The transcription discusses the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF and its implications. It mentions that 11 or 15 ETFs were approved, and big names like Grayscale, Fidelity, BlackRock, and Invesco are offering them. The ETF allows individuals to gain exposure to Bitcoin's market price, but they don't actually own the Bitcoin. The ETF must purchase the Bitcoin for investors, and if they sell their shares, they won't receive the Bitcoin. There are fees involved with the ETF, both for stockbrokers and management fees. The transcription also mentions that the ETF is a mainstream solution for those who don't want to learn about Bitcoin or do the work involved in owning it directly.
Thanks for watching! Welcome to Beyond the Brink, the show that explores global events that are pushing people to their limits and driving them to the brink of change. I'm Melissa and my beautiful co-host Christy is here. If you're watching this on YouTube or Rumble, please hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. And for those joining us on X basis, please share this space out right now so we can get more people here. How are you doing Christy? Oh good, it's great to be back.
It's been a little hiatus, so it's nice to be here. Happy New Year, by the way. Happy New Year to you. I need to start the space itself. I just realized that I did not do that. That probably would help getting people in there. And I can't find my write-up for the show, so that really helps right now. I had it saved on my desktop and as soon as it was go time, it completely disappeared. So I'm flailing here.
It was there and then it's not there. So I had my own written up. Well, we're going to talk about the spot ETF, Bitcoin ETF. So there's some definite distinctions there and gosh, I don't know what this feedback is. I'm going to ditch the phone, see if that helps. Sorry about that. No, that's fine. Yeah, so I wish I could find my thing. So basically, what was it on the 11th? The spot Bitcoin ETF was approved and it looks like they approved 11 of them.
15, wasn't it? Well, it was 11 on that day, but apparently there must be more than if you've heard that before. Yeah, there's 15. Okay, so tell me what you heard about it then. Well, you know, it started off as a big kerfuffle. You know, there was the FCC got hacked. Their Twitter account got hacked. I mean, it's just amazing when they talk about security and being careful and then the FCC didn't even have to two-factor authentication on their verified Twitter account.
Amazing. So somebody spoofed it. It was a day early and it moved the markets and then the markets, you know, calmed down. And then the next morning when we had expected the approval, it didn't happen quite straight away like we wanted it to, but it did eventually happen and we were off to the races and trading started on Thursday. Yeah, I mean, I didn't get an article on the amount. I don't have that pulled up, but I knew that it was a significant amount already.
And the question is really, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, we've been waiting for this to happen for quite some time now. In fact, I looked up how long this spot Bitcoin ETF approval, it's been a 10-year journey for the spot Bitcoin ETF approval. And I didn't know, for some reason, I thought, I don't know why I thought it was the ARK Invest, the ones that have been battling it out. I thought they were the first people that had applied for this spot Bitcoin ETF.
But it all started in July 1st of 2013. The Gemini co-founders, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, they are the ones that filed the first application for a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States. Did you know that? I did. I was not aware of that. And then this article, I'm looking at a Cointelegraph article, but that was like four years going back and forth. And eventually in 2017, that application was rejected. And then Grayscale, they debuted as an open-ended private trust for accredited investors.
And they received approval from the financial industry regulatory authority, FINRA, to trade publicly. It wasn't an ETF, but they became the first publicly traded Bitcoin fund in the United States. And then they've now ultimately converted it into a spot-based ETF. Yeah, they were one of the first for futures trading. Yes. We talked about this on Dip a Toe, and I was a little bit confused on the difference. And I think we had a crypto professor was in the chat schooling me the difference between the spot and the futures.
And I had it right, but I wasn't using the right terminology. But at least for the spot Bitcoin ETF, they do have to have the one for one. Right. And that was what I was focusing on. But then they were talking about it being the spot price and that being the important factor also, not just the futures, which they've been trading for a while. I mean, I don't know how many years that was. Well, this, what I just said, with them having the first futures, the Winklevoss twins or whatever.
So I thought it was pretty interesting. But yeah, they traded it on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for commodities trading futures. Yep. So well, you said there's 15. I saw that there was 11. And some of the big names, some folks that, you know, a lot of you that listen to the show, you're already kind of up to speed on all of this stuff. But those of you who aren't, some pretty big names, Grayscale, Fidelity, BlackRock, Invesco, they were all approved to offer the spot Bitcoin ETF.
And they actually started training on the 11th. They started training on Thursday. Right. And like you said, it's been, it's on, right? Well, billions moved into the market right away. And Bitcoin went up to $49,000. And today, back down to 42. So. What do you think would be the ultimate thing with this? Well, okay. I think that there's a couple schools of thought. Is Bitcoin ETF good, bad? I don't have an opinion one way or another.
I think what it is, it's an opportunity to drive adoption. I think it's also an opportunity to, to learn more about Bitcoin, this wonderful technology, this, this asset, this, this commodity, if you will. It almost forces people to do it because now it's in the mainstream. It's been institutionalized. So it's really, so it's really, oh my goodness, the feedback. I'm sorry about that. Don't know where it's coming from. But it's really important to know what the distinctions are and know just some of the pitfalls of an ETF, how it really affects you.
I think as far as institutional plays, when you have investment managers that are handling millions and millions of dollars, many different account holders, this makes sense for them. But for an individual, I'm all with Bitcoin all the way for a number of reasons. So we can get into discussing those if you like. Sure. Go ahead. Well, we got to understand what an ETF is in the first place. It's an exchange traded fund or an exchange traded product, right? In ATP.
But they're investment instruments. So it allows an individual to get exposure to, to Bitcoin's market price. But these funds are only available through brokers that trade stocks and bonds and various other commodity tracking type of ETFs, okay? And so there is a difference. With an ETF, you don't hold the Bitcoin. Although the ETF must purchase the Bitcoin for you to buy shares in, okay, very much like Satoshi's, you don't own that. And if you were to sell your shares, you're, you're not going to get any of the Bitcoin, you can't call up your broker and say, send me that Bitcoin that I bought, you're not going to ever get it, their shares.
So that also means that you have to work with an intermediary. Whereas with Bitcoin, you and I can have a personal transaction. And there is no issues, we don't need somebody in the middle, you know, doing a handoff, right? Nor are you charging me a fee for that handoff. I pay a fee to support the network, which pays the miners for securing the network. When we do a Bitcoin transaction, which those are also happening when the ETF company, the ETF fund buys those Bitcoins, they have to pay mining fees, you know, the transaction fees of Bitcoin as well, that's baked into the cake.
But there are also fees for the stockbrokers to make this investment vehicle available to you. There are management fees involved as well. And they can add up and when they compound, they add up substantially. The biggest thing that, that I think is the fact like you said, it's not, you're not holding the, you're not holding the Bitcoin. If you were to cash out if you were to cash out of the fund, you're, you're cashing out in cash, you're getting federal reserve notes.
Something I was listening to, people were talking that they, they wanted it to be this way, because they wanted to make sure that that you buying into these funds that you have to be buying into it with cash. They don't want you buying into these funds with say, you know, you can't just come in with Bitcoin and then, and then have that within this fund. You had, if you did have Bitcoin, or some other type of asset, they would expect and that was all the cash you had in order to get into this fund, they would expect you to liquidate that it into cash, and then buy into the fund.
And at comes time that you want out, you'd be cashing out in cash. And it doesn't make sense to me to why somebody would cash in their Bitcoin to go buy an ETF. And just so our listeners understand, if you want to get into an ETF, you're going to open up a brokerage account, you need to. And you're going to do the KYC, and it's going to be a little bit of time before your account is open.
And, you know, maybe the broker has a minimum, you know, maybe you, sometimes there's a $5,000 minimum to be able to get started with some of these brokers. So what if you don't have that? It's just like with Bitcoin, you have 10 bucks, you could buy Bitcoin. Yeah. Well, it's easy. I think I think this is so, you know, you and I have talked about this stuff for, for a couple of years now. And, you know, a lot of our friends that got into the crypto space, and we've taught ourselves how to on ramp and off ramp and how to store in our own wallets and learning about money and what is money and all these types of things.
This is the solution, the mainstream solution for them to bring in the newbies of the the people that aren't interested in learning and doing doing the work, right. And so for those of us that have been doing the work, it's not as appealing to us to I could see if you have, if the only thing you have that could be like rolled over into into something and you want to have some exposure or say, you know, your 401k plan or, or any other kind of pension plan that you can assign and say, this is what I want invested in, you know, which will take a little bit of time to come into fruition by the time, you know, depending on your plan, what what assets you're already allowed to participate in.
And then when whoever administers your plan, they will, they will give the offerings to the say, the employers or their board, whoever's in charge of that, to actually make the selections for the people and then then depending on the year, you know, when, when your plan year is in effect is when you can make those elections, right. So you can't just because these are approved, I guess what I'm trying to say, just because these are approved right now, doesn't necessarily mean that you could call up your 401k provider or your employer and say, I want to participate in this, because chances are, they're probably not in your fund in, in your assets that you're able to participate in at this moment.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I wouldn't. Yeah, I hear that unless you are in a highly diversified fund that let's say, if you're in a technology fund, so there might be that fund manager, if there's any rebalancing done on that account on a regular basis, that's the job of asset managers is to rebalance accounts that they may just go ahead and let's say, if you allocate your account to be more high risk, you're willing to be, you know, make more, you understand the risks of those accounts that have a higher return.
So you might be considered more take risky. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the actual investments that you're that you can choose from from the beginning. So I'm talking about my personal experience with with our fund, the people that that choose what we can what we can participate in. That is done at a certain time of the year, there's a deadline for that. Sure. They can't go changing those in the middle of your of the year or whatever.
I'm not suggesting that. No, but I mean, that's what I was talking about. I wasn't I wasn't saying you. Yeah, I know you can change yourself into a different and these probably would be considered the more high risk assets, right? I would imagine so. But getting back to your employer, if they gave you so many choices, let's say you're already in a technology choice, right? I don't know. I don't my funds are not individual choices. We buy buckets.
That's how our fund works. Buckets of investment. So we've got like, you know, I don't know how many buckets of investment. So if we went into a technology bucket, it will include this Bitcoin ETF just by default. Just automatically, because I look into ours. I don't know. I've looked into I've looked at our buckets that we offer, and there's nothing like this is in there. And it's probably not there yet. No. So you're saying that if I'm already in that, and it gets added to whatever fund, because I know where they've replaced a certain fund, you know, they let us know.
But like I said, it has to be at a certain time, time frame or whatever. But you're saying that if it's whatever XYZ fund, and they now decide to put that into that fund, then it's just in, you're in it. So actually, I guess for those people that are sketched out by the whole thing, you might want to pay attention to what's in your fund if they can just add them. If you're doing that, go ahead.
I said Simon's listening, and we got Bitcoin Country on Spaces. Hi, Bitcoin Country. How are you? It's been a long time. So good to see you guys. But you know, I think if you are in an IRA account, if your IRA account has access to these various companies like Fidelity, Grayscale, ARK Invest, that type of thing, I think ETF is on the horizon for you. But there's some other things you need to realize. Let's say if you're just an individual, which is probably the easier conversation to try to get the point across, is that you got to realize it works just like working with a stockbroker.
You're going to have set hours, generally 9.30 a.m. Eastern through 4.30 p.m. Eastern, and those are the trading times. Whereas when you are dealing with Bitcoin exchanges, it's available 24-7, 365, anytime. So there's a big difference there. So if you want to make a change to your ETF, it better be Monday through Friday between our time here and on the West Coast, that'd be 6.30 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. So you better get it right. So if you're late from lunch and you got to get a call in your broker, you just might miss it that day.
And then you've got the three-day settlement. You've got all of these other issues that you've got to deal with that are synonymous with the broker world. The other thing that happens is that with the Bitcoin ETF, they're subject, this is really important to know, they're subject to tax rules that don't allow losses to be declared unless you remain out of the market for 30 days. But, however, Bitcoin requires you don't have to wait because it's a commodity and it's traded, it's treated like gold or silver.
So you can do tax loss harvesting instantly without being out of the market. Big difference. Yeah, that is a big difference. So if you're tax sensitive, you want to be careful about that. ETFs are subject to the same tax rules as stocks and bonds. If you want to access the purchasing power of ETF units, you must sell them. So you've got to convert them into U.S. dollars, and I think you mentioned that earlier. That trigger is a taxable event.
So if there's a gain, a taxable event, a loss, that's a taxable, it's not taxable, but it's a tax consequence. You've got to report it. Bitcoin is subject to the same tax rules as property, and that's under IRS 2014-21, in case you ever want to look it up. And in the United States, it's considered a commodity like gold, oil, corn, oil. I just mentioned oil. So if you want to get your forklifts and get your barrels of oil, you know, there you go.
And so Bitcoin's also considered legal tender and can be used as a form of payment with potential tax consequences, of course, but you can use it as a form of payment. You can't do that with an ETF. And here's the biggie. Here's the biggie, all right? With an ETF, you must rely on the honesty and competence of the middlemen that stand between you and the actual Bitcoins. So did you know that for most of these ETF providers, their middleman custodian is Coinbase? How many times have we talked in the past? Get your coins off of the exchanges.
So you have to keep those things in consideration. I think it's good, though. I mean, like I don't have an opinion one way or another. My position is if my portfolio had a bucket for ETFs and that makes sense in my technology fund to pull the ETFs, by golly, we'll hold the ETFs. No problem, because we have ETFs of other things. But as far as buying and maintaining custody of my own Bitcoin, that's going to be me and my husband, right? Yeah.
I mean, at this point, you're able to do that, right? We're able to buy this and hold it ourselves. It doesn't make sense necessarily to start buying into an ETF, whether it's a spot or otherwise. I don't like the futures ones at all. No, I don't either. Who? I had a clip of Caitlin Long had concerns over this ETF approval like five years ago, and she's been talking about it forever with concerns over the fact that they can rehypothecate things.
And they've gotten more and more crafty over the years of how to do it. And her fear is that they're going to do the same thing here with the Bitcoin. And then, of course, like we just said, you're not actually holding Bitcoin. And that's the thing that I think a lot of people might be confused about. And while there's a lot of folks like, you know, I mean, we talked about this. We did a show on this several months ago where we were speculating when they were going to approve the spot Bitcoin ETF.
And, you know, here we are and it's approved. And so, you know, you think like something huge is going to happen. And I do think it is going to make a difference in the market, in the price at some point. I heard people having concerns over where are they going to get this Bitcoin from? And there was a person I was listening to. Oh, geez. He was concerned over where they were actually going to be buying it because he said there was only like 900 Bitcoins a day.
Does that sound right? That are mined a day. Where are they going to get them from? And then he also had concerns over the fact of like you referenced that Coinbase is going to be the custodian for BlackRock Bitcoin. Majority of them, except for Fidelity and Bitmain. All of the others, from what I understand, are going with Coinbase. So is Fidelity going to hold their own Bitcoin? I have, I don't know who their custodian is. Okay.
I mean, I can. So there's there's just so many things when it comes to this. You know, it kind of does bring things more into a centralized fashion, which is kind of against that kind of it is, um, you know, completely centralized when, when, when, when the controller is the stockbroker, a handful of investment firms. That is definitely centralization, but it is of an interest in Bitcoin. They're selling the interest. I mean, people, you got to understand that Wall Street is profiting off of this.
You know, Wall Street, if they, if they can make a buck off of a paper bag, they will, they will find a way to trade it. And I mean, look at derivatives, all of these other trading type of instruments. A lot of people get hammered with this. This is no different. This is just another way for Wall Street to dip into your pocket a little bit more. And what's great about shows like this is that we're just laying out the distinctions.
Now, if you were in a diversified fund, like, like I mentioned before, and that's part of your portfolio, you have stock market exposure, and you happen to be in a technology fund that offers Bitcoin ETF. And in that technology fund, there's 17 little buckets or so. And so much of the percentage of your portfolio is in technology, then it's going to be divvied out with those 17 buckets, right? With the Bitcoin ETF being one of them.
So you're going to have some of it. It's just like, you know, you may not, you may have stocks in your portfolio of some of the most disgusting companies that you would never want to do business with, but they're in your portfolio somehow, because you just it's part of the bucket of funds. But just might just understand Wall Street is making money off of doing this big time. Well, here's my here's my, my thought on my hopeful, my hopefulness.
Oh, by the way, the crypto professor is, I think, watching on YouTube. He said, fidelity is custodying their own Bitcoin. Oh, good to know. Thank you, sir. Yeah. That I was gonna say, out of out of all the folks that are companies that that we're going after this approval, fidelity, I have a little bit stronger feeling towards fidelity than some of the other ones. Just because they I mean, they've been in it definitely schooled in the in the Bitcoin space, they're very well aware of what it is.
And the fact that they're custodying it themselves is interesting, too. Yeah, they've been in the game a long time. Yeah. So I mean, if I had to go with any of them, I think I would go with fidelity, not financial advice. Of course, that's just my, my, my opinion, plus my, I know somebody who works at fidelity. So I would, I'd go with them anyway. But what I was gonna say is, you know, and I think about, you know, we've talked about just the economy and the world and the transformation of the financial system and, you know, the country's de-dollarizing.
You know, there's just some huge changes going on. And you have that BlackRock and Vanguard, you know, the biggest asset managers and the 401ks and defined contributions and all this money that they got sitting in those funds, that will affect a lot, a lot, a lot of people. And so while for someone like myself, that's been researching this and kind of trying to educate myself on what Bitcoin is and how to do it myself and all of these things.
I do think that I feel better for those folks that have money invested in these types of funds that they might actually get. Bitcoin, I feel, is not going away. It is going to go up in value. And so maybe perhaps it will protect some of those funds for what's to come. I don't know, really. Like we were talking about the other day is this all has to be handled very delicately. And the money that people choose to put into these funds is going to come from somewhere.
And so, you know, you got your money in the stock market or, you know, these other funds for other types of funds that have other things that taking it out of those and putting it into something else is going to hurt whatever these propped up stocks are that you have your money in to begin with. Right. So I think what I'm I'm happy that this could be an option for people, especially those that are not even aware of any of this stuff happening.
And if it's true, like you say, they can just if you're already in a tech stock and they can just plop it in there and mid cycle, you could benefit from having it in a Bitcoin ETF fund. That's great. I didn't know. Well, you know, I think it all depends on your investment portfolio and how it's set up. I mean, some people like to pick their own stocks and that's their their portfolio. I'm referring to like a highly diversified portfolio where it's balanced on a regular basis.
So I don't see I don't see the disruption so much in that if Bitcoin ETF was added to a technology fund in my particular portfolio, I wouldn't see the disruption so much because it'd be part of the rebalancing part of my portfolio. I mean, there are there's always going to be times when the portfolio is a little too top heavy, maybe too many gains in one bucket. Let's call it technology and then maybe retail didn't do so good.
So you might take off a little off the top of the technology and then maybe move some into more of like an emerging market or something that's showing some promise and has some really good values in there. But that's all part of the rebalancing process. So I would say that a majority of the folks that I see all choose the do it for me option. They choose the do it for me option and they have the, you know, they'll say like you could do it based on age.
But even most people, they don't even do that. If they choose the do it for me option in our like in our company, choose the do it for me option, then they will know how old they are and they will do it based on their age. They'll do it. Could you explain to people what the rate this rebalancing means for those who don't understand that? We don't, you may not. Well, I that's all part of the do it for me.
So retirement funds especially rebalance all the time within their portfolios. So what I mean by rebalancing, let's say, let's just say you have four quadrants, four buckets, just to keep it simple. So you have maybe two buckets who did. Let me back up. You have a bucket expectation. So you have a threshold. So let's say that bucket improved, grew 10 percent, 15 percent, and maybe the growth threshold might be seven. Okay. So what about a rebalancing will happen is that they'll take that bucket down to the seven percent level.
They'll take those gains and they'll go ahead and invest it in one of the buckets that not performing as well, because generally, you know, the market is secular. So real estate does well, you know, certain times bonds not so good, that type of thing. That's how it all works. So they'll just balance it off, take those gains, put it into a bucket that that wasn't as performing as well. And with the expectation that when it cycles around, that bucket will then perform better than maybe one of the higher performing buckets that you just took funds out of.
This way, your portfolio is always balanced and you have this slow, gradual growth, because if you don't have a really good portfolio manager, they're going to get fired. Yeah, especially if you have one that you've hired, like a CFP that you're paying directly. They're not associated to, you know, maybe they work for an independent broker. I know Fidelity is a great firm, but their brokers within Fidelity, they will push what Fidelity tells them to push. I don't care if they're CFPs or whatever, certified financial planners, if they work for Fidelity, there's going to be some manager at Fidelity that says, we haven't sold enough of this particular fund.
Sell it, sell it, sell it. But if you have an independent CFP, they're not beholden to any of that. They're working exclusively for you. Which is what you want. It's exactly what you want. Yeah. I will say that there are a lot of employers, but just people don't realize it, that, you know, if you do have a 401k plan that you're participating in, generally there is, I don't know, we have brokers that handle ours, right? But our employees can reach out to them and have an appointment.
It doesn't cost them anything because it's part of what they're paying for. But I don't think that most employees really know that. And so if you guys are interested and you're participating in a 401k plan, maybe reach out to your employer and ask them, you know, who the broker is or look at your paperwork and reach out to them for a meeting. Nine times out of 10, it doesn't cost you anything. As far, at least I know our employees, it doesn't cost them anything to kind of have them tell them, give them a little bit of advice or whatever.
So. Well, I'll tell you, if you're an employee managed fund, okay, a 401k, a pension plan, more than likely those funds are managed through Vanguard, State Street, Schwab, BlackRock. So these are very large portfolio holders. And so, yeah, there's going to be individual brokers that are aligned with that, but those are the ones that are managing the largest retirement funds. Yeah. So but it is good to reach out and talk to your broker about how it affects your individual retirement account.
Another thing we should we should look at is we talked earlier about centralizing Bitcoin and ETFs, and that is centralized with the institutional custody holder, the institutional investor. We talked 15, right? That's that's highly centralized. You had mentioned also where the Bitcoin comes from. So what's going to happen here is that these firms, these funds, they're going to be trading that Bitcoin, they're going to be selling, they're going to be buying. You got to realize, too, that the miners have held quite a bit of Bitcoin and they've now been able to sell off now that the market has improved a bit.
So they're profitable, which is really good. So it's putting some supply into the chain, if you will. But here's what I'm excited about. See, after this next halving, and probably I'm going to say in about five years or so, the halving is going to be de minimis for the miners, right? They're going to be just getting a small amount of Bitcoin for every block. But this is, you know, I guess the wisdom of Satoshi, they front ended Bitcoin and the miners at the very beginning.
That's why there was so many Bitcoin was at 50 for one block, and then it went down to 25 and, you know, 12, 12 and a half. And now it's six and six and a quarter. So it's going to go down to three and an eighth. So it's really interesting. So over time, the transaction fees because the market is so established, okay, and fortified by all the miners that we have, now they get paid for maintaining the network, the power and the strength of the network.
And that's how the miners are going to have to transition. The miners might actually become more centralized in that with corporate structures and stuff like that to where, you know, they're going to have to be lobbying to keep to keep Bitcoin alive, basically, because that's their livelihood. Interesting. I think it's really exciting times. I heard Michael Saylor say on a recent video, he sees this 1000 years out. There's only 21 million coins, it's such a simple monetary concept, just 21 million.
There is no derivatives, there are no other things. It's all this 21 million. And it can have a tremendous effect on disrupting governments, as their monetary system collapses. We know it's coming. And we've got to watch out for the government that wants to come in and print more money to offer to buy you out of your Bitcoin, because that's going to be one of the first things, you know, they come to these centralized, institutional players, and want to buy them out with a Federal Reserve notes.
And, you know, shortly later, you're going to feel like, if you if you took that deal, sold your your Bitcoin to the government, and they gave you Federal Reserve notes that are worth a goose egg, right? Nothing. You're going to feel pretty bad about that later. That's a rug pull of all rug pulls. Yeah, well, that's what they want. They want people. Of course it is. Yeah. That's why if you have Bitcoin, don't give it up.
Just give it up. I think they said, what is it 80% or higher are long holders of Bitcoin. And that's where this guy was saying, you know, you know, where are they going to get it from type thing. So I'm trying to, I'm, I'm with this whole spot thing, and them getting cash. So people, they're putting their money in, I guess, in, so they're just going to be making money as Bitcoin price goes up in value.
Somebody was describing it very similarly. Actually, what do you mean? Are you referring to the miners? Or the investors? I'm referring to the investor. Okay. To the investor. So I don't know how this couldn't go up. I heard some conservative estimates. I mean, like really conservative. It won't be a 1x. Okay. So that would be where we are today. 42,000. At least expect a 2x. The probability, I mean, a 2x is, is really an easy one.
So theoretically, you know, after we get past this halving, we could be at $90,000 a Bitcoin. Okay. Which is a lot. But I still wonder, I mean, they're going to still make you cash out with cash anyway. Well, in the ETF, but if you're holding the, the actual digital asset, yeah, that, and that's the, yeah, that's the difference. I want to share this. Let's see. Hopefully, you'll be able to hear it. This is, what is a spot Bitcoin ETF? And I thought that this guy did a concise way of describing it for those that don't know.
Let's delve into this with Brad Smith. What the spot Bitcoin ETFs are and what they mean for the market. Hey, Brad. Hey, Rochelle. Well, yes, it's still an ETF where you've already had many commonly traded assets or baskets of securities that make up ETFs in the past. But what is the purpose for this, this one specifically in Bitcoin? The purpose for this one is where a fund would hold Bitcoin with the investment value proposition being for the shares that they are then listing publicly to reflect the performance of the value of a Bitcoin at a more cost effective and commonly known trading mechanism than buying cryptocurrency.
So really this takes us back to the question of how an ETF traditionally is created and what makes this one just slightly different because of the holding a much more riskier asset or commonly thought of as that in Bitcoin. Well, how an ETF is created. You've got an ETF manager. They basically file for these plans with the SEC. We've got multiples of these and the SEC reviewing them for now years at this point. And then the sponsor, they're looking for some type of agreement and an authorized participant, a market maker.
The participants, they acquire typically stock shares previously. But in this case, they would have Bitcoin that they would be able to put into a fund. And then ultimately, they would then list that ETF and put those ETF shares up in the public market. And so they would trade just like regular stock, but it would be a basket of stocks previously. In this case, it would be a basket of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is most prominently the submission that we've seen to this point.
So to try and simplify this, at the end of the day, the ETF is still going to be listed the same. It's really just the asset that is held in the fund. And we've got multiple funds now that are putting their ETF listings forward so that people can simply just go into their registered or customary brokerage and still place a trade the same way they would if they were buying a similar or just a single stock at the end of the day.
Yep. You know, Melissa, this is no different than what happened with gold. When the gold ETF came out, it made gold go up. And it helped prop up the value of gold and it got more people interested in gold. So I think that's what's going to be happening here as well. Yes. I mean, just the way that he explained it. And I find it funny because when I first came into the cryptocurrency space and started learning about Bitcoin, it was, do not compare it to stocks.
It's not a stock. Right? What are they doing? They made a stock out of it. Trying to turn it into a stock. And then the fact that I thought I was curious, too, that for those of you that are watching on YouTube, the video write-up, he did not mention trust, but his resource said trust. That they would be putting it into a trust and then the trust issues. Did you see that, Christy? And I wondered why he didn't use the words trust.
And so, you know, between you and Simon and Sharon and all these people that say words matter, right? I'm really just paying attention and giving attention to everything that people say in this space, because I'm noticing that they're using certain words or omitting certain words when they're referring to these things that are being interviewed on television. And I think, well, what is that plausible deniability if they leave out a certain thing? And, you know, I just find it all very interesting, this whole thing.
Let's see. Simon's got a thing. He says, the ETF is based on the spot price of BTC. So when the retail price goes up, so does the ETF price as it is pegged to the spot price. ETF is based on the spot price. So when the retail price, so does the ETF price goes up. Okay. Same as a stock, right? When the value of the business goes up, but you don't actually own Bitcoin. You're owning the spot based on the spot price, the price goes up.
But then if it crashes, the price goes up. Same with a stock. Well, the same thing. Yeah, exactly. You had mentioned trying to turn it into a stock. Well, they did, because all a stock is, is an interest in something. Right. So when you buy Apple, you buy stocks of Apple, you have an interest in it. You own so much of it, right? So you might own a little itty bitty speck of ownership in Apple. But who has the controlling interest? It's probably the founders, right? Yeah.
Not us. Yeah. It is still their company. They still control it. So all we're doing here with an ETF is given an opportunity for people to participate in the growth of Bitcoin. I mean, it is still a volatile asset, but still they can participate in that now, hopefully learn a little bit more about it and the differences. And hopefully people will come to the conclusion, like say, why in the hell did I buy this? I should just bought the Bitcoin, right? Because I think a lot of people don't realize that you can buy Satoshi's or, you know, a portion of a Bitcoin, just like you're buying a stock, you're buying a portion of Bitcoin, right? So, yeah, once people realize you don't have to buy the whole Bitcoin, you can buy $10 worth if you want, and you don't need a broker or be part of an ETF.
I mean, this is holding on to something that we had a producer on the radio show is from Ukraine. So we were bantering back and forth today about she goes, I don't know why I would never want one of these. She goes, and she went through this whole thing about trying to do exchanges in Mexico, because evidently she and her husband ended up there. And they were trying to convert their Ukrainian dollars. And it was like almost impossible.
When they had to use Western Union, they had to be at the Western Union office. And they had to be there at a certain time. And maybe the Western Union office had the money. Okay, and then there's, there's a 10% fee. And she says, you know, just once I learned Bitcoin, she goes, it was so simple. I did it with my Apple Pay, on her phone. And so they can't cost her anything now. No, not at all.
That's right. So basically, she's converting her dollar, her money into Bitcoin. Correct. She can convert Bitcoin into whatever if she needs to use it for US dollars or whatever. She sends it overseas to her family. And it's just like, you know, in fact, they just do Apple Pay to Apple Pay. And she says, it's instantaneous. It's very inexpensive. Bada bing, bada boom. She goes, there's no hassle. People do the same thing with XRP also. Yeah, I love that.
It really depends on, you know, where you're at, what, what, what you want, you know, type thing. And I mean, obviously, if you have a, if you're in a country that's actually taking, accepting Bitcoin for payment on things, I mean, that's fantastic. If you could send your, your family home some Bitcoin to be able to pay their bill. It's pretty, that's pretty awesome. Look at how many things that we can convert Bitcoin into, like using gift cards, for instance, like through Bitrefill.
I mean, you could take a little Bitcoin, send it to Bitrefill, get a gift card, and you have it on your phone and go to Safeway, for instance, and go buy groceries and with the phone and you've checked out and you literally did that with Bitcoin to start with. I am not familiar with Bitrefill. Yeah, Bitrefill is pretty cool. What is it? Is it like this R-E-F-I-L-L, Bitrefill? It's Bit, B-I-T-R-E-F-I-L-L. And there are scores and scores of vendors and, and retailers that you can use through Bitrefill.
You send your Bitcoin and you can get, get gift cards. They're on your phone typically. And it's like I said, you can go to Petco and $40 worth of pet food, and you know, go ahead and I'm going to go on to Bitrefill. And I'm going to go into Petco and you scan your phone and you just bought, you just made an exchange. Interesting. I'll have to check that out. I've been using the fold card earning Bitcoin.
I know you could buy it on there and, and that and they have a deal where they're, you know, they have relationships with different vendors. They have a complete one with Amazon for the longest time, which is why, or you can get 5% back. They don't do that anymore. But, but there's some really good deals. They have Home Depot and Target and different vendors. And you get, depending on the vendor, you get more percentage back in Bitcoin.
And that's been a way that I've, I've been able to save, but I'll definitely check out this Bitrefill. I put the link in the chat for those of you that are following along and you're interested in looking that up. But I did, I came across an article on NerdWallet and there's a fella named Peter Everly. He's the chief investment officer of California-based crypto investment firm, Castle Funds. And he had said in an interview that an approval, the proof, the approval has a positive impact on the price of Bitcoin.
And his reasoning, he said many investors can't currently get exposure. For example, many people with the 401ks, IRAs and similar accounts can't easily access Bitcoin. So these vendors of investors will be able to allocate funds going forward and demand in the coming years. But he did caution that bullish sentiment could be overblown because the ETF approvals do not necessarily guarantee billions of dollars of inflows on the first day of trading. Well, no, duh. He said expectations might be too bullish for a short-term impact.
I mean, a logical person should know that already, though, I would think. But he said, I do think we'll see some all-time highs for Bitcoin could even reach up to $100,000. And, you know, as of this article, Bitcoin was trading below $47,000. And, you know, they said that if it rose to $100,000, it would entail cryptocurrency rising in value by more than 100%. Well, when you consider the Bitcoin halving and all the things that we know that are coming up, that's a very real possibility.
I'm not financial advice, but between the halving this and other things that are happening around the world, I could definitely see it going that and above. You know, I mean, what's your opinion? The longer it stays below that $100,000 or $50,000, the better for everyone that is able to buy into Bitcoin right now and host it on their own wallet. Well, people got to realize, too, that just because the ETFs were approved, it doesn't mean that these institutions are going to just jump in.
They're slow. They're methodical. It's going to take some time before they all fully enter the market. So I think that this is a good time that if you wanted to top off your bag, this is a good time to be doing it. Maybe dollar cost average into doing it, but I would be looking at doing this soon. Not a rush, but you're going to see more and more institutional investors getting into this because, you know, they run on quarters.
Okay. Everything's down on quarterly plans, annual plans. I mean, there's a plan for a plan for a plan. And so, I mean, we're in the first quarter of the year. Some of these companies might say, okay, we're going to allocate more into the second quarter and maybe more in the third quarter because it's going to be, you know, test and see. Yeah. You know, there's some interesting things that we should also talk about is the choke point.
There is a choke point. We can call it choke point 3.0 or 2.1, whatever you want to call it. And this is some information that came from James LeVish. He's an economist that very friendly in the crypto space, Bitcoin. And this was on one of his articles. And just so that so our listeners understand, there's been a couple of operation choke points. The first one was during the Obama era back in 2013, where banks who did business with firearm dealers and maybe payday lenders and those who had interesting ways of earning income.
Okay. Those banks stopped doing business. Right, right, right. Then we all witnessed choke point 2.0 just a couple years ago during the pandemic. Right. And that's the same deal where banks began terminating relationships with any company or anybody who was redlisted due to cryptocurrency transactions at the time. Think about the truckers. You know, the Canadian truckers. Oh, yeah. Okay. There's so much of that going on. And many people have gotten canceled. So here we are. Fast forward to 3.0, 2.1, whatever.
It makes sense to be called 3.0. But with the Bitcoin ETFs now available hundreds of trillions of dollars that otherwise not had access to Bitcoin can now jump into this asset class. But there are some banks or some funds that are going to hold back. And one problem is that they're blocking these on ramps to getting onto this massive superhighway. And, you know, the big kahuna, okay, they sit at the apex of the pyramid. Okay. I think you know who it is.
Right? Who is it? Is it BlackRock or Vanguard by any chance? Apex. Vanguard. Ding, ding, you got the brass ring. Okay. So they are the worst and loudest offender. And they issued a statement, if I may read it. Quote, spot Bitcoin ETFs will not be available for purchase on the Vanguard platform. Our perspective is that these products do not align with our offer focused on asset classes such as equities, bonds and cash, which Vanguard views as the building blocks of a well balanced long term investment portfolio.
So they know more than you. But interestingly, their mission statement, this is this is great. Our core purpose is simple, to take a stand for all investors to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success. Okay. So but yeah, they're one of the top holders of MicroStrategy. Michael Saylor's company, Michael Saylor, the number one cheerleader for Bitcoin. Interesting. Now, what what do you what what is your personal take on that? Like, what? I mean, why do you think they're they're playing games like this? It's, what do you think that's about? It's very suspicious to me.
I just I, you know, I mean, I got to play this Gary Gensler thing after after we're going to talk about this, because this is just another another thing where, you know, Vanguard's acting weird. Larry Fink from BlackRock's acting weird. Gary Gensler from the SEC is acting weird. You know, this is like, well, what is this? What's going on? What do we think is going on here? Well, I think it's interesting the dynamics between Vanguard and BlackRock.
Right. Interesting, though, Vanguard does allow their customers to hold a futures based Bitcoin ETF called the Bit-O. And it's a terrible long term proxy for Bitcoin. And now Vanguard is not alone. Merrill Lynch is not allowing their customers to buy UBS is only offering ETF Bitcoin ETFs to, okay, eligible wealth management clients. So you've got to be in the special class. Citigroup only provides Bitcoin ETF access to institutional clients. So what's going on here? So that is it.
So, you know, I don't know. This is just so interesting to me. I think back to the pandemic time and when we did, you know, Monopoly, okay, when we talked about Monopoly, like who owns the world? You know, who was sitting right on top? Three big players, right? Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street. But so here's the thing. The fact that but they but when we did our shows on BlackRock, and you did Vanguard, and kind of came together and we talked about them all, right? We said they're all playing one big game, right? They're out the top, right? So when if you think that BlackRock, gosh, now I'm gonna get my conspiratorial mind, you know, is kind of rolling.
And when you think of like certain things, certain people are in control. And then you hear these people saying, you know, this is this path has been taken out, this one's been taken out. And there's all these things happening. And I think about Larry Fink has been acting very squirrely for quite some time. I've seen interviews where that dude was wearing rubber boots. I wish I could find the interview that I saw him. But he was in a suit and on stage in in some like, like rubber boots, like rain boots or something, which did not make sense to me whatsoever that a professional would be at a professional type of event where he'd be on stage with rubber boots.
It was that obvious. And his swaying of opinion going from that, you know, one one place to another with his opinions on it. BlackRock having major control over the United States, money for so long with the whole Aladdin and how it's all tied in. And, and then him being the person that was on speed dial for everybody to be calling and blah, blah, blah, all these things. And I'm like, it's interesting that BlackRock's the one that is like, yay, Bitcoin.
You know, he went from, oh, it's terrible speculative. I don't know what it is that you should have a whole bunch of Bitcoin in your portfolio. Yeah, right. And, and then you've got Vanguard and these other old guards saying, no, we're not doing that. And I just, I don't know what it means, but I know it means something. The hypocrisy that there is, it's just like everything else, trust the science. You are not capable of doing any critical thinking.
You know that, Melissa, you are not capable of, of discerning any literature put in front of you and going out and figuring out the long, complicated vocabulary that is used and decide if that particular piece of science is good for you or not. Yeah, right. Okay. And, uh, but yeah, you didn't go out and it is a science, is it not? Yes. And you can go out and you can buy the most horrific thing, uh, to put in your body if you wanted to do that right now, because you are allowed to do that and manage that with your money.
But yet you want to go ahead and buy Bitcoin ETF with these companies. Nada, not going to happen because for some reason they just don't think that, you know, that you should for whatever reason. Well, what did you say? It goes against their, um, principles or goes against, uh, something like that. Yep. Whatever. And so I guess, I guess to me, this is some kind of a sign that whatever hierarchy that was at the top, either they're playing mad games, which is very possible because that's what they do.
Um, or maybe it is true that some, some of that is broken that, uh, because otherwise wouldn't they across the board, I'll say, well, no, we're not doing this. Right. We're not going to, we're not going to do it. I just find the whole thing very curious. It's very interesting to me. It's all about money. I mean, look at, um, X, uh, Larry Fink would not commit to this either, but it's a XRP and ETF XRP ETF is expected to launch in 2024 and BlackRock and Grayscale are right there leading the charge.
Yeah. They know that this, this is something that fleece the people. They know it. They're going to get much more rich off the people who don't want to become educated about this. They just want a little piece of the action. I mean, I got some cheddar for you to remember cheddar. No. Okay. Cryptocurrency. It was terrible. People were buying cheddar all the time and all of this other stuff, you know, and it rug pulled and it's just like, people didn't research it.
And we were, we were talking all the time, read the white paper, do your own research. I mean, what is this project about? And I do think that that's also the beginning stages. A lot of us went through that, that crypto phase, right? It's, it's exciting. It's, it's novel, right? It's, um, it's pretty cool. But when you sit back and you think about it, it's like, what the hell was I doing? I'm trying to get rich quick.
You never get rich quick on anything unless it's extremely, extremely lucky. You know what it's, it's the influencers that there are, there are folks. And, and I, and I will say like, I got sucked in a couple of times with the hopium and all of this kind of stuff, but I've been around for a couple of years now. And, um, and I see what's going on. And that's why this channel, um, you know, we're, we're just trying to have a conversation, be real with you and, and, um, you know, let you know what we've learned and hopefully, um, it inspires you to go look into things for yourself.
But, you know, there are so many people and we're coming up on like, we're going to, we're in this bull run. Um, and when Bitcoin starts going up, of course, all the other coins are going to start going up too. Right. Cause that's, that's, it's the, it's the main daddy of, of the charge for the, for the bull run. And so there's going to be people out there that are going to, uh, they're going to just give you like price predictions day after day and watch out for that stuff, YouTube thumbnails and, you know, ridiculous stuff.
And I actually stopped listening to some folks. I was very disappointed cause I was, they were great. I started watching them and they were wonderful content, very smart individuals. And they just cave to the, I don't know, the, the, the thumbnail grab. And I, I'm like, who is actually going by that where they're like, um, you know, Bitcoin's going to going to 200,000 next Friday, you know, like, no, it's not right. It may, maybe it will, but it's just like a clickbait type thing.
And yeah, it is clickbait. It gets people poked up for no reason. Um, there's a couple of comments from JRB, uh, in, in the chat, if you don't mind. Sure. As some, the first one says thoughts on a decentralized bank digital currency backed by XRP issued on the XRP to compete with CBDC. Hmm. I think anything is better than a CBDC. Decentralized. That's a key word. Uh, we don't want a central bank digital currency. Yeah. And people should not in my view, we shouldn't support them in any way.
What would an XRP ETF look like in that case? Wouldn't it be a commodity? Uh, I don't think so. Cause it's still, it would be a share share of stock. Oh, right. Well, we see because we think we think of Bitcoin as a commodity, more of a commodity, right? No Bitcoin, the spot Bitcoin. Okay. The actual Bitcoin. All right. And we, it, I've seen it, uh, called spot Bitcoin. If you're going to compare it to a spot Bitcoin ETF.
Okay. Same price. Let's say Bitcoin's $42,000 straight that spot. Okay. On the ETF there, that's what they buy it for that. Then they add their, their fees on top of that. So no, uh, it tax wise, it is not treated like a commodity unless you own the actual coin. Right. So I guess I'm saying is Bitcoin is commodity more real, but the spot XRP real, not, not a security, right? As long as you have the XRP, a real few.
Yeah. If you're buying an interest right by via shares, that's going to be treated like a stock. It's the same tax treatment, like a stock sale, the stocks and bonds. There's a final question here. Um, making for a perfect real time, 24 seven liquidity and trustless system. Oh, I think biggie is saying what would an XRP ETF looks like in that case, making for a perfect real time, 24 seven liquidity and trustless system. If it's an ETF, it's still, if, if it goes with how the ETFs are running right now, it's not going to be a 24 seven system.
It's going to be based on the markets. So it's going to be a Monday through Friday thing, except for tomorrow, which is a holiday in the United States. So there will only be four trading days this week, right. And open from nine, eight, 9 30 AM to 2 30 PM Eastern. Yep. That's it. Good point. That is, that is a very good point. And again, it goes back to you old cash is you're going to cash out in cash.
You're going to buy it with cash, cash out with cash. Same thing. I love XRP too. And thank you for, you know, sending me straight a long time ago about that, Melissa. I don't know why it's at 58 right now when it, but that's another discussion. Okay. It's okay. I think it's a buying opportunity, but in any case, a slight digression, why not? You know, you can buy a small amount. I mean, you can buy a lot of XRP for, you know, if you've got a hundred, $200, you can get yourself many coins, which is really, really cool.
Or any of the, you know, ISO 20,000, 22 or 20, 22, 22. Gosh, sorry. I had a blurb there. I think that they're all reasonably good investments, but, you know, XRP being the granddaddy, the same thing with Bitcoin, you know, why not a dollar cost average into all of this? And be careful. I think dollar cost averaging, not financial advice, but just the way I roll, I'm going to dollar cost average in. If there's a good dip in the market and I've got extra cash in the side, I might put that in and top off my account, but I'll still keep my dollar cost averaging plan of action in place and dollar cost average out.
Yeah. Yeah. That's what profits off the top. There's, there's a whole nother show and that, yes, indeed. And those of you, I know that there's a lot of people that listen to this channel that are also viewers of the Staple crew. But Alan Staple had a show today. I was listening. I don't know if it was this live or if it was his show that he posted either this morning or yesterday. But he was talking about, about those same types of things.
And he was also talking about, you know, mistakes made in prior bull runs where, you know, he, he had the coins, but he didn't take, he didn't take the profit or he had the coins, but he didn't have enough to like change his life and he didn't take profits. And so just like you were saying, take, you know, you could take profits on the, up on the way up and on the way down. Because this is this, I am no expert on the, the charts or anything like that, but being an observer in this space for the past several years, I have noticed it up and I've noticed down.
I was buying Bitcoin when it was $68,000 or whatever, you know, I was buying it when it was $17,000. So, I mean, I've seen it go up and down and, but I have to say, the more that I learned about it and understood what is actually happening, I wasn't upset. I wasn't upset that the price went down. I actually was excited because I know that we're at the beginning of this great transformation and these things take time, even though it's been what, like 15 years, a solid foundation is being built this time.
I really have faith that a solid foundation is being built this time and the direction that we are going is freedom for all, a level playing field for all. And, and so I'm a patient person. And, you know, if you, if you set up something that you, you just set it and forget it, dollar cost average in, and I don't know, I, I know we should do the whole take profits and maybe I will this time, or maybe I'll just continue to.
You know, if you take a little profits off and just set it off the side, I mean, if you need those profits to go pay bills or whatever, that's, that's fine. But, you know, if, if, if you are able to remain disciplined with it and you take your profits off, you leave, you leave it in your cash fund, right? And when there's a good time to buy, you know, because markets, I mean, we're going to have this volatility just because of the larger institutional players coming in and out.
They're going to make big buys. They're going to make big dumps and that's going to put, we've seen it in the market, right? You see the whales, okay. And they, they pump up the pump and dumps, right? So when, when you got the dump, you jump in with that cash that you've got sitting on the side and you let it ride up and, you know, it's like skim the cream, take it off, put it off the side.
I just don't want to, I don't want to create tax situations for myself unless it's absolutely worth it. I don't want to, I don't want to deal with the tax implications of turning it into cash. And I mean, I know I have, I've heard people say before, you know, if you're not taking it, converting it into cash, you don't have a taxable event. I think that's a, John Singleton has said that and some other, many others.
So in other words, you leave it on the exchange. Yeah, you leave it. Sure. You, you, you, you put it into some other asset, right? That makes the most sense. But then I think that's also where, you know, you've got the controversy over these quote unquote stable coins. You know, people getting scared about leaving it set in there and losing their money that way and seeing their dollars go down. And so that's all like a push to like, get it better, convert it to cash, cash, or I might lose my money type thing, I think is kind of one of the problem, reaction solutions.
I think we're all going to balance that stuff out. I really do. This is exciting times. I mean, ETF, you know, it's not something that, you know, I'm going to run out and go do, but if, if my portfolio manager has us in some ETFs, I know we're in some other ETFs. I'm sure we've got, you know, I mean, I wouldn't actually, I like it. I mean, if I want, as soon as I can have some of my money going in, hell yeah, it's going in there.
I would trust it being in a Bitcoin over some of this other stuff that I, that I know is overinflated, or you don't even know how many stocks there really are. I do think that with, with this adoption, it's furthering adoption. And I do think that that is also more, more validation that we're having a changing of the monetary system. It's coming. It's going to happen in our lifetime. Yes. It was exciting. Oh, before I forget, because I didn't, I didn't mention this.
If you wanted to buy just a small amount of Bitcoin, you know, you can buy it through your Cash App, Apple Pay. I happen to love Swan Bitcoin. There's River. River's a company very much like Swan, highly regarded. You can just buy a little bit. You can start off buying 5-10 bucks if you want. And you can set your portfolio or your account to where you would allow that company to, you know, maybe remove 5-10 bucks out of your checking account.
So often you, it's called a set it and forget it feature. And then you're, you're in the game and you're owning the actual Bitcoin. And all of these companies promote you taking self-custody of that. Yep. So on the self-custody thing, just remember that you will never, I'm sure you don't go around telling everybody your bank account number and your social security number. So you want to be just as careful about storing your cryptocurrencies. You know, when you take them into custody, don't leave them on your phone.
You want it, you want to learn where you should put them. You know, in the worst case, then, you know, maybe then you would leave them with Swan for a little bit, because at least, you know, their, their, their custodian is insured. Because yes, you can, you can do it. So like you just said, any of those, and we'll, we'll put some links into the description box after this video processes, I'll, I'll put some of the links in there.
And you could do it through, you know, like Chrissy said, we both trust Swan Bitcoin and some of these other platforms that you can buy dollar cost average in. But then also, like I said, the full card, where if you're, if you're still a little bit worried, but you want to kind of learn, you can earn some Bitcoin. And then once you get to a certain amount, then you can move it into your own wallet. And you're just putting some of your money and using that debit card, or it's more like a I think it's a Visa or MasterCard or something.
But anyway, it's very simple. And it gets your foot wet. And, you know, we got one minute left. I didn't realize it was almost 930 hour and a half tonight. So I also want to mention if you're going to if you want to buy some XRP, you know, Uphold is a company you can get. I love Uphold too. I really do. I trust them for whatever reason. My gut instincts have served me well so far, except for with Celsius.
But Uphold, I feel is good. Well, when I get something from Uphold, I do take it off of the Uphold exchange right away. And with XRP, they will allow you to take it immediately. You don't have to sit there and let it season. Yep. Which is nice. It is very nice. Well, my friend, it's 930. I'm so glad to have you back. I missed you. It's good to be back. It's been a very interesting month or so.
Go ahead. I was just going to say, well, we'll see what happens next week. Yeah, exactly. I think it will all be good. One last little final say. There's a couple new players, countries that are coming in on Bitcoin in Qatar. One's coming in with 500 billions worth in a Qatar. One's coming in with 500 billions worth of Bitcoin investment. They still have some regulatory hurdles to overcome. And then, of course, there's Ecuador and the OG is El Salvador.
Yeah, this is coming along. Very nice. Yeah. Well, we want to thank everybody for joining us this evening. As we said earlier, you can catch all of our previous episodes on our website at Beta Broadcast Network dot com, or you can find us on all of your favorite podcast platforms by searching us at the handle at Beta Broadcast. And we hope to see you back next time. Please don't forget to like and share and subscribe and all that good stuff.
All right. I hope you have a good rest of the night. Good night. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
