Um, but you know, uh, do, do you see people moving over to Strike even through bear markets like this? Or is this one of those things there might be seasonality to people still when it comes to Bitcoin as money?

No, it's, it's actually interesting.

Even through the bear market, the company's gonna grow in revenue year over year, to, to my surprise as well.

We see growth in all verticals, but there's orders of magnitude in growth on something like our lending business as opposed to the payments business.

And you know, my high-level thesis ...

Listen, I think all Bitcoiners have the same 5, 10, 15, 20-year vision.

We all know where we want Bitcoin to monetize and dematerialize.

So how would you summarize the correlation between Bitcoin and art?

I described it as death last night when I wrote my letter.

Yeah, it's...

Because I tell you what, Nick, I remember when SBF and FTX went down.

And when I say went down, the tweets of, you know, we've entered an agreement with Binance to be purchased, right? Like anyone with a few brain cells was able to put two and two together with what was happening prior about setting target prices for their FTX coin.

And I knew that guy was full of it, Nick.

We all did.

One of the cool things about truly understanding Bitcoin and how it works and being around for so long is you can even call out a guy like Elon Musk on his shit when he talks about Bitcoin in some respect.

Do you think that this is a Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen? Is that where we need to be pointing the blame? Are these guys that are funding the Palantir's the open AIs, are they the ones that, and then putting their guys in Washington as well, are they to blame here for this approach? Is it back to the government? Who would you point it at? Because not enough is discussed these days about Thiel and Andreessen and their role at the top.

Um, so talk to me about, like, the beginning of that before we get to this decision to step down.

Yeah, I mean, so there's a, there's a lot of lore here.

Um, I co-founded 21 with Tether.

And like, what does that even mean? Uh, Tether was founded by, and the chairman of the business, is a guy named Giancarlo, which people don't...

He's just not a very...

He doesn't like attention.

I don't know.

Let's all go public"?

Um, what would you have done differently? Like, I, I know that's very easy with sort of 20/20 hindsight to, to pick at the moments, but i- is there any one thing that sticks out as that you wish you'd not done?

Hmm.

I think, uh, the level of expectation, uh, that I set publicly in hindsight should've been much more measured.

I'd never experienced Wall Street.

I'd never been a part of a board where I ultimately couldn't act decisively when I felt convicted.

I had never been part of a public company.

And so I think, you know, I, I think fundamentally that optimists define the future.

Yep.

You're building a Bitcoin business, right? Um, do you wanna-- Let's just start, 'cause for anyone who might not have seen the announcement, do you wanna explain what's actually happening?

Yeah.

So I had a keynote at Bitcoin 2026, and it was fun because, uh, everyone says online I wear two hats.

So for those that don't know, I'm the founder and CEO of Strike, which you can think of as like a Bitcoin bank of sorts.

We're not an actual bank, but we provide Bitcoin financial services, buy and sell, custody, credit, lending, all sorts of stuff.

And then the other hat I wear is I'm co-founder and CEO of 21.

And 21 owns 42,514 Bitcoin.

But the one thing that I think is clear is that the world is moving more multipolar, and I don't think anything is positioned to benefit from that as much as Bitcoin in terms of, like, global money.