I'm not convinced that we'll see another massive surge of retail interest in bitcoin like there was in 2017 and less so 2021. Bad take?

Wed 9/30. You must not listen to The Last Trade

ATTN: Listeners of The Last Trade. I cordially invite you to @OnrampBitcoin "After Hours" on Sept. 30th in Philadelphia. Please join us a week from today for drinks and good conversation. RSVP below 👇 I heard if enough people attend that @MTanguma will be flying in to join

bitcoin ETF flows just flipped positive for 2026. roughly $4.6 billion in since august 19, erasing a year of outflows. bitcoin is up about 35% over that stretch, now around $85,000. but here's the most important part: the treasury intervention so far is a drop in the bucket. we are not talking about serious money yet. now think about what it looks like when the intervention actually has to scale. because the fiscal math says it will.

"as that bitcoin position grew, it was no longer sustainable for me." i talk with people about securing bitcoin every day, and inheritance comes up on almost every call. protecting generational wealth doesn't have to be scary. not for you, your spouse, or your kids.

might be able to do a double quarter pounder for dinner tonight. huge

What's stopping you from joining us in Philadelphia later this month? The @OnrampBitcoin "After Hours" continues... last month NYC, this month Philly, next month a city near you?? Please join us for drinks and lively conversation. RSVP below 👇

The grift that keeps on grifting. We're deep into loot the empire stage.

eating like a king tonight. listeners of the last trade know.

I’d like to see AI try to take his job

three weeks ago people were calling it over +25% august, best month since november 2024 $3.5b into US etfs, biggest monthly inflow in over a year IBIT outperforming SPY since inception despite bear market NEVER DOOM

The global financial system is catching fire. Fast. Bitcoin is the fire alarm.

love to see good guy bill come to the rescue. just trying to help the middle class not lose their jobs to the droids.

some people are reading the @COLDCARDwallet and @Trezor incidents as a concerted effort to fud self-custody. i think the simpler read is that wall street is opportunistic. they see a lot of people looking for a solution right now, and they're moving to provide one. @BlackRock dropping their in-kind subscription minimum from $25 million to $1 million casts a much wider net. far more people now have the means to move real bitcoin into an ETF. and i understand why people are doing it. these incidents landed in the middle of a bear market when sentiment was already poor. a lot of people have concluded that the sovereignty of self-custody no longer compensates them for the risk. mismanaged keys, digital attacks, physical attacks. the stakes only go up from here. but i think it's short sighted to hand over real bitcoin for a financial product you can't take delivery of. there's a third way. you don't have to manage keys, and you don't have to park your bitcoin with an ETF provider or a single custodian. it's called multi-institution custody. more people should know it exists.

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bitcoin is up 24% in the past week. biggest weekly move in over two years. we went from stuck in the low $60 to $79k in about four days. the treasury stepping in to buy its own long-dated debt, close to $2b in ETF inflows, and a short squeeze that punished everyone positioned for more of the same. feels like summer ended a few weeks early. i'll be in manhattan wednesday. we're hosting a happy hour at @PubKey at 5:30 ET with @MTanguma and @Lnelson_21 one of the better parts of working in this industry is getting to meet people in person who already get it. you spend a lot of time explaining the thesis to people who aren't there yet, and then you walk into a room where everyone understands and the conversation starts three levels deeper. if you follow the @OnrampBitcoin podcasts or the research and we're on your radar, come say hello. there's also a virtual roundtable at 4:00 ET the same day if you can't make it in person. we'll get into the treasury dynamics behind the move, the recent security incidents, and where the industry goes from here. RSVP below for both. happy hour spots are limited, so grab one today.

"The yields don’t reflect the underlying fundamentals.” - Bessent GASLIGHTING ACCELERATES

yesterday morning may have been the start of what a lot of bitcoiners have been anticipating for five years. the treasury intervening in the long end is not a one-off. it signals much more to come. the last time this playbook ran was the 1940s, at a debt-to-GDP over 120%, roughly where we sit today. the long end was suppressed at a 2.5% ceiling for more than a decade. bitcoin was around $64k when we recorded this. it's near $72k now.

GM. Bad day to be a Treasury Bond.

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if you're in new york or the surrounding area, please join us for happy hour at @PubKey. wednesday, august 26th, 5:30 eastern. i'll keep saying it: the best part about working in this industry is getting to spend time with people who share the same passion, a similar worldview, and are equally as poor as you during a bear market. i get to talk to clients, new and existing, every single day. that's the part i love. what i love even more is getting to meet them in person. so if you're a bitcoiner and you're local, or you want to make the trip in, come out. RSVP link below. @MTanguma & @Lnelson_21 will be doing a hot dog eating contest.

75% of people under 30 now think AI means fewer jobs. two years ago it was 61%. there's no use being discouraged by AI. in fact, if you're discouraged and you bury your head in the sand, you just end up at an even greater disadvantage. i still think this is the best time in history to be alive if you want to take control and agency over your own life. you control your destiny.

over $130 million in bitcoin is gone. not from an exchange. not from a phishing link. from people who did exactly what every best practice guide told them to do. the coldcard firmware flaw went public july 31. the devices had been generating seed phrases that weren't actually random. a configuration error sitting in the code since march 2021. 1,596 btc drained from roughly 7,300 addresses. $70 million of it in the first 41 minutes. still ongoing. two weeks later, trezor disclosed a breach at their shipping partner. 13,689 customers. full names, phone numbers, home addresses. no coins moved. no devices compromised. but what leaked is a verified list of people who own a hardware wallet and the address it was delivered to. certik has confirmed 52 physical attacks on crypto holders in the first half of 2026, up from 39 last year. i've been on calls non-stop for past few weeks. clients, non-clients, people who just want to talk to someone about it. it's the same question every time. how do i hold this without one mistake, one device, or one company standing between me and my savings? there's a third way. you don't have to manage self-custody alone, and you don't have to hand your bitcoin to an ETF. three independent institutions protect your bitcoin. you stay in control. no institution can move or lose your bitcoin. and there's no seed phrase for you to manage and no trusting a single exchange. if the last few weeks have you rethinking your setup, my DMs are open or check out @OnrampBitcoin

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for those of you in NYC and metro area, hoping you'll join us next wednesday (8/26) for happy hour with @MTanguma & @Lnelson_21 one of my favorite parts of working in this industry is actually getting to meet people who share the same passion for bitcoin. so if you're local, come out. i'll be putting back a few guinness and a smash burger at @PubKey RSVP below, and sign up soon since we only have so many spots. not local? you can still catch the industry update. we'll be getting into where things go from here: the coldcard vulnerability, the threat landscape more broadly, and what wall street and the financial institutions are actually building for bitcoin. same link to RSVP below.

this might be the most important chart to understand, because at the end of the day it's all about incentives. asset ownership is enormously concentrated at the top. so there is a permanent, structural incentive to keep asset prices climbing. ask yourself honestly: does anyone in a position of power, holding significant equity and real estate, have any incentive to let these things fall? they do not. and they never will. that's the whole thing. it doesn't require a conspiracy. it just requires people acting in their own interest, and the people acting in their own interest happen to be the ones setting policy. this trend shows no signs of reversing, and every incentive points toward it widening.

good morning great egret

Hey Jason, before you complete the in-kind transfer to BlackRock, I really do think that you should take a look at what we've built here at @OnrampBitcoin. All of our clients have their own Bitcoin wallet segregated on chain (no pooled wallets), secured by three independent institutions (incl. BitGo), none of which can move or lose your bitcoin. No keys or seeds for you or your family. Inheritance and insurance (thru Lloyd's) is built in. Our clients choose to work with us for the same burdens and complexities that you cite. Would love to tell you more about it before you trade one set of tradeoffs for another.

we all joke about the dice rolls, but part of me is genuinely frustrated that this is the answer a large part of the industry is landing on. if the best we can offer people is roll your own dice, spin up your own multisig across multiple hardware vendors, and geographically distribute the devices, then nobody should be surprised when most people hand their bitcoin to blackrock instead. especially now that in-kind subscriptions are opening up at $1 million. don't be shocked to see further centralization of bitcoin in the coffers of Fink & co

Fintechs, crypto exchanges, prediction markets all peddling gambling. One of the fastest growing sectors of finance. Hate to see it. soundmoneysoundlife.com/p/a-…

we are truly in uncharted territory, and most of wall street has no idea how this plays out. i caught up with a friend who runs a multifamily office. he said something like "if a recession were to happen," and i stopped him. "do you genuinely think a recession could be sustained at this point? a real bear market in the S&P, a significant contraction, held for any length of time?" he paused. said "that's a great question." and then we actually talked about it. where we landed: the fed and the government will do whatever it takes to prop up the economy and the markets. two down years since 2008. 2018 was barely one. 2022 was a real correction. and here we are printing new all-time highs. the biggest risk for most people right now might just be not being invested. i know how it feels to keep shoveling money into things that don't seem to make sense anymore. but ask yourself honestly: which is more likely from here, the melt up intensifies, or it all comes crashing down? this is the same thing i keep coming back to. asset prices going up is mostly the denominator being devalued into oblivion.

bitcoin sits 50% off of highs and SPY is at all time highs, despite that DCA past 4 years would have netted virtually the same returns said plainly, bitcoin at its worst is as good as the S&P 500 at its best

it shows how early we are that multi-institution custody (MIC) is still not widely understood as a viable alternative... there's no need to go from self custody into an ETF, trading one single point of failure for another MIC allows for direct ownership of BTC in your own segregated wallet protected by three independent institutions, none of of which can move or lose BTC... insurance and inheritance built in have seen a major uptick in interest in light of the cold card incident

Doesn’t get better than this

my baby is the boomers' exit liquidity

boomers are max bidding young families into the permanent underclass

the people who choose to work with us are often the most technically capable bitcoiners i talk to. years of self-custody. they know exactly what they're doing. they partner with us anyway, and it's usually for one reason: they're honest with themselves about their own limitations, and about whether their family could actually recover the assets without them. there's a stigma in this industry that if you don't hold your own keys, you're beneath everyone who does. i understand where it came from. but it stopped matching reality a while ago. self-custody is great and it matters and people should do it. but managing your own keys when bitcoin was $1,000 is a very different exercise than doing it when a meaningful share of your net worth sits there. people get older. they have families. they get sick. they want to travel and not think about it. at some point it becomes a practical question, not an ideological one. trading a little sovereignty for a lot of practicality isn't weakness. so let's stop treating it as such.

telling people to memorize 24 words and roll dice to protect their life savings is a surefire way to centralize all the bitcoin in IBIT

Eric, agree this is a catalyst for more coins landing with centralized custodians, ETFs included. there is merit to broadening access and getting people easy exposure. the challenge is the custodian concentration in the chart you shared. the lesson of the past week was single point of failure, and that is something to be mindful of now with both single hardware devices and single custodians bitcoin is a decentralized asset, and i think its custody eventually follows. multi-institution custody is the middle ground: clients hold real bitcoin, keep control, manage no keys themselves, and don't hand the whole thing to one custodian. three independent custodians, two required to move it, and no single one can lose it. i'd bet ETFs themselves adopt some version of this eventually to mitigate risk. thanks for sharing your thoughts, always enjoy them

you?

most people are realizing they don't want to be in a position where they can lose all of their family's wealth. but they also don't want to be in a position where one company can lose it for them. that tension is the whole story of where bitcoin custody goes from here. here's what i'm watching. people who were the hardest advocates for self-custody are now recommending ETFs and exchanges to friends and family, and moving their own bitcoin there too. i understand the reaction, but it's a big shift. what it tells me is that self-custody, at least as it exists today, has a ceiling. the early adopters are largely already in. some will keep all of their bitcoin there, some a portion, but the number of new people willing to take on full self-custody is starting to plateau. which means more and more bitcoin ends up with centralized custodians. and that concentration is its own threat vector for the entire industry. so the question we have to get clear on: how do we offer solutions that don't compromise control and don't force people to manage significant tradeoffs themselves? i'm optimistic that multi-institution custody plays a critical role here. it strengthens bitcoin's long term security and broadens adoption, because it answers both fears at once. you're not the single point of failure, and neither is any one company.

love this framing. the only thing i'd add is a simpler version we've written about for years: the barbell approach. on one end, multi-institution custody holds the bulk of your long term wealth. secure cold storage for the family stack, with inheritance, insurance, and financial services built in. no single custodian can be compromised or go under and cost you your bitcoin. on the other end, a smaller self-custody stash. the proverbial bar of gold you can reach in a desperate situation. that structure solves both failure modes at once. you're not trusting one custodian, and you're not one lost device, one passing, or one vulnerability away from losing everything. my honest conviction: multi-institution custody is the right answer for the largest share of bitcoiners. full self-custody of the entire stack should really be for the deeply technical. and no, the answer isn't giving up and moving into ETFs or coinbase either.

just going to leave this here for anyone who is looking for a more secure option for either short or long term. i personally store my family's BTC wealth in multi-institution custody onrampbitcoin.com/

i just got this text from a family member who owns no bitcoin and just likes to reach out any time something bad happens

You can DM me with any questions, happy to answer over X or have a call too, whatever is best. You can also schedule a consultation here: onrampbitcoin.com/consult

GM today is a new day Some heron posting for your timeline

jeez. i really hope it works out for you. you're asking where to send it next: multi-institution custody is worth a serious look. i'm biased since i'm at @OnrampBitcoin, but it's where i keep the large majority of my family's bitcoin. you get a segregated multisig vault secured by three independent institutions. no single institution can move the bitcoin, and no single institution failing can lose it. inheritance and insurance are built in. it's the middle ground between figuring out how to manage all of this yourself and giving up control to an exchange. happy to answer anything. also a few weeks back we reduced pricing to $100/mo as part of a summer promotion.

there's a fourth worth knowing about. before you sell into IBIT or commit to managing multisig solo, look at multi-institution custody. your bitcoin sits in a segregated multisig vault protected by three institutions, none of which can move it or lose it. inheritance is built-in, insured through Lloyd's of London it's the middle ground between "do it all yourself" and "give it to an ETF." happy to walk you or anyone through it. also people can onboard in minutes at @OnrampBitcoin my DMs are open, want to help.

i largely agree with what you said here but there's a false dichotomy hiding in here. it's not just "worry yourself to death" vs "hand it to a third party." there's a third option: multi-institution custody. your bitcoin sits in a multisig vault held across three institutions, none of which can move it or lose it. professionals do the active managing you describe, but no single party is a point of failure. you keep control. it's insured, inheritance built in. that's the whole point. you get the "someone competent is worried for me" benefit without the "i fully trust one custodian" risk. this is exactly what we built @OnrampBitcoin for.

Hey Kyle, great catching up the other week man This news has been tough to stomach for a lot of people. And my heart goes out to those who have lost funds. If you or anyone else is interested in learning more about multi-institution custody, let me know. Want people to be aware there is another place besides rolling dice DIY multisig and giving up control to an exchange/ETF

brutal day. feel for everyone who woke up to that sinking gut feeling, and for the people who found out it wasn't just a feeling. a lot of us in self custody are further out over our skis than we admit. i was. my family's whole outcome came down to me never making one mistake, and i had become a single point of failure. the answer isn't an exchange or an etf either. multi-institution custody is a multisig vault protected by three independent institutions. no single one can move or lose your bitcoin, you stay in control, insured by Lloyd's of London, inheritance built in. set up in minutes. happy to answer questions and help in any way that i can. this is what @OnrampBitcoin was built for.

Hey Jason, a practical solution for most people is to have a multi-institution custody solution. This way you do not rely solely on yourself and a device, nor do you rely on a single exchange. You can get access to MIC, inheritance-built in, insured, so that you and your family can sleep well at night. This is something you can get set up in minutes at $100/month. I can expand on this if you have any questions. Genuinely want to help people and going into ETFs and single exchanges is just trading one set of trade offs for another. This is why we built @OnrampBitcoin

this is devastating and i truly feel for everyone who lost funds. an awful awful thing to go through. i got lucky this time. i never used a coldcard because it always felt too technical for me. honestly i'm one of those people who probably shouldn't have been fully self custodying in the first place. and you're right that this pushes people toward exchanges and etfs. but i want people to know there's a middle ground. you don't have to manage all of your bitcoin wealth yourself. you also don't have to hand it to blackrock or coinbase. multi-institution custody is a multisig vault held across three institutions, none of which can move, lose, or spend your bitcoin. you stay in control. it's insured, with inheritance built in. it's where i park my family's wealth, and i talk to people about it every day. happy to answer questions for anyone scrambling for security right now, you can sign up in minutes this is what we built at @OnrampBitcoin for exactly this reason. app.onrampbitcoin.com/signup

yes, it's harder, especially once a material amount of your wealth is in it. the stakes are already high and they only climb from here. bitcoin appreciates over time and the threat vectors get more sophisticated, both physical and digital. there's a reason centralized custodians emerged around gold. the difference with bitcoin is you don't have to centralize the asset to get the protection. that's why i think multi-institution custody becomes the standard. your bitcoin sits in a multisig vault secured by three institutions, but you stay in control. inheritance built in. insured custody built in. is it fully self-sovereign like self custody? no. but you and your family also aren't the last line of defense against a freak vulnerability like the coldcard mk3. im happy to answer any questions. people can sign up in minutes, set up inheritance for their family, and start depositing into their segregated vault app.onrampbitcoin.com/signup