So as you look at the metrics and the numbers and the inflows, do you see a point where we see Bitcoin taking market share from gold as its preferred scarce asset with younger investors and institutions as we see more institutional capital pour in?

Yeah, I think you're already seeing that.

I think young people prefer digital assets over gold.

It's the exciting thing.

But that's going to take a long time.

I also think gold will do well in this period of financial repression and currency debasement as another hard asset.

But like I said, Bitcoin is very different.

And if we see long term yields continue to rise despite this Treasury intervention, does that strengthen your Bitcoin thesis or does it threaten it?

So as far as what we're seeing, as far as just overall assessment of Bitcoin and, of course, the momentum that we've seen come back into play this week, I mean, how are you assessing the appetite for risk assets as well as just the way some of these names like strategy, of course, have benefited?

Yeah, and thanks for having me back on.

It's been a volatile week, but everyone's celebrating this time as volatility has returned back to the upside.

And I think this is related to what's occurred at the Treasury over the last week when they're doubling the amount of share buybacks.

And really what this points to is the lack of sustainability of the fiscal outlook.

And the currency, the basement trade, was really popular in the earlier in this year.

And then AI kind of took some of the spotlight away from that.

And I wonder how much the fact that we've seen volatility really come down in your more traditional financial risk assets like equities has helped drive activity back towards crypto at the same time that some of these big picture debasement sort of anti-dollar and fiat currency trades are working as well.

Can you talk to us and give us the TLDR of what we need to know about Digi11?

Yeah, thanks, Gareth.

So Orange PTC has been working hard behind the scenes to bring this to market, and we announced it last week at Blockchain Rio.

It's a new ETF that pays monthly distributions in Brazilian reais with currency hedging and daily liquidity.

It will initially have a weighting of about 95% STRC and 5% of Strive Stata.

And we hope that that universe expands with more issuers in the future.

But it's a passive fund that holds a basket of the perpetual preferred equities, like the strategies STRCs, as you mentioned.

You have to follow most of this quite closely, right? Given that 95% of the Digi11 product is backed by or exposure to STRC.

Uh, uh, does that delay the next leg higher for B- for Bitcoin? How closely do you view the correlation there?

[smacks lips] Well, if the Fed comes out, like Warsh, uh, last week in his testimony said that, "Hey, we're gonna fight inflation.

It's our number one priority to get price stability where we need it to be." Um, if they start hiking interest rates, that could tighten liquidity conditions and put pressure on long-duration, non-yielding assets like Bitcoin, like gold.

It has matured.

It has...

It trades more like a macro asset in some ways.

But another thing Warsh said last week that caught my attention was, said, "During crises, I will be quite aggressive with the balance sheet, with the assets that I buy." And that's what matters for a Bitcoin investor because what we're betting on is that they're gonna con- when, when crises come, they'll continue to intervene.

How important is that legislation to institutional adoption?

And on digital credit as the fastest growing credit sector in the world.

Yeah, can I just add on to some of what Alex just said? I think Stretch is not even a year old.

I think it turns one in July.

And so they are still young, novel instruments, and the market's still wrapping its head around what it means to have a perpetual preferred equity product that's supported by a large Bitcoin balance sheet.

I think part of the volatility that you see in those instruments is just a lack of market understanding around them, but also a lack of appreciation of the Bitcoin that backs it.

So there's mispricing of the Bitcoin risk still.

You know, they still have over $50 billion worth of Bitcoin, even when Bitcoin's dropped 50% off its all-time highs.

You can learn more at archlending.com.

Now

there's reasons to believe that it can perform 25, 30% a year.

And I think when people say like, hey, it could do 25% over the next 10 years, people are like, no, that's crazy.

Because they think about returns on the NASDAQ or the S&P 500.

Right.

25% a year, that's those crazy returns.

Now we know that Bitcoin has done more of that historically, but even looking into the future at 25%, you're looking at a Bitcoin price by 2031, around like 240, 250,000, you know, to me, I'm like, that's pretty reasonable.

So I guess closing thoughts, any kind of outlook going forward for the rest of this year or into next year?

Is that your read as well?

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I think it's going to be a pretty large market with a lot of different players.

You know, Brazil is interesting just because there's very, very little competition here in terms of public, you know, regulated public vehicles to gain exposure to Bitcoin.

We're one of the only ones that exists.

You know, in the U.S., there's a ton of different options in terms of ways to get exposure to Bitcoin.

There's 11 ETFs.

Is that going to be a catalyst for, you know, hyperinflation in the West? And is that the time when we see Bitcoin really kind of rip relative to fiat currency? Or I guess, can governments keep kicking the can down the road? And how does that play into the long-term adoption of Bitcoin? I think that's

How do you, how do you visualize that type of threat?

threat?So actually, I, I wrote a pretty long, uh, blog post on this.

You can find it at orangebtc.com. That's spelled with a J, The Orange.

I, I, I think the risk is less imminent than the headline suggests, and, uh, actually the work underway to already address it is more robust and diverse than people think.

And, um, it really comes down to the fact that the hardware doesn't exist yet, and it c- and when you look at quantum computing, when you have, like, environmental disruptions, you have to keep it kind of perfect or else you get a, a wrong outcome, an interact- an inaccurate outcome.

And so that doesn't exist.

We no long- we don't have the ability to actually have a crypto-relevant quantum computer to exist today.

What does it take for those, that capital to rotate back into Bitcoin?

So take us through some of these trends that you're observing and how it's changing.

Yeah, well, really over the last year or so, we're seeing the institutional adoption of Bitcoin accelerate.

I mean, some of that is due to the reduction of regulatory barriers, as well as large financial institutions leaning into this, really giving credibility as a new asset class.

And so they're building products, We saw Morgan Stanley last week launch a product.

Charles Schwab is getting into it, launching direct spot Bitcoin trading in the coming quarters.

And so we're continuing to see that adoption and really Bitcoin had a correction in the late late last year, and now it's coming out of that, and it's been really resilient despite the uncertainty and the heightened geopolitical tensions that we've seen.

Bitcoin has actually outperformed the S&P 500 and gold since the war broke out.

How are you thinking about that for the space?