YouSaid · the spoken record

Andy Edstrom

lines on the record: 68
first: 2021-02-03
most recent: 2021-02-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Man, it was a pleasure. Always happy to do it. Look forward to doing it in the future. And yeah, I guess one final thing, if anybody wants to follow me on Twitter, hit me up on Edstrom Andrew.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Edited down No, no, no. So, anyway, it was a real easy read and it was a pleasure. So people can check it out. But why buy Bitcoin is the book and it's an investment thesis. And it is also, in my opinion, pretty digestible. And yeah, look, I shill it relentlessly, but people have been giving it good feedback. And it was both the thing that I felt I had to write for my clients and for my family and for my friends. And as long as I was going to write it, I was going to put it out there for the benefit of people who are trying to get their head around Bitcoin. And I guess the unique aspect is I bring some, speaking of stories, I have a few stories from my time on Wall Street, which are relevant to the overall financial system that are buried in there. And they're a little bit different than the stories about your friend Mitch, but hopefully some entertainment value as well.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I laughed. I laughed about your friend Mitch, who got away with murder until he didn't. And then ultimately did. That's a great story.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're very kind. I want to say, by the way, before we talk about that, over the weekend, I hadn't been aware of it prior, but I heard about your book, Diary of a West Point Cadet, and I ordered it and I read it.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally. I mean, why can't you have streaming money? We have streaming voice and streaming video. Why can't we send very small payments in real time? I mean, it doesn't seem like there's a technical limit to this. And I'm optimistic that Lightning will be the thing that actually brings it to the masses. We'll see.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. So I had heard that performers in Korea were actually getting paid in real time, and I don't know via what app, I'm not aware that it was via Lightning or anything crypto-based, but I had heard that that was the thing already in Korea, but don't quote me on it.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't honestly know. I have read about in parts of Asia, you ought to know, weren't you a, I was thinking of Korea because Korea has been so smartphone savvy for so many years. And they've had high bandwidth for a long time. Weren't you stationed there?”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh no, I'm just, you know, yeah, no, I don't have a TikTok account. My only access to TikTok is people on Twitter, obviously sometimes forward their TikTok videos.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And where it just becomes normal, basically, if you're a content creator on the internet, you have your Lightning wallet, you have your Lightning set up, you can accept payment in that regard. And the pools, the liquidity providers that are basically greasing the rails and balancing the channels and lightning in the overall system are going to make that potentially possible. And I like the angle you described for Will and Fold and him sort of quote unquote getting sort of forced onto the second layer. That's all good. That's all good for Bitcoin. It's indicative of high demand on the base layer. And that's a healthy thing. That's a healthy proposition. It indicates that the base layer is in rude health when there's so much demand that basically lower value transactions get pushed up onto the second layer.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the clear case is just smaller payments, it's micropayments. And that's been on people's minds, I think, for years now. I would like to see, and I do think there's a good chance that we'll see a whole dynamic where anyone creating content, whether it's podcasts, whether it's articles, whether it's videos, whatever TikTok type of stuff, will be able to get paid, be able to get tipped via Lightning.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something and they basically round off and give you sort of free money. But here the free money is the good money. It's not the crappy fiat money. It's Bitcoin. It's the hard money. So I love it.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Love to see it. Yeah, no, Will and the full team. Those guys are great. They have a great product. And it's one of the wedges into Bitcoin adoption. There's all these angles you can make it easier to buy Bitcoin outright, such as through Square Cash. You can figure out ways to give people rewards, credit cards or debit cards. And yeah, the idea that Fold had about finding ways to direct traffic at vendors and then get rewarded by the vendors and shovel Bitcoin into the pockets of users is great. I mean, it's a great way to accumulate sort of automatically over time, also kind of reminds me of the, I forget there were a couple of debit cards or credit cards where I guess it was debit cards where you buy.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of gold and Bitcoin are about the same now, then I struggle to come up with a reason why Bitcoin isn't worth as much as gold or more. And the argument is, well, it takes time. You got to change mines, and gold holders have to be shaken out of their positions over time and into Bitcoin. But yeah, if you're looking for the strong view on S2F or S2FX or not, I'm probably going to punt. I think it's interesting. I think it could have a self-fulfilling dynamic in the sense that if people, if enough people believe it to be true and if the numbers keep following the pattern and the expectations, there could be a self-fulfilling element to it. So that's one way to think about it. But yeah, I don't have a strong view.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been a while since I did my statistics work back in college and then even since the CFA program, I've seen the arguments about how, well, basically how you don't have true randomness in the variables and the correlation and that basically the correlation framework is invalid. So I'm aware of the critique of the mathematical critique. My friend Corey Clipston has been all over that. And I think the Matt, you know, I suspect he's right about the math. If the assumption is that, you know, if he's right about the assumption about the randomness among the two variables. So on the other hand, I have to say that stock to flow is a concept seems to be logical. The model may be wrong, but the concept seems right. I can even go so far as to say that it's not bullish enough in the sense that if I know that the stock to flow,”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All that stuff that makes it not decentralized compared to Bitcoin. I guess that if, I don't know, if there was like a major change in demand, if like for some reason Michael Saylor was like, nope, I was wrong. Ethereum's the thing, you know, and governments, you know, started buying it instead of Bitcoin. Then maybe I scratched.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember the old flippining narrative from 2017, right? Ether's going to flip and going to overtake Bitcoin. Yeah, it's, how would I respond to that? If the question is like, what do you do or what do you talk about if the market cap gap starts closing? I think for me, it would have to overtake it for a significant period of time for me to be at all concerned about it. And it would also have to be based on facts and circumstances. In other words, as long as Ether is planning to change out their mechanism, exactly what their consensus algorithm, until they actually successfully do that, it's really hard for me to see how on a risk-adjusted basis it has a chance of overtaking Bitcoin, really hard to see. And then that doesn't even account for the fact that the blockchain is bloated and it's all run on Infura and still clear leadership.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, I think on Twitter when you asked what questions to talk about tonight, one of the questions that was mentioned, I don't remember who it was, was basically what would change your thesis? What would cause you to sell? What would cause you to sell Bitcoin? And there's a couple things that come to mind. One is the system stops cranking out blocks regularly, right? Stops working. Okay, well, if it doesn't stop working, what else would cause me to not want to own it? I guess government rectitude, right? balancing budgets, not printing so much money. Even then I still think that Bitcoin has a long-term value proposition, but maybe it'll take longer to realize. So those are kind of the two scenarios is basically if the thing stops working or if the competition for money or monetary assets gets stiffer. Other than that, it's sort of hard to come up with ideas for why to sell it when it looks so.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Effectively going poof. So look, I'm not saying the tether is fully backed. I don't really know. I don't really have much idea of how many dollars are backing the $25 billion worth of notional tether. But I don't think it's a very significant probability that it will be a big long-term risk to Bitcoin.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have to say, that's right, you have to say that, and in fairness, it's more the offshore exchanges, right, rather than the onshore ones, rather than the US-based ones or the Western ones, where Tether is prevalent. And some of those guys are relatively fly-by-night operations, I guess, although frankly, some of the smaller exchanges have dropped out over time. Some of them have gotten hacked. Some of them have disappeared or, I don't know, exit scammed. Others have been acquired. And so yeah, I think the field, the remaining field of sizable offshore exchanges probably want to stay in business, and they probably have some idea of the counterparty they're dealing with. And yeah, I don't think that they want to, I think they're smart enough to not risk their long-term business by taking counterparty risk and risk to their enterprises of this thing going.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll tell you what I want to get past is the tether fud. Blow up tether. Tether, please blow up. Everybody go redeem your tethers. By the way, I've never held tether myself, not even for a nanosecond have I ever held a single tether. You know, let's all redeem our tethers. Let's see if it's really backed and let's just get this thing behind us. Let's get it over with. Episode tired of it. I think that the notion that the hypothesis that Tether is a major reason for the Bitcoin price going up in the long run seems tenuous, seems unlikely. And I think that fear among investors, institutional and retail, this overhang basically that comes from the existence of Tether, I think if we removed it in the long run, actually Bitcoin might potentially be better off. And I do sort of get tired of spending time. Thinking and talking about it.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really will have a profound impact if Bitcoin starts to demonetize other risk assets. If we get to that point, right, where people stop viewing Apple as a store of value and buying it for 40 times earnings and start to think that, oh, actually, maybe I should park it in this other internet native store of value asset. And that is the scenario where actually Bitcoin potentially takes a bite out of the Nasdaq. You were talking about the triple Q a minute ago, takes a market share byte out of the Nasdaq accrues to Bitcoin. Will that happen soon? I don't know, but it could happen in a period of years. We'll see.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's put it this way. I have a very few clients who are double digit percentage exposure, but for the vast majority, we're talking two to three percent, basically.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The central bank to raise interest rates potentially. And so if you have a bond portfolio and we finally get significant inflation. And you better hold some hard money assets. I use the term hard money assets for a portfolio. And historically, that's been gold and monetary metals. But as we know, Bitcoin has characteristics that are more favorable even than gold. And so, yeah, you better hold Bitcoin basically at either end of the risk spectrum there. And so I can make a pretty strong case that everyone ought to have an allocation. And it tends to be beyond, say, a couple percentage points in the portfolio, which is effectively hedge, then it's more, I'd say, the folks that have a little bit higher risk tolerance and really understand it and really don't care that much about the volatility, which is a smaller subset. It's those guys that go with a larger allocation where a larger allocation to Bitcoin ends to make sense, in my experience.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you might be surprised about the demographics or the age or how close are you to retirement? And here's why. Take the extremes. So when we talk about quote-unquote risk in the portfolio, when we talk about your normal basket of assets, generally speaking, you've got your stocks, your equities on one end, and then you've got your low-risk bonds, your fixed income on the other end. And there's various other asset classes mixed in, but that's kind of the main buckets, as you know. What does a sizable or significant Bitcoin position mean to a risky client? Well, it means they want to swing for the fences. They want to make that 300% return in a year or more, potentially. So they want an allocation. But now you talk about the low risk portfolio, which is very skewed to bonds. And what is the kryptonite for a bond portfolio? Well, that's inflation and higher interest rates. It's inflation that costs.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And granted, in all fairness, as we know, the log scale graph is downward sloping over time. Or the percentage gains higher in the earlier years, yes, they were. So maybe you're averaging whatever 400 or 500% a year in the earlier years. And so in the more recent years, it's only been 1% to 200%. But that's still pretty good.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Total percentage points of the portfolio, which is pretty significant. And getting to the sizing, because we didn't talk about that with your last question, which was, yeah, sizing is the thing, right? This is a fallacy that I encounter over and over. People say, oh, there's certain assets that are uninvestable. No, actually, there's no such thing as an uninvestable asset. There's only portfolio sizing. Now, as a practical matter, most extremely risky investments don't trade in public markets. So you can't put 0.04% of your portfolio and VC bet A or a risky tech bet B, but with a publicly traded asset like Bitcoin, you can size it as you wish. And so, yes, 1%, 2% of the portfolio kind of a no-brainer, in my opinion. When you get into double digit percentages, then the client better be really comfortable and they better.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so maybe it was like 4 So, yeah, you made, if you had a 1% position, then you added 300 basis points to your portfolio. Is that right? So if you had a 200. A two percent position, then you added 600 basis points or 6.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From the perspective of the client. And now that it's been bought and many smart, well-known, regular way finance people and investors have said they're long or bullish, that has changed the narrative significantly. So now in 2021, I do actually think we're in a position where you have to explain not having a position, at least if your client has heard of Bitcoin, which is probably most at this point. And that was not true six months ago. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, really It was a great trade because it was like my recollection was like 5.5% or 6%. Triple tax exempt, right? No local tax, no state tax, no federal tax. So on a pre-tax basis, that's like buying a bond that's depending on your tax rate, yielding 8 or 9%. Pretty juicy. So that was a great investment for us. But man, we had some pushback because the headlines were relentless. Puerto Rico's going down. This thing's insolvent. government's going to have to step in. Bondholders are going to get torched. All this stuff. So similar dynamic with Bitcoin. The good news is, well, there's been two ways to mitigate that. One is, you know, if you bought it and it went up, that always helps. It always helps to be staring at a gain on the quarterly report rather than a loss, amazing how that works. And the narrative has shifted, obviously. I mean, it has been a dramatic shift in my estimation between even June of last year when Bitcoin was still, I don't want to say toxic waste, but let's just say kind of smelly.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're spot on that the optics, as we say, right? Has been very tough in Bitcoin. And so it's a funny thing, right? For my clients as an example, I have made, and my firm has made optically bad investments from time to time. And it's always an uphill battle, a giving example. We bought Puerto Rican bonds. I want to say like four or five years ago. And this was after the whole capital structure basically had fallen out of bed. Everybody thought that Puerto Rico and the various government related municipal entities were going to fold. We found a bond issue, several bond issues actually that were guaranteed they were backed basically by one of the bond insurance companies. And it happened to be the bond insurance company that had the strongest balance sheet.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The whole investment industry on average in terms of fees generated, in terms of assets under management, Bitcoin reaches its potential. It's going to take a big bite out of all these businesses, including mine. So that's my answer, is the wealth managers have quite a bit to lose. The corporates really don't as long as they're running a tight ship, as long as they're running their businesses, generating cash flows like you've talked about on this show, and then accumulating Bitcoin and socking away their retained earnings over time in that manner.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going on, Preston? How come you figured out that you could buy Bitcoin years ago and it started stacking? Here's my answer. And it's a great question from Brendan. My answer to that is corporates have, for the most part, nothing to lose and everything to gain, right? From adopting Bitcoin. And money managers are the opposite. In a world where I can store assets in a non-inflating monetary asset, that's Bitcoin, store value there. I don't have to beat quote unquote beat inflation by going to great lengths to have a diversified portfolio and invest in fixed income and invest in equities to beat inflation, you know, just to sprint to stand still in terms of my purchasing power. If Bitcoin reaches its potential, I can just sock it away in Bitcoin. And that will be bad news for...”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or investor has its own set of facts and circumstances and limitations, and they have their own timeline and their own adoption curves. So they're all sort of separate adoption curves piled on top of each other. And they all have their own timelines, but there aren't too many filters left or there aren't too many new pools of capital where there's literally zero allocation. But then again, we're still super early. Even with the hedge funds, we're kind of early. But the corporates were clearly very early with the insurance companies were early, with the pensions, it doesn't seem to have even started. And with governments, we don't know whether it started or not. It wouldn't surprise me if it had. But that's kind of where I see it, where I see it going. So eventually, I think every entity of any significant size will make an allocation and the rate at which they do that will be different for each.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Asked why is it one already? So now getting to how the game theory plays out. I've actually been sort of surprised at how easy the path has been relatively regulatory barriers are falling away. I think people in power in the United States and other Western countries. And frankly, across the globe realize that the thing can't be killed. And it is real important that the powers that be realized that the thing can't be killed because then they probably won't even try. And that seems to be the path we're on. So you've already got, obviously you had adoption by individuals, then you had family offices. You've had a little bit in wealth management, but not a lot. And then hello, you know, the corporates showed up, the insurance companies showed up. That surprised me. I didn't expect to see insurance companies show up in 2020. And so who's left? Pensions are left. Governments are left. And each of these categories of asset manager or asset holder.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and that's a fair point too, which is like, you know, is it money or is it not money today in its current form? Yes, it's a good saving vehicle. It accumulates value over time. Is it good for transactions? No, it's not good for transactions. Does that matter today? No, not at all. Will it ultimately be transactional money? Yes, if it reaches its potential. And in the meantime, it's just a monetary asset similar to gold, although better than gold, as you know, in several key ways. And so, yeah, I don't, in the colloquial definition of medium of exchange across space as opposed to medium of exchange across time, I would say today Bitcoin is not good money, but it is an investable asset that is on its way to becoming very good money. And in the meantime, yes, it's a good store of value. I might have lost the threat on the original question. Whoa, well, you had...”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And then, of course, additionally, just the additional layers being built on top, the exchange infrastructure, lightning for micropayments, the wallets, the integration with the major fintechs, like we were talking about with Square and PayPal, which was relatively recent, all this stuff. I mean, Bitcoin is so entrenched. Money is a network is a network effect concept. It's a protocol. So all those reasons, I think that Bitcoin has already the dominant internet native hard money. And as we know, when you dematerialize things, like Saylor says, it'll dominate, basically it'll dominate the world. So it'll be the world's hard money. And then the question is, well, will people want hard money or soft money? And I take the view that they'll want hard money.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just think it's too hard to kill As Michael Saylor said, maybe said it on your pod, it's already reached over well over $100 billion in value. And everything that is network native that is internet native that has reached that valuation has been dominant. And we're well past that, right? We're almost even in order of magnitude bigger than that with Bitcoin. So that's one thing. Two is just obviously when you delve into the network topology and you understand proof of work and the incentives, I mean, it's sort of hard to imagine that something else is going to beat it.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are we talking about just in general in terms of adoption? Companies and governments and That stuff. I've said before that I think Bitcoin has already won and we could take the easy path or the hard path. And I think we're on the easy path. I think that it gets broad adoption.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These guys are taking a big bite out of the banking system in general. I get that argument. For me, the thesis on even just digital gold is clearer than that in terms of valuation, but I don't begrudge somebody who comes with that perspective and says and looks at the banking system and says, you know, this thing's a dinosaur, smarter, faster, leaner, software-based companies are going to take a chunk out of it because that's true, that's going to continue.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And part and parcel of that oftentimes is the diversification argument. Like, I don't know if Bitcoin's the winner. So, you know, I want to own the company that's got exposure to all of crypto. Okay. That was a stronger argument a few years ago in 2017, even then Bitcoin looked pretty dominant, but there was some doubt. Now there isn't much doubt. So it's a weaker argument, I would say. Now, having said that, when I look at the stock price, I look at the chart of square, it's pretty impressive. It is very impressive. PayPal has done well too. Not as well on a percentage basis, but arguably that's just because they were already a pretty sizable company. I mean, Square has narrowed their lead, closed the gap on PayPal in terms of valuation. But yeah, these companies have done really well. So there is a reasonable argument for fintech exposure. There's no doubt that”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is a very good perspective. And I personally have one of these LLC structured self-directed IRAs where I can buy Bitcoin outright basically with an exchange account. But it's a pain. There's a bunch of steps. You got to do a bunch of paperwork. It costs a lot of money. I mean, relatively speaking, it costs quite a bit of money. And so there's all those reasons not to do that. And yeah, it's simpler. You got Ira Money. It's already there. You got your whatever your Schwab account, your Interactive Broker's account, your TD Meritrate account. And you just buy GBTC in much, much, much simpler than going through all the brain damage of the self-directed LLC structure that I mentioned.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, that's a trade, right? That's not something you want to count on, but there have been times when it's paid off in the future. So long-winded answer your question, but those are just some considerations and sort of reasons why one might want to hold the Bitcoin trust, maybe in addition to a core Bitcoin portfolio or as a substitute.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To hold a security basically in their brokerage account, that'd be another reason to hold it instead. Another reason to hold it, which is maybe not a great reason, is the premium has been pretty persistent historically, although it's been falling lately. There may be opportunities to buy when the premium is quite low and even trade out at a larger premium. You got to be, I don't know, either clever or lucky to get the timing right. There have been periods in history when Bitcoin has traded down. The premium disappears, you know, goes near zero basically into the single digits. I'm talking about on premium to net asset value, i.e. normally you pay whatever $1.20 for a dollar's worth of Bitcoin if you buy the Bitcoin trust, GBTC. But at times you only have to pay $1.5, let's say. And when you get the recovery in the Bitcoin price, then often the premium goes higher in GPTC and you get effectively some extra juice on the upside.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talking about Coinbase. Exactly, which is kind of shocking considering how long they've been in business that they don't run a tighter ship anyway. So that's another potential disadvantage. And so if you're an investor, you might say, okay, I want to hold the bulk of my Bitcoin and cold storage, which if necessary, I can move to the exchange and liquidate and hopefully wire to my bank account if I have to. on the off chance that I don't have access, maybe I want to hold some percentage in Bitcoin trust in GBTC. That would be an example of a scenario in which you might do that. Another advantage for somebody potentially is they just don't want to deal with an exchange. They don't trust them or I don't know. They can't, somehow they can't figure out the interface. I mean, I have older clients that are not very tech savvy, not very computer savvy. It's just easier for them to.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. There's servers are down. I mean, I think the last outage was more than half an hour. I mean, I think it may have been hours, but don't quote me on it.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. I talk about literally you can't sign into your Coinbase account. You literally can't access your money. So you can't trade out of Bitcoin into dollars. And also, you can't wire money out of your Coinbase account into your rank account.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a double edged sword. When you think about being able to exit a position, you're talking about your Bitcoin exposure, like, you know, hey, I have to peel some off or it really moons really quick. And, you know, I got to get some liquidity, et cetera, et cetera. If you want to get hash dollars out of Bitcoin, you got to go through the exchange system, right? At least as a retail guy. I mean, if you're large, you can go over OTC desks, right? Over the counter desks. similar concept getting your dollars out as we know with the major exchanges sometimes they go down sometimes they have problems with their banking relationships when you say”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, as we know, Bitcoin trades 24-7, trades 168 hours a week. So GBTC only trades 40 hours a week, because it basically trades over the counter on the stock exchange. So that's a disadvantage in terms of your liquidity and availability. Now, on the other hand, if you're a human like me and not an alien, not being able to trade 24-7 may not be such a disadvantage because sometimes people do dumb things when they try to trade around the Bitcoin position, right? I like where you're going.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To make more venture type bets in investments that aren't necessarily going to be cash flowing in the short term but are supported by these other cash flowing businesses like Grayscale.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My impression to Barry and I don't know Barry at all is that he's been pretty clear about creating a holding company structure in perpetuity basically sort of a kind of a Berkshire halfway type structure. I don't know if he's going to ever go public or not, but I think he's indicated that he's taking a long-term view on these things. So I'm not sure that people think of him as an asset seller as a guy who's exiting positions. My impression of him is sort of a long-term builder. And so in that respect, I sort of doesn't shock me that nobody's made an approach at him to divest grayscale. Not least because grayscale is so core to their business. And again, I'm not aware of any transparency into DCG, but I have to imagine the Grayscale is the cash cow that's driving the bus that's supporting. I mean, that plus Genesis, right, plus the trading desk that's supporting the overall structure while he's getting.”
2021-02-03 · We Study Billionaires · BTC011: Bitcoin & Traditional Finance w/ Andy Edstrom (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT