You guys are too nice. This a Wow, it's a big room, man. Shout out Bitcoin Mag. This bigger than the empty closet. I'll tell you guys that much. I love you, too, buddy. That's very sweet of you. Um, all right. I really appreciate you guys making it all the way out to Vegas. Uh, we're going to hang out for about 30 minutes. Next 30 minutes, you and me. We ready? Let's go. Let's go. Oh, I appreciate you guys. All right, the title of my talk, I call it the hodler's dilemma. I think it's a topic that we as Bitcoiners don't talk about enough. And in my opinion, I think the asset class has gotten big enough to where we're embarking on Bitcoin's new wealth paradigm. Okay, so chapter one, first of all, what's the problem? What are we out here to solve? Why are we all here on the Vegas strip? Well, the problem is fiat currency, right? I call this the vicious fiat cycle. The problem is pretty simple. When the US government and the Federal Reserve prints dollars, those dollars become worth less, that makes the life that we all want further away, unachievable, not affordable, right? That then forces everyone to borrow. you get into debt. People are using credit cards, student loans, buy now, pay later, mortgages. All right? And this now has forced households, households are over $18 trillion in debt. Credit card debts passed a trillion dollars in the United States of America. Okay? And the US dollar since it was launched at the Federal Reserve a little over a hundred years ago has lost 97% of its purchasing power. And this cycle repeats because all of our paychecks in this room, I don't care who you are are. I don't care if you're Donald Trump, Michael Sailor, it doesn't matter. None of our wages are keeping up with the inflation of all of our assets. And this is the problem. This is why we're all here. I call this the vicious fiat cycle, right? And if you look, I mean, this is the growth of debt in the United States of America. If you're a millennial, if you're my age, if you were born in the last 20, 30 years, you want to own a car, debt. You want to own a house, you can't afford a house, take a mortgage for the rest of your life. You want to go to school, you want to go to Harvard, did you work hard the first 18 years of your life? Debt. You need a student loan. You can't ever own assets. You're in a perpetual cloud of debt. This is the growth of credit card debt. And it's not just at the individual and the family home level. This is our federal government. And listen, I know every reporter wants to ask me Republican, Democrat, left, right, up, down. Guys, it's a bipartisan thing. We're in a debt based financial system, right? Yes. This is a chart. What shitcoin do you guys think this is? This is the US dollar. The best time to go to Whole Foods and buy eggs with your dollars was 1913. Every other time after that, you're getting screwed, right? Okay. Now, this is a little bit more interesting. Check this out. So, the US dollar, we divorced from the gold standard in 1971. So, I'm no artist, but I'm trying my best. That's where my arrow is pointing down on this slide. So, you can see once we started to print money, right, and we're divorcing ourselves from the physical realities of mother nature, it's really benefited the top 1%. The rich have gotten a lot richer and the rest 90% of us, we're the ones that have stagnated income or now it's declining. Right? Check this out. This is these red and green lines. These are the prices of a median house in New York and Boston. They're just getting more expensive. The bottom two lines, the gray and the pink, that's our income. We're not getting paid anymore, but the life around us is getting more expensive. Here's another one. How long does it take to save for a house? Well, while we were on the gold standard, it was a few years. Off the gold standard, it's a decade, right? This is my favorite. Okay. Debt to go to Harvard. Okay. Debt to get a house. Okay. Debt to own a car. Debt to watch Justin Bieber. Debt to get a chicken sandwich. This is the problem with fiat currency. They print it. It becomes worth less. Our lives suck and get worse. We get in debt. We never escape it. We are slaves to the system. It is our burden to carry. Right? [Applause] I believe that the banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, the banks will deprive the people of all their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. Thomas Jefferson current version of the dollar is not very American, but that's for a different presentation. How about Henry Ford? It is well enough that people do not understand our banking and monetary system. For if they did, I believe they would adopt Bitcoin before tomorrow morning. He said that. I swear I was there. I was there. Okay. So, what's the solution? I know a lot of you guys know some of this stuff. The solution is Bitcoin. It's pretty obvious, right? Bitcoin is the money that we conceive that nobody can print. You can't print it. You can't debase my time and energy. You cannot deprive me of owning assets, of getting out of debt, of living sovereignly and protecting my future, my family, my prized possessions. Bitcoin is what we invented to do that. And so on the left here, that's about every single property that you could ever want in a money, right? And I Let's look at the report card. I know I'm a college dropout, but let's check this report card. Gold. I mean, gold's like a passing C. It does some stuff well, other stuff not. Fiat also kind of passing. It's a little worse student than gold. Bitcoin straight A's, baby. Straight A's. It's fungeable. It's portable. It's durable. It's divisible. You can't print it. It's programmable. People don't understand Bitcoin's going to get be getting better forever because the story of humanity is engineering a better world. And this is technology, right? This is technology. Okay, let's look at the scoreboard. That was the report card. Let's look at the scoreboard. Yeah, we're kicking ass and taking names. I mean, Bitcoin's the best performing asset in human history. This is compound annual growth rate. Okay. So, what's the average annual return of Bitcoin? You want to look at it on a one-year basis? They say, "No, that's bias. It went up that last one year." Okay, fine. What you want? What do you want? 2 year, 3 year, four year, 5 years? What time frame do you want to understand that Bitcoin is the solution to all 8 billion people's problem? You say, "Okay, yeah, but everything performs well against the dollar. My gym shoes are going to go up in dollar terms by next year. This hoodie, this screen, this clicker. Okay, but what about Bitcoin priced in oil, which is energy, right? You need oil to fly here. You need oil to drive. You need oil to charge your phone. Okay, Bitcoin's outperforming it. What about a median house outperforming it? What about stocks outperforming it? What about groceries outperforming it? What about gold outperforming it? As Will Rogers said, the quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it in Bitcoin. I swear I was there. He said that. He said [Applause] that. Okay, so the first two chapters pretty simple. Fiat sucks and is making everybody poor through violence and is just a terrible malicious thing that government and central banks do. Bitcoin is our solution, a peaceful revolution that all of us in this room have contributed to. I'm very proud of every one of us for getting this asset class to where we are right now here in this moment. Okay. But what I don't think we talk about enough is what I call the hodddler's dilemma. Okay, my girlfriend is some Oh, I see her. My girlfriend is here. I was I was practicing. I was giving her my presentation. I was asking for some feedback and she said, "Hey, I'm a little embarrassed. Um, but where did huddle come from? Why isn't it just hold, you know, I heard on CNBC they said it stands for hold on for dear life?" There's a No, that's not necessarily correct. Um, a little Bitcoin history for you guys. Huddle comes from a Bitcoin talk post in 2013. My speaker notes here are a little too small for me to read it, so I'm going to turn around. Sorry. Oh, I actually didn't mean to do that, but I got the huddle message on my back here. Check this out. Uh, by the way, I don't know if you guys can see, but everything is spelled wrong. This guy was wasted. Ready? I typed that title twice because I knew it was wrong the first time. Still wrong. Whatever. My girlfriend's out at an amazing bar. Bitcoin's crashing. But why am I hodling? I'll tell you why. It's because I'm a bad trader. And I know I'm a bad trader. Yeah, you good traders can spot the highs and the lows. Pit path piffy wing wong wang and just like that make a million bucks. Sure, no problem, bro. Likewise, the weak hands are like, "Oh no, it's going down. I'm going to sell." He he he. And then they're like, "Oh my god, my behind." When the smart traders who know what the hell they're doing buy back in, but you know what? I'm not part of that group. When the traders buy back in, I'm already part of the market. So guess who you're cheating day traders? Not me. Those taunt threads saying, "Oh yeah, you should have sold." Yeah, no No I should have sold. I should have sold moments before every sell and I should have bought moments before every buy. But you know what? Not everybody is as cool as you. You only sell in a bare market if you are a good trader or an illusion noob. The people in between, we hold in a zero sum game such as Bitcoin. Traders can only make money on you if you sell. So, I've had some whiskey. Actually, on the bottle, it's spelled whiskey. Whatever. Sue me, but only if it's payable in Bitcoin. Now, yeah, that's a little history. I hope CNBC is out here in the crowd, you guys. That's the origin of huddle. It's a meme. The meme is very powerful, though. is that what if we had the scarcest, hardest money in human history? Would it be just as simple as working hard and saving it and never selling? You don't need to be a trader. You don't need to study Japanese central bank monetary policy. You just got to huddle. And that meme has taken us so far to where this is what who is now our current president of the United States said at this conference last year in Bitcoin or 1% of the total supply that will ever exist. But for too long our government has violated the cardinal rule that every Bitcoiner knows by heart. Never sell your Bitcoin. Right. That's right, isn't it? Huh? That's right. How did I figure that one? Never sell your Bitcoin. And so as the final part of my plan today, I am announcing that if I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires into the future. We'll keep 100%. I hope you do well, please. So powerful meme. We went one night we had way too much whiskey and now the United States has a Bitcoin strategic reserve, right? And it's never sell your Bitcoin. And to be honest, it's kind of simple. Like let me ask you guys a question. How much of the money that only goes down, it's never done anything besides go down. How much of that would you want to own? Well, none of it, right? Yeah, of course. Okay. What about the one that's historically just it just goes up? If you just hold it and you don't trade it, it just goes up. How much of that would you want to own? Well, probably as much as I possibly could, right? And so, this was me last January. I officially owned 0, right? And so, I'm like, man, you know, President Trump, the hodddle drunk guy that drinks a lot of whiskey, like, let's go. I'm going to own as much as I can. Screw the dollar, right? But this is the hodler's dilemma is like then I had to sell it, right? I didn't have any dollars to spend. So some of you in the audience that troll me on Twitter, you're like, "Bro, I thought you were one of us. You're selling Bitcoin?" I'm like, "Dude, what do you want me to starve myself to death? I had to. I didn't own any dollars." And so this is the dilemma. Every Bitcoiner faces this fork in their life, right? Because the reality is this guys, money is a means. It's not an end, right? Money itself is not valued for the literal piece of paper or the little bites of data. It's value because of the things that it can get you, right? Nobody wants a green piece of paper or the physical Bitcoin itself. We all want what those things can get us, right? We all want to go to school and make best friends. We all want to get married and fall in love and buy a house that is really beautiful and start a family. All right, my family's here and start This is what it was like to start strike and start a business. Uh take a vacation, see the world, just like do stuff, right? Be adventurous. Um, right. You have to live your life. Now, I've met a lot of people in my 31 years on this planet. I've had a hell of a career so far. I've never met the man that has 10,000 Bitcoin but is homeless, starving, and sick. Never. I've always met the guy that would sell a little bit to live his life. And that's the dilemma, right? Have you guys ever heard this folktale, the miser and his gold? Have you ever heard this folktale? So the miser miser and his gold the miser had buried his gold in a secret place in his garden. Okay? Every day he went to that spot. He dug up the treasure of gold and he counted it piece by piece just to make sure it was all there. He made so many trips back and forth that a thief recognized what he was doing, guessed there was value there, and one night quietly dug up the treasure and made off with the gold. Okay. When the miser discovered that he had lost his gold, he was overcome with grief and despair. He groaned and cried and tore his hair. A passer by heard his cries and asked what had happened. My gold. Oh, my gold, cried the miser wildly. Someone robbed me. Your gold in that hole. Why would you put the gold there? Why did you not keep it safe in your house where you could easily spend it if you needed to spend it? And the miser screamed, "By golly, I would never spend my gold. I couldn't think of spending it." And the stranger picked up a large rock and he put it in the hole and he said, 'If that's the case, cover up that stone with dirt. It's worth just as much as the treasure that you are going to stare at for the rest of your life. Right? And so a possession in any of our lives, whether you're a Bitcoiner or not, it's worth no more than the use we make of it. And to be honest, you know, all of us in this room as Bitcoiners, we're on the right side of the greatest wealth transfer in human history. And I'm not going to tell you guys what to do with your wealth and with your Bitcoin. For me personally, what I believe is, you know, we have a responsibility to do well for the world. Part of the reason I'm excited about our future is because all of us are amassing wealth and we can change things and we can do stuff and we can get married and have kids and set a new standard for what society should be, right? And so knock knock. Who's there? Hodddle. Hodddle who? Nobody hodddles. Right. And this is my point, right? Steve Jobs, remember that you are going to be uh that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have Bitcoin to lose. Okay. So, you can't huddle forever, right? And this is the fork we all deal with. But the point I want to make here in this keynote is that has everyone throughout human history parted with scarcity when they needed cash. If the earliest investors of Manhattan when their kid was like, "Hey dad, I want to go to Harvard." Were like, "Shit, I got to sell these 20 blocks of Manhattan to pay for your tuition, right? What about all the land that people have owned or the real estate in New York or the amazing tech stocks?" Right? The answer is obviously not. Borrowing against scarcity is a timeless solution. This is the Dutch and British East India companies. These companies pioneered global trade in the 600s. I'm taking you way back. But they were the first to ever collateralize their assets to borrow and perpetuate their growth. The point was we have scarce desirable good try not to get rid of it. And they were able to borrow against it. How were the US railroads built? Does anyone know? mortgage government land agreements. They collateralized the land to find the cash to build the railroads. They did not sell the United States to build the railroads. They borrowed against it. This picture is the Rockefeller Center being built. New York City was entirely built. Guys, the le your great great great grandfather, the legend that bought 20 blocks of New York 400 years ago, he's a legend because he didn't sell it. That's why he's a legend. And New York was built on I have blocks of land. I'm going to borrow against it to build a building. I'm going to borrow against the building to build a bar. You do not get rid of the scarce desirable asset and hold the pieces of paper that these governments print. Right? This is Elon Musk. Tesla had to put a cap on how much this guy was borrowing against his shares. Okay? And so my point is Bitcoin is not different. Bitcoin is next. Okay? Yeah. So, this is my favorite. But, bro, Bitcoin has no cash flow. Here's Peter [Applause] Chef. Where is he? Is he here? I love you, Peter. I love you. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, no cash flow, no earnings, no dividend. Its value is what the next fool will pay. I don't know what year he said this, but I think it was around $1,000 per Bitcoin. Okay. I think that this is stupid. Okay. What has cash flows but doesn't? And the answer is Bitcoin. The point is every asset has an expected cash flow. Okay. My point is this on the left. This is what I call and Ross Stevens, shout out Ross Stevens, calls issuer cash flow. That's a government bond. And this is the cash flow everyone's used to. You buy a 10year and the government, the issuer of that tenure, pays you the interest, right? So, they're making payments to you for owning that asset. And yes, that's cash flow. I call that issuer cash flow. They're making payments. Now, on the right, Bitcoin's cash flow or screw Bitcoin for a second. Everyone in here, I I'd hope so. Unless you're homeless, you live in a house. And let's say you own that house. That house would generate cash flow when when you sell it, right? So, everything you own can generate cash flow. Sometimes the cash flow is because there's a dividend or there's interest yield or for what you're renting out in Airbnb, right? The other is when you have an asset and you own it. And you can always generate cash by simply selling it, right? So here's Bitcoin data. This is if you were to buy DCA, dollar cost average, $100 of Bitcoin a week over the last four years, you would have bought a little over $20,000 worth of Bitcoin and it'd be worth over $60,000. And if you wanted cash flow, you could get $60,000 worth of cash flow just by selling the Bitcoin. Duh. Okay. What about 6 years from now? You'd have over 160 grand of cash flow. What about 8 years? What about 10 years? You'd have millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin if you just bought every single week $100 at a time. To to say that this asset doesn't generate cash flow, in my opinion, is stupid. Everything generates cash flow. If you want cash, you historically just had to sell it. Right now, we know that you can get cash from Bitcoin by selling it. The question I want to ask you guys and why I'm here is, can we generate cash while still owning it? And that's the hodler's dilemma. Every other asset class has solved this problem. No one's had to sell their New York real estate. Elon Musk doesn't have to sell his Tesla stock. The great Indian trade companies did not have to sell their cargo ships and their cargo carriers. Why do we have to sell our Bitcoin? Because in theory, Bitcoin is the best collateral known to man. Like if you just wanted to measure collateral, right? Traditional collateral versus Bitcoin. Bitcoin's faster. It's more portable. It's more divisible. It's easier to custody, right? You can't print any more of it. It's divisible. Guys, if I were a lender trying to give a loan to someone and there was an emergency and they they gave me their house as collateral, how would I sell the fourth bedroom in the attic on a Sunday night if something went wrong? I can't do that. But I can with Bitcoin, right? I can. And so if you stack up Bitcoin as collateral against all these other things, it kicks its butt. You can post collateral in minutes. Its market hours are 24/7. It's global. It's liquid in every single currency that you could possibly want. Anyone in the world can get a collateralized loan from this. You live in New York, you live in Chicago, you live in Ghana, anyone can access this collateral, save and borrow against it. So if Bitcoin is the best collateral of all time, why are we facing this dilemma? Why has borrowing against Bitcoin been so difficult? Okay. And this is in my opinion as the founder of Strike what we've identified is that historically lenders have rehypothecated Bitcoin. The rates are outrageous. You can't get the right size loan. Some lenders can't go low enough to meet your needs. Some lenders can't be institutional grade. And then just the experience, being able to refinance a loan, multiple loans, being able to easily withdraw the cash, post collateral, meet your margin calls. Okay, like I just want to show you guys. So, a traditional margin loan, and for those that don't know what that is, take your stock portfolio. If you wanted to get a loan against that, this is the overnight funds rate plus that's half a percent to 1.5%. So, when Elon Musk gets a loan, Elon Musk is getting rates at like 4, 5, 6, 7%. If we all wanted to loan on our bitcoins, the market before I got on this stage was like 20%, 15%. Extremely high, outrageous. And when everyone says all these, you know, professional economists, they're like, "Well, Bitcoin's risky. It's volatile." No, it's not. This is the Magnificent 7's one-year volatility, and the orange one in the middle is Bitcoin. It's no more risky and volatile. Okay, I give it to you. It's a little bit more volatile than Apple, but it's far less volatile than Tesla. Why am I paying 20% a year for a loan? Screw you. It didn't make any sense to me. Right? This is Bitcoin's volatility. So, the pink and the green is Bitcoin's volatility. The orange is Bitcoin's price. Okay? So, you can clearly see it. It took a toddler to be able to recognize this. As Bitcoin matures, its volatility goes down. And Bitcoin's volatility is at a point now where it's no more risky than a Tesla stock. We should not be paying double-digit rates for a loan. We should not have to have lenders that are rehypothecating, right? I for the life of me, I could not understand. I own zero dollars and I'd have to sell my Bitcoin over the last year to live my life. And I for the for the life of me, I could not wrap my head around why this market was so screwed up. And so that brings me to our announcement. So I personally believe the future of Bitcoin and lending is now. I think this asset class obviously started at zero where there was no wealth in this asset. It's now over $2 trillion in market cap. Meaning there is $2 trillion of newly created wealth that all of us in this room play a part in owning. We want access to that wealth. We want to get married. We want to buy a house. We have an emergency medical situation. We want to start a business, but we don't want to sell the sats. And so at Strike, we built it. So about a month ago, we launched our Bitcoin lending product. And I'm a big fan of just get the product to market. You know, I'm not a genius that predicts what you guys want and how you want it. I like getting things in your hands, opening my Twitter account, taking all the abuse that you give me, but it's good feedback. And it's like, okay, you guys want cheaper rates, you want to make sure your collateral is not rehypothecated, etc., etc., etc. And I told you guys before the end of the month, I would do it for you. I promise. I'm a man of my word. I try and be. I try and be. And so, I want to talk to you guys about where Strikes lending product is today cuz I think you're going to be really excited. First of all, no rehypothecation. Okay. But yes, your collateral when deposited to strike, it sits with us and the partners and it does not move. It sits in a Bitcoin address. It is your collateral for the duration of your loan. We couldn't quite make it for this announcement. We are excited for a proof of reserves version of this product. But we do not rehypothecate anything. The Bitcoin never moves. There's no yield. There's no gimmicks. There's no nothing. You deposit the Bitcoin, it sits right here securely through the duration of your loan. Okay, I want to make that someone clip this and tweet it. I could not make that more clear. Cool. Cool. Next. Yes. What about cost? I believe and I and I I don't want to misrepresent, so take it with a grain of salt, but I believe we are the first financial institution of our scale, size, and caliber that is regulated that is now officially giving out loans for a singledigit interest rate. By the way, if you wanted to get a home equity loan from Bank of America, it'll cost you 9.5%. We have finally found the capital and driven this market down where we can give you a singledigit Bitcoin loan. Again, it is unbelievable. I'm so proud of the [Applause] team. You guys can go to our website and check out the tiers and see where you would fit in. We've also dropped our minimums all the way down to 10K. Okay? And so we will serve as low as a $10,000 loan. And on a per loan basis, I could give you guys up to a billion bucks. Okay? So Naive Buchelli, if you're out there, you want a loan, I got you, brother. I got you. Okay? President Trump, I got you. Got you. We also rolled out today multiple loans. So you can open up as many loans on Strike as you want. think the current we have it at three. We're going to keep raising that. Okay, just try just bear with us as we scale. But the point is you can open up a new loan to pay off and refinance your old loan. You can open up a new one at a different Bitcoin price, different terms, whatever. Multiple loans refinancing this product. And then also, I just want to mention that Strike's a financial service, right? And so you can we've had customers that needed to make a down payment on a home in about 30 minutes and they were able to do that. download Strike, deposit Bitcoin. There's no credit checks. So, you know, one customer called me and said, "Jack, trust me, you know, I I went to Stanford. I can No, no, you don't need to prove to me who you are. I got the Bitcoin. It's sitting here in the address. Take the cash, go buy your house, right? Withdraw it easily to your bank, pay your bills, buy more Bitcoin. And so, this is where the product is. We're going to bring it to Africa, Latin America, Europe, the UK. We're going to expand it, but we are beyond excited. I've almost I've almost taken it a bit personally to try and pioneer this. I really do not want Bitcoiners to have to sell their Bitcoin if they can responsibly borrow against it. So, the last thing I just want to say, um, at Strike, we build products we want. I want you guys to know I'm putting my money where my mouth is. A lot of you are like, "Does Strike have a Bitcoin treasury? We don't know how much Bitcoin they own." you know, do they actually believe in the products they sell? So, I put out our financials uh about a month ago as I launched, you know, another company 21. I wanted you guys to get some transparency. Um, do you know some of the earliest customers of our product? Me and my company. Okay. So, at Strike, these are some of our financials, but Strike owns 1,500 Bitcoin in our treasury. So, we I'm I'm a I'm a humble stater, baby. You know that. You know that. And I just want I want you guys to know it's for both individuals and businesses. And so hopefully this draws some inspiration for the people out in the room. You know, if you're a business and you sweep your cash flows into Bitcoin that's compounding at 50, 60% a year, you have a capital base, a savings account that's actually working for you. You know, if we have 150, 200, $500 million on our balance sheet at Strike. Let's say I need to go get a license in Australia for a million bucks. I could borrow against a fraction of our stack, go buy the license, launch in Australia. It's an amazing way. No dilution, no selling our SAS, right? No, it it's it's a beautiful for both businesses and consumers. And the way I use it personally is the same thing. I borrow against, you know, two to 5% of my personal stack. If the market goes down, I can overcolateralize. And since the product launched, um, I was the earliest beta customer. And I've never sold a SAT since. I have not sold Bitcoin since this product launched, which is amazing. And I live on [Applause] Bitcoin. So anyways, I I I had the vicious fiat cycle, right? And this is the one that we're trying to build. And I it's not just us. There's great companies doing similar stuff. But, uh, you know, if you could borrow fiat, keep Bitcoin off the market, that accelerates the death of this awful thing, which increases Bitcoin's utility. We're seeing Bitcoiners now tap into their capital and change the world, get married, buy a house, and it repeats and it builds on itself. Okay? So, I want to tell you guys quickly, you know, please be responsible. This is debt. debt. It's like fire in my opinion. It can heat a civilization. It can warm a home. But if you go too crazy, you're going to burn your house down. Okay? And it's only responsible that I tell you, you got to be careful. Please be responsible. This is not a silver bullet. Okay? [Applause] But if we can as an industry continue to push and mature this asset class, make sure that hodlers do not have to face the dilemma. They don't have to part with their sachs, but we can tap into the wealth we're building and continue to change the world. Um, as my friend Ross Stevens said, life is short. Take the trip. But with Bitcoin, you just get to take a better one. Okay. Thank you guys.