US court greenlights the sale of six and a half billion and sees Silk Road Bitcoin so then you know price starts falling bitcoin's down a couple percent so everyone says oh you know bitcoin's down because the US government is about to start selling six billion into the market this is wrong you are saying very very wrong again in the sense of will there be a moment in time when they will start the disposal process the people That crashed the market were the crypto folks wiely speculating on news stories let's be clear people say the government
are doing this with no facts but but I just read a tweet from someone saying know this is how efficient the US government is they want to build a strategic Bitcoin reserve and now they're starting by selling 6.5 billion Bitcoin this is someone with tens of th hundreds of thousands of of followers and people just lean into it today's Episode is sponsored by geod net they're a leading dpin protocol that's providing critical location and spatial intelligence Services needed for Aid driven robots and drones discover how the Network's native token GE EOD D is powering the
next wave of the robotics Revolution by hitting the link in the description of today's episode what's up everybody welcome back to the Roundup um we have we have AE of podcast at blockworks finally so these Shows are about to level up baby level up yeah oh for sure people uh I love the comments on YouTube at some point we're going to have to go revisit them but there there were some pretty spicy takes in the the 2025 predictions I mean basically I think our mics got worse and we Lo just loaded up with ads so
I do understand why people were not stoked but anyways uh what's going on mean light week Market tanking but there's not like a lot of news uh the market is Just doing its thing so um how are you doing I'm doing great I'm having like an amazing start to the year it's been good um I mean you got our investor update last night it's been just like yeah things are things are good life is good bside bside reading it's great I think you guys are like a leading indicator for everything that's going on in crypto
like there's certain businesses that if you had like perfect like perfect information like you'd want to like of Course like we interviewed who was it uh oh the the Richard from binance like and we asked him this question it's like hey from your kpi dashboard like you probably have like pristine information of where we are in the cycle kind of thing like so people should go listen to that episode I think is one of the it was short and sweet but I think it was very insightful um yeah good episode so we interviewed Richard the
CEO of binance drops on Monday uh the best part Of the episode is definitely when Santi keeps pressing him on the fees that binance takes for listings and uh you know gonna ask the question when he didn't answer the first time I think he enjoyed the conversation except that part I mean he definitely did not enjoy it but to his credit to binance his credit oftentimes people will reach out to us saying hey can you take that part out of the episode we need to cut that part obviously we we we never actually Do that
um but you know but they didn't reach out they they said look run it it's fine so yeah no no it was very good conversation nonetheless um yeah so what's going on what do we want to cover this week um we have a very special guest yeah we want to um okay so the kind of a light news week but the big question I think this week was have we topped so first off I think that's a it's we definitely have not topped I'll tell my quick take we definitely have Not topped but it's actually
a good thing to reflect on quick to just think about like hey look if this was the top how upset would you be was it a successful cycle for you would you be pissed off would your company you know if you're running a company or something would would you make it through the bare Market um that I think is why this conversation around like have we topped I think it's silly because like there I really strongly Believe we have not topped and I actually think we're going into like what will be a couple months of
just Ridiculousness in the markets in a in a good way but it's a good thing to think about is like are you gon to be happy um if this was the top like are you happy with the cycle did you take any profits like um it's just a good thing to reflect on I thought it was an excellent tweet that you had um and it's just sound advice it Was like um maybe just for people that uh where is it here uh try to pull up your where is this I've been tweeting too much cycle
has not you tweeted this uh um Dayo cycle is not topped but if you panic at anom 75% it's worth thinking because anom this guy Evan said would you say there's like 20 25% chance of cycle top anim response 75% chance that cycle is topped and you said if you believe whatever it is that you believe a would You be okay if this was the top two would you end up with profits three would you think that this bull was a success four would your company or fund survive the bear you you said no to
any of those reflect and I think it's oh there you go yeah fantastic for people not listen uh viewing this live um video and I think it's just a really good reminder it just feels again we've said it time and time again in the podcast we said it in the 2025 predictions like I'm not and I don't think you are here either like you're building a company super focused but like as an investor coming in like I've readjusted my Frameworks to say I'm not here to capture and shoot to capture 90% of the returns of
the cycle right at best I'd be happy of it's 50 and I tweeted something today he said listen day like today you're seeing a lot of coins go down 25 30% in any given day I think your assumption when you're in This asset class is that any given day the price movement of any coin including Bitcoin can be upwards of 50% yeah and so you kind of invert and you say well what if that's going to be true I definitely don't want to use leverage yeah so here's my favorite part about all of this is
a you need to flush some things out right every once in a while it's it's a healthy thing for the market the other thing is Trump's inauguration is now a bullish event not A bearish event so what I what I originally thought was going to happen I I was 180 wrong what I originally thought was going to happen was um you know there's going to be like a big bull run into the inauguration and then it's kind of a sell the news type of event um or what is it buy the rumor sell the news
whatever it is um and I thought there was going to be a selloff around the inauguration but now because we got this selloff before the inauguration and Trump moving into office is actually I think a very bullish Catalyst um and so I am I have flipped very bullish from here is what I will say um uh you you remember that uh Reddit post which says everything is priced in yeah yeah it's like you know I mean like it is I I just think that like people play and focus so much energy in trying to understand
how much is priced in MH and I've I've it's a I think it's pretty hard more importantly you're gonna pull It off with so for for people don't know one of the best copy pastas of all time the best uh yeah I remember yeah anyways uh but it's uh you know during the Hing events is it priced in uh fire dancer for Sal is it priced in trumping inauguration to the price in I think like you know when the market comes down like I think just sort of there's two kinds of people I think one
that the point the longer time frame and Time Horizon you have the more patient you are I think you just naturally think of these moments as like good entry points the question is where are you going to pull cash from so you have to have some sort of dry powder uh it never hurts to have dry powder you know like in my entire investing career in crypto uh you think I learned a thing or two uh I still make a lot of mistakes but the thing that I've appreciated is anytime you you're chasing an Asset
um a lot of times like you think that oh my God fomo I'm never going to see this thing below 100K ever again everyone on the timeline's calling hyper liquid at 200 Bitcoin at 250 like everyone's you know I mean like I think just it's a helpful reminder like there is a natural gravity to things right like mean reversion is very much a thing and um I've always kind of it's super hard but I'm like all right there's probably it's almost like I take the Invers anytime I feel like I've never going to see this
asset below you know whatever I'm like no no know like just be patient like let the market come to you kind of thing um and like DCA into a multi- decade or multi-year kind of M or through cycle kind of trade um because you know everyone in the timeline was like be in November Trump got elected it's like go we're blue past 100 so much momentum you're sitting there you're Like wow yeah this going 120 115 like 150 like let's go but yeah you know all it takes is one Trump tweet saying you know the
the the government selling 6.5 billion we're going to buy it back right boom Back Off to the Races everyone flips bullish um on that note I actually I think the news of the week the theme of the week was definitely have we topped the news story of the week was uh the government has now has approval and uh to sell 6.5 billion of Bitcoin and It's goingon to start selling Bitcoin so um you and I could pontificate on this all day long but we are lucky enough that um we have Aiden lurin joining uh the
the episode we're going to pull him in in a second Aiden um for contact so full disclosure Santi and I are both uh investors in a company called asset reality Aiden is the CEO and co-founder of asset reality asset reality I'll I'll I'll do one sentence on it and then I'll let Aiden actually do it um they Basically investigate manage and realize seized crypto assets for both the like government like public sector and private sector clients I I'm pretty sure Aiden was the first seized crypto Auctioneer in the world um and so what this actually
means in layman terms is if a government seizes Bitcoin could be from the Silk Road or could be from somewhere else um they call Asset reality and they call Aiden so he TR he has more experience with this than Anyone else in the world and I messaged Aiden I said what do you think of the government selling Bitcoin he said this is a ridiculous thing that people are blowing way out of proportion so anyways wanted to pull Aiden onto the show so Aiden welcome hi folks thanks for having me yeah yeah Aiden wait a minute
Aid I'm just gonna ask you are you are you the guy that's pressing the big red button for the government sell the Bitcoins I'm the guy with the megaphone saying Stop Believing everything that you read on Twitter or X it's yeah there's there's so much there's so much to un unpack in this but like the fundamental disclaimer is that the US government has a contractor that manages we don't so just just to be clear so we're not in the hot state with this particular this particular transaction and you're right uh we help governments with managing
seiz crypto and the actual Seizure part itself but you're right I've been in this sector for for quite some time and a lot of our team I mean they're the guys that actually seized this 69,000 Bitcoin they're talking about so like we're practitioners in this and when you see these news stories I mean for the avoidance of doubt this is a it's it's a nothing story in our world in the sense of this happens every day assets get seized they go through a process called civil forfeiture this Could be a boat someone comes along and
says hey I have an interest in that boat that's my boat don't just forfeit it to the government they go through a process so this particular case has been kicked out of court like two or three times this has been like a 10-year-old thing I think 2022 is the first court case they had and then as recently they get the Supreme court and they're like it's kicked out again so all that means is from the government's point of view they Are cleared to continue with the next phase of the Civil forfeiture process now you can
assume that this case was an anonymous individual who hacked Silk Road so this should be a bit of a slam dunk case for the government so just like all of the other crypto that's ever been seized before this should just become a at some point in the future it'll just go through the normal government processes there will be a civil forfeiture application here in They will get their green light and then it will fall into the normal Marshalls process public domain coinbase is their contractor so at some point coinbase will then manage and it'll move
on chain and there'll be a seal but no one's going to push a button on 69,000 so so the so the news story right if people missed it right this week was I mean I'll pull up an article from decrypt uh US court greenlights the sale of 6 and a half billion and sees Silk Road Bitcoin So then you know price starts falling bitcoin's down a couple so everyone says oh you know bitcoin's down because the US government is about to start selling six billion into the market this is wrong you are saying very very
wrong again in the sense of will there be a moment in time when they will start the disposal process absolutely but I mean they've been doing this stuff for years now I mean no no everyone wants to get best value for the assets they sell Whether it's a mega yott or it's crypto assets we saw the same in in Germany where there was all this wild specula that the people that crashed the market were the crypto folks wiely speculating on news stories let's be clear people saying the government are doing this with no facts but
but I I just read a tweet from someone saying know this is how efficient the US government is they want to build a strategic Bitcoin reserve and now they're starting by Selling 6.5 billion Bitcoin this is someone with tens of th hundreds of thousands of of followers and people just lean into it and it it's just doesn't happen this way like practically speaking what will happen is they will go in in the EU in Germany for example they locked in that price but when people saw the onchain move they then assumed it was happening it
had already been the government got best value for those assets it was a stunning result For the German government the news story I think you'd mentioned Jason youd mentioned the um the buy buy the rumor and sell the news or that I always get that thing wrong this is everyone reacting after the fact who who are not in the circle of sort of knowledge and just putting two two together and getting seven when you say the locked in the price was that an OTC trade for with a particular like a few parties in the EU
I believe so so governments have Different disposal methodology so this is why 10 years ago know the US government would have auctioned uh to your point um now I was involved in a crypto auction because back then there just wasn't the the relationships with exchanges but now you've got know regulated exchanges all around the world with good track records at handling big disposal volumes so most government agencies would follow a process of giving this across carrying out a number Of sort of small transactions offchain getting a good price for it and then the final move
will usually be the execution piece because they precisely don't want the unhelpful speculation affecting their own returns they don't like companies tracking wallets and saying it's on the move it doesn't help anything I mean but to be fair like if you do an OTC trade there's another counterparty there that has needed to hedge and and also dispose of that like If it's Market maker they're going to have to they're going to have to move those coins right because they're Market neutral or and they need to lock in a certain you know in an OTC trade
there's like some some spread and some disc and there's always going to be these enormous transactions but I think I don't know if it's this particular case because I don't know if it's in the in the public domain as I haven't done my research quickly enough um but I know in One of the cases recently for example they actually stipulated in the order this must be disposed over multiple dispositions to know prevent an impact on the market as well but now like things are getting so modern 2025 governments have been seizing crypto assets and selling
them for a long time globally most of these things as you say they have the discrection it's not a megga yot they don't need to do a single portfolio they could also go and when we Talk about things like strategic reserves maybe the government could strictly speaking the process the government can reuse a yacht can reuse a car could strictly speaking reuse crypto assets for undercover operations whole bunch of things can be done but there's a federal process that they have to go through to do it as well you're talking about multiple different government agencies
involved and then there's lots of court orders and instructions and Things in the background so there's also just to put a pen in that there is no chance for an incoming president or current president to say hey I'll take those six and a half billion Bitcoin and put them over here thanks that's just not allowed let's play some context like this surface in I mean everyone's always been nervous about the 69,000 370 Bitcoin that the US government has right it's it's very known uh they've seiz it they've had it for years uh I remember In
October and I'm referencing the decrypt article um there was an um you know there was a news story that appeared that said the US government is free to sell the C's Bitcoin this is from the Silk Road Affiliated wallet okay so that's October but it's really the point that they make in the article which I think is a good one that I'd like to know I don't know if you have insight into that is it's like unclear Why there there was a the judge um I think rejected the or sort of like denied a motion
to block the forfeiture of the Bitcoin yeah and that clear the doj to presumably be in a position to sell right doesn't mean they're going to sell today it doesn't mean that they're selling it just is they can now sell it yeah um qu a couple questions the first one is were they in a position because they've had this for years to sell it at any given point in Time no so there's a very strict process that has to get followed so so let's say the government seizes uh crypto assets tomorrow uh and it's a
know Department of Justice sort of linked law enforcement agency the if in the merits of that particular case they can't identify the particular individual so they use a mechanism called civil forfeiture this is like finding a big bag of cash at the airport and no one will claim it so crypto assets tainted Through onchain activity and block analytic tools they're very straightforward civil forfeiture cases because you can clearly see where they're from it's like it's like identifying stolen goods so the government process will involve a bunch of steps but fundamentally there is a legal process
of forfeiture and that's why you see these descriptions um we actually did a we did a podcast recently ourselves with a guy Steph Cella I mean He's the Godfather of sort of asset forfeiture in the US and he talks about the fact that you see these particular court orders where it's like US Government versus 69,3 70 Bitcoin that's the same as the US government versus like the you know SS Indianapolis so so it's against the asset itself and then so that forfeiture has to take place so in all of the other crypto cases that have
gone by the crypto has been season seized they've then put in an Application saying hey we've got all of this evidence we want to Forfeit these assets once they get the forfeiture then agencies like the US Marshals can then go ahead and execute their own disposition plan based on their internal sort of um operating procedures so this one particular case just had a unique wrinkle that is not um reflected of how you know crypto seizures actually operate this is a very specific case where an um individuals or a group have Come forward and said hey
that valuable asset that the government wants to put through the regular forfeiture process we think we have a claim to it because of like some linked bankruptcy process um I forget the name of the entity I think it was um battleborn Investments or so this is just third party laying claim to an asset that is about to go through the regular Federal process process um and literally because they've been through courts so long like this Started was it pre was it 2020 2021 I know the first case I saw was 2022 when it was kicked
out they went somewhere else it was kicked out they went to Supreme Court it's been kicked out so this is just been sort of circling the drain in the US government for now and now it's another one of their cases that'll fall into the forfeiture application bucket they get a green light they'll go ahead with disposal but this could be a year away could be six Months away so just so the context so we're all care uh the government sees these Bitcoins tied to Silk Road many years ago forget the exact year like decade yeah
like like 10 years ago they were never in a position to sell because they had to wait this grace period make sure that you know no one came back and so this process of forfeiture um which is just claiming that and just saying hey I got this bag of cash in the airport gonna Give it a 10 years no one shows up now um so so that so far so good the my question is what are the odds that this particular entity battle one group that you mentioned actually doesn't have a claim at all but
like could you or could anyone randomly just file kind of this I don't know if it's an injunction or what the like file a court orders to just like delay the forfeiture and you could just keep doing like it's it's almost like a Dos attack on the the forfeiture It's it's a very expensive dos attack because if you think of the asso but if you have a big bag of Bitcoin look it it true like me this is I think I think we saw this this is this is your world and not mine didn't something
like this happen with openc where you could lay claim to an nft during the auction process and you could say hey that's mine and they would go and sort of investigate but if you wanted to strategic strategically attack a Competitor you would just wait like three minutes before the auction and all the hype around it and then sort of lay claim to it so you're right and again I'm not an asset forfeiture lawyer but under any sort of traditional asset disposal process when they post a notification to say US Government versus X now come forward
and plead your case because there will be legitimate times when someone for example has been associated with a business they've Bought the business and all the no proprietary Tech and they turns out that actually all the kit that they bought they maybe bought options in a company or shares it happens all the time that people come forward for third parties and they have to make their claim what I will say from personal experience if it's know if it's a slam dunk it's a slam dunk you get your stuff really quickly like if you turn up
and say hey government agency has sees my mega yacht Because some criminal was driving it but they had a lease with me for three weeks I bought it legitimately here's all my earnings validated I'm not the crook you get your asset back straight away but this looks like on the face of it again I wasn't involved in this case that someone's had a you know an attempted had a claim and I think in three or four us courts they failed every time so and who makes the decision at the US government whether or not they
should Sell so it's not a should sell they don't really get an option the asset forfeiture process is you have to convert the asset to get the value back usually for victims that's sort of the main reason civil for exists so it's kind of if you imagine know take take like a big drugs or a big narcotics case know big Warehouse filled with cocaine and filled with filled with cash the government goes through a process and says what do we do with this cash to Legally take that in and put that into the narcotics program
to basically know tackle more crime and sort of fund more awareness campaign they forfeit it to the state or if you're the victims of a Ponzi scheme and they find a bank account linked to Bernie made off they can go through a forfeiture process and then the next step is actually to identify victims or maybe the victims the identification could be before that the Specifics but basically it's does someone own it have a legal claim to it if not it gets forfeited once the title gets forfeited that effectively means it becomes the property of that
government agency to do so as they wish now if it at that point the government said hey there's a really interested incoming president that wants to Hoover up all the Bitcoin is there a way then there is a mechanism legally would know it's legislation and policy but there's Nothing to stop them but probably just be easier um to basically realize that and put money in the bank it so it happens a lot but I think that for this particular one this will just fall into the next stage of forfeiture but Santi your point is strategically
someone could be saying I'm going to come along and delay I'll coordinate with uh you know 10 D hey let's you know let's file a motion here to Del lay claim on it yeah and it Happens a lot like how many forfeited pieces of real estate for example that people that have went in again it's it's expensive to get together and obviously mean this is one of the I think three or four high-profile sort of no billion dollar sort of Silk Road related seizures it's specifically this one that was caught up the other ones sort
of sealed through assets have already been liquidated and they don't reach news Because unless you're tracking the court Dockets or watching was the two billion that because I did see they did send two billion to coinbase right a couple months ago that did that did happen right so in October right yeah so remember so coinbase is the contractor for US Marshall so every day there'll be transactions taking place assets getting moved around it doesn't and this is where the fud kicks in it doesn't signal a disposal that's just inventory movement like someone one day could
let Let's say I'm I'm a police officer and I carry out a seizure and I recover you know a wallet. DAT file or I recover snow seed phrases or I take custody of an accountant an exchange overseas there'll be an initial movement of assets to recover them there then might be a requirement based on the configuration of that portfolio to move assets around there could be just evidential requirements and things that have to get done so this it's it's a Dangerous um thing to do the amount of people that know track these wallets as if
it's gos you're going you don't have all the context it's like watching a super yacht move from port to port and assume that it's been sold and assume the ownership's changed it's not the full picture so so you don't like these like like the Arkham of the world or maybe it's not that you don't like them but you think it's a there's a lot more context than just watching the Arkham Wallets context I think it's phenomenal from from a transparency civil Li I think it's phenomenal that we can track this asset category because you can't
track how they're doing with the performance of selling off Epstein's portfolio of assets for for example you just don't get to see that but without the additional context of knowing what that movement relates to you're making a decision or know spreading a rumor on 1% of the Story um so okay now there the motion was denied there are to your my knowledge no other motion there to kind of lay claim I think that was Supreme Court or something like so I think they're pretty much done they're pretty much done they are in a position free
and clear to dispose of these assets in some so not not dispose and again remember they're only clear to continue with the forfeiture Process so this was an appeal from for my quick reading this was an appeal during the Civil forfeiture process so now the article is one of the articles I read is correct and the extent I've just seen one on MSN which is just unforgivably inaccurate is that main new source it's okay like the um yeah I've just seen it pop up because I se it um but I think that within the within
the context of the Civil forfeiture they have the green Light to proceed with the forfeiture now if I'm a betting man that forfeiture should seal through because now know all the all these outstanding claims have been settled it's against individual X it's linked to Silk Road it's a there's been a criminal conviction on the back of that case again this is like cash in a bag at the airport at this stage it's Administration it has to go through but it's still it's still a long process to to follow those next yeah that was my Main
question which is obviously know Trump's going to come in office there's a strategic Reserve discussion that is very pertinent to this which I want to get your take on I know you're not a forfeiture lawyer but um timeline wise if there's like in what scenar like what is a sequence now from here on out so the sequence would be there will be a forfeiture no hearing they'll go through those steps and but this thing will be measured in quarters like this could be It wouldn't be shocking if this was still not moved all of this
year like this is this is not not going to be something that moves in in days or weeks the only time that would change is if for some specific reason there was a court hearing and there was a date and it was set and it's a little bit of sort of just potl with with court dates based on the jurisdiction that it's in based on who's on sick leave who's available what the resources are what other cases Come in if you have a January 6 style incident for example then all the court dockets get pushed
back I mean this is just sitting in amongst all of the other sort of forfeiture applications and things that have to go through the know the wheels of Justice type thing so we could be sitting here in a year's time and those assets still haven't been liquidated similarly you know things could be done in in months time but it certainly will not I mean you're talking About people like coinbase talking about people like the marshals who have no managed billions of dollars in assets if they do have the forfeiture permission to proceed the normal standing
operating procedures is governments want to move as quickly post the forfeiture order being granted it's not a government's job to speculate so the government normally would just move as quickly as reasonably practicable to execute and actually do the trade if this was a Lower lower value what's an interesting wrinkle as you've said is about if potentially an incoming president then says I want to look at taking all of the current assets that is forfeited to the government that is very different than seized something that seized still hasn't went through its legal process it's just Frozen
but the forfeited assets that's a much smaller number than the big number that gets kicked around everyone talks about the US government Having 10 tens of thousands of Bitcoins in all of these cases yes they're at the beginning of their process they're seized they're not actually forfeited yet so the actual forfeited cases they're the ones that will will take a bit more bit more time but this one certainly is on its way to along so that's a 6.5 billion of forfeited assuming it's forfeited that belongs to the US government the doj has perview over how
to go forward with the the US Marshalls they're the respons they're the responsible Authority for managing all the doj sort of assets and Ladies and Gentlemen Just for context aident you worked a lot with these folks over the years right yeah and I so my well most of our company are the folks that worked in in US Marshalls um like my my colleague Joanna Summers she was the one that actually ran that unit that know managed the first silk grad seizure the stuff that Tim trer bought at auction um I think before before the intro
you mentioned I ran an equivalent process in the UK and Europe so managed some of the first Bitcoin auctions in in the UK and in Belgium so these are standard like operating that this isn't a regular day at the office for us this is just an exceptionally high amount that sort of caught the public imagination What there hasn't been talk about globally is the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve angle so imagine imagine the US government had $6 Billion do worth of gold billion today and it was about to go through a forfeiture process if some sort of
Federal Reserve decision was made to say can we take that and transfer that across then the actual Department of Justice account would have to get its its money worth there would be a transaction a notional transaction to say we're buying that 6.5 billion off you and then moving that across into a Federal Reserve because there might be Victims in this case that we're not privy to in the public domain there could be asset sharing agreements with overseas government agencies we'll never get the see below the the sort of water line and that's what I wanted
to get to which is like you know you can imagine Trump saying hey guys uh that six come here like but it's it's it's like an inter agency transaction there's no selling there's it doesn't hit the market but like it just moves ownership Within in government agency so to speak it moves from doj Marshall like it's a doj right Marsh Marshall within the doj so the doj so the doj like as an as a def fund budget or whatever like it's very entice because like this is going to our bonus maybe is tied to it
whatever and then that this is what funds know law enforcement this is what pays victim compensation this is the and again as I mentioned a really important Angle in all of these cases is that will not be privy to if this was an overseas operation there could be other governments that have asset sharing agreements in place based on the proceeds post forfeiture so again and you would question that if you want to set up a Bitcoin Reserve would you want to have all of the assets that have some of the worst tainted history on chain
it's like why would the government they' buy a bunch of new police cruisers Instead of reusing like the old beat up no Cruisers that have been seized off a a drug dealer I mean these assets have an onch in history as well if I was setting up a Bitcoin strategic Reserve just go place an order with one of the big know the big funds or the big entities and get some clean coins actually well say more about that because I would have thought hey why not I mean we already have this just transfer it over
you have some sort of Record between inter agency you know transaction it's it's entirely doable with the right policy changes and legislation changes and if obviously I do not know the inner inner workings of the US government but logically would make a common sense that if they wanted to set up a strategic reserve and they already had a balance sheet full of forfeited assets then I could completely see how that could be how that could go ahead that's entirely possible it Happens all the time when government sees vessels The Vessel gets forfeited and then the
Navy comes along and says the kit on that vessel is really valuable to us for trading exercise and then the naval authorities will make a submission they'll run through a paper process and they will have that asset transferred to them so it it happens all the time and I said forfeiture it just hasn't happened and I say I would go a step further I have a Feeling when the I kind of agree with Aiden here I don't think they would use this Bitcoin for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve I and I would go a step further
and say I think when they announce or if they announce the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve they will only buy a I'm putting quotes around this American minded Bitcoin I think there will be a whole it's an opportunity to say like we are bringing Bitcoin mining to America it's in Texas it's clean clean energy maybe Opportunity to do that like do you think the the government here there's some like conspiracy theory but like you'll tank the price of Bitcoin with this and then you buy Bitcoin B at 75k or 60k you know somewhere behind here I think
I mean yeah I don't think it's credible but like I'm sure someone out there is going to have this type of conspiracy theory which is like they're want to dump the price of Bitcoin with this stuff and then buy it on the Cheap geonet is a first ofit kind dpin protocol that's revolutionizing satellite navigation Services they're actively generating onchain Revenue that's growing 500% year-over-year by providing Precision location services that are 100 times more accurate than standard GPS on Empire we always talk about finding how crypto can power completely new business models and they're a perfect
example of this they're already trusted by over 30 Enterprise customers across Industries including Automotive agriculture construction and even robotics the network is powered by its native token G EOD and easily mined with their satellite Miner by setting up a base station you can get involved with this uh groundbreaking web 3 ecosystem learn more by heading over to geod net.com or just by hitting the link in the description of today's episode here's the different conspiracy Theory that I think is maybe less of a conspiracy Santi is Biden and the Dems just hate crypto so much at
this point because arguably crypto helped Trump get elected so is this the one final thing I mean we've got what 11 days left like Aiden I'd be curious to get your take I I don't know but is this the thing that Biden could do just on the way out being like I'm I'm selling the Bitcoin I'm selling six and a half billion of Bitcoin so I I I read that again I get I Get that it's not Biden clicking sell on a Bitcoin I do understand that but it will have any Authority but Biden doesn't
have any Court authority over the court uh interpretation and dismissal of the case so so that's what I was going to say again not comment on this case specifically but I said forfeit in general this has nothing to do with any politician this is a court process that started like you say a decade ago in ter in terms of the Seizure this is running through a process so it wouldn't matter if it was Trump or Biden no one is stepping in and getting involved in a Supreme Court case or a local case that makes its
way through the court so they're actually I can that's the one thing I'm more than happy to sort of um make a very strong assumption that there is zero interference and now the difference would be where the conspiracy theory would kick in is that if there was some Record Express forfeiture granted a really strong contentious case was suspicious ly concluded fast and all of a sudden the most clumsiest transaction was carried out in conjunction that ran through the marshals and in the coinbase and then there would be a this is so highly irregular we can
only start to draw different conclusions but me sort of sitting back as someone it works in asset recovery this is just this is trundling through the normal processes You just have a bunch of you know coincidental interesting facts taking place that you've got no change of President and but it really has zero to do with the with this case or that there's an interesting narrative but I will Jason to your point on the know the the Texas Bitcoin is a really valid point I mean if you're a political opponent or you're someone sort of know
fighting against the us talking about this in future when people go deep and Go you know I'm thinking like the the online sort of crypto slow whipping out the blockchain analytic tools and you start to go through these would you really want your country strategic Reserve to be oh look that wallet was linked to that wallet that was linked to the know welcome to video online child child exploitation case or that was linked to this or that was linked to that I mean this will paint a horrific picture this particular wallet because Of the nature
of the the seizure that took place and what it was linked to so again if you had a ship full of human traffick noled gold bar seizures that had this tragic backstory would you then want to proudly stand over them and say hey these are in our Federal Reserve now we've brought back gold standard when you could just go and get shiny gold bars somewhere else so that's why I don't think practically seized Bitcoin will ever make its way across into that Because it's it's just so much easier to get regular maybe as the last
Point how do you think they dispose of this then exactly like they've always done so the the auction I saw some again wild conspiracy theories about they're going to bring back auctions they're not going to bring back auctions um no paintings will be sold at auction and things like that there's a proven successful model that's been used all around the world now interacting now we sort of fit in This appeel chain where we'll sit and help manage the asset and then it goes off to Someone Like A coinbase or some sort of sort of liquidation
route so I imagine this will be the typical large know multi-day multi-week multi-month sort of disposition um handed across to their contractor to coinbase and coinbase I think successfully um defended the protest that was against them there was I think there was Anchorage and coinbase obviously we're We're fighting it out as the the recent winner of the US Marshall tender for the category one the big sort of Bitcoin of the world so coinbase just got that news a couple of weeks ago so this will just be become just another this will go into the melee
of all the other coinbase Prime activity and if and when it happens this year and just to put it in perspective 6 and a half billion Bitcoin I'm referencing coin market cap data um sorry coin gecko the 24-hour volume on Bitcoin today is 55 billion now binance alone is three billion let's look at where they practically would dispose it that would be like coinbase or Krakens of the world coinbase is like a billion so you know uh that's like 11 say if you believe that full number um that's like 11% of volume like you could
just like it's it's I know it's like more symbolic than it is like the market can absorb that like it's not I mean it's you can you can drip out of that And remember the governers and stuff like that and like you could I'm not a market maker speci but I've dealt a lot with them like you could reasonably dispose of this within days well well that that's what we do at us in reality if we're working with a government agency particular jurisdiction we'll go and find a you know a regulated insured a reputable sort
of Provider of those services and say what's your strategy for us getting the best return for the Agency and if they say right we're going to do this in 25 chunks over x amount of time then that's the decision that comes to it's always based on how do we get the highest possible return so what I will guarantee whenever people see onchain movement that is not the selloff starting that's after the fact in most cases or it'll be moved so early so for example I would be permitted to send all my seized assets for example
to someone like coinbase tomorrow and at some point In six months they'll get the email to actually start the sale and you'll see it disappearing in the big Omnibus wallet somewhere like so people trying to figure out when this button is going to be hit only the people that work in the US Marshals and are involved in the court process and the the security cleared sort of Sword the secrecy people in coinbase link to this they'll be the only people will know I won't know we won't know um the rest is just Entertaining fud very
interesting what else is there uh noteworthy about this or just the entire forfeiture seure seizure disposal liquidation process from your standpoint anything anything that hasn't been talked about we haven't covered that you find interesting uh about this case in particular or just stuff that people should be more aware of because there's just to your point just a lot of misinformation and and lack of knowledge about how these Processes work yeah it's the fact that know globally all all of this criminal activity sits under the C legislation set people always think that because it's their sector
it should be treated specially or differently like governments are literally not allowed to it's the Constitution it's the law in all these countries so we we have these same discussions in different jurisdictions around the world you know people want special permissions for know Bitcoin ATMs and forgetting that that just sits under moneya laundering legislation know seizing crypto assets sits under asset forfeiture and know forfeiture legislation there's this sort of misconception that people think there's a special lean for digital assets in particular digital Assets in most countries around the world are seized under like 1970s know
Place legislation it's just an intangible asset there's no special Crypto that people sometimes forget that all of the talk about crypto legislation globally is about regulation we haven't even fixed that globally we we haven't got into the asset recovery and that specific piece so I think there's still such a long way to go and same if someone sees an nft there's no special treatment it will go down the normal process it'll be forfeited it'll go in and the government agency selling it has the discretion to say should we just Sell it ourselves do we go
to someone like one of the nft sale platforms again for in our world let's know whether it's a boat or a Bitcoin it's it's just another seized asset in a nice way yeah with the benefit that you can track exactly what they're doing that's the big thing it's it's for an entirely sort of not not for your show a different episode but the I mean asset recovery globally only 1% of criminals assets are recovered globally I mean as a global Community we launder four to five trillion dollars per year this was all before crypto came
along the irony is because of the traceability of crypto it actually is the white night and asset recovery we recover more crypto assets by like 1001 globally than we do regular illicit assets so the youngest industry but with this really inter in technology victims are getting money back like they never did before in regular Pon like FTX you know actually can you go a little Deeper on that I have um I have several family members uh DC in DC who uh despise crypto I would say I think despise is an understatement and the um the
reason is the the like number one sentence that they tell me is because crypto is used for criminals what would what do you say to that group of folks yeah it's and again I I find myself as agnostic I'm a former criminal investigator I used to investigate criminals in SE their assets and that Was my role I mean we have how many how many centuries do we have of banking in its current form and we have billions of dollars spent on anti-money laundering and compliance controls yet traditional Financial money laundering is off the charts so
the yard stick by which we're assessing how bad crypto is like elicit crypto is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction but it sits similarly alongside for all of the amount of cash in circulation and all the asset globally There's always a small fractional percentage that will be evolved in a listed activity crypto follows exactly the same pattern I mean it there's estimat range from anything from sort of 0.1 to 5% they are absolutely madeup academic estimates you can take a little bit of onchain data that's unique to crypto that we can actually track
I can't track a $20 bill but I can track a Bitcoin transaction so I can make assumptions on the minimum amount that Is El listed in crypto because I can see it's been used on the dark web or used to do the various things but but I also don't know that if you're a money launderer and you've just went and done a Bernie madeof style bought a brand new Ledger W out of the box used a Bitcoin ATM somewhere and then handed that wallet to somebody else I'll never see onchain that that's elicit so I
think it's important that people know that the elicit onchain data needs to be taken With a it's the minimum but I also don't subscribe to your family members respectfully that it's worse it's actually much better because of its inherent traceability if I'm going to run a Ponzi scheme tomorrow I would be an idiot to do it in crypto assets but the reason there is so much crypto related crime is because sadly globally law enforcement just doesn't have the resources and the tools is why we exist it's like people are using and Exploiting the state and
local government weaknesses because they haven't been given the tools they need to track how could imagine you're a victim of a massive defi scam and you turn up at a local police force that they've just dealt with a mountain bike being stolen they've just dealt with a know a DUI and then you see hey I fell victim to know a complex sort of Da and it's it's a forensic sort of accountancy exercise that needs to be Undertaken it's resources yeah well to to be fair like let's just just go back to the stat that I
find more surprising which is 1% of all criminal seized assets get recovered I just want make yeah so it's a 2015 report there's so little data it's never been updated since 2015 um and and but but the interesting thing about the 1% is that's before crypto activity so it's like as a global Community we had a problem before Digital assets came along we were recovering an estimate of 1% of all of the available elicit assets globally So when you say that government agencies are underfunded that's not a problem of crypto that's just a problem of
governments being inefficient well I would be as I'm going to be bied and be as X law enforcement what I would say is you can't expect someone to know I can't be the sheriff of a large town or a large Village if I've got 10,000 people and I have no three deputies and this is typical governments around the world historically underfund like for there's a great stat in the UK that is representative globally fraud is the biggest reported crime type in the UK 40% of all crime in the UK is fraud 1% of policing resources
is dedicated to fighting fraud so the odds of you actually being able to get your case in front of an officer that has the skills The necessary training to actually take your case and I guarantee if you run a straw poll of all of your listeners the vast majority of people that have ever been caught up in a crypto scam it's unless it's less than maybe or under $5 million they've probably never been able to get their assets back or fund the recovery because there's just so many scams but the amounts are too little for
law enforcement that actually jump the fence so unless you're swept up in a Federal case where they do a massive seizure and distribution to individual victims an average person that gets a Falls for a metam scam and loses their wallet and loses their contents and loses a couple hundred grand that's gone forever like they're not what would you say to those I have a friend who um their wallet just got drained earlier this week actually two wallets um for a total of 350,000 um and the the the immediate Thought is like go text Zack xpt
and see if he responds like what do you recommend to those people there is the sad reality is there is just so little funding available in law enforcement globally that this is why why know so many of these scams exist because they're just know very very low risk and high reward and unless you fund and you go and pay an attorney and actually get a get a go and get an investigator and get someone to map it out even if they Map it out and they say great we can see we can see the wallet
we have an IP address it's in Singapore and it's link to this exchange you still have to enact back to the beginning of the show these are asset forfeiture or asset know they're just legal cases so you've got to get that case heard you've got to get it on a docket you've got to get an order and then if it's international Case you've got to get an international phasing order that's not being done for Anything less than millions of dollars because they're just simply isn't the resources to do all of the cases the example I
gave at an ft event was if I got a if I um had a Rolex um stolen in the middle of padelli circus in London and I ran in and told the police even though a crime has been committed I know they're not going to jump the desk no close the airports we want we can see the guy on CCTV they're going to say fill in a form like so when you look at That that's what happens in regular assets it's the same thing happening in crypto unfortunately so unless they get lucky enough to actually
trace it back and connect the onchain data with some offchain data and all of a sudden you found a person that's in an apartment in Florida somewhere and you can get local law enforcement you've got a shot but if it's disappeared overseas and it's a typical sort of Southeast Asian sort of Golden Triangle scam sadly the recovery Um possibilities but I would insist that people report it to ic3 because at least if you report it and report it to police a docket is completed the address is recorded and if there is a massive seizure in
two three four 10 years time you're in there and you're in the list and you could get a distribution and we've seen that in mty know people came forward in mty gox and have now been made insanely more than whole no they lost 20 Bitcoin 10 years ago and now They're coming along all getting out in insane amounts W that's good advice really good always file so always file that what is I so ic3 is the aggregator I think it's operated by FBI it's the it's the for for us listeners every country has an equivalent
now just go to your local sort of fraud Authority or local law enforcement they'll direct you to a national reporting portal and I would say it means the most in crypto because your Rolex is never going to Turn up again no one's going to call you from Italy and say hey we think we have your watch but in crypto cases because of onchain flagging and analytic tools there's a shot if yeah so I would say to your family members if everyone use crypto ironically my job would be a hell of a lot easier someone investigates
and sees his assets the seizures that are hardest to do are the meots that are sanctioned by Oligarchs yeah I was gonna go there like I'm getting shocked by this 1% so like uh Russia Ukraine war breaks out uh there's a lot of forfeitures of of Russian oligarch Yachts around the world seizures that's a really important SE seizures how does that 1% tie like practically speaking so the idea is if they successfully and not again it's another legal wrinkle is that they sanctioned all of these assets which aren't Seizures so it's a really silly they
like circumvent the whole process because it's sanction just slaps a big like prohibited sticker on it they still have to then start the seizure process so let's imagine even and this is there's lots of reported cases right now of no very expensive vessels hundreds of millions of dollars with a million dollars a month Marine fees associated with them they're all just appreciating once they're sanctioned they then have To move into the seizure process just like our 69,000 Bitcoin there will be a docket there will be a case taken applying for forfeiture people will come forward
and we've seen that in Ukraine lots of third party shell companies that say say the Ukrainian lead action has identified know oligarch um alleged megga yots and if you follow the court dockets it's like offshore jurisdiction corporate no shell company is saying hey that's my asset and they're going like Well you're just a front for this guy and because it's not blockchain it's very difficult to prove the UN ultimate beneficial owner so then the seal gets tied up and these assets are kind of stuck in perpetuity a lot of the times so that's why there's
been very little value unlocked and this is another reason for the 1% so when people see billion dollar seizures not in crypto the likelihoods of that ever trickling its way back in terms of real money and The made off versus FTX is one of my favorite analogies made off to recovery was nearly 20 years from initial reporting in defense and FTX was 24 months and by the way I stopped getting Che I stopped getting checks from made of I we lost my we lost money in made off I stopped getting checks from maid off only
I think last year I like get a monthly check from from maid off did you get how many cents on the Dollar on your now we're now we're mostly made I think Up to like 90% um what what they did with made off was um they gave tax credits so you didn't have to pay taxes for the first like five or six years as as they work through everything and then as they started to get the money back they would send like basic very small distributions like every single month or every single quarter got it
oh sorry ah well FTX is gonna be more than 100 yeah I just this year it's like mty Cox and all the a lot of the crypto cases but I Think I think Jason the what's interesting about made off to the topic of what we're discussing it does show The Art of the possible there was actually I believe legislation change in an actual act that was passed to allow the mechanisms to do a lot of the things that you're talking about and again it t it's taking nearly 20 years that's not a bad thing in
my world that's still a phenomenal result with crypto the possibilities in asset recovery are Phenomenal again this is why we all quit our jobs and sort of found an asset reality because it can change the 1% stat the actual potentials of governments use use analytic tools grab the assets get expedited court orders we can grab assets and get things back for people but I think that M off and FTX the timeline shows the art of the possible but ironically the madeof changes to legislation answer the very first question around could they create A strategic Reserve
with c's crypto they could they could go and pass a bunch of laws and change know make a lot of changes like they did in made off but I think we should be enthusiastic about the fact that we can change the 1% in asset recovery precisely because of the wider adoption of crypto assets not elicit crypto I'm even talking about like regular fraudster who steals no seal his money steals assets from pensioners and he puts his money in Bitcoin no the Bitcoin doesn't featuring the actual scam that's just how he Parks his assets being able
to recover those assets as laundering proceeds again has made easier because they're using Bitcoin yeah Aiden what do you think of uh AML and kyc it's mid easier because of the programmatic way that you can implement it in sort of blockchain related um assets so trying to do AML and kyc is it it's a very necessary evil some people can see it as honorous and Laborious but again as someone has been on the other side of the fence the only way that you know human traffickers can launder their cash and buy properties and even as
of this year or last year people could still buy I saw a news report recently have undercover journalists buying properties in Dubai with cash I mean not having AML and kyc programs in place can allow the world's worst criminals to profit and distribute their wealth Around the world so so you believe that AML and kyc even though it's been even though a lot go you know gets through the system and it costs a lot of money billions of dollars every year by Banks to spend on it you still you think it's a worthwhile system to
invest in I think it has to be because again as someone that's been involved in child child exploitation cases the data collected in kyc and AML let's say someone has an online identity but I can trace back and We can see that one time years ago they can they had some sort of transaction in offramp with a bank somewhere that kyc and AML information is the reason I can go after that person offchain I completely get Bo from a practical point of view is it always proportionate absolutely not it's never a perfect science it's the
it's the SE bels argument it's the and how would yeah I hear like I've heard by the way two points on that that real estate is the Primary mechanism you pay cash then you get your system in like Miami for instance like people go apartments in cash you know people would do very lightweight kind of verification and then once once you have that in in real estate you can borrow against it and you doesn't matter if they seize that asset the money's free and clear for money like and that's like a primary mechanism for money
La was a minow yeah crypto was a you really want to laundry you're Gonna do it through real estate yeah oh you're going to go set up a shell company buy a bunch of assets have shares in other companies and I think even in the US risk assessment a couple of years ago most things like art and real estate were still the things identified on the on the risk register it is the cliche of the megot filled with art and diamonds and jewels it's just that in a diversification of their portfolio there's now some crypto
thrown In it's but the the actual the still the king of all of this is no Global real estate Global shares Global if you think that the big you know um oligarchs and criminals are not holding really solid shares in apple and everywhere else through multiple companies that that's what they're doing um but but I think again I go back to crypto from my perspective is is shooting fish in a barrel in terms of the sloppy criminal that uses crypto assets is easy to find And that's why in the us alone like tens of billions
of dollars are being seized IRS criminal investigation as one agency has seized like over 15 or 16 billion dollars that's crazy compared to traditional asset recovery statistics the entire US Government pre- crypto like three or four billion was a good year in the UK two or300 million pounds was a good year the UK has one case now that's 4 billion pounds worth of bitcoin so it's kind of for us it's like the Early days of oil and gold um they're looking they're finding it and the bounties are huge yeah that's the takeaway here for everyone
that has been critical that Bitcoin that crypto is used for criminals one criminal smart criminals definitely don't want to use crypto uh people can go back and listen to Katie H when she was at the doj saying like the only reason they were able to find these people in silk road which he was involved because they were Using the traceability of crypto um the and and more importantly crypto might be one of the biggest F fund like ways that government agencies are funding themselves like the CZ case the recovery of these assets like it's uh
it's a great uh you know the biggest point is yeah the the ability to recover it and dispose of it and like actually fund these agencies which are grossly underfunded again to that 1% number and the last point I'll make is like as you See time and time again like Hamas the terrorist organization came out saying guys please do not send if you want to send do not send crypto because of the you can trade CIP please like send something else uh and that tells you everything you need to know it's just uh you know
the smear campaign against crypto will always continue but it's great to hear from your standpoint as a former person in the government you know it's just yeah it is and and I also I Also want to I also want to weather it I I want to say that look the fact is all asset categories will be used for moneya laundering if the controls are not in place I think the reason that sometimes for it's the quote the the cheesy sort of Spider-Man quote with great power comes great responsibility precisely because you can track and Trace
the transactions if you want to build your own exchange for the first time and you choose not to build in kyc and AML Just For Speed and user experience you kind of know that the criminals are going to exploit that weakness if I'm going to smuggle narcotics and I know of an airport that has no sniffer dogs no controls in place guess where I'm going to go and it's like in 2025 if you set up a crypto business and you don't implement this stuff you better get used to know steal bracelets because the audit Trail
is just there like there there's no more excuses about running a Mixer running and I didn't know and I set it up and it wasn't me these are asset forfeiture 101 cases if you run a moneya laundering operation and other people use it and you create it you are going to feel the full force of the law rightly or wrongly regardless of what your position is you're on the hook by using and running those so I think there's enough Lessons Learned but I I go back to the initial point of it's because of the potential
for recovery And the potential for programmatic safeguards that I think there's been a lot of pressure and the combination of just the fud people not understanding what it actually is yeah one last question which I want to go back to anything that you would change to the KL process if you had absolute discretion any particular mandatory okay sorry that was my so yeah for for me it's really important that because of the scale of the human tragedy Associated with some of these money laundering cases I think it's a price to pay I think it's a
it's a fair cost to enter if you want to have a legitimate sector worth trillions of dollars you've got to do the same if you want to be treated like the banks in the trafi world then you've got to accept that this is just a would you go as far as taking the position that the bit coin the crypto industry as a whole over the years has Become far more transparent far more um I guess buttoned up in KC AML relative to the as a whole the banking infrastructure the banking system like you know you
have would you would you take that position or how do you yeah I I would I would definitely take the position that I think the sector doesn't get the credit it deserves in the sense of the progress that has been made in a relatively short time scale but we still I can count on one hand the amount of Bankers that have been prosecuted for gross money laundering breaches and people that have now funnel funds for the caloa cartel the people that have fund billions in the Dana Bank case how many of those cases you track
them through did the bank manager or the owner or the main shareholder face criminal prosecutions um but I think with crypto like again as as former law enforcement so many exchanges around the world have Law enforcement leers on teams like many of them have turned over and done incredible things but I think as well there's still a lot that aren't and I think until you until those Bad actors the industry almost needs to self- cleanse a little bit but it's phenomenal what's being done in such a short space of time compared to traditional Finance last
question in a world where everything happens via stable coins or cash or the traditional uh banking System which one is easier for law enforcement to actually um uh prevent and and uh seas and you know oh on CH is Shadow over I mean if you think everything from benefit fraud tax evasion in a totalitarian sort of society if everything was on chain it would be infinitely easier but again we've all seen the human rights abuses that can go with that sort of State yeah but like you know usdc you know Circle has the authority uh
this is why a lot Of the hacks happen over the weekend because you need to have like a warrant uh I heard but like if it's during the week like Circle can go very quickly to the get a warrant and freeze that at like you know like uh to like um peel it back so to speak because they have in the in the smart contract they're able to do that they need a warrant but they're able to do that very quickly we've seen some phenomenal headlines recently about the there an initiative I Think that was
set up between one of the blockchain analytic companies and between trm and and tether and others where they're identifying those cases and I think just freezing the wallet and burning and reissu yes instantaneously so again this is the art of possible in crypto asset recovery that doesn't exist anywhere else you can't you can't stop someone's $100 bill in their wallet and give it to the person that should have it you you can't uh say hey my Rolex Yeah yeah yeah freeze it delete it and go to weint it again Star Trek that that's a beauty
of IM digitally scars provable Assets in a transparent Ledger you know and and if you're a criminal I think you you will either know it or you will understand it very quickly if all of a sudden you think that you've stolen a millions of dollars and it's like oh no wait a minute no they were able to freeze that or meev right there's a lot of times where like It's you know I've heard like a wallet gets compromised that wall those funds are being moved and then immediately like through me like you just snipe that
you front run that and you recover that or if it's staked you know you have six days to actually get that stuff together and there's just or exchanges halting that like binance and coinbase like just you know in intervening at that level and almost immediate recovery and that that's a better world I think Aiden Thank you man appreciate the time thanks so muchen we're gonna have to have you again and I don't know I didn't want to ask because I didn't ask you before but like at some point I'd love to hear some crazy stories
that you've been a part of like the seizures you saw tigers and leopards in a yacht like I want I want to hear all the inside stuff I'll I'll I'll leave you with the one line that the most infamous asset recovery story globally which People should Google the reason there is a hippopotamus problem in Colombia like attacking tourists and killing people is that was a failed asset recovery activity they released Pablo Escobar's hippopotamus end of the wild they went and repopulated and they're now on the Rampage 30 40 years later they should have been seized
and then the process would have been forfeiture probably to some sort of like like like a rescue Farm or whatever it's called when went To be cared for but because those seized assets they were just like what do we do with hippotamus so the hippo was in the wild he reprod multiple hippos were in the wild whole bunch of they opened the gate let them go and all of a sudden now so our a bunch of hippos running around like killing people yeah the Google Google Escobar why made cookie and bar and they didn't make
cookie and hippo I think they made they missed the huge Opportunity there but we talk about the hippo in the corner versus the AL in the corner wait this just needs to be a Netflix series can we license the rights to this movie and like create a series or a movie wow look at this there's a whole there's a whole Wikipedia page hippopotamus is in Columbia that's wow how many of them were they by the way 100 individ wow that's crazy there's Four to start and now there's hundreds crazy cocaine hippos there we go cocain
hippos I told you on that point as we round out this there's a fantastic book called The billion dollar whale which is about the Malaysia 1 mbb 1mb scam uh Wolf of Wall Street there's a whole entanglement and it just documents if you really want to understand all of this and like uh you know yeah in one MDB for example I was involved in the valuation of some of Those seized assets they're just asset seizure cases globally I would say that um there's a new there's no such thing as crypto crime um full disclosure I
contribute to a little bit of the book on seized assets it's my co-founder Nick ferno's book it's his second book that's a fabulous one of demystifying what actually takes place and there's a bunch of good books on the topic so yeah that's for another day Aiden thank you man um if by the way I don't know how to Make this pivot but I think Aiden you will be at Das in New York so uh you have an event on St Patrick's Day in New York I got we just announced that um Michael sailor is joining
us uh at D talking to this guy about cocaine hippos like like you got to make sure you plug it on the podcast I was like I don't think there's gonna be like some overlap so I think I maybe squeaked it if if you want to hear more about sees assets We'll see you at us yeah there you go all right Aid thank you for lightness about cocaine hippos and everything everything all that appreciate it Santi good up that might be the title of episode cocaine hippos there you go thanks everyone for listening appreciate you
guys um Monday we have the episode with uh Richard the CEO of binance and then we'll see you next week for another Roundup thank you ladies and gentlemen see you next week hey everyone just Wanted to give a quick thanks to today's title sponsor goet by setting up a base station you can get involved with this groundbreaking web 3 ecosystem learn more by heading over to geod net.com or just by hitting the link in the description of today's episode [Music]
