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War is exploding across the Middle East. Iran, Israel, and the US inch closer to a conflict nobody can afford. And when governments need money fast, they do the same thing every time. They print. Every new dollar printed quietly drains the value of the one you hold. That's why top market voices, Kathy Wood, Mike Belshe, Michael Saylor, are all sounding the same alarm.
Fiat is weakening and capital is rotating into Bitcoin, the only asset with a fixed supply in a world spinning out of control. If they're right, this is the moment everything changes. Um Bitcoin, we believe, is going to be the um most important crypto asset um for three reasons. It's It's really three big ideas in one.
Uh the first is it's a new technology. We have now currency native to the internet, which is going to take out a lot of friction from the buying process, especially as we move to agentic AI, where, you know, machines will be uh will be buying from other machines, right? So, uh so that's the first thing.
The second is it is a global monetary system, and we're beginning to see it react to the uh events in the Middle East, and it has stabilized after something called a flash crash from last October, um which caused auto deleveraging, which caught a lot of people offsides. We think that's all washed through.
We think Iran now is taking center stage, and that Bitcoin will serve its role as a store of value. We just hit 20 million Bitcoin minted ever, and we're going only to 21 million. Gold, with the increase in price, I guarantee you miners have accelerated uh their search for more gold and will be producing more.
Uh Bitcoin is mathematically metered, and its growth rate has already slipped below that of gold. Uh and we also think with the huge intergenerational wealth transfer taking place that Bitcoin will be the store of value of choice. And then the third big idea is Bitcoin, and we wrote this paper in 2016.
I'm very proud of our team. Uh Bitcoin, the first of its kind in a new asset class. If you look at Bitcoin, its correlation relative to other assets is very low, even to gold. Many We call it digital gold, but if you look at the correlation since uh 2019, really since institutions started thinking about this, the correlation between gold and Bitcoin is 0.14, hardly any correlation.
And if you look at a matrix, I put it in my uh New Year's uh letter in January. We have a matrix. You'll see the correlation with other assets is very low. So, what does this mean? Asset allocators are looking for low correlation assets because if they in the satellite strategy that we offer, if they put a a a lower correlation asset in their mix, their risk-adjusted returns go up over time.
You know news, Mike Belshe, the CEO of BitGo, just dropped a major truth bomb. Bitcoin is now the world's global liquidity venue. When the world panics, when markets freeze, when governments clamp down, one asset still moves. One network still flows. One system never sleeps. Belshe says Bitcoin has quietly become the place where global capital escapes to when everything else locks up.
A financial lifeboat that crosses borders without permission. So, let's dig into what he means and why it matters right now. We've seen a lot of cycles from Bitcoin over the years. Uh it goes up pretty extreme, it goes down pretty extreme. It's been the saying for a long time, if you're not ready for my 60% drawdowns, you're not ready for my 600% gains.
Um and that's that's kind of true. Now, in the market, I think right now, a couple of interesting points. Bitcoin has established itself as a global liquidity venue. Um if you need liquidity, you can go to Bitcoin at size, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, pretty much anywhere in the planet. And so, it's often one of the first things that will be used to get liquidity when it's needed, whether that's short or medium term.
So, that causes one side of it, which can be downward pressure uh at various times. The other thing, you know, we've been talking about for years that it's a hedge against dollars, fiats, you know, when the traditional system struggles. And what's going on in the Middle East is certainly reminding everyone right now that you could very much wake up one day and have a struggle with your existing bank account, not be able to get a withdrawal that you wanted.
Uh certainly in those regions, uh access to money is something that is uh very much top of mind for all of the people that are affected by the current situation. So, these two things go at odds with each other. Like, on one hand, you've got things pulling it down, which is that's the best liquidity ever.
And on the other hand, you've got some things which are pulling it up, which is that's proving its thesis in the grand scheme. Michael Saylor makes a powerful point that hits deeper than most people realize. He reminds us that no great invention is embraced instantly. Bitcoin is 17 years old, yet the world still struggles to understand it.
Even electricity, something we now consider essential to life, took nearly 30 years before humanity finally agreed it was a good idea. Saylor says the same pattern is unfolding today. People keep asking, "Who created Bitcoin?" But he argues that the inventor doesn't matter. What matters is the transformation it brings to human freedom, wealth, and possibility.
And when you hear Saylor explain it, his perspective is nothing short of mind-blowing. It took uh 30 years for people to embrace electricity. Bitcoin's been around for 17 years. Uh and Bitcoin is Bitcoin. So, so someone might very well say, "Okay, well, you know, did I wait until 17 years after the airplane got invented, right?
The airplane is 1903. How many people had flown in a passenger jet or passenger airline by 1920? You know, maybe it's still early, and I just want to see more people, you know, than me try it out first, and then I'll follow it. So, will it take 20 years? Will it take 30 years? Will it take 40 years?
Uh the world's full of, yeah, of profound innovations that eventually were embraced by everybody, but it took more than 17 years. And like, it doesn't matter who Satoshi was. You don't need to know Satoshi. Do you need to know who Prometheus was, you know, in order to decide not to set yourself on fire, right?
Fire. Prometheus doesn't matter. It's fire. It's chemical reaction. You know, you can study chemistry, you can figure it out, you can study thermodynamics. Bitcoin's a force of nature. Anybody can use it. There are people that I don't agree with that may have, you know, used it. There are people that I don't agree with who talk about it or use it or who came along before me or who come along after me.
And uh it's you know, we're speaking the English language. There are a lot of people that you disagree with that also spoke the English language. Now, some of them even contributed words to the English language. Some of them even wrote books in the English language. Some of them were even English. And at And at the end of the day, it's a protocol.
Just like, you know, fraudsters, right, use Arabic numerals, right? And uh and criminals use English. And and every movie's got a car chase in it. And sometimes you hope that the person gets away. And sometimes you hope they get caught, right? It's And you're still using the car. Bitcoin's digital capital.
It's a revolution in the capital markets. It's a profound, you know, once-in-humanity innovation. It allows us to tightly bind economic energy to the human being or to the corporation, to any entity. It's, you know, the ability to tightly bind economic energy to the individual is as profound as fire, electricity, or even the formation of fat in mammals.
It's It's a fundamental building block of life. So, you have a world which is not served well by the 20th century conventional finance assets and finance structures and finance ideologies and finance protocols. You have a new world, a digital world with digital protocols, digital assets, digital capital, digital credit, digital money.
Is it going to solve all the problems? No. There's going to be a lot of problems in the world that we're not solving with digital money, digital credit, and digital capital. However, walk down the street and ask a hundred people whether or not they'd like more money. Every one of them is going to say, "I'd like more money." So, there's a there's an obvious, you know, unequivocally utilitarian opportunity for us here.
It's straightforward. The money's not going to fix itself. [snorts] Right? The money is not going to fix itself. Bitcoin was capital, you're going to have to build credit on top of it, you're going to have to build money on top of the credit, you're going to have to go and market that, you're going to have to get regulators to approve it, you're going to have to put it in a ETF container, put it in a crypto token container, put it in a private fund, put it in a public fund, get the Japanese to approve it, get the Emiratis to approve it, get the Americans to approve it, get the Europeans to approve it, fight with, you know, the Chinese regulators to approve it, the Australians to approve it, the Canadians to approve it.
Then people are going to start and say, "Yeah, it looks too good to be true. I don't trust it." And then you're going to have to explain why it's trustworthy, and then they're going to disagree with you, and they're going to keep scoring on you, and then you're going to have to keep coming back because that's just the way the world is.
And 30 years after this podcast, everybody will go like, "Oh, yeah, digital money, of course." Of course we want that. Do you like electricity? Yeah. Do you like cars? Yeah. Do you like fire? Yeah. Do you like antibiotics? Sure you do, right? Do you like television or radio? Yeah. How about airplanes?
Sure. Was there a time when all of these things were in disrepute and created incredible fear, uncertainty, and doubt? Every one of them. Right? And this is just the latest technology transformation. It's coming. It's as As William Gibson said, "The future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed." And in 30 years, it'll be consensus, but you know what?
You won't have a job, and I won't have a job because it'll be uninteresting because everyone will have embraced it like water, electricity, fire. It's like, "Yeah, of course, right?" There's no opportunity once everybody agrees with you. It's not interesting when everybody agrees with you. They don't interview people to ask whether or not your company's going to be installing running water in the new corporate headquarters, do they now? No.
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