Preston Pysh (00:08:34):

Okay. So on your profile, I’ve noticed this for a while, but I’ve never asked you about it. Your profile says, “Buy Bitcoin, delete Facebook.” What’s the background, or what’s the story on the second part there?

Parker Lewis (00:08:49):

I deleted Facebook a long time ago. I think Facebook is the social network. I view money and Bitcoin as a social network as well to social consensus as to what the new form of money is going to be. But I don’t think that there could be a greater contrast between Bitcoin and the social good that it will drive. I don’t think that there’s a worst company in America than Facebook. It’s just kind of the vitriol. It’s a place for people to go and scream at all the people that they don’t like and ultimately Facebook monetizes that.

Parker Lewis (00:09:30):

So I think it’s very divisive, I think. I don’t know how many years ago, but they basically did an experiment on some of their users to see if they could affect their emotions, where if they put negative news in there in their feed, if that could trigger certain actions. Obviously it could.

Parker Lewis (00:09:51):

I think people started posting basically just the filter of the 10% of how they wanted to portray themselves to the rest of the world. Just for a number of reasons, and then I think about people sitting on their phones and getting into spats about politics for four or five hours a day, rather than doing something productive.

Parker Lewis (00:10:13):

If it comes back to them both being social networks, Bitcoin, not in terms of like Bitcoin, Twitter and socializing, but that money actually is a business, social consensus. It’s a social network and that it will lead to social good, and that Facebook basically does the opposite. So if there’s a company that’s not going to survive the Bitcoin standard, I would say it’s Facebook.

Preston Pysh (00:10:39):

I love it. I am not a fan of Facebook either. What are your thoughts on all the supply chain issues that are happening right now. What’s driving it? What’s going to be the long-term impact of it? Just some of your thoughts.

Parker Lewis (00:10:53):

I think that it would be impossible to point to any one thing that is driving the supply chain issues. I think that this is one of the things that a lot of macro investors will make an error. I believe it’s a fool’s errand whether the point to… The ever grand situation or they’ll point to COVID, or they’ll point to the response to COVID with the vaccine mandates.

Parker Lewis (00:11:29):

We’re seeing today that there’s a thousand cancellations on Southwest Airlines flights. But then some of it’s driven by the fact that planes are in the right places. So the reality is that the US economy and the global economy are extremely complex and that the US financial system and the global financial system are incredibly fragile. So to point to any one thing, I think it isn’t any one thing.

Parker Lewis (00:12:04):

It is the culmination of 30 to 40 years of fiscal and monetary irresponsibility combined with in more recent time, a government that thinks that they can take a highly complex system, more complex. Maybe rivaling the complexity of the human body and just stop it, and then think that things aren’t going to go back to normal.

Parker Lewis (00:12:43):

They never were, but it was an accelerant to the disruption. So I think that when you basically take that combination of complex economic system, highly complex, highly complex supply chains, just on time delivery type with… I don’t know how many vendors would be in a car or would be in a computer, but hundreds that as soon as there’s a problem with one then it causes delays of others. And then solvency of different parts of solvency issues in different parts of the supply chain that it just starts to have a ripple effect.

Parker Lewis (00:13:24):

So to then be able to zoom back out and say, “Well, was it because the government shut down a little?” I was like, “Well, no, because the US financial system was already incredibly fragile.” “Why was it fragile?” Well, that’s a story of 30 to 40 years. Well, every time the economic system tried to eliminate imbalance, the federal reserve created an environment where imbalance could be sustained and then grow. And that then when you have shocks, ultimately everything comes home to roost.

Parker Lewis (00:13:52):

So I do think that it’s like a Pandora’s box that it’s out. I don’t see how it gets better before things get a lot worse. I think that it ultimately will be going through a restructuring of the entire system.

Preston Pysh (00:14:12):

So this is not temporary. What we’re seeing right now in supply chains is just getting started. Is that what you’re saying?

Parker Lewis (00:14:20):

I believe so. I’m not an expert on supply chains, but I do have an understanding of the US financial system and the complexity of the broader economic system. Anecdotally, when I hear about a car dealership here in Austin that typically sells 11,000 cars a year, and I’ve been told that they’re only going to get 1,800 deliveries next year, that there is a whole host of inputs that could create that dynamic as well as consequences.

Parker Lewis (00:14:59):

People that are going to have to be fired, car prices having to be increased. The more parts becoming more businesses that are in the supply chain of cars that are becoming impacted by that. I don’t know how given the landscape in the US financial system, the imbalance that exists within the broader economy, the rate at which they’re printing money and kind of the talk around tapering. This is something that has to play out that you don’t just magically… You can’t turn… A lot of, I’d say, people, whether it’s in the government or the central banks that think this is like turning on a light switch and that you can turn it off and turn it back up. It just expresses, I guess, a large degree of naivety, but then also just a lack of understanding of the stakes at play.

Preston Pysh (00:16:08):

What I find interesting about this one, Parker is when you look at all the action that’s been done by central banks over the last decade, it’s almost like they always had a lever to pull to reflate things. So the market was kind of throwing a tantrum back in 2015, then it did it again in the 2018, 2019. And did it again. Then we had COVID. And each time it did this, and we’re talking about a 20% plus correction on the S&P 500.

Preston Pysh (00:16:39):

The central bankers would step in, they would exercise more QE. They would drop interest rates. They would play all those games with the levers that they had the pull. And it would reflate the stock market, right? The rest of the economy in the US I think got more unstable and more unstable as all this was going on.

Preston Pysh (00:17:00):

And we’re really starting to see that now here in 2021. But right now with the supply chain piece, this isn’t something that they’re able to kind of pull a lever to. So we’ve had a CPI print, which is the gauge that they’re forcing everybody to look down and say, this is what inflation is at 5% for the last, I don’t know five months. We’ve had CPI at 5%.

Preston Pysh (00:17:23):

And based on everything that you just described and everything that we’ve been seeing, it seems like it’s not going to go away. So they’re going to keep doing this. They’re going to keep playing these games, but they can’t make that CPI disappear, or they can’t make these supply chains get better by doing more quantitative easing. So I’m just interested what’s the strategy? What does this look like moving forward in the next six months? You had implied that you don’t think it’s going away. Does it amplify? Does it get worse? What are some of your thoughts on it?

Parker Lewis (00:17:57):

I think that the way that I look at this especially if you talk to investors in the hedge fund community, wherever it might be built, but the traditional financial markets, they will look at 2008 and ’09, which was very similar to March to June and into this year of printing money. So they will say something very consistent as if they are all just parroting each other’s lines, which I’ll say that as to the fed printing trillions of dollars. They’ll say, “It was crazy. It’s not going to end well, but they had to do it.”

Parker Lewis (00:18:41):

It’s like almost verbatim, you will hear a bunch of macro investors and high finance types pair that line. And that they don’t actually provide any logic between it’s not going to end well and they had to do it. And that it really just ends at it’s not going to end well, but that once you start to understand what actually happens through the function of the fed printing money via quantitative easing, it is that there is economic imbalance that exists, and the market is trying to heal and eliminate that imbalance and the function of central banks, printing money to sum it up in my mind does two things.

Parker Lewis (00:19:30):

It allows balance to continue to exist and grow, but then it also causes the deterioration of monetary unit that coordinates economic activity. That is the really destructive piece because one of the things I talk about a lot as it relates to Bitcoin is this idea that money and economics systems converge to a single monetary medium very naturally to the function of money. But more realistically, what happens is that economic systems emerge from one money that economic system actually derives from a particular form of money.

Parker Lewis (00:20:20):

What that means is that the supply chains only exists because a broader and broader set of people with a broader, broader set of capabilities all use the same money. And that when the fed does that combination of two things allow imbalanced to continue to exist and grow as well as cause the underlying unit, a monetary unit to not just depreciate, but to become less reliable, that when we see these supply chain issues, it’s basically a ship where water is leaking from all parts of the boat and it’s about to go under.

Parker Lewis (00:21:03):

What they were essentially doing was whack-a-mole. But just like, we all know that it’s not going to end well when they print trillions of dollars, it really isn’t. It’s not to say that this is necessarily the last cycle. I don’t operate. I think timing and part of the recognition that economic systems are incredibly complex. It’s not worth necessarily predicting. It’s worth being prepared for all interim weathers, but also knowing what the end state is. That is core to surviving all weathers.

Parker Lewis (00:21:43):

The thing that I try to articulate and I have one of the articles that I’ve written is Bitcoin has common sense. I try to visualize for people or get them to at least get this train of thought of like when the fed prints, they’ve printed 1.1 trillion just this year, they printed, I believe 4.5 trillion since March of 2020.

Parker Lewis (00:22:11):

That if you actually think about the operation of they just literally click a button on a screen and that’s how the money gets created. There’s probably a few people that have to… There’s probably some financial withdrawals to ensure that not one person can just print trillions of dollars by clicking one button on the screen. But that’s functionally how money is created in this system. And that through that operation, at the moment when the fed puts a trillion dollars then nothing economically change. All that happens is the balance of who gets to allocate the monetary capital in the system has now been altered by the federal reserve.

Parker Lewis (00:22:52):

Imagine there’s X amount of money and then there’s X plus 1 trillion. Well, the distribution of that money is different. Now, that economic system is fundamentally different in this case existing in a world where there’s greater and greater imbalance.

Parker Lewis (00:23:12):

Once the boast starts to burst at the scene, it’s like you can pull on the thread, you can’t push it back in. And that’s essentially what’s happening. Once the system is obviously structurally broken and people are losing their jobs and more people are dependent on government checks, it only can accelerate, right? So can they rescue it like they did in 2008 and ’09? Can they rescue it like they did in March of 2019?

Parker Lewis (00:23:48):

It’s like never say never, but we also didn’t see those types of supply chains. And the thing that I articulate for people as well is that hyperinflation is not just a function of… I don’t like to use that terminate in a dystopian or fear-driven way, but when I just explained it as a natural function, it’s the way every Fiat currency will ultimately end. If there’s an idea that… I think it’s just something that is true that is inarguable, that the value of any Goodwill trend towards its marshal cost to produce.

Parker Lewis (00:24:29):

The cost to produce a dollar to zero, the cost to produce $3 trillion is zero. The cost to produce 15 trillion Venezuela bolivar is zero. This is a logical end game that people understand that dollars are becoming more and more abundant, but hyperinflation doesn’t just occur because governments print money.

Parker Lewis (00:24:53):

What is actually happening is that the monetary unit is becoming less and less effective at its exclusive purpose, which is coordinating economic activity, facilitating trade and exchange. As those supply chains break down, then you’ve got more and more money at the same time that you have less and less real goods. And you have a lot of people that will have a lot of the money, and a lot of people that won’t have any at all.

Parker Lewis (00:25:21):

That has a very negative feedback loop. And then once it becomes a parent, if there aren’t real goods and services or that there are fewer and fewer of those, and then you have a dynamic where there’s fewer and fewer real goods and services at a time where there’s more and more money, that is the combination of those two things. But what actually happened on the lowest level was at the printing of money, actually created the imbalance and created the environment where the supply chains would break down because the system was so fragile.

Preston Pysh (00:25:55):

Talk to us about the debt ceiling. So recently there was a lot of concern whether this was going to get passed. Everyone started talking about minting a trillion dollar coin. What is going on here? What are some of your ideas on this one?

Parker Lewis (00:26:11):

I mean, I think this discussion is it’s a perfect jumping off point for that last part about the fed prints money, but the US government is in a scenario where the fed has to print money. Essentially, the fed, and when I say has to, it’s not. I mean, there is a reality that they shouldn’t, but we also have to operate in the reality of understanding not only what their psychology is, but what their economic worldview is as well as the degree of leverage in the system that dictates that if they’re going to continue their charade on that they must print money.

Parker Lewis (00:26:57):

They would all have to forget everything that they thought they knew for the last 40 years to reverse course and not do that. But the dynamic that’s happening is there is a… Because there’s such a high degree of leverage in the financial system that when there’s a shock to the system, like what happened with COVID, but I also do like to reiterate for people that the imbalance was already existing. The repo markets broke in September of 2019.

Parker Lewis (00:27:30):

There was a massive imbalance in the oil markets that had already appeared in January and February of 2020, and then COVID happened. But COVID wasn’t accelerant, with the financial system that leverage it as it is. Then the economic system shutting down like that it was. The fed system needs credit expansion, otherwise the credit system will collapse.

Parker Lewis (00:27:59):

The fed does not understand that. But that is the dynamic at play because the financial system is so highly leveraged that if it’s not growing, if growth slows or growth contracts, the entire system implodes. One default actually causes the next. It’s a very negative feedback loop.

Parker Lewis (00:28:23):

But when we’re in a period like we are today, where growth is slowing and confidence is… That may be potentially all time lows. There’s a natural function to want to contract credit. The credit impulse is impaired in those scenarios in the current scenario, and that the fed really needs the public system credit to expand because it needs the overall credit system to expand.

Parker Lewis (00:28:58):

So it, one way or the other, not only will fund the federal government and its pursuits to trillion and a half and $3.5 trillion, whatever the budget might turn out to be, but there’s effectively a partnership there. There’s a constitutional separation of those powers and the fed is technically private entity, but at this point that the bed is made in their web.

Parker Lewis (00:29:35):

For my entire, I’d say professional career, I can’t remember how many of these instances there have been, but they all end the exact same way that the debt… There will be political gamesmanship, but they’re all just doing it to get what they want. They all have different motivations, but they all want something and they derive a lot of power by the government actually running. That’s true of both sides. So right now there’s a lot of nerves in the market. There’s the fed talking about tapering and there’s the federal government debating a trillion and a half to three and a half trillion dollar budget. And there’s a debt ceiling looming. And the reality is if you think that this time is different, that is the foolish position. Their entire system collapses, and they’re highly motivated to not have that happen from a power structure standpoint.

Parker Lewis (00:30:36):

So right now kind of my view is the same thing will happen as it always does, which is they’ll get to the last minute. They might even shut down the government for a period of time. And then they’ll increase the debt ceiling and all the while the debt and the entire system will continue to grow, and the fed will be the one. Finances like you mentioned, there was the reference of the trillion dollar coin. And my understanding of that while it is not highly technical, is that in the current system, the fed is actually the one that creates dollars. It’s the treasury that prints dollars.

Parker Lewis (00:31:16):

So when a bank wants to convert a digital reserve to a physical note, the fed doesn’t print that, the treasury does, but what the fed puts in is essentially a request. That digital reserve is converted to a physical bill, now, partly by the treasury. So in this case, the treasury would mint a trillion dollar coin. Who knows what it was actually made out of maybe gold. And just to maximize whatever value you could pack into a trillion dollar coin.

Parker Lewis (00:31:47):

But then they would deposit that at the federal reserve and then the federal reserve would credit it to the treasury’s general account. And then the federal government could circumvent the legislative need to increase the debt ceiling. What it only signals for everybody else who has any lick of common sense is that the charade is almost over that we’re getting to this point where the…

Preston Pysh (00:32:20):

It’s desperation.

Parker Lewis (00:32:21):

Yeah. It’s very clear to a lot of people that the inmates are running the asylum right now, and the inmates are the congressmen and women who threw around words like trillions and trillion dollar deficits. And that is going to be a $3.5 trillion bill, but that it’s going to cost zero that when they start getting to the point where they will say, “We will print a trillion dollar coin, and that there’s a guy like Joe Weisenthal, who’s on Bloomberg that goes out and says that there’s sound economic and legal theory behind it. These people to the actual adults are children.

Preston Pysh (00:33:02):

Tell Joe.

Parker Lewis (00:33:03):

It’s becoming more and more evident. Will Cole who’s a colleague of mine at Unchained Capital, also lifelong friend of mine from here in Austin, he was interviewing his mother-in-law, Senator Lummis at this Texas Bitcoin event two days ago and he asked her about the trillion dollar coin. And she had a really funny response. It was like, “Well, I would say that if you gave me $6 trillion coins, and I gave you six egg rolls, that would sound like a fair deal.”

Preston Pysh (00:33:34):

I mean, it is a total breakdown in trust and very concerning that you have these entities trying to circumnavigate elected officials through desperate means of minting a coin that’s worth a trillion. It’s a little unfathomable to be quite honest with you just hearing it and being so publicly talked about. Then, like you said, you have journalists that are covering it with this lens.

Preston Pysh (00:34:08):

Do we call Joe a journalist? I don’t know, at this point. I mean, he’s covering it in a way that is suggesting that it’s common sense that it makes sense that this is what should happen. And it’s like, “What are you talking about? This is crazy talk.”

Parker Lewis (00:34:26):

The beautiful thing about it is that when the fed effects quantitative, easing, like most people, when they say that Bitcoin is complicated, they have no understanding of the US financial system. The plumbing of it and how it works, but that’s also why they can get away with quantitative easing like, “Ah, it’s complicated.”

Preston Pysh (00:34:49):

Yeah, by design.

Parker Lewis (00:34:49):

The people that explained it are like, “Oh, it’s not really printing money.” It’s swapping one liability for another. And then you start using swapping liabilities for another, and you’ve lost somebody at the door. What ends up ultimately happening is in the last year and a half they’ve printed 4.5 or 4.7 trillion, and effectively, they doubled the money supply. What people don’t immediately see 100% inflation the next day. They’re like, “Well, they’ve printed money before and ‘nothing happened’. It just happened slowly.” And it ultimately will come to the logical end point.

Parker Lewis (00:35:36):

But when they get to the point of doing things so ridiculous as we’re going to mint a coin that realistically is not going to be made out of gold. It’s probably going to be made out of nickel or copper that’s worth the equivalent of 15 cents and say that that is worth a trillion dollars.

Parker Lewis (00:35:54):

The Kiwi thing didn’t make sense to people, but it was complicated. This just articulates in very simple terms, like something is incredibly wrong here at multiple different layers. Do they think that we’re idiots? Eject and that becomes a thought process. And it really distills adaptive people.

Preston Pysh (00:36:16):

I love this point because let’s say that they do keep raising the debt ceiling and they keep doing what they have been doing, which is QE, what they’re effectively doing is minting the trillion dollar, 15 cent coin just in these different terms and much more confusing and much more difficult for the common person to grasp. But all they’re doing is they’re bidding interest rates, or they’re bidding the price, pushing interest rates lower.

Preston Pysh (00:36:44):

Then I think the thing that so few talk about is the capitalization rate of the equity market, because interest rates keep getting compressed more and more down to zero, because there’s a premium. A 2% premium above that risk-free rate that’s being bid into the equity markets. So the market cap of all that stock, anything that’s equity based is going to the moon as it continued to do these QE policies down to 0%.

Preston Pysh (00:37:11):

And that’s not talked about. It’s not even discussed. And I can’t even imagine how many trillions that adds up to just based off of the QE of the manipulation in the federal funds rate and in the bond market. Did you have all that other spill over effects that go into the equity markets because of those risk-free rate premiums?

Parker Lewis (00:37:33):

Yeah. I mean, that is a reality. The other way I’d say framework that I think about it as in the decade following the great financial crisis, the fed printed $3.6 trillion or digitally created, however. Again, people like Weisenthal will be pedantic and say they didn’t print, they digitally created $3.6 trillion. From 2007, beginning 2008 to the… Let’s see. Probably, I guess, over the next decade, I’m trying to get my frame of reference right, to 2017-2018.

Parker Lewis (00:38:17):

The credit system grew from about 50 trillion to about 73 trillion. So for $3.6 trillion added to the system, it basically got lent out more and more than $23 trillion of credit was created. Well, that 23 trillion of credit that’s created on top of 3.6 trillion in new base money that exists and ultimately finds its way to financial assets.

Parker Lewis (00:38:48):

So for every dollar that essentially enters the system, it’s those dollars that are entering the system, which manipulate the cost of credit, but at the fed funds as well as all other interest rates, all other dollar interest rates. The supply of dollars in the… What drives dollar interest rates is supply and demand for dollars. How do you drive interest rates to zero? Flood the market with more dollars on the supply side.

Parker Lewis (00:39:11):

But then once those new dollars exist in terms of base money, more and more credits created on top of it and those deposits find their way ultimately to financial assets. So not only does the actual on a first order effect does the leverage increase, but the flow of funds, because ultimately, if people are looking whether it’s a pension fund and looking at kind of unfunded liabilities and needing to find return in different parts of the market, then it pushes them into the equity markets.

Parker Lewis (00:39:43):

But ultimately those are more, I’d say third order effects. There’s actually first order and second order effects directly tied to the base money than tied to the new credit that has created as a function of that base money that spills into the equity markets as well. But everything will go down in Bitcoin terms despite all of the money printing. But that’s also because there when the market is looking for real economic growth and activity. There’s more and more dollars slushing around kind of less productivity gains, more zombie companies.

Parker Lewis (00:40:24):

Everything from a valuation perspective at any historical valuation metric, whether it’s PE, EBITDA, whatever it might be, or EBITDA. However, somebody looks at value, everything’s ridiculous. So as more and more dollar slush around, find their way to the equity market, because formerly credit investors are now equity investors, which creates kind of malinvestment itself.

Parker Lewis (00:40:51):

They’re all looking around for water like they’ve been starved in a desert for 40 years and slowly people find Bitcoin and they realize that gig is soon up.

Preston Pysh (00:41:06):

All right. So the ETF discussion seems to be getting hot and heavy these days. Many saying that they expect something to actually get cleared through the SEC here pretty shortly. From what I understand, it’s going to be a cash settled ETF type vehicle, not a physically settled Bitcoin. What are your thoughts on the ETF in general than maybe some of your thoughts on cash settled versus physically settled ETFs?

Parker Lewis (00:41:41):

Well, I think that the ETF, if I go back to 20, I think it was 2017 when Gemini submitted for an ETF and they got rejected from the SEC. My reading of that response was… And that was asking for a physically settled ETF, that there were nine or 10 reasons why they said they were rejecting it. I read it though as… I was at Hayman at the time. So it might have been 2016 or it might have been early 2017. But I read it as if you fix these nine things, I’ll come up with another nine things. Now where that it was basically a signal of under no circumstance do we want a Bitcoin ETF.

Parker Lewis (00:42:30):

Now, that was at a time where I think Bitcoin had a… I don’t like to think about it as marketing cap or of market cap, marketing cap, but a purchasing power of probably 15 to 20 billion. Now, it’s an excess of a trillion. Now, much larger institutions are at least publicly whether they were some then or not, that there are very large institutions that are involved in Bitcoin that have power and influence.

Parker Lewis (00:43:05):

So I think that the same though is true now, as it was then that really the SEC has no interest in a physically settled Bitcoin ETF. I think realistically, they don’t have an interest in any ETF, but that there are interests now involved that make that untapped. And that the best cop-out is an ETF that is based on the CME futures or whether it’s a CME combination of CME back, however they look at it.

Parker Lewis (00:43:39):

I guess that’s really up to the issuer and each one will present kind of their plan. I ultimately think that it’s a sideshow, truthfully. I think that the only thing that is positive to come of it is that it will legitimize Bitcoin in the eyes of some, and it will make it more difficult for the federal government to run first course and take really onerous actions against Bitcoin.

Parker Lewis (00:44:08):

They’re going to. Nothing good for Bitcoin is going to come out of DC. A lot of good is going to come out of the states, on the state legislative side or governor’s side. But my point is that Washington DC and Bitcoin are not friendly. But I do think that even if a cash settled ETF were approved that that would in certain ways kind of create an opening that would make it more difficult for somebody to come out and say, we must ban Bitcoin.

Parker Lewis (00:44:45):

Whether it’s Brad Sherman or some other clown that exists in Congress. So I think that that is a positive. Realistically, an ETF is a small step better than GBTC as a way to own Bitcoin, but practically speaking, it also has everything that is negative about GBTC involved. So the more people that think of Bitcoin as a financial asset, rather than a monetary asset. There’s a reason why we have Pizza Hut and Starbucks, and there’s another large company that was the one in the news, but there’s three large companies, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and McDonald’s are accepting Bitcoin for payment, and they’re not taking Facebook stock.

Parker Lewis (00:45:37):

That there is a fundamental difference between… We’re even a US treasury for that standpoint. There’s a fundamental difference between a monetary asset and a financial asset. An ETF is effectively treating a monetary asset like Bitcoin as if it was a financial asset. What have you done as a result if you buy it through an ETF? You’ve taken on unnecessary counterparty risk, and you’ve basically opted in to an inferior way to own bitcoin when you could have owned it in a superior way.

Parker Lewis (00:46:08):

So the example that I use is GBTC. Even though GBTC is a trust structure and not an, the reality is that GBTC is custody to Coinbase custody based on my understanding. So if you decide to buy GBTC, you have coin basis, counterparty risks, you have gray scales counterparty risk. You’ve got gray scales parent company and then you’ve got whoever your broker is that whose name it is held in.

Parker Lewis (00:46:47):

You likely have four layers of counterparty risk. So if you could just go to Coinbase and own it at Coinbase and have one layer of counterparty risk, rather than adding unnecessarily on three additional layers counterparty risk. So an ETF might be better because it will be the least structured to manage to nav, but from a way to hold Bitcoin, you can hold your own keys and eliminate counterparty risks.

Parker Lewis (00:47:13):

You can hold it with Coinbase, or you can do the Coinbase route and add on four layers of counterparty risk. Why would you ever do that? So I think that the only true benefit is yes, more money will flow in, but that the tree benefit that it gives credibility. And that really cuts out a leg. It’s like when people were worried about China, “Oh, Bitcoin mining is concentrated in China.”

Parker Lewis (00:47:39):

Well, now it’s not. So you no longer have that complaint. As soon as the ETF is approved of any fashion in the United States, then the argument is the US in Bitcoin is going to become more ridiculous to pair it.

Preston Pysh (00:47:53):

Do you think that it’s going to have any type of price impacts because now more people have access? Despite all the arguments that you make, which are clearly all valid, do you think it’s going to-

Parker Lewis (00:48:07):

I think that realistically, I think that it would be more fooled by randomness than actually having an impact. What’s also happening at the same time is that what is happening beyond just an ETF is that Bitcoin, more plumbing is being built every day. More kind of different institutions opening up rails, right? NYDIG working with Fiserv to turn on the ability to buy Bitcoin at your local regional bank, so you don’t have to go over to Coinbase, basically lighting up that plumbing without you having to onboard with another financial institution.

Parker Lewis (00:48:57):

Something like that to me would be more impactful than an ETF. But if I think about it in that context, it is more ways with more partner institutions are lighting up the little button that says buy Bitcoin, and that is happening as a function of knowledge distributed. More and more people are finding about Bitcoin. Bitcoin, every time that somebody on the periphery believes that Bitcoin died, it didn’t. And then it comes back into their conscious at an app or near an all time high.

Parker Lewis (00:49:32):

So, yes, certain pools of capital will open up and they will buy an ETF when they wouldn’t otherwise. But to me, that doesn’t change the adoption curve. That is not something that fundamentally shifts that. And it would be one small thing that would happen alongside of other, even larger macro shifts, but it would be a single thing where people would be like, “Oh, the price went up because of an ETF.”

Parker Lewis (00:50:04):

I’m like, “No, no, the price went up because more billionaires and a hundred millionaires and millionaires, and every worker in the country figured out that the federal reserve is printing trillions of dollars, and that this thing, Bitcoin, isn’t just magical internet money, that there’s real innovation in digital scarcity, and that it’s the foundation of a future monetary system. Maybe I need that.” So I think that ETF will be a good headline, but it would be more of a fooled by randomness.

Preston Pysh (00:50:37):

Yeah. I agree with you on that. I definitely agree with you in the short-term here is if it does roll out and we see that and the price would go up. I don’t think that it would necessarily be because the ETF was approved where I could see it having an impact is further out in the timeline when, let’s say the price just really starts to rip.

Preston Pysh (00:51:01):

Let’s say the price blows through a hundred thousand and it gets to 110 or 120,000 in short order, and you have people who don’t have a Coinbase account, don’t have a Kraken account or whatever exchange you’re talking about, but they do have their TD Ameritrade or whatever they use, and they just now type in the ticker and they smash buy for that ticker that they all have access to in retirement accounts or whatever. And I think that that could have an impact just because you have access to so many more people in the hurdle. The frictional hurdle of them having to open an account at an exchange has been removed. I think that that could happen.

Parker Lewis (00:51:44):

Yeah. Look, I mean, I think that if I was thinking about it from a fundamentals perspective, it’s like does it change the fundamentals now? Obviously not. It doesn’t there. The reason to own Bitcoin has not changed because ATF exists. Is it a better product than GBTC? Yes, absolutely. Kind of ETF are superior to GBTC’s product. It creates competition in the market. It will actually be managed by people that know how to manage an ETF.

Parker Lewis (00:52:14):

So the product itself will be better. So there will be some marginal demand for that because what you just described, most people can go do with GBTC, and that’s what’s happened, right? A bunch of RIAs have plowed their clients into truthfully a bad product because it’s the only thing available.

Parker Lewis (00:52:32):

So those people that want to buy it and be that mechanism practically speaking have something that is like as flawed as it is that if they want dollar exposure to Bitcoin rather than the Bitcoin itself, whereas something in the market.

Parker Lewis (00:52:47):

And that what we also see is that… The way I describe it is that price is an output. It’s an output and that monetary properties will be input. The scenario that you described when Bitcoin gets back through its all time high and is screaming and double, and people are FOMO’ing and buying it because they have no idea what’s going on, it’s because there was actually a fundamental signal that was sent that more and more people stared at the equation of Bitcoin, the fed, the ECB, the BOJ, the insanity that’s going around saying no, actually Bitcoin makes sense to me.

Parker Lewis (00:53:27):

I’ll adopt that because more and more people are going to adopt it because it actually has sound incredible monetary properties. So I always like to come back to a fundamental and something like this, because the only reason that Bitcoin will be higher than its prior all-time high is denominated in dollars or euros or any other cross of currency is because somebody evaluated the fundamentals and accumulated when everybody else was panic selling. And that is why Bitcoin doesn’t die.

Parker Lewis (00:53:56):

So when that happens though, that’s when Coinbase goes down because literally their user base 10X is when people are motivated to do something, they will go through the pain and do it. And what exists today is that it’s not just Coinbase, but there’s River, there’s Swan, Unchained and more and more places popping up to buy Bitcoin that it’s all of the different possible network connections where people can make it easier and easier that causes us. So it’s like people actually go through a lot of pain if they are particularly motivated.

Parker Lewis (00:54:27):

I do agree that on the margin, there will be some universe of people that now, if I share has a Bitcoin ETF, they’ll buy that when they wouldn’t otherwise buy GBTC. But I do challenge that kind of that more so it will be driven by somebody might not have gone to open up a Coinbase. When the price of Bitcoin was going from 60,000 to 30,000 and they were about to dance on its grave before it froze like a Phoenix from the ashes as it always does. But then when Bitcoin is 120K that got the same person that was like, “Nah, I’m not buying it. It’s dying,” that they’ll be motivated to open up a Coinbase account and not tell their friends and buy some.”

Preston Pysh (00:55:13):

Michael Burry just blocked you, Parker.

Parker Lewis (00:55:15):

Yeah. He might or migrate. I don’t know.

Preston Pysh (00:55:19):

Hey, do you think that the typical person has the capacity to self-custody Bitcoin. When you just think about your common person that knows nothing about any of this, do you think that they have the capacity to take ownership of this or do they need to outsource something like that?

Parker Lewis (00:55:38):

I think that the normal person, yes, will self-custody. I think that it is actually easier to do than securing funds on Coinbase. And that is for technical reasons. There’s two things that happen with self-custody, and we’re talking about people’s life savings, right, in many cases. Again, a lot of people… Michael Saylor has a quote that is, “If you actually understand Bitcoin, there’s no way that you only own 1% of it.” And that’s true that if you actually understand what Bitcoin is and why it exists and how fundamental it will be to our entire economic system being buyable and then flourishing into the future, that Bitcoin will be the solution to that, you don’t just have 1% of your wealth because you have 99% of exposure.

Parker Lewis (00:56:39):

That’s what you figure out along that path. And that if you have an amount of money that represents your life savings, or a large share of it, because when you do truly… When Bitcoin clicks for you at a fundamental level, you’re going to have one of the 50% of your assets in Bitcoin. This isn’t like RIA portfolio theory where like, “Oh, we should have 1% of this and 2% of that.” It’s like, no, this is the best more money that’s ever existed. It’s not too volatile. It’s going to be adopted by 7 billion people and I’m going to own a lot of that.

Parker Lewis (00:57:16):

If you’re in that world and you have them whether it’s 50% of your portfolio or something that you just can’t afford to lose, we saw a week or two ago about how 6,000 Coinbase accounts that had 2FA set up, were hacked and drained.

Parker Lewis (00:57:32):

Imagine that was your life savings. It’s like, “Would you ever put yourself in a scenario where even if it happens to .5% of people or 0.1% of people, that is too high of a probability to put yourself into a ruin event type scenario.

Parker Lewis (00:57:49):

Now, in that case, because there was some error on Coinbase’s side that Coinbase made those folks hold. But before Coinbase, there’ve been any number of scenarios. There was the Canadian exchange. There’s the South African exchange. There was Mt. Gox before it. There is a reality that people believe that holding Bitcoin, the keys to your Bitcoin is daunting because there’s permanence to private keys. But once you actually hold private keys, in generally people that are used to storing things that are valuable, understand that things don’t get up and walk away. There’s high degree of redundancy, such that if you lose a key or even lose a key and a backup or multiple parts of your security setup, that there are ways.

Parker Lewis (00:58:38):

That’s what we focus on at Unchained Capital, helping people self-custody in ways that are highly fault tolerant and eliminate single points of failure. So you can make numbers of mistakes and still have your Bitcoin. The difference between self-custody and cold storage and working with an exchange or a third party custodian is that when you work with a third-party custodian, you 100% in all scenarios have a single point of failure, that you have a single point of failure because first and foremost, it’s permissioned.

Parker Lewis (00:59:09):

If you see what’s happening in Lebanon, people can’t get their money out of the banks because that’s an abject disaster. Bitcoin, you can hold on a permissionless basis. And that grants you an incredible amount of power. But more from a technical perspective, why I say that self-custody is actually easy and why more and more people do it, if it represents material amount of their wealth, it’s from a technical perspective it’s much more difficult to secure a password and to avoid the consequences of living in a permissionless or in a permission system where someone could just say, “No, I’m not going to give you access to your money.” But that being your single point of failure.

Parker Lewis (00:59:45):

But it is a world where you actually severed… Bitcoin is a digital bearer asset and when you have your own keys and you have cold storage, you actually sever the internet connection, that you massively reduce your attack surface when the way for somebody to get a hold of your Bitcoin is no longer accessing your account on our remote basis at an exchange like Coinbase like hackers did to 6,000 people, but when your keys live in a combination of safes and safe deposit boxes, geographically distributed when you need more than one key to move any Bitcoin.

Parker Lewis (01:00:22):

So the analogy that I use to simplify for people is that we think about or envision how many times you access your money in the dollar world. Maybe you affect five or six transactions in a day, maybe fewer, but you’re accessing your funds about 0.1% of the time or maybe the less .01%. But there’s an internet connection around the clock that is there to access your funds.

Parker Lewis (01:00:51):

You’re actually spending at least in this day, your Bitcoin less frequently. So you’re, generally just checking on it to check balances and that it’s there. But think about in the Bitcoin world, when you have a Coinbase account like you only ever move Bitcoin maybe once a week, maybe once a month. Realistically, it’s probably fewer than that. Once every three months, once every six months.

Parker Lewis (01:01:15):

But when you’re sleeping 24 hours a day, you’re connected to the only way that you have to access your Bitcoin. In that world, you have massively increase your surface area. So what we do, and that’s why the longer that somebody holds Bitcoin, the more likely they are to self-custody, because they understand that dynamic. It is actually harder to secure a password to an account that your only way to access is remote. It’s actually easier to take a physical key and put it in a physical location and physically secure it.

Parker Lewis (01:01:51):

This is also not saying everyone has to have guns, but when somebody can hack you remotely versus have to come into your house or also get to a safe deposit box, but they’re less likely to do that because they’re going to have a higher probability of having physical harm.

Parker Lewis (01:02:06):

So as we kind of develop solutions, which we are today, we onboard a lot of people who are first-time Bitcoin buyers directly to holding their own keys because we use multi-site, because it’s collaborative, because we’re there as a partner, I think that that will be the standard that in four years when people own Bitcoin, the idea of going to Coinbase will sound for, that it will be flipped because the solutions will get better, but the market will also have more and more education about trial and error.

Parker Lewis (01:02:42):

And the beautiful thing about Bitcoin is that it eliminates moral hazard. It pushes ultimate accountability to the user that if 6,000 Coinbase users get hacked as bad as I feel about that. And again, in that case, they got [inaudible 01:02:58]. But usually when Coinbase accounts get hacked and money gets drained, they don’t. That doesn’t impact.

Parker Lewis (01:03:05):

I’ve got my Bitcoin. There’s no socialized losses. There’s no counterparty risk. And for people that actually understand Bitcoin, understand that is a finite scarce resource and there is a reality that markets do have no memory, but for listeners of your podcast that remember 2008 and 2009, counterparty risk is a thing. And that when you find out that it’s a thing, it’s probably too late.

Parker Lewis (01:03:35):

So those that are smart and that actually understand Bitcoin and understand its value will start to realize that the power that you gain from having permissionless access to your money and by eliminating counterparty risk and eliminating single points of failure, that is the smartest best way, and it’s actually achievable. There just is a knowledge gap that needs to be bridged and there’s more and more companies that are helping to do that. Ours, Unchained Capital being one of them, but there’s other good companies out there too.

Preston Pysh (01:04:06):

Talk to us about your ideas on tax planning, because a lot of people that listen to the show have a decent net worth. They might have substantial gains on their hands. How do you think about tax planning for those people with that situation and particularly for anybody holding Bitcoin?

Parker Lewis (01:04:27):

So first I will say that I’m not tax attorney. This is not a tax advice, but that it is definitely true. That has more people accumulate a non-immaterial amount of money. And as Bitcoin exists into the future, that people start to think about passing on wealth to their family, but also thinking about technical aspects of inheritance planning.

Parker Lewis (01:05:05):

So yeah, I think there’s a technical aspect of actually physically how does this get passed down? And then there’s the tax side of there’s nothing new about it in the sense of everyone always to maximize the amount that they can allocate how they choose, whether it’s the family or whether it’s the charities rather than the federal government.

Parker Lewis (01:05:28):

I think it’s important that people kind of understand that frame of mind. I think that one of the things that we’re doing at Unchained is we recently brought on Jeff Vandrew, who is our head of retirement and inheritance. The first thing that Jeff is working on is an IRA product where people can hold their own keys. We’ve actually started to it pilot it. There’ll be a broader launch in the coming weeks, but that he’s also focused on the quest of inheritance.

Parker Lewis (01:06:00):

There’s the aspect of holding Bitcoin in such a way actually with a plan so that it doesn’t get caught up in a court process, and whether it’s held in trust. A lot of people are evaluating whether to hold a trust where they can avoid painful probate processes, but that also in order for people to actually have credible plans that are confident in not just for our estate planning purposes, but for tax planning purposes, that more of the people that actually have the knowledge and expertise to plan need to get involved.

Parker Lewis (01:06:35):

What we’ve seen is that more attorneys are getting focused on this area and that there will be more and more services coming out from Unchained and others that don’t have kind of particular strategies that I would say other than when I talk to my parents and talked to older folks, they generally think about retirement or tax planning. Ultimately, before you get to that point, you need to understand the fundamentals of Bitcoin, which I think is still a 99% problem and that you’re going to need Bitcoin to buy groceries in the future.

Parker Lewis (01:07:10):

I think at some point in the future, and this isn’t necessarily specific to your question, but it is pertinent to the tax question, I think at some point that the federal government will change the tax treatment of Bitcoin to whether they make it legal tender to treat it as currency. And through that, they will likely accelerate capital gains because they’re going to need the federal government to be capitalized with a form of money that actually functions.

Parker Lewis (01:07:40):

So I think that the most important kind of order of effects is understanding Bitcoin why you should own it, understanding and then how to secure it so in the future, you have access to it. And then figuring out how to minimize your taxes. But I also operate with the reality that a whole lot of things are going to change because of Bitcoin. I focus a lot more time and energy on the first two and never selling my Bitcoin, so I don’t incur taxes.

Preston Pysh (01:08:06):

Last question I got for you is on the Bitcoin lending side. I think I had this conversation with you privately, where we were about the various risks that many of these lending platforms have inherently because of their institutional books versus their retail books. Talk to us a little bit about your ideas or your opinions on the lending space as it exists today. And then how do you see this evolving into the future so that it becomes a little bit more secure and not as risky as maybe it is right now?

Parker Lewis (01:08:42):

Yeah. I can’t remember when we came on, but I believe it was either six months ago or 18 months ago. I can’t remember.

Preston Pysh (01:08:54):

Yeah. It was probably about six months ago.

Parker Lewis (01:08:56):

Okay. I knew that it was like April, May timeframe, but the last year and a half feels like an eternity. So we have a pilot that we’ve contemplated and worked on with an exchange that would essentially hold Bitcoin in collaborative custody while Bitcoin is on the low. I had an exchange, and effectively able to trade. The idea behind it is that how certain goods or stocks trade on an exchange can be, and oftentimes is, and should be different than how those assets are in custody.

Parker Lewis (01:09:37):

An example being that in the kind of today and the Bitcoin exchange world, all Bitcoin is generally held on exchange rather than in third-party custodians. That is very different than the worlds of stocks and bonds. New York Stock Exchange is not in custody of any stocks, but it trades a lot of stock and that the stock is oftentimes actually at the DTC.

Parker Lewis (01:10:04):

So this idea that maybe if all Bitcoin lending that happens today, like no one is lending Bitcoin to go build a building. So that’s an important thing because there’s a reality in the dollar based world that everyone was trained to earn interest. It’s like, “Oh, if you’re not making your money work or an interest, you’re doing something wrong.” They don’t think about the risks that they’re actually taking when they do that.

Parker Lewis (01:10:34):

And this is going to sound crazy, but it might not sound crazy to a few people listening to it because it might actually describe them. There’s some people that just think that interest magically shows, that you put your money in and they pay you some money out and how that happens, they don’t know, but it just does.

Parker Lewis (01:10:53):

I say that kind of jokingly, but it’s also true that people think that when they put money in a company that pays them Bitcoin yield, money is… I’ve talked to people where they think that when they deposit Bitcoin to BlockFi that the Bitcoin is just sitting in BlockFi and they’re earning interest. But really happens because this is… It’s not specific BlockFi, it’s the only way that any Bitcoin lending works is you deposit your Bitcoin in, they take your Bitcoin and move it out. Or if it’s at the same custodian, it’s at a different account.

Parker Lewis (01:11:26):

It transfers out of the account of the person that you gave it to, and it’s not there and it’s at risk. So that’s the first thing, that you’re taking something that has a finitely scarce asset, that in my view represents the greatest asymmetry that’s ever existed in the entire world.

Parker Lewis (01:11:43):

You fundamentally change the nature of what it is you own. You had that, and now you have counterparty risk of multiple institutions essentially. And that if you’re lending into a black box and you can evaluate the nature of those counterparties, and you’re trusting institutions that are ultimately very young, and you’re doing that in a world where what they’re lending is a finite scarce asset, which there are no bailouts, you’re making a decision with an amount of information that you need more of.

Parker Lewis (01:12:17):

So what we were contemplating, are contemplating is an arrangement where you have a known counterparty, you have a known way of how that Bitcoin is actually custody and that no single party would be in control. And that there’d be an idea that if all Bitcoin that is lent kind of getting back to the point where I started was that the only way that they’re able to pay yields and Bitcoin is that the returns are generated via sub-trading activity.

Parker Lewis (01:12:44):

You’re lending Bitcoin oftentimes for someone shorting Bitcoin. And they’re trying to make income based on volatility. They’re not necessarily just directionally short Bitcoin, they can be arb in Bitcoin spreads. Long on Kraken, short on Coinbase, long the futures, short the spot. It’s not just people. There are some crazy people out there that are just directionally short on Bitcoin. Those people are going to need some serious help at some point in the future. But there’s a reality that all income that is derived and paid on yield products in Bitcoin lending is the counterparties are trading firms.

Parker Lewis (01:13:29):

That gives me a lot of pause and should give a lot of people a lot of pause. But that if you are going to structure a product, if you recognize that all Bitcoin yields are derived from firms that are pursuing some trading activity, ultimately Bitcoin winds up in exchange for some venue where it’s trading.

Parker Lewis (01:13:48):

So our idea was to go to the exchange, enter into a collaborative custody arrangement, where you could certify how the Bitcoins held that the exchanges and singularly in control. You could actually lend in a capital efficient way on a secure basis rather than today. What happens is that all lending is to trading firms. And on the institutional side, generally on an unsecured basis, not say a hundred percent, but given the nature of the problem that it solves, which is one of capital efficiency.

Parker Lewis (01:14:14):

It’s why many firms borrow Bitcoin because they have to have dollars in Bitcoin posted all over the place to pursue arb strategies that is generally on an unsecured basis. I don’t think that Bitcoin should ever be lent on a secure basis. It Is too precious of an asset, and counterparty risk is too real to do that. What ultimately happened with our product was when that… We’ll likely have it out in the future, but when the spread of the GBTC trade went from a premium to a discount, which it fundamentally should trade at a discount, a fairly steep discount, given the nature of the product that the demand for Bitcoin borrowed collapsed. And then that caused the market interest rates to collapse.

Parker Lewis (01:15:06):

So ultimately, there were firms that had promised certain level of yields and they were essentially going to anybody that was remaining in the market to follow Bitcoin and driving interest rates down. And it got to the point where we were like, “Okay. Well, this market structure doesn’t make sense. There’s no rational defense to lend Bitcoin at these nominal rates.

Parker Lewis (01:15:28):

So we just deferred it. But I do think that that still is the vision. We will have that out at some point in the future, but the market structure just needs to come in a bit and rationalize.

Preston Pysh (01:15:43):

Parker, I could talk to you all night. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Every time we get a chance to talk, I just love talking to you. You’re so smart. I wasn’t going to ask another question, but I had this one written down and it relates to what I’m saying right now. So Sammy asked, “I’d love to know how he learned to think the way he does. Your ability to reduce to first principles is unmatched and very unique. Give us a tip. What can people do to be better at dissecting critical thinking and getting down to first principles?”

Parker Lewis (01:16:19):

I think you just have start at being really dense. I’ve never, I guess, consciously thought about that. So that’s a hard-

Preston Pysh (01:16:32):

Well, do you read a lot? Do you read a lot?

Parker Lewis (01:16:35):

That’s a hard question to answer. I think that there’s a lot of noise and I’m actually fairly risk averse. So as an example, when I was getting into Bitcoin, Bitcoin made no sense. And then as I had the benefit of being able to meet Saifedean Ammous, before he wrote The Bitcoin Standard. There were a number of people that I met that helped me understand things I didn’t know before.

Parker Lewis (01:16:59):

So it was like Bitcoin clicked for me. It started to make sense, but I had a bunch of ideas jumbled up in my brain where it was like kind of like a lightning strike where like, “Oh, okay. That makes sense now.” But now I have to actually get back to that same point with reason and logic to reaffirm that it’s actually a defensible position. I try to think, and that’s a lot of what I’ve done with my writing and then that writing once I was able to distill it down, I carried that forward or at least that thought process down, which was, I recognized something about Bitcoin, but it was before I could describe it.

Parker Lewis (01:17:50):

But then in the process of actually distilling my thoughts, it was going down in a very logical rational way to say, “Okay, that idea that just kind of triggered in your mind of like Bitcoin makes sense that it’s going to be money and the whole world is going to adopt it,” break that down until the hundred different parts to how your mind just put that all together in one flash. I think about it as also trying to get down to the things that you’re most certain about.

Parker Lewis (01:18:23):

So with Bitcoin, it started as an example, I know independent of Bitcoin why the federal government is going to print trillions of dollars. I have a fundamental understanding of the construction of the US financial system, and I think I have an understanding of it, not maybe kind of technically how they actually click buttons and print $3 trillion, but I think I understand the cause and effects better than the people at the fed.

Parker Lewis (01:18:47):

But I also know that that system will not last. I use that as example like that was my anchor as I was looking at Bitcoin is like, that is certain in my mind. The timing is uncertain. When it happens, how it happens, but that it happens is true. Okay. If that is true, then there has to be a solution.

Parker Lewis (01:19:10):

What is the solution? Is Bitcoin viable as the solution? As we go further out in time where things are uncertain, but the things that you know will be certain at some point in the future guide all of our thinking, in my view. So it’s just kind of trying to get down to always, and it doesn’t just apply to Bitcoin, it applies to other things, things that I… The way I would think about investments when I was at Hayman Capital, but going through the least common denominator, the assumption that you know to be true and then the thing that all other assumptions build off of as the general way of thinking.

Parker Lewis (01:19:45):

So to being put on the spot like that, I don’t know if that adequately thought about it, but it probably ties back to just being risk averse, and also generally who a logical or rational mind and be like, “Okay, am I crazy with this Bitcoin thing?”

Parker Lewis (01:20:01):

And the only way to prove that I’m not crazy is to get to that same kind of flash of an idea where probably a hundred different ideas come together all at once and an actual reason why. So with my writing, I really tried to just say, “Okay, I had to struggle through all of these things myself.” Let me unpackage the ideas that are in my head of the things that I struggle with because many other people would struggle with them as well.

Parker Lewis (01:20:25):

And actually through the process of writing, you might find that that is the way to always bring things back to the first principles, because oftentimes I would write something and I’d say, “Well, no. That’s not a logical connection. There is a logical connection. That thing I just wrote on paper is not it.” Let’s try it again. And it’s just iterative.

Preston Pysh (01:20:52):

That’s so true.

Preston Pysh (01:20:52):

Especially, if you’re going to publish it in a public kind of way. I know when I’m writing something, I’m like, “You know what, I’m going to get hammered if I would publish this or put this out into the public.” Okay, let me ask myself why five times on this particular point and see if it really kind of holds up as drill down on it. That’s a great point about writing. I like that. If people want to learn more about you, Parker, where can they find you? I know you’re active on Twitter. Anything else that you want to highlight? Just let it rip.

Parker Lewis (01:21:22):

Yeah. Find me on Twitter, @parkeralewis. Read my writing. I’ve got a series on Bitcoin called gradually then suddenly. It’s on our website. I’m head of business development at Unchained Capital based here in Austin, Texas. So you can find us on unchained.com. And then all of my articles are on the blog. I write the Gradually, then Suddenly series. And then also we’ll write a number of other things about our company, about financial markets.

Parker Lewis (01:21:50):

So on our website, unchained.com. You could find it on the blog. And then also on Twitter, @parkeralewis.

Preston Pysh (01:21:57):

And if people don’t know, Michael Saylor has quoted saying that he did some of Parker’s writing. The stuff that he was referring to earlier was some of the things that convinced him to become a Bitcoiner. So kudos to Parker and his contributions to the space. Love having you on. You’re just a total wealth of knowledge. And thanks for making time.

Parker Lewis (01:22:18):

Preston, I always enjoy it. I appreciate you having me on.

Preston Pysh (01:22:21):

Hey, so thanks for everybody listening in to the show. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you’re using. We really appreciate that. And if you have time, leave us a review. So thanks for joining us this week and we’ll catch you next Wednesday.

Outro (01:22:36):

Thank you for listening to TIP. To access our show notes, courses or forums, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investors Podcast Network. Written permissions must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.