- 9 months ago
Capped at 350 curated participants, the Unconference is intentionally intimate, prioritizing quality interaction over scale. The event targets C-suite decision-makers, CFOs, public company treasurers, and capital allocators who are driving the adoption of Bitcoin as a core balance sheet asset, rather than a speculative investment. Tim Kotzman & Ed Juline, Hosts Of Bitcoin Treasuries Unconference joined Benzinga on our free morning show, Premarket Playbook, to discuss.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Tim Kotzman, how are you doing here this morning?
00:07I'm very well. How are you, sir?
00:08I'm very, very good. Look, first of all, I can't thank you enough for coming here.
00:13Tim Kotzman, organizer of the Bitcoin Treasuries Unconference. Did I get that right?
00:18You got it right. You can call it whatever you want. Just don't call it a conference.
00:22Okay, we will not call it a conference. It'll be the Unconference. Tim, it's great to have
00:26you here. Look, you are here with a group of active traders. Every single day we show up and
00:31we try to make sense of all of the different news that's going out there. Well, it's a big news about
00:35a company like Apple or whether it's news about companies that are adding Bitcoin to their treasury
00:40strategy. And I'm hoping that I can ask you some questions about that here. Can we start by talking
00:46about the conference? Can you tell me a little bit about yourself to start us off? Sure.
00:49Unbelievably, less than a year ago, I started the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast to try to platform
00:57in one place everything that's going on with the corporate adoption story. That turned into a
01:03digital conference that was maybe 14 hours long and then a 21-hour digital conference where we
01:09interviewed 42 people back to back to back to back. We don't have time for all the backs. And now Ed,
01:16Julene and I are organizing the Unconference. It'll be our first in-person conference.
01:21It'll be kicked off with a keynote from Michael Saylor. And then instead of just kind of boring
01:27panels where everyone's falling asleep and just drinking as much coffee as they can,
01:31we'll still have coffee, but it'll be more of a town hall Q&A, very interactive format.
01:37And we're excited to bring that to New York next Wednesday, September 17th. Doors open at 8 a.m.
01:43Okay. That sounds awesome. Let's actually bring Ed on here. Ed, good morning. How are you doing here
01:49today? Good to see you. Good morning. Good morning. Yeah. Fighting with a computer on a Monday morning
01:55seems to be a ritual, huh? Yeah. That's par for the course around these parts. We deal with technology
02:01issues on a regular basis here, but I just want to give you an opportunity as well. I just had Tim
02:06telling us a little bit about the conference. Can you tell us a little bit more about the conference,
02:10providing your camera and microphone? Yeah. Providing my camera comes back. Anyways,
02:14you can hear me, right? You can hear you fine. It's like you're in the room with me.
02:17Yeah. Sorry about that. Let's see. Oh, I got to go back over here to this camera. There we go.
02:21Okay. Yeah. So everything Tim said. No, just kidding. Yeah. I was fortunate after a 25-year
02:30career in manufacturing to fail miserably at entrepreneurship, which put me in a place where
02:37it was like, well, what do I want to do? I don't want to go back manufacturing. That hurts my stomach.
02:42And a job with the Bitcoin conference fell out of the sky. And that event with 30, 40,000 people
02:50is just not only an amazing experience, but you get to see how the biggest and best conference in
02:57the world is run in the Bitcoin space. Right. My job there was enterprise. So I was supposed to bring
03:01in, you know, the big banks, the big corporations to say, Hey, this is, this is what, where the future
03:07is. And they weren't ready. They were, they were all saying like, no, the Bitcoin brand is toxic. We
03:11can't do that. I had an opportunity to go to Mara to work on a side chain project. That was
03:16really exciting. And L2 did that. But then strategy called and said, Hey, we want you to run our
03:22conference. Fantastic. The Bitcoin for corporations conference put on my strategy, very focused on
03:27sailor and his message, what strategy is doing. So I had an opportunity to join a Bitcoin treasury
03:35company in Mexico. I lived in Mexico 13 years fluent Spanish. And I couldn't do that while working in
03:41strategy. So I called Tim, I said, Hey, what are you up to? He goes, thank God you're, you're,
03:46you're available because I decided to run a conference six weeks from now and I need help.
03:51So I, I decided to, to, to, to join Tim on this adventure that we've got with nine days
03:57left. And we had both attended a conference. Did you already tell them about Santa Monica?
04:03Okay. So we both attended this conference out in Santa Monica last year, put on by Fred
04:07Kruger called an unconference where there was sofa sets. And the only agenda was topics.
04:14And there would be a thought leader that would start the conversation. And then people would
04:18talk about that topic for an hour and they'd go, okay, next. And then people would either
04:22change sofa sets or stay in that same sofa set and a new thought leader. And I thought
04:27it was going to be a train wreck. I'm like, this, this won't work. How are you going to do
04:30this? People go crazy. But it was mostly people with gray hair and people that had invested
04:35for a while and it went really well. So we decided to create our conference in that same vision
04:40of, of how do we not keep tiring people with presentations and panels, right? Because they're
04:48getting, they're getting old, right? It's a, it's the same three people up there agreeing
04:52with each other. It's a presentation that just doesn't seem like there was any work that
04:55went into it. So what you're going to get by through our conference is a town hall type
05:01discussion. As I heard Tim, as I, as I joined, it's going to be a situation where we've got people
05:06on stage that are thought leaders. We're going to have a topic such as proof of reserves. We'll
05:10have a topic such as does the underlying business matter? You can find the agenda on our website.
05:16You can find it all over X and then people will be able to interact through questions,
05:22comments, whatever with those thought leaders on stage. Okay. First of all, this is a long answer.
05:27Sorry, but no, no, it's totally fine. And it's a great long answer. You actually took a couple of
05:31the questions that I was going to ask you and answered them without me even having to ask them.
05:35You know, we, a lot of the questions that you just mentioned, these are questions that our group
05:39of traders and investors have. Does it matter what the underlying business is? You know, what,
05:45what does all this, what does all this mean? So it sounds like your unconference, I won't call it a
05:49conference. Sounds like your unconference is actually set to address those things. Really,
05:53really exciting. Let me ask you, can anyone attend this or is it just for invited individuals?
06:00Go ahead, Tim.
06:02If you can buy a ticket, you can walk through the front door.
06:06So it's basically open to anybody. As long as they want to buy a ticket and go,
06:10it's open to them.
06:10Yeah.
06:11It's open to anybody that got in on the first 350 because the fire marshal will shut us down after
06:18350. And I think we're currently at like 315. So there's not a lot of tickets left with eight
06:23days left.
06:24Okay. Awesome. Be sure to check that out. We'll go ahead and throw the link here in the chat
06:29for that. Let's talk about the Bitcoin and the treasury companies themselves. I think that's
06:34what everyone's waiting for. What are your thoughts on Bitcoin and altcoin treasury strategies? When I
06:40say altcoin, I mean things like Ethereum or Solana.
06:43Yeah. I think it comes back to this idea of the pristine asset. In the crypto world, we keep on
06:51coming up with these catchphrases, these little cliches, and some of them stick, some of them
06:55don't. And that pristine asset one seems to have stuck for quite a while now. And Bitcoin being a
07:01pristine asset. And it's really difficult sometimes to get your head around Ethereum or Solana or
07:06Fartcoin being pristine assets. And will Ethereum be around for a while? Will Solana be around for
07:14a while? Sure. Yeah. They're not going anywhere. Right. But I could go back and look at the list of
07:18the top 10 on CoinMarketCap just a couple of years ago, and a few of them are gone. And so you just
07:25kind of wonder, you know, what could change? Is somebody going to come up with a better Solana or
07:30whatever? There's not going to be a better Bitcoin. Bitcoin is going to be around forever.
07:35Great. But if you're betting your company's future on what I call a crypto company rather than a
07:42crypto asset, I think you're putting your company at some kind of existential risk, much higher returns,
07:48probably much more upside, but definitely risk. Interesting. So Bitcoin, the safer play there.
07:55Tim, how do you see the future for Bitcoin treasuries?
08:00I think we're at this inflection point where you just see this march of adoption,
08:04right from retail to corporate and institutional to nation state where Bitcoin becomes this global
08:11store of value. Some don't currently see it that way because of the volatility.
08:17But I have conversations every day with people that want to understand it. People that are in high
08:22school or college people that are retirees and they have open minds. They want to know what's going on
08:30with this technology. They own gold and they want, even if it's not right for them as a retiree in their
08:36eyes, they want to understand it. So I just keep quoting Lynn Alden. Nothing stops this train.
08:42Okay. Sounds good. Michael Saylor has been the leader for Bitcoin. Do you think that he's been
08:49early? Do you think we're still kind of in the early phase here for Bitcoin? How do you place that
08:54when you start thinking about timelines? I don't know. I struggle with that. The leader for Bitcoin,
09:01you're saying, I guess, on the Bitcoin treasury side. Yeah. Okay. I mean, Michael Saylor,
09:05when people say his name, he is viewed as a Bitcoin leader just in general, more specifically,
09:12the treasury side. Yeah. No, I've tried to do this. I've tried to have chat GPT help me with this.
09:18There really aren't a lot of other industries where somebody has such a huge, massive lead. I mean,
09:22there was a point at which Google had that, but it kind of fixed itself. In this case,
09:28it's literally impossible for anybody else to catch them. I mean, even if Apple said,
09:34we're going to take our trillions of dollars in cash and start smash buying Bitcoin, the price
09:39is going to go up so fast and so hard, they still won't catch them. So it's an interesting dilemma
09:43of does this matter or did they just get the head start good for them? Unclear. The only analogy
09:51that I found similar was in the US military, where the US military is so much bigger, so much better
09:56that it gives them this power. It's like, well, is strategy eventually going to be the biggest
10:02company in the world. Number one on Dow and S&P and everything. And what power does that
10:06give them? You don't find Bitcoiners thinking too far into the future. Sometimes looking at
10:13the current price and maybe a year in the future, but there aren't a lot of thinkers apart from
10:18maybe Jeff Booth or Christian Radusen who are thinking, what is this going to look like
10:22in 30, 40 years? And I don't know if you can. It's very, very challenging. So do they have a leg
10:30up and advantage? Absolutely. What does it mean? No clue.
10:35Okay. Fair enough. Look, would you advise companies buy Bitcoin or maybe another coin and add it to
10:42their treasury as a strategy? Is this something that you'd like to see proliferate or does it
10:46only make sense in certain applications? We've already seen Polkadot and other coins come out
10:57and publicly state that they're going to put Bitcoin in their treasury. I think you'll see that
11:02continue and accelerate as they realize, hey, this is the pristine collateral. Everything else
11:10is a venture project and it may or may not have value in the short, medium and long term. I think
11:18when you look at BitcoinTreasuries.net, which is different from BitcoinTreasuries.media, where you can
11:23get your ticket for September 17th, you look at 180 some companies and you'll see people quoting that
11:32number, but there's only a few dozen actual strategy type leverage Bitcoin equities. So I think that will
11:39continue and proliferate, but I think every company, whether it's 10 basis points or 10% or can really
11:48benefit from having Bitcoin on the balance sheet. And I think as the volatility potentially continues to
11:54decelerate, that you'll see the adoption accelerate. Okay. All right. And then this is probably the
12:02biggest question for our group here, specifically for our group. What are the biggest tips or pieces of
12:08advice that you can give active traders or investors when they're looking at companies that are adding
12:14Bitcoin or some other type of crypto to the treasury? And then I have one follow-up here from the audience
12:20about a specific company, if you guys can answer that. I thought you were going to ask, do the Bears
12:25have a chance at the Super Bowl? Look, I'm saving up for that. They've got to keep the important
12:30questions till the end here. So we'll, we'll get that in here at the end.
12:34You know, I've been saying this on podcasts and different forums lately that, you know, Jack Dorsey,
12:42about a year and a half ago, maybe he, he said, we don't need freedom of speech. We've already got
12:46that. What we need is freedom of algorithm. And whenever somebody asks me, what do you think?
12:51What is this one going to do? I just say, well, what is your algorithm telling you? I've come to the point
12:55where I just don't trust my algorithm because, you know, it, it, my algorithm told me the day before
13:01said, uh, Travis and Taylor are breaking up. And I said, oh, well, that's not news. And then the next
13:06day they're engaged. And it's like, yeah, you just can't really trust your algorithm. You have to
13:11question it all the time. And so that's the piece of advice is, is find your sources, figure out what
13:17you can trust, ask other people what their algorithm is telling them. I have a whale friend who, uh,
13:22got in super early sitting on a massive stack that he's kind of an Ethereum guy and I'm a Bitcoin
13:28guy. And then he sends me an Ethereum article. I'm like, where did you get this? And then I'll send
13:31him a Bitcoin article. He's like, where did you get this? And, uh, everybody has their, um, uh,
13:39what is it called? Thesis and, and Jeff Walton, or I think it was Jeff, maybe it was Ben put something
13:44on X just yesterday saying, figure out your thesis and stick to it. And your thesis is going to be
13:49different than others and nobody is right yet. So you've got to be able to sleep at night. And if
13:54you can sleep with your thesis and where to invest, and you're putting in the time to,
13:59to check your algorithm and make sure that it's giving you the right information,
14:02it's about the best you can do right now. Okay. So due diligence, maybe tune up that
14:07algorithm, Tim, how about you? Any pieces of advice or tips for active traders and investors?
14:12I'd say walk before you run. I mean, to understand like, what is a pipe? What happens
14:19when those shares unlock? How did these actual mechanisms work? I mean, I was on the phone
14:26yesterday with a very good friend and he said, I love micro strategy, but I'm just going to focus
14:32on stacking my own coin for now. I'm just like, he's very, very, uh, active and passionate and
14:40enthusiastic. And he's like, with all these preferred products, he's like, it's just over
14:45most people's heads. Like, he's like, I see the vision. I see sailor's vision, but it's something
14:51that like, for most people, this is like, whew. And, and so, um, you know, even one X, you see
15:00people posting, like, just trying to figure out how many actual shares are on the market. So unless
15:06you're going to do a deep dive, I do not recommend YOLOing into most of these things.
15:11Yeah, no, I, I, you know, you're saying that this goes over a lot of people's heads. Look,
15:16I'm, I'm one of those people too. I mean, I'm someone that's bullish on Bitcoin. I think this
15:19is here to stay. I actually really like what I'm seeing here. Every time I see Michael Saylor talk,
15:25I think this is easily the smartest guy in the room. This is someone that, that I want to follow as
15:29well. But some of this stuff, it just kind of goes right over my head and it's tough for the
15:34individual investor to discern, Hey, is this company actually doing the right thing? Is this
15:38going to be worth anything down the road? And that actually brings me to my final question here. So
15:42this comes from a viewer here. Um, we would not be able to have a show without our viewers. So I
15:47think it's important to be able to allow them to ask questions. He wants to say, what does Tim and Ed
15:52think of ticker BMNR Bitmine immersion? So go ahead. I just saw that and looked it up. I'm not familiar
15:59with that. Bitmine is a pioneering digital asset platform dedicated to maximizing ETH per share and
16:06advancing the Ethereum ecosystem. Look, I made a lot of money on Ethereum back in the day. And then I
16:12kind of started figuring out how Bitcoin is different. And I became what I call a Bitcoin
16:17inclusion. It's not a maximalist. And, and said, you know, if you're not doing it on Bitcoin, well,
16:23then either figure out how to do it on Bitcoin, or let's work with Ethereum. I go to East Denver,
16:27you know, because it's cutting edge technology, there's people doing amazing, fantastic things.
16:31Uh, but I can't say that I'm an expert specifically on Bitmine immersion, but with the
16:39probably millions of people that are holding Ethereum and the tens of thousands that are
16:44working on it, there's some fantastic stuff going over there. So I'm not going to pretend that,
16:48that it's not good stuff. It's just, uh, uh, I'm specifically got my bandwidth and my algorithm
16:54fine tuned to Bitcoin. Yeah. I think the reason that this one's getting brought up,
16:58Tom Lee is the chairman over at this company. I believe Tom Lee was actually on CNBC this morning,
17:03saying that he could see Bitcoin doubling from here by Christmas. So he makes a lot of news in
17:08the, in the Bitcoin world. And that's one of the reasons that this stock is highly followed.
17:12Tim, any, any, any thoughts on that?
17:14The question to ask Ryan is, um, cause I've met Tom Lee, right? I just saw him in New York about a month
17:19ago. His algorithm is different than mine. When I talked to Tom, Tom Lee, I'm just like, where,
17:23where are you getting your information? Cause he, I'm saying one thing, he's saying another thing.
17:28And it's like, are we both right? Are we both wrong? Or is it two different planets? And, and these are
17:34good questions we need to be asking. And people like you are out there feeling back the layers of the
17:38onion. Do you, does your algorithm also think Bitcoin can go to a million or 2 million? Or is that
17:43just the Tom Lee thing? Uh, Bitcoin will not go to a million. Bitcoin will be the same. It's a,
17:49it's a linear path to how many Bitcoin are produced. The dollar is melting. The dollar is fading away.
17:54You just have to go to Buenos Aires or Caracas or Zimbabwe and it's people there get it. I mean, when,
18:02when, uh, Bitcoin hit a hundred million pesos Argentinian pesos per Bitcoin, I said, Hey,
18:08one Satoshi equals one peso and it wasn't two months before it was 120 million. And, and those
18:16people get it. Right. I, I always say this, what part of the problem for the adoption of Bitcoin has
18:21been that it's really hard to go to wall street and say that the sky is falling. Cause it is not,
18:26man. They are eating really good steaks and have nice cars and houses in the Hamptons. So trying to
18:32convince them that the sky is falling is tough. Will the dollar have a massive collapse? No. Will
18:38things fall apart in the U S no. So it's all your perspective. And, and will the dollar continue
18:45to depreciate so that one day a Bitcoin value is valued at $1 million per Bitcoin. It's inevitable.
18:52It's like gravity. It's going to happen. It'll be a Tuesday.
18:57Okay. We'll keep our calendars marked that Tim, any thoughts on BM and R or any closing thoughts
19:02here from our discussion. I don't, I don't follow it, so I can't speak to it, but if volatility is
19:10vitality, when you're speaking about a Bitcoin treasury company, you can just enlarge that and
19:15you're just further out on the risk curve. And that's about the extent of my intelligence on that.
19:20But, uh, one other comment I'll throw in, I have created a coupon code Benzinga.
19:25So if you go to Bitcoin treasuries, treasuries.media, if you're thinking about coming,
19:29you need to be in this room. So, uh, coupon code Benzinga at checkout gives you 21% off.
19:35Okay. Absolutely amazing. Tim Kotzman, Ed Julien. Did I pronounce it right? Julien. Okay. Sorry
19:44about that. Organizers of the Bitcoin treasuries unconference. We won't call it a conference.
19:49Bitcoin treasuries, New York city unconference with Michael Saylor. We did put the link in the
19:53chat there. Thank you for creating a coupon code for us as well. Uh, I suspect that we're going to
19:58check in with you again. Good luck with your conference and we'll follow up with you next time.
20:01All right. Thank you. All right. That is Tim and Ed folks. I know we've been on top
20:07of these Bitcoin treasury companies. We've been trying to make as much sense of them as we can.
20:12Sounds like we're not the only ones really good stuff here from our guests. If you're interested
20:17in that, please check it out.
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