Did Bessent's Treasury Buyback Spark Bitcoin's Rally to $80K?

Transcript

The alternative would be to change the rules of Bitcoin like your Ethereum or something like that would be the most stupid own goal in the history of Bitcoin to just steal the coins and break the rules of Bitcoin. So dumb. >> Hi everyone, welcome to Unchained, your no hype source for all things crypto. I'm your host Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. We'll first take a quick word from the sponsors who make the show possible. This episode is brought to you by 1-in Aqua, the shared liquidity layer from 1 in. Back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance and keep your tokens in your wallet until a swap fills. See how it

works at 1in.com/ aqua. Today's guest is Corey Kipston, founder and CEO of Swan. Welcome, Corey. >> Hi, Laura. Thanks for having me on. >> Yeah, nice to see you again. Let's start uh with Bitcoin. A couple weeks ago, we saw that the Bitcoin price shot up after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the Treasury would aggressively double its long-term government debt buybacks from a max of $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. And ever since then, we've seen Bitcoin kind of at this 80k level at sometimes, you know, above it. Now, it's slightly below. Um, there's been comments about how this price move could potentially

signal the end of the bare market. There's others who are not convinced, and I'm wondering what your thoughts are on where this market is headed. >> Yeah. Well, first off, I hope we finish with Bitcoin, too, because, you know, it is my favorite subject. Um, and yeah, it's it's interesting that you led with that because there have been a lot of folks uh profering other potential catalysts for what kind of kicked this off, but I also marked that uh best in speech as being the thing that did it. It seemed pretty obvious when you kind of looked at the timing of it and it basically just led straight into a bit of a liquidation cascade for the shorts that got caught off sides. Uh but what's interesting about that move is it was just supported by a lot of spot volume

both uh in the ETFs and also real onchain Bitcoin buying at places like Swan and others. And so uh we basically found ourselves with a rally that went up you know 23 24% something like that over the course of a week and as you noted planted itself right around 80K and it didn't involve leverage on the upside. So there was basically nobody to just kind of crush and easily wash out here. Uh so yeah, I think uh stuck the landing is kind of interesting and it puts us in this place uh right below the 50week moving average, which again I I'm not a uh numbers astrology guy and I don't trade and I don't really recommend that most people who aren't already professional traders before they get

into Bitcoin. Y'all shouldn't be trading either. But there are a lot of people who do trade and they do trade support and resistance lines. And you know that is one of the indicators that shows up on every professional's uh trading terminal is the 50we moving average. So uh I'm not surprised at all that there's some resistance there. There also happened to be an enormous amount of volume traded in that kind of 80 to 82k range historically which again people pay attention to whether it makes sense or not. Uh a lot of people see that big volume thing and they they assume that it's going to be hard to punch through and so they load up some shorts and and that's why it takes a while to punch through later. Uh what is interesting is there's just almost no historical volume at any no large amount of historical

volume at any level between 8082 and all-time high. There's a little bit around 88. Obviously 100K is like a psychological number. There's maybe a little bit of memory of the original pump to 108K before the pullback. That was kind of the first bull market peak in 25 and then after that it's just, you know, 126k. So, you know, I think it is, you know, I'm optimistically hoping that we're in the early green shoots of a bull market. I think we deserve it. I don't think we got the bull market that we deserved either of the last two times, frankly. And uh I would I would love to see Bitcoin just uh absolutely rip people's faces off and remind everyone that it is uh the king of the

jungle. >> Well, I did also want to ask because we are seeing that, you know, there's quite a lot of demand for Bitcoin ETFs. There's been about $3 billion in inflows over the past two weeks. And at the same time it looks like you know onchain indicator indicators are showing movement toward exchanges. So like what does that say to you when you see you know those segments of the market acting in that way? That's interesting. So I guess you're saying that some of the crypto exchanges have sellers that are moving coins on and are going to do something with it or might be preparing to do something with it. Yeah. I don't know. I we don't see it. Uh, so I don't I don't have any data

that shows people moving coins to uh to sell at Swan. >> Yeah, I'm not sure if it's like >> Yeah, it's not as big as the ETF uh you know uh indicators >> info. Yeah, that's interesting. I honestly don't have much of an opinion on that. Um, I guess you could you could see that maybe some people uh maybe the people that kind of bought the bull market would be looking to peel some off and you know they're they're getting back to break even or something like that. So I I think if you kind of take the curve Oh, I you know there was another interesting number which lends a little bit of credence to that um 88k volume hump that we'll have to get through at some point. And I think it

was that as of a few days ago the average price that uh ETF buyers purchased at was 87. So that's kind of interesting too. So it just may be maybe chopping wood in here in the 80s for a little while. Uh I'm not quite in the bull camp where I've seen some people obviously only after the price pumped to 80 saying that uh they thought we'd see a bull an all-time high um this year. I'm not in that camp. >> Yeah. Yeah, I probably am not either. Um well, so you've been in Bitcoin for at least a few different cycles because I think I've known you since at the very least 2017.

Um so >> sounds about right. So, I'm wondering um you had a little video that you made about all the different theories that have come out over the years about how to project Bitcoin's price and you you know he made some some critiques of some of of some of them including some that were quite popular. Um, so you know after all these cycles like how do you think about how to kind of price Bitcoin? How to sort of forecast you know where the price is going? Like do you have certain metrics you track? Like what's your kind of whole hypothesis around that?

>> Sure. Look, I first of all I want you to know that uh I've been doing these videos for almost three weeks now almost every day. So I've done about 18 or 19 of them in the last three weeks. And that was the one that I dressed the best for where I I kind of put on my Sunday best. I had a collared shirt. My hair looked relatively kemp. There was no hat. So, uh, thank you for putting that one on your show. Um, that's ser serious Corey right there for a serious subject. Um, but no, I really do. I come at it from a a philosophical angle first and which is backed by by science and empirical evidence, which is that most people that try to apply too much math and physics to economics get wrecked. And there's

usually something hiding in the model like a gremlin that if you know a little bit about statistics which I happen to it was a big focus of my undergrad and my graduate studies was stats and and probability and these have been subjects that have been kind of near and dear to me throughout my entire adult life of learning as well is how do you detect BS? Like you better understand the math behind BS detection. Um, and it's really easy to pick these things apart. Like it's it's it almost as easy to pick apart, you know, a stock toflow model and show exactly why it's invalid and as it was to, you know, figure out how Doco Kwan's whole thing was a ponzi. Like it's it's not that hard to actually do

it once you train your attention on it and use the tools. Um, so I guess what I mostly want to get across is this idea that you can predict Bitcoin price based on historical data is false. What you have is people making best fit lines or curves with whatever equation you want that fairly accurately fits the historical data. Meaning that the regression on it, the R squar would be rather high like over 95% over 98% 0.95.98 something like that. And that

this somehow means that the price is going to fit some kind of extrapolation from that point. and it's just not true. So that's the that's probably the main message. And you know, the reason I think it matters is I'm a firm believer in uh buying what you know. And I think that you should buy things that you actually understand to some degree. And you want to build a mental framework that doesn't include anything false in it. So what you'll tend to see is you know a lot of people got wrecked trading stock toflow model lines or whatever in the last cycle like 2122 something like that and uh you know whether the uh the new class of modelors you know kind of

the male astrology proponents that love their numbers you know whether they believe it or not uh and whether they think they're just using it as a professional or not you know they're out there pumping these things and in many cases is monetizing based on the pumping of these kind of false gods, these these models that have no predictive power. And there's a lot of people looking at them and listening to them and actually trading based on it. And uh you know I just I tend to tend to think that most people that have a false input into their mental framework uh tend to have paper hands meaning they just like they don't actually have real conviction in what they what they own and they tend to um you know basically just uh cough up

their coins rather easily. So, I just I I'd prefer that people understand the truth of things, understand how amazing Bitcoin is, you know, understand that it's very likely for lots of different reasons to go up a lot in purchasing power over the long run and uh not worry too much about these, you know, fouryear cycles or stock to flow models that are invalid or power law models that are invalid, etc., etc. Like, just buy the coin because it's awesome. there's a fixed supply and over time 8 billion people are waking up to how awesome it is. That's that's really all you need as a trading thesis.

>> Okay. Wow. So, okay. So, you don't go into anything even more in depth. Um that's I mean that's interesting. >> We have we have Swan Research and we go in depth like crazy. Like we've run all kinds of analyses and at the end of the day like you can you can do all kinds of trend lines. You can do all kinds of projection ranges, but at the end of the day, the only thing you know for sure is that your forecasts are going to be wrong. >> Yeah. So, but as essentially it's almost like a real estate pitch, like there's going to be this amount and like it's, you know, Island of Manhattan kind of kind of pitch.

>> Yeah. It's like this is this is a good bet. This is a good bet. Size according to conviction and that's different for every single person. So, but I I do have some sympathy for people like, you know, and by the way, I'm sure Yuri and Timmer at Fidelity is a delightful guy. I've never met him, but you know, there's good people over there. I'm sure he's super bright. And I'm very sympathetic to people that work in Wall Street having to have something to say. And you know, so he pumped stock toflow models really hard last cycle and like now he's pumping power law models. And that was what that was what spared me to do the video. It was like how do you not like you're smart enough for sure and again

I'm sympathetic that bankers and frankly journalists have to have a narrative to say about things otherwise there's very little to say or do for the most part. Uh and that's why probably I think my most popular video the last few weeks was uh basically about the the five catalysts for the Bitcoin bull market and pointing out we already know what they are. price happened to pump a few days later which was hilarious. But uh the point is like we'll back fit the narrative after the price moves. But really what's happened is like sellers are exhausted and people just you know think that 60k Bitcoin is reasonable or cheap at some point and there's nobody selling and then it moves and then you go back and you're like oh well it was

you know this thing and that thing and that thing and that thing and when the price was going down all of those things were actually present too and they weren't catalysts then. So, you know, this is what we know about reading the Wall Street Journal, reading the New York Times. You know, if it's ever something in your domain of, you know, your area of expertise, you kind of know they're bullshitting and just looking for something to say. Um, you know, you said real estate pitch. If you have friends that work on Wall Street, like we all know they party on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night and take out clients, and then everybody stays in bed basically Sunday and recovers and reads Baron's cover to cover. And then Monday morning they come in and they pitch, you know, stories that and they try to come up with like two or three stories that

the whole desk is going to roll out that week and hit all their clients with a narrative that sounds truthy or sciency, but like it's relation to the truth or whether it actually matters is [ __ ] zero. >> All right. Well, I love I love what you said right there. It's very funny. Um, but we're going to first uh before we go on and talk about some other big news in the Bitcoin world, we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors who make the show possible. $540 million. That's how much concentrated liquidity sat idle in a given week in the first half of this year. About 30% of the DeFi TVL if you're wondering. That's according to Dune Research commissioned by 1 in. But

there's a solution. 1in Aqua is the new shared liquidity platform. It lets LPS back multiple positions with the same token balance and keep their tokens in their wallet till a swap comes. Why does that help? Because the LPS don't have to split their tokens across positions. They can cover more market conditions and pairs with their full balance. That means more activity across deeper liquidity. See how it works at 1in.com/ aqua. Remember that providing liquidity carries risk and fees aren't guaranteed. Back to my conversation with Corey.

So, it's very fun to talk about the Bitcoin price going up. But let's talk about some news that's kind of a bit sadder, but we have to talk about it because it was so big. So, earlier this month, the Bitcoin community suffered a massive attack when several thousand cold card wallets had their funds stolen. I so I actually was kind of like on vacation during this time so I didn't follow it very closely but I could definitely see there was like so much selfreflection on the timeline because this wallet was actually seen as one of the most secure ones. So I would love to hear kind of like your takeaways from the whole incident.

>> Yeah. So I mean first of all awful and feel so much for some of these people. Um it was over a thousand coins lost which is tragic. Um I think the largest that I've seen on the timeline of any one person was uh unfortunately uh a guy who lost 60 coins. The second most I saw I think was 17. So you know the people that have been stacking coins for a long time and you know just awful. Uh, also important to keep it in perspective and recognize like it is just awful that you know 1,400 or 1500 coins or whatever it was were lost out of self-custody for this one. Um, something like north of 1.5 million coins have been lost to

hacks and frauds at centralized exchanges and um, you know, CFI lenders. So if you actually add up uh Gauss and Celsius and BlockFi and Voyager and and on it quadrea and all the rest, it's uh over 1.5 million coins that have been lost. So it's a thousandx the number lost to these uh trusted third parties versus what was lost in this cold card incident. So just important to keep that in mind. Now, nevertheless, it had an outsized impact on like vibes in general because, as you noted, this was a very popular wallet. It was uh, you know, promoted heavily by people that, you

know, were super cipher punk and they also sell all the merch. You know, the the block clocks that everybody has, that's the same company, you know, kind of a lot of different things. And, you know, I think NVK is super entertaining and used to hang out on Clubhouse all the time. He's a hilarious guy. He's super smart, helped a lot of people get into Bitcoin, helped a lot of people figure out self- custody, etc. So, it's like truly heartbreaking. Now, was cold card ever used really as a tool for institutions like Swan and others? No, it wasn't because it's not just kind of the evaluation of the device. It's also like you know if you go through proper screening to figure out what you're going to use as an institution it also has to be like size of team and you know

how deep is their security architecture you know is it certified this the way that way etc and so it just doesn't pass on those so for instance with swan vault when we went through that you know we couldn't use cold card because it doesn't pass those you know it's a team of five or six people or something like that right so you just as an institution you can't really partner with the company and so you don't even really evaluate the device in that way. Um, so it really just hurt so much the people that just wanted to be self- sovereign and were doing what a lot of the podcasters said and you know like people it was popular. So in that respect it's heartbreaking. Uh I don't think it does anything to the long-term

value prop of self-custody and holding Bitcoin uh in a self-s sovereign way outside of the financial system. It's kind of the the it's not the main thing in in the west, but it's still a multiplier um outside of the West and and I mean really the West is is fracturing anyway and becoming more socialist and grabby so and adding more taxes and kind of every everywhere you look. Uh outside of the West, you know, it might Bitcoin might be worth, you know, 5x or 10x more than any other asset that you have inside your local financial system. Um I talk often about uh I call it the sovereignty multiple but it's basically how much more

valuable is bitcoin and self- custody than the same you know nominal value of assets that you have inside the the system whether it's banking system or at your stock broker or whatever and that multiplier for somebody in the west may only be like you know if you don't understand bitcoin you don't get it at all you just hold an ETF but you know even for people like me I can see it empirically in my financial decisions you know I value it at something like you 1.5x anything else. So, you know, if you told me that I could, you know, sell a stock and my only option was like to sell, you know, $150 worth of stock, but I could get a $100 worth of Bitcoin, that's about my my breaking point. Like, friends in Lebanon, it might be 20x instead of 1.5x. It's like the one thing

that they really want, you know, outside of the system. So, I I do think that, you know, ETFs are kind of having their day, but I do think it's actually just the top of funnel for real onchain Bitcoin and people come to understand Bitcoin and desire the real thing over time. And it's important that they be able to get real Bitcoin. It's the reason that we built RBX, the real Bitcoin exchange, which is, you know, we launched two or three months ago with quite a bit of fanfare. And you know, we've been slowly and hopefully more quickly recently emptying GBTC because that's the one that has 1.5% per year and everybody's kind of in the grayscale goolag because they don't want to sell and get cap gains tax. And we can turn

that that the GBTC shares into real Bitcoin in a tax advantage way. Check with your financial adviser blah blah blah all the all the disclosures on swan.comrbx. But uh I think it's important that people be able to go the other way as well. IBIT's making a bunch of noise about trying to get people to turn Bitcoin into paper Bitcoin. Swan is the only place that you can turn paper Bitcoin into the real thing. >> And how do you do that and it and without incurring a lot of tax? >> Well, the ETFs were structured as granter trusts, which means that the client actually owns the underlying. So, you have to do it in a particular way.

It involves a few different counterparties and, you know, kind of instant liquidity swap, etc. and you can never go to cash, but uh there's a way to do it. It's complicated. Uh we started doing it manually at the beginning of the year with like a 53-step process that probably took a week and a half. It's down to two or three days in a 24-step process now. But uh we have lots of happy clients and people uh owning real Bitcoin and not being stuck in the Goolag. >> Wow. Yeah, that's I mean I'm sure it's helpful to so many people. Um yeah, cuz that obviously was um that was an albatross for a lot of people I think for a long while. Um >> remains there's 8.5 billion still in there and it's like they have another

product at 0.15. It's literally onetenth the fee and they won't let people move over into it and they can by the way it's just a you know it's a very sort of calculated anyway I'll watch what I say. I mean, there's there's good people everywhere, so I don't want to hurt them too much. But, you know, for for people out there that are stuck paying six times more than you do at IBIT, 10 times more than you do at Morgan Stanley, even if you just want to go to another ETF, you know, we can do that, too. So, you know, it's just um yeah, I would just say like if that's of interest to you, get in touch. Corey swan.com. Sorry for the shell, but uh I pro when we're flush again someday, I probably owe you a sponsorship deal, Laura. Thanks for that

one. >> I mean, it's it's clearly something I'm sure a lot of OG people are interested in. Um, >> yeah. >> So, I love I love this discussion because I think like it shows there I mean there's so many options now in terms of like how you can own Bitcoin and each of you know those options has its own trade-off and I so I actually took your comments about like the multiple you would put on Bitcoin to mean like that you would apply that to self-custody Bitcoin.

>> I think it's real onchain Bitcoin. I I think there's probably like a slight lift to having it fully under your own control, but as long as you can withdraw it in unlimited amounts. So like that would that would be Coinbase, Swan, River, Unchained, all the places without uncapped, I would say that your Bitcoin is trapped at Fidelity. If it's $25,000 of Bitcoin per day is your max withdrawal, I would say that you're trapped by the financial system if you have a lot of Bitcoin. So, I would just say make sure that if you sniff out that weird things might be coming at some point in the USA for some reason and they may 6102 the Bitcoin, like you want to be able to get at it right away when

>> you know what that means. 6102 your >> 6102 attack is 1933 when they uh they said you can't own gold anymore in the USA. >> So 6102 is one of those numbers that's just kind of bandied about in the Bitcoin space. uh like 1971 or something like >> I mean I I don't think they would do that. Like I don't even know how >> I don't think it would happen to gold either. >> Wow. Yeah. >> I also don't think that they would do it. Like the world that we live in right now in 2026 isn't the one in which I think that is likely to happen. Uh but 1933 looked a lot different than 1928

and things can change very quickly. And so what I would just say is like there re there is a lot of value in owning real onchain Bitcoin that you can take self- custody of or that you can move into a multi-IG where you have two keys even if you have a company like Swan with Swan Vault as the backup or something like that. Uh there is tremendous value in actually being able to take full custody of your wealth if you choose to. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so let's let's parse this out because I I would love to hear you you probably have probably like some kind of decision tree about how somebody should think about how to custody their Bitcoin. And I would love to like hear you talk through like, you know, who who

does it make sense, you know, for them to like just do the Bitcoin ETF or or some other kind of, you know, similar type of solution and then who like like walk us through kind of like how you think about like which type of option fits which type of scenario or or set of circumstances or person. >> Yeah, I think that's true. So, I would say uh it's it's it is a tree with two branches and I don't care about this one, the paper bitcoin one and then I have a lot of thoughts on like the real thing and I would basically say like if you just want some price exposure and you don't understand bitcoin or care about it then paper bitcoin is fine and that could be that could be ETF that could be you know one of the strategy or strive products whether they're kind of

levered equity or one of their preps or something like that. Um, if you do find yourself understanding a little bit about Bitcoin, uh, or caring about owning a little bit of real onchain Bitcoin and not the not the paper IOU version, then you have to think about how to custody it because it is a bearer asset. And I think about that as a spectrum where just for visualization purposes, let's say on the left is fully on your own self-custody and you have no help. And then as you move toward the right, the next step I would say would be like supported self-custody where you have an adviser, somebody that's actually helping you. And there's a bunch of Bitcoin consultants out there.

We have Swan Sovereign uh that we launched uh actually we launched it interestingly in May and then this cold card thing happened and then we put out we officially launched it right after that because we realized so many people wanted it. So, it's got I think we're at 13 or 1400 clients already in Swan Sovereign where you actually have a Swan private exec that you can talk to about your setup and you know do key key rotation ceremonies and kind of get our view on different hardware wallets and all kinds of extra information and webinars and this that and the other.

Um, as you've moved further to the right, I would then put uh collaborative self-custody which is multi-IG. So that's like Swan Vault, that's like Casa, that's like Unchained. So you have two out of three in a multi-IG where uh you have two keys as the user and a company keeps a third one as a backup. The reason I like that a lot is because the user can keep one key, you know, in their office, on their desk, like wherever, and it can't be accessed. And then you can move your Bitcoin or or do transactions with that key and the swan key or the whatever the the company is that has the backup key. And that second key of yours can be off in a bank, you

know, safety deposit box, you know, states away or in a different country or something. And then if if you lose your key, you go take the trip or have your, you know, brother-in-law send it to you or whatever it is and you can still get the coins. or if the company goes away for some reason, you still have two keys. So, it's really robust and is probably the right move, especially in a postc cold card world. We've just seen a massive rush of people into that. Um, as you move further to the right, I'd say the fourth stop is uh just delegated custody. So, that's just having an account with a company. Think of it like a bank. So, this is this is swan safe for us where your coins are stored with backed or bico. Um, this is just Coinbase and trusting Coinbase to not

lose your coins and not do something funky with it. Um, that's the one that generally got people wrecked because they trusted Celsius and Sam Bakeman Freed and and Quadriga and Mount Gaus with their coins. So that's, you know, it is a much better much more regulated world now. Uh, they have good accountants, they have good audits, they have, you know, OC chartered in many cases on and on and on with these these custodians. So it is much better than it used to be. and they are leaving the coins at rest and not trying to do all kinds of funky things with your coins if they are holding themselves out to be, you know, realities and and they're all public too, right? So, you're peering into the the financials and really like a lot of people are hammering at Backed and Bitco and Coinbase, which are kind

of the the big three. Uh, plus there's others, you know, there's Fidelity, there's um, you know, BNY Melon for institutions. I think State Street is in the game now, too. So there's more and more of these um Wall Street firms that are getting into custody as well. And then finally, I would say the the fifth stop on the far right would be multi-institutional where you don't have any keys, but uh your multi-IG, your three keys are split across three institutions. Uh so I think that's an interesting model. Um there's one or two really tiny companies that have started doing that. I like it. We thought about it. I think Mike Bell at Bitco pitched me on it like four years ago. Um, we're doing it now. So, we will actually have that out hopefully by Q4. It's called Swan Trinity. And, uh, we'll have a key.

Bit will have a key, and we're evaluating the third partner. It'll probably be a well-known UK company that has the the third key. And and that's nice because you're not going to get two institutions colluding to steal your coins. And if one institution goes under, gets hacked or something, nothing happened to your Bitcoin. Like, nobody actually owns your Bitcoin. I just I thought it was brilliant when I heard it from Mike. I don't know if he came up with it originally or, you know, maybe it was Jameson Lop when he worked there or Rearen when he worked there or who, but I just think it's a great model and I'm glad we're going to be able to offer it later this year.

>> Wow. Yeah, I hadn't heard of that. That's um really interesting. Um Okay. Well, I love that you broke that down because I think like in the wake of cold card and especially now, you know, like like you know, I just found out about this new option that you just talked about like I think a lot of people are kind of wondering what exactly to do and I think that it is such a different world even than you know before uh like when we got into into Bitcoin. So I think um yeah I think people have options and they should think about you know what is kind of most appropriate for them. All right. So before we hopped on here um we had a discussion about

what to discuss and um you you actually told me you didn't want to talk about this but I need to know why. So I'm going to ask you about it. Uh which is the quantum threat to Bitcoin. um like you must be aware a lot of people not only are talking about it but they're actively working on it. They think this is important. There's um you know some portion of the Bitcoin community that is not interested. I personally don't think it's a good idea to to poo poo this threat. But you don't think it's really worth discussing. Tell me why.

>> I didn't say I don't think it's worth discussing. I don't think it's worth freaking out about. >> Okay. And the uh the specific time when it came to the four was manufactured [ __ ] We're nowhere near any kind of quantum threat coming. There's nobody serious in the quantum space that actually thinks there's any kind of threat to Bitcoin anytime soon. And basically what happened is there were a bunch of kind of interesting developments in quantum tech kind of late 24 and into early 2025. And there was a huge flurry of pump and dump penny stock schemes on the stock market in the first half of 2025. And the crypto blockchain people saw that and said,

"Oh, let's launch a bunch of quantum coins and a bunch of [ __ ] startups, you know, quantum proofing shitty blockchains." And so that's basically where it came into the zeitgeist in late 25 was some funds trying to raise money for their crappy quantum blockchain startups. So basically, >> so one thing that I have to ask is like you started by saying we're nowhere near, you know, to when that threat would materialize, but I think the argument was that if we wait until it's soon to happen, then it's too late. And that because Bitcoin is decentralized, it's much harder for the community to >> first of all come to a decision and

second then mobilize to execute it. So, >> so there's there's multiple things to unpack there. So, first is it's false that nobody was working on it. Uh, people have been writing about the future quantum threat to Bitcoin for at least 10 years and people have been working on it here and there for at least 10 years. Uh, second is the idea that research needs to be decentralized somehow. Obviously, any individual person or any individual lab can do all kinds of research and you don't have to mobilize Bitcoin somehow to get people to do that research. It's an interesting problem and people care and a lot of people that uh have quantum knowledge also overlap with people who care about

Bitcoin and so there's plenty of horsepower to go at this thing. Uh and then the last one that I think is a false assumption that was promulgated by uh the subtweeted blockchain VC uh that shall not be named is uh the idea that you wouldn't easily be able to marshall the resources of the community and do something fast. Uh it's not easy to get the Bitcoin community and the various parts of the ecosystem to band together and do something controversial or stupid. uh we've seen that time and time again that it's very difficult to make stupid changes to Bitcoin. It should be from a game theoretical or just a logical perspective extremely easy to

coordinate miners and node runners and economic participants uh and you know core developers or whatever to make a change very quickly if there were some kind of existential threat to the network. But like to decide on what that action should be, that might also be harder. Like this question of what to do with Satoshi's coins is probably a good example. >> That's that I don't think that's a question at all. I think that's uh that's just a bunch of uh altcoin types lining up wishing they could steal the coins. I don't think there's anybody that I >> So there's nobody that I respect in the Bitcoin space that wants to steal Satoshi's coins.

>> Well, okay. So what do you think should happen to his coins though? because like since they're more susceptible to a quantum attack, somebody could presumably steal them and then um you know dump them on the market like like that would cause a big problem for Bitcoin, right? >> Why would they dump them? >> I mean because then they could make money. They could turn those like let's say it's not a Bitcoin or they're somebody who believes in dollars over Bitcoin or whatever the currency is. Like >> I mean how many coins have have been how many coins have traded hands since October?

>> Like 10 million? >> I I don't think about supply. I don't know. It's it's like 8 to 10 million coins have traded hands since since October. >> Um now so let's say that you dumped a million coins. First of all, remember that they're split over like 22,000 addresses or something, right? because it's 50 coins for address and he didn't do address or use when he was mining these coins. So, you got to hack all those addresses. You're probably not going to crack them all at the same time. So, you're going to see that this is >> they could crack them silently and keep and keep them until until they're ready.

>> So, they want to start moving them all at the same time, I guess. >> Yeah. Like a >> again. So, like let's say that then a million coins come to market. I mean, fire sale back up the truck. Great. Now, and let's say that that causes a crash in the Bitcoin price. Fine. We'll suck up the supply. Like that's that's like one month of supply on the schedule that we've been on since the all-time high in October. >> That was brought to market. And the alternative would be to change the rules of Bitcoin like your [ __ ] Ethereum or something. Like that would be the most stupid own goal in the history of Bitcoin to just steal the coins and break the rules of Bitcoin. So dumb.

>> Okay. Okay. So you're you're anti like freezing Satoshi's >> Yeah. And what about um there was another proposal. Shoot, it's embarrassing because this happened just last week and I can't even remember who said this. Um but yeah, we Oh, I know. It was uh Charles GMA of of Ledger. He I had him and I on the show talking about the quantum threat and he proposed that they actually seize Satoshi's coins and then tail emit them to also resolve the security problem at the same time which I actually thought was a good proposal. But >> the security problem there is no

security problem. >> Oh wow. you. So, you feel like the the block reward >> why why it's such a it's such a fiat mindset and such an altcoiner mindset to think that you need to change things because something might happen 30 years from now. >> I mean, isn't like mining equipment priced in dollars? Isn't electricity priced in fiat? Like, these are actual real calculations that are happening based on like real prices in the world. So what what what h what what happens if the what happens if the hash price stays stable for a long time and a bunch of miners end up unprofitable?

They go out of business. They turn off the rigs, right? And then, you know, in two weeks the difficulty adjustment happens and it's easier to mine again >> and the people that are still in the game make money >> and then potentially >> it still has a million times more hash rate than any other proof of proof of work network. >> Well, I mean, yeah, of course, because the only like what's the next biggest one >> because proof of stake is fiat. So like it just doesn't matter.

You can't do money without proof of work. You can't have decentralized money without proof of work. So uh it just isn't an issue. This is made up by by you know people with altcoins on the brain that think that you need to have inflation. You don't need inflation. >> Okay. Okay. I I I'm just Yeah. I'm I feel like there is going to come a time when potentially if the block reward is small enough and fees are not high enough then it might not be enough to secure the chain and I do think that could be a problem.

>> Yeah. But what was the price what was the price of Bitcoin eight years ago? Like 2018 it was uh >> like it started at roughly 20K >> 6K. We were like 6K 8 years ago and then went down to 3K and it finally crashed through. We thought we had a floor, so it hit 3k. Uh what's the price today is like 79 or something like that. So even give it 4K. Like we're up 20x and you know to maintain the same minor revenue in those eight years, you needed to go up 4x.

So, let me know when the price of Bitcoin starts going up by like dramatically less than, you know, 2x every four years and we'll worry about it then. And in the meantime, I have a very strong feeling if Bitcoin does what I think it's going to do, we're gonna end up with a fee market, a very robust free mark fee market because I think lots more than the, you know, tens of millions maybe that use onchain bitcoin today if that expands to a much larger number like block space will be limited and it will have a very active and robust fee market. So again, I don't think there's any point in trying to fix something that isn't broken and that we

don't even know if it is going to be broken. And I don't think that we're going to be able to know whether it's broken for at least another 20, probably 30 years. So it's a cute mental exercise, but it's really fiat thinking and all corner thinking. >> Okay. All right. Okay. Well, Corey, it's unfortunate because we kind of got a late start and I had a few other questions for you, but we'll just have to have you back to discuss these other topics, but otherwise, it has been such a pleasure having you on Unchained. Thanks so much for joining. >> So much fun, Laura. Always enjoy speaking with you. Have a great day.

>> Nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is forformational and entertainment purposes only, and my guests and I may hold assets discussed on the show. For more disclosures, visit unchainedcrypto.com. Heat. Heat.