Key Takeaways


Despite Bitcoin being in a bear market with prices down significantly from highs, adoption has fundamentally diverged from previous cycles. River's data shows business Bitcoin purchases doubled over the past year even as prices fell, a pattern never seen in previous downturns. The ownership distribution of Bitcoin is shifting dramatically from individuals to businesses and institutions, with individuals losing share while entities from summer camps to Catholic organizations to construction companies accumulate. Leishman argues the price downturn is partially a byproduct of institutional adoption itself, as early whales diversify and large institutions use Bitcoin as a liquid asset to sell during fear events. On AI, both Leishman and Marty agree the tools are accelerating productivity but haven't replaced human taste and decision-making. River is building toward a "dual money future" where people save in Bitcoin but continue to spend in dollars, positioning itself as the banking alternative to legacy institutions paying 0.01% interest.

Best Quotes

"We saw record growth in the amount of businesses buying Bitcoin despite the flat and down market."

"Adoption hasn't really been slowing down in this bear market. Historically, we saw capital flee. We saw adoption really come to a halt during previous bear markets. That's not really happening right now."

"The percent held by individuals has gone down and the percent held by businesses has increased substantially."

"We see summer camps putting their excess cash in Bitcoin... construction companies, real estate companies, restaurant chains, food manufacturers."

"The price downturn is the result also of the institutional adoption of Bitcoin. But I think long-term this is bullish."

"Your checking and savings accounts at the largest banks, JP Morgan, Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, they're paying like 0.01%. They're just eating all of that money for free."

"What a lot of these AI tools are surfacing to people is the hard part was never really writing the code for most things anyways."

"I don't see a future where JP Morgan is putting Bitcoin side by side in your checking account in the near future. They just don't actually believe that. The organization and its DNA does not believe this is the future."

"A white pill scenario would be these AIs allow us to get out of the email jobs. The email jobs go away and everyone actually has to go back to doing real things."

"There's something fundamental missing in our understanding of building intelligence. A human doesn't need all the information on the internet to be able to be useful."

Conclusion

This episode captures a pivotal shift in Bitcoin's maturation: for the first time, a bear market isn't scaring away capital, it's accelerating the transfer from individuals to institutions and main street businesses. Leishman's River data provides rare behind-the-scenes evidence that the adoption thesis remains intact despite price weakness, and his "dual money future" vision offers a clear roadmap for how Bitcoin-native financial institutions will eventually displace legacy banks still extracting value from their customers through negligible interest rates.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro

0:44 - The Files

2:37 - Adoption & distribution of ownership

12:54 - Asset maturity

17:11 - LN network effect

24:00 - Crypto distractions

29:00 - Yield products

33:20 - Banks will play catch-up

35:29 - AI revolution

41:38 - Prediction markets

44:47 - Navigating the change

51:39 - Quantum computing

59:23 - Looking forward at 2026

Transcript

(00:00) We saw record growth in the amount of businesses buying Bitcoin despite the flat down market. Adoption hasn't really been slowing down in this bare market. Historically, we saw capital flee adoption really come to a halt during previous bare markets. That's not really happening right now.

(00:15) The price downturn is the result also of the institutional adoption of Bitcoin. But I think long-term this is bullish. The percent held by individuals has gone down and the percent held by businesses has increased substantially. Sup freaks. Before we get into the show, I just want to send a heartfelt thank you.

(00:37) Thank you for joining us and ask for one quick thing. Could you like this episode, subscribe to the channel, and if you like the conversation, join us in the comment section. Alex Leechman, CEO and CTO of River, one of the best and most focused Bitcoin financial institution now. How are we describing ourselves? Yeah, you call us a financial institution.

(00:58) Can't say bank yet, but >> yet interesting interesting uh characterization there, but one of the best in the world. Uh good friend. Been on the show many times, but it's time to catch up. The world is chaotic out there. Many people are worried Bitcoin is at $67,000. Uh it's it's detached from the NASDAQ.

(01:20) Gold and silver are pumping. Uh Epstein files have been released. It's It's all over, sir. >> Yeah. You know, apparently Epstein's Satoshi uh >> it has uh it's been a combination of hilarious and tiresome watching the narrative slow through over the last few weeks. But >> yeah, um there's been a lot of new information.

(01:47) Uh you know, I think the one of the problems with the whole Epstein thing is sort of, you know, it's like the ultimate boogeyman, right? And uh this guy who was very rich and connected for uh a long time emailed people in all walks of life all over the world and unfortunately some of those people were working on Bitcoin and so any everything seems to get sucked into his orbit.

(02:10) Um unfortunately it's sort of like a like Wikipedia you you know how many uh how many hops does it take to connect two things? It's sort of like what's the hop between anything important and Jeffrey Epste? It's basically like, you know, one or two. Uh, and so I think everything, you know, not just Bitcoin is getting pulled into all of that.

(02:29) >> Yeah. It's almost like it was a concerted effort to to wrap uh almost everything in his web. Um, >> yeah, exactly. But we don't have to uh belabor the Epstein files. I think uh why I love catching up with you is cuz you have some deep behind-the-scen knowledge of what's actually happen happening uh in terms of adoption of Bitcoin.

(02:53) I mean, you interact with your clients with individuals and businesses every day. uh your research team. Shout out to Sam and everybody um putting putting a lot of effort into your research reports uh trying to figure out what's actually happening on the network. And um this morning you released your uh your basically state of of Bitcoin adoption light and uh reports and there was a lightning network report that went out yesterday.

(03:23) Um, and so I think it'll be good to start there. Like what what are you guys seeing behind the scenes in terms of Bitcoin adoption in this? Are we calling it a bare market or is this a bull market correction right now? >> Um, I would call it a bare market. I think it's a bare market. Um, yeah, we gave a little taste of our adoption research and we're going to have a much more thorough report coming out uh next next week.

(03:46) Um, but but really I would call this a bare market. um you know the prices down over the last year when you know tech stocks, gold, other things have rallied a lot. Um and but what's different in this bare market and we've been through a lot of bare markets at River. I've been through even more just in personally um in my at this point 13 years working on Bitcoin is adoption hasn't really been slowing down in this bare market.

(04:16) Historically, we saw um capital flee. We saw adoption really come to a halt during previous bare markets when Bitcoin was in a much smaller era of its life. And that's not really happening right now. Um business adoption of Bitcoin continues to grow. Individual adoption of Bitcoin continues to grow. The smart money continues to allocate to Bitcoin.

(04:40) And so that's, you know, happy to dig into that. But, um, I think that's like what's what's really interesting here. Uh, and and and and so, you know, we detail a lot of those findings in in this report we're going to put out. >> Well, that's that's one of my favorite uh or periodic updates you give is the type of businesses that are uh on boarding to river and adopting Bitcoin.

(05:03) I think that is high on it and I think this could dubtail into um the adoption and distribution of ownership charts that you guys have been putting out uh over the last week. But um this is a signal that that I always look for is somebody runs a business. Yes, we're a media business focused on Bitcoin specifically.

(05:26) So, it makes sense that we would uh invest in Bitcoin as a treasury asset and use it for payroll and other things as well. Um, but I think I've always been waiting for that sort of mainstream breakthrough for business owners who have nothing to do with Bitcoin recognizing that it's worthwhile for them to hold some uh on their business balance sheet.

(05:48) And it seems like that's accelerating. >> Yeah. What we've seen in the last year is that the individual ownership of Bitcoin has decreased um or you know the net sort of the amount of Bitcoin in existence the percent held by individuals uh has gone down and the percent held by businesses uh has increased substantially.

(06:12) So um yeah, if you look at this chart, you know, you can see that um uh the basically the the Bitcoin held by individuals has been eaten up by by businesses. Now, it's important to point out, you know, individuals at the end of the day are still the owners of businesses and and and ETFs and things like this. Um but I think what this i