Bitcoin's Wall Street Era Hits a Gold-Sized Reality Check | Cory Klippsten

Cory Klippsten says Bitcoin's Wall Street era ran straight into a gold-sized reality check: the ETFs and institutions arrived, and it still trades like a high-beta tech stock, down about 30% year to date and roughly 52% off its high, while gold held up far better. So did Wall Street adoption change Bitcoin, or did it just attach it to the same risk cycle?

Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten joins Kitco News anchor Jeremy Szafron for a straight conversation in front of a gold audience: why a man from a gold family still owns Bitcoin, why he says crypto's stablecoin era actually made the US dollar stronger, and why the fastest-moving story right now is the push to pull every asset, payment and ID inside a permissioned system, from digital identity to AI age-gating, arriving faster than he expected. Plus the common ground gold and Bitcoin owners share: holding the real thing, outside the system.

Recorded June 24 2026

00:00 A gold family, and he still owns Bitcoin
01:00 The honest scoreboard, and what to tell someone sitting on a loss
03:30 Don't be a trader, buy what you understand
04:00 Why Bitcoin sells off with AI and high-beta tech
04:30 ETFs: the cart before the horse, and paper hands
06:00 Exposure is not ownership: the sovereignty multiple
08:30 The casino, and why the Bitcoin-vs-crypto war is over
13:00 Is the four-year cycle just a meme now?
14:00 52% off the high, and the dampening of Bitcoin's swings
15:30 Risk-on for those who don't understand it, risk-off for those who do
16:00 Bessent on dollar dominance, and did crypto make the dollar stronger?
19:00 Why the "dollar decline" story may already be over
21:00 The permissioned system: digital ID, the UK bill, AI age-gating
24:00 "It's 1984, brave new world"
24:30 Why it's arriving faster than expected
27:00 Inside the system vs outside the system, and self-custody
29:30 Moving from ETF exposure to real on-chain Bitcoin
33:00 Three stores of value: Treasuries, gold, and Bitcoin
35:00 How a curious gold investor should actually start
38:00 Two horses in the race against fiat collapse

#gold #bitcoin #dollar
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Disclaimer:  
The videos are not intended to provide trading advice, and the views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. Kitco News, its anchors, producers, and reporters are not responsible in any way for the performance or actions of any sponsor, advertiser or affiliate of Kitco News. In no event will Kitco and its employees be held liable for any indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the use of the content in this video.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Government likes to have control over everything all the time. If they know where all your assets are, it's easier for them to take them. It's easier for them to tax them.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

KitCo News in Focus with Jeremy Safron.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Welcome back. I'm Jeremy Saffron. Now, the last time Corey Klipstein sat in this chair, about nine months ago, Bitcoin was riding high and the case looked clean. Since then, it's fallen about 40%. Gold's had a wild year too. It ran to records and has pulled back hard as of late, but it held up a little bit better. And Bitcoin is selling off again as we speak, but down about 5% today, breaking below $60,000. And here's what makes him worth having back. I mean, he's not your typical Bitcoiner. He comes from a gold family. He owns gold. He rips the crypto casino, the leverage, the meme coins of gambling, harder than almost anyone in our comment section. So the question I want to answer is the one you'd ask him for yourself. I mean, after a year like this, why does a gold guy still put real money into Bitcoin? Corey Clipseam, CEO of Swan Bitcoin, back with us. Good to see you, Corey.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Jeremy, thanks so much for having me back on. Excited for this.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

Yeah, me too. I mean, uh, obviously, you know, gold's down, silver's down. I'm looking at the board today. Interesting on the hard asset side. Uh, Bitcoin as well. But let me start with that kind of scoreboard because this audience respects that straight talk that you bring here. I mean, over that past year, gold hit that record high. Even after its own correction, it's dramatically kind of outperformed. I mean, Bitcoin fell about 40%. It's been trading more like a high beta tech stock than an independent kind of hedge. A lot of investors were told it would become. So, I mean, you put yourself kind of the odds of a new high this year at about one in four. And now you're a buy it and forget it kind of guy. A year like this doesn't move you. But for the person watching who bought a little higher and is sitting on a real loss right now, I mean, what do you actually say to them?

SPEAKER_04 1:46

Well, first off, uh, think about tax loss harvesting. If you like the positioning, you like the asset, and there's no wash sale rules in Bitcoin. Uh, definitely talk to your advisor about that. A lot of our clients uh have taken advantage of price declines in the past and and have done so this year. So that would be my surface answer. Um, just in general, you're right. I think that Bitcoin is the type of thing that you should think about a long-term savings plan. It's a it's something that you should buy and hold for at least five to ten years, if not more. And what I've tended to see is that once you've held it for five years, you hold it pretty much forever and plan to hand it to your grandkids someday. So that's how I think about it. I like making the decision once, kind of like contributing to a 401k or paying down a mortgage. It's just one of those things. You know, I'm a huge fan, by the way, in the gold space of some of these programs that let you just kind of, you know, shave off part of your salary or or something every month or every week and just be putting it into gold. That's exactly the same philosophy uh that we have over here in uh at Swan. So that's how I tend to think about it. You do incredibly well in the long run if you basically just buy the whole curve during a bear market uh rather than trying to time it. I'm not a big believer in trying to catch falling knives. I'm also just not a believer that most people's time is best spent, you know, trying to go into a dark office with three or four screens up and trying to be a professional trader going up against, you know, hedge fund programmatic traders instead of focusing on your where you actually add value during your day and spending time with your family. So I think uh either way, my my no matter whether it's SP stocks or gold or Bitcoin, my investment philosophy for 95% of people is the same. Like, don't try to beat the people that don't even click buttons. They make fun of click traders, you know. So just be an investor for the long term. Don't be a trader. Buy what you know, spend time learning about the things that you own so that you don't chase shiny objects when the price is way up and you know, buy silver at 110 instead of having bought it all these years and buying it now. You know, most people buy high, sell low if they don't know a lot about what they're buying.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

Yeah, yeah. Good point. And I mean, you know, that long-term kind of intention is what a lot of our viewers kind of do. I mean, they want to sit on it, especially bullion. But when, you know, going back to just a little bit of this price action, because I got to ask you, I mean, when Bitcoin kind of sells off alongside AI and high beta tech, does that tell you that the market still treats it as part of this speculative capital bucket and not something independent from it?

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Yeah, so look, this ties into your intro and also a little bit to our chat in the pre-show. Yeah uh I did not think that Bitcoin was gonna be in ETFs until probably 2028, 2030, something like that. The fact that we got them in January 2024, we it's good news because it made Bitcoin price exposure accessible to lots of people and it kind of put an institutional stamp of approval on the asset. It basically turned BlackRock and Fidelity into marketers of Bitcoin. So all these things were broadly positive. What I think it did also, though, is it put the cart before the horse a little bit because education about Bitcoin and separating Bitcoin from the morass that is non-Bitcoin crypto probably needed a few more years. So the ETFs passed, you know, right after the crypto collapses and FTX fraud and all of that. And I think we would have benefited from another three or four years of really solid Bitcoin education before a lot of people plowed money into it. And so what I think you've had is a lot of investors that don't know what they hold, that just threw in a little bit of an allocation into Bitcoin. And this goes for institutions as well. You know, Bitcoin is basically the last thing added to the portfolio. It's the newest asset in the portfolio for so many funds and so many investors, and it's often the first thing that they sell uh when they get scared because again, they don't understand it, they don't know what it's about, uh, and it's just something that they bought because they were told that, hey, you should own some Bitcoin. So basically you got a bunch more demand, but they're paper-handed.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Yeah, yeah, well said. I mean, you you talked about that cart before the horse. Wall Street kind of packaging came before the market really understood custody and ownership. So did ETFs kind of accelerate adoption or did they just accelerate the wrong kind of adoption?

SPEAKER_04 6:12

Uh I don't think there's a wrong kind of adoption. I think that the ETFs are a fantastic top of funnel for real on-chain Bitcoin, which, you know, just like with gold, you can have gold exposure through GCF, but you can also hold the real thing and have it outside the system, which is kind of the point. Uh, it's similar with Bitcoin. You can have price exposure that you can't actually hold the physical. It's it's funny to call a digital asset uh the physical, but that's how the commodity guys refer to real on-chain Bitcoin. Swan, my company, is all about real on-chain Bitcoin. And we don't mind that you know, half or two-thirds of our new clients already have some price exposure through iBit or FBTC. And there are good people working at these firms that are Bitcoiners that are just trying to get people price exposure and educate them. But the truth is, it's only the start of the journey. And what we generally find is that once people tick over something like half a percent or 1% of their liquid net worth or their investment portfolio in Bitcoin price exposure, that's when they tick over and start thinking about wow, okay, maybe I want to hold the physical and actually own real Bitcoin outside the system. And people, as they learn about Bitcoin, which I'm sure is true of gold fans, because it is of me for the little bit that I own, you know, I value that more than assets inside the system because I actually have control over it. So I've come up with this concept probably about two years ago now called a sovereignty multiple, which is basically how much more is your sovereign asset, your self-custodied asset, worth to you than assets inside the system. Now, in the West, here in the USA, you know, I have pretty pretty good faith in rule of law and the systems and everything. But if I look at my investment activity, it's pretty clear that I'm giving at least a 50% premium to uh on-chain Bitcoin over anything that's custodied by Wall Street.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

Right, right. Yeah. And you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_04 8:11

And I think in other countries, yeah, like you go, you go to Turkey, you go to Lebanon, you go to China, like other places. I mean, that that multiple could be 10x, that could be infinity because they just don't have any control over their financial life in so many places around the world.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

Yeah, and I mean we've been seeing some interesting news that you and I will get to uh just in a little bit about CBDCs, you know, what we're hearing about uh basically government involvement. But here's what surprises people about you, though. I mean, uh, you know, the thing you are most famous for is not pumping Bitcoin, right? It's attacking the rest of crypto. So let's go there a little bit because this is where you and my audience are on the same side. I mean, you've spent years warning about the casino, the leverage, the meme mania, the gambling riding on Bitcoin's coattails. Now, my audience can't stand that world either, obviously. I mean, we see it in our comments, but is this financialization what really weighs on Bitcoin? And does it chase off any long-term holders you actually want?

SPEAKER_04 9:05

Um, so I try not to spend too much time worrying about things that are inevitable that you can't change. And so the financialization of Bitcoin was always inevitable. It's something that was talked about ad nauseum by Satoshi and Hal Finney and the early participants in Bitcoin talk forums in 2010, 2011. So, you know, there was always going to be Bitcoin in national treasuries, custodied by banks, uh financialized, rehypothecated, lent against, levered up. All of this was inevitable and frankly has been happening for more than a decade at smaller levels and has just accelerated a ton over the last four or five years. So that's kind of the first thing. It will happen. Uh, a lot of people that come in through that side of Bitcoin, uh, you know, kind of through the TradFi financialization side, end up appreciating it. We see this time and time again. I know people that have gotten really into Bitcoin after having their first exposure being trading micro strategy convertible debt four years ago. And that's what got them to start to learn about the underlying and now they're big Bitcoiners. Um, and and then I should address kind of the preamble to your question, which was really about the Bitcoin versus crypto era. It's over. I think that was a big battle that took seven years. It was a seven-year war of Bitcoin versus crypto. It was the full years of 2017 through 2023, and it was fueled by $100 billion of very cynical pump and dump altcoin venture capital money, including some of the biggest venture capitalists in the United States, like Sequoia and Andreas and Horowitz, um, and obviously a lot of Chinese capital as well. And it was gross and it was disgusting, and it's a blemish on the history of uh, you know, sort of scamming and ponsies and gambling, et cetera, um, for the US and the world. But uh it's basically over. And I think pretty much the media, the markets, regulators, legislators, they all recognize that Bitcoin is dramatically different from all of the non-Bitcoin, the 30 million non-Bitcoin crypto assets, and that that in its best case, some of the technology that's been developed is part of TradFi now and is basically about digital rails and record keeping and it's kind of incremental improvements to financial IT, which is what I've said is the bull case for all of crypto blockchain DeFi since 2019. So seven years now, I've been saying that's what's gonna happen. It has happened. They've merged with TradFi. There's not much difference between Coinbase and Robinhood. There's not much difference between, you know, e-Trade and Binance. You know, they're just all kind of about basically retail liquidity venues that want people to trade everything all the time from prediction markets to tokenized gold futures to altcoins to stonks to you know options, covered calls. Like they just want everything traded all the time, ideally with leverage, ideally with lots of wipeouts, ideally with lots of pump and dumps, you know, because everything, if you can financialize everything, these guys make more money because they're all about number of transactions. It's not about actually helping their users buy and hold for the long term and build wealth.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

Right, right. So I mean, if the the speculative capital is kind of washed out a little bit here, which obviously we're seeing. I mean, that corporate buyer is also slowed, then the adoption story needs a new marginal buyer. I mean, is that the regular savers? Is that going to be some institutions, the sovereigns, or does Bitcoin just need some time?

SPEAKER_04 12:33

It usually just takes time. Uh, you you you have a metric that we often look at through these cycles, which is uh how much of the Bitcoin supplies with long-term holders. So I think it's, you know, you can look at it, whether it's people that have held that coin for 12 months or held it for six months. But basically right now we're at all-time highs. And uh and this is typically when these things have turned around historically. So, you know, we've all kind of watched this space that's had these cycles in Bitcoin, which I think initially were pretty much driven by uh Bitcoin mining and the halving and these four-year cycles. So there were bull markets in 2013, 17, 21. Um it seems like we front ran the bull market in a big way. And there was a there was a huge spike in 2024 when the ETFs launched, and then there wasn't much of a spike in 2025. And in fact, Bitcoin was actually down for the year in 2025. It was down about 6% from January to December, which has never happened before. We've never actually had a down year on that on that four-year cycle. Uh, I think the four-year cycle is turning into basically a meme that people trade because other people trade it. Kind of like if you're in trading and you know, your trading software comes preloaded with Fibonacci levels and everybody else trades it and treats these silly lines uh as support or as resistance, like they work because they work, not because there's any actual logic or magic to it. It's just because everybody else trades it too. I think the four-year cycle is kind of turning into that. What we do see with Bitcoin down, you know, 50%, slightly more actually, and it's about 52% because we hit 126, um, 126k in October. You know, if if this is it, or if there's a flush, you know, down to 53 or 54 or something like that, and just kind of like a V-shaped you know, flash cache or something like that, you know, that wouldn't be surprising. I I've kind of expected that we'd see low 50s at some point, but that's still dramatically dampened versus previous pullbacks. You know, the pullback from uh 19,700 in in that was 20 seven, December 2017 to December 2018 was like an 85% pullback from almost 20,000 down to about 3,100. And similarly, that pullback uh from a high in 2021 of just over 69,000 all the way back down to 15,500 in late 2022, at the end of 2022, uh, that was a 77% pullback. And so I just think you're seeing a dampening of the amplitude of these rises and falls as Bitcoin matures, which is just kind of what always happens when the numbers for something get large. It's harder to move things in percentage terms when the numbers are large. Um, so you know, it's uh it is still treated risk on by people who don't understand it. It's treated as a risk-off downside protection from the financial system hedge by people who do understand it. And I think that's what you're seeing is the supply transfer from people who don't understand it to people who do understand it, and that usually forms the floor and and launches Bitcoin into a next um bull market.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Yeah, this is uh this is interesting. I want to go to the dollar for just a second because I mean it kind of takes us somewhere. Nobody asks the Bitcoin or itself, and it and it kind of cuts against your own side. The dollar, I mean, you know, Treasury Scott, uh Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, I think it was yesterday on MSNBC or CNBC. He was blunt about this. Let's roll it, Lou.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Dollar dominance is essential, and everything President Trump is doing here is you know, if you look, uh the the the new Venezuela is going to is invoicing in dollars, they're coming back onto the dollar system. They've been sanctioned, they were not allowed to translate or to transact in dollars, and now uh dollar the dollar is going to be the centerpiece of their trade. Uh you know, they were selling discounted oil to China and not getting dollars. You know, we're seeing in the uh Iranian negotiations, the Iranians will be uh invoicing in dollars. So everything we are doing is pushing the dollar the uh back. It's never left as the centerpiece for the global currency system, but we're reinforcing it. You know, I would anticipate uh when the Russia-Ukraine uh conflict ends that Russia will want to come back in the dollar system because again, you know, the the dollar, it's our liquidity, it's our capital markets, it's the depth and breadth. Everyone wants to be here.

SPEAKER_03 17:09

Yeah, so I mean, Breston just said the quiet part out loud, right? Washington is not trying to manage dollar decline, it's trying to reinforce the dollar's dominance. And I mean, here's the kind of an uncomfortable one for a Bitcoin. I mean, you've argued that kind of stable coins, digital dollars actually extend the dollar's life by creating some fresh demand for it. So, did the kind of crypto era, that thing we were talking about, end up building a stronger dollar, the opposite of replacing it? I mean, is the is the dollar the real winner so far?

SPEAKER_04 17:34

Uh, so absolutely, crypto has always been centralized, non-Bitcoin crypto has always been about centralized companies trying to make money. And if they can make money by furthering the dollar, that's what they will do. Um so in that last election cycle in 2024, when crypto was over half of the political donations uh for the 24 election cycle, you know, they basically paid for the things that they're getting now. The only one that was actually blessed by treasury fed and state was genius, which is why they got that through first. And that was really easy, and that was because it creates treasury demand. And the thesis there is if a lot of these sovereigns are going to be selling treasuries, which they have, and you've seen that from China to Turkey to lots of countries have sold off their treasuries, then your best move is to sell it directly to the population itself and basically aggregate the demand of the populace and the companies and have them turn their savings and their, you know, in essentially into dollars, and and that's all backed by treasuries. So that's what they're trying to do through Circle and Tether, and frankly, it's gonna be hundreds, if not thousands, of competitors. It's not about whether it's on-chain or not. That doesn't matter anymore. It's all centralized. The five eyes and all the three-letter agencies are in the database, it's all censorable, it's all confiscatable, um, and they know exactly kind of who all these people are, and they're gonna KYC everybody. And they're gonna let every single Neo Bank and every Wall Street firm create their own stable coin uh because that's just that that just helps market the dollar. So, yeah, it is um that so that's one angle. The other angle, which is just kind of fun to think about, is um I'll give a little anecdote. Uh, growing up in Seattle in the late 80s and the early 90s, uh, it was everyone was freaking out about Japan. And Japan was already over. It had actually already collapsed. But you just kind of the echo of the fear and you know, hearing about them buying up all the buildings in LA and you know, buying Sony and uh all these things and you know, rising sun. We're all looking to Japanese culture and trying to become samurai and figure out tea ceremonies and everybody studying Japanese in high school, you know, it was it was like a weird echo, and it was already over. And that, you know, then you saw kind of the the lost, the lost generation of 25 years of flat to down for their market, et cetera. It's kind of like that with China. So a lot of people thought the dollar was gonna fall and China's rising and all this stuff, and it's like it's already over. So all the Silicon Valley folks trying to teach their kids Mandarin, like it's kind of irrelevant. You're probably still better off learning French or Spanish or something that matters in the West. And it's not gonna happen. Uh and just the geographic advantages and the sociopolitical advantages of the American system, in particular, just being protected by oceans on both sides and having more rivers than the rest of the world, more navigable rivers than everybody else in the world, all the stuff that geopolitical analysts talk about, it's just really indomitable. And they're going to be able to take swing after swing after swing after swing after swing until they get things right. And we have more degrees of freedom to mess up over and over and over again. That's that's where the resilience comes from. And that's why it's like you really only see the dollar and the US fall if we just have a really sustained, you know, probably 20 years of just absolute socialist mismanagement. And as long as we don't have that and we, you know, kick the socialists out every eight to 12 years, like we're gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, this is uh kind of a theme I want to come back to this week, too. Uh it leads directly into you know the bigger question for the audience. If the dollar system gets stronger on the surface, but say savers still kind of lose purchasing power underneath. I mean, uh, where do people go? I mean, Corey, is this theme? It's not uh one policy in one country. I mean, it's the direction of travel, it seems. Like Canada moving uh on online safety legislation and age verification. The UK is debating restrictions on under 16 social media access. I think Europe is moving the digital euro forward. Yeah, it's already passed.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

Yeah, and interesting. Yeah, they uh so it's a ban on 10 social media. Networks, all the big ones for under 16, and everyone else has to verify with their ID.

SPEAKER_03 22:06

Yeah. Okay. So I mean the details differ, but the common thread is clear, right? I mean, more identity checks, more platform control, uh, more financial rails that can be monitored, restricted, or even switched off. So, I mean, is that the real reason your message still resonates with the people who don't even like crypto? I mean, it's the same fact.

SPEAKER_04 22:27

It's the same fact. And the scariest one actually is they're going to age restrict AI. And so they're marketing AI. The government's trying to get involved in AI. The government wants to own pieces of all these companies. Eventually, when, you know, there's just inevitably going to be some kind of big pullback that will probably require a bailout of some kind, and that maybe bailout for everyone through massive money printing because the stock market collapses and government revenues and all of our savings require the stock market to only go up forever, in nominal terms at least. Uh, you know, they're using that now. That that is the US's big plan to force everyone to uh hand over their ID and basically have a digital ID for everything that they do on the internet. So expect that to come here. Uh, and Trump is pushing it hard and all the people around him are pushing it hard. So don't think that there's like a freedom party. There isn't. There's when it comes to control and kind of Leviathan Panopticon, you know, all the things that people would have been slagged on for uh being tenfoil hat wearers are right. And it's all happening a lot sooner. This is what we talked about in the pre-show is you know, this also is happening a lot faster than I thought. I thought the 2030s was going to be kind of when uh all of these things actually launched and started to get real. Uh, Utah's VPN ban, um, you know, all of this is looking really scary, and it actually just accelerated. You know, we're recording here on Wednesday morning. This is the last 10 calendar days. This is started last Monday with the UK bill passing, and then it's just been a barrage of news every day that has just been um extremely scary. And it's uh it's Brave New World, it's 1984, and it's uh it it certainly makes me appreciate Bitcoin, and I can certainly see why uh your audience and fans would be appreciating having some some sovereign some sovereign money, some sovereign bullion. Something outside. Something outside.

SPEAKER_03 24:31

This is where the gold investors understand you. I mean, they might not trust Bitcoin, but they absolutely understand not wanting every asset, every payment, every account inside a permissioned uh system. I mean, as you just said, that this is happening faster than you even expected. ETFs came earlier than you even thought. You know, this digital dollar rails are moving a little bit faster. Now these identity checks. Um, what changed and just on the microphone? I mean, I mean, why is the permissioned system arriving so quickly?

SPEAKER_04 25:01

Uh well, government likes to have control over everything all the time, and mostly because they want to be able to have more money. And if they know where all your assets are, it's easier for them to take them. It's easier for them to tax them. So ultimately, consciously or subconsciously, that's what the motivation is. It's to perpetuate itself and to gather more and more power and control and money, uh, which is kind of a human urge and it's an organizational urge, and it's what mobs do. And that's essentially what's happening at the government level. Uh, unless people stand up and fight against the continuing growth of government, it will forever encroach on humans until we're all kind of just vassals of the state being farmed. And, you know, that's why movies like The Matrix just feel so so realistic, even though they're metaphorical, because that that is what we all are becoming. We're just plugged in and we don't even notice that it happened. So much of it happened in 1913 and 1933 and 1946 and 1971 that we don't even really notice what's happened. Most people don't have any idea what this means. You know, I was hanging out with you know socioeconomic peers in London, and you know, I'm sorry, but we're blessed to be here in the US where normal discourse actually encourage you know encourages diverse viewpoints and you kind of have access to different views, even really liberal people, if they're watching, are exposed to opposing views about kind of you know safety versus Panopticon. They're not really exposed to that in our socioeconomic economic class in the UK. It's just everybody wants to save the children from the baddies on social media, and they don't really understand what's happening to them.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

Very interesting to watch, one could say, and kind of secretively as well. I mean, I don't even think the Canadian House of Commons sat for it. It was it was passed during an overnight session. Um, that brings us to kind of a cleanest bridge between your world and this audience, those assets inside the system versus outside the system. I mean, gold investors obviously understand that immediately. Physical gold outside the banking system is different from a claim on gold. So when you say Bitcoin is an asset outside of the system, tell me a little bit about what that means in your practice.

SPEAKER_04 27:23

Sure. So Swan has always promoted and educated about self-custody and whether that's you holding your own private keys. Private key is what you want to keep really secret and not have the on the internet and not share with anybody. And of course, now that is your bearer asset, similar to holding the gold bar. So that private key is what you want to protect. And that's why people will split the private key across a couple of pieces of paper and put it in different bank vaults. Uh, or as we've developed better ways to think about it, you know, we have collaborative self-custody like Swan Vault. So you can check that out, Swan.com slash vault. And that's where the client, the owner of the Bitcoin, actually has two keys and Swan keeps a backup key for them that we can take instructions and use for you. What's great about that is you can keep one on your desk and not worry about anybody being able to steal anything. And the other one, your other key can be, you know, in a different state. It can be in a vault across town, it can be anywhere, and that's your backup. And then if something happens to Swan, you have your two keys, it'd be a pain in the butt to go get the other one, but at least you still get your Bitcoins. But for every day spending or moving or trading or whatever, you can just get in touch with Swan and activate your second key through your biometric login or something like that and be able to access your Bitcoin. So that is, you know, really what's different about Bitcoin is it's digital. All you have to protect is the private key. You do have to level up your understanding of how to protect information like a private key, um, just like gold owners have to level up their understanding of how to protect gold bullion, right? And where is that actually going to be stored? Do you trust the place it's stored? Is it in your home? Do you how do you keep it secret and make sure that nobody ever knows that you're a gold owner? Like it's a lot of those types of things that you have to think through when you hold assets out of the system rather than just kind of outsourcing your thinking and your sovereignty to State Street.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that takes us to RBX, uh, but not as a product pitch. I mean, it's really a test of this whole argument. I mean, a lot of investors got Bitcoin early through that ETF exposure. You're saying exposure is not the same as ownership. So, what problem is RBX trying to kind of solve for someone who already has ETF exposure but now wants to move closer to actual ownership?

SPEAKER_04 29:45

Yeah, so first off, uh I'll do my best to explain it very quickly, but I highly recommend checking out Swan.com slash RBX if you're interested in this. Uh it the form of ETF that the SEC approved back in 2023, and then there were 10 or 11 launches in January 24 and more since was a grantor trust. In a grantor trust, the client actually owns the underlying asset. So just because the ETF issuer only performs cash create and cash redeem for retail, they actually do uh and they do redeem and allow deposits for authorized participants, you know, six or seven firms in in the actual asset. But for the rest of us, they don't. Uh doesn't mean you can't do it if somebody will help facilitate that for you. So through through the lawyers and the custodians and the liquidity providers and a broker dealer, uh, we've set it up so that uh everybody can get out of an ETF and straight into real on-chain Bitcoin in one transaction. This is mostly a big deal for people that have huge cap gains tax. So that's not going to be people that bought in the last year, obviously, and bought iBit or FBTC. It's mostly a big deal for uh people that bought Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. So if you own GBTC, obviously check it out, look at it for yourself. But uh what's great about it is if you um exchange one of these ETFs for real Bitcoin, uh, you carry your tax cost basis forward. So uh you don't incur cap gains tax when you do this transaction with Swan. And that is a huge deal uh in particular for GBTC holders because they rather cynically uh have people trapped in there with 1.5% per year AUM fees, which is uh 6x higher than what you get at iBit and FBTC. So uh I highly recommend people check it out, Swan.com slash RBX. If you're a uh a holder of one of these ETFs and have big cap gains tax, uh definitely consider getting out from under that brick and uh and owning the real thing and not paying that massive AUM fee anymore.

SPEAKER_03 31:53

Yeah, no, it's interesting. And obviously, to be clear, this is not a blanket kind of tax claim, but I mean, you know, you instruct people to look at their own tax advice, obviously.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

Um, Corey, uh Yeah, you're gonna have to get this by your lawyer and your accountant anyway. And you know, it's it's uh, you know, we we we have disclaimers six ways from Sunday around it, but that's how people are using it.

SPEAKER_03 32:13

Yeah, it's interesting. I like the product case. Uh, you know, the bigger question is whether the ZTF boom accidentally, I guess, kind of train investors to accept, and you talked a little bit about it there, but to accept paper Bitcoin instead of owning the asset directly. I mean, did Wall Street kind of their adoption, I mean, did it solve access while making ownership problem worse?

SPEAKER_04 32:35

It did, but again, it's it's a temporary state of affairs because these people are, you know, the earliest adopters of ETFs are two years into their Bitcoin journey. And it's very common for people to not really understand what they own for two years, even four years, five years. We get people all the time that have only really gone deep on Bitcoin, you know, this year, even though they bought some in 2016. It's super common. People are busy, people are doing other things, they're building businesses, they're investing in stocks, they're doing whatever. Uh, but when you when your time comes and you actually get interested and you read a good book like Broken Money by Lynn Alden or Inventing Bitcoin by Jan Pritzker, or you start to see me show up and actually be rational and have the kind of background that you like to see when you talk about financial assets and investing for the long term and you know, not saying that the dollar is gonna go way more inflation tomorrow, which it's not, uh, and just kind of being a reasonable, rational person about this, um, you know, whose dad is a gold bug. Like uh it's okay. We can we can talk about these things and um and have good discussions about them. And you know, I think there are three great stores of value um in the world right now, and you know, one of them is weaker than the others, which is treasuries, because the value just continues to fall um in purchasing power terms. And then gold obviously has the 5,000-year history, and there's a lot of people that trust it and understand it and use it exactly for how it optimally should be used. And then there's Bitcoin, which is a lot smaller and I think has a lot steeper growth trajectory that I expect over the coming decades, and I think it will come to be in a similar spot. So, you know, if you look at uh, I think gold, when it was over 5,000, actually ticked over treasuries in central bank reserves for a little bit. And so it's just kind of hovering a little bit below treasuries now in central bank reserves. I fully expect Bitcoin to be at par with gold, you know, in 15, 20 years, something like that in central bank reserves. And I think it'll be uh more widely held by um individual investors over that time. And so what that does to price, you know, I mean, I think it's kind of implicit what I what I think will happen. I think Drucken Miller was right in 2020 when he said Bitcoin is the fastest horse in the race. That doesn't mean that you should buy and own it if you don't understand it. So, you know, if you want to learn more about it, you know, I I love the KitCo audience. We obviously have a long history um, you know, working with you guys, uh, even back when Michelle was here and we've had fun. You know, I I don't often do this, but like for real, anybody at KitCo that if you're watching this, like you can email me, Corey at Swan.com if you want to ask questions about Bitcoin, Bitcoin, and gold. You know, I I think nobody uses email anymore. So it's actually like probably the best right, best way to get in touch with me, as opposed to me drowning in my Twitter DMs. Um, but yeah, shoot me a note. Happy to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 35:32

Yeah, amen, Corey. I appreciate that. And I'm sure the audience will too. And I mean, you know, it's an important note. I mean, you're gold friendly, so let's kind of be practical. I mean, you covered the sell-off, the ETF cycle, the kind of casino money leaving, right? And and stable coins helping the dollars. Um, for the person watching who owns gold but doesn't trust the crypto casino, I mean, but but is starting to worry that more of their money and their speech and access is moving inside these controlled rails. I mean, what is that one thing you want them to understand about Bitcoin before they write it off all complete?

SPEAKER_04 36:03

Yeah, so I again I think it is useful to buy a little bit of an asset you're interested in just because it causes you to have selective attention for that asset. And it'll be, it'll start to creep into your algorithm a little bit on Twitter, on YouTube, on Facebook, wherever you watch news, you'll you'll hover a little bit longer, you'll click, you'll read. Uh, so I always I always recommend buying a little bit just to get started, or maybe starting a savings plan, like a recurring purchase plan, which of course we have at Swan, um, you know, just to kind of nibble at it. And I think that then starts that pro-cyclical relationship between learning and acquiring. And you basically earn the right to own more of an asset as you learn about it. So I hate it when people get like out over their skis. Uh, my goal with Swan since inception is to never have an unhappy client. And, you know, one of the ways we do that is by making sure people understand what they own. Uh, and so they are totally comfortable with big pullbacks, and we can still, you know, throw a conference in the middle of the depths of the bear market in like a 2022, and everybody's still happy and high-fiving and enjoying being into Bitcoin and learning more and and and owning the asset. And then we all have, you know, a great few years as at 8x's in the next two years, you know. So I fully expect that now. You know, we're we're we're a signal platform, not a noise platform. We don't promote Doomerism. We actually try to get it right. Uh, I'm not the only person here that has a deep journalistic background that also happens to be in business and be a Bitcoiner. There's four or five of us. So we're all about kind of, you know, don't get out over your skis, clearly mark opinion versus fact. Uh, try to be journalistic, you know, adhere to journalistic objectivity, like all these different things. It's why we why we enjoy engaging with media platforms like Kitco is, you know, you kind of speak our language. So we're we're trying to be the uh literally an honest broker of Bitcoin. And so if you appreciate that, whether you are up to speed on the asset, love it, hate it, whatever, I hope that at least that Swan and I are appreciated for not being hucksters and and really trying to deliver the the cold hard truth at all times.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

No leverage, not meme coins, not bet in the house. But for people who are curious, I guess have a little bit of Bitcoin, use a reoccurring purchase plan, nibble carefully, and I guess keep it boring. This is uh this is why we have you on. Thanks, Corey.

SPEAKER_04 38:29

And we have a lot of clients that own gold.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:32

Like we know that we talk about it with them all the time. So, you know, very, very friendly to you guys. We we see the same problems. I think there are two good solutions here. And I mean, it wouldn't you rather have two horses in the race helping to stave off fiat collapse instead of one? Uh that's kind of how I see it. I appreciate it, Corey.

SPEAKER_03 38:53

And next time we have you on, we got to go down the rabbit hole here and talk about some of this uh surveillance that's happening and starting to kind of creep in at a pace, like you've mentioned, a little bit faster than you thought it would happen. Uh appreciate this, Corey Clip Scene. Can I show one more thing before I go?

SPEAKER_04 39:06

Of course, which I totally forgot. And hopefully you can put this in the put the link in the show notes on on YouTube.

SPEAKER_03 39:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:12

Um, we released a documentary last week uh called Bitcoin Season. So a director and a production crew followed us around in our journey to try to uh bring Bitcoin into the world of basketball at multiple levels over a couple of years. So it was kind of 23, 24, 25. Um, it's fantastic, I gotta say. So you can find it on the Swan Bitcoin uh YouTube channel. It's called Bitcoin Season, or just email me and I'll send you the link, Corey at Swan.com. But uh it is it is really entertaining. I think you'll also come away from it understanding Bitcoin a little bit. It's fun. There's, you know, if you're into basketball like I am, it's like it's it's us in the Compton Magic at the AAU level, and then it's clutch sports, you know, Rich Paul LeBron's agency. We do a partnership with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Uh Matt Delavodova, the the former NBA champion uh for the Cavs, is actually a uh VP of business development here at Swan. So he's kind of a central character as well. Um, and it's just it's one of these things, documentaries are kind of hit and miss, and it usually comes down to kind of the director's storytelling, interestingly, and how good the editing is. I was blown away. Like I really I'm I'm super proud to have been involved in it and to have financed it. Uh I did not know how good they were at making movies, but but it's it's it's a fun way to get into it. So if you're into gold, you're curious about Bitcoin and you kind of like basketball, I know that's that we're getting into a niche of a niche, but uh it's also just good entertainment and I highly recommend it.

SPEAKER_03 40:40

Sounds like a hell of an audience. Uh, hopefully they'll watch it. All right, man. We'll leave it there. Corey Klipstein, CEO of Swamp Bitcoin. Appreciate you taking the hard questions today in front of the gold audience, of course, as always.

SPEAKER_04 40:52

Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_03 40:54

All right, that was Corey Klipstein of Swamp Bitcoin. And credit to him for taking the hard questions in uh front of a tough room. Now, here's my honest read. This year, when Bitcoin investors expected Wall Street adoption to change the way it traded, and so far it is not gold. He reminded investors why it remains the home team here. Now, Corey's case is that we're still early and that the dollar problem underneath both conversations is not going away. You decide who's reading it right. This is why we put a Bitcoiner and a gold audience in the same room. Now, for more straight talk on gold, on macro, no hype, hit subscribe. I'm Jeremy Saffron. Thanks for watching.

SPEAKER_02 41:29

Kitco News in Focus with Jeremy Saffron.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

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