The Last Trade: Matt Odell on the 2025 postmortem: why BTC lagged gold, how DATs wrecked sentiment, what the quantum debate gets wrong, and what changes when institutions take the wheel.

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Matt Odell: https://odell.xyz

🎙️ About This Episode

With Matt Odell in the studio, we run a proper 2025 postmortem: why the “OGs are dumping” narrative never dies, what actually changes when Bitcoin’s liquidity deepens, and why it’s healthy (not bearish) for long-term supply to distribute over time.

From there, we tackle the elephant in the room: gold and equities ripped while BTC chopped. Matt’s take is simple and brutal, retail is broke, capital is hiding in perceived safe havens, and Bitcoin still gets treated like a high-risk tech trade if you don’t understand self-custody. We also dig into the October break in the crypto casino and how forced sellers can pin price even when long-term fundamentals look strong.

Then we get honest about the cultural and structural fallout from “Bitcoin treasury companies” & DATs: how leverage-on-leverage turned into a negative feedback loop, why board seats and influencer incentives distorted the narrative, and why the only benchmark that matters is whether these wrappers can actually beat spot bitcoin over time.

Finally, we hit the quantum panic. Matt lays out a sober framework: upgrade carefully, opt-in where possible, don’t rush into untested cryptography, and don’t even flirt with protocol-level seizures or “freezing” coins. If Bitcoin compromises neutral property rights to “save” the market, it’s no longer Bitcoin. We close with what this all implies for 2026: whether cycles are fading, where the next reflexive move could come from, and why the most bearish sentiment is often the best tell.

The Last Trade: a weekly, bitcoin-native podcast covering the intersection of bitcoin, tech, & finance on a macro scale. Hosted by Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, & Brian Cubellis. Join us as we dive into what bitcoin means for how individuals & institutions save, invest, & propagate their purchasing power through time. It's not just another asset… in the digital age, it's The Last Trade that investors will ever need to make.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 - Christmas Greetings + Why 2025 Felt So Weird

01:42 - “OGs Dumping” Bitcoin: Meme Narrative vs. Reality

03:35 - Liquidity, Distribution, & Engagement Bait

06:24 - Sentiment, Macro, & the “Quiet Depression” View

09:42 - Institutions, ETFs, & How Market Structure Changes the Cycle

12:35 - DATs / Treasury-Co Mania: Why It Took Over 2025

16:27 - Cultural Fragmentation + Incentives

22:36 - Quantum FUD Deep Dive

45:25 - Why the Next Move Will Catch People Offside

48:25 - Centralization Risk, Custodians, & How a Fork Would Play Out

55:28 - Why Quantum Became the “Last Remaining FUD”

59:11 - Stablecoins, Tether, & the Institutional Rails Story

01:02:20 - SBR: Expectations vs. Reality + 2026 Scenarios

01:06:20 - Gold’s Run, the Debasement Trade, & the Bitcoin Setup

01:10:27 - 2026 Outlook: Cycle Theories & What Could Flip the Switch

01:29:21 - Outro & Disclaimer

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🎧 The Last Trade | Final Settlement | Scarce Assets

Connect with Early Riders // Connect with Onramp

Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…

Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.

00:00 - Year-End Reflections and Top Deals

12:45 - Market Signals and ETF Flows

25:13 - Stablecoins and Digital Asset Integration

28:19 - Noise in the Market: DATs and Cycle Theory

35:26 - Reevaluating Bitcoin Cycles

36:01 - The Quantum Debate

37:09 - Predictions for Bitcoin's Future

41:39 - Market Dynamics and Predictions

53:45 - Innovative Banking Solutions for 2026

59:55 - The Future of Multi-Institution Custody

If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly.

Keep up with Michael:

https://x.com/MTanguma
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mtanguma/

Keep up with Brian:

https://x.com/BackslashBTC
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-cubellis-00b1a660/

Keep up with Liam:

https://x.com/Lnelson_21
https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-nelson1/

The Last Trade: Jeff Deist explains why “saving” died in the fiat era, how markets morphed into a casino, why gold is quietly re-monetizing, and what Bitcoin’s financialization gets dangerously wrong as younger generations face a broken denominator, housing despair, and a culture of Hail Mary bets.

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🔸 Connect with Onramp: The leader in resilient, fault-tolerant Multi-Institution Custody for secure, enduring bitcoin ownership.

👉 Inheritance & Trust Planning: https://onrampbitcoin.com/products/inheritance

👉 Institutional: https://onrampbitcoin.com/products/institutional

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Jeff Deist on X: https://x.com/jeffdeist

🎙️ About This Episode

With Jeff Deist (General Counsel at Monetary Metals, former President of the Mises Institute, former Chief of Staff to Ron Paul), we go back to first principles: what Austrian economics actually is, why “macro” often becomes storytelling, and how sound money frames human cooperation, scarcity, and long-term civilization building.

From there, we diagnose the modern U.S. economy through Deist’s lens: the post-1982 debt era, collapsing savings as a virtue, and the way suppressed rates turned equities and housing into de facto “savings accounts.” Jeff argues this is why under-40s feel trapped, why wealth inequality becomes socially corrosive, and why a culture that can’t save drifts toward speculation, despair, and even prediction markets as financialized entertainment.

We then zoom in on gold’s breakout year and what it signals. Jeff makes the case that gold’s premium still reflects “moneyness,” especially outside the West, and explains Monetary Metals’ model for earning yield in ounces through gold leases and bonds. Finally, we close on Bitcoin’s institutional path and the risks of financialization: why Deist dislikes BTC treasury companies, how distorted incentives pull talent into financial engineering over real production, and what it means for capital markets when “numbers go up” becomes the organizing principle.

The Last Trade: a weekly, bitcoin-native podcast covering the intersection of bitcoin, tech, & finance on a macro scale. Hosted by Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, & Brian Cubellis. Join us as we dive into what bitcoin means for how individuals & institutions save, invest, & propagate their purchasing power through time. It's not just another asset… in the digital age, it's The Last Trade that investors will ever need to make.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 – Welcome + Jeff Deist’s Background

02:17 – Discovering Austrian Economics

04:38 – Libertarianism vs. Economics

08:43 – Bitcoin as a Sound Money On-Ramp

14:13 – Inequality, Housing, & the Under-40 Squeeze

19:17 – Distorted Capital Markets & Malinvestment

23:30 – What Money Is: Rates, Inflation, & Savings

28:11 – Why Savings Died

39:12 – Speculation Culture & “Betting on Everything”

42:03 – Gold’s Breakout & “Moneyness”

46:23 – Gold vs. Bitcoin

51:33 – Preserving Wealth in Uncertainty

56:43 – Government, Fiscal Dominance, & Tech Deflation

01:04:15 – Learning as the Real Edge

01:12:42 – Bitcoin Financialization & Treasury Companies

01:21:38 – Outro & Disclaimer

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🎧 The Last Trade | Final Settlement | Scarce Assets

Scarce Assets: Vance Crowe explains why BTC is becoming the superior store of value, how it could reshape farmland economics, & why family legacy may be the most important asset you pass on.

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Jackson Mikalic on X --- https://x.com/macrojack21

Vance Crowe on X --- https://x.com/VanceCrowe

🎙️ About This Episode

Vance Crowe joins Scarce Assets for a wide-ranging conversation on family legacy, farmland economics, inflation, and why Bitcoin is becoming the superior store of value. From his early career at the World Bank and Monsanto to founding Legacy Interviews, Vance brings a unique, real-world perspective on how sound money reshapes behavior across generations, industries, and economies.

We explore his thesis that Bitcoin will eventually demonetize farmland, how inflation quietly destabilizes societies, why cycles matter far less than conviction, and why running a node changed his understanding of Bitcoin forever.

- The origin story of Legacy Interviews and why family storytelling is an irreplaceable asset

- How a World Bank economist accidentally pushed Vance toward Bitcoin

- The farmland store-of-value problem and why Bitcoin alters the economics

- Inflation, The Mandibles, and the politics of a weakening currency

- Hyperbitcoinization vs. stability: why Vance prefers a slow transition

- Government adoption, commodities priced in BTC, and the role of hash rate

- Stablecoins, dollar geopolitics, and the risk of “financial conflict”

- Why most people won’t adopt Bitcoin without guided onboarding

- How running a full node changed Vance’s mental model of Bitcoin

Scarce Assets: a biweekly podcast presented by Onramp which delves into the emergent role of bitcoin in finance professionals' strategies and outlooks. Hosted by Jackson Mikalic, Scarce Assets provides invaluable insights for wealth managers aiming to outperform their peers in the decades ahead. Finance professionals everywhere know about stocks and bonds, but the macroeconomic outlook requires that serious investors pay close attention to another category: Scarce Assets.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 – Introduction to Vance Crowe & Legacy Interviews

07:05 – How Legacy Interviews Began

13:19 – The Value of Capturing Family Stories

20:13 – Vance Discovers Bitcoin

26:08 – Bitcoin’s Impact on Farmland & Land Values

31:46 – Inflation, Mandibles & Monetary Reality

36:50 – Wealth Bifurcation & Inflation Misunderstandings

42:54 – Bitcoin as a Savings Technology

49:52 – Adoption, Onboarding & Government Dynamics

55:59 – Stablecoins, Geopolitics & Dollar Power

01:00:44 – Closing Thoughts, Outro, & Disclaimer

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🎧 The Last Trade | Final Settlement | Scarce Assets

The Last Trade: Tad Smith unpacks why Bitcoin’s “disappointing” 2025 might be the perfect setup, how gold and sovereign flows are quietly rewriting the sound money playbook, and what AI, labor shocks, and Fed policy mean for younger generations staring at a broken system and a massive opportunity.

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👉 Institutional: https://onrampbitcoin.com/products/institutional

👉 Business: https://onrampbitcoin.com/products/business

📩 Schedule a briefing: https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact

🎙️ About This Episode

With returning guest Tad Smith (former public-company CEO and NYU Stern professor), we zoom out on Bitcoin’s “underwhelming” 2025: why sentiment feels terrible at ~91K, how expectations got ahead of reality, and why he likes the current setup precisely because narrative and positioning look so weak. Tad contrasts gold’s structural central-bank bid with Bitcoin’s emerging endowment and sovereign bid, digs into Harvard vs Abu Dhabi’s BTC motives, and explains what it means when elite institutions are willing to take reputational risk just to get exposure.

From there, we walk through the Fed’s recent cuts, balance sheet “relief,” and the slow-motion regime shift heading into 2026—arguing that liquidity and policy, not a mystical four-year cycle, drive BTC. Then Tad delivers a blunt generational autopsy on debt, housing, and student loans, lays out how AI really threatens white-collar labor, and sketches the likely path to “soft UBI” through more generous existing programs. We close on optimism: why this is still the best time in history to be young and high-agency, how CEOs are actually using AI to reshape labor and productivity, and how Tad rebuilt his NYU Stern course so AI is a required superpower instead of a banned shortcut.

The Last Trade: a weekly, bitcoin-native podcast covering the intersection of bitcoin, tech, & finance on a macro scale. Hosted by Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, & Brian Cubellis. Join us as we dive into what bitcoin means for how individuals & institutions save, invest, & propagate their purchasing power through time. It's not just another asset… in the digital age, it's The Last Trade that investors will ever need to make.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 – Introduction, Tad’s Return & Market Overview

02:42 – Bitcoin’s 2025 Performance and “Disappointing” Sentiment

06:53 – Narratives in Non-Yielding Assets: Bitcoin vs. Gold

08:50 – Harvard, Abu Dhabi & Quiet Institutional Bitcoin Allocations

12:18 – Central Banks Buying Gold and the Emerging Sovereign/Endowment BTC Bid

21:39 – Federal Reserve Rate Cuts, Balance Sheet “Relief,” and Liquidity Shift

32:02 – The Treasury–Fed Relationship and the Myth of Full Independence

37:10 – AI’s Impact on the Labor Market and Career Paths for the Young

38:39 – Generational Accountability: Debt, Housing, and a Rigged Starting Line

42:26 – AI, Job Displacement, and the Road to “Soft UBI”

44:47 – Agency, Entrepreneurship, and Opportunity in a Changing Economy

49:56 – Education in the AI Era: Bans, Blue Books, and Missed Opportunities

01:05:25 – Inside Tad’s NYU Course: Requiring AI and Redesigning the Classroom

01:11:55 – Optimism for the Future: Bitcoin, AI, and Personal Responsibility

01:13:14 – Outro and Disclaimer

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High-signal insights in bitcoin, macro, and custody.

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🎧 The Last Trade | Final Settlement | Scarce Assets

The Last Trade: Mark Yusko breaks down why the bitcoin cycle isn’t dead, how futures and index flows “tame” BTC, why gold and oil remain the real benchmarks, and what this year’s post-peak reset signals about an adversarial, institutional future.

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🔸 Connect with Onramp: The leader in resilient, fault-tolerant Multi-Institution Custody for secure, enduring bitcoin ownership.

👉 Inheritance & Trust Planning: https://onrampbitcoin.com/products/inheritance

👉 Institutional: https://onrampbitcoin.com/products/institutional

👉 Business: https://onrampbitcoin.com/products/business

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🎙️ About This Episode

With recurring guest Mark W. Yusko, we zoom out on Bitcoin’s 2025 run: why he still sees a 3 years 11 months, block-based cycle, how fair value models frame the recent peak around $126K, and why a smaller overshoot can mean a healthier foundation for the next phase. We unpack how CME futures and “paper BTC” reshaped market structure, what it really means to judge Bitcoin in gold and oil terms, and how prediction markets and casino-ified finance fit into a world of engineered liquidity and index-driven equities.

From there, we get into the quiet endowment and institutional bid (via Paradigm, Andreessen, and now ETFs), the structural “rigging” of 401(k) and index flows, and the political/regulatory edge of the Genius Act, Clarity Act, and CBDC ambitions. Mark lays out why Bitcoin and gold remain core stores of purchasing power in a heavily financialized system—and how allocators can navigate an increasingly adversarial environment while keeping the message human, savings-focused, and long-term.

The Last Trade: a weekly, bitcoin-native podcast covering the intersection of bitcoin, tech, & finance on a macro scale. Hosted by Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, & Brian Cubellis. Join us as we dive into what bitcoin means for how individuals & institutions save, invest, & propagate their purchasing power through time. It's not just another asset… in the digital age, it's The Last Trade that investors will ever need to make.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 – Welcoming Mark Yusko back & Thanksgiving sentiment

02:15 – No blow-off top: did the 2025 cycle peak quietly at $126K?

05:36 – “Taming” Bitcoin: CME futures, paper BTC, and market structure

10:54 – Bitcoin in gold and oil terms: has the real bull market started?

17:46 – Prediction markets, gambling, and separating signal from opinion

25:54 – Post-2020 money printing, MMT, and gold/BTC as liquidity sponges

30:31 – Tech cycles, venture vintages, and where this crypto buildout fits

35:54 – Rigged equities: 401(k)s, index flows, and boomer entitlements

48:42 – Vanguard, JPM, IBIT flows & why “coincidences” cluster on Wall Street

55:22 – Endowments, Paradigm/Andreessen, and quiet institutional BTC adoption

1:08:17 – Genius Act, Clarity Act, CBDCs & the “then they fight you” phase

1:20:15 – Internet vs bitcoin, censorship, and an adversarial next decade

💡 Subscribe & Stay Ahead

Get Onramp’s weekly Research & Analysis:

High-signal insights in bitcoin, macro, and custody.

📩 https://onrampbitcoin.com/research

Subscribe to Onramp Media for more:

🎧 The Last Trade | Final Settlement | Scarce Assets