scale was 20 to 50% less than the value of the underlying Bitcoin, and yet the fee was being charged on the higher amount. So the effective fee was huge. And then they had promised that once, once they got it converted to an ETF, that they would lower the fees to be competitive. Well, I guess in their mind, competitive meant lowering it from 2% to 1.5% while everyone else was doing like 0.2 to 0.3% and waiving their fee for the first, you know, X number of months or billion doll, you know, billions of dollars of assets or something like that. So yeah, there will still be holders of GBTC, there's gonna be a lot of people that bought it early on that have huge gains. And they're gonna have to decide, do I wanna, do I wanna, you know, sell gray scale to move into a, you know, less expensive product and pay a ton of taxes or are the, you know, is the management fee worth paying to avoid the taxes? And so there's gonna be some people that are kind of stuck there. I think there's gonna be also people that use it as a trading vehicle. So it's got more of trading volume than, than everyone else because it, it, it came into this ETF market as a fully grown adult. Everyone else started from zero. They're just, as you were describing, they own like 600,000 Bitcoin. They're huge. They've already been trading over the counter for years. So they have a huge advantage there. But it's gonna, I think, you know, the tide's going out for them. And so it's just a matter of how long.

Vance Crowe [00:14:38] Well, and this brings up like another interesting thing that people, at least even people that watch it pretty closely didn't understand, which is you have all these new demand of people that want to bring, they wanna bring dollars into the system, they wanna spend it on buying Bitcoin, whether they own it or now they're buying it through this ETF. Well, where is all of that supply coming from? Well, when the ETF opened up, there were a whole bunch of people that said, I wanna sell my gray scale and I wanna buy into something else, BlackRock or, or Fidelity. And so all of that liquidity that happens when they sell now is available to the market. So you didn't have this really constrained supply, you had a lot of liquidity. Let's, do you think that had pretty big impact? I mean, I know the inflows in the outflows.

David Oransky [00:15:27] Yeah, but there's obviously a lot of selling pressure coming from grayscale and there appears to be based on some of the analysis I've seen with the kind of on chain analytics that there's been some miners that have been selling into it. So, you know, miners often will hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet if they can, but they have also have a business to run. They have to pay for electricity and their operations. And so periodically they're selling there May, we don't know how many people were just speculating merely on the ETF approval and how many people bought Bitcoin earlier this year just to sell the news. And so I can, you know, as Bitcoiners were used to seeing these huge swings of, you know, things move in 10% or more, you know, you can lose 80% or can, you know, double, triple, quadruple in a shorter period of time. You know, most investors out there are expecting like a five to 10% return per year and they're thrilled when they get that, you know, Bitcoiners, you know, they're disappointed that the, we didn't get the God candle when bitcoin's up over 80% over the last year, I think. I think it'll come, but I think it's gonna take a while to keep up. 'cause I don't see these outflows from grayscale continuing forever. You know, I think a number of people that wanted to get out did it right away. There's gonna be another tranche that we're waiting just to see if that dis discount narrowed, which it has. And they can get out for a little, you know, a little less of a haircut, but at some point everyone that's gonna get out is gonna get out. You're gonna have the having here coming up in a few months, which is gonna further reduce kind of the available supply. So there's a lot of catalyst that I think eventually turn this around.

David Oransky [00:17:00] But it is gonna take, it's gonna take a spark to kind of ignite the next, I think, big leg up. And that could be an asset manager, a a notable asset manager deciding to add a, you know, 1% allocation of Bitcoin to their models or somebody kind of, you know, blazing the trail that's big enough to have other people pay attention and say, Hey, maybe this isn't crazy to add, you know, a little bit of Bitcoin or at least make that available to clients.

Vance Crowe [00:17:24] You mentioned something, the OTC, the over the counter. So there, there are miners that are out there, they're collecting a whole lot of Bitcoin. They have to sell enough to be able to keep their operations. But every once in a while they might have a position where they're like, we got a lot more Bitcoin than we need.

David Oransky [00:17:41] Where

Vance Crowe [00:17:41] Do they go to sell it? They, they don't put it on the exchanges like a normal person that wants to get the

David Oransky [00:17:46] Bitcoin they can. So there are, there are some exchanges, like Coinbase has an exchange. And the way to think of an exchange is probably much more like an auction, like kind of everybody comes together and is, you know, bidding or selling. And so you get like an active market of price discovery, OTC, which stands for over the counter is far more like you're calling around the individual desks and saying, Hey, either I've wanna buy Bitcoin or I've got Bitcoin to sell, you know, here's the pricing I'm willing to accept. And so it's a lot more fragmented and there can be, you know, kind of not full public knowledge of what other transactions are going on. So it's a little harder to get a competitive market there. And so I think we, yeah, that could be affecting the price somewhat. I don't know, I mean I, I tend to be someone who, you know, defaults more to, markets are reasonably efficient in that the people that are playing in this space now that are driving these ETFs are all very experienced market makers that kind of know what's going on. That I think there's just a lot more selling pressure right now than people expected, or at least in Bitcoiners expected. I think people in the traditional financial world aren't surprised by this at all. In fact, some of the ones that I talked to that are not very pro Bitcoin have had to be like, well, I gotta hand it to you, like, this launch was a lot more successful than I anticipated. So I think a lot of it's perspective Bitcoiners have a very different perspective on this than the traditional financial world. The traditional financial world. They're still saying negative things, but all they can point to is the price. Like if you actually get anyone to look at the fundamentals, they're like, actually yeah, this is actually kind of impressive. So hope.

Vance Crowe [00:19:14] Yeah, and I hope, and I think they're the, the hardcore bitcoiners are like, I won't sell at 40 or 80 or 120, you know, and maybe they will when it comes down to it, but the,

David Oransky [00:19:22] They will, there's a pr there's a price point for everyone where they'll take a little bit off the table to go do something for their life. But,

Vance Crowe [00:19:28] But for the most part, the people that are doing the trading Yeah, the every day, they don't care at all. They don't, it could be that they're selling chickens that it doesn't matter. They're

David Oransky [00:19:35] Just looking for arbitrage opportunities and short term stuff. Yeah. And that's, you know, long term like real bitcoiners, they're not looking to, you know, this isn't a short term speculation for them. This is, you know, in their minds the end game is Bitcoin will become money. Why on earth would I get off this train until we reach the destination? And so I think there is the opportunity down the road to have a pretty big squeeze where suddenly there's a lot of demand and there's very limited supply left. Because, you know, one of the benefits of these, you know, vicious bear market cycles that we have in Bitcoin is it shakes out all that we can. So most of the people that owned Bitcoin, you know, at least prior to this recent runup that were just speculating on it, are those kind of hardcore long-term bitcoiners that it, it's gonna take a lot for them to sell. The price is gonna have to go quite a bit for them to say, I'm now willing to exchange my Bitcoin for something to make my life better. Because doing so, they will also be knowing, or at least in their mind, that if they held on for another, you know, five, 10 years, it'd probably be worth even more. But they're, you know, they can't, aren't gonna defer their life forever, but their opportunity cost is much higher than somebody that's just looking to make an arbitrage trade.

Vance Crowe [00:20:41] So what do you think, how long does supply hold out? Is this months, years?

David Oransky [00:20:47] I think it's, I bet in the next two years or so, we see something and I think just, and that's just based on a few things. You've got the having coming up, which will further reduce supply. And that alone, I don't know enough is enough to kind of spark that, but it certainly adds that pressure. I think the, the driver ultimately is gonna be liquidity. You know, right now we've been doing the opposite of, you know, printing money. We've been contracting the money supply, which makes dollars more valuable. I think at some point that has to change. I think at some point we start, you know, injecting liquidity back into the system. And at least historically that's been one of the biggest drivers, the highest correlations with bitcoin's kind of price jumping up. And so if we get that on the back of a having and, you know, unlocking demand by having these new ETF vehicles available. 'cause there are a lot of people that would not have considered buying Bitcoin before and suddenly now those doors are open with the ETF. I think you could get a, yeah, the stars aligning where you could have a pretty big leg up in terms of exactly what time or how much. I have no idea. You know, my, my projections on Bitcoin are mostly directional, I think up into the right over the long term that's, and, and because I'm in it for the long term, I don't much care if it happens next week or longer. I think a lot of Bitcoiners, you know, get excited about the price it goes up and then their immediate next thought is, oh no, but I still wanted to buy more and now it's more expensive. And so it's a double-edged sword.

Vance Crowe [00:22:06] Yeah. And the, the companies that are entering this market, the, the Dels and the BlackRocks of the world, there were some other companies that did not want to do it. There were the Vanguards Yeah, there's Jamie Diamond. I know last time we talked about, you know, Jamie Diamond's running a bank. He's in a different situation than somebody like Vanguard. What do you think are the bogleheads, are they crazy for turning this down? What, what do you, what do you think about that? You

David Oransky [00:22:35] Know, people often ascribe, you know, cultish behavior to Bitcoiners. There is a very similar culture within the Bogle head community that to the outsiders, they looked very close-minded because they are so fierce about a few principles. I don't think the Vanguard's gonna come around soon. Their whole culture is built on passive index funds, stocks and bonds. You know, they don't like gold generally, they don't like commodities. They're very laser focused on, you know, total market funds and that's served them well. Now what I find ironic, 'cause that's actually kind of the world more where I come from in terms of my investment philosophy, like the rest of my investment portfolio looks very similar to kind of what Bogleheads would believe. And you know, I used to be more involved in that community and I know a lot of people there, the actual underlying beliefs that drive them to Vanguard and to index funds are surprisingly aligned with Bitcoiners. You know, it's this idea of, you know, stop paying these exorbitant fees to these, you know, elite money managers, you know, you should just bail to save and do it yourself and keep it simple, you know, more of a populous movement of, you know, bring, bring the power back to the everyday people and stop trying to, you know, you know, look for an edge here or there and stop trying to, you know, trade. And, you know, it shouldn't be about publics, just buy everything and, and have that, just ride it out, you know, do it for the long term. That, and I, I don't know if I've said this on, on your podcast before, but I ultimately think that if Bitcoin's successful, Bitcoin becomes like the ultimate passive investment and that there's actually so much alignment with what, with what bogleheads are trying to achieve and what Bitcoin I think will ultimately deliver.

David Oransky [00:24:19] It's not there yet, but I eventually could see those groups converging. I just don't see it happening immediately.

Vance Crowe [00:24:27] Yeah, my knee jerk reaction at first when, when I heard that they were gonna askew it, I was like, ah, you know, this is just, you know, bullheadedness. But then as I was looking around in, in communities, I run around in my brother Dan was talking with us like, they really don't want commodities. They like, their belief is, hey, invest into companies that are producing something that are selling it at a profit. And that's the way you're going to make money. And if the Bitcoiners really are living that ethos that Bitcoin is a commodity or it's, it's something like that, like you can't really hold it against them. And I, I think that there is like a, a silly amount of tension there that's not like, not important, right? The, the investing world needs all different types and you know, I think if you're gonna hold to a philosophy that's, that's a decent one to have

David Oransky [00:25:15] There, they've developed really good heuristics for avoiding bad investments. Having since had my mind expanded and now including Bitcoin. I see, I, I think they're missing something here. And even on following their own logic of yes, they want things that produce cash flows, we would never invest in anything that doesn't produce cash flows. Okay, well let's talk about the half your portfolio that's invested in US government bonds. Well those produce cash flow, they pay me interest. Oh, where does that interest come from? Well, from taxes wrong, we don't bring in enough taxes to cover our budget. We run deficits. Where does, where is the interest on those treasury bonds coming from? Oh, by, by issuing more bonds, by borrowing more, like there is no actual fundamental earnings behind that, you know, that promise of interest. So the argument falls apart and this is actually how, not how I, you know, ultimately came to Bitcoin, but what was the precursor to it? So I, like I said, my philosophy has historically been very aligned in the bogle heads and, and most of my portfolio still very much is I think for investing in stocks and bonds. Like you can't do much better than that. There's a lot of ways to do worse, but I used to kind of a shoe gold being like, yeah, why would you want this yellow rock that you put it in the vault and you open it up 10 years later and it's still the same one ounce of gold that didn't produce anything. Whereas my stocks and bonds produced interest in dividends. And I had to question that when back in, what would this have been 2017 timeframe? I don't know, more than five years ago when real interest rates on bonds went negative and it was like, well hold on.

David Oransky [00:26:52] Although they're still paying interest. Like we know for sure if you go buy a treasury inflation protected security, it's gonna yield a negative interest rate. Suddenly that makes gold with its 0% real interest rate actually seemed relatively better. And so that brought me down the whole rabbit hole of, you know, understanding gold and all the gold bug arguments, which then as you know, you're aware there's a lot of overlap with the gold bug community in Bitcoin. So I actually think there's, you've got these three very diehard groups, the gold bugs, the Bogleheads and the Bitcoiners that all think the other ones are crazy and missing something. And I actually see there's so much overlap in what they believe is wrong with the world and kind of what the right tools are. They've just kind of found that they're different tool to do it. I personally think all three of those philosophies have value and, and I include all three of those philosophies and, and how I manage my own money and, and that of clients.

Vance Crowe [00:27:40] So speaking of interest rates, which are all, you know, not all but largely artificially controlled, right? Like it was, the market was for a while there pricing in that they were gonna keep doing interest in, you know, rate increases. And now when you go look at the Vegas lines and you look at where the betters are, they're saying there's as many as seven interest rate cuts coming. I think the market believes it's probably gonna be more like five. What happens to an economy when you are, you suddenly go from, you know, pushing the rates up to slamming it into reverse?

David Oransky [00:28:18] Well let's start at the top there. So there's actually debate within the, you know, financial communities of how much the Fed actually controls the interest rates versus they respond to them and kind of act as though they control them. They certainly have a lot of influence in terms of how people think about it and therefore how people act. And, and so they, they have a lot of control, but I don't know that they have total control. So mainly what they can do is set the short term rates or the targets there and they have various tools to bring that about. They have less control over the long-term rates there in order to affect the long-term rates. They can engage in, you know, quantitative easing or quantitative tightening, either buying or selling long-term bonds kinda create demand or supply, you know, as needed. But the market's a pretty big force also. So, you know, there's a, there's a pretty credible school of thought that thinks that the Fed is mostly having to respond to what's going on in the market and that their biggest tool is actually just that they have a big microphone to talk to people and they can influence people and you know, generally you wanna be aligned with the Fed 'cause that means they're working on your side too. And so yeah, the consensus seems to be, or at least this is what you see, you know, most talked about articles that interest rates are coming back down and you know, look, there's already been some progress. Yeah, maybe, I'm not sure they're eager to get them back down. I think they'll only bring them back down if they have to. And although inflation, you know, in terms of CPI, numbers have come down a bit and are looking, you know, promising.

David Oransky [00:29:52] I don't know if they're just gonna say, Hey, we got inflation down, we're gonna now bring back rates to seem like the economy. I think they want to keep those, you know, those tools in those arrows in their quiver of, you know, if we get a recession or something else that they can, they're gonna use that to re-stimulate stuff. So I don't think inflation coming down alone is enough for them to cut rates back super low. I think ultimately what's gonna cause them to reduce rates is, is the, either the economy we get into a bad recession, they feel like they need to, you know, restimulate it or you know, fiscally there's, they get a lot of pressure from the treasury in terms of, hey, these interest rates are too high for us to pay, you know, we gotta do some yield, some form of yield, yield curve control here. So I don't know, but I've been wrong on this stuff so many times that I, I don't adjust my investments that much based on it. You know, we've always kept a shorter to intermediate term duration on our, on our bonds and we've mostly stuck with that. You know, I didn't think they'd be able to take interest rates as high as they did without step breaking. And so they got it there and they've held it there longer. And if I had to guess, I'd say no, we're probably gonna end up staying a little rates are gonna stay higher for a little bit longer than what a lot of people are talking about right now. But I don't know, I wouldn't bet everything on it either way. I think we need to be ready to roll.

Vance Crowe [00:31:07] Yeah, I mean for me the, the most that it impacts me is like how wealthy do people feel? Do they feel like they have spending money? Do they feel like they can purchase things that are outside of food and rent? And I believe that inflation is still ripping, I think it's actually ripping a lot hotter than what people believe, certainly hotter than the CPI. I mean I don't think any, any rational person believes that that measure covers anything. But I think it's still ripping and, and I think like things that are totally out of our control, the kie rebels of which, you know, I didn't even know who they were until maybe three weeks ago. And now they have become as powerful as what it used to take a Navy to do. They're now doing with $10,000 drones for people that aren't aware they that in Yemen, there's a group of rebels that have been fi fighting the Saudis for more than a decade. They ended up after the Israeli conflict and seeing that the US was otherwise occupied, they've now started attacking tankers and cargo ships that are going through the Suez Canal and trying to use the Red Sea to be able to cut the time from Europe down to Asia, which the traditional route takes about 24 days, but now they've totally shut down the Red Sea. They're giant tankers that are no longer willing to do that, go that route. So they have to go all the way around, which takes what would be a 26 to 40 day trip to now being somewhere around 60 days, which means the prices for everything, every single good that occurs somewhere between Europe and Asia and many, many others.

Vance Crowe [00:32:50] Because now you're tying up more fleet time. This means prices are going up because the cost of transportation is going up, supply chains are gonna be harmed by this. So these are areas that the US government, federal Reserve, treasury has no control over at all and now is going to impact prices and it, I think we're just gonna continue to see 'em rip.

David Oransky [00:33:12] Yeah, I think there's a lot more things that are gonna cause inflation to go back up then things are gonna keep it down. You know, I've heard the analogy of it, it feels like we're trying to hold, you know, that beach ball under the water and like we're, we're doing it so far, but eventually it's gonna pop up and the longer we hold it down or the lower we're able to take it, it's just gonna potentially go higher. Yeah. I I'm not convinced that inflation has been slated and it's gonna, you know, be at 2% or less for the foresee future. I think there are scenarios that could, that it, that could make that happen, but there's a lot more that could cause it to, you know, at least at the very least have some waves of inflation here. Yeah, and I, I think a real everyone else is, well not everyone else, but there's a lot of people that are worried on the other side that we're gonna have a, you know, 2008 style, you know, stock market crash, real estate crash. Like that's also a possibility. But I think a, a third possibility is that we kind of just move sideways for a long time, you know, in nominal terms, like the stock market doesn't fall, it might even continue to go to all time highs, you know, in nominal terms the real estate doesn't fall apart, but in real terms, because they allow inflation to kind of go on behind the scenes and you know, some of it may not be readily apparent, we're kind of inflating some of that away and trying to solve the problem. But the result of that is gonna be kind of the sense of like, we're treading water. Like, okay, nothing bad ever happened, but like why does life feel like it's getting harder and more expensive and more and more outta reach, but it's happening at a slower pace without some big sudden event that, that that might actually be the scenario that ends up in hindsight being labeled the soft landing.

David Oransky [00:34:47] Like, yeah, no crash ever happened, what's everyone talking about? And yet people's quality of life hasn't improved. I think that's a real,

Vance Crowe [00:34:55] Yeah, that soft landing idea. I mean, I can remember sitting with some financial planners about, I don't know, a year ago and they were like, yeah, I think the fed, you know, it's probably 50 50 if they can get a soft landing or not, which to me that was them saying we're not actually gonna make a prediction at all. Like it may happen, it may not happen, but like the idea that there even could be a soft landing seemed completely impossible to me. And I have to admit a year later, like, you know, well, like the things I thought were gonna happen, they've been able to stave off way more. I, I mean I remember looking at the, the banking crisis and, and and being like, well it's all over. We're, we're hitting the apocalyptic times and yet they've been able to stave it off. So it's been humbling for me.

David Oransky [00:35:40] They've got more tools and more control than I think, you know, we often think that they can, you know, they can maintain a s semblance of stability longer than I think most people anticipate. Yeah, I still not optimistic that we've solved this problem for the long term, but I think this, this is a good reminder. Like we, you know, I enjoy thinking about this stuff too, and I also didn't think that they'd be able to take the game this far, you know, and like so far there hasn't been a hard landing. The question is will they pull off the soft landing or is it kind of like, you know, jumping off a cliff and saying, hey, we haven't hit the bottom yet, but like it's still coming. Like, I don't know, but it's a good reminder not to move your portfolio everything, you know, based on projections that this is why we diversify, this is why we have, you know, everything spread out. Like we just need to make sure that kind of no matter what happens, we're okay. And, and so my focus on trying to understand geopolitics and different asset classes is like what's the long term direction here? Because I know that I can't predict what's gonna happen in the short term or specific levels, but if you can start to see trends and patterns to say this is where it's going eventually, or is this where it appears where there's a high probability it's going, how can I position myself so that if that happens, I'm not left out or, and so that for me is a lot of the reason why ultimately adopted Bitcoin. Like I don't have a strict timeline on when I think, you know, we get there or even what there is like, you know, there's a, I do believe that it could end up being global money, but I temper my expectations of what if it's just, what if it's only use as a portfolio diversifier, what if it's just an uncorrelated asset class that we add a few percent in the portfolio and improves risk success returns?

David Oransky [00:37:25] It's still attractive for that. I don't think that's where the end game is. But even if we tone it down just to that I think it's effective. And so to me, I just try to look at it from a lot of different angles, different time horizons say, is this something I wanna own for the long run? And I buy everything that I buy to invest in, I buy for an indefinite time period. It's not just a, this is a quick play because it's too easy to get caught off upside there and lose, as we've talked about, like both of us thought they wouldn't be able to pull this off as long as they have. So,

Vance Crowe [00:37:53] Well, I mean one thing that it'll be able to be used for, according to Jamie Diamond and I think Gary Gensler, is that it's able to be used for all these Alyssa activities. One of the things that happened in the last week was Jamie Diamond went on M-S-N-B-C, he continued to, to compare Bitcoin to Pet Rocks and said like, well look at all these illicit activities that people are using it for. The government's gotta control it. Now you and I have talked a bunch of different times Yeah. And it's like, well you can use US dollars for these things, but what is the game there? Because he is not a dumb man. He, he's mispronouncing, how to say Satoshi, he is like making really poor analogies. Why is that going on that way?

David Oransky [00:38:37] Yeah, I think it's a bit of each, I mean he's obviously smarter than he lets on about it, but I don't actually know that he really understands it and that this is all, you know, smoke and mirrors of pretending like he doesn't, I mean I think the reality is there's, there's still a lot of risks to Bitcoin's ultimate success. The ones that I think are the most apparent right now are the social and political risks. You know, it is Bitcoin is a threat to certain industries and certain people that are currently in power and they are able to, you know, to the extent that they can turn this into a political argument of why it would be too dangerous for people to build, to use Bitcoin because oh, you're enabling bad people using Bitcoin or that it, you know, it uses too much energy and it's gonna hurt the environment. Like all of those on the surface level are, will scare people away, but they don't even take that much of a dive into them to realize that what's the truth there is wildly different from what those headlines sound like. Very, very yes can Bitcoin is a permissionless money. It can be used by anybody. It's also not very private. And so most illicit activity actually isn't using Bitcoin, but is there some Yeah, there's a ton with the dollar too. Should we stop using the dollar? Like IIII just find it to be not that, that compelling of a case for me.

David Oransky [00:40:15] And that's before you even get to the, you know, principles of like, well who should have the ability to decide who can and can't send value around the world? Like should we have that power for everyone in the world decide, you know, whether they can or can't do what they want. But even before you get to that, I don't even think it's an issue. Even if you accept that, no, we do want to have that power. Bitcoin doesn't appear to be a major issue there. And then the whole energy, well, you know, we can hold that dive into, but in general, if you look into that, most people, and there's been a few really good like kind of ESG analysts and investors that have taken a dive into this and been like, we really misunderstood this, Bitcoin's actually a net positive for the environment because it uses Rader energy or is able to convert, you know, methane into, you know, use that methane and instead just have CO2, which is less harmful than methane. So there's, there's a lot of narratives that just don't make sense, but they're going to be effective at attacking Bitcoin on the social and political level. Now that's a double-edged sword because in our current environment, as soon as one side hates something, the other side decides to like it just because they wanna be on the opposite side. So I don't, I don't know how it plays out again, like long-term I think Bitcoin's adoption increases and the success of Bitcoin, you know, the movement of Bitcoin is up into the right, but there could absolutely be some rough times in there where it's uncomfortable.

Vance Crowe [00:41:31] Yeah, and I mean we, you've kind of already covered this, but I'd be interested in hearing your, your thoughts. Gary Gensler, who clearly understands Bitcoin because he taught a class he

David Oransky [00:41:40] Does at

Vance Crowe [00:41:40] MIT about it, right? And, and for whatever reason he is decided to come in in a much more reluctant position, fine, he's, he's got a different role in a different administration, but at the end of his ETF approval, he basically laid out, you know what I kind of consider some really weasily words about how that, you know, they don't support it, it's not really an asset in a traditional sense. What's your take on that? Why at the end of that? Did he put that in there?

David Oransky [00:42:10] Yeah, so you're referring to the, so after they got approved, there was like three letters written, one by Chairman Gensler, one by, you know, one dissenting opinion from Hester Perch and one other, no, not dissenting, she was in the affirmative and then one, you know, on the dissenting side. But yeah, the one that got the most fanfare was Chairman Gensler's letter because it basically read of like, you know, a begrudging approving letter. Like I didn't wanna approve these things, we don't like them, the courts made us do it, and so we're gonna follow the court's orders and you know, as, as the SEC is merit neutral, we don't make any judgment on, you know, the underlying value of the investment, just that it's, you know, full and fair disclosure and that there's protections, however, not that withstanding, you know, the underlying of these IE Bitcoin, you know, is primarily speculative and very volatile and is used for all these bad things, these things, right after he says they're, you know, merit neutral. So it is odd. I think part of the issue is they made this Bitcoin ETF launch such a big deal. Like they've been, they've been denying these ETFs for like 10 years. I think the, the, the first Bitcoin et f application was, you know, by the Winklevoss twins back in like 2013 or something like that. So they've been denying these forever and especially in the last few years. It's just been denial after denial, after denial, after lots of companies have tried that, they created all this attention, this became a spectator sport of everybody watching. So then when they just approved it, it was a big deal. Had they just approved them like any other investment product, it would've been probably a non-issue.

David Oransky [00:43:46] And so I think they had this, they put themselves in this spot where they had a lot of eyeballs on them and people were looking for commentary and so they gave the commentary and I think they're, it's really hard to figure out what Chairman Gensler's real views on Bitcoin, are it, you know, if you try to be the most charitable towards his letter, maybe he's just trying to make sure that all the investors understand that just 'cause the SEC approved an ETF doesn't mean that we are promoting this investment as something that's safe and that you should consider. And we just wanna be really clear about that. And that's valid. Like the SEC should not be giving investment advice in either direction, but I think the tone of that letter sounds mostly negative and is unusual that they would do something like that other than there's been a such a spotlight on them. So I, I don't really know what to make of it other than I think it also reads, as you know, in there is a big reminder to investment advisors and brokers that, hey, you guys also have, you know, obligations, fiduciary obligations and stuff and you know, keep those in mind. And so I think there will be a lot more scrutiny for anyone recommending these vehicles. And the reality is like, you should be knowledgeable and you should have done, you should do due diligence and all this stuff before you do it. But I do worry that there's a little bit of a, you know, political tone to it of, you know, they're gonna single this out for, you know, various reasons and make sure you've got all your i's dotted and t's crossed and the effect of it, whether intended or not, will be to scare a lot of people away.

David Oransky [00:45:21] No one's gonna wanna be the first one to move. They're gonna wait for someone who's big and notable, who's willing to be, become the example. But I think that's gonna happen. I mean, Fidelity's already, you know, fidelity a couple years ago, I think it was, started adding Bitcoin as an option to various 401k plans and they got a lot of bad press about that and I don't think it stopped 'em. So it, it's gonna happen. This is just more fud, which the benefit for anyone that likes Bitcoin is it's probably helping keep the price down, at least for now. So for me, I think there's an argument that right now Bitcoin might have one of the best forward looking risk adjusted returns out there in its history because although, you know, the people that bought in in 2013 are gonna have had insane returns. And I don't know that you can expect that to happen again. There's way less risk now. Like this is now integrated into the traditional financial system. Like even, you know, some of Bitcoin's harshest critics don't think Bitcoin's going to zero anymore. I know some of these harsh critics and then, you know, they don't like Bitcoin, but they're like, yeah, yeah, it's not going away, it's just a question of what it's worth. And so, I don't know, I find Bitcoin very attractive right now, as long as you have a time horizon long enough to wait. Like I don't know what's gonna happen in the next few months. I'm reasonably bullish over the next year or two. I'm really bullish over the next couple decades.

Vance Crowe [00:46:37] So President Trump, right after he met with Vivek Ram Swami comes out onto the stage and says, you know, the government is trying to put out these C BDCs, the Central Bank digital currencies, and if I'm president, that will never happen. How do you distinguish between Bitcoin and C BDCs and what, what do you think's going on there?

David Oransky [00:47:00] I mean, they're polar opposites. A CB A-C-B-D-C is basically, you know, is it really your money if you don't have control over it? You know, they can, you know, they can add all sorts, program, all sorts of things of how you can spend it, where you can send it all that. Whereas Bitcoin is truly permissionless, you know, censorship resistant money. So yeah, personally I am not pro central bank digital currency, however, what we have isn't that far off. Like, you know, we've got dollars that mostly move around on digital rails and, you know, you say the wrong thing and or spend it on the wrong thing and your accounts can get shut down and you can get, you know, unbanked like the, you know, so-called CBDC might make all that easier for them to do things like that. But it already exists. So like, you know, I guess it's a positive, you know? Yeah, I, I just, I don't know that it's really keeping us from it, like we're already there, like, you know, the CBDC is just one more step in that direction, but it's not like, you know, it's not the Rubicon that is gonna be crossed. Like we already crossed that. So I don't, I don't see too much threat from the CBDC because I think it's already there.

Vance Crowe [00:48:14] Well, another thing that you hear people talk about, which I actually know very little about, because to me they're, they're not worth looking at are stable coins. So people talk about, you know, being pegged to the US dollar, what does all this mean?

David Oransky [00:48:29] So the way I think about stable coins are very similar to a money market mutual fund. So within brokerage accounts you can buy a money market fund that's basically holds typically US treasuries or very high quality corporate debt. But just for illustration, let's think about it, one that just holds short term treasury bonds. Those are used as an alternative, as a savings account. Like, you know, the, the price of those is pegged to a dollar. Like they only go up in value. They pay interest much more like a CD or a bank account than, you know, a volatile bond portfolio. And they've got the special status as money market funds that allow them to do that in terms of how they account for it and you know, maintain that dollar peg, you know, don't break the buck. Stable coins are, to me, almost identical to those except that you don't have to buy them through, you know, through brokerage accounts. They're, you know, you can do it through crypto platforms and hold 'em directly. And so you don't have to be within the US you don't have to have a US brokerage account to buy them. And so that is an area that I think the government is gonna have to figure out. I think initially they didn't like the idea of having this whole, you know, banking system that they didn't have direct control over. I think ultimately if you're pro, you know, dollar Empire, these are actually a really good thing for the, you know, for that camp. This allows the, you know, this would, you know, the proliferation of of of stable coins even further than it already is basically creates demand for US dollars or demand for short-term US debt that's used as dollar substitutes rather.

David Oransky [00:50:00] And so it actually would enable us to continue running deficits, effectively printing money and not having that feed through to direct price inflation because there'd just be PE all these people around the world that wanna hold dollars. So there is actually a scenario where Bitcoin becomes the, I don't know what you'd call it, but basically the Trojan horse that takes down many other fiat currencies. So of all the fiat currencies, the US dollar is the strongest. People want that. So if you're in, you know, a country that has hyperinflation or even just, you know, high inflation that's sustained, you're trying to get your hands on dollars. I mean you see this in Argentina, there's a limit to how many dollars you can, you know, hold in your bank account or, or convert pesos to. And then there's black markets where you can try to do it, but it's not easy to just decide to save in dollars. You know, Bitcoin being the most permissionless free money enables people to get around those capital controls, which ultimately just causes those currencies to hyperinflate even quicker. But at the same time, Bitcoin is not yet a stable currency. It's not a unit of account. So it's very volatile for, from its purchasing power. And so while it may be a good savings vehicle or a good way to, you know, get around certain capital controls, it still doesn't function as good day-to-day money, you know, between something I wanna save for something to buy next week. I probably want dollars. And so you could have Bitcoin coming in and basically just destroying these other currencies and then who rides in with, you know, IMF loans and you know, hey, why don't you dollarize and we will, you know, invest in your infrastructure and all this stuff and you actually could have, and this is kind of goes to the dollar milkshake theory that I think we've alluded to at least before, where you could have the dollar and Bitcoin rising together.

David Oransky [00:51:41] Now I think ultimately the end game is to Bitcoin, but that could allow this, you know, this dollar being the world's reserve currency that people are worried about coming to an end going on for another, you know, many, many decades where you end up with the dollar as the fiat currency in Bitcoin as the, you know, neutral asset. So, and I think stable coins would be a good way for them to further that. And so I think we'll get regulatory clarity on stable coins. To me the most obvious way to regulate them would be around money market mutual funds rather than banks. I think the more I've thought about it, I think they're far more like money market funds and I wouldn't be surprised if they get some special status where they can be owned by people outside of the US. 'cause that helps further our reach.

Vance Crowe [00:52:26] So the other thing that I hear going on right now, and this is more in the pockets of the weird places I run around in, is that people are like, ah, Bitcoin's ETF got approved. Now it's time for ether's ETF to get approved. And there's, you know, other what I think you and I might call shit coins, you know, things that are, that are drafting off of the value of, of Bitcoin. But yeah,

David Oransky [00:52:48] What

Vance Crowe [00:52:49] Do you think is, is Ether gonna get a approval to become an ETF?

David Oransky [00:52:55] I wouldn't give it the same odds that it, so once, once Grayscale won their court case, which started, that's when the odds of the Bitcoin ETF went up significantly. I wouldn't put as high of odds on the Ether ETF. And part of that is based on that same letter we were talking about earlier. So Gensler made comments of that, you know, this decision, what I think he's like is cabined to, you know, one non-security commodity digital asset or something like that, kind of making it very clear that this is for Bitcoin only. Don't get any ideas that we are setting precedent for anything else which kind of indicated that, no, don't expect, you know, Ethereum, ETF on the heels of this. But at the same time, the arguments that allowed Gray grayscale to prevail in getting, you know, winning the court case look remarkably similar with e you know, their, you know, ether futures contracts are already trading, you know, and those are on regulated exchanges. And so as long as they can show a correlation, you know, of you know, E'S price to that, then they've got an argument, at least a similar argument to, to what grayscale made. I think the big difference here is that the SEC has consistently said that Bitcoin is a commodity. They have been very vague on Ethereum. There's been some instances where they kind of indicate that it might also have commodity status and others were not. And then there was some comments I think after they switched proof of stake, which does further centralize and make it look more of like a security, 'cause now you're kind of getting yield for staking your, you know, your e, that I think they'd at least have an option to try to deny it and force to go through the core system again.

David Oransky [00:54:36] And I don't know, it's not really that interesting to me, to be honest. I don't follow Ethereum that closely because after I started researching I was like, this to me isn't impactful enough that I would invest in it. You know, I generally don't invest in startup companies and ideas and so on first glance, Bitcoin looks like this odd one and it is kind of a venture like investment, but it, to me it's akin to investing in the internet itself rather than an internet company. Like I view it as a very, like a real paradigm shift of a base layer rather than just as another company. Ethereum to me is more similar to a company and it just doesn't interest me that much. I don't, I don't see the opportunity cost of, even if Ethereum were to be successful, missing out on that opportunity is a lot less costly than missing out on the opportunity of if Bitcoin, you know, continues on its trajectory.

Vance Crowe [00:55:26] So let's change the topic entirely off of Bitcoin and into something that I, that I observed the other day. You know, one of the ways that I encounter the rest of the world more than probably anywhere else is at the grocery store. I go to the grocery store and my complaint would be the same as everybody else, right? The prices of those groceries are way higher than they used to be. Like I shockingly high. It's hard to even know like, am I buying things that are so radically different? Like how is this possible? But the other day I went into the grocery store Saturday evening and all of the people working there were like 65 years or older and there were no high school kids at all. Is this a one-off experience? Like, I looked around and was like, what's going on? And I ended up asking them and they, they were like, ah, it's really hard to get kids to work on on Saturday anymore. This is shocking to me. You know, when I was growing up, there was a lot of like, Saturday was when you made your money for the rest of your life. Where's the economy going if high school kids aren't working in the grocery store on Saturday night?

David Oransky [00:56:33] I don't know. It's not something I've thought about from an economic standpoint. I mean I anecdotally I observed that there's not many teenage kids working the way that I saw when I was, you know, their age. You know, I was, you know, mowing lawns when I was 12 years old and you know, once I could, you know, actually get hired by a company that I was, you know, making sandwiches at a, you know, store and all that stuff like that was just what I expected to do. And I also wanted money to have freedom to go buy the things I wanted to. 'cause my parents, you know, it was kind of like, yeah, I pretty much always had the things I needed and educational stuff, but if I wanted a new bike or something I had to go earn the money and it was a lot. That was the best way to do it. And so I more think of it as a parent. Like I think I learned a lot of valuable skills by doing that. And I, I guess I don't know what these kids are doing. My kids are still younger so I haven't had to contemplate this yet. But you know, what, what are, what are they doing instead of working that we think is, you know, better for their long-term development? You know, is it just to get into college, which increasingly looks like less of a, a good value? Like, I don't know. So yeah, I don't know that I have any good answers other than I see it too anecdotally. I don't know what it means for the economy. I think more of what it means for my kids and, and what expectations and kind of how we want to guide them in terms of when they get there.

Vance Crowe [00:57:55] Yeah, I mean that's a, a great thing to be contemplating. I'm similarly a ways away from it, but you know, so few parents have their kids working 'cause they're like, well I've got 'em in soccer and they've got piano lessons and they've got, and I think in some ways this is amazing, right? You can really give a child these, these experiences in this education in a way that certainly was not available to me. But I'm also of the same mindset. Like a lot of what I learned in my first, you know, few jobs in high school were way more valuable to me long term than probably any basketball game I would've ever attended or soccer matches.

David Oransky [00:58:36] Yeah. Well and you get comfortable, you know, dealing with other people and upset customers and like adults that I, I think it just gives you really valuable skills to carry later into life. You know, it forces you to grow up a little bit, but that's good. You're also still living at home. Like otherwise at some point there's just a sharp point at which, you know, you send 'em off to college and you hope that, you know, you taught 'em everything. If you haven't given 'em any experiences along the way to help guide them and when they come home after a hard day, talk about that or you know, I mean I was waiting tables and you know, occasionally you'd get, you know, the food's taking longer and someone's all upset 'cause they're having a bad day and you take it personally and then like over time you learn not to. And I don't know, there's, there's valuable stuff there. And I do worry about, you know, with, you know, our kids, like if they don't have any of those experiences and they go to college and then they go straight to a corporate job and they've never seen anything other than, you know, group projects in school and then group projects, you know, at x, y, Z company. And

Vance Crowe [00:59:33] Well I think there's also something to be said for the nature of relationships when you are paying to have someone teach your child or to make sure they have this good experience versus the child is being paid. And so there is an expectation with them and like that can't be substituted. Like when the money is changing hands, who is responsible for this being a good experience really, really matters. Yeah.

David Oransky [01:00:00] Yeah. I think that absolutely changes the dynamic. I dunno that I had formulated that in my head, but that makes a lot of sense to me in terms of how everybody acts. You know, there's, if, if you're paying them to do something for your child, they're trying to keep you happy if your kid's getting a job there, like your kid's supposed to be making their life easier and providing value. And so it, it changes the dynamic a lot and ultimately that's what you're gonna have to, you know, do in life, right? The way you earn money is providing value to other people. You know, what you're offering them has to be more valuable than the money that they would be paying you to do it. And that's where exchange comes from. And so yeah, I, I'm with you. I think it's valuable skills. I don't yet know how to navigate that. Got a few more years to figure it out, thankfully.

Vance Crowe [01:00:47] Alright David, well I super appreciate you changing the, the, to be able to do this online, I knew we were gonna do it in person. I'm also glad to be talking about it. We're gonna have you on a couple more times in the next few months as stuff with Bitcoin unfolds and clearly as the economy plays the role that it does in our lives. So thanks so much for coming on. Thank

David Oransky [01:01:08] You for having me. It's always, it's always a fun conversation.

Vance Crowe [01:01:10] Real quick, if people wanted to find out more about you, where should they go?

David Oransky [01:01:14] I'm on Twitter but not very active at David Aki, so I don't know if that's the best place to follow me. But every now and then I post something my website or our, our company's website is lanar wealth.com. We mostly, you know, work with retirees and although we talk a lot about Bitcoin here, it's a pretty small portion of what we do within, you know, within our portfolios. There we're, you know, more Bullhead traditional investors there with a little bit of Bitcoin, which we think adds a lot. And then we have a few clients that fall down the Bitcoin rabbit hole after conversations like this and, you know, and want greater exposure there, but don't think that we're just all, you know, hardcore Bitcoin and investors there. We'd love you to be, but we would like to do it within a, a reasonable framework and for most people that's a small percentage.

Vance Crowe [01:01:56] Well thanks for coming on man.

David Oransky [01:01:57] Thank you.