068 - Bitcoin, Real Estate, and the Future of Finance: A Deep Dive with Joe Consorti

In this conversation, Joe Consorti discusses his journey into the Bitcoin space, the intersection of Bitcoin and real estate through Horizon, and the implications of recent regulatory changes on homeownership and Bitcoin. He emphasizes the importance of Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and the unique value proposition of Horizon in allowing homeowners to leverage their home equity to invest in Bitcoin without incurring debt. The discussion also touches on the broader market trends and the distinction between Bitcoin and other digital assets.

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Joe Consorti and His Journey
07:53 Understanding Bitcoin's Role in Traditional Finance
15:12 Horizon: Bridging Real Estate and Bitcoin
24:54 The Impact of FHFA's Directive on Bitcoin and Homeownership
29:32 Bitcoin as Pristine Collateral in the Housing Market
46:17 The Distinction Between Bitcoin and Other Digital Assets
57:21 Parting Thoughts on Bitcoin and Life Philosophy

References
https://www.joinhorizon.com/

https://theya.us/
https://x.com/JoeConsorti

https://www.buildwithbitcoin.xyz/
https://x.com/BuildwBitcoin
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❗ DISCLAIMER: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions, consult a professional.

Transcript

Joe: 0:00

Know, it's very helpful to think of it as, you know, essentially a Home Equity swap, right? You have capital in your home, maybe you have a mortgage, maybe you don't, and you can take up to about 22.2% of that net equity and put it in a Bitcoin

Israel: 0:20

Ever wondered how Bitcoin could revolutionize home ownership? In this episode, Joe consorti shares his journey into the Bitcoin space and reveals how the company horizon is allowing homeowners to tap into their home equity to invest in Bitcoin without debt. Join us as we have a glimpse into the future of finance and real estate as a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only. If you enjoy our content, please remember to subscribe to our channel, share and leave us a review, as This all helps us greatly. Lynne and I are partners at Bayer advisors, where we use our network of Venture Capital Partners and startup founders to connect investors with unique opportunities within the Bitcoin innovation space. Alongside this, we help startup founders with their growth and fundraising. Visit our website's advisory section to learn more. Welcome to build with Bitcoin. I'm co host Israel. Munoz joined with co host Lynne Bairstow. Today we have the pleasure of welcoming on to the podcast. Joe consorti from Horizon Anthea, first of all, welcome, Joe. We're excited to get into today's conversation. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me excited as chat before we get into some of the offerings of Theia horizon, as well as the whole intersection of real estate and Bitcoin, which is part of the focus for today's conversation. It's always helpful to get a background for the listeners of who you are. You have a well respected following on social media. You've been, you've been on on TV as well, talking about macro. Tell us a little bit about your your Bitcoin story, and what got you to Theia as well. Of course,

Joe: 1:56

absolutely well. Again, thanks so much for having me. And always love talking about this. So I went to school up in sort of rural New England, and one of the things that I really prioritized going in was, you know, obviously learning as much as possible, going to going to college. But I initially went in for medicine. I wanted to become a pediatrician. That's what I wanted to do. I was sitting in my dorm room, and this was during orientation, and I just had this sudden epiphany that I didn't want to spend 12 years in residency. I kind of wanted to get into a career right away. And so one of the things I had done in high school quite often was I was one of the presidents of the business club. And so, you know, business was a tertiary interest of mine, I decided to pursue it fully. So I decided to major in finance and economics instead. That was a great decision, because I met some fellow Bitcoiners up at school, some pretty prominent Bitcoiners in the space and in the space today, and they kind of introduced me to the asset around that same time, I was sent home during spring break, the entire school was sent home because covid hit right in the middle of spring break. And so that was kind of a, you know, a turning point for me that I was I was really mad because I had paid for the full semester and room and board and everything, and now I couldn't go back to school, let alone even go back to my dorm room to get a bag of clothes or my computer. And so it kind of left me jaded toward higher authority generally, and that kind of set me down the path of maybe this Bitcoin thing has some merit to it. I read two different pieces, the masters and slaves of money, by Robert Breedlove in the bullish case for Bitcoin, by Vijay Boyapati. And this was also during a time where the business school that I was a part of had given out free Bloomberg terminals to all students in the library. And so I spend most of my time in the Bloomberg terminal just teaching myself how to do it because I knew it would be a valuable skill. And also trying to understand the interplay between different financial assets and understand cross asset correlations and what really makes markets tick. And during that time, Bitcoin was, you know, sort of, you know, right around 5000 $10,000 this is the, you know, summer of 2020 and then late 2020 obviously, you know, it exploded in value. And so I decided to fire up a Twitter account and just post, just start posting my my analysis, my thoughts, you know, I figured it was a great learning tool to be able to take my learnings from teaching myself how to use a Bloomberg terminal and trying to figure out how Bitcoin fit into all of it, and then publishing that data on Twitter, right so I could get feedback, and I could sort of build an audience. It was, it was never my intention to basically make Twitter the vehicle by which I would, I would get, you know, my job, but that's really how it ended up happening. That's how I broke into this space through a mutual friend of a mutual friend, Nick Bhatia, obviously, over at USC Marshall School of Business. He taught the first major Bitcoin class in the country at a United States University. He reached out to me about joining up with him to start this little company called the Big. Layer. At the time, it was next Nick's sort of hobbyist publication, you know, two or 3000 substack subscribers. And he brought me on board purely because of what he saw me doing on Twitter. He took me under his wing. And he was really my first major mentor in this space, and currently my mentor to this day. And so basically he, you know, he helped me build out this framework that I had already begun developing. And over that period, we took the Bitcoin layer from, you know, this fledgling hobbyist publication to now, you know, multimedia publication with 30,000 YouTube subscribers, and, you know, several 1,000x followers, and I think 30 or 40,000 subscribers on sub stack. And you know now we went from a two man team to a six or seven man team, and that's essentially how I got my start in the space, a little bit unconventional, but certainly, certainly wouldn't have it any other way. You were

Lynne Bairstow: 5:46

probably one of the first ones to really take kind of a traditional financial analytics lens and put it onto what was happening in Bitcoin at the time. Is, would that be accurate to say,

Joe: 5:57

certainly Nick and myself, I would say that from the beginning, having Nick as a mentor, he traded on a rates desk, US Treasury desk for several years, right? And that's his world. That's where he comes from. And so from the beginning, he really taught me the importance of cross asset correlations and the understanding that rates matter more than anything, and rates being those rates found in the US Treasury market, and the interplay between how the market trades those rates and the Federal Reserve itself, and really that rates lead the Fed in the sense that wherever the market trades US Treasury yields, chances are that's what the Fed is going to do, right? And so that that's kind of at the core of my understanding, right? This the cost of capital drives everything, right? It drives Asset Pricing across the world, regardless of how big or how small they are. You know, he taught me all about the different buckets, the risk on risk on bucket, and really how US Treasury rates dictate basically all of it. And one of the things that, you know, I had spoken about really early on was that even though bitcoin is this, you know, Apex monetary tool, it's an asset you want to own during good times and bad. It's kind of this Apex hedge against perpetual debasement of the dollar. It doesn't trade that way. And so, you know, basically throughout my entire tenure, I'll say, you know, the five years that I've been tweeting this sort of stuff and doing this work and publishing all of it and going on shows and things like that, and building these companies, is that, you know, bitcoin trading like the NASDAQ is the biggest informational asymmetry of our time, right? It currently represents point 2% of global wealth, when, in reality, it should represent a far larger chunk of that. Thankfully, we're at a stage where bitcoin is much more intuition institutionalized. But from very early on, when I initially started talking about this stuff, one of the big points I was hammering was that this is an asset that everyone should be owning all the time, rather than an asset that drops when something scares the market and the risk bucket goes down. So yeah, no, it's it's certainly the framework that I encourage everybody to operate with, because this is the reality. Bitcoin is one asset that operates in a much larger universe of other assets, and so it's cross asset correlations and how those change over time matter more than anything

Israel: 8:02

else, as much as it is true which, which I do hold this belief that Bitcoin is a completely separate system to this credit based system, let's say that's traditional finance. It's also true that, I mean this transition, or this merging of the two worlds is going to be a turbulent transition, right? And so you, you can't get away from a lot of the just massive impact that the global markets and this credit based system has on, on Bitcoins, you know, kind of maturity as as it grows up. And you provide some excellent analysis on all of that that you just mentioned, Joe. So highly encourage listeners to give Joe a following as well on social media. And apart from being a respected global markets analyst, Joe and within the Bitcoin space, you're part of the founding team at Horizon, can you tell us which is a platform that lets individuals essentially tap into their home equity in order to purchase some bitcoin. But without getting into it myself, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about the the value proposition,

Joe: 9:10

absolutely. So, you know, Horizon kind of came about because I just mentioned that Bitcoin represents point 2% of global wealth, right? It's a 2.3 ish trillion dollar asset. It surpassed Amazon when it, you know, hit $120,000 behind me. It's a little bit lower than that. Now, it's now a top five global asset, but that said it's only point 2% of the one quadrillion dollars worth of global wealth. And this was a, you know, this is a figure that was put put together by Jesse Myers, who's now over at the smarter web company. And, you know, essentially, that's kind of where we are, right? Bitcoin is this asset that lives in a world where there is misallocated capital everywhere else, right? But there, there are very few direct bridges from these asset markets into Bitcoin. The big asset markets that are you know that these bridges have been built for are bonds, right through vehicles like strife, where. You know, capital essentially is coming from people who are purchasing this preferred stock, right, this fixed income instrument and funneling directly into Bitcoin, because MicroStrategy uses those proceeds to purchase Bitcoin, right? And so in essence, fixed income investors now can have leveraged exposure to Bitcoin, right? So that's building a funnel between the and I'll pull up the figure in front of me so I can have these numbers on hand from the $318 trillion global bond market into Bitcoin, right? Money. Obviously, that's a big one, right? People all over the world can purchase Bitcoin, right? So that's $129 120 $9 trillion bridge that has been created. Right? People can usually buy bitcoin in any country that they're in equities. You have MicroStrategy of all these Bitcoin Treasury companies as well, people, obviously, all of these entities issuing common stock, and then, in return, they use those proceeds to buy bitcoin, right? So it allows equity investors to gain leverage Bitcoin exposure, right? And not to mention the ETFs allow that to happen as well, right? People can purchase a spot Bitcoin ETF and have Blackrock fidelity and others buy bitcoin on their behalf, right? And so all of these markets have a bridge between them, from that massive global market, global asset market, into Bitcoin, the largest of them all, does not have any clear bridge. Yet, real estate. Real Estate is a $370 trillion market, over 10% of which is in the United States, right? And if we just talk about equity, there's $35.1 trillion of home equity in the United States. We're just talking residential and so residential real estate alone in the United States represents over 10% of that $300 trillion global market. And so ultimately, there are, there are very few, if any, bridges that directly exist that allow real estate owners to siphon their capital into the $2 trillion Bitcoin market. And that's essentially the guiding vision behind horizon. And the way that we've achieved this, you know, with this first iteration of the product, is through a home equity investment. Right? Essentially, Horizon allows individuals to stack Bitcoin using their home equity. And a couple of the key distinctions that differentiate us from a traditional loan, because an HEI horizon, what horizon offers is not a loan. There are no monthly payments. That's a huge one. But more importantly, there are no interest charges, right? So when you think of, you know, there are certain reverse mortgage products out there that also offer this sort of no monthly payment selling point, right? But the asterisk is that it's essentially just a deferred interest loan, right? Deferred interest loan products have existed for an extremely long time. In my view, they're highly predatory, because essentially, you're being sold on this no monthly payments component, but then at the very end of the day, you are beholden to whatever rates do over that period, right, whatever rate you locked in at the front end, and over that 10 year, 15 year, 20 year, 30 year period, you have to pay it, and that interest can rack up quite a bit. And so one of the key distinctions between horizon and a deferred interest loan product is that the company does not make its revenue on interest whatsoever, right? There are no interest charges. And so that's another key benefit for homeowners. Another key benefit is that there's no Bitcoin upside taken, right? So the Bitcoin that you use, the cash proceeds you get from horizon to purchase, is entirely the homeowners, right? There's no upside taken on that by horizon, the company or our financing partner. And the fourth thing, and you know, one of the biggest things in my mind is that there are no term limits, right? Everyone's investment horizon is different, but particularly with Bitcoiners, it varies quite a bit, right? People may be operating on a five year or 10 year time horizon. Others are operating on a 30 or 40 year time horizon, right? And that plays directly into home ownership as well. Some people may be in their starter home that they purchased, and they're planning on moving into a bigger one once they form their family. So their time horizon is shorter, and some people are in their forever home. A gentleman I just spoke to yesterday about this product, he was doing a consultation with me, is already in his forever home. He bought it outright fully two years ago, and he plans on staying there for 50 Years and passing it on to his children. And so people's time horizons vary. And so one of the really, really cool components of horizon is, not only are we allowing you to do this swap from home equity into Bitcoin, but we're also allowing you to keep that alive and not have to essentially settle up the contract for as long as you'd like, right until there's a title transfer, or you sell the home, or your refi, or you just voluntarily settle up, you can let this thing go for as long as long as you want. And so those are some of the key distinctions from traditional loan products today, and how horizon being not a loan product offers some more flexibility to homeowners and really more broadly. You know, this is, this is the first step into building this bridge between the $370 trillion global real estate market and Bitcoin, which is a$2 trillion market

Israel: 14:41

right build with Bitcoin. Is a proud affiliate partner of river, a Bitcoin only financial services company that I've personally been using for years. I really enjoy the strong folks they have on security and reliability, which ultimately leads to peace of mind. I know you. You're a big fan as well.

Lynne Bairstow: 14:57

Lynne, I am, I am. I feel so. Confident referring people to River. In addition to what you mentioned, also, they've got us based phone support, which I think for somebody who's less familiar with the space or used to personal service, is really helpful. In addition, they have a private client services division, so if you're looking to invest 100,000 or more, they have a special suite of services designed for you, whether you're a high net worth individual, a family, office or trust. I also really appreciate the continued improvements they make in the back end, so that that reliability and security continues to be really apparent.

Israel: 15:29

They they additionally also have US dollar cash deposits paid out in Bitcoin. They have a yield product for that which is an interesting alternative way of accumulating Bitcoin. Overall, fantastic suite of services. If you're interested in onboarding or opening up an account at River use partner.river.com/build, with Bitcoin for personalized onboarding.

Joe: 15:52

Bonds are already well underway. Right strategy is taking care of those vehicles via his preferred stock. Equities are already underway in the form of spot Bitcoin ETFs and leverage Bitcoin exposure through Bitcoin Treasury companies. Strategy included meta planet, smarter web company and others, real estate at $370 trillion horizon, right? This is the first example of a direct funnel that is built between real estate and Bitcoin, with the goal, with the idea of siphoning the $370 trillion global real estate market into Bitcoin, taking away that monetary premium that exists there and making it so that homes are affordable again, and Bitcoin actualizes its destination, which is as the world's largest asset market,

Lynne Bairstow: 16:32

Joe. How does horizon monetize? So if you, if there's, I mean, is it a reverse it's not really a reverse mortgage, but Are there fees involved with those? Or how do you get

Joe: 16:43

paid? So payment for horizon and our financing partner comes at the very end of the life of the term, right? And as I mentioned, there are no term limits for some people that'll be in five years. For some people that'll be in 30 years. It's whenever the homeowner decides. And essentially, what happens in exchange, right, for this tax free cash upfront in order to go and buy bitcoin, horizon and our financing partner receive a commensurate stake in the property. That stake grows gradually over time until year eight, and then at year eight, it stays completely flat. And then at that point, the contract payoff only grows at the rate that the home is inflating. And so essentially, that's the way that horizon gets paid, right in exchange for this upfront cash horizon and a financing partner receive a commensurate stake in the home, which grows modestly over time until year eight. And then whenever the homeowner decides to settle up, whether that's year 10, year 12, year 15 or 20, or even year five, then essentially, that is the contract payoff. It's the homeowner pays off that stake in the property in the form of cash. Okay,

Lynne Bairstow: 17:41

that's super interesting. And Joe, one of the reasons we really were happy to have you on is just your your kind of big picture perspective of markets in general. And I have heard you speak a little bit about housing prices are decreasing relative to Bitcoin. And how do you as a partner or founding partner in horizon. Think about this.

Joe: 18:03

Yeah. So I love this question. And you know, as far as home prices go, we saw what happened in 2008 and 2020 essentially what we saw was not only the Fed jumping into rescue the housing market. Right in 2008 It was much different than in 2020 what had happened? But essentially, in 2008 these mortgages were being extended to people who certainly could not pay them. They did not meet the qualifications for a mortgage. They were extended anyway, because they were then securitized and sold. And the bank did not care if the person could pay off their mortgage, because they securitized it and sold it somebody else, and they got their fee for doing it right. That created a lot of moral hazard. And what ended up happening was this huge collapse once people couldn't pay their mortgages, the people who own these mortgage backed securities, as they were called, that went to zero, and banks began began collapsing, and as a result, the Fed jumped in to rescue, not only these banks, but the housing market, right? And you know, since 2008 we've seen the median home sale price accelerate quite a bit. Just 10 years ago, the median home price, or I'll actually use 2012 or 2013 as an example. You know the genesis of when Bitcoin began being actively traded, 2011 2012 the median home price was right around, if not below,$200,000 today, it's 420 to$430,000 right? So that is a more than 100% increase over just 12 or 13 years. And so one thing we learned in 2020 was that regardless of whatever crisis initiates it, the Fed will jump in overnight to save the banks and the housing market. And so the response time over time has actually become much shorter, right? We saw in 2008 late 2007 there were some pretty clear signs of what was happening. The Fed largely ignored it, right? They did some maintenance cuts, but no direct intervention. And then in 2008 they had waited far too long, and the collapse was already really underway. In 2020 the first inkling of any sort of issue happening, right? World government shutting down the Fed essentially slammed rates to zero. In real terms, rates were negative, and as a result, it basically. Put this floor underneath the housing market to make sure that it didn't fall and so, you know, the Fed operates on these two different mandates, and I'll get to the Bitcoin part in just one second. But this is really fascinating. The Fed operates on two mandates, at least explicitly. Those mandates are stable prices and full employment, right? It's a bit of an oxymoron to have to juggle those two. It's kind of insane that one entity has to maintain those two things, and also the notion that one central entity can control prices. It's kind of crazy. Besides the point, they have this third shadow mandate that not a lot of people are aware of, and that's to make sure that the asset market, asset markets, particularly the stock market and real estate, do not fall right. This is what's called the Fed put right. It's it's something that not a lot of people are aware of, people who are in the know and markets are aware of. But essentially, the Fed cannot allow two consecutive negative quarters of GDP, right, in order to make sure that we're not in a recession. That's one of his big mandates, staving off recession, to maintain full employment and stable prices. But this other mandate that it has is that it's, it's kind of strange to say it out loud, but it can't allow the stock market to fall too much, and it can't allow the housing market to fall too much, right? And that sounds a little bit strange, but it's true, and because we've seen that in its behavior, in the way that it's reacted over time, all that to say home prices are never going to fall. They're never going to be in a secular decline, so long as the Fed is in charge of things, and so long as United States dollar is the chief denominator for all assets globally, right? They're never going to fall. They're going to continue in the secular uptrend that said, there's another asset that exists today that allows people to hedge against this reality, hedge against this reality that the Fed trying to operate on this dual mandate, plus its third shadow mandate, will perpetually debase the dollar for the rest of time. And that's Bitcoin, right? If you look at home prices in Bitcoin over the last decade, they've fallen 99.98% sounds untrue, but it's true. If you take the median home sale price in the United States, you take, you put Bitcoin in the denominator, instead of the US dollar, they've fallen by 99.98% right? You know, today you can buy a median home for just under four BTC, right? I you know, I mentioned 420, to 430 is the price of a median home. You can buy that for, you know, 3.5 3.6 or seven Bitcoin, right? Whereas, several decades ago, it would take several 100 or several 1000 or 10s of 1000s of Bitcoin in order to purchase that same home. And so ultimately, you know, it's really something fascinating. We've built a Chrome extension for this. If you just search horizon Bitcoin extension on Google, you can find this and essentially it lets you browse through Zillow and get this perspective in real time, not to see the price of homes in Bitcoin, but also see the historical data of homes in secular decline when bitcoin is in the denominator. And so really, at the government level, for the reasons that I just mentioned, home prices can never fall. However, at the individual level, Bitcoin allows folks to insulate themselves from that, right? If the government's not coming to save you, because its incentive structure is aligned with making sure that home prices rise perpetually. Then, at the individual level, Bitcoin allows people to insulate themselves from that. And every homeowner, every individual, has the responsibility to do that, because, frankly, the government and the Federal Reserve will not do it for you. This is a system that we're in, right? That we're in. It cannot stop. And so as a result, Bitcoin allows people to insulate themselves from that. And seeing the chart of property values and secular decline when bitcoin is the denominator is really a fascinating thing

Israel: 23:13

to behold earlier, when I was referring to, you know, the credit based system and Bitcoin being totally separate, that's why everything Joe just mentioned is true, because you when, when you measure this scarce, hard asset and compare it to a world where it these markets need increased liquidity and credit, the nominal value just just it's just going to continue and continue increasing. So if anyone out there has heard some of the phrases, like, everything is falling against Bitcoin, or if you've ever seen that, that graphic, where it's a perception of what is happening, is the first image, right? And then you have Bitcoin as kind of the straight line, and the dollar, the dollar figures, kind of going up. And then you know, there's image number two, and what's actually happening is the dollar actually just going down against against the flat Bitcoin rate, right? Excuse me if I didn't explain that precisely, but I mean all of that is to say that once it clicks, you do just see the massive opportunity in the merging of these two worlds, right? And so honing back to the real estate market, Joe. I mean, I think it's a particularly fascinating moment right now with the recent FHFA news, which we can maybe get back to in a moment. But basically, the housing regulator in the US just directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take Bitcoin and crypto into account for the risk assessment of want to be homeowners or mortgage borrowers, right? So you have, I kind of see that as one, one side of the coin, a current holder of Bitcoin that has some wealth there, that's the. Looking to purchase a home. That's one very interesting bridge that's being formed. And then on the other side of the coin is more what what you're doing at Horizon Right? Which I think is probably the more, well I would, I would say the more sizable, nominally, right now, because real estate is the number one asset for the majority of American households. So now horizon is providing the the other, the bridge on the other side where I currently have most of my wealth tied up in real estate, which has served you know, which maybe has served me well for many years, but if I have woken up to the realities that you just went over, Joe, then I'm able to tap into that, that wealth, right, and diversify into what's seems to be likely the best performing asset of many years to come, still, right? So how do you so first of all, how do you look at this FHFA directive, Joe, even though I know it's not precisely the that angle that horizon is tackling, I think it speaks to just the overall healthy direction that we're heading into. How do you view that?

Joe: 26:13

So the news from the FHFA is really substantial. Will palti has done a really good job at heading up the FHFA, and basically what he put forth was directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to explore counting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, right? But frankly, just Bitcoin, and I'll speak about well, we'll get into that in a second, but now it's going to count as an asset when applying for a mortgage, right? This is different from a mortgage collateralized with Bitcoin, right? But it will count as an asset when applying for a mortgage when previously it didn't. This is substantial for two reasons. Reason number one is that you may no longer need to sell your Bitcoin into cash in order to buy that house, right? Cash counts as an asset when you're qualifying for a mortgage, but Bitcoin didn't, and so homeowners who were looking between, okay, do I keep my bitcoin stack, or do I buy this home? I'd like to start a family. I'd like to be a homeowner. I'd like to mow my lawn, right? But I have to sell Bitcoin. And so they had to make that trade off and sell their Bitcoin to purchase that home. And so now you may no longer need to do that. You can hold your Bitcoin, right? It may need to be with a custodian, but regardless, you can hold your Bitcoin. That's that's substantial point number one. Substantial Point number two is that the US government is now comfortable with taking Bitcoin risk on its own books. And what do I mean by that? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government sponsored entities, right? And so essentially, you know, when we're including Bitcoin in a risk assessment, that means the mortgages that these two financial institutions are underwriting, which are government sponsored agencies, have Bitcoin included in that risk assessment. And so now these loans on the risk side of it have Bitcoin on them, or they can have Bitcoin on them. And so those are the two substantial things, and what it means is that it now eliminates the trade off between home ownership and Bitcoin, and so too does horizon, right? So all of these things are interlinked. Is Bitcoin institutionalizes, right? It's bigger than Amazon now it's a top five global asset. You know, your stocks can count toward, you know, an asset when you're applying for a mortgage. It's high time that bitcoin does as well, considering its size. And so now that it can all of these things, all of these developments are very substantial, because they mean that the trade off between Bitcoin ownership and home ownership is waning, right? And so that means less Bitcoin has to be sold in order to achieve the dream of home ownership, right on the front of on the front of this FHFA news so you can qualify for a mortgage without having to sell your Bitcoin. And then, on the flip side of it, with horizon, that trade off between Bitcoin and home ownership is also waned, right? Because, you know, if you own a home, you have these mortgage payments, right? Chances are, particularly if you're my age, right. Most folks my age, most of my peers, are totally priced out of the housing market. However, most of my peers, most people my age are invested in one asset more than any other asset, and that's Bitcoin. And so essentially, what horizon allows people to do is, instead of, you know, selling your Bitcoin in order to put a down payment on that house and buy that house, and now you're really upset because you forfeited X amount of BTC, now horizon allows people at the margin to claw some of that decision back right the down payment they put on their home and the mortgage payments that they've been putting in since then, you can now borrow again or not borrow against, rather, but transform some of that net equity you put into your house back into Bitcoin. And in essence, as this product grows and expands, the name of the game, at least for me, in my mind, is that ultimately it's allowing people to live in their Bitcoin that trade off between Bitcoin and home ownership. I know many Bitcoiners are renters, right? Particularly many young Bitcoiners, they're renters. Because why on earth would they sell their Bitcoin in order to put a down payment on a home when they could just rent and buy bitcoin, which has a far greater appreciation, you know, than their house. Now, for a lot of Bitcoiners, between this FHFA. News, and the fact that any money you put into your home could, potentially, if you qualify, be transformed back into Bitcoin. All of these developments are really just eliminating the trade off between home ownership and Bitcoin, and that's a phenomenal development for BTC and for home ownership, right? You know, it makes it means Bitcoin can be a larger asset. It means there is less selling pressure from the FHFA side and more buying pressure from the horizon side. But also is good for real estate, ultimately, right? Because if people are putting less of their capital to work in real estate and more of their capital to work in Bitcoin, as instruments like horizon proliferate, then that means the monetary premium from real estate gets siphoned away, right? And so it's basically doing these two things in tandem, Bitcoin is becoming the store of value through this direct bridge, siphoning the monetary premium for real estate and making, you know, properties, making houses, homes again, rather than investments. And so that's that's essentially where all this fits into my mental model of what's

Lynne Bairstow: 30:52

happening. It's fascinating, because it does feel that Bitcoin has been kind of excluded as an asset class for collateral for in traditional finance, and that seems to be shifting very rapidly. Now, what do you think, Joe could be the implications of this as as it does become more standard as an asset for collateral, and do you feel that that might open up opportunities for i and we read so much about this, about how younger generations are being locked out of the housing market because of the appreciation in price. So do you foresee Bitcoin appreciating at a higher rate than housing increases, and that that might enable kind of a shift in in home ownership toward younger generations?

Joe: 31:34

Do it? I certainly pray so. Right? You know, more than ever, as I mentioned, young people are priced out of the housing market. I'm 24 years old. Just turned 24 a little bit less than three months ago, and currently, I'll say most of my peers, six years out of high school, two years out of college, just finishing up their graduate degrees, they have all of these student loans. Most of the rates on student loans today are completely absurd, anywhere from 5% to 11% I've seen as high in my own personal circles. And so the dream of home ownership, right? It's not the 90s or the 80s or even the 70s anymore, where somebody fresh out of college may be able to, you know, work for a couple of years and then be able to put a down payment on a home and pay that home off and live comfortably and go on vacations. That dream is dead for a lot of people. And so the prospect of, you know, this Fannie and Fred news, what it means for me is that now these young people who may have been stacking Bitcoin now they may qualify for a mortgage, whereas previously they didn't. And furthermore, right? This is one development in the process, I believe, of Bitcoin actually becoming collateral, collateral, collateral for loans. Right? We we've actually seen news out of JP Morgan, where they're exploring the potential to allow Bitcoin to be used as collateral for loans. And so this is really just all wonderful developments, and it speaks to bitcoins monetary properties very well, because not only do you have this absolutely scarce monetary asset, right, that's only going to have less, just under 21 million units forever, right? That's solidified. Nothing can happen that will change that. But it's also a 24 7365, asset, right? There no circuit breakers on this thing. It's highly liquid, right at $2.4 trillion less liquid than other markets, but it's on its way to being one of the largest single assets, if not the single largest asset in the world. It's now more than 10% of the size of gold. So it's 24/7 365, it's highly liquid, and it's verifiable, right? It's a trustless, verifiable, highly liquid 24/7 asset. What does that sound like? That sounds like the best collateral in the world. And in other words, it's pristine collateral, right? And so as more financial institutions catch on to this, and I believe this Fannie and Freddie news, although it's not telling them to explore the use of Bitcoin as collateral, merely an asset during loan qualification, it is a step in that direction of pushing financial institutions to begin using Bitcoin for, frankly, one of it, one of the greatest utilities that is monetary properties allow it to which is his pristine collateral. And so moving in this direction, it's going to make, you know, loans at a much better rate, frankly, for people, right, because of the collateral type that we're talking about. And so it's going to make homeownership much more affordable, right? If Bitcoin can be used as an asset during loan qualification, if it can be posted as collateral, and further, if banks treat Bitcoin as the very, very premium asset that it is the, you know, the quality of that collateral type, and therefore they can get a lower rate on it. I believe that that world is, you know, 10 years, 20 years away from us, or even sooner, who knows, then all of that makes homeownership affordable again. And so, you know, for me, that's one of, that's my biggest personal Mo, you know, you know, one of the things I'll say is that I'm a Christian man. I've been Christian man. I've been Christian my whole life. And every single night I pray that, wherever I can be put to provide value, that just every single day I provide the most value that I possibly can. And I believe, you know, over the next several years, what I was put here to do is to help facilitate this right. Help facilitate this transfer, not just of wealth from real estate into BTC, but. In doing so making homeownership affordable again, right? Ultimately, I want everyone to live the American dream. I want everybody to have a white picket fence and a big, beautiful American flag waving off their, you know, porch, you know, with hanging porch slings and dogs running out front and children running out front, you know. And this, this American dream that's, frankly, completely not available for people my age anymore, right through a variety of factors, namely Fiat inflation, people my age just simply can't live that life anymore. And through companies like this, like the companies that are facilitating the transfer of bonds into Bitcoin and equities into Bitcoin, and with Horizon Real Estate into Bitcoin, I believe all of these developments and all of these firms are going to make the home, are going to make the American dream possible again. And that's ultimately what I see to do each and every day.

Israel: 35:46

You know, completely agree with with the bright future you're kind of painting in that regard, as far as shifting this back to being a utility asset, ultimately a home for the purpose of being a home, a true, true, yeah, the utility that your home provides instead of just being this investment flip

Joe: 36:07

that a place to live in, a place to own instead of a retirement account, that's absolutely

Israel: 36:11

right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and the work that horizon is doing is part of this, this direction that we're heading towards. So, you know, great, great respect for everything you guys are working on. To get back to the horizon product, Joe, I like to maybe kind of put some numbers as an example to make sure people understand exactly what you mentioned. So you kind of went through some of the mechanics of how horizon works earlier. But can we work through just a very practical example briefly, to make sure everyone understands what how this works. Let's say we're starting off with a $1 million home value. Let's just use that as an example to make numbers easy, and I'm looking to tap 100,000 of that million as equity that I currently have, and I'd like to use that cash to buy bitcoin. How does this, in a practical sense, work at Horizon? Absolutely. And

Joe: 37:07

I love that you answer this question, because storytelling is one component, right, but examples are another component, right? What I try to do is, I try to paint a picture in people's minds of what the product can do and what Bitcoin can do generally. I mean, you know, if you boil down my job to its very, very basics, and really, anybody that works in Bitcoin, it's explaining the why Bitcoin question 1000 different ways. So that's one side of it, but also offering examples is extremely important. So plugging those numbers in, if we take a$1 million home, let's say the investment horizon is 15 years, and you want to tap $100,000 of that to go into Bitcoin. So essentially, the way that it'll work is, as I mentioned earlier, what you'll do is you'll fill out your application, you'll go through your process. If you're in a state that qualifies, and we're currently live in 1617, states we're aiming to be in as many as we possibly can over the next several months. Then essentially, you know, you get wired $100,000 in tax free cash in order to buy bitcoin. You can buy bitcoin on an exchange of your choice. We also allow people to buy bitcoin with horizon, but it's entirely up to the homeowner. They can buy where they'd like. They can custody how they'd like the bitcoin is now this collateral, okay, so that's for the homeowner in exchange million on a million dollar home. $100,000 represents 10% of the property's value. So in exchange cornerstone, which is one of our current financing partners, or any of our financing partners, really, they will receive a commensurate stake in the property, right? And so in this case, that's 10% right. Let's say the homeowner stays in this contract for 15 years. Let's say the home growth rate is about 3% which is the current case, Shiller, national average. That varies, right? But let's use 3% as an example. Let's use a Bitcoin annual growth rate of 24% right? Currently, Bitcoins, for your CAGR, is about 30% over longer time horizons. It's more but you know, for the sake of this example, let's say 24% something conservative, kind of the lower bound, right? Because we have diminishing marginal returns over 15 years. Essentially, the way that the transaction would work is that there's a 2.25x multiplier applied to the value that was swapped out in the home right? So the the home equity share, we call it, there's a 2.25x multiplier that's applied to that that reaches 2.25x that that equity share in year eight, right? So essentially, you begin with a 10% share, and then it moves up to 22 and a half percent, and then it stays there, right? And it stays there for however long you intend to stay in the horizon contract you can exit before that year rate threshold or after again, either voluntarily or through settling up by selling the house or refinancing or doing a title transfer. Let's say, again, to back away from numbers in this in this example, those are the mechanics of the horizon contract, $1 million home,$100,000 in cash, drawn out. All of that goes into Bitcoin, let's say over a 15 year period, with a 3% home growth rate and a 24% Bitcoin growth rate. You. Essentially the way that this would all work out is the future value of one bitcoin in 15 years would be about 2.9 5 million the future home value would be $1.55 million and the projected Bitcoin investment value right, because $100,000 went into bitcoin be about $2.51 million and so the contract payoff right on a home that is $1.55 million we mentioned, we drew out 10% at the front. That turns into 22.5% at year rate, and then remains there. And so the future home value of $1.55 million we take about 22 and a half percent of that. That represents the contract payoff, which is about 362,000 against the future Bitcoin value, which is $2.51 million for net investment return of $2.156 million so that's a high level example of the way that horizon works. You know, it's very helpful to think of it as, you know, essentially a Home Equity swap, right? You have capital in your home, maybe you have a mortgage, maybe you don't, and you can take up to about 22.2% of that net equity and put it in a Bitcoin. So essentially, that's, that is the way that horizon works. You know, it's this home equity swap payment comes at the end, and upside is based on the home's appreciation, plus that multiplier that I mentioned, right? And so for homeowners, really, who believe that Bitcoin is going to continue outpace to outpace the rate of growth on their home. Horizon offers a very, very clean way of acting on that belief without altering your lifestyle with monthly payments or interest charges. How do you

Lynne Bairstow: 41:32

account for housing markets that are either accelerating more rapidly than the average or declining in certain markets? How does horizon look at those two scenarios?

Joe: 41:43

That's a very good question. Ultimately, we believe, on net, that, you know, home prices across the country are going to continue to increase, right? There are going to be some markets that underperform, no doubt. So, you know, in 2020 we saw mass exodus from California, for example. And in a lot of areas, home prices stagnated or fell, you know, but we believe that, you know, the length of time that people will be using horizon for, whether that's four years, five years, 10 years, 15 years on net, home prices will increase, right? And so there are no adjustments made, you know, when it comes to, let's say we believe a market is going to fall, or we believe a particular housing market is going to rise, there are no adjustments or considerations made in those scenarios.

Israel: 42:23

Are there any metrics that you can share with us? Joe, as far as what you have actually, I don't know. I don't know if originated is the right word. But as far as just transaction average, transaction sizes, I mean, how much have you actually tapped into? As far as home equity to date, yeah. Well, what can you share, as far as how people are actually using and thinking about this product?

Joe: 42:46

Absolutely so I can't share any hard numbers, but what I can say is that we have spoken to 1000s of people, and this is just in, you know, the roughly under two months since we've launched. We've spoken to 1000s of people, and we have helped several people, several dozen people, originate on their houses. And so when we talk about the the average, let's say, amount, that is drawn on, because home sizes differ, the more, the more useful metric would be like, percentage, right, more often than not, what we're finding is that people kind of sit right in between. In between that 10% to 22.2% scenario, right? And a lot of people right, particularly for people who have no mortgage balance remaining, they're deciding to essentially max out, right? And with horizon, we have pretty conservative requirements when it comes to qualifying for Horizon, our max CLTV is 47 and a half percent, which is much more restrictive than other traditional loan types, because horizon isn't alone. It's this equity swap program, home equity investment. And also we only allow 22.2 roughly percent of that net equity to be drawn on. And so given how restricted that is, but, but more than anything, given how much people believe in Bitcoin, we've seen that more often than not, homeowners are choosing to go on the higher end of that maximum amount that they can draw on. And from my point of view, like, you know, obviously there's a point, there is a there is some amount of FOMO in there. But more than anything, it's just, it's this core belief in Bitcoin, right? Because if people are saying, I'm going to take 10s of 1000s of dollars or a few $100,000 and put it into Bitcoin with the plan of doing this for 12 or 15 years, they tend to have a great deal of conviction that goes beyond just FOMO at the price. And so really, the people who are using this, you know, believe in Bitcoin to their very core. But there are also a few people I've spoken to who just see this as a great diversifier, right? You know, even though they may be Bitcoin agnostic, or they've heard about Bitcoin, but not quite invested in it before, I am speaking to a great deal of people who are purely interested in in it, from the standpoint of having their home do more than them, right, having to their home do more for them, rather, you. Know, if your home is growing by 3% a year, and Bitcoin has this, you know, is the best performing major asset over the last 12 years, then you kind of begin to look at your situation a little bit differently, right? And you kind of begin to think about the possibilities of putting some of that capital to work and not having to worry about it, right? Because when you think of a HELOC, you think, Okay, I'm going to have monthly payments, right? Whether that's an addition to my mortgage or I paid off my mortgage, and now I'm going to get some more monthly payments. Not a lot of people like that, and further, with interest rates at 7% 8% even 9% in some instances, on HELOCs, this offers a really great alternative to a lot of the homeowners that I'm speaking to, and we're speaking to as a team, that allows them to do this without having to adjust their lifestyle. You know, so internally, it's going fantastically for us, not from a numerical standpoint, but, as I mentioned, from the standpoint of providing value, right? Ultimately, what we aim to do, and what I aim to do personally, is to make it so that, you know, homeowners can breathe again. They can be comfortable again, right? You know, if someone's home is their retirement account, but it's not keeping up with inflation, that's not great, right? That ultimately limits people's options from when they decide that they want to sell their home and go live in retirement, they may need to work a job alongside that, or at some point pick up another job alongside that. You know, the median 401, K balance is declining year after year, even for older generations, right? And so for people who are sitting on a great deal of equity, this really represents, I would call it breathing room for people, a sigh of relief that lets them breathe again. You know, over the last several years in particular, where their home just hasn't caught up with the cost of living.

Lynne Bairstow: 46:30

Yeah, it's a great diversifier. Because I think if you look at asset classes overall, I think there is a concern that the equity prices are perhaps a little inflated away by increases in money supply, but Bitcoin being a different type of collateral is, you know, just gives you optionality, where, if your house does end up appreciating at just the rate of inflation or a little less than you, at least have an asset that has the potential, logic would would follow that it could increase at a higher rate than inflation. So that's a great option. I want to get back to something that you said. You said, you're always explaining why Bitcoin and the and the ruling that or the the direction that came out, the advice for the for the housing applied to all cryptos, but we've been speaking specifically about Bitcoin. What is horizons? You know, take on other cryptos, or why have we been talking about? I mean, everyone who listens to our show knows Israel, and I's position on this. But can you explain a little bit about why Bitcoin and and why we haven't been talking about other crypto assets?

Joe: 47:37

Of course, so I'll speak for myself personally, a lot of people had a phase when they initially got into bitcoin where they saw bitcoins price and unit bias immediately kicked in, right? Particularly for, you know, a broke college student, when I came into Bitcoin, looking at this thing and saying, oh, geez, it's, it's 3000 bucks. I can't buy a full Bitcoin, right? Unit bias kicks in. So naturally, the next step is to think, what's the next Bitcoin? And so they search for this shiny thing with, you know, a great founding team with a great smile, who says, Oh, I love Bitcoin. Bitcoin is great, but you should buy this, this thing that I created. And so really, that was the MO for the market. I mean, in 2017 we had the ICO bubble, where, essentially, you know, these initial coin offerings, this vapor, were essentially just popping out of thin air, and people purchasing it because they wanted to find the next Bitcoin that blew up in everyone's faces. And so that was a major hit to crypto. And in all my writing since I began doing this with Nick at the Bitcoin layer, we put crypto in quotation marks at Theia and horizon, and in all the research that I publish, and even on my personal account, I put crypto in quotation marks. And there's good reason for it, and I'll explain. And then in 2021 it moved to, and that took a hit to, you know, crypto dominance relative to Bitcoin dominance. And then in 2021 it turned to, all right, we're not going to launch as many vaporware tokens, but what we will do is we will launch yield products, right? You could post your usdt or USDC or your Bitcoin as collateral for this loan. It wasn't called a loan, right? But essentially what was happening was people were posting their Bitcoin into this basically box, right? Nobody knew how they worked, but essentially what was happening was that Bitcoin that was being posted for yield was then taken and lent out elsewhere, right? And so that represented a great deal of moral hazard for the companies doing this. But more importantly, it was the next variation of shiny object syndrome, right? All of these, you know, crypto tokens and all of these platforms that allowed them to be posted, you know, and offer this tremendous yield, you know, 11% 12% 13% 40% 13% 40% but as I mentioned, you know, I was mentored by a gentleman, Nick Bayt, with a rates background. And when you think of yield, when you think of a 12% yield, right, the two year US Treasury, I don't have my terminal up, but I believe it's around, you know, four and a half to 5% or four to 5% somewhere in there, when you think of a 12% yield, the. Is an additional 700 basis points on top of, you know, the commensurate US Treasury yield, right? Whether it's a one year, three month, or two year, 10 year. So that's a premium, and that premium is all risk, right? Because if the US Treasury market is considered the risk free benchmark rate, because, you know, they can never default, they could just print the difference. If they don't have the revenue to make up for it, then where is the rest of that risk accounted for? Right? What's happening here? How am I earning this whole percent yield? And that's because there's an immense amount of risk involved. And then ultimately, when price went sideways, all of these schemes blew up in people's faces. And so what we have seen is Bitcoin dominance, which is bitcoins market cap relative to the total crypto market cap. It's a great metric to kind of gage Bitcoin relative to everything else. And during 2017 you know, kind of pre Ico bubble, Bitcoin dominance was, you know, really close to 100% you know, high 90s. And then during the ICO bubble it waned. It fell pretty tremendously, right? Because people were buying things that were not Bitcoin. And then when the ICO bubble collapsed, Bitcoin dominance rose in 2021 this negative correlation still existed. You know, there was a negative correlation between bitcoins price and Bitcoin dominance, because as Bitcoin rose again, a unit bias kicked in, shiny object syndrome at the individual level kicked in, and people wanted to find the next Bitcoin. So instead of buying Bitcoin, people were buying other assets more often than Bitcoin right during bull markets. And so in 2021 again, Bitcoin dominance was inversely correlated to bitcoins price. When these yield farming schemes exploded, Bitcoin fell. Bitcoin dominance rose. Now what we're seeing is for the first time ever, there's a positive correlation between Bitcoin dominance in bitcoins price and what does that mean? That means that this is the first cycle in bitcoins history, where, instead of shiny object syndrome kicking in as bitcoins price rises, people are just seeking to allocate to Bitcoin as bitcoins price rises, right? And so this is really the first recognition from the market. And I believe that this will continue rising over time, until Bitcoin dominance relative to other non stable coin crypto will rise back up to as close to 100% as it can possibly get. And that's because people are coming around to the fact that there's Bitcoin and then there's everything else, right? Ultimately, Bitcoin is this absolutely scarce, neutral money, right? Neutral being the key word. You know, there's, there's. The governance structure is distributed all over the world, right? Anyone who runs a node has a say in Bitcoin, and because of that, it's extremely anti fragile, right? Its rule set cannot be changed. Everything else has a centralized board of directors, right? You know, you talk about Ethereum, the Ethereum Foundation, right? This was a token that was pre mined and issued, and the majority of it, if not a lot of it, is held by the Ethereum foundation. Same thing with Solana, same thing with XRP, right? These are essentially stocks, right? They're unregistered securities that have been issued by these major entities who basically run solely on narratives, right? And so they're fundamentally different from Bitcoin. Bitcoins value prop is, as the dollar degrades, this absolutely scarce money that's neutral, whose rule set cannot be changed isn't is a great hedge against that. And more people are coming around to it because of this correlation that I just mentioned. And more and more, the rest of crypto is kind of actualizing its own destiny, which is as a casino. Right? In cycles past, they were trying to position themselves as the next Bitcoin, right? But this cycle, more than ever, the market has come around to, well, that's not actually the case. Bitcoin is Bitcoin, and then there's everything else. And so now, more than ever, you see platforms, and I won't name them, you know, I don't want to get into legal trouble, but platforms are kind of really leaning into this more casino angle, and so really, ultimately, Bitcoin, as I tweeted this yesterday, you know, Bitcoin has moved to Wall Street and crypto has moved to strip mall casinos, and that's, you know, a bit of a stretch. But ultimately, the analogy means that, you know, these other tokens were formally trying to position themselves as the next Bitcoin, but the market this cycle has come around to and it will continue, realizing that there is no other Bitcoin. There's Bitcoin, then there's everything else. And so now, instead of leaning into being the next Bitcoin, these crypto tokens are leaning into being a casino, right? We have this other utility. We can do this. We do that, we do that. But ultimately, shiny object syndrome at the market level has waned. Right? Institutional allocators, the one that's the ones that succeed, they're buying Bitcoin, right? Whether they're pension funds and endowments buying spot Bitcoin ETFs through BlackRock and fidelity, or whether they're Bitcoin Treasury companies that are purchasing Bitcoin on behalf of their shareholders, it's more clear than ever that the only thing people are interested in is Bitcoin. And so that's that's kind of the difference it's presented itself in the data. I've said it for some time, but finally, at long last, it's beginning to present itself in these cross asset correlations that I mentioned

Israel: 54:46

are so important, I think another, another strong signal that backs everything you you're just making mention to is the the actual use cases, I mean, the companies and the entrepreneurs building products you. So if you look at Horizon, for example, or the evolving insurance products that, for example, anchor, watch and meal, meanwhile, are providing, I mean, you look at these very long term thinking businesses, and to no surprise, they're plugging into the Bitcoin network, right? And then Bitcoin, and Bitcoin as the asset, not, you know, the other quote, unquote cryptos, right? So I think, though those are strong signals that also kind of speak to themselves and back everything you're mentioning. Well, I know we're getting close to wrapping up here. Lynne, anything you'd like to touch on on your end?

Lynne Bairstow: 55:38

Well, yeah, I had about 10 more questions for Joe, just to kind of pick his brain about just different aspects of markets and macro. But to wax poetic, I apologize. We love that. It's always better to have more to talk about, which means we can invite you back on and and check in on horizon and Thea, and also just your views on how the market is, I think you've just got some great insights that just frame, you know, I mean, we, we spend so much time Israel, and I just talking to founders and investors and talking about, you know, what different tools and infrastructure are being built on Bitcoin, but we don't talk enough about the why and the big perspective about what are the shifts in the markets, and what are the shifts, and, you know, between interest rates and stocks and fixed income and and Bitcoin as this new asset class. And so your your perspectives are just really welcome, and I think, a great way to frame this conversation that we're thinking about in terms of of the broadening of the availability of using your Bitcoin as either qualifying for a mortgage or collateral for a mortgage, perhaps and more frequently in the future, and just as a way to, you know, to increase your ability to own a home and to be comfortable in a home, and broadening that home ownership perspective. I loved your comments on that. So, I mean, I love to just continue the conversation at future times, but I think, I think we hit on a lot of great points Israel. Any other questions that you have for Joe? More

Israel: 57:14

So Joe, open it up to final comments on your end and where people can find you

Joe: 57:18

absolutely so thank you guys for having me on. These are my favorite type of podcasts to do, where we just get into everything, and we talk about the why. Thank you so much. Lynne and Israel. Parting thoughts is, I'll say, you know, broaden your time horizon, right? Send it out as far as you possibly can, and try to look out 6070, however old you are, you know, you know, God willing, I'm planning on being here till I'm 90 or more, but who knows, right? Broaden it out to 50 years, I'll say, and think about where you would like to be in 50 years, and then work backwards, right? Ultimately, you know, I'm a very young guy, and so I don't have a great deal of wisdom. But what I try to do is I try to look out into the future and see what I would like to accomplish and what I would like to do and how I would try, you know, what I would like to have at that point, you know, and then I try to work backwards and figure out, what can I do to maximize the amount of fulfillment and meaning and purpose in my life. And, you know, oftentimes we talk about crypto and Israel. One last thing that you you just said that really resonated was that, you know, there's a reason that all of these companies who are building insurance products, who are building life insurance products and custody products, like Thea, you know, and you know, this home equity product at Horizon, there's a reason they're operating on a Bitcoin standard, and they service Bitcoin only. And there's a reason the shift is occurring, and it's because there's a recognition that low time preference and immediate consumption have really destroyed a lot of what we enjoy about life when you're going down and buying a lottery ticket that's far less fulfilling than trying to build something meaningful that will last. In the same way when you're going down and trying to spend hours and hours and hours finding the next token that's basically equivalent to going to the casino and putting it all on black, or going down and buying a whole bunch of lottery tickets and scratching feverishly. And so Bitcoin really ties neatly into the life that I'd wager everybody wants to live, which is a life of meaning and fulfillment and a low time preference, right? Rather than immediate consumption, delayed gratification is what people need to be focused on, and ultimately, just maximizing how to live a meaningful life. And so beyond Bitcoin, those would be my parting thoughts, right? Bitcoin really changes people's personal ethos and people's personal mental models, and it extends everywhere, into life. And so if you are a Bitcoin or already, you're already on the right track, and if you aren't yet a bitcoiner, it's certainly something to consider, because it's it's less so an asset, and more of you know, a complete 180 in terms of the way that you think about life in the world around you, and what you should be doing. So those are my parting thoughts, a little bit different from what we talked about, but I think it's a nice way to tie it all together. And if you want to see more of my work, and I really appreciate. Appreciate that you can find me at Joe consorti on X slash Twitter. You can also find me on YouTube, if you're watching this on YouTube, at Joe consorti, you know, thank goodness I was able to secure both of those full name handles before anybody else did. And you can also check out horizon. If this product interests you, you can go to join horizon.com you can book a call with me, and I can walk you through it again. It lets you stack home equity or stack Bitcoin using your home equity without new debt, new monthly payments, interest charges or term limits. And again, that's join horizon. Doc,

Lynne Bairstow: 1:00:28

thank you so much. Beautifully said, Joe. We appreciate your time with us. Thank you, Joe, thank you. Thanks for listening to the build with Bitcoin podcast. If you found benefit in what you heard in this episode, we'd truly appreciate it. If you would like share or leave a comment on whichever platform you're listening as this helps others find us, which is especially important for a new podcast. And as a reminder, our content is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not to be considered investment advice or recommendation to invest in any company or asset mentioned in the podcast. Build with Bitcoin is a proud affiliate partner of river, a full service, 100% reserve custody Bitcoin only financial services company for your next Bitcoin purchase, use our exclusive link partner.river.com/build, with Bitcoin. Thank you sincerely for being a part of the build with Bitcoin community.