EP20 | Beyond The Brink | Bitcoin Spot ETF | 10/01/23

The hosts are discussing the Bitcoin ETF and its impact on the crypto industry. They mention that major financial institutions have applied for Bitcoin ETFs, but as of August 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission has not yet approved a spot Bitcoin ETF. The hosts also discuss the difference between owning physical Bitcoin and owning shares in an ETF, and the potential for institutions like BlackRock to hold a significant amount of Bitcoin to back their ETFs. Welcome to Beyond the Brink. This is a show that explores global events that are pushing people to their limits and driving them to the brink of change. My name is Christy, and I'm here with my amazing co-host, Melissa. Hi there. There you are. It's good to see you. So good to see you. Good to be back. Yeah, it's been a little it's been a bit, hasn't it? It has been a little bit. Well, today we thought we'd chat about some things going on in the Bitcoin market as far as the Bitcoin ETF. And what is it and what does it mean for the crypto space in general? Now, before we kick things off, let's hear from all of the awesome viewers out there. And if you're tuning in on YouTube or Rumble, can you show us some love with a thumbs up or a rumble? We really appreciate that. And that allows us to get more more views. You could catch up with us on all of our previous episodes by visiting our Web site at Vita Broadcast Network dot com or on your favorite podcast platform. Just search for us using the handle at Vita Broadcast. So my amazing co-host, why don't you just take it away? I am. So I want to preface the show with, first of all, this is not financial advice. And I personally am by no means an expert in the topic of of Bitcoin ETFs and spot ETFs. But there's been so much talk about this in the news and the senators. I watched the hearings talking about the impact of this. And I thought this would be a great show to do to just kind of talk about what does this all mean? And how close do we really think we are to this? And what could this mean for the crypto industry in and of itself as far as the price goes? And so, yeah, that's that's what I wanted to let you guys know. I'm not an expert on this, but in any event, I mean, you you have your show, too. You've been kind of talking about it, you said, on the Tokens radio show. So there's a lot of a lot of interest in this subject, wouldn't you think? Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's so many news articles out there. And I've lost count of how many companies have applied for Bitcoin ETF. It's not if it's when there are a couple of approvals we were just talking about. We just want to confirm on. But I thought I had saw some news that came across it. We have a couple of spot ETFs that have been approved and ready to go. I don't know. I would imagine it's going to be fairly soon. It had everything to do with the potential government shutdown. And now that that hasn't happened. So we'll get back to you about the exact timing and the accuracy of that statement. Joe bought us some time, didn't he? I personally I I'm I'm over it. Shut it down. Shut it down. I'm done. Shut it down. And I'm, you know, sorry if anybody is offended by that. But there's just there's so much ridiculous stuff that goes on right now that I think shutting it down could be a valuable lesson to all involved. And and maybe clean some of this up. And we keep pushing and kicking the can down the road. It doesn't really help anything. But in any event, back to the Bitcoin spot ETF. I came across an article in I don't know. I'm sure I know you are familiar with it. But the Decrypt.co is a is a great Web site that has a lot of different articles regarding in in regards to the crypto space. And I ran across one and I'm just going to read a little bit from it because they're talking about crypto. A lot of the people that are crypto Korea curious, they they still view buying Bitcoin from a crypto exchange like themselves as intimidating. And it's opaque process. And in the technicalities of holding Bitcoin, understanding what is a crypto wallet? What is the Bitcoin address? What is a private key? And a lot of people are really intimidated by that and they're confused. And really, we've talked about this before. There's a lot of scare tactics out there to kind of push investors away from being involved in anything crypto and Bitcoin. You know, they're kind of taught that it's bad, you know, Bitcoin bad. And in reality, you've got all these institutions working behind the scenes to ready the environment for investors to come into the Bitcoin space and the crypto space. So in any event, this this article says that this has intensified the appeal of having a Bitcoin ETF or which is called an exchange traded fund. And many of the major financial institutions, BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, they've all applied with the Securities and Exchange Commission to be able to launch these ETFs. And according to this article, as of August 2023, Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to approve the spot Bitcoin ETF. And I'll link this in the description box below so you guys can can read it. But what I thought was really interesting, Christy, is you and I talked about Larry Fink. We've watched him and he kind of goes back and forth when it comes to Bitcoin. And I mean, there wasn't too long ago where he was completely anti Bitcoin. Do you remember that? Yeah, it was just bad timing. That's all. You know, didn't really, didn't really like it then. But they knew exactly what they were going to do. Right. It was funny because I was I was seeing people on Twitter and in other places. And, you know, you see him on the news. We were talking about it and they're just like, you know, calling him a boomer and he just doesn't understand Bitcoin. And I'm like, you guys, Larry Fink knows Bitcoin exactly what Bitcoin is. OK, he's not he's not this boomer that has no idea what Bitcoin is. And what it represents and what the potential is. I mean, I refuse to believe that. But anyway, so as I was surfing on Twitter the other day and I came across the clip of Larry comparing the the spot ETF and in just the Bitcoin ETF in general, comparing it to how the gold ETF from 20 years ago democratized gold. And, you know, he says that it gave the average person an easy way and an efficient way to to purchase it and store it because, you know, they don't have to go and physically buy the gold and store the gold themselves. You can assign to the ETF and, you know, somebody else is going to be holding it for you in a vault, which is what a lot of people do. Well, did they really have the gold or did they just have an interest in the gold? Well, that's the thing with the Bitcoin ETF. It allows you to speculate, participate in in the profit taking and also the losses that can occur with within that exchange traded fund. But you're not owning the Bitcoin at all. You're owning an interest in it. Right. You can't call them up and say, hey, I want my Bitcoin. They're just going to say you can sell your your position in your ETF. Well, some some of these ETFs, we understood it is that you actually you actually own the physical. But you don't have I mean, you don't have it. They're holding it for you. So it's kind of like trusting your bank right now when you put your money in that your money is actually there. And then you go to the bank to try to withdraw the cash out, the cold cash. And you're like, whoopsies, we don't have it. Right. It's kind of the same thing, which makes me not want to do that. But I understand why people do. And I do I do think that it does give people the opportunity to participate. But if you are like you and I and the people that are going to be watching this show, you probably want to you probably want to buy your own. Right. And this is another mechanism to control. Can I push back on that just a little bit? I don't know what I'm talking about. You're doing great, because a spot Bitcoin ETF is an open ended fund that can issue or redeem shares based on demand. It's shares, not the physical. Or digital. Bitcoin. Or anything else, unless if it was like a Pax, Pax gold type of thing, where when you're buying into that and you have gold that's put off and stored on your behalf. Yes. You're buying shares in a fund that's backed by Bitcoin. Yes. OK, that is. Well, I guess I was getting them confused because we are talking about spot. But I guess when I was talking earlier, I was thinking of where people are now able when they bought gold, you know, in the in the ETF. They were actually buying like they actually had physical. What do you call it? Right. To that to that particular gold that's being stored in a vault somewhere for them. And supposedly they want to try to do that with Bitcoin as well. Sure. If that if that's accurate, because it's still buying shares in an exchange traded fund. So these are funds that are trading all of the time in in your your stock market, if you will. You have a lot of diversified portfolios and certified financial planners who will take. Take a customer and put them into a basket of funds, if you will. A lot of them are exchange traded funds. It might be oil sector, it might be gold, it might be mining, whatever the case is. But I can't go in and say, hey, to my CFP and say, I want a piece of that mining operation. Right. I got you. OK, so that that. I just want to be clear on that. You have an interest for sure. Yeah, you have an interest, but it goes right back to you. You don't actually own the physical asset. So there you're buying into it like you have an interest. So they're kind of treating it like the like the stocks and stuff then. Right. Yeah. No, you have an interest in the company or whatever. You're in interest in the gold. I have an interest in the gold. I have an interest in the Bitcoin. So if it is a BlackRock ETF, then BlackRock itself is going to have to own quite a bit of Bitcoin or be insured. They will be both to have enough to cover what they're putting out as an offering for their ETFs. Well, that's part of this clip I found later. Yeah. Little that you're right in which. OK, well, we get to that point. That is something that really did spark my interest, which means it's a little bit more legit because they actually have to have the physical. Well, they have to have that. They have to actually have the Bitcoin because I think like futures, there's the futures ETF futures also. And I mean, like I said, I am not I am no way a an expert or even a novice at this stuff. It's just extremely interesting. And I know that it really it really matters with the whole the stuff that's going on with the financial system right now. This is very significant. I'm smart enough to know that these decisions that they're talking about, I understand that they're significant. And so really, even if I'm sure there's plenty of people that will watch this show that know way, way more about this stuff than I do. And if you do know about it, look into this because you're actually smart enough to understand what this means and what it could mean for your future. So I, you know, not financial advice, but I would definitely be looking into it. Well, I'd say better yet, reach out, contact us and we'll have you on the show. Oh, gosh, that would be fantastic. I would love to talk to someone that really knows what they're talking about. So anyway, when Melissa was surfing around Twitter, I came across the Larry Fink talking and I whenever I run across Larry, I, I just got to listen to him. And I got to I, I got to be annoyed and I don't know, mesmerized by his power. We're going to have to come up for with a special sound effect for Larry. As you know, on Tokens, our favorite SEC chairman has his own sound effect. It's a crying baby. Oh, it's a great one. Oh, yeah. Every time we talk about Gary, that's the intro for him. We're doing it. We're going to have to I need to get my button box going. I, I have one, guys. I just haven't figured it out yet. But, yeah, it's easy. I got to talk to you, girl. Talk to me. Okay. So I'm going to share this clip, hopefully, and and you guys will be able to see what Larry had to say. And let's see here. Hopefully. Can you see that? I can. All right. So BlackRock CEO Larry Fink on broad industry trend. Talk about how crypto fits. I can't talk about Bitcoin. We have a filing with the SEC, so I'm prohibited. I could talk about crypto in general, and I could talk about what we have done. You know, we believe we have a responsibility to democratize investing. And we've done a great job. And the role of ETFs in the world is transforming investing. And I think we're only at the beginning of that. Only at the beginning. We believe the fixed income market is going to become multiple trillion dollars in ETFs. Equities will continue. More and more of the market will be delivered through an ETF platform. You think about what was done 15, 20 years ago now for the advent of a gold ETF. That really democratized gold investing. It brought down the cost of transaction for gold. I mean, the cost of transacting physical gold is absurd. And now with crypto, the idea of democratizing that role, the cost right at a transact, it's quite expensive. We're talking points, not decimal points. And so that's a big point, too. Over the last five years, more and more global investors are asking us about the role of crypto. And as I said, I do believe a lot of crypto is an international asset. It has a differentiating value versus other asset classes. But more importantly, because it's so international, it's going to transcend any one currency in currency valuation. If you just look at the value of our dollar, how it depreciated the last two months and how much it depreciated over the last five years, I mean, an international crypto product can really transcend that. And that's why we believe there's great opportunities, and that's why we're seeing more and more interest. And that interest is broad-based worldwide. Can you talk about that? Yeah, broad-based worldwide. What do you think about that, Christy? Oh, no doubt. Like I said earlier, I believe that this wasn't just a new revelation on his part. This is something that they knew was coming, and they decided to just couch it. It's kind of like when we're not ready for something, but we know we're going to join the party. You deny it. It doesn't even exist. You start talking against it. It's bad. You might even have to litigate against it to stop it, and then you join them. Then you join them. Yes, that's where we're at here. I mean, and I really – so you and I talked about cryptocurrency a lot, and we've both done our homework, and we're learning every day more and more about the potential for people to be sovereign when it comes to crypto and the decentralized nature of this whole space. But, of course, it has all of the challenges that we spoke about earlier as far as the wallet and the security and all of this stuff that most people don't want to get involved with. And so, I mean, there's an incredible opportunity then for the BlackRocks and Fidelity and all of them to kind of – I feel like they've delayed this space intentionally to get ready for what's coming, for what they want to usher people into when it comes to cryptocurrency, because it is – I mean, it's a beast, right? The potential for what it can do is incredible. Like, people have no idea. Ryan and I were out to dinner, and we were talking about the future and what we see and all of the things that we study up in this space. And I'm looking around, and I'm saying, these people have no clue. They have no idea what's coming. In fact, I talked to an older lady yesterday, and she is – I think she said she was 65, 69, and completely against crypto and Bitcoin. And she said, it's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. And I said, I respectfully disagree, ma'am. It's already here. It's already happening. She said, well, I'll tell you what, us boomers – and I don't remember, she's like 75-point-something million boomers, and our money, not one dime of that's going to go into crypto. We won't let it. We'll take our money, and we'll just go cash. And I said, that sounds – I understand where you're coming from, but unfortunately, you can't go into your bank and take out your money that you want. If you think for one second you're going to walk into a bank and withdraw $10,000, $5,000, walk into the bank today, tomorrow, and tell them you want to take out $5,000 of your money, cash money, and tell me how you get treated, and tell me if you walk out of the bank with the $5,000, because you're probably not going to, because they don't hold that kind of money. And if you want a big chunk of money like that that's your money, you're not going to be walking out of the bank with it. And she was like, wow. Of course, she stopped talking to me, and I was – I mean, I was polite. I was polite about it, but I thought – And that's where Ryan and I were saying, like, the average person that's not paying attention to any of this stuff, they don't really know, but what's going to happen that I see, the Larry Finks of the world, they are – what do you call it – capitalizing on that, those people, because that woman will go into these ETF funds or her – Sure. Advising her, and she'll be in it without even knowing it. That's right. Absolutely right. Without even knowing any of this stuff. So I just thought it was a really interesting conversation that I had with her. And usually I don't engage with folks, but she was all fired up, and she was – Oh, yeah. So I did engage, but – She's going to have quite an awakening when she finds out that there's a shortage of cash and the banks are not going to put any more into the liquidity pool because they want to pull the cash back. They want to go to cashless so that they can roll out a digital currency. There's a lot of places – I think they've been doing trials everywhere, you know, in any of these huge companies like Walmart. I saw somebody on Twitter again saying they went into their Walmart and it had a big sign saying no cash accepted here. And so I think they did it a lot with COVID, with trying to get people to use the digital means instead of the actual cash money. And so that push is just going to get greater and greater and greater. I find that's happening even at Costco. If you wish to do self-check, you cannot use cash. So it makes sense if you're going to go into Walmart who has virtually no cashiers anymore, everything is self-check. They have a cashier observer there, but you're not going to have somebody who's actually handling the cash anymore, very rarely. At least when I go to Walmart, you know, ours is pretty much locked down anyway, but it's all self-check. And so there is no cash to be operated in those machines. Let me take that back. The last time I was there, you were still able to put cash in the machine, but it's got to have a machine that accepts cash. Right. So we're getting there. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, people don't realize they're slowly replacing all the infrastructure, little by little. We don't notice it, right? We just go along with our day to day. I mean, when they started doing, you know, self-checkout, like you're saying, you go to the grocery store. Here in Michigan, we have Meyers. And, you know, part of the reason that I went there is for the customer service and, you know, they bagged your groceries and it wasn't stressful, you know, for me. And now it's like, oh, you got to go through the self-checkout. And I just, I don't like it. It's something I have to get used to. There's nothing I can do about it. Right. In terms of, you know, if I want to shop there, that's what it is. That's the way it is. But I think that we've seen these things happening over the course of many years now and it just becomes the norm. And we just accept it and nobody pushed back against it. And so they start changing over their infrastructure, like you're saying, the machines. Some machines take cash. Others most now, the new ones don't. And so you're going to go places and there's going to be one machine that's going to take cash and it may be down when you're there. You know, there might be some angry people, but it only takes a few times of somebody getting pissed off and having to leave a cart of groceries because they don't have any digital money with them. They have to use, you know, want to use cash and walking out to where they're like, well, next time I go to that store, I'm not going to use cash, right? It's like you get a spanking. You're not going to do that again, right? This is so much, you know, into another story that we talked about was the fourth turning. This is all part of it. We have when you get to the fourth turning where we are right now, as all fourth turnings have been, you have a crisis mode. It is a crisis generation. And it can go on for some 20 years or so. But look at where we, this, our whole change in technology has been going on for a long time to where we've gotten to this point. So for people to sit there and think, life's just going to go on the way it is. I mean, look at your electric cars and you talk about being pissed off from having to wait and do your self-check. Imagine people who have to wait 35, 40 minutes to go ahead and wait another 35, 40 minutes to get half a charge so that they can go on to the next charging station. It's unreal. But this is the path of progress. And somewhere along the line, all of this chaos is going to get straightened out and it's going to be beautiful. I don't know if it's going to happen in my lifetime, but, you know, we'll see. We're going to see some stuff, for sure. I was listening to something the other day. I don't remember who said it, but I was like, wow, they nailed it. Talking about the older folks that kind of push back on technology, you know, particularly the phones and the way the TVs work now and all this stuff. They bypassed them becoming like big time users of, you know, say like the cell phones and the clickers by the voice activated. Now they're in. The older folks, because it's easy, right? You just you tell them, you know, I want to watch this or whatever. And it works for them. It made it easy for them. And so finally you have, you know, older people kind of coming into the space where, you know, they push back for the longest time on the flip phone, you know, type thing. And now they're using their phone as a clicker for their television and telling you what to do. So it's pretty incredible how far we've come. But so back to the SPOT ETF. I came across Bitcoin Magazine had had a little bit of a guide because, again, I'm not I'm not an expert on this. And so I thought I would just kind of go over what is a SPOT ETF very briefly, you know, by definition, what what it is actually. And then I found a clip from I want to say it was CNBC, this fella explaining the significance of it. And it's really a really good bunch of information that I thought I would share. But Bitcoin Magazine says that a SPOT Bitcoin. Lisa, let me get in here. I mean, this is a great article and there are the two distinctions. And I think you might have been getting confused about the Bitcoin Trust before versus the ETF, which is in this article. But the Bitcoin Trust is where you do hold the Bitcoin. Okay. And they've been doing that one for a long time. MicroStrategy is a good example. Yes. A grayscale. They have a Bitcoin Trust, the GBTC. So anyway, please. So when someone has it in the Bitcoin Trust. Right. Is that kind of along the lines where you have a key and they have a key or something or they're custodian your Bitcoin then for you? I think it could be a bit of both. It depends on how you have it set up. The Bitcoin Trust is a private closed end fund that's invested exclusively in Bitcoin. Okay. Okay. And the shares are not redeemable, meaning they can't be exchanged for the underlying Bitcoin. Oh, it says they can't be exchanged for the underlying Bitcoin. So the shares are not redeemable. So. Hmm. Okay. Anyway, but go ahead. Take it away. So the Spot ETF, the Spot Bitcoin ETF, it says it's an open end fund that can issue or redeem shares based on the demand. And that it's designed to closely track the spot price of Bitcoin. And the ETF is traded on major exchanges similar to stocks, and they can be bought and sold throughout the trading day. Right. So, you know, at the prices that are in line with the underlying asset. And then they also allow for the creation and redemption of shares to meet demand. So that's kind of just like a short thing. And of course, I still don't super understand what it means. But when I ran across this clip, I'm like, these guys explain it a little bit better, or at least explain why this is so monumental, what's getting ready to happen. And for those of us that have been in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency digital asset space and been waiting and waiting for something huge to happen or the institutional money to come in, we're one step closer. And this clip, I think, kind of explains that. So I'm going to go ahead and share that. Yeah, I think we're real. I think we're real close to that. I do, too. I really do. All right. So hopefully you'll be able to see and hear my screen. Here we go. Yeah. Got it. No spot Bitcoin has been approved by the SEC, at least not yet. There are several futures Bitcoin ETFs that are trading. These futures Bitcoin ETFs are backed by Bitcoin futures contracts. And ETFs, like the ones that exist, the brochure products, for example, track the price performance of the underlying futures, which track Bitcoin. So, you know, kind of the benefit of that is liquidity and regulation. But the downside of that is that the futures have a cost in terms of cost themselves. They may or may not track the actual spot price of Bitcoin, but it's the closest thing to it. Simply put, the futures ETFs don't require an underlying holding of Bitcoin since they're backed by futures contracts. But a spot Bitcoin ETF could change how Wall Street buys into the cryptocurrency. And the big question is, if approved, how will this affect markets? An approved spot ETF means asset managers would have to hold as much Bitcoin as the ETF is worth, triggering a potential wave of institutional holding of Bitcoin. If investors bought $100 million of a spot Bitcoin ETF, the ETF would be obliged to go out and buy roughly $100 million in Bitcoin, minus fees, of course. The entity responsible for holding the asset is called a custodian. The amount of Bitcoin that would need to be held for a spot ETF depends a lot on what the demand would be, the initial demand for that vehicle or product. Given that the ETF applications are from larger asset managers, it's likely that it would be in the hundreds of millions, if not low-digit billions. The hope is, institutional investors who might have been reluctant to hold Bitcoin itself will see the new asset as a safer way to buy in, and set off a buying spree of Bitcoin along the way. Over the last five years, more and more global investors are asking us about the role of crypto. If you get products like ETFs out there, which are then regulated, trade on an exchange, you kind of have your bid-ask spread on a daily basis, you can monitor trading efficiency, you can see the transparency of what is in the ETF and what the cost is, that will open up certainly the ability and use case for larger institutions to deploy Bitcoin into their portfolios that might not have done it before. And use in investments like retirement accounts could drive huge gains in Bitcoin's market cap. I think there's almost $40 trillion of retirement assets. And you can imagine a scenario where 5% to 10% of those assets end up becoming allocated to Bitcoin. 10% of a $40 trillion retirement asset, that's $4 trillion. The total current market cap of all cryptocurrency is around $1 trillion. So that would be four times the size of the current market cap. Still, an ETF faces a huge hurdle. Approval from the SEC. The agency has denied several proposals in the past. In the past, the SEC has denied the applications, say, for a couple of reasons. But one of the main reasons was around the potential for market manipulation and the lack of a surveillance sharing agreement with a market of sufficient size, an underlying market of sufficient size. And the agency launched a crackdown on the crypto industry in 2023. The timing of BlackRock's filing, I think, was certainly surprising, given the current regulatory backdrop. We're going to get good news. The agency has been extremely aggressive over the past year with essentially a regulation by enforcement approach. After BlackRock's initial filing in June, the Wall Street Journal reported that many of the ETF applications had to refile their proposals after the SEC deemed applications inadequate. Updated filings from firms include surveillance sharing details to watch for potential market manipulation. They're bringing together some pretty good partners from a custody standpoint. They've got Bank of New York Mellon. They've got Coinbase. They've got an agreement, a surveillance agreement with NASDAQ to help with the security aspect of it. So they're trying to show the SEC that they're putting all the safety things, provisions in place to give them the confidence to give them that acceptance of their application. If the SEC feels confident in the safety of these ETFs, if it approves them, it could be a boon for Bitcoin investors. If not, those investors will likely be stuck on the sidelines looking for another reason to start Bitcoin's next bull run. Yeah, well, I thought that was a really good explanation. It was very good. I do think the bull run is coming. Yeah. Real soon. I mean, we've got the halving that's going to be happening right around April of next year. Things are bound to take off. It's the fall. When you think about that, that's the little things that I hear people talk about and that we're coming up to the full run, not even thinking about this, not even putting this into the mix of it. And I find it so fascinating. If you couple all that together, I mean, that could just be a massive explosion in price. Well, check this out. If 2140 is the last year, the last halving that will ever occur, that will be when the last Bitcoin is mined. No more. And it's going to be a fraction of a Bitcoin at that point for each block that's validated. So, currently, we're less than 2 million Bitcoin away from reaching zero. Zero Bitcoin availability. So, something tells me that these companies have been buying Bitcoin for a while. They've had to if they have to back it. And it will drive up the price if they've got to support the asset. You know, if they're going to apply for and get approved for a spot ETF, they're going to have – if they don't already have the Bitcoin, they're going to have to acquire it. That's going to drive the price up. Somebody's hodling that Bitcoin and somebody wants it really bad. I wonder how much you're going to let it go for. The store of value. I mean, so, when I think about Bitcoin, and a lot of people disagree, and I can appreciate everyone's points of view when it comes to Bitcoin. You know, as far as using the lightning network and all that. I personally, even though the white paper was the peer-to-peer cash system, I personally think it's a far greater value as a store of value. And what an incredible tool. When you think about the fiat-based and the debt-based and all the bullshit money that we have right now that's based on thin air, nothing, and all of our 401ks and the retirement plans and all of this stuff. This stuff being done in the background is being masterly worked, really. They create confusion for the public to understand what's really going on when it comes to Bitcoin. I think they've used Bitcoin as a tool to catch bad guys, even. It was pushed out initially as only criminals use it and it's untraceable, you're anonymous, and that couldn't be further from the truth. All they're doing is talking about themselves. I mean, the criminals that run the Federal Reserve. Right. And so I think that there's been money that's been seized and Bitcoins that have been seized and all these types of things. And when you find out, you know, I just found out a couple of days ago about Fidelity mining Bitcoin since 2014. I had no idea. The article that I came across talked about, you know, they're getting their feet wet. They're using their own computers and that sort of thing. And then I have concerns over micro and macro strategy owning so much Bitcoin. But when you think about them having this futures or what did you say, the Bitcoin trust, you know, people getting in, you know, the guys got the Bitcoin. So I could see where people are going to be investing in that and transitioning our old fiat system into this new system where Bitcoin is a store of value for things like our 401ks and all of those types of things. I mean, in a couple like you've got the XRP and Ripple and all these other technologies that are going to do something different. But they're all going to work together. But I just think it's incredible what's happening and that, you know, a lot of people aren't really paying attention to what's going on. It just blows my mind. It blows my mind. It's time to start having a conversation with your financial advisor because your financial advisors are being trained in digital assets. Currently, that's part of their continuing education requirements. Yes. Yeah. I mean, well, you know, they said also even some of the universities are offering courses in, you know, digital assets and things like that. And so, you know, but yet when you look at the news and they're talking about it, they try to confuse people and scare people. That's really what I see. It just annoys me that they do that. It's just a different thing that they're trying to scare us and confuse us about. It's something that's been going on for a long time and about a whole bunch of different things. You've heard of DACFA, right? The Digital Assets Council of Financial Advisors. No. Tell me. Okay. Rick Abelman founded this organization. You probably have heard of Rick Abelman, longtime independent financial advisor, top-rated guy. He started his own financial advising company, went huge. He bought Financial Engines, and then it became Edelman Financial Engines, and then Schwab. Is it Schwab? It's still called Edelman Financial Engines, but Schwab is kind of the engine that's running it, if you will, behind the scenes. And Rick stepped over and started this council. This is several years ago now because he had the foresight to see what was coming. He had been talking about digital assets for 10 years or so. Wow. So he founded this organization, and this was specifically to train financial advisors on what is digital assets, the who, what, where, when, why, all of that. Wow. And we, as laypeople, can take their courses as well. We won't be able to get continuing education credits, but we can certainly take their courses. It's very easy to become a part of that. You know, and so I'm glad that you brought that up because, you know, here's someone that you are familiar with and that we can educate ourselves and take these courses. Right. I found, I was reading an article, and I want to say it's like Northern Trust or something like that, one of the oldest established banks. Right. If you sign up for their email, they send invaluable information. And I tend to say, what are the rich people? Like, they're sending emails to, like, their clientele that are rich people. And so I've just been kind of immersing myself into, what do the rich people need? You know, and I'm educating myself every day. And it's just really interesting when you hear what they or read what they are finding important and significant. It's so far removed from what you see on Fox News or CNN or whatever. It's actually laughable. Yeah. I would be willing to bet most of those people don't even watch those channels because it's just, it's a trash. So anyway, I just, I find that fascinating. And maybe we can link in case people are interested. I don't know. Expand your thinking, people. Like, spread your horizons, I guess. When you're looking through information, it's pretty wild what people are really talking about in the financial world. One thing that I ran across, there was recently, it was called Mainnet 2023 conference that they have every year. And some of the biggest names in the crypto, digital assets, Bitcoin show up to this conference. And there was a conversation with Mike Novogratz, who a lot of people don't like, but Mike is in the know. He's been around the block a time or two. And he brought something up that I felt was very significant. And I found this on Twitter also. So I'm going to play this clip. But basically, seven or eight competitors, he's saying, are going to launch the same day. And I find that really interesting. So let me get this. And this kind of goes along with the spot ETF as well. Hopefully you can see Mike. Yes. All right. We're going to get good news in October. Good news in October. And that would mean you'd probably have to get back to trading by early December. I don't think people understand how important it is. And so, you know, Invesco, who's our partner in this, we want to win, right? But Cathie Wood wants to win. BlackRock wants to win. Fidelity wants to win. There are probably seven or eight credible competitors that I think will launch the same day. And so you step back. We want to win. We also want Bitcoin to go higher. And think of the sales forces. You've got BlackRock's sales force, Invesco's sales force, Spark's sales force, Fidelity's sales force. So you have an entire new group of people picking up the phone. Because Bitcoin is only sold. It's never bought. One thing I learned starting in 2013 when I had to explain what the business team general's problem was for people to kind of get them to buy Bitcoin, now it's a macro asset. And so I think this is a complete game changer. Prices are always set on the margin, right? They're not on the sellers. Right now it's not on the buyers, it's on the sellers. We have very low liquidity in these markets. But you're going to start seeing buyers and they're not going to buy and sell right away. So you're going to suck up a lot of supply and prices are going to go a lot higher. That is significant. I mean, I got excited when I saw that because, I mean, think about it. We're out here trying to encourage our family and our friends. This is not your crazy Uncle Joe telling you to buy Bitcoin. This is going to be the sales staff at your Fidelity, your Invesco, these bigger companies, BlackRock, saying, you know, Mr. Jones, I think you should diversify your portfolio. And if they're all going to probably launch, I mean, that makes competitive sense, right? Why are you going to let the other guy get a leg up? As soon as they get the green light, boom, they're going to hit the door running, don't you think? Oh, absolutely. And it's going right back to what we talked about maybe five, 10 minutes ago is about supply. There's a limited amount of it. So those who are holding it are going to have to decide when they want to sell it. And it's going to have to come at a premium. Yeah. I mean, it's all good times. If you own Bitcoin, it's good times. Even if you own anything you own, it's going to... Yes, I think it's going to be good for quite a bit of the crypto market. Yeah. And him saying, so he's speculating that they're actually going to, you know, get this approved in October. And then when all the kinks are worked out, you'll be trading by December. And I mean, there are so many other weird things going on, exciting things going on, and everything gets kind of tied together. I mean, I don't know if the folks watching our show have been paying attention to all the different hearings that have been out there. Oh, yeah. I mean, they've been talking about the SEC and, you know, just the different bills, the funding, just one thing after another. There was something on the agricultural or agriculture and who is allowed to own it. And I mean, they've just been really working. It doesn't seem like they're doing anything because it's a dog and pony show half the time when you're watching it. But I do think they're making progress and they're trying to, you know, make rules and regulations. And Congress, they actually have to be the ones to pass these laws. We don't want Gary from the SEC making these damn rules and determining what it is and what it isn't. And, you know, delaying. I mean, that agency, there's a lot of people that they don't agree on the Eastgate thing, but Eastgate was given a pass. And they always put Eastgate, you know, Ethereum with Bitcoin, which I think are different. Bitcoin is different than Ethereum. Yeah. I mean, those two, but they always want to pair those up. But Ethereum definitely seen from things that they sold it as they sold the security and ICO and all this kind of stuff. And they were given a free pass by the SEC and all these people in power. And they held back progress from, you know, XRP, for example, and Ripple and the things that they were planning on working on. And, you know, that was why they had the big lawsuit and, you know, yada, yada, yada. There's all these things where there's just people in power that they want to control everything. And we just kind of sit back and watch it all unfold. But it does seem like things are heading in the right direction. But I think it's important to pay attention because if we don't, you got some person like Maxine Waters making the rules. Well, you know, what's refreshing is that you saw some of the House legislators or I should say legislators from the House, congressmen and women who are telling the SEC, let's get those ETFs approved. What's the holdup? Let's get it done because they see the importance of it as well. It's good for the economy if they get the stuff going. Yeah. And I see you have it here in the lineup, so I'm not going to talk more about it. No, go ahead. Actually, that was what I was going to talk about next is the senators. If you want to if you want to talk about that, because I think we found the article on the senators and then actually even the letter that they wrote. So if you got do you have that? I have it up right now. But, yeah, I mean, it was just about a week ago where a group of congress members sent a letter to the SEC. Gosh, was it a week ago, Tuesday or something like that urgency or urging the agency to approve the listing of spot ETFs immediately? Immediately. It was signed by reps Mike Flood, Tom Emmer, Richie Torres and Wiley Nickel. They argued that a regulated spot Bitcoin exchange traded fund would increase investor protection by providing safer and more transparent access to Bitcoin investments. They went on to say that Congress has a duty to ensure the SEC approves investment products that meet the requirements set out by Congress. The letter stated not the other way around. Going on, says the Congress members wrote, there's no reason to continue to deny such applications under inconsistent and discriminatory standards. They argued that the SEC stance is untenable moving forward. Wow. The SEC's repeatedly blocked proposals for spot ETFs, despite applications from major financial firms like Fidelity, BlackRock, Bitwise, VanEck, Galaxy, Invesco and WisdomTree. So just like, what is it, Mike? Millegrant? Yes, was saying he's from partners with Invesco. The agency has only approved Bitcoin futures ETFs so far, not exchange traded funds, not the spot ETF. And to finish this out, lawmakers told Gary Gensler, a spot Bitcoin ETF is indistinguishable from a Bitcoin futures ETF. Thus, the SEC's current posture is untenable moving forward. So they pressed to have that approve a spot Bitcoin fund. So this gets back to what I was saying when we first started the show that I thought I had read something. I could have sworn I saw this where we have an approval of a spot ETF. But we'll do our research and next time we get back together, we will confirm that. But had everything to do with the government staying open. That was the excuse of the SEC for delaying like ARK Invest, their application and BlackRock and so forth. So there you go. Well, and I like I so I've been watching these hearings and I'm happy. Richie Torres, he's a Democrat. I think Tom Emmer is a Republican. I'm not sure what Mike Flood is. He's a Republican. And I'm not sure what Wiley Nickel is. I'm not sure. But I mean, I love Richie Torres and I love Tom Emmer. These guys know they've been paying attention. And you can tell when when they're asking their questions in the hearings that they understand what they're talking about. And I mean, they were they blistered Gary at the last the latest one. And it is just it comes it's it comes at a frustration level. They don't turn over documents that they're supposed to do. And they're just they're they're hindering our innovation. But I thought if you don't mind, I wanted to read the letter. It's kind of it's short. It's not very long that these that these four senators wrote to Chairman Gensler. And just just to say, so they say, dear Chair Gensler, we write to ensure the Securities and Exchange Commission does not continue to discriminate against Bitcoin exchange traded products. The SEC is responsible for making certain that products that comply with investor protection standards are made available to investors. This position was affirmed three to zero by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last month. And here's your thing, Christie. Grayscale LLC versus the SEC. The circuit court upheld Grayscale's position that the SEC violated the Administrative Procedures Act when it denied Grayscale's application to convert Grayscale's Bitcoin truck into a spot Bitcoin ETP. In its decision, the Court of Appeals held that Grayscale's proposed Bitcoin ETP is materially similar across relevant regulatory factors to the approved Bitcoin futures ETPs. It further found the SEC's unexplained discounting of the obvious financial and mathematical relationship between the spot and futures markets falls short of the standard for reasoned decision making. The Court of Appeals concluded that, quote, in the absence of coherent explanation, this unlike regulatory treatment of the product is unlawful, end quote. The court's finding underscores the fundamental point. A spot Bitcoin ETP is indistinguishable from a Bitcoin futures ETP. Thus, the SEC's current posture is untenable moving forward. During your time at the SEC, you have consistently stated that digital asset firms should come in and register with the SEC. Market participants have relied on your statement and have filed applications for a regulated spot Bitcoin ETP. Following the Court of Appeals' decision, there is no reason to continue to deny such applications under inconsistent and discriminatory standards. A regulated spot Bitcoin ETP would provide increased protection for investors by making access to Bitcoin safer and more transparent. Congress has a duty to ensure the SEC approves investment products that meet the requirements set out by Congress. To that end, we urge you to approve the listing of the spot Bitcoin ETPs immediately. We appreciate your attention to this important matter. Signed Mike Flood, Wiley Nichol, Tom Emmer, and Richie Torres. I thought that was, these guys, they know what they're talking about. And you're right, you read it. So you would think the court did sign it. So who is Chairman Gensler and the SEC to override that? Like, how do they have so much power to overstep their boundaries like this time and time again? It's very frustrating to me. But in any event, the last thing that I have is there was a post on Twitter that was saying from now until January 10th of 2024, that's the final deadline that the SEC has to decide whether they're going to approve the spot. He thinks that once that happens, that they're all going to get approved at the same time. Right. That's going back to what Mike was saying. Yeah. Well, Mike was saying that, like, they have them all geared up. I got them geared up, ready to go. Right. But we'll see. I'm glad that more people are paying attention to this kind of stuff. And I know myself, I've learned so much over the past couple of years. I would never have even tried to talk about, you know, something that I don't know a lot about. But I think it's important. And so if I've got to put myself out there to get somebody to pay attention and say, no, you big dummy, it's this, I'll do it. I do it. Well, I just wanted to mention something, too, that I think this plays into it, even though they're not talking about it. Think about the financial planner who's tasked for handling a person's financial account, okay? And let's say their customer, their client has said, you know, a few years ago, they said, I want to buy crypto, and I'm going to pull some of my funds out, and I want to buy some Bitcoin. Now, the financial advisor was not allowed to do that for them. They weren't able to buy it. They weren't able to custody it. So they had to work with their customer to keep their customer, maybe liquidate funds or take some cash that they had in their account sitting there, and the customer goes off and buys the crypto, self-custodies it, you name it. So what if they took away 10%, 15% of the portfolio? That's an awful lot away from the portfolio that the financial planner is now having to deal with in terms of, how do they best counsel this person on the remaining portion of their portfolio? That 15% that's sitting out there in an investment of Bitcoin or whatever else is there, hopefully there's a discussion going on between the financial planner and their customer about that, so that the advisor would know how to advise them on their other basket of investments. You know, I think this is really important to have all of this. I think this is one of the reasons as well is that this brings this under the umbrella of the financial planner. I don't think that this is a benevolent action so that the financial planners can do a better job. It's so that the investment funds, you know, these brokerage houses and all of that, they have control over the monies that they have already, that they're kind of letting go, because their customers want these products. So now they can say, hey, we can get you into exchange traded funds. You don't have to worry about it. Well, you know what else popped in my head when you were saying that, about them having to take out their money out of the fund, and then to be able to buy the Bitcoin or whatever themselves to self-custody it. Imagine if everybody was doing that, that would have a tremendous impact on the market, because you're going to, if everybody's money is in there and you start pulling money out, right, it's going to affect the price of the fund. You know, so if you have like, I don't know, different kinds of stocks and interest in different companies and whatnot in these funds, and you start pulling money out, a lot of people start pulling money out. That would not be a good thing. It's kind of like a bank run, right? You go and try to take all your cash out of the bank, and the bank doesn't really have all the cash. And so then, boom, that's going to be a problem. So this is another way also to control that too, right? I mean, yeah, I think that they saw this coming because, you know, you figure how many people actually were doing this. I think a fair amount of people, but not a large percentage of their clientele. But I know talking with our own CFP, he has, that's a regular discussion he has with his clients. Whether they're investing or not. How long has he started talking about this with his clients? Three, four years ago? Okay. Okay, wow. So he was on the ball, though. You got a good one. Well, yeah, and he's a young guy. He has been investing in cryptos himself, so he does understand it. But he's told me within his own firm that there are financial advisors that don't know much about it at all. And so I do believe that that's why Rick Edelman started the DACFIP, or DACFA, so that the advisors can get the education they need. Otherwise, their customers are going to be going somewhere else. They want an advisor who knows about all of the financial investment tools. Right. Yeah. Wow. It's all wrapped in somehow. Yeah. I got one more cute little thing before we go, before we end the show, that I found on Twitter that I thought was really cute that I was going to share. It's kind of funny. Where are you? There you go. This is, what is it saying? This is, what do they say it is? The cat's, what's the thing? Institutions Waiting for Bitcoin Spot ETF. And it's all the little kitties. Oh, how cool. Looking at the door. I thought that was pretty funny. That is cute. Like, hello, we're just waiting right now for you to approve us. Soon as we're approved, I'll know. This kind of makes me think a cat turd. Was this one of his posts? Yeah. I don't know who it was. Let's see who it was. I should give him credit. Nate, oh, it's N-A-I-I-V-E. Okay. It's a little cat. I don't even know how I found that, but I thought it was really cute. So I've got something for you. Yeah. So you know who Dylan LeClaire is, right? LeClaire. Yeah. Okay. So he came up with a couple of quotes a while back. And, in fact, I had these notes out, so I wanted to share them here. A couple of quotes. The first quote is, it takes a lot of work to understand what Bitcoin is, but ultimately, Bitcoin is a saving mechanism that no one can mess with if you safely self-custody your Bitcoin. That's if you hold it yourself. Your ETF allows someone else to hold an interest for you, and you still benefit from it. And then he finishes it off with, Bitcoin fixes the government monopoly on money and currency debasement. I couldn't agree with him more on both of those points. Very nice. Very nice. Well, what do you think? I mean, this is a lot of stuff to go over. I'd say so. You know, touch lightly on it. We will put the links in the description box below to some of the articles and that one video in particular to give them credit for it, because I think they did a nice job explaining it, at least helping me. And I'll have to watch that like 25 more times before it really sinks in. But I find it helps me to just keep doing this type of stuff and talk about it and ask questions. And somebody that I'm talking to, like yourself, you know a little bit more about something than, say, I do. And then we can just kind of grow together. But, yeah, if any of you out there have any more information or are interested in being a guest on our show, let me know. Let us know. And we would really appreciate some feedback from our audience here. What would you like us to cover, you know? Beyond the Brink is what's pushing, you know. I think a lot of the folks do want the funny thing is the conspiracy. Did I just whisper, like, I'm a creepy person? They're not such conspiracy persons anymore. There's some real stuff. Man, there's just so many things that we could do a show on to talk about. There's so many crazy, funny things. Actually, before we go, the SEC hearing, we did, if any of you missed it, we did a couple hearings ago of Gary Gensler and his testimony. And we got a lot of good clips out of that. That was pretty funny. But this time there was a person that was behind Gary. And I don't remember what thing that they put up on their phone. I think it might have been the Coinbase logo or something. But they were doing hand gestures and stuff. And I'm like, I'm telling you, they do this every hearing. There's somebody in the back in the audience making some kind of thing or they'll do a, you know, I don't know what any of that stuff means, but it cracks me up. Spaceball signals. I know. I need to learn how to do. I never learned any of those. So, Melissa, when we started the show, I thought Bitcoin was going to hit 28,000. Here at the end of the show, we're at 27,848. Oh. Well, because the last couple of weeks, as you know, I report on this on a regular basis, it's been hovering around 25,000. So, today we had a spike. And I do think a lot of what's going on in Congress, I think, having us as much as I think we needed a shutdown, us not shutting down was probably good for the markets. XRP, $0.52. That's been sitting at $0.49, $0.50 for weeks. And XLM is even up too. I mean, that was up as high as $0.15. It's now almost $0.115. So, yeah, it's looking, I think things are starting to happen. But it is Sunday. Usually Sundays are kind of an interesting day. And, you know, people, there's a lot of people that are like, oh, it's taking so long for all this stuff to happen. It's like, man, you're talking about a complete changeover of the finance system. This is not going to happen overnight. And if you do your due diligence and you do your own research and you are confident in the asset that you've chosen that you hold on to, just forget about it. Buy it, forget about it, and move on with your life. Forget about it. Yeah, forget about it. You just, if it's something. Now, if you're getting involved in these pump and dump type coins, then, yeah, you better be stressed out. Don't mess with those things. Not financial advice. You don't want to be buying from Cheddar. No Cheddar. You know, if you want to be a playa, play on playa, you know, but you're not a day trader. You can't beat the system on that. And that's where a lot of the stress comes in. So I'm just like, you know what? Educate yourself. Keep educating yourself in anything. The more you educate yourself on this space, the more you realize what the future is going to hold. And so if you're transitioning jobs or whatever, there's a whole new market of jobs that are going to be coming out, and it would behoove people to kind of start looking into those things. Like AI. I mean, really? Or even just understand. Like I'm thinking I'm in accounting right now, and I think I'll bet you there's going to be a bigger need for forensic accountants. And I always wanted to get into forensic accounting, but, you know, forensic accounting on a different level where, you know, you want to be able to trace these payments and everything's going to be, you know, automated. It's going to be, I don't know. It's an interesting world that we're heading into. I'm excited for it. It is exciting times. But in any way, my friend, I think that's all I have, unless you have anything else. Yeah, I think that we've pretty much talked the subject up, down, in, and out very well tonight. All right. Well, we thank everyone for joining us. Please don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe button on your way out. And if you would share this with your friends and family, that would be fantastic. And if you're on Rumble, how about a little Rumble? Little Rumble? We got to get a Rumble sign. Get a Rumble. Yeah. Yeah. But thank you guys so much. We appreciate everyone that watches or listens on the podcast. And we will be back with another episode shortly. Have a great rest of your day. You too. Good to see you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.