Second, as he was explaining the services of Unchained and how they openly work with your financial advisors -- legal, tax, planning, estate -- to create sound structures and procedures, he said it’s like building your own “personal Fort Knox.”

The third highlight with Trey is how he has adapted the FIRE concept of "Financial Independence, Retire Early" to the ultimate freedom asset.

You can jump right into the podcast linked above and hear Trey's story in his own words, but be sure to come back to this article as I have some goodies for you.

Millions of Stories, Only 21 Million Bitcoin

Since I've been in financial markets for three decades, I tend to notice a big divide between the "youngsters" who grew up with Bitcoin just like smartphones, and the traditional finance or "tradfi" folks (like me) who studied the new asset class for years and one day finally realized the true power of Bitcoin (btw, I still capitalize the "B" just like the Internet as a unique technology protocol).

The first group tends to be tech-savvy and skeptical about old institutions, while my group can be full of late-adopters who understand the fiat monetary system that got us to the day where we said "Wow, this digital gold is really an entirely new and compelling asset class that can compete with barbarous gold and money printing!"

Trey Sellers is a bridge in the middle of these two broad groups. You can follow him on X @ts_hodl for excellent education and wry wit to understand why.

Even Michael Saylor, the current champion of "hodling" (buying, "holding on for dear life" and never selling) didn't "get Bitcoin" until 2020.

My story of "getting Bitcoin" is summarized in this 9-minute video...

Bitcoin for Family Offices in 500 Seconds

To symbolize the "speed of light" power of Bitcoin as a digital asset, I tried to make the message only 8.33 minutes long, the time it takes the Sun's light to reach Earth.

I wish I could say I borrowed the "Bitcoin for [insert professional audience]..." idea from Trey because that means I might be further along on my Bitcoin accumulation journey by now!

But since my full appreciation of this new asset class didn't occur until March of 2024 -- after I listened to Saylor speak -- I think my story might also be useful to some people.

From Fed Apologizer to Fiat Antagonist

In 2017, I learned a "little bit" about Bitcoin and Blockchain. Like "a little enough" to be dangerous. I thought it could be a big force of change in finance and technology, but I didn't really understand how.

I even did a podcast episode titled "CRISPR or Bitcoin: Which is the Bigger Disruptor?"

Turns out neither were working for me, so I just stuck with the one area I did understand and had high conviction about: the NVIDIA AI revolution.

But I was still watching Bitcoin. Like "on the edge of my seat" during the 2022 bear market when it looked like Michael Saylor's Bitcoin strategy was about to implode his company MicroStrategy... because his "digital real estate" was about to go below his average buy price near $15,000.

He had just bought new highs above $60,000 in 2021. And then he lived under constant media and Wall Street scrutiny as prices collapsed again.

The last thing he needed was a numbskull by the name of Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) creating yet another scandal in the wild west of crypto. As I've written about since my first article on "rogue traders" in 2008 -- before we even heard Bernie Madoff's name -- technology and regulations may evolve, but human nature never does.

In fact, it just occurred to me that my study of Mental Models of Financial Sabotage was the perfect precursor to what Satoshi Nakamoto invented: impossible to trust jungles of finance in search of a trust-free asset.

But what kept me on the sidelines, or "on the orange fence" to turn a phrase, was that I still couldn't answer two important questions:

(1) How does Bitcoin keep getting hacked, stolen, and lost?

(2) How do I know the supply cap of 21 million is real and permanent?

Sam Bankman Fried, Champion of Dunces

When I learned that SBF didn't even read books, it all made sense. So many kids who grew up with the web, social media, and online forums pride themselves on their internet education. And there's more than ever on X spouting wild views, who you can tell got their "minor in macro" from YouTube.

The problem with this approach is that while Bitcoin is a revolutionary financial asset, technology, protocol, and network... it is not completely separate from the traditional finance world that made it possible.

I know that must sound heretical to some Bitcoin maxis listening, but hear me out. How finance works, how derivatives work, how the Black-Scholes option pricing model works, how complex systems emerge, how semiconductors have evolved because of traditional capitalism -- all of these areas have created the soil for Bitcoin to develop and grow.

Satoshi didn't invent the Secure Hash Algorithm 256 out of thin air. Cypherpunks like Tim May and Hal Finney had been in search of digital, stateless, private money for decades... until the greatest "anon" who ever lived, finally found a recipe in 2008.

The Problem with Fiat Was Still Invisible To Me

But even as recently as early 2024, I was still on the "orange fence." Then I listened to an event where Saylor was on stage with Peter Diamandis and a Strategy MSTR investor in the audience essentially asked him, "I have made so much money on your stock, why should I buy Bitcoin?"

The next few minutes were a masterclass for me. Here was a guy who spoke my language of markets, derivatives, and economics with the knowledge and conviction that only an MIT engineer could.

Saylor explained how he could offer convertible bonds to investors and arbitrageurs that created a packaged, lower-risk form of Bitcoin volatility for them. He was essentially siphoning-off capital from Wall Street to build his revolution -- that he now teaches other corporations.

I went on to watch more of his interviews and presentations about his 2020 "conversion" moment.

Saylor admits he was acting out of desperation during the pandemic when his company was barely growing and he might only have a 2-3 years of cash runway. But when he studied "the problem" of run-away inflation from deficit-driven fiat printing, it became crystal clear that a digital, secure, finite-supply asset was "the solution."

You couldn't run and you couldn't hide from dollar debasement. And I already agreed with him that a precious relic like gold couldn't be the only way.

This was a turning point in my Bitcoin education. I trusted Saylor's knowledge, his conviction, and his long-term plan. So I hit the books to learn all I could about monetary history and fiat debasement. And to get my two burning questions answered about security and scarcity.

I had always taught investors that we could easily beat price inflation with stocks and real estate. Now I suddenly saw the "hidden inflation" of excessive money printing -- driven by endless fiscal deficits. And then I saw what it could do to silently degrade any investment portfolio with another 5-10% of annual monetary inflation.

My "Gradually, Then Suddenly" Moment

In the podcast, Trey Sellers and I talk about the work of Parker Lewis who wrote the 2023 book Gradually, Then Suddenly: A Framework for Understanding Bitcoin as Money to explain the inevitable Bitcoin monetary revolution. I hadn't read it, but the title sounded like a microcosm of the thought process one goes through as they study Bitcoin.

We discuss the view that you should be skeptical as you do "the work" of understanding Bitcoin. And there are no dumb questions. Is it a commodity? Is it money? Is it a better store of value than gold? Who controls it? Can it be outlawed? These are all smart and essential questions that you must pursue to their ends.

Once I "got Bitcoin" I wanted to explain it to everyone I knew. I started a small education group for friends and family and began recommending to investors to at least get started with the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF IBIT. Once they had some skin in the game, I knew their interest and learning curve would accelerate like mine did.

And in October, I published an article that basically said, "Get ready to go all-in because Bitcoin is about to breakout above $70k and it will go very quickly to $85K and then $100k." That prediction worked and my followers and I made some dough using call option strategies.

Then things got tricky as Bitcoin stalled again below $100k. The nation-state “sovereign cavalry” was not showing up to send Bitcoin to $125,000 as I had imagined would happen in Q1.

But my conviction remains that Bitcoin can hit $500k in 5 years by 2030 -- that's only a 38% CAGR and there's no reason that Bitcoin shouldn't ascend to a ratio with gold of at least 25% to 50% of gold's current $22 trillion market cap.

In fact, in my October article, I give you 10 reasons -- without even comparing the two assets. I think they will coexist for some time, just like the US dollar will still be a central part of the global economy in 2050.

Here's that article...

Scaling Laws 101: It's Beyond Exponential and Bitcoin Will Benefit

I also have a special gift if you are trading options. My PDF, titled OptionsPhysics 101: Put-Call Parity, is the foundation of understanding and working with options even before you learn about volatility strategies, Black-Scholes, and the greeks.

That link will lead you to the Gumroad site where thousands of creators post their work for free and for pay. In my case, I just post valuable long-form content there for free.

Cantor Equity Partners and Twenty One Capital

Speaking of scaling, there was an incident last week that attracted lots of attention in the Bitcoin community.

First, Bitcoin surged 6.8% Tuesday April 22, its biggest one-day rally since November 11 (the Sunday March 2 rally of +9% I’m not counting because it was immediately reversed on 3/3). I was scratching my head about that surge for days, until I started to see the chatter about a new Bitcoin "consortium" to challenge Michael Saylor's Strategy, announced on April 23.

The announcement was previewed on Tuesday evening by the Financial Times (FT) and Reuters...

CANTOR NEARS $3BN CRYPTO VENTURE WITH SOFTBANK AND TETHER - FT

TETHER WOULD CONTRIBUTE $1.5BN OF BITCOIN, WHILE SOFTBANK AND BITFINEX WOULD CONTRIBUTE $900MN AND $600MN- FT

This consortium came about after Cantor Equity Partners CEP went public as a SPAC (special-purpose acquisition company) in August 2024, raising $100 million through the sale of 10 million Class A ordinary shares.

Brandon Lutnick, son of U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and chair of brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald, somehow found his way to partner with SoftBank, Tether and Bitfinex to create a multibillion-dollar bitcoin acquisition vehicle.

And their plans appear to be for a “soft IPO” of Twenty One Capital as a SPAC entity under the stock symbol XXI.

XXI expects to launch with more than 42,000 bitcoin, which would make it the third-largest bitcoin treasury in the world, it said.

The transaction gives Twenty One a $3.6 billion enterprise value. It is expected to provide $540 million in proceeds to Twenty One as the company also entered a subscription agreement with investors to raise $585 million of additional capital. Some of the net proceeds will be used to purchase additional bitcoin.

Shares of Cantor will continue trading on Nasdaq under the symbol CEP until the transaction closes. And that's okay, as they've already created quite a few millionaires in just a week.

CEP shares vaulted +55% off of $10 on 4/23 and the next day traded as high as $39 but fell back to $25 on some fast profit-taking. On the morning of May 1 as I write this, CEP has hit $57 for a gain of over 400% since the announcement.

The backroom deals in Washington DC should never cease to surprise us. And with crypto, the grifts have grown even greater as suggested by this morning's New York Times article "Trump Shapes the Policy on Crypto, and Cashes In: Hushed Deals and Foreign Investors Propel President's Digital Money Start-Up."

But after we recover from the shock of the latest "political blessing on private wealth" (bypassing all regulatory functions in favor of crony capitalism) we must then consider if any of this can benefit us... vs the insiders who easily grow their fortunes.

The one way this works for you and I as Bitcoin investors is that this new institutional demand will make a scarce commodity-asset-protocol even more scarce. So if you buy this year, you'll have increased leverage on the future where 95% of the population still doesn't understand or care about the Bitcoin monetary revolution.

I don't think Twenty One Capital will meet its claim to be the biggest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world. There's a low probability they will catch Saylor's Strategy which has amassed over 550,000 BTC.

But the race is heating up among big players. In the last slide of my video presentation (link below), I show a favorite Saylor image of the greatest purchases on the American frontier, from Louisiana to Alaska, and I say:

“This is our chance to grab big pieces of the new world for ourselves… while it’s still on sale.”

Remember that there are only 22 million “dollar” millionaires in the USA. And that means there's not enough Bitcoin for them all to own even ONE. Now is our time.

Bitcoin For Family Offices in 500 Seconds

To wrap this up, I encourage everyone to watch the video linked above.

My goal was to encourage busy HNW individuals to give just a few minutes to understand why their assets were not entirely safe in the dollar system of stocks, bonds, real estate, and private equity.

But the real message is this: it won't move the needle for HNW as much as it will for you and I. So my goal here is really for all of us to learn quickly about monetary debasement and investment alternatives outside of any fiat system.

It will make you think strongly about why you need to allocate a portion of your savings outside of the stock market and real estate into Bitcoin -- either directly with self-custody or just getting your beak wet with the iShares Bitcoin ETF IBIT.

Where to Learn More about Bitcoin and Unchained

If you go to the Unchained website, you'll find educational resources and a link to their YouTube channel with lots of good discussion and tutorials.

And Trey Sellers will be speaking at the world's largest Bitcoin conference May 27-29 at The Venetian in Las Vegas. The theme of Bitcoin 2025 is "Embrace Game Theory."

One more thought: As many of my followers know, I am building a free youth STEM education organization that I want to be funded by Bitcoin. I already know that when I launch the non-profit and begin accepting Bitcoin donations to fund it for a century or three, I will be calling Trey and Unchained to help me plan it properly for such longevity.

I leave you with an X post by Saylor on Monday 4/28...

When banks finally bless Bitcoin

and the experts agree it’s a good idea,

everyone will want to buy it,

no one will need to sell it,

and you won’t be able to afford it.

Talk soon,

Cooker

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