The Wall Street Attack That Breaks Saylor | Adrian Morris

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]They have a million Bitcoin. So what what what are they going to do with it?

[00:00:03]That's not a cycle to me. That's an event. That's a liquidity event that wiped out the market and we've been trying to recover ever since. And if I were a hedge fund, I would bid up Stretch and I would slam MSTR as much as I possibly can. If you do that long enough, it starts to buckle. It's ironic that the financialization of Bitcoin seems to be one sucking a lot of interest away from the crypto broader crypto market because I'm seeing people Adrien Morris, Bitcoin investor, strategy investor. Last time we talked the topic, the stairway to heaven.

[00:00:39]Bitcoin on its way to a million dollar.

[00:00:42]You said we wouldn't see an extreme cycle. Your thoughts on the current market setup? Is the steroid of heaven still intact?

[00:00:50]>> Over 10 years. Yeah. Um and I don't think we've seen an extreme market. We are we what hit 126 and uh we dropped down to 697 well what whatever the number was I forget it was we haven't seen 80% draw down yet now can we in theory but I think that um what we're seeing right now is that the market the market is is a little bit different and I'm not I've never been a believer in cycles so I think that we're seeing a bare market but it's not as if we had um a organic sell-off in in the sense of people were taking profits. I mean, October 10th happened and then we got kneecapped and it's we've just been kind of treading water ever since.

[00:01:32]>> The four-year cycle it was supposed to be dead. You talked a little bit about this just now, but want to dive into it.

[00:01:38]So, your view is currently that the four-year cycle is still over and that what we saw at the end of last year wasn't just your garden variety for your cycle selloff.

[00:01:50]>> Well, let's think of it from a few different angles. Um, one, the reason why I mean I talk about the cycle. I reference the cycle, but I'm not necessarily a believer in the cycle. I think what we're seeing and what we have seen are events that have been cemporal and contemporaneous. So, they haven't been causitive. They haven't been necessarily um correlative with the um Bitcoin price action when Bitcoin was incepted in you know in 2009 to now. We have to think of it in terms of what was the macro backdrop. Right? Now, people always talk about liquidity, liquidity, liquidity. Okay, that's fine. But what kind of liquidity was it? Interest rates being cut or was it like I like to frame stimulus? We had massive stimulative events between 2008 and um 2020. Um between 2000 and now we've had something like $35 trillion of stimulus. So Bitcoin has always existed in a stimulative environment with lower interest rates that were either at or near zero.

[00:02:46]What we were seeing in my view is liquidity going further out in the risk curve as a result of stimulus not as a result of something like interest rates coming down or macro policy ne necessarily driving people towards Bitcoin. It's just that people are going further and further on the risk curve and Bitcoin benefited from that because of its nature because of its narrative because of its overall appeal to the masses. We had those boom busts but it always came back which is why in my view Bitcoin was never a bubble. But if you think of it in terms of what makes more what makes more sense in terms of the market structure we were seeing lower interest rates and liquidity coming into a market. It t it tends to be a gradual uptick with peaks and valleys. It doesn't tend to be all coins running to thousands of X's and then slamming down and then Bitcoin running up and slamming down. I think that's a very very stimulative stimulative trajectory more than a liquidity trajectory. So that's one of the things I like to differentiate why I don't think we we followed cycles. I think we've just been cemporal and contemporaneous with other macro events.

[00:03:52]Now that said, what did we see that led to this market? Was it selling off? Yes.

[00:03:58]But was it a gradual selloff or did the market just collapse and then we saw the price action? Is that a cycle? Okay, let's say it is a cycle. Where in the cycle does it predict that October 10th was going to happen? There would be a massive liquidity event. People start getting kneecapped. Derivatives are d would slam. The overall market would slam. People would leave the market in mass all at once. That's not a cycle to me. That that's an event. That that that's a that's a liquidity event that wiped out the market and we've been trying to recover ever since. A cycle to me would have been like, you know, what did Bitcoin follow in the past? If we're using the cycle analogy, where was alt season? We didn't really have it. So, let's say it was replaced by treasury season. Okay, fine. Are those companies selling off Bitcoin? No, they're not really. So, where why if if we had a if we had a alt season like cycle from Bitcoin treasuries and we had no traditional alt season, where were the peaks and troughs? Where was the normal rotation that we see in cycles? Where was all that activity? didn't exist. So even though we had meme coins and even though we had all coins doing what they were doing for a very very short period of time, nothing about this quote unquote cycle followed any other cycle.

[00:05:12]So I don't really see why people are still saying it was the same old cycle.

[00:05:16]>> Well, I want to get to strategy. One last thought on the cycle. Uh obviously the strategy I think impacts, you know, how people are viewing the market.

[00:05:23]Michael Surpin had him on the podcast.

[00:05:26]His view, the answer to your question is OG Wales. They're still setting the floor. They're setting the market and they decided four year cycles are real.

[00:05:33]We're going to sell at the end of 2025.

[00:05:36]Uh your belief are they still influential in the market?

[00:05:39]>> I think that they are influential in the sense of they have size. So when they when they sell they are they can appreciably move the market in terms of um price activity. However, I would still be reticent to say that it's just OG whales that believe in the cycle and therefore it's playing out like a cycle because I think that one of the things that never gets talked about as a derivatives market, right? We have the futures, we have all of the paper Bitcoin in the market. I think that's what's setting price. I don't think OG Wales selling is necessarily um setting price or setting a floor. One, I don't think there is a floor per se. And two, I think that we just have to look at what we've seen. I think what was it ear late uh late late last year or right before the crash that Galaxy Digital sold off like thousand tens of thousands of Bitcoin at once >> and the price dipped but then >> right the price dipped and it recovered, right?

[00:06:37]>> So we have an institutional player that's dumping. We have, you know, OGs that are potentially dumping. I don't think that's really driving the price or setting a floor. I think that's being absorbed in a larger market activity.

[00:06:50]And when we take exchange activity, when we take derivatives, when we take the whole market as a whole, I don't know if any of these are being are really the um marginal price setter. I honestly think that the market has grown and the ETFs have make it made it grow. There's now even more derivative derivative activity in the market. And I think whether we want to accept it or not, that is what's setting price.

[00:07:14]>> Sideway strategy, Michael Sailor, 815,000 Bitcoin, maybe 18,000 Bitcoin at the time of recording. Just passed Black Rockck's the largest institutional accumulator. The question now, it seems on everyone's mind is not when or not, sorry, not if, but when Strategy hits a million coins accumulated. Uh, do you believe that strategy will acquire a million Bitcoin?

[00:07:38]>> Oh, at some point, yes. Um, I'm not going to I'm not going to say that it's going to be like, you know, quarter four this year, but I think that they absolutely will um acquire a million Bitcoin. Now, at that point, what does that mean? So, this is where I'm somewhat um unpopular because I say um so what? They have a million Bitcoin. So, what what what are they going to do with it? Um they have the the preferreds.

[00:08:03]they the net asset value um of the company's swelling has what's given them the impetus to have the preferred that's all fantastic we saw well stretch is doing but having a million Bitcoin in the balance sheet that's great for Bitcoin I think that's great for perception but that's that's for us what is the market going to think of that what is the market going to what kind of a premium will the market put on that what kind of a premium if any would the market decide to put on that I think that for me is the real question, not so much if they're going to hit a million Bitcoin because I think they're absolutely going to.

[00:08:38]>> Is there a point that strategy accumulates so much Bitcoin that the bare market comes to an end sooner? This is this seems like the big question, right? The rate of accumulation sailor on pace this year to outdo last year on pace for 425,000 Bitcoin this year. So, first part of the question, can he keep it up? Do you think he can stay at this rate of Bitcoin accumulation? And if he does, does it end the bare market early?

[00:09:06]>> So, can you keep it of this clip that that's that that has a few parts to it.

[00:09:13]So, when we think about how they're buying um Bitcoin is through the ATM equity offering and it's through the preferred right primarily stretch um right now for the last few months. Now the demand for stretch has been consistent.

[00:09:28]Even though we've seen these market girrations, even though we've seen these feats and troughs, the demand for stretch has been consistent and it's been growing and they've been maintaining the peg more effectively.

[00:09:37]Now they're going towards the um semionthly dividend payout, which I think is going to help stabilize the price even further.

[00:09:45]That leads me to believe that they will be able to have consistent buying pressure in the market. Whether or not they'll be buying tens of thousands of Bitcoin at a time, that's going to be a little bit harder to say because, you know, it is dependent upon trading volume. It is dependent upon a lot of different things when it comes to stretch. But let's say that they do, right? So, let's take that step. Let's let's take that step first. Does that end the bare market? I don't think so.

[00:10:12]Because while having a consistent marginal buyer is consistent buying pressure, the way strategy buys is specifically in a way not to move the market. So it's not as if the amount of Bitcoin that they're buying is being done o open market, right? They're buying OTC. They're buying algorithmically in a way to not move price. So let's let's put that aside. Now let's say that the supply crunch happens, right? This is something that sailors talk about. This is something that others have talked about and we hit we hit that inflection point where all the sellers have sold. Now we're really in a in a crunch where all the Bitcoin that's being uh mined is being swiftly bought up and there's not enough sellers. Could that theor theoretically drive the price up? Of course, naturally, right? But we're still making a very very big assumption that we're not always going to have sellers at these prices.

[00:11:06]the the market is always going to be distributed between buyers and sellers.

[00:11:10]Now, what drives the price up is that we have more more buyers and fewer sellers.

[00:11:16]When does that happen? I don't think we can just say that strategy buying Bitcoin is going to be the driving factor behind that because you still have the derivatives market where whether we want to admit or not the larger Bitcoin gets in terms of market cap the larger the derivatives market is going to get as a result and the more buying and selling pressure is going to exist in the der because of the derivatives market because of the ETFs people are playing the options now very very heavily on the ETFs and with IBIT All of these factors come into play to bring in even more institutional players and they're not concerned about Bitcoin going to 250,000. They're concerned about trading the volatility.

[00:11:58]So I don't know if strategy by themselves are going to be able to end the bare market or or bare markets as a whole.

[00:12:07]>> Fascinating. So your belief is that part of the reason for this is what critics call the paper Bitcoin market. Can you explain why you don't maybe have a negative view on the formation of this derivatives market?

[00:12:20]>> So, it's not that I have a negative view, it's that I have a realistic appraisal of it. It it it exists, right?

[00:12:26]So, last so last cycle, I'm sure you remember there were a lot of people talking about pay for Bitcoin, right?

[00:12:31]And how it's being used to um suppress price and how it was being used to drive the price down. But really, it it boiled down to I don't know if you remember F2 pool. every time Bitcoin went up in price, they started dumping Bitcoin. And when we say dumping, we're talking like 50, 60, 70,000 at a time. Anytime we got any kind of um market activity going, right? And even with the paper Bitcoin, you know, we still hit, you know, we crossed 60K for the first time, we crossed 65K for the first time, but what killed the market wasn't the paper Bitcoin. It was FTX, it was BlockFi, it was three hours Capital. That is what kneecaped the market, right? Why am I bringing that up?

[00:13:11]I'm not bring I don't talk about the derivatives market because I have a negative view of it. I I'm talking about the derivatives market because now at this in this cycle with all the institutional players with the ETFs with strategy holding over 800,000 Bitcoin, the scale of the market and the players in the market are fundamentally different. Now it is not all it's not guys like us driving the market anymore.

[00:13:35]It is institutional players. So I need to have a realistic appraisal of and a realistic understanding of how it is they drive price and they're not fundamentally concerned with Bitcoin doing a two or 3x. They're trading the volatility. They're making their money at the margins, right? So that is they're making their money insides at the margins. They can do that with Bitcoin at 70. They can do that Bitcoin at 700. They're they're going to play the market as it as it goes. But I think right now clearly if we look at the market activity there anytime we cross like even right now anytime we get up to 78 or close to 79 the price is being pushed right back down. That's not just from people organically selling Bitcoin that's in their cold wallet. That's being driven by the derivatives. That's being driven by the algorithmic activity in the market. So again, I think that Bitcoin is going to go higher. Bitcoin is going to succeed.

[00:14:34]Bitcoin already has succeeded, but the derivatives market is here to stay and we need to be aware of its impacts.

[00:14:42]>> So what does end the bare market this time around? If it isn't Michael Sailor, if it isn't Michael Sailor, if it isn't the people that he inspired, Adam Back, Jack Malers to buy more Bitcoin. If it isn't these preferred equity products, do you have a sense of what does end the bare market?

[00:15:01]>> I think macroeconomic trends have to go on our side and I think that um narrative needs to shift and I'll touch on each and I can go into some other factors as well. So if we think about it in terms of you know macroeconomic factors, what have we had in the and this is not me being political to anyone watching this. I'm just saying what has been what has been going on in the market essentially for like the last what 18 months a tweet comes out and everything and all hell breaks loose either something either things start ripping or they start or they start dropping right we've had tariff Armageddon we've had Iran we've had the forget about Iran the overall general situation in the Middle East Iran Syria the United States oil prices tariffs tariffs tariffs no tariffs okay tariffs no tariffs okay tariffs Nvidia being the the essentially the center nexus of the market at certain times and if they drop 1% everything starts selling off.

[00:15:58]The macroeconomic and broader um um stock market dynamics are so volatile right now that something like Bitcoin is further on the risk curve whether we want to acknowledge that or not is is is having trouble catching a bid. So, we had October 10th that happened, right?

[00:16:14]That really kneecaped things. And now what we're seeing is that I think Bitcoin is trying to find footing in this larger macroeconomic environment.

[00:16:22]And um as someone that's an investor in Nvidia and has been for years and someone that's an investor on and off in other Mag 7 and Mac 7 adjacent companies, I can tell you that AI everyone keeps waiting for a bubble to pop, but it's more of a secular trade.

[00:16:39]Even if the overall AI mag7 market gets kneecapped by 40% or 50%, it's still 5 to 8 trillion damn year. That that's a fundamental paradigm shift in how people are allocating their money. And even in the Bitcoin space, I'm seeing avid Bitcoiners talk about AI all the time.

[00:17:00]It is something that has sucked capital out of Bitcoin and into and and into something else. And is that a trend that's going to end anytime soon? I don't think so.

[00:17:09]So coming into that's macro and coming into narrative that which leads into narrative I think Bitcoin needs its set narrative that the market is going to latch on to.

[00:17:20]So is it digital gold? Is it um anti-debasement money? Is it pristine digital property? Is it anti-establishment cipher cipher punk cash that that's supposed to be only peer-to-peer and we're ruining it by having strategy and ETFs and so on and so on and so forth. Which narrative is going to become the thing that the market latches on to with gold? And this is not me being a gold bug by any means. I'm just trying to draw a parallel with gold. There's a set narrative as a you know pristine monetary metal.

[00:18:00]With the AI trade, there's a set narrative. AI is going to disrupt everything and everything else is trickling down from that. What is that one set narrative that the market is going to latch on to with Bitcoin that's going to make us hit that escape velocity that I think is happening that's going to happen and you know the quote unquote stereo to heaven narrative and stere scenario will really take off. I think that we're still waiting for that. Now, is that coming? Yes. Do I know which one is going to be and what what the catalyst for it is going to be? No.

[00:18:36]Because quite frankly, one of the things that Bitcoin really really was running on post subprime mortgage meltdown was, you know, anti-debasement, pristine money, all of those narratives were kind of coalesing, but it had a very very grassroots movement to it and the market cap was very, very small. Now that the market cap is much larger, we are attracting different players into the market and each of those players is looking for what the narrative is. Yeah, they know Bitcoin is great, but they know Bitcoin is great in terms of historical performance. It tends to do well. It it it's a pristine. It's scarce. It's all those things that tends to lead to runups in price. Okay, that's great. But we all know that. So, if that if that is enough, why isn't Bitcoin at 500K right now? If the world knew what we knew, Bitcoin would be at millions and millions of dollars already. So, so what what that tells me is the the market is still looking for that one narrative that's really going to cause it to break out.

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[00:20:00]Take a 5% discount with the promo code Rizzo on me. I want to get back to macro. Got a few questions towards the end of the podcast about that. Want to flip it back to STRC because some people think that this is the narrative.

[00:20:12]preferred stocks, preferred equity type products that funnel demand that wasn't coming into Bitcoin. Michael Sailor himself describing STRC as the product that you pitched to grandma to retirees.

[00:20:24]This is how we get them into Bitcoin. Do you see what's going on with STRC as something that's one scalable? Can more companies do it? And does it become the narrative?

[00:20:35]>> So there there are a few pieces to that.

[00:20:36]Do I think he is right when he says that this is something you can pitch your grandma? Absolutely. So where I and I've had this experience at Strategy World last year and I've had this experience recently where I live there are a lot of putting it delicately um more senior individuals that have a lot of capital and periodically you know people do recognize me from True North and whatnot in the area that when when I'm out and about and I've had conversations with people when they hear about stretch or when they see us talking about stretch and they ask questions about it. They're very very curious in the fact that is it stable?

[00:21:14]Does it maintain the $100 peg? Um is it really going to give me 10 plus% so on and so on and so forth. That's what the conversation tends to pivot on to, right? But what's very very strange is that they don't care about Bitcoin.

[00:21:30]whenever I try to bring up Bitcoin into it and explain the idea of being um you know collateralized by Bitcoin and the fact that if you know play it out however many decades um strategy needs to pay the dividend on stretch they can you know not ideally but they have this this this massive war chest of Bitcoin that they can use to fund the dividends and so on and so on and so forth.

[00:21:58]there's not interest in buying Bitcoin.

[00:22:00]They know that there's a correlation between the two and some understand more than others, but it's not as if it is driving them towards stretch. What's driving them towards stretch is the dividend and as long as that dividend gets paid and as long as that dividend um keeps getting paid and as long as it stays around that $100 peg, that is what people are primarily concerned with. the individuals that the older individuals that I speak to, younger individuals like myself, we are more concerned with and interested with Bitcoin and so on and so on and so forth. So I think they're they're there's like a a divergence in the cohort of people that are going into stretch individuals in a space that are younger that are more attuned to Bitcoin. They may be interested in the Bitcoin narrative of it and the dividend. Older individuals that are looking into capital preservation and whatnot, they're not really concerned with Bitcoin whatsoever. Not not from what I'm seeing, not from what I'm hearing, not from what not from the interactions that I've had. They're interested in the the dividend. They're interested in stability. They're interested in long-term viability of the offering. Um, now, is this the narrative? And again, this is where I'm going to be unpopular. No.

[00:23:06]And I don't I I think that Stretch is going to be very successful. I think that Stretch is successful. I think that stretch is a phenomenal tool, but there's always I always have to be honest and talk about, you know, the risks that are associated with stretch and the broader implications for what that means for strategy right now. How do they pay Stretch? They essentially pay Stretch either through the treasury that they have or through issuing equity on the common stock, building up the treasury and issu and paying the dividend that way, right? It is a is a closed loop.

[00:23:42]Stretch buys Bitcoin. Stretch goes up in price. MSTR has a trading volume. They are issuing equity. They're using issuing equity to pay for the dividends and so on and so forth. That is a model that works. However, there's something called the crisis of scale that I want to bring up and I have and I have been bringing up. If stretch gets to the point where it's tens, hundreds or people are throwing out trillions of dollars in size that has a commenurate dividend obligation along with that, right? So how does strategy pay the dividend? If they don't have the ability to pay for it by issuing equity, they'll have to sell Bitcoin. Now, what's Bitcoin's price point going to be when Stretch gets that large? In theory, and I think it makes a lot of sense, Bitcoin will be several multiples higher by the time that's even a consideration. And by Bitcoin being several multiples higher, strategy, common stock will be several multiples higher as well, just in terms of price appreciation, even if they were trading at par of net asset value, they would still be much much higher than they are right now. Okay, that's fine.

[00:24:51]But as their footprint increases, so I think does their attraction of other players in the market. And if I were a hedge fund or if I were someone looking to stress test this, I would bid upstretch and I would slam MSTR as much as I possibly can. And we've already seen that that can be that can be done.

[00:25:11]You do that long enough, it starts to buckle.

[00:25:15]So, I honestly think that while Stretch is a success and Stretch will be successful, treating it as a foregone narrative conclusion that this is what's going to be driving people into the market for Bitcoin, I think is kind of flawed.

[00:25:29]>> Speaking of the scalability of the product, the question, can other competitors will other competitors get?

[00:25:34]seen Seda, this is obviously the product of Strive, Bitcoin Treasury company that came to market last year, fondly on stage in Vegas this week suggesting that banks may offer their own version of something like STRC. Do you believe that that's plausible even if it's not the narrative?

[00:25:51]>> Oh, it's plausible for sure. Um, so like the thing about it is we have to separate products from narrative. all kinds of products can exist with and all kinds of narratives can exist but that doesn't necessarily mean the two are going to coales and drive a particular outcome. So I I think that banks are going to be interested I think banks are interested in stretch and I think they they will be I think there's going to be other products that existed on stretch.

[00:26:14]We've already seen um companies bring stretch onto their balance sheet. I think that's something that's going to grow as well. I I think stretch has a very very large total addressable market. So it's not as if there will not be demand for it. That's that's not the problem. The thing about it is is that you have to be able to search the demand and that that's where the potential risks and that's where the potential challenges come in. That's not me saying it's going to fail. That's just me be giving an honest appraisal of it. Right now when it comes to um other companies being able to do it, I think Strive has done it with SATA. I think SATA is going to grow as well, but they are a smaller company with a smaller footprint. And I think it's unfair for people to to expect the same levels of success from some of these other treasury companies doing the things just because of strategy's footprint is so massive.

[00:27:04]There's going to be degrees of success, right? There's going to be ratios of success and I think that Strive and I think SATA are doing are doing well and they will do well. I think that the other treasury companies that get to enough scale and size to support um preferred offerings will find ways to do it. I know that MetaPlanet has um you know Mercury and Mars in the Japanese market and I think that they are finding their own you know niche to be able to do something similar. So there's room for growth here. Um by no means are we at the apex of what this can be. No. And I think that the preferred offerings are another another transmission layer for Bitcoin because whether people have realized it or not, all these preferred offerings, they're making people passive Bitcoin miner buyers whether they realize it or not. You you're buying stretch is directly facilitating the purchase of Bitcoin. So whether you believe in Bitcoin or not, you're helping the cause altogether.

[00:28:08]Funly also saying in Vegas something interesting I want to bring up. You've talked about tribalism in the space.

[00:28:13]Bitcoin and crypto. It does seem the crypto space is warming to what strategy and Michael Sailor are doing. We're seeing products come to market building on top of STRC as if it's a DeFi platform. Finally, Michael Sailor at the conference talking about crypto coming to Bitcoin through products like STRC.

[00:28:31]What do you make of these stable coins backed by STRC? of these exotic DeFi products that could potentially be built. Is that not a growth market for STRC?

[00:28:42]>> Absolutely. It's another adjacent market. It's another demand driver for STRC. See, I want to be very very clear of what I'm saying. Demand is there.

[00:28:49]Demand will be there. It will grow. But we should not treat it as a as a one-sided equation. As demand grows, there's also risks that grow with it.

[00:28:58]Right? So that said, I think that it's both ironic and apppropo that there's products being built on top of Stretch and that a lot of crypto like native um products are coming out because of Stretch and I think this is a natural progression. I I think it makes perfect sense for for an offering like Stretch to be leveraged and tokenized and and applied to different markets. And I think that the extension that we're seeing with some of these um other um these other offerings and these other um products makes perfect sense. And I think that that Fong is is correct in the sense of and this is where I'm going to sound like a toxic Bitcoin and I don't mean to sound like it, but I'm going to say it anyway. It's ironic that the financialization of Bitcoin seems to be one sucking a lot of interest away from the crypto broader crypto market because I'm seeing people that were talking about Salana that were talking about you know ETH or talking about so on and so on and so forth. They're talking about stretch and they're talking about all of the different um strategy offerings. I think strategy's footprint in terms of narrative like we've been discussing and in terms of the offerings is only going to swell because of the preferred offerings, right? And I think that they're going to find even more avenues and and different offerings to bring to the market along the preferred model and perhaps along other adjacent models that we haven't even seen yet. So Fran is absolutely right. There is room for growth there and we will see that growth and we're going to see that growth come through a variety of channels.

[00:30:37]Let's talk about narrative again because I'm curious. I want to pin you down on this. You've talked about what you feel like are the competing narratives. This is aligned with my thesis, right? I think every cycle we see a narrative come to the four. Feels like a lot of the 2025 narratives are breaking down.

[00:30:53]The regulatory side, Trump administration going to face a tough midterm election. Maybe the future looking less certain than it did during the initial golden age of January 2025 and beyond. the DAT, digital asset treasury market, Bitcoin treasury market, outside strategy looking weaker, miners are capitulating.

[00:31:13]What other fragments of that market do you see uh that are you're interested in? And what viable narratives do you even think are currently in the market outside of the ones we've discussed?

[00:31:25]>> Uh let me see if I can remember all those in order. So, if we take a look at the 2025 narratives that are breaking down, let's let's look at the SBR narrative, right? Everyone thought that was going to be, me included, thought that was going to be a big potential catalyst.

[00:31:38]The one the one caveat I did, and I did this in my original post, I said this is great for Bitcoin in terms of narrative and in terms of perception, but I'm very very concerned that it's a grift. And it turns out, and I don't care if I piss anyone off by saying it, that the SBR was a full grift by the administration in my view. Um, we we've seen them launch memecoins. We've seen them do absolutely jack all for Bitcoin.

[00:32:00]So, you know, if if you want to say that, oh, well, legislation has been passed. Well, yeah, but legislation was passed in 22, 23, and 24. There's always been legislation. Okay, great. Where's the action behind the legislation? Where where is the besides, you know, the US government not selling Bitcoin, what else has happened? Have they bought Bitcoin? Have they indicated that they're going to buy Bitcoin? I don't think they have in any appreciable fashion because one, if you take a look at the narrative, the the guidance that came out on that, they're they're going to do it in a tax neutral way, right? Which means that they're going to shift money from other areas to be able to buy Bitcoin. That would require balancing budgets. That would require a paper trail. That would require them actually having a plan for that. When has a government ever stopped spending money?

[00:32:50]They take money from one area and they spend it in another, right? that's what they do. So, finding a a budget neutral, taxpayer neutral way of doing this, that was my red flag that it was all a grift.

[00:33:01]They were going to put it forward as something that could be done as a great Bitcoin golden age. It was going to come upon us, but in reality, it was just a political talking point because over a year later, nothing has happened in terms of the SDR. So, let's put that aside. the um Bitcoin treasury space has it died down? Yes. But that's that's broader market sentiment, right? I'm someone that believes that the sentiment primarily that the market primarily moves on sentiment and I think that's quite apparent. So if Bitcoin is drawn down and strategy is drawn down, all of these other treasury companies that I don't call Bitcoin beta plays, I call them strategy beta plays because people were the reason why they had such disproportionate run-ups and multiple wasn't because that they were quote unquote the fastest horse or better than strategy is because they had a smaller market cap and bigger players could move the market cap easier. That's why they saw a runup and they rotated from strategy into the um treasury companies.

[00:34:01]I literally did analysis on this where I saw the price of strategy dropping down and there was a high correlation moving into all of the other treasury companies. It wasn't rocket science.

[00:34:10]That's what was taking place. So the fact that these companies have drawn down so heavily to me it stands to reason. It's not necessarily a breakdown in their narrative. It's a breakdown in Bitcoin's price action and they've been suffering as a result. If you take a look at the miners, miners always capitulate. They always have to sell Bitcoin to keep the lights on. The only difference is is that, and this is something that I and other individuals like um Ben Workman and even like Mike Alfred, people may not like him, but he's been talking about it for like like years now, the miners were going to pivot into AI.

[00:34:45]The ones that did, three of them that I hold were Iron, Terraolf, you have um Cipher, you have other ones. the the AI pivot led to disproportionate run-ups in them in the in parts of 2025.

[00:35:00]They were running up not because they were Bitcoin miners. They were running up because they were AI plays and people were were trying to were starting to were initially blurring the lines between those two. But that the run up we saw in miners was because of AI. It wasn't because of Bitcoin. So now that we're seeing those cooling off, and they have been cooling off for some time, it's not as if the narrative has broken down, it's just that, you know, broader market sentiment is taking over. Before you had the AI sentiment and capital driving it up, but now that broader market dynamics have taken over, other narratives are driving it down. That's that's what we're seeing. So, you know, in terms of what I think could be the narrative, I still don't know. If I had to flip a coin, I would when it comes to Bitcoin, I would say that in my view, a digital analog to gold or as pristine property/colateral is probably going to be the best one. And I say that because and I'm some kind of somewhat biased saying that as someone that's borrowed against their Bitcoin to invest in equities. I've only been able to do that because it's it's a it's an asset I can borrow against just as if just as I borrow against equities and whatnot. But ironically enough, Bitcoin led me into equities. When I first got into Bitcoin, I sold off equities to buy Bitcoin and now I'm leveraging Bitcoin to buy equities. So, it's it's kind of a very um interesting kind of uh path that I've had between um as a Bitcoiner. It's and it's not this is not me saying that equities are better than Bitcoin. This is just me saying I'm using my Bitcoin to grow my Bitcoin and I'm I'm doing it by buying equities. I sell some equities. I buy Bitcoin and I hold equities long term because of options and so on and so on and so forth. So that's why I say that there's many different narratives that can play up and I just don't know which one will be the set one.

[00:37:01]>> Well, let me ask this question another way. A lot of folks, I'd say myself included, they see a world where micro sellers buying 20,000, 40,000, 100,000 Bitcoin a week. I don't think that's you maybe that last number is is just too high. But you know, he's buying a lot, right?

[00:37:17]>> How does that not become the narrative, right? Bitcoin as a technology, we talk about number go up. It is true, right? People want Bitcoin because of the financial freedom. They want Bitcoin because it's a growing economy. However you want to slice it and dice it. How does Michael Sailor not become or not stay in the pole position in the narrative? Uh if we're looking for another narrative and he's succeeding at that level.

[00:37:41]>> Well, I don't think him being in the pole position is the narrative. So, and let's try this.

[00:37:49]Strategy is buying tens of thousands of Bitcoin. That's fantastic for Bitcoin.

[00:37:53]Okay. But what does strategy buying Bitcoin mean for Bitcoin in terms of global adoption?

[00:38:01]We have one buyer, one peer of massive scale in the peer-to-peer network that's buying Bitcoin and they're financializing Bitcoin. Okay. So, I don't think them buying Bitcoin is going to be sufficient. So, let's talk about the financialization of Bitcoin. They have been tremendously successful in the financialization of Bitcoin in terms of the reverse, right? They have been f another thing that people don't talk about or give enough attention to is people use MSTR as a levered Bitcoin play in many many ways. It's not just in terms of price appreciation. It's in the options market, right? their options market is always in one of the top 10 in the entire world which is something that's quite profound considering that they're in there with like Nvidia Palanteer Google and so on and so forth right so from a narrative standpoint can we say that they have kind of driven Bitcoin into the heart of Trafi yes but does that necessarily lead to more Bitcoin adoption does that necessarily lead to grandma and grandpa having Bitcoin in in their retirement accounts. Does that lead to more number go up?

[00:39:18]I'm not sure because we need to separate the financialization of Bitcoin from Bitcoin adoption. Bitcoin adoption is you and I know people that we've been trying to orange for years now finally coming on board and buying Bitcoin, finally getting maybe a cold wallet or you know if they have to buying the Bitcoin ETF and holding it. That is Bitcoin adoption. The financialization of Bitcoin through preferreds through MCR.

[00:39:49]That is the financial architecture in ingesting Bitcoin and finding different ways to play it. That will lead to number go up, but that is not the same thing as Bitcoin adoption. What will lead us to sustained number go up is adoption.

[00:40:09]what will lead us to peaks and troughs where we're going to go up, then we're going to come down, then we're going to go up, then we're going to come down, and so on and so forth. That's financialization. I think we need both.

[00:40:21]So, strategy is serving one side of the equation, but we still need the other side to hit this gate velocity.

[00:40:28]>> Smart contracts on Bitcoin no longer just an Ethereum thing. Opnet is different. It's not a side chain. It's not a bridge. It's not a wrapped asset.

[00:40:36]It's a meta protocol. Your Bitcoin stays on Bitcoin the entire time. And every Opnet transaction is just a Bitcoin transaction. Connect your Bitcoin wallet. Make trustless swaps with no new tokens to buy and no new chain to learn.

[00:40:49]Bitcoin is the gas. If you've been waiting for DeFi that doesn't ask you to migrate to another crypto asset, Opnet just went live on mainet. You can check it out at opnnet.org.

[00:41:01]Let's get back to a little bit of macro, maybe tie in some regulation there.

[00:41:06]catalyst on the board. Obviously, it seems the Iran war is weighing on the market, weighing on risk assets.

[00:41:13]Clarity, it's May as of recording, unlikely to go to the floor until later this summer, if at all. What are you seeing for catalysts? Does Clarity have to pass? Does the war have to end for Bitcoin to move?

[00:41:30]>> Uh, let's take let's take them both here. So when it comes to the war, what we're really talking about is oil prices. Um oil is the bedrock for our entire civilization either directly through gas or through petrochemicals.

[00:41:44]Right? If you take a look at your house, apartment, job, car, whatever, petrochemicals are all over it. Right?

[00:41:51]So the challenge with the Iran war and the constraints is PL is putting on oil and as a result petrochemicals is what's weighing everything down and everyone is kind of overreacting and and um underreacting in a way. So once that resolves itself once the Iran war and the straits and all of that resolves itself I think the market is going to resume an upward trend. The challenge is how long does this go on before something either breaks or before a longer downward turn takes over. If oil prices remain elevated for a long period of time is going to lead to in theory economic stress. It's going to lead to higher inflation. Now it's also going to h have the ironic effect of as oil prices go up and then consumption might come down or as a result in economic activity might come down as a result oil prices will go down but because economic activity goes down the overall market goes down as well. So it's kind of like there there's no way to escape the effect that that has on it. So, I do think that needs to resolve or find a reasonable path towards resolution before the market's going to make a decision one way or another. Um, now when it comes to legislation, I'm going to sound like a toxic Bitcoiner here. Bitcoin has done what it's done with or without legislation.

[00:43:21]And I think right now we're putting too much faith in the politicians for them to move the needle. um whether clarity gets passed, I don't know if that's necessarily going to be a catalyst without some adjacent activity. Are we going to see more movement like I was talking about the SBR? Are we going to see more movement on I don't know what have you? Whatever um other aspects that are correlated with that I think is more a wish for us. I don't know if it's a necessity. I think the broader macro environment is going to play more to do with how Bitcoin does than any particular piece of legislation right now.

[00:44:03]>> Let's guess back to the beginning of this discussion. The stairway to heaven, a million Bitcoin. You said you didn't want to put a timeline on it, but maybe if I can pin you down. The stairway long and flat, then periods of increases, do you think will continue going sideways through the rest of the year?

[00:44:25]without a as we've been talking about narrative catalyst. Um yes, I think that we can be sideways for a while. I still don't think we're going to like there's people calling for 40k and there is like no I don't think that's going to happen.

[00:44:38]I'm not there. Um do I think that we can see some sideways shop for a prolonged period of time? Yes. And one of the main things I talk about in the stairway to heaven is that, you know, it's the flat kind of ascension. Uh that's very very deliberate. I think that one of the ironic things about Bitcoin becoming bigger and one of the ironic things about Bitcoin um getting financialized and and Bitcoin's eventual inevitable success is that the boom bust cycles, even though we've seen a bare market right now, that's still not as bad as you've seen in the past. And I think that we weathered the storm from October 10th fairly well. And the fact that we've been kind of sideways chopping for as long as we have without a massive capitulation event on top of it, I think set it speaks very very well for the long-term I like to say 10year window for Bitcoin to eventually hit a million dollars. Um, so I haven't lost faith in that thesis at all. I and I I think that's still the course. But this year with all the things that we've we have going on, we've got October 10th, you have tariffs, we have a war in the Middle East, you have oil prices. I I just don't know where that catalyst is going to come to make us see maybe potentially like an all-time high this year or or maybe or return to 100k. I think we're going to chop and I think we can chop for quite some time.

[00:45:58]>> Final question. We've talked about different aspects of the market strategy, paper Bitcoin, the different maturing aspects of the market, the supply shock, it's a meme. Is it still real? Can it happen? Will we see it?

[00:46:12]>> Um to a certain extent, yes. But again, I'm still going to caveat it. I probably sound like a broken record at this time.

[00:46:18]The derivatives market and the broader market is a very real consideration. And I do not think simply saying supply crunch is going to make number go up is sufficient. The derivatives market allows people to bet with more Bitcoin that's in existence. So, how does it how does a supply crunch fight that? I think that we're as Bitcoin's market cap grows and it will and as the price goes up and it will, the derivatives market will increase and the same shenanigans are going to happen. But that is what success looks like.

[00:46:54]Bitcoin becoming successful means it's going to be part of the financial system. and being part of the financial system invites the same kinds of games that they play. And we should see this as a sign of maturity that we have the the ETFs that we have so much options activity that the derivatives market is still um growing that they're probably going to find new ways to have new products and new players in derivative market that we have the financialization of Bitcoin with the preferred offerings.

[00:47:24]We have strategy. We have so many things that are successful that that are indicative of Bitcoin's long-term success that we just kind of have to weather the storm and and ride these waves as you always have.

[00:47:36]>> Adrian, final final question. You're a Bitcoin guy first. There's a broader market. You often talk about strategy and Michael Sailor and what he's doing.

[00:47:46]What else out there in the crypto market has your attention that you don't talk about that often?

[00:47:51]Well, I have been an investor in some of the other Bitcoin treasury companies. Um, not not so much right now. I have been an investor in Bitcoin miners, not so much right now. And I think that those are two areas that, you know, as we see or as we can potentially anticipate a market turn that I'll focus my attention on again. Uh, the Bitcoin miners because I've never been bullish on Bitcoin mining. I've always been bullish on AI and HPC and that's why I got involved in Bitcoin miners end of 2023, beginning of 2024.

[00:48:25]Um, I think that's still a narrative that's going to play out. And the Bitcoin Treasury companies, I'm watching them because I think that we're not going to see like, you know, companies just start a whole bunch of just start selling everything off. I think that the reality of um M&A and mergers and acquisitions is going to be something that's going to be something that's going to be more prevalent as the the years go on. And I think that, you know, when it's all said and done, we may have three or four solid Bitcoin treasury companies solely in the space and then we'll see expansion in other areas because we shouldn't automatically assume that every company that wants to buy Bitcoin is a Bitcoin treasury company. There could be companies that decide to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet that have no interest in, you know, becoming a Bitcoin treasury company. They just see it as another asset to hold. And I think that is another phase that could be coming that I'm also going to be watching for.

[00:49:23]>> Adrian, appreciate the time. Where can people find out more about your thesis and how you're investing?

[00:49:29]>> Um, my only social media presence is on X, so that's so you can find me there. Um, I'm also on so my writing is on the true north website. So at tenor.com you can find my work there. But those are the two primary areas you can find me. Adrian, we appreciate the time. For the folks still watching, like and subscribe out there on YouTube. You go out check out some other recent guests. We've got Samson Mau predicting supply shock is coming from Michael Sailor maybe contradicting some of Adrian's statements. Check it out. We've got a lot of folks on the channel saying a lot of different things. We appreciate the time. Thanks everyone for watching.

[00:50:04]While you're still here, head over to treasure.io and check out the latest and greatest in Bitcoin hardware wallet security. I'm talking about the Treasure Safe 7. Use the promo code Rizzo for a 5% discount today.