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UNCHAINED BITCOIN SOLUTIONS
Recorded: Dec. 8, 2025 Duration: 2:02:42Space Recording
Short Summary
In a dynamic discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored market trends, growth opportunities, and strategic investment picks, highlighting significant returns and the impact of upcoming earnings reports. The conversation emphasized the importance of adapting to market conditions and leveraging insights for future gains.
Full Transcription
Thank you. What is up, everyone?
Happy Monday, December the 8th.
Better get that Christmas shopping going here pretty soon.
In the meantime, we've been shopping for some stocks and specifically on this show, of course, stock picks for the week. Welcome
in. Hope everyone had a great Monday, a great weekend. And I'm interested to dive into this
one. We had a blow away winner this week. Just an absolute fantastic pick. One of the better picks we've
seen in the last few weeks for sure. And of course, that person took the crown this week.
Let me dive into it a little bit. The market itself, since last Tuesday's open through
today's close, SPY up a quarter of a percent, 0.25. And NASDAQQQ up 0.78%. Those are your benchmarks. As always,
our competition goes from the Tuesday open through the Monday close. And when I'm looking
across the board at our current results, let me make sure our current champion is on stage here.
Boom. I just want to make sure that he hears this as I call out our current champion,
Sam Solid, a 19.85% return. If you can guess the ticker that he had, well, if you've been
paying attention to the market, you probably know which ticker it was, but half. 35.18% return on that.
DRG N was the other pick he had at a 4.5% return,
giving him that 19.85% average.
Sam Solid, our current champion.
Let me call out second and third place.
Second place goes to Chris Patel.
We'll see if we can get him joined up here shortly as well.
He went METU, 7.44% was his average. He did that. He doubled up on that
pick. And then Story Trading, Ben, 4% return. Rounds out the top three. We had a couple other
good picks. Bull Trade Finder, Knott's, was actually right at a just under a three percent return and then jordan my
co-host that's joining me right now boom let me get him uh co-host over there boom sorry did you
mean to put i love stocks at nvdx and aapu for last week or is that for this coming week that
was for last week uh she responded i think she
had a connection error error and um i got those i just i did it manually they basically um i'm
putting them in yeah perfect thank you i'm watching you do it you're uh you're a maestro
when it comes to the google sheet but wanted to make sure we got her on there as well. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you,
sir, for doing all that great coding and stuff. I manually typed in the returns because I was like,
okay, I can manually check these, at least make sure we get the accurate stuff. But as a group,
2.93% return, I'm sorry, 2.61% return for the week, beating the market. Again, well done team,
turn for the week, beating the market. Again, well done team. Great job. And boy, the glitches
right here. Let me get Jordan back up here. But let's dive into it. As always, if you're new to
the show, we go around and do market thoughts kind of in the front half, what we're liking,
what we're concerned about, structure type of things, macro type of thoughts, all that good
stuff. And then we come around and each picker gives two tickers that they think will perform the
best over the next week from tomorrow's open.
Once again, through the Monday close.
Let's start off with our current champion, Mr. Sam Solid with the great call on PATH.
Yeah, I mean, I've done some fundamental research on this company the timing uh was not
because of me that was stock talk uh but i definitely jumped on that bag and waiting and
timing in size and let's just say the portfolio did really good last week the stock is still up
today it i think this is going to $30 in my opinion.
I'm going to pick this again, but I'm also going to pick another stock later when we do the rounds.
But I mean, as far as the marker goes, I mean, I think we're getting a pretty good setup going
back to the 20-day moving average on SPY or at least somewhere near there before FOMC to launch another rip higher in the next leg.
We'll see.
I mean, I think that we should get a nice healthy pullback.
Just one more percent down, maybe one and a half percent down before FOMC.
We'll see what happens.
I mean, that day is going to be super chop.
I'm going to be not trading that day unless we get like a really good intraday setup.
But other than that, I really tried to avoid trading fomc um but yeah we have oracle and adobe reporting i think oracle
is probably the one that a lot of people are looking at this quarter um it's pretty a interesting
chart coming into earnings but i think adobe is actually a bit more interesting coming to earnings
like just negative sentiment companies companies trading at the worst valuation
or the cheapest valuation in a decade.
So it'll be pretty interesting to see what's going to happen with that one.
41% free cash flow margins, I don't know.
Valuation maybe just makes no sense at this point.
Maybe I might or might not pick it, we'll see.
But other than that, I mean, the market's doing what it does
above all the moving averages.
Doesn't really look bearish from a long-term meaning perspective.
Maybe short-term, need a little bit of a pullback here.
But other than that, I mean, I can't complain.
Portfolio's doing great.
It's at all-time highs.
I took down a lot of risk in the trading book last Friday.
Not that I expect the day to happen because, I mean, we just basically went straight up since Friday,
November 21st. So, you know, I mean, trading wise, like it's better not to press things too much,
especially when you have like a 5% move in the indices. But more importantly,
wait for the next setup. Long term wise in the trade on the portfolio, you know, just things are just talking along. My biggest
positions are just continuing to make new highs every single day. And yeah, I mean, Zeta is
actually a really good one. That one's actually pretty solid position. And that's just, it's just
been on a tear. And so it's on semiconductor. But I think that it's going to be a pretty good toward the end of the year. But do I think that we're going to be pretty good toward the end of the year.
But do I think that we're going to have a major Santa Claus rally?
I think we might have had the biggest part of the Santa Claus rally recently.
Maybe it'll continue floating up, but I don't think a 5% move in a couple weeks,
the probability that happened again is pretty slim.
But I don't think we're going to mean revert back down.
I think that maybe people are waiting for it, and people are definitely going to be waiting
for it.
If we go back to the 20-day moving average, which is around 674 in SPY, so it is at like
1.5, 2% down from here.
I think that you'll get a lot of people shaking out of the market, which might bring a pretty
good setup into the next leg if we do get one.
But other than that
i don't know man great time to spend with time with family toward the end of the year
some good football on tv yesterday's game was pretty interesting i don't know if you saw that
or saw the highlights from that amp while you're on the plane but uh that if that if you said that
that was a super bowl game that would have been more enjoyable to watch i just hope the super
bowl this year is going to be even better we'll see i guess it depends on which game you're
talking about yesterday there was there was several good ones oh okay my bad the chiefs
the chiefs yeah yeah i got to watch most of them while i was delayed for two and a half three hours
so yeah that worked out but uh some good football on tv for sure. When it comes to the market, Sam, any concerns around hawkish cut?
Any concerns around data or just anything, I guess, in general?
Or on the flip side of that, are you looking for some positive reactions here?
Maybe once we get through kind of the uncertainty piece of it.
It's tough to tell.
If I have to guess what's going to happen at FOMC Day, I think it's going to be a low volatile event. I think it's going to be an option selling event as it has been. I mean, the VIX is up 10% today, almost 10%. So that's a pretty solid move for the VIX on a single day basis. But we've been just dropping on the VIX for quite some time. The VIX actually did reject the 100 day moving average intraday. So could be moving down further back into the 15s again. If it does, I think FOMC is
going to be probably a very narrow range that a lot of people might be looking to trade and just
get chopped up on. Again, you know, it's just FOMC. It's just we're near all time highs. It
really is not that much fear in the market. I don't think Powell wants to drop a bomb. He never
likes to drop a bomb during FOMC. But I do think that Oracle is probably going to have a bit more impact on the market than
people expect.
I mean, if they come in less than $455 billion in a backlog, that might not paint a good
picture for the market.
But also, if they come back above that, the market now might not believe them, right?
So it's very difficult to tell what's going to happen to the market these days from the short term, long term, definitely bullish. But hey,
man, I messaged you last night. I top ticked that NQ short. It was great. I pulled an M.
It was great. I think I was actually using your account when I did that one. So more
an additional short trade. No, just kidding. I wish I did. But no, that was good. I think
it was more for ego than anything because it wasn't even in size.
But it was pretty nice just to
call that top there for a minute.
I didn't have Wi-Fi,
unfortunately. I would have probably been in that same trade
with you on the plane.
But yeah, great job. Great job on
PATH as well. Reigning champion
Sam Solid with his
market thoughts there. Let's continue
around the panel here, see what the others are looking at. Let's see, second place is not here.
Third place, Mr. Ben, Story Trading. Great calls there. AEO and MDB, 4% return overall. Well done.
What are you seeing out there? I got to hear some of your thoughts earlier, but different audience,
different crowd.
Would love for you to share those with us again.
Sure.
First of all, great job on that path.
I was also in that, but you know that saying, you can't borrow conviction.
Not my stock.
I didn't do the research on it.
So I looked at the earnings report real quick and after hours after they reported, I'm like,
ah, this is just a small beat on their revenue and their eps and their guidance and uh i sold it at like 15 and i had a massive
position too and yeah so you can't borrow conviction you gotta do your own research there
and uh i'll talk about the other side of stock i've done my own research on i have a massive
position i'm holding for huge gains so i can't wait to talk about that. But in any case, in the macro, look, we are in a very exciting part of the year, me, where I'm preparing for my version of the January effect trade.
January effect is something I recognized many years ago on my own, and I had my own spin on how to execute on it.
And it's more than just small caps outperform large caps. There's a lot of incredible opportunities
starting from Christmas Eve day till about mid-January, partly driven by tax law selling.
And then you also get a confluence of other factors like catalysts and positive sentiment.
And it's really fun.
So, like, I'm really focused on that right now.
I'm doing a lot of research to get into that seasonality that's about to come upon us.
And we also get that, hopefully, Santa Rally effect from Christmas to New Year.
Now, between now and then, we have FOMC this week.
We've seen volatility in small caps in IWM since Friday, which is really being driven, I think, from Bitcoin.
It's very clear, you see this, Bitcoin 20DMA is really impacting the breadth of risk assets. Every time we drop below it, there must be some big algos connected to the 20DMA on Bitcoin,
which is just directing risk in just regular equities.
It's really kind of weird what's going on, but it's just clear as day.
So there's like two big things influencing small caps to risk assets.
It's the FOMC this week, and it's how Bitcoin is done versus the 20DMA.
And, you know, given the price action of Bitcoin since Friday
and given, I don't know, some uncertainty in terms of is this rate cut priced in,
obviously if we get 50 bips or flying, I don't expect it.
I just saw a post.
I don't know where he was getting it from, but Grant Cardone,
I don't know if you guys know him, but he just posted something like, told you 50 bps is coming. I have no idea where that's coming from. I don't know if some just data came out that's pointing to that. I have to maybe look into that.
and risk of a sell-off if it's just 25 bps.
So, you know, I'm just really focused on individual stocks.
Right now, like 70% of my portfolio is in three stocks right now.
And, you know, what's that?
Bull?
Bull's one of them.
Weeble's one of them.
Kodak's another one.
And CWN's the third one. But in any case, yeah. So, you know, I'm doing my stock picking thing and I'm worried about volatility, worried about maybe a little bit of sell the news on FOMC.
What happens January 2nd with QQQ and big caps and large caps and the companies that have done really, really well in 2025, I think we may be seeing there's a risk of tax deferral selling.
You know, people don't want to pay taxes till next year or next quarter if they're institutions, if they're paying quarterly.
you know there's a lot of
I almost
I'm afraid to say it but I don't know
there's signs of stagflation out there right
the bad economic data and inflation
kind of stuck at 2.8%
but you know that's
a worry for January
I think you have to be aware of that
honestly I might buy some puts
the last day of December
on the queues or on Soxel or something like that. We'll see. And then I'll go long the
January effect picks. So, you know, my thoughts are more about kind of preparing for the seasonality
over the next three or four weeks rather than what's going to happen this week. I think there's
definitely going to be some volatility and some unknowns what happens
this week, but I'm like really not too concerned about it.
And I'm just like very happy, concentrated in two or three names right now.
And I cannot wait to get into about, I'm probably going to diversify into about 10
January effect pick names that I'm going to be writing from Christmas Eve day through mid January,
with probably something like a 20% position of my portfolio,
just in call options on 10 different names,
about 2% each.
I do that pretty often.
Most years it works out incredibly well.
So yeah,
that's my thoughts.
I don't know if that makes sense.
Makes sense to me. I like it, Ben. Well, I'm excited to come back to see what you've got
picked for this week. I honestly, I'm stuck on about eight things that I don't just love. So
I'm really curious to see what everyone's going to pick this week with the possible volatility
in the middle of the week. Obviously, some earnings. You heard Sam mention a couple of earnings.
Broadcom also reporting earnings on Thursday.
So Broadcom, Oracle, Among, and Adobe.
Synopsis, some of the bigger ones.
And then I know a lot of people are watching some of these other names as well.
Planet Labs, for example.
Maybe Vail Resorts.
I don't know.
Maybe booking a ski trip.
Either way.
I want to go over to Chris Patel,
who was our second place finisher with METU. Talk about conviction on a thesis there on meta. He's
been pounding the table on that. It's played out pretty nicely there. Chris, what are your market
sentiment thoughts? I see an unmute. I didn't get any. that was it those were his thoughts oh well
he said buy more metu i think that's sorry i had chris let me try your uh input your mic maybe
is uh on a different input something like that because i see you unmuting but but I'm not getting any sound here.
Let's give him one second.
Try to rejoin.
Gotta love this app sometimes.
In the meantime, let's go over to Nick Drendel.
Get some market sentiment thoughts from our friend Nick Drendel.
Oh no, am I going 0 for 2?
Oh no, same as you. Oh no. Am I going 0 for 2? Oh, no. Same issue.
Oh, no.
R and R.
Yeah, I've got no voice there either.
All right. Well, that's great.
Nick, we may have to have you drop and come right back up as well.
Michael Niles, am I going to go for three with my...
Uh-oh. Test him.
Oh, we got sound for Michael Naus.
All right, you just saved the entire space.
Michael Naus, great to have you back on the show.
I know you were pumped up about finally getting free on some of these Monday evenings again.
We're just as pumped to have you back on the show here with us.
Market sentiment, what are you looking out there?
I know, obviously, you're a quant, you're a very systematic trader guy,
but I'm curious on your market thoughts here.
Yeah, and it's good to be back.
And I love the talk already with some people mentioning the seasonality.
This is a big time of year for that.
I'm not one that's a huge seasonality guy, but the ones that I like
are around elections and around taxes, because those are, you know, the two unavoidable,
except that third one with death that we have to just deal with all the time. So
yeah, just to reiterate for people quickly, I've done videos about these on my X and everything if you want to look deeper.
But Santa Claus rally is the last five trading days of this year and the first two of next year.
There is like an 80% chance the market's up around one and a half to 2% in that period of time, which is great.
And all of this just shout out.
I'm sure you've had.
I know you have lots of spaces with Jeff Hirsch and his father, Yale Hirsch, kind of coined all these phrases like 62 years ago. So it just goes
to show how long this kind of stuff works. And then, yeah, the January effect starts about now,
it's about halfway through December and goes all the way till March, but like the bulk of it is
done in January.
And like StoryTrading said, this one is one that makes perfect sense where small caps are generally shitty companies.
So they get kind of hammered into the end of the year where people sell them to generate tax losses.
And then after the lapse period where they can buy them back,
if they still like the fundamentals of the company,
they've harvested their tax loss and they come back to buy them back if they still like the fundamentals of the company they've harvested their tax loss and they come back to to buy them back and that again happens
at the end of this month all the way for the next couple months where you have a put a three to seven
percent chance out three to seven percent outperformance uh and again yale yale hirsch
again 60 years been talking about this just to show it's not like, you know, just a random occurrence that's happened once or twice, like sell in May go away or something like that.
Like this is a legit phenomenon that they've studied back till 1950 and legit and happens.
The reason I bring that up is when it comes to market sentiment, kind of funny that last week, all of this is lining up and we have the queues that are still a couple
percent off all time highs. But yet we have IWM, the small cap index made a new weekly all time
closing highs last week. So goes to show that we may be seeing the seasonality things take hold.
And just like anything, right, seasonality is one piece of the puzzle and you need price action to confirm and all of that. But if we are getting this relative outperformance in small caps going forward, generally that money has to come from somewhere.
In this case, it looks like it's coming from these kind of larger cap names.
to be a good environment, I think, for, you know, nerds like us that talk on Twitter spaces and
listen to Twitter spaces, because usually we're just not trading the mag seven, right? There's
a lot of the world, a lot of the trading community and the investing community that only cares about
these mag seven stocks. But if we're getting this period of relative outperformance from small caps,
it means that these stocks, these big stocks that have been the movers the last couple of years, might just do nothing for a period of time where we start to see this rotation and this outperformance.
In which case, again, that's great for us that are OK with moving our money into into different caps and into different spaces and all of that.
Annoying for people who are just holding broad market indexes. So when we're talking about the
market, you got to understand that for the the spy and the queues, it doesn't matter if there's
like 1000 tiny companies that are doing great because of this, this outperformance period,
the the indexes themselves will look like they're choppy and not moving. So if you're looking at
the market as, you know, everything, or if you're looking at it as the spy, I think you're going to
see two different markets out there. So more than ever, this period of time for each year,
makes sense to dive under the hood, kind of ignore the broad market indexes a little bit and try to
find individual stocks and like
individual sectors that are really outperforming because so far it's starting to pan out that
we're going to looking to see a lot of those things any particular pockets of the market that
you still really like here i mean obviously i've asked this question a few times but we've seen
kind of the resurgence in retail going into the end of the year.
Some of the Black Friday sales numbers look pretty decent.
We saw small caps running, as you mentioned there as well.
There's obviously the rate play that's kind of being watched pretty strongly.
What pockets of the market are you finding opportunities in?
Well, I think the rate play and the small cap is kind of the same story, right?
Where we've learned, even if you're new to the market, that these MAGA cap guys, they don't care what rates are, right?
If you've got enough cash that you're Apple or something, you don't care if the rates are 5% or 2% or whatever they are.
It's the little guys.
It's your mom and pa organizations that are. It's the little guys. It's
your mom, pa organizations that really got hurt with the rate hike. So the fact that I think
we're seeing, right, the cut cycle at the same time that we're getting this historically
outperforming seasonality makes perfect sense where, you know, if you were someone for like
these regional banks, or is I think a perfect example with KRE, they had a rough time, right?
We had a lot of these guys go bankrupt when the rates really started cranking.
And, you know, we've regional banks, at least for the last couple of weeks, have been on absolute tear.
I'm seeing up 12% here.
So I think it's all one story that if you do get the relative outperformance of small caps, you're probably also getting interest rates coming down at the same time.
So the large components of IWM or of the small caps, a lot of biotechs, a lot of smaller banks and brokers and things like that, that I think is is the best place to look at, right? So, you know, focus on, you know, find a drug company
or a couple of them that you believe in what they're doing
and have some sort of catalyst happening soon.
Find some even, I know these are boring,
but like regional banks, smaller financial companies
that would really benefit from rate cuts.
And I think that's a really, really good hunting ground
for if, again again all of the stuff
that that looks like is is happening is going to happen into the new year
oh great to have you back on the show sharing thoughts come back around and get a couple
picks from you here shortly let's test out chris patel's microphone one more time. Yeah, it should work properly. There it is.
Now we've got you, Chris.
Great job with the Meta pick or M-E-T-U pick this past week.
Conviction.
Can't borrow conviction.
I heard Ben say that earlier.
I really like that.
But either way, Chris, what are your thoughts about the market in general,
the macro, the big picture of things here?
I think we're in this world where it's kind of like these mega caps are horses. And every time
a new news cycle comes out, the market discounts one and then goes aggressive on another. And then
it kind of flips the switch a little bit and it keeps happening. And I think a lot of the market
participants are probably rotating in and out of mega caps, right? So if you think about like right now, if you look at Google, right, Google at the start of the year was one of the most undervalued among the mega caps. Now, all of a sudden, they're getting all the value and all the love after the Gemini release and some of the data that Google's been able to come out with.
So I think we're at this point where each business is being kind of like challenged and say, well, what about you?
And I think that's what's happening.
So I think we could actually see a rotation into NVIDIA going forward now that the news has kind of digested all the stuff with Google TPUs and Google's valuations
gone pretty bananas, especially from an EBITDA multiple standpoint.
And then NVIDIA has kind of flattened out a little bit.
So bullish news on NVIDIA comes out today about China chips.
And now all of a sudden the market wakes up and says, hey, listen, I need to get into NVIDIA.
I need to get into NVIDIA.
And then NVIDIA reports their earnings. and it's like a blowout quarter.
Then people are like, oh yeah, see, I was right. It's kind of happening the same exact way.
I would say for someone who is looking for a lot of liquidity, especially these large hedge funds
who are looking to arbitrage and be in a safe place. I mean,
what safer place is there than the mega caps, which are just generating absolutely tremendous amount of free cash flow that during periods of weakness that they can just deploy into share
buybacks and boost up future earnings, right? So right now you're looking at Meta not getting as
much love and then all of a sudden Meta started getting some love, you know, and so now Meta is kind of on this recovery path back to just have rotation in and out of the mega caps, depending on which new cycle is carrying which one.
So, I mean, that's probably how I'm going to position myself for the next couple of weeks in that I'm ultra long on meta.
I think meta's got a gap fill that they can get to
and just stay long and strong on meta for me.
Appreciate those thoughts, Chris.
Any thoughts around the rate stuff?
I mean, I know it's kind of a hard thing,
but I'm just curious with Powell, his commentary.
I mean, it's all but priced in at 25 basis points, Scott.
But that tricky word, priced in, is always a dangerous sword to play.
The unfortunate reality is that no matter what anyone says, there are certain things in the economy that are going to push inflation higher.
And then there's going to be things that push inflation down. And right now, you know, each thing has its own
impact. I'll give you an example. Like a lot of people say, well, look, the tariffs, we had all
these tariffs and we didn't get inflation. And it's like, okay, yeah, but you know, a lot of
those things are going to be related to inventory. And right now you're starting to see businesses
raise prices because they're like, okay, we're running out of inventory and now we still have the tariff.
So I think delayed responses are being translated into, hey, look, nothing happened. And it's like,
take a break for a second. And then you look at LNG, same thing is happening on the natural gas
side where data center demand is absolutely insane. And then on top of it, you've got LNG export facilities coming online,
and that's going up.
So LNG prices in the U.S. have spiked from $2 per MMB to you to now $5.
So it's one of those things that the administration is playing a game of
whack-a-mole right now, trying to kind of undo some of the things that they know
may or may not have worked out well.
And I think a lot of the decisions that were made were made purely on what could they accomplish
in the short period of time that they're allowed to. As an example, I think Besson said it best,
there was a choice. Do we pursue illegal immigration or do we pursue tariffs? Because
each policy is just going to be a giant hit to the economy in either direction. So which one are
we going to pursue? Because if you think about it, the mass deportation was going to be heavily
deflationary and then the tariffs are going to be inflationary. And so they kind of just counteracted each other, in my opinion.
And that's why we're seeing inflation kind of get to that 3% amount,
which is like above what the Fed's target is.
But it's not like, oh, my God, bad.
So I think that's what I asked.
I asked that question earlier, Chris, in a different space.
I said, at what point do we just see the goalposts moved
and the 2% is no
longer the target? And they say 2.5% or 3% is normal. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how
the Fed could possibly signal that 3% is okay. Because if you say 3% is okay, that means that
the neutral rate on the treasury should be higher. It should be like four and a half, five. So, you know, any indication that you're willing to accept a 3% inflation rate
means that all your long bond, all your long treasuries are going to have to compensate
because what, you think investors are going to say, oh, inflation is 3%, it's all good money to
the US for 3%. Like, no. If you say to people like, hey, long-term inflation goal is 1% or 1.5% to 2%, then people
will be willing to buy your 10-year bonds at 4% or 4.5% because this way they're actually getting
some yield out of it. So if you project that 3% is going to be the normal rate, then all of a sudden
now your long-term bonds are never going to go below that four, four and a half, probably even,
they might even go up to like five. Does it compensate for that? So any messaging on,
hey, 3% is acceptable, I think would be a real detriment to long-term bondholders,
in which case a lot of people would just be asking for more yield, in which case it would
actually not be as good because then you also have the issue with housing, right, where a lot of people are priced out of the market.
A lot of people are sitting on 3% mortgages.
And there's a lot of prospective buyers that want to get into this market, but they can't afford 6.5% interest rates.
So, you know, what's going to happen there?
So it's all kind of like working its way out.
So I think some of the signaling that's going to come with the next Fed chair is going to
be something that we all have to watch out for. But I don't think signaling to the market that
a 3% inflation rate should be normalized would be good. Because then, like I said,
the bondholders on the longer term side, they're going to say, wait a second,
I need some additional yield to make sure that I'm getting some return.
Otherwise, basically, I'm sitting on no gains on Treasury.
So what's the point of even buying a Treasury?
Great thoughts there, Chris.
I want to bring in Nick Drendel.
Nick, did we get you reconnected with a mic?
Hopefully. Can you hear me?
There it is. We got you, Nick. How's it going?
Pretty good. Pretty good. Thanks for having me.
Pretty awesome market the past two weeks here,
where we saw group after group after group join the rally on the upside.
And for two weeks, you saw any group that was showing relative weakness eventually broke to the upside,
whether it be the crypto, the nuclear names, the stuff that was
really lagging off the lows, started to build some higher lows and actually got back in some
uptrends, at least in the short term on Thursday. And then every time we kind of have a hour long
or two hour long pullback in the market, We've bounced at the five-day moving average. Yeah, there's a little bit of volatility there, but overall, really, really great action.
The only thing that's making me a little bit hesitant for this upcoming week is how quickly
we've come off the lows and the current positioning. So the positioning that I look at,
because we don't have commitment of traders data still, even though the government's not shut down anymore, which is disappointing, is the NAIM, Active Investors Index.
And that jumped from 89% last week to 98.5%, which is over that 95% threshold that I start to get a little bit cautious about.
95% threshold that I start to get a little bit cautious about. The reason why I'm not as cautious
as I was the first time it jumped over that 95% at the end of October is because we are just coming
out of not technically a correction, but like a pretty steep pullback in with that kill bar that
we had on November 20th. I basically call what we had a correction.
I know it doesn't meet the percentage threshold,
but enough things got damaged under the surface there.
But now I'm kind of looking at the correction that we had at the kind of
July to September of 2024, where we went three weeks down.
It was definitely a deeper correction but then we snapped
back for two weeks higher we had a week and a half like higher low pullback and then had a very nice
sustained rally and that's kind of what i'm thinking is going to go on um over the next like
week and a half i don't because of the correction or the pullback wasn't as steep back as 2024s, just a pullback into the 10 day or even the 20 day, I think would be perfectly fine.
There's just so many quality setups and so many themes in the market that you get one more higher
low pullback and things are set for an end of year rally, kind of a really strong
January and February. And another kind of comparison that I've been doing throughout the
whole year is looking back at 2020's price action, because I think the correction that we had in
April matches the type of volatility, the steepness that we saw, obviously for different reasons. But then we had that V recovery,
very similar to what we had this year. And in that year, we had a really nice January,
halfway through February, and really had all the small caps rocking. And if you look at IWO,
which is like the growth stocks of the
Russell 2000, we still are not back at February 21 highs. We're getting there. We're very, very
close, but it does feel like that's the next target to get to. Now, whether we get there like
this week or we have a week of pulling back volatility, kind of a shakeout here.
I'm hoping for a shakeout because there will be some A-plus setups after that, if that does occur.
But I don't think there's really a reason to be super bearish by any means going into the rest of this year. I don't think people are going to be in a rush to sell
and realize their capital gains a year early.
There's enough quality setups that things just feel like
they're a little bit too strong to end the year on a sour note.
So Santa Claus is coming to town.
That's what I'm hearing from a lot of our panelists up here.
Nick, I appreciate you. Appreciate you sharing those thoughts as well. Great having you on the
show. Take a moment if you're in the audience, make sure you give all of these great speakers
a follow. Check out all the things that they're doing on and off this app. A lot of good live
stream content out there, a lot of deeper rooms and learning services and stuff out there as well that you
can check out. And I want to go over to my co-host, Mr. Ace the Kid, no longer TA, just Ace the Kid,
keeps messing up my schedule post on Sunday until I get all those kinks worked out of it. But Ace
the Kid, Jordan, not a bad return, 2% across the board there. You were close to the podium.
What are your thoughts?
What are you seeing as we tap into some of these daily areas
that you've been watching for?
I like what Nick Drendel was saying.
I don't expect any particularly harsh selling going into the end of the year
given that people don't want to realize those gains until next year.
So from here, you know, last week we were sitting on a little bit of a dip last Monday.
And I thought we could dip a little bit more.
And this market just wanted to rock it.
And it's been kind of a slower grind upside.
And it doesn't seem like it's stopping yet.
So I guess I've got to be, you know, continue to be bullish.
I've been taking things
very day by day and just spread an interesting spot given the daily chart and where we're at.
But I can't complain with what this market is doing right now, right? We're getting opportunities
every single day. Even on a Monday with not much news today, we had a ton of opportunities to the
downside and some scalpy opportunities to the upside.
So I just think no matter what my kind of higher timeframe thoughts are right now, which I don't have a lot of conviction on, especially until after this FOMC, I think it's just take it day by day and play with this volatility until it's gone.
Because we're not far from all-time highs.
I don't know where SPY was today. Let's see. I don't think we're not far from all-time highs. I don't know where SPY was today.
Let's see.
I don't think we're too far off of there, though.
Yeah, we're right there.
We're just a few bucks off those all-time highs, right?
So I think it's pretty imminent that we go towards there,
and I don't really foresee too much harsh selling
before the end of the year.
So I guess just drifted up into the right,
but I would like to see FOMC bring a little volatility like it kind of has been the past
few times, maybe bring a little downside in the market. I just don't know if we can expect that.
So again, like Chris Patel was kind of saying, no matter what anybody's thoughts are,
things are going to do what they're going to do. We don't have a crystal ball and we're not able to see exactly what's going to happen.
And so that's where I just say keep taking it day by day.
You know me, I'm playing with these overnight levels a lot of the time, previous day highs and lows.
And once we take those levels intraday, I'm pretty much done for the day and I could care less what the market wants to do.
So we'll see if we want to keep drifting higher, but nothing structurally wrong with this market from
what I can see. I mean, we've been going a little more sideways for sure, but all dips are being
bought. No real higher timeframe structure is being broken. That's what I'm looking for, right?
If we broke through October's lows and actually got some downsides through there,
it might've been a different story.
But instead, we swept those lows.
And I guess my case still stands from when we were talking from those lows
is that I think we continued to these highs.
So we're just going to continue with that.
FOMC might be interesting this week.
So I would advise people to be very careful.
I know I'm going to be on a flight for a portion of the day.
So I'm probably going to stay pretty risk-off.
But, yeah, those are my thoughts right now.
Just stay safe out there.
I like it, Jordan.
I'll be sitting in a lounge somewhere in Atlanta's airport as well,
watching Papal, staying away from probably trading too much during that time,
but always attentive to what's going on. It will be very interesting to see. I'll just toss in on top here. We'll get to the
picks. When I look at the overall structure, yes, we're 1% away from the high. We really haven't
had a pullback. You don't always have to have a pullback. Sometimes you have time consolidation.
That's kind of what I'm seeing here. We're getting some of the short-term EMAs catching back up to price action on the indices level.
If you look at SPX, if you look at NDX, QQQ, SPY, whatever you prefer, you're seeing the 9 EMAs slowly creeping its way back up,
getting close to kind of touching some of these lows that we've had the last few days,
and other things curling back up and catching back up.
So we'll see.
I would love to get a little dip buy down into that area,
but if I don't get it, I'm not going to sit here and fight it trying to get it.
So we'll see being tactical here as we go through some of the volatility,
which VIX came back up a little bit today,
but you didn't really notice it in the price action.
Just kind of a natural mechanical thing there.
But enough with the market sentiment
thoughts. Let's get into the picks here. Vegas could not make it tonight. She had a
personal thing come up. I'll leave it at that. But she did send me her picks. She's going to play
NVDX, which unfortunately that news came out already, so she won't get the benefit of that.
But she is an NVDXx which is 2x leverage nvidia
and orcx she's going to play oracle earnings and with that said let's jump into all the picks we
have up here from the pickers on stage sam solid current ring champion you're up to bat first
i'm gonna have to do short oracle long adobe Short Oracle, long Adobe. Short Oracle, ORCL, and long Adobe.
Any words of wisdom on that?
Or are you just, hey, one is overpriced,
the other one's underpriced?
I mean, I just don't think that we're really going to get
much happening this week in the market.
So I'd rather be neutral in terms of the competition.
And I think Adobe's valuation makes no sense.
I think the bars have pretty low for them for earnings.
I think Oracle is in a lose-lose situation here.
I think that either they report a good backlog where the market doesn't believe them,
or they report a bad backlog where the market doesn't believe them, or they report a bad backlog where the market criticizes them for it.
So, I mean, I'll be neutral.
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
It's all good.
It's all good.
It's all for the competition, of course.
Full disclosure.
Some people do take the trades.
Some do not take the trades.
This is for the competition.
Only what we are calling out here on the space.
And as always, just do your own due diligence no matter what.
But Oracle, ORCL, and Adobe, A-D-B-E, from Mr. Sam Solid.
They're a current champion.
We'll see how that plays out.
What if you just hit a banger on both directions?
That would be fantastic, Sam.
That would be great.
Let's go ahead do you
have a comment no i said i'd love it yeah we we i would love it i'd love it for you all right uh
let's go to ben ben uh what uh two picks are you looking at this week okay um i gotta do the kodak
one do i have a three minutes to run down the thesis real quick here?
You heard it before.
Yeah, go for it.
All right.
So wait a second.
How do I put this stock picks for – is it up in the notes?
Okay, great.
So check out Kodak chart.
It's been insane.
And I've been in it most of this whole ride from, let's go pull up the daily chart.
So you see the earnings report there actually got in and after hours after they reported on November 6th.
And it's been a very, very great ride.
And it's just one catalyst after another.
And each of these are basically inflection catalysts.
catalyst. It's just amazing what's going on. The latest of the catalyst I put up in the nest.
It's just amazing what's going on.
The latest of the catalyst I put up in the nest.
So the latest of the catalyst is a kind of sneaky insider buy that a lot of people don't realize
is an insider buy because the algos don't recognize it. And so there's no news items on it.
So the Kennedy Lewis fund that the co-founders of the fund sit on the Kodak board, or at least one of them is represented on the board.
So they're a director of Kodak.
Bought one million preferred shares Friday after the close.
These preferred shares mature in May and pays like a 4% annual dividend quarterly, but they bought it from
the fund they bought it from. They paid a premium over face value of 1.5%. They paid
101.5 instead of 100. Long story short, anyway, these preferred shares are convertible to
common shares, convertible to 9.5 million common shares. So look, the insider here sits on the board. They're not
buying the stock to get $100 million back in May, plus their puny dividend for a total return of 0.36%
over five months. The reason they're doing this is that they could convert these to common shares,
and if you do the math, they're getting 9.5 million common shares at ten dollars and sixty-five cents so this came out
Friday after the close I already had a massive position going into this news
Friday and I increased my position even more I have like a like 40 percent of my
accounts and Kodak now like 30 like maybe 30 to 35 percent common shares and
like five to ten percent options, something like that.
So in any case, let me now rewind.
That's the latest is that there's a massive, effectively, there's a $100 million insider buy,
which just happened at $10.65.
The stock reacted today up 8%, but it's still trading over $1 under where this insider just bought.
Okay.
Now, I want to rewind just a little bit to tell you the story and why this is justified.
This all started on the earnings report on, you can see there, November 5th, where they had a massive inflection to profitability in their operating profit,
flipping from just like $ million dollars in profit last
year, year over year, to $28 million year over year. And there were no one-time items in there.
It was all just cost-cutting. They also had some revenue growth for the first time in years,
top-line revenue growth. So they're seeing revenue growth, a major inflection of profitability at
$28 million a quarter. And in that earnings release,
they said that this pension reversion, they had a $1 billion surplus in their pension,
and they've been working for three years to unlock that money and give it to the company,
right? There's a lot of legalities how to do that. It took them three years to do this. And
in that earnings report on November 5th or 6th there, they said, hey,
this pension reversion is just about finished. It'll finish before year end. And we're going to,
after taxes, there's huge taxes on that. After taxes, we thought we're going to get 500 million.
We're actually going to get 600 million. And that'll happen by the end of the year.
Anyway, if you look at the chart, you'll see how it reacted for two straight
days, exploded, pulled back when the market pulled back. And then on December 3rd, they announced
that the pension reversion is finished, and they got $608 million, and they're paying off hundreds
of millions of dollars in debt, and they're keeping over $300 million cash on their balance
sheet and just keeping some very low interest long-term debt So that news happened on December 3rd and then the next day. This is fascinating another very
Important pivot they were on Fox business on the Maria Bartiroma show
She didn't interview him someone else did, but they played a recording of the interview
and I'll tell you in a second why this is so important.
I'll tell you in a second why this is so important CEO was on that show
CEO was on that show.
Fox Business actually went on site to their huge business campus in New York,
Kodak, Eastman Park.
And then later in that day, replayed on Fox Business.
Kevin O'Leary commented on, you know, I like their pivot to pharma.
That's another thing.
They're pivoting to pharmaceuticals.
But in any case, the reason that that was so important is that this company
has been so hush-hush for three years. You can't get them on the phone. They don't do Q&A on CCs.
They've just been focusing on this transformation of the company and the balance sheet.
And the fact that they were on Fox Business on Thursday means that now they want to get out there
and really support the stock price and go out there and do some marketing. What happened the next day? The next day, you get what's in the nest.
Insider buys $100 million of stock, effectively buys it at $10.65 and in a very hidden way,
like I'm saying, there's still a huge opportunity here because the algos don't recognize this as
an insider buy yet, but it is absolutely a $100 million insider buy,
9.5 million shares of 1065. Now, to add on top of all of that, I'll just say that
valuation-wise, it's still very cheap. It's trading in an EV to EBITDA of about five,
five EV to EBITDA. You won't find anything in the chemicals industry or whatever kind of industry you want to put them in at a 5 EBITDA.
I pegged value, I think fair value is at like $15 or so.
And then on top of that, there's a 10% short position, okay, and this short position is
6.7 million shares short, and the volume today was 2.4 million, right? They're having a heck of a time
covering and the stock is at a four and a half year high. So if you talk about like what triggers
a short squeeze, a stock at a four and a half million, four and a half year high with insiders
buying 100 million shares at like a 20% premium to the last trade on Friday, or whatever that was, 1065 to 890 closed.
I mean, the elements are all there.
This is a perfect storm.
And I understand the RSI's are stretched on the daily and the weekly.
By the way, look at the monthly chart.
This thing's gorgeous.
And I'm sticking with these high RSI's.
I think we're continuing this explosion higher.
I don't think there's any reason why the stock should be trading below where the insiders bought it at $10. And that's what's called $10.50. Because if they wait till May to
convert, they'll collect like 10 cents in dividends. So their cost comes out just a smudge.
All right. So and this also has a previous history that a lot of people are hoping,
you know, on the first Trump administration, if you go look back on the chart on July 2020,
the stock went from like $1.50 to $60 in like a day, like something crazy.
When the Trump administration said, hey, we're going to give you a $785 million loan to pivot
into pharmaceuticals.
Long story short, it didn't happen because of some allegations of insider trading.
But in the end, that's what they did.
They didn't get a loan.
They actually unlocked their $1 billion surplus of $1 billion. They got $608 million cash after the excise
tax, and they did the pivot to pharma on their own. So that whole story has actually played
out. So, I mean, there's so much going in here from low valuation, great sentiment,
you know, pivoting, you know, company pivoting, the technical short squeeze. I mean, this
is just a perfect storm. It's my largest position by far right now, and I expect this move to continue to at least 10.50. Technically,
I think the next target was going to be 11.20. 11.20, I think, is the next target. You'll see
some psychological resistance at 10, maybe some more psychological resistance at 10.50 to 10.65
where the insiders just bought on Friday. So Kodak, I'm going to
stick with that even though it's just exploded a lot so far, but I am being greedy on this one
and I've got a big position. I'm going to keep it. I'm like at 35% common shares and in fact,
I'll tell you right now, actually 32% common shares and I got call options worth 2, 3, 4, about 5% of my account is in call options.
So making a big bet on that Kodak.
And the second one, real quick, won't have to say much about this one.
Breaking news after the close, AVAV, Arrow Environment, they just won a huge contract.
After hours, $874 million versus a $14 billion market cap.
Look at the chart.
20 DMA breakout, I think, is going to occur tomorrow on that news.
AVAV.
Is that V as in Victor?
Yeah, Apple Victor, Apple Victor.
Perfect. Got it.
Kodak, love the rundown on Kodak there.
And then AVAV. I am tweeting all these out, of course.
If you're following along, you'll see a tweet with every one of these picks.
Nick Drindle, let's get your two picks in here next.
All right. So we've been talking about how, well, I talked about how each group that was showing relative weakness eventually started to participate in this rally.
And I think the next group to do that is going to be the Chinese equities, especially with this news that NVIDIA can sell chips to China.
That seems like a little de-escalation to me.
And the stock that I'm looking at first is the most liquid would be Alibaba, BABA. Super, super tight chart
the last four trading days, just under the five to 10 to 20 day moving averages. But you're not
going to get tighter risk reward buying on strength than that setup. And I'll go with BABX just to get
the leverage on that. But this is a stock that broke out of a three and a half year base earlier in the year, rallied 61%.
And then as the tariff war kind of heated up again, we went through this correction.
But again, just super tight price action.
And now it is kind of trending a little bit up after hours.
So I think I'm not the only one that's thinking about this NVIDIA news that way.
So we'll see if we can get through Friday's high tomorrow.
And then the way I'd actually trade it is keep my stop at today's low.
And if we take that out, then that would invalidate the setup on the long side for me.
then that would invalidate the setup on the long side for me.
And then second one, because I think it is going to be like a trickier week overall,
I'm just going to go with a stock that I've been stalking for a very long time for a potential short,
and that's going to be Costco.
It's had a major stage two uptrend for multiple years now.
And then this whole year, we've been in a stage
three topping phase. So if you're familiar with stage analysis from Stan Weinstein,
he's got a couple of interviews on YouTube. He does an incredible job at kind of nailing the
larger market trends of a stock. And you go through your stage one, your basing phase,
your stage two uptrend. Eventually you go through a stage one, your basing phase, your stage two uptrend.
Eventually, you go through a stage three top and then your stage four downtrend.
And we've seen a stage three top here.
We peaked in February of this year, did not take out February's high. So started showing relative weakness compared to the rest of the market.
Basically, all year, we lost the 200day moving average, then started rejecting that as
we rallied back to the upper side of that. Now we started rejecting at the declining 50-day
moving average. And now we're right at this point, right around 880, where buyers have stepped in a
couple of times when the prices flashed lower, but we have earnings
this upcoming week in very similar to the MMYT short.
That was in a stage three top.
We were going into earnings on October 28th.
And since that point, that stock dropped from $90 down to $70.
So when you get into a stage four downtrend, you can take a look at SFM, MMYT, and then we'll see if Costco is the next one.
But it's usually a pretty clean move to the downside.
Now, if they come out and they crush earnings, then this could be invalidated, like stage three tops.
They sometimes come back into stage two uptrends.
into stage two uptrends.
Tesla in 2021 did that.
Tesla in 2021 did that.
But for the most part,
we've seen other types of consumer stores like this
break to the downside.
And it seems like Costco is one earnings call
away from that.
So we'll go, is there a leverage Costco to short?
COTG.
Yes, let's go with that one.
All right, shout out leverage shares, friends of the show, COTG. Yes, let's go with that one. All right.
Shout out Leverage Shares, friends of the show,
COTG short and BABX long.
If you are coming for the unchained Bitcoin conversation
that we're going to have here in just a few moments,
please go ahead and request up on stage.
In the meantime, we're going to finish out the stock picks here
with Michael Naus up to bat next.
All right. So I'm usually a little quicker i think than most just because it's been a while since i'll give all the caveats that
i'm a quant right so i'm a systematic trader which just means that i build systems i run them
i back test them and they spit out results of things that I should trade.
So a bit of a caveat there that I don't know anything about these companies.
Anything I learn about the news of the world is entirely against my will.
So these could be amazing companies.
They could be absolute crap.
But both of them have come from my kind of breakout my trend following kind of
breakout system and both in this system just it has a sub 50 50 win rate so both of these things
have more of a chance of failing than they do actually working so just fyi in that in that
case where um but you know like most things when it comes to trend following and
everything like that there's just because they have a sub 50 50 win rate doesn't mean that
it's not something you want to trade right because the risk reward on these are usually pretty great
both of them too are on my one I have a full video on on my little feed there and the other one, just a little bit of a picture. So first one is MindMed, MNMD.
I've actually held this one in another account for a long time.
Another trade that I bought some at five and the things at like 13 right now.
So I have a rule if I ever accidentally double my money on something, I sell half and I move it to this other account that I don't even have like face unlock on. So it takes me a
long time to, to actually look at it for on purpose to make sure I'm removed from it. But
triggered today at 1286. And this one, again, is just very, very simple. It's a, it's a two week
kind of setup play where week one, you need a strong up move. And this thing went from about 1050 all the way up to 13.
So we're 22% up move on week one. And then week two has to be a kind of sideways low volatility
inside week. And then you're looking for a breakout into week three. All of these are a hold until
next Monday is kind of the extra rules, which are pretty simple with fairly
tight stop losses. I know we don't do stop losses here, but this one, the stop loss to be around 12
bucks. So that's for MindMed. This other one is IMMR. And this is again, if you look at the chart,
you'll see roughly the same kind of move. IMMR, Emerson Corporation, went from $5 up to $7.5.
So it's like a 30 or so percent gain. On week one, that's our igniting candle. That's what
spurs all the interest and everything. And then we get another week of sideways,
kind of really tight consolidation around $6.6969 to 7.10, that chopped around there.
And then we got a trigger today on the breakout of $7 with a hard stop here around 6.80 or so.
So you can see the benefit is that in both cases, the stops are really, really tight. So the fact
that we're right over my 25 years of testing, we're 48 of the time ends up being really good because with
stop losses that tight you only need a handful of them to to go your way to really kind of
knock the knock the ball off so that's IMMR and MNMD and those are both long side correct
yeah that's right I don. I don't swing short.
I didn't think you did.
That's what I remembered.
But I was like, let me just make sure and ask here.
Appreciate you, Michael Knauss.
MNMD and IMM are both on the long side.
Jordan, I'll send two picks for me real quick.
And we're going to jump into a great conversation around Bitcoin and
with our friends over at Unchained. Jordan, two picks for you, sir.
Let's run it back. TSLG long, TQQQ long. We'll do this.
Right. Leverage Tesla to TSLG. That's from Leverage Shares, and TQQQ on the long side as well.
My two picks real fast.
GiraffeKings, long, looking for just continuation of momentum,
hoping that it doesn't care about what's going on in the macro.
And Boeing poking through the 50-day moving average with some strength here.
So just looking for a couple of continuations there.
DKNG and BA are my two picks.
And with that, we are going to roll the conversation over here.
Big shout out to the Stock Pick crew.
We appreciate all of them.
Make sure you follow all the great speakers that were up here
giving out their market sentiment thoughts.
And of course, their two Stock Picks for the week.
Great to see you guys.
Every Monday at 5 p.m. we run that show.
And of course, this whole thing is recorded. If you missed any of it, you can go back once we finish and listen to any
of it. And you can also catch this next hour right here live or listen back to it at a later time,
either one, because I'm excited to have our friends from Unchained up here again with providing all
kinds of great Bitcoin solutions. And Ben, joining us again, great to have you back on.
I'm curious to kind of get some updated thoughts here.
Maybe we just kind of get the water wet a little bit, as they like to say.
I know that's a funny saying, but I like to throw that.
Let's get the water wet here a little bit.
Ben, what are you seeing in the crypto markets right now?
I just want to kind of get your gauge on.
It seems like some people are starting to try to buy this dip.
It looks like maybe things are bottoming out a little bit.
Maybe there's more downside.
I'm just curious your take around crypto right now.
Yeah, absolutely.
I just wanted to make sure you guys can hear me well.
Yes, sir.
We got you.
Perfect.
Well, I love it's how we started out because I just want to clarify that here at Unchained, we take very seriously the
difference between Bitcoin and crypto. And so we provide financial services for Bitcoin specifically
and folks who typically are thinking about Bitcoin as a generational asset.
Many of our clients use Unchained to help secure Bitcoin in an IRA or perhaps put it in a trust.
And so obviously we keep an eye on the market in the short term. I think our general thesis,
or not to give obviously any sort of
financial advice, but many of our clients see Bitcoin as that asset that they want to hold
for the long haul. Of course, we're going to have day to day volatility depending on
what the, you know, kind of news of the day is. But, you know, oftentimes what we see on
our trading desk is that our clients are buying the dip.
Yeah, I love that clarification.
I kind of teed you up for that one a little bit too,
right there with the difference between crypto and Bitcoin.
And I know Cade is over there reacting
because he knows the intricacies behind that
with the different conversations that go on, of course, around these circles.
But I'm just, I'm really interested.
A lot of people obviously are DCAing in,
or maybe they've missed some of the boat and they're saying,
okay, now's my chance to start maybe building a position here in this long-term asset.
I just want to give you a chance, Ben, again,
to introduce Unchained a little bit
and some of the solutions that you guys do provide. Because I know I've talked to several people
lately, both in these circles, even the TradFi circles, as they say sometimes, but over some
people that have missed the crypto vote, some people that have been wanting to get in for a
little while, and they're looking at Bitcoin here and saying, OK, I'm ready to start building a position.
But you guys provide a lot of solutions for that.
And some people may be having trouble getting started.
Some people maybe are getting started.
I'm just curious if you will just give us a quick rundown of what you guys do offer over
there at Unchained.
Absolutely.
So it's a full suite of financial services for Bitcoiners, right? Whether it's individuals or institutions, we have you covered. And I think what draws folks to Unchained is that we have the best team in the game. And so that's been compiled over the course of close to a decade now.
Unchained started out in 2016, and we started out by securing Bitcoin-backed loans.
And what we saw was using multi-signature custody, which essentially means that there
are multiple keys involved as opposed to just one.
We saw that the market had a huge need for a company that they could work with to secure their Bitcoin for the long haul in a
variety of ways, whether it's personal accounts, business accounts, trust accounts, or IRA accounts
in a way that rests upon the rock solid ethos of Bitcoin, which is not your keys, not your coins.
If you don't control that private key information,
you're outsourcing that trust to someone else like a custodian,
which we've seen get hacked, you know, over the years.
And so by using a setup like Unchained,
where you, the client, retain control of typically the majority,
two out of three keys, you get the best of both worlds where you can help. You have a trusted partner to help you secure your Bitcoin.
But at any point in time, unchained, only securing one of the three keys could never
move your Bitcoin or the Bitcoin of any of the other 10,000 clients that we already
helped secure over 100,000 Bitcoin.
So happy to take that however, wherever you like to go. But obviously, you don't want 100,000 Bitcoin. So happy to, you know, take that however,
you know, wherever you like to go. But, you know, obviously don't want to get too into the weeds.
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of different pieces of that to unpack. And I've brought on
some great minds around the space to help unpack that with us a little bit here. Now, I'm working
on getting a post out right now. There's a great link that I'm going to get pinned up top in just a few moments that
takes us right over to your website, actually takes us to a consultation.
And I think that's something really cool that you guys do, where you, you actually allow
people to book a consultation and I can speak for myself.
I know some of these other guys up here, guys and girls up here on stage with us are almost
experts in this field a little bit.
And some people like me are going, okay, I don't even know what I need or what I need to do here.
You start talking about multi-sig and stuff. I have more questions than I even know I need to ask.
You guys are doing consultations for that. Tell us a little bit about that as I get this link
pinned up top here in just a second. You guys are actually saying, hey, we'll talk to you and figure out what you need, what fits you.
Yeah, what we heard from folks is, you know, that's what they don't have in the Bitcoin or
crypto markets, right, is a partner that they can talk to, right, somebody could pick up the phone,
right, if there's a problem with your, you know, Coinbase account, it's kind of like, good luck,
right? So what you'll get with a consultation is 20 minutes
with one of our team who are going to start by figuring out where you're at in the journey,
whether it's like, hey, I'm just hearing about Bitcoin. I feel like I'm late. How do I start?
Can I start buying Bitcoin with the Unchained Trading Desk? And then I also have these other
IRA funds that I'm trying to figure out how you know, how to get some Bitcoin exposure to.
So we're known for the human element and the education.
And so you can start out with a consultation.
And then if you're the type of person that says, hey, you know, I really value that.
I want same day emergency support and being able to establish a relationship over the course of the year with a dedicated account manager.
You might want to look at our signature service, which is going to provide that all year. So you have the ability
to have that guidance while you're, you know, perhaps having those initial moving parts of,
you know, setting up these vaults, making sure that they're set up correctly for years or decades
to come. And then a lot of our clients are worried about inheritance, right? They start to understand Bitcoin as a generational asset. And then, you know, they've titled other things to
a trust. Maybe they want that same treatment for Bitcoin. And so that's, again, where our team can
guide you through, you know, what is otherwise mysterious. And especially, you know, extending
that education to your family, your wife or your heirs, I think is super critical for a lot of folks that end up working with Unchained.
Absolutely. The planning part of it and thinking about how do I move these to my kids?
What happens if I'm the only one with the sig phrase? How do people even access that?
So these are things that I had never
thought about until I first met you guys, as I mentioned before. So excited to dive into some of
those different things. Free consultation. That link is pinned up top there. So if you're like
me and you're saying, okay, I'm trying to get in here, I'm trying to invest here, but I don't even
know where to start or where to go. The experts over there at Unchained are going to take care of you.
You guys have been around quite a while now, Ben, right?
Almost 10 years?
Yeah.
So, yeah, it's coming up on a decade now.
And so, you know, definitely building on the shoulders of giants,
like guys like Parker Lewis were a huge part of us getting started.
And I think, you know, retaining that ethos of being Bitcoin only is
really critical to a lot of the folks that we work with. So I would also say that, you know,
we do offer commercial loans, Bitcoin-backed loans. We've originated over a billion dollars
worth of those loans. And I think a testament there is that, you know, we've done that with no loan loss,
you know, over a variety of cycles. And I think that track record speaks for itself there.
Absolutely. I bet you guys have seen quite a few changes too in the space over those last
nine to 10 years there. I want to dive into the security side of things
a little bit. And I welcome open dialogue here from some of the others up on stage,
and I'll probably bring it around to each of you. Cade, I kind of want to bring you in first,
and then we'll hit some of the rest of the panel. You're in a lot of these conversations. You're a
lot more researched and studied to me. Obviously, Ben, great expert here in the space as well.
Cold storage, multi-sig, all this stuff.
Why is it so important?
Yeah, I mean, it depends on how deep in the Bitcoin conversation you are
and amongst what type of Bitcoins you're with.
Some people are down just to have the asset as an investment.
They're looking to kind of go up in value
and they don't particularly care about custodian it.
And then you've got the Bitcoiners who are hardcore.
They want to make sure that Bitcoin is theirs.
I mean, Bitcoin is fundamentally a different asset
than other ones out there.
And you are able to custody it yourself and hold it
and have it be in a place where nobody could freeze it.
Nobody has access. And that's where the benefit of custody comes in. But with self-custody entirely,
you also take on the risk, the entire risk. And if you lose your key or seed phrase,
you're kind of done for. And there's no customer service. There's no way around it. You're kind of
screwed. And so multi-custody is a really great way to hold real Bitcoin. If you have it in
Coinbase, you have it in an ETF or wherever you have Bitcoin, you don't exactly have Bitcoin and
it's probably good enough, but at the same time, you don't really hold the Bitcoin. And so for
those who pick Bitcoin as an asset to hold as an investment, a lot of people love the idea of being
idea of being able to custody it themselves just to make sure they've really got that thing
able to custody it themselves just to make sure they've really got that thing on lock. Otherwise,
on lock. Otherwise, you just have an IOU. And so multi-state custody is really cool,
especially for most folks out there who just want to make sure they have it,
but they also want to make sure it's real. It's real Bitcoin, real custody of Bitcoin.
And so all that does is just it kind of removes the single point of failure for me. I think that's
massive. I think it's a huge, huge win for people who want to be in Bitcoin and want to hold it.
But they're like, look, dude, I lose my remote four times a week.
Like, I don't know about this.
You know what I mean?
And I also get that side of it.
And that's where it changes.
It's just a great solution, honestly.
Ben, I'll toss over to you.
I've probably boshed it a little bit on the clarity side of things.
It's been a long day for me.
But I think from a value add perspective for people who actually want to hold the Bitcoin and not the IOU,
Molotif's Take is such a good solution.
Absolutely. And I think it helps for folks, the uninitiated writer who haven't spent as much time down the rabbit hole as a lot of us,
to just kind of look at it from a from a
high level view so all bitcoin live on addresses right and each of those addresses is secured by
either one or multiple private keys and in the case of multi-sig as the name implies there are
multiple um the vast majority of accounts at unchained are going to be two out of three
multi-signature addresses, meaning that two out of the three keys are required to access
or move the given Bitcoin. And so if you think about your own situation, if you're a client of
Unchained, you have two hardware devices
that are each securing a private key.
You may have seen one of these,
but it looks like a little USB device.
And then Unchained has the third.
And so you as a client
are gonna geographically spread those out.
Maybe there's one in a safe at home
and one in a deposit box or another loved one's home
or a second property, but separate locations.
And now you're insulated right now. If a house burns down, if a safe gets rummaged through and you lose one key, it's okay. It's not the type of thing where, you know, that was the only
information. And now a bad actor has your Bitcoin. It's not a single point of failure.
With this setup, if that bad thing
happens, you can come back to Unchained. We can help you replace that missing or stolen or
compromised key. And you know that your Bitcoin is still secure. So it's a great way to know that
you are still the only person that can unilaterally access your Bitcoin, but you have some help if
an unfortunate event happens.
So how does that work?
Because I hear these stories about all these lost wallets and stuff out there.
How does that piece work?
If, if I am securing my Bitcoin, I get, you know, my multi-sig with you guys.
If, if I misplace or do something, you know, like Kate said, I, you know, I turn around,
I can't find my phone. It's in my hand sometimes. How does that work with you guys able to,
you know, step in, but it's still secure and I still have some say there?
Yeah. So, I mean, there's a couple different ways you can go about it, but I think the easiest one to describe very quickly would be that you have two
keys unchained as one, you lose one, then we can help you set up a new key and build a new vault
with two secure keys on your end and one on ours. And then we can simply help you transfer the
Bitcoin by you signing with your current existing key and then
Unchain signing with ours, the Bitcoin moves to the new address that is now controlled by two unaffected keys of yours and one of Unchain's. That's, I think, the simplest way to describe
one of a few ways on how you could kind of re-secure the quorum or continue to secure the Bitcoin from there.
could kind of re-secure the quorum or continue to secure the Bitcoin from there.
I love that. I could ask so many questions, but I want to bring some of these other people into
the conversation. I see Nat, and your hand went up at a perfect time because I was coming to you
either way, whether you liked it or not, because I've heard you speak in some spaces, very,
very intelligent in some of these areas. Nat, what are your thoughts
around the cold storage piece, the multi-sig piece, and any questions that you might have
around this with Unchained? Yeah, thanks for having me, Wolf. I've actually listened in and
had a few conversations with Unchained on the Wolf Bitcoin channel. And I really like what they're doing, right? I think as the world
comes to know Bitcoin, as Bitcoin progresses and becomes more adopted and more available worldwide,
I think these services are going to become key, right? So I'm very, very big on cold storage and
the walls that on chain. And the majority of the services that they do provide, right?
One in particular for me that stands out from the very beginning
has been the inheritance portion, right?
Because we have the same, in the Bitcoin world,
we have this saying where we say one does not sell Bitcoin, right?
Because if we look at overall trajectory has been up, right?
Let's say even from 2020, within the last five years, yes, it's been pulled back.
But a lot of a lot of those that have been able to hold throughout the entire movement within the five years or five or six years, they've reaped great rewards.
Right. So, for example, for me, I have Bitcoin. I have kids. Right.
So for example, for me, I have Bitcoin, I have kids, right?
So I guess this question for you, Ben,
with regards to the inheritance portion,
what's the process like and are there any fees associated with it?
Because I think as we progress in crypto
or more specifically as we progress in Bitcoin,
I think this will be a big portion or a big factor within families.
Yeah, yeah, inheritance is huge. you know, a big portion or a big factor within families. Yeah. Yeah.
Inheritance is huge.
It's it's I think the issue that's most cited by our clients in terms of
why they appreciate the support of Unchained.
And so
basically there's a couple of different ways that you can set it up
depending on the experience that you're looking for.
So Unchained in general, we have our accounts a la carte. So, you know, personal account, business account,
whether it's a trust account or an IRA account, you can purchase those individually for $250 per
year. It doesn't matter how much Bitcoin we're helping you secure. And then if what you're looking for is more of that
you know white glove private banking type experience, we're going to have dedicated
account management trading discounts and then full guidance for both you, your loved ones,
trustee, or anyone who's involved in the inheritance process guidance throughout setting all of that up.
That's going to be through what we call our signature service, which is definitely more of that all inclusive as opposed to the a la carte setup.
So depending on what you're looking for, we can we can help you where you're at.
Wonderful. Wonderful. So now is there a minimum Bitcoin that one must have,
or is it more like as long as you have a percentage?
Yeah. So no minimums at all. And that's actually, I think,
where, you know, maybe our cost structure could differ from other folks in the
space. Some is that we intentionally, you know,
don't have these charges based on percentages. They are
flat rate fees. So ideally, that's more accessible. And then also doesn't lead to a situation where
we see Bitcoin's asymmetric upside as well and don't want those fees to go up in turn.
Wonderful. Yes, because that would have been my next question,
right? If, if you were charging a percentage, then at that point it becomes, okay, so let's
say Bitcoin hits a quarter of a million dollars. How do we keep the fees to, to a minimum or to
help, to help the product remain attractive? So I like that you guys are doing a percentage
and it's more a flat rate fee. I think the other question that I do have is in regards to the IRA portion. That's
the second thing that caught my eye as well. How is that structured, right? And are there fees
associated with that? Sure. So to my knowledge, our IRA is still a unique product in that it's the only place on the market where clients can retain key control within a IRA structure.
And so we have a qualified custodian Fortis Bank that acts as a qualified custodian for the IRA product.
And they delegate key control to the client
and unchanged in this structure.
And so it's gonna function just like, you know,
any other IRA that you're used to.
And many folks will fund these IRAs
with either transfers of existing IRA funds.
You know, a lot of times those can be maybe forgotten
or not quite sure what they're invested in,
or even old 401k funds as well are often transferred over.
So I'm happy to dive into further detail there,
but those IRA accounts are going to be just $250 per year per account.
And the process to transfer rollover funds is really smooth.
Wonderful, Ben. So I do have a lot of friends that do have Bitcoin and, you know,
we're in a mom circle, so we all have kids. So is it okay if I forward them your information?
Absolutely. I would really appreciate that if you did.
Wonderful. Thank you guys so much for having me today.
Great questions there, Nat.
That was one of the things, the IRA, that really caught my attention more than anything.
And once again, the link is up top there.
If you're hearing some of these pieces and you're saying, hey, maybe that's for me,
you can book a free consultation with Ben and his team over there.
I'm looking here at the link itself and I you know, I see, okay, improving security
of my Bitcoin. I need to check that one personally. Succession planning. I need to check that one.
Yeah. There's some IRA stuff here that I see buying and selling in general.
All those, I feel like I could check half these boxes, Ben. And my call might go longer than some
of these other veterans up here on stage, but some great stuff there. Great back and forth. Eva, if you're available, I definitely want to bring you into the conversation as well. See if you have any thoughts here. I know you've been around the Bitcoin space for quite some time. If you had any thoughts or questions here around Unchained.
chained hello good evening from london um yeah so i've been in a crypto space for a very long time
um you know traditionally have used you know cold hard wallets myself from other obviously two bigger
name brands um this is definitely very refreshing to hear that there is you know people that you can
connect with on the phone not some chatbot or some email and then your ticket
is lost and you know two three months later they haven't even looked at your freaking support
ticket and you're like well still can't access my account so a lot of frustrations uh for the mass
people who aren't familiar or you know not too tech savvy but they want to get into Bitcoin space. So, you know, being a UK resident and from
EU, so I do host the EU show, which is also going to be a hot topic for tomorrow's crypto shows.
We, not to my knowledge, I haven't actually researched, there is no, because we have so
much regulation here in the UK and EU, and they're a bit slow, I would say. There is no IRA or similar
or SIP, which is equivalent on this side of the waters. So I just wanted to ask, do you guys or
do you plan on having in the pipeline international services for pensions or like, yeah, similar to
IRA, but for internationals.
I know respectively there is a lot of countries to cover
and there's obviously a lot of laws and hoops to jump through
to apply for all these things.
I would love to have that as an extended service
for our international folks.
Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Ava.
I wish the news was better, but I will say, you know, at this
time, business decisions and operations in mind, expanding internationally is not, you
know, the top of the roadmap. So, you know, obviously things can change at any time. And
in a perfect world, we'd love to, you love to offer the multi-stig architecture that we
currently do internationally. We'd encourage you to stay posted, but at this time,
we're definitely focused on the US. Great. Thank you so much for confirming that.
Yeah, I think there's going to be a massive edge in the market as everyone starts scramming. UK recently this past week have just announced that, you know, they're classifying crypto as property. So different, slightly different category, I would say, comparison to the US, which is going to be very interesting as I think the Americans are leaning towards more security.
The Americans are leaning towards more security.
So, yeah, I think you guys might even have, you know,
more than welcome to open an office here in London is what I'm saying.
And, you know, we're barely even offering ETFs alone for Bitcoin or crypto
allowed by law over here.
So we have a lot of challenges over here
comparison to US,
whereas already you guys,
I believe you can buy what,
straight ETFs already for your portfolios
and pensions over there?
Yeah, yeah, most of the time you can,
depending on if you have it set up correctly.
Awesome.
Yeah, I think that's really the main question
was just, yeah,
looking out for the international folks.
Yeah, we'd love to see you guys expand in the future on the roadmap.
And probably that's about it for me.
Yeah. And look, you know, that's what's also great about multi-sig architecture in general, right, is we didn't invent it, right?
We've coined some phrases like collaborative custody, but there are other folks out there.
And, you know, I'll shout out my friends at Casa
who do a good job of providing multi-sig internationally.
I wanna connect a couple of thoughts there
because when I think about what Cade was saying
a little bit earlier about paper Bitcoin,
just an IOU, if you're buying it in your traditional IRA
or your brokerage account.
And I think about like gold and it's like, okay, when I think about if I'm trying to
invest and I look at the inflationary trade or the anti-inflationary trade, I guess I
should call it, it doesn't look by any means that we're going to stop printing anytime
soon.
So you see gold, you see Bitcoin, especially over the last few years,
just rising and rising. People are buying gold and they're basically cold storaging that, right?
A lot of them in their own homes or in a safe or something like that. And obviously, this is a digital version. I think about the IRA stuff, Ben, and I say, okay,
there's a big difference between that IOU piece of paper and then actually holding that Bitcoin.
And then you guys are allowing the benefits of the IRA to go with that.
So talk me through that piece just a little bit of how you guys are able to provide an IRA where I can still cold storage and actually own my own Bitcoin there.
Yeah, absolutely.
It has to do with the fact that the qualified custodian Fortis Bank
is delegating control of the keys and the terms and conditions
to both the client and unchained.
And so the client maintains two and unchained retains the third.
And so what the third provides is constant visibility for both Unchained
and Fortis into the balance of that given address. And so, you know, in the same way that, you know,
at a Fidelity or another institution, you know, you could have an IRA and you could take, you know,
a wildcat withdrawal or a premature withdrawal. And then those funds would lose their tax advantage status.
You could do the same thing with an IRA, a Bitcoin IRA here at Unchained.
And so, you know, when you were to go move the Bitcoin out of that given tax advantaged IRA, you know, that would be reported on the given filings
for that tax year.
And any funds that are moved out
would lose their tax-advantaged status
in the same way that it would happen at any other IRA
that you currently held assets at.
Yeah, I try to stay away from obviously
any of the tax advice.
Obviously, seek a CPA, but definitely some really good pieces for the IRA piece there
when it comes to the investing and all of that.
Cade, your hand went up there.
Let's go to you, and then I want to bring in Bits as well after that.
Oh, big bad Bits is on stage on Wolf Financials.
Wow, what a day.
My question was, Ben, was there are other custody solutions out there, other lending solutions.
I'm curious.
You guys have been around for a really long time.
When people are looking and they're canvassing out for various options and they see all these offers and stuff,
what are some red flags that poke out to you that you're like, hey, you know,
the alarm should be blaring
when you see some of these things,
some of the buzzwords and things like that?
Yeah, yeah.
So obviously there's a lot that could be said there.
I think we try to keep it super crisp and clear
here at Unchained, right?
And that's where you can see it on chain
in that any Bitcoin that's
collateral for a commercial loan here at Unchained is held in a multi-sig account where the client
retains control of one of the keys so they can constantly or at any point verify that that Bitcoin has not moved and is on that address on chain.
Now there are other, you know, there are groups and folks in space that advertise things like,
you know, quote unquote, and this is kind of the buzzword, no rehypothecation. And so
I would encourage folks to do their homework and to read the fine print, because sometimes there can be a deeper story there where, you know, the collateral ends up being moved or parked at a different institution.
And I think a long track record is a critical component of, I think, anybody who you might want to consider any sort of Bitcoin-backed lending with.
I love the lending piece as well. There's so many different solutions around Bitcoin. I think
a lot of the average people, they just think, oh, just buy Bitcoin, or they think from a trader
standpoint or short-term investment standpoint. But the amount of solutions that are so much
deeper than that that are out there are really, I get excited about it when I see this. And it makes me just more adept to want to become a deeper investor over there.
Bits, I want to bring you into the conversation here.
Bits is my favorite line drawler.
I know you're a trader.
Use the crowns on the charts like I do.
At least that's what they tell you over in some of the Bitcoin spaces.
But I think you're great.
I also know that you invest some as well.
I'm sure you hold some bitcoin yourself so i'm curious your thoughts around the conversation side of
things here uh the the security of the bitcoin and some of the other solutions that unchanged provides
yo what's up yeah i look i i jumped in because i saw a wolf and nat in here and i was like all
right you know they got to be talking about something cool in here that uh involves crypto in some way so uh figured i'd jump in and um yeah i think this
is like the second space that i've been on with unchained and um uh look multi-sigs it's nothing
new um i think ben was kind of talking about that but it is uh it is really cool tech and um i i
still think it's a bit underutilized in the space.
So it's kind of good to see that, especially with the amount of people that are coming in now that,
you know, I think like the crypto definition of what we've historically referred to as like
retail is shifting a little bit because we're still getting retail, right? But it's not like your coworkers jumping in on their own wallets that they're downloading stuff.
What we're seeing now is like these instruments, right?
These ETFs and these different products that they can use now.
But look, I mean, we're in a world, man, where there's more and more ways to get exposure to Bitcoin and to crypto.
And I still think the security conversation is a big one.
It's probably one of the most important, if not the most important conversation when it comes to this stuff.
So, you know, I think a lot of us that have been around for a while and I haven't even been around, like I don't consider myself a Bitcoin OG.
um for a while and i i haven't even been around like i don't consider myself a bitcoin og i bought
my first btc in um this is like mid mid 2017 or early to mid 2017 and um dude i've been through
a lot of a lot of wallets um um a lot of exchanges a lot of different uh services a lot of different
ways to get exposure to it over the years a lot of different places that i've bought it a lot of different ways to get exposure to it over the years. A lot of different places that I've bought it, a lot of different places that I've sold it. And yeah, I have become a
huge believer in that, like, you have to really take this stuff serious. Privacy and security are
a big deal. And, you know, I think there's some serious risks that even outside of like, you know,
you might trust yourself and you might say, well, I'm really good.
I know that I'm not going to get compromised. I'm not going to fall for a phishing scam.
I know that I'm not going to forget where I placed my keys or any of that. Right.
But stuff happens. Right. Like an example that was given, like your house burns down or something.
Suddenly, how do you access that stuff? um I do think we have to be thinking
about that and multi-sig is a great way to uh to kind of eliminate some of that risk there so
um and whether that is you know like two locations that that you have you know local or regional to
you or whether it's like you have one with you and one across the country or across the globe or wherever that might be.
And then, you know, Unchained having the other one.
I think that's pretty neat.
I think it's a good it's a good system.
And then, you know, if you're coming in and you're looking for something like that, you're probably someone who, number one, you don't want all of that risk yourself, which I think is fair.
I think a lot of people fall into that.
You know, they want someone else to kind of help them through that. They want the customer service.
They want to be able to reach out to someone, talk to someone, a person, right, when stuff comes up.
So I definitely think there's a need in the marketplace for that.
So it's pretty cool to see someone executing on it and offering that.
I love the thoughts there, Bitson.
I think you probably do classify as an OG if it was 2017.
I don't know where the cutoff line would be,
but I feel like that puts you pretty much in that camp.
I mean, it's not 2012, 2013, but that's OG enough, I think.
When I think of OGs, that's what I think of, man. It's like 12, 13, you know, that's like, to me, those are the OGs.
The pizza order with the Bitcoin. Now, what you bring up here is really is, you know, because you may trust yourself and you may be comfortable in the space.
But I know a lot of people kind of like myself, I'm just I'm not super comfortable. And, you know, I feel like that's maybe one hurdle to me wanting to really, you know, invest more into Bitcoin itself is because I don't have that
trust factor that I could do everything correct. And you brought up the, you know, like phishing
and some of these, you know, all the risks and scams and protections. And Ben, I kind of want
to ask your thought on that. What have you seen out there? Because there's, there's a lot of examples of this where, you know, people's wallets are compromised. Their,
their seed phrase is stolen, things like that. What are some examples that you've seen on that,
that then of course you guys actually have created solutions to, to help that not to happen to people
because a lot of people, you know, they see the opportunity here and they want to put it,
you know, maybe it's a decent amount of money for them that they want to put into here.
But they're concerned because they see these stories. I'm curious, what are the most common ones that you see?
Yeah, I think, I mean, it usually starts from a point, you know, those tragic stories start from a point where folks didn't take the time to understand the Bitcoin network and understand what comes with securing your private keys and the ramifications of being separated from them
or other folks getting that type of information. So I think what's critical is, you know, you don't want to get over your
skis, right? You want to, you want to, obviously no financial advice here, but I would say what,
what tends to happen is folks kind of dip their toe in the Bitcoin water and then their conviction
tends to grow with how much time they put into learning and understanding the network and security around the network there.
So once you decided which setup is best for you, whether it's a multi-signature setup
to avoid single points of failure and enable easier inheritance for your relatives, or
if you want to start out with just a single, set up one device to kind of test the waters and see how things go.
What you should understand is, is that, you know, the classic rules against getting fished anywhere, right?
Is like, if you set things up correctly, it's going to take usually some action from you to, you know, compromise that setup. So it's going to be someone pressuring you into thinking that, you know, something's compromised and you need to give them a seed phrase or, you know, move
something to someone else or give someone different credentials. So I would say, you know,
take the time to understand it before you implement it. So that way, you know, that,
you know, you shouldn't fall susceptible to these pressure tactics. And, you know, ideally,
you work with Unchained, we have your back, if anything looks suspicious, you know, give us a
call. And, you know, we have a lot of clients for life who are this close to, you know, permanently
losing one, 10 hundreds of Bitcoin. And the team has helped them through those difficult situations. So what a lot of folks find they really need in that time is a team of trusted experts to say,
hey, am I crazy or kind of please help me navigate this situation.
I think it's the comfort level there, just having that little security blanket around it, because a lot of people, they're getting into it and maybe they get over their heads a little bit and they
just don't have that trusted friend. They don't have a bits of wealth that they can hit up or a
Cade or a Gnat and they can't say, hey, how are you doing things? You know, how do I need to do it?
And then what if I do it wrong from there? And so I just I love the fact that your team, you know, I go into the link once again, pinned up top there. And I see the free consultation. I feel like a lot of people could get a lot of value out of that, just signing up and and see some of the different things that he's talked about. But I hear those horror stories all the time, Ben, and that's what I think makes me
nervous, makes a lot of people nervous. What kind of, obviously you guys have the solutions,
you guys have the experience there having been around the game for quite a while,
but is there a backup, is there a fail safe here somewhere? If something, you know, cause that's what I've seen a couple of times
around the industry is, you know
maybe a data breach or something
from a wallet provider themselves.
What do you guys have in place
that really kind of provides that extra security
behind the scenes?
Yeah, so obviously we're, you know, SOC 2 compliant
and security is, you know the keystone of our entire operation.
And I think a testament to how we've been around so long and continue to do so.
I think what's important to note is that part of the beauty of multi-signature architecture, underpinning each of these vaults at Unchained, is that our clients understand deeply that their Bitcoin could not go down with the quote unquote Unchained ship.
because we're only holding one key.
And so that's something that our account managers
and the signature service are gonna guide folks
through preemptively is this recovery process of that,
hey, if I wake up one day and Unchained
has fallen off the face of the earth
and I can't access anything over at Unchained,
how do I still access my Bitcoin?
And the answer is using your two keys
and what's called the wallet configuration file.
You can use free and open source software.
There's a variety of these.
One's called Caravan Multisig,
where you can use that key information to interact directly with that Bitcoin
and move that Bitcoin completely independent of Unchained.
So that brings a lot of comfort to our clients
because when they deeply understand that,
they know that, hey, everything we're doing here
is optimizing for no single points of failure.
And we're ensuring that when you understand
how to interact with your key material,
Unchained can't be a single point of failure for you either.
It kind of leads me into another question that just pops into my mind here.
And I'm sure you guys more than cover all of this in the consultation itself.
But if I get a wild hair and I do want to move some of my Bitcoin, do I have to contact
you guys and get it approved through all that?
What is that piece? Do I have to contact you guys and get it approved through all that?
What is that piece?
Let's say I've signed up with you guys and you guys are securing my Bitcoin, you're securing
Bitcoin for my children.
What does it look like if I want to add more, if I want to move things around, if maybe
I want to spread some things out somewhere else?
Just whatever comes up.
How much do I have to go directly with you guys?
How can I pull that off? Yeah, you have optionality, again, there as well. So most of our
clients are going to have at least one key, you know, either at home or close to home for ease
of use for signing purposes, right? So assuming, you know, Unchain's available, they simply log
into the Unchain platform.
They use that first key at home to sign.
And then you have two options from there.
You can either request the Unchain signature, which we have some intentional friction.
We allow for 24 to 72 hours for our team to sign.
You may have also activated video verification on your profile where you recorded an initial video that we would then request a new video at the time of the additional transaction if that's set up.
So that's option A is basically requesting unchanged key signature, which would then be accomplished over the next 24 to 72 hours. The other route would be you simply go to your second location, log back into Unchained,
and then sign with your second key, in which case the Bitcoin would move as soon as the
next few confirmations happened on the Bitcoin blockchain.
All right. I've got one more follow up question. happened on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Right. I've got one more follow-up question. I'm going to get Nat Nat in here again.
One follow-up question. How many of your clients are bringing their own Bitcoin? And do you have the ability, if somebody's saying, okay, I'm ready to get in, I've just been waiting on
a secure solution to feel good about it.
Do you guys allow people to come in and buy somewhere through your platform?
Is there an exchange connection somewhere there as well?
Yes, we do have our own trading desk.
So whether you're at a point where you're looking to buy the dip and build up your stack
or you're looking to buy the dip and build up your stack, or you're looking
to sell Bitcoin for whatever reason, we can help you with our trading desk. And that's just
continuing to get better over time. So I know a lot of folks don't know that about Unchained.
So I appreciate you bringing that up. And I think as folks start to consider long-term solutions, a lot of clients want to consolidate.
So being able to title Bitcoin personally on behalf of your business, in your IRA, and
or on behalf of your trust or a family trust, while knowing you can buy and sell at Unchained is huge in terms of
a, you know, ideally single solution for, you know, most, if not all of your Bitcoin needs.
And I'll also, you know, take a quick second to just shout out Gannett Trust, which is the first
Bitcoin native trust company that Unchained has helped stand up so they can assist on
the trust management and estate planning side as well.
Ben, I really appreciate you.
I could ask you so many, so many questions and I know time is a little bit limited here.
So I'm going to go over to Nat Nat next.
Nat Nat, jump in.
Thank you. Now, Ben, from my
experience in speaking with multiple companies, right, whether it's Web2, Web3, Bitcoin, or
anything else that they have going on, right, one thing that I noticed and one thing that they
always speak about, or so one thing that I always ask about is I've noticed that there's a story
there's a story behind the business. There's a story behind the company, something that inspired
behind the business, there's a story behind the company, something that inspired the name,
the name, something that inspired the idea. So I'm kind of curious, what inspired Unchained?
Sure. So that goes back to our roots in Texas with Parker Lewis. And I think if folks haven't
I think if folks haven't taken a look, a great, you know, 20, 30 minute intro chat around Bitcoin is Bitcoin is not an edge by Parker Lewis.
But it's these it's the core ethos, really, of Bitcoin as the common purpose, low time preference and extreme ownership.
And that's really what is embodied Unchained for
close to a decade. And I think it's also why you see us persist in multiple different lines of
business where many, many folks have come before us and perhaps haven't been so successful. So
it's definitely that ethos of not your keys, not your coins, Bitcoin and only
Bitcoin, and helping to guide and shepherd folks that, you know, there is a lot of noise
in this arena. And so hopefully we can help, you know, some folks save some time. And, you know,
from the from from us, you know, the team of experts that we've assembled and how we've all earned our stripes.
The hope is that we can pass that knowledge on and be a trusted partner for decades to come because we truly see Bitcoin as a generational asset.
So ideally, we can work with you if you feel the same way.
Great question there, Nat Nat.
Here towards the end, if anybody else wants to jump in,
please feel free to do so.
Cade, you're more of the expert.
I've been learning from you.
Obviously I've been learning some stuff here from Ben,
joining us a couple of times
in some different spaces as well.
So Cade, if there's anything that we haven't hit on that you feel like is important or just a question that maybe you have
to throw in, please jump in. Yeah. And you may have answered it, Ben, so forgive me. But you
mentioned earlier a little bit on the fees and how much some of these things cost. And so,
breaking down the fee structure across your various services,
whether it's fault setup, trading, loans, how does it compare to other custodial alternatives that you've seen in the industry, whether it's in the Bitcoin world or even in the TradFi circles?
Absolutely. I think we're competitive across the board. And I think I'll just touch real
quickly on the fact that it's structured very intentionally
in terms of flat rate fees, as opposed to percentages. Again, we want to meet you where
you are. So if you're the type of person that says, hey, I've been stacking some Bitcoin,
I have a single signature device. It's now getting to the point where it's kind of scary to
quote unquote have that under the mattress. And I'm getting to the point where it's kind of scary to, you know, quote unquote, have
that under the mattress and I'm ready to upgrade to multi-sig, but I just want to do it slowly
and, you know, a little bit.
Then you might go the a la carte route, right?
And just, and sign up for a personal account, $250 for a year.
See how you like that.
You know, does it fit your needs?
We have a concierge onboarding call.
So if you wanted, you know, perhaps help to get started,
a single session with one of our experts
to help you set up those devices initially
so that you have the peace of mind of like,
hey, you know, now I understand this at a deeper level.
I understand securing my keys.
And now I'm ready to transfer some Bitcoin into this vault, you could
order what's called a concierge onboarding session. Or if you're
the type of person who you know, really need is really looking
for a lot of help and handholding and guidance and the
ability to meet with an account manager throughout the year,
that's going to look like our signature service, which is $6,000
for the year of paid up front, or you can break it down quarterly. But in addition to providing you with
all of the accounts or votes that you need, and that relationship throughout the year,
we're also going to provide guidance and education for your family, right? So I've had clients who
use that signature service for one year because
they say, hey, look, I understand the rest of my family, as much as I wish them to, is never going
to go down this crazy Bitcoin or rabbit hole as far as I have, right? They're just not going to do
it. And so with that in mind, they need to learn from someone else, you know, someone who's a
trusted partner and maybe more of an authority on the subject. So we're going to set up this inheritance protocol. We're going to
title Bitcoin to the trust. And then we're all going to sit down and have a couple of calls
together to understand, you know, what this looks like and how we simplified it to the point where
your heir or your trustee has a packet of information. They understand that when you
pass away, they need to come to Unchained. We're going to work together with them using the combination of our key and that key information that they're coming to us with to then move the the full service with the signature,
or if you just prefer an a la carte account and needing help to get started,
maybe you're also a Bitcoin wizard.
We also have the ability to just get going on your own
and you don't need to work with the team at all.
I appreciate that.
Emph, back over to you, sir.
I'm going to sneak one more question here on the like trust side of things. Do you guys have
like attorneys or anything that helps set up the trust stuff or do most of the clients,
you know, bring their own trust kind of documents into you guys?
It's going to be the second route. So yeah, we don't provide those attorneys in house.
Folks are going to need to work with their individual estate planning attorney in terms
of creating that trust documentation, et cetera.
But then, you know, whether that's done ahead of time or concurrently, once that's complete,
that's where Unchained can step in with the infrastructure to help you title Bitcoin to that trust and make sure that it gets the same treatment to other assets in there in regards to staying private and avoiding probate.
I love that. I have trust stuff set up myself.
And, you know, honestly, I think everyone just because I come from the real estate world should definitely look into some of those pieces for sure, whether it's around Bitcoin or not.
But the ability to tie Bitcoin into that and include that in there. I know if I talked to
my trust attorney about it, he would be completely lost. He could draw up the papers,
but that's about as far as he could go. So I love the fact that you guys
have that there. All right, we're coming to the top of the hour here, Ben. I really appreciate it.
I learned so much from you and the crew every time you guys come on. And honestly, going in,
I probably just need to go in and do the full-on onboarding call there, or the consultation call, I should call it, that's pinned up in the nest.
And I also saw there's a little bonus, code WOLF10 might get you an additional surprise. That was
put onto my radar here a little bit. So definitely want to put that on everybody's radar as well.
WOLF10 is that code if you get in there and start checking it out. But I would say just start with
the consultation call and find out maybe what I would say just start with the consultation call
and find out maybe what your needs are.
Talk to the experts over there.
Don't listen to me,
but listen to all these great people up here on stage.
That's for sure.
You can hear the importance that's come across
in this conversation for sure.
Ben, is there anything that maybe we didn't hit on
in this conversation today
that you want to make sure we mentioned
before we close down?
I think we covered it. I would say it might sound like a broken record, but
you know, you're not too late, right? It's, this is an evolving phenomenon in terms of
the hardest money that we've ever seen created. And the truth is the vast majority of folks in
the world don't know anything about Bitcoin. It's easy to fall back into our little bubble
and ecosystem here. But zoom out. If you look at use cases for Bitcoin in other countries,
if you're looking for ways to become more hopeful, get more involved in the network,
understand, learn about running a node.
Maybe, you know, you grab a little home miner and you start playing around with that.
It's just incredible how how Bitcoin continues to open deeper rabbit holes and inspires me to learn about things that I otherwise never, never would have learned about.
So please book a consult with our team.
Feel free to hit me in my
DMs here. And, you know, we're always, you know, looking forward to talk Bitcoin. Stay humble,
Stacks has. Boy, I should just end it on that right there. That was the best sign off ever,
but I'd be remiss if I didn't shout out all the great people that have been a part of this space. Of course, Ben and the Unchained team, Nat Nat coming in, Bits of Wealth, Eva, Wolf Bitcoin.
You see that account up here. Cade, you can learn so much more from their spaces than you will on
some of our spaces. But there's so much cross-pollination these days. I think we're all
looking at the same stuff here. I mean, I can't tell you how many people in our spaces say the
government's never going to stop printing. They're just, it's the same stuff here, I mean, I can't tell you how many people in our spaces say the government's never going to stop printing.
They're just, it's inflation's here forever and it's just going to keep happening.
So, you know, taking those things into mind, definitely something to do some more research on for sure.
And as you're getting that little tickle, you know, jump in there, check out Unchained.
A lot of solutions here.
If you go into the link, you can actually click in that link.
Obviously, we're going to take you straight to that concierge or the consulting call, I guess is the correct term there.
But if you click on services, you can actually see all the different services that we did hit on here a little bit.
We're just scraping the edge of what Unchained does.
Definitely worth your time to go in.
It's free.
It's my favorite price, free.
But either way, appreciate everyone tuning in.
The entire space was recorded.
So if you missed any of it, the stock picks at the beginning with all the great market
thoughts, the stock picks on the back half of that, and then a great hour-long conversation
here talking about Bitcoin security, planning for the future, all of those great pieces.
talking about Bitcoin security, planning for the future, all of those great pieces.
I mean, from vaults to commercial loans to inheritance to trust to IRAs,
all of it, Unchained, great source for all of those things around the Bitcoin world.
We appreciate everyone that tuned in.
Big shout out to all the speakers, of course.
Make sure you give them a follow.
Follow that Unchained account.
And I love Ben being up here, sharing his knowledge and wisdom
and inviting people
with questions to reach out directly to him as well. And the team over at Unchained,
they do a great job of answering my questions, everyone's questions. Appreciate everyone for
tuning in. What a great Monday of spaces here on Wolf Financial. We've got more coming even
tomorrow. Of course, all day long, you can see our full schedule pinned right there on our homepage here on X.
And of course, you got some travel stuff coming up later this week.
Some big things happening around the Wolf Financial, Wolf Bitcoin, Wolf Crypto, Wolf Everything team that we've built out.
So stay tuned for all that.
We appreciate you guys for tuning in and we will see you guys on the next space.
