Building Bitcoin While Battling Cancer with Becca Rubenfeld

22:08You can use our platform's infrastructure, which you weren't able to do last year. We've opened that up and APIs. So lots of composability and Miniscript is what really makes that possible.

22:20Alex Thorn:It's very cool. And these types of highly secure, let's just say, multi-sig custody setups are common. But I think most of the difference that I see is that beyond using a simple, Bitcoin has multi-sig as a native feature. So beyond simple, whereas I just point that out, Ethereum does not. You have to use smart contracts to create those. you know like people use gnosis safe on ethereum and other things like that um but most are just maybe a two or three or three or five multi-sig and that's it it's in cold storage what's so cool about if you wanted those other features you're talking about usually people are abstracting those into the application layer right so they're they create business logic that results in what you're talking about what what you guys are able to do is do it natively with bitcoin so like your customizable, composable vault that you make for an enterprise client, it's actually secured the design on Bitcoin in those transactions, right?

23:17Alex Thorn:Like foundational transactions. Yeah. And that's why I say it's excellent for creating governance and compliance on chain because you can create a vault that matches your legal infrastructure, your legal compliance, the people and the roles that they have. You can distribute keys similarly. Right. Rob has described, you know, he's gone through kind of the thought exercise of thinking about the strategic Bitcoin reserve. Yes. And how you could distribute keys across, you know, the different branches of government or the treasury. I know you can have like the treasurer has a key and the master of arms of the house or something.

23:57And you could utilize time locks to be maybe across terms. Right. so you could get away from either lame debt yeah so there there's a lot of things that composable on-chain yeah flexibility could do for us it's a fascinating um product and technology that you

24:17Alex Thorn:guys have developed and i know rob had been uh we joked that he was the miniscript influencer that was like two years ago at this point and miniscript i think andrew polstra created at blockstream and peter willow yeah and sunk it i believe but and they spent a long time building it and i I remember I saw, I think I saw Andrew give a talk at the Bitcoin meetup in Boston like five plus years ago, seven years ago about Miniscript. And I remember being like, what is this thing? I'm not quite understanding it. And as far as I can tell, there's a couple. I know like I think Liana, those guys use Miniscript too.

24:52Alex Thorn:But basically, you guys are the main people using it. I don't hear about a lot of other people using this very powerful thing. Well, there are reasons for that. And I think that will change. It's already changing pretty rapidly, and I think it'll continue to. But after it was developed by the Blockstream team, for the most part, it was shelved. I think at the time, there were questions about complexity. You know, is complexity the enemy of safety? Yeah. And I think that's always a fair thing to look at. But the other thing, and by the way, the answer to that is Miniscript is actually very, very simple.

25:28Yeah. Right? So you can describe, well, you could have a two of three and then a one of two and then time locks and all this. And you can start, if you're new to it, it can sound very complicated. But really, it's just stringing if-then statements. And so once you actually take a look, it's truly simple. So that concern, I would say, was overcome pretty quickly. The other thing, though, is there was no hardware wallet support for Miniscript. So the magical thing about when Rob came across it and discovered it is when he discovered it, it was, I think, within a month of when Ledger had added Miniscript support.

26:10So he happened to come across it and be like, and he had been trying to develop customized scripts to be ideal for insurance. and I came across Miniscript and was like, wow, this creates a lot of the security that I was going to try to do in a bespoke manner. And wow. And here's hardware. Yeah. And so actually Rob put a lot of efforts into reaching out to the other hardware wallet companies. Win Miniscript. Win Miniscript. And I think currently it's in five.

26:43Alex Thorn:Well, yeah, I know Coldcard, I think, now supports it. We just introduced cold cards. So when we launched, it didn't have many script support. Now it does. So customers can choose their wallets. Customers, with us, we had customer two of three, and then Anchor Watch has our own key set. That's still available. Customers can now choose a single SIG. And if that seems crazy, because it's a single SIG, again, remember there's time locks. So the additional. And there's overall a two of two. with you as well. So we're still there. The customer... Oh, and you're saying if you lose the single SIG that it can still decay back to the...

27:22Alex Thorn:To the recovery options. I love that. Right? And then we've just introduced in the last couple of weeks multi-institutional custody. So a lot of people, frankly, are not interested or ready to hold keys. They're very concerned about wrench attack risks. A lot of companies, their legal team has just said that we're not comfortable with the executives or internal people holding keys. So multi-institutional is important. It's using our infrastructure and we partner with BitGo and CoinCorner as the institutional key holders. Yeah, absolutely. Institutional custodians for the key material itself if they want.

27:59And then you can get insurance on all of them. Insurance is now optional.

28:04Alex Thorn:Right, so you're selling this and building it as wallet infrastructure in addition to the insurance use case. Yeah, when we launched, we actually didn't have permission to decouple them. So our agreement with Lloyd's of London was that to offer insured custody, it had to all be insured custody. This year we were able to decouple them. What that means is on the custody side, we can now support global customers, which is great because we've had a lot of companies, a lot of individuals from around the world who very much want the security that we can offer. You know, maybe even more so because of where they live and they like the, you know, two-party signing.

28:44So we can now serve global customers. And as I mentioned, we can also offer our entire platform as infrastructure. So other customers like...

28:53Alex Thorn:Other companies, other Bitcoin companies even. Yeah. So we're supporting, we're about to launch with a company who's currently an exchange. And they're going to be offering insured custody to their clients. using AnchorWatch's infrastructure. We are in the middle of integrating with a large regulated bank who is going to be doing the same thing. So it's great to see volume come to the platform, trusted institutions see us for the security and the insurance that we can offer. So insuring custody, or people ask about this, and the President's Working Group on Digital Assets has a thing about insured custody in their report from last July.

29:38Alex Thorn:And it's been a tough market, right? Because, and this is my understanding over the years of sort of loosely following this question, most big crypto exchanges have some form of custody on their hot wallet, right? On their send and receive. But getting longer term, bigger coverage that potentially would need to cover billions of dollars has been really hard. And I think even the extent that they have some insurance on a hot wallet, but it's historically been more like cybersecurity insurance, right? Well, so any hot wallet insurance will ultimately be cyber coverage. Right. So you generally would want to segregate your risk types to be able to get the best pricing on each type of risk.

30:22So hot wallet is cyber. Cyber risks are pervasive, frequent, and when they happen, severe. So cyber coverage and hot wallet coverage tends to be more expensive.

30:35Alex Thorn:And cyber coverage, again, even outside of crypto, cyber coverage is because the potential loss, it's enormous. Like I think about, was it Home Depot, I think, had this giant, what was a pretty bad hack, but like it spiraled well beyond what you might think from a cost perspective for them. There were lawsuits then that emanated from it, regulatory fines. I don't want to speak too much about that when I forget all the details, but it's way bigger than just losing the thing. Yeah, and a lot of times when a company has an insurance policy, it's to protect themselves, right? So as you said, like if you have a loss or an incident, you potentially are being sued by your own customers.

31:14So a cyber policy can help protect yourself. It's not necessarily for your customers. Right. So what we say ultimately is the custodians have some insurance, but you are not insured. Your Bitcoin is not insured.

31:31Alex Thorn:It's so interesting. And I'll be very transparent and fair to what they have, which is they all, for the most part, I think all, have significant sized insurance policies. So somewhere between$100 million and$350 million insurance policy on their cold storage, which is great. except they have somewhere between 75 and 750 billion dollars on platform right so it's less than one percent right and so they'll say things like well we we limit our individual wallet size to the size of uh the insurance policy so it's it's if we lose one whole wallet it would be recoverable right but the the problem in my opinion is that one of the biggest risks is internal is an internal bad actor and i think the way that will happen at some some company is somebody or somebodies will have worked for several years they will get employed at a company and spend several years learning the systems gaining trust setting their their traps if you will right and if they're going to do that i don't i'm not confident they're going to limit it to a single wallet right if they figured out how to infiltrate the company it's going to be in a much broader way so i think i think the risk is real and and the market did develop for a lack of options right so i think um companies did the best they could but there came a point where they determined, hey, we're paying enough for insurance to check the box for marketing.

33:19And why add any more insurance when all it's going to do is eat away at our margins? Because if we get more insurance, it takes us from half a point coverage to 0.65 % coverage, right? So it doesn't actually add a lot of protection for customers. So then they'll say things about the market hasn't shown demand for it and things like that, which I think is clearly, clearly untrue. So I think over time we will see changes based on consumer demand and what they want to see, what they're willing to pay for. Or, you know, hopefully, and I do mean this, hopefully we won't see a huge loss at a major player, which obviously would, I think, change people's behavior.

34:13You know, but I really do hope that doesn't happen. I don't think it would be good for Bitcoin and certainly not good for the individuals and companies who would be impacted. So, assuming that it doesn't happen, we will keep making great products available and meet people where they are and we'll pull the market over.

34:29Alex Thorn:Well, and they are moving in that direction, as you said. I guess it's from your perspective, of course, nobody wishes that bad things happen like you lose money. Of course not. But I think there is, just in cyber generally, it's hard to say with a straight face that it is unlikely to occur. It's probably going to happen. Oh, yeah. And when it does, that would move the market, I think, even further in your direction. Oh, yeah, yeah. And, I mean, we will always continue to develop and introduce new products. So, you know, our custody insurance product covers wrench attacks. Right. That was a very integral part.

35:09I love that. You know, it was huge. We put in so much effort to be able to cover that.

35:14Alex Thorn:This is, and Paul, Bitcoiners, well, if you've been in Bitcoin really at all, you're aware of this risk, I think. I think Bitcoin has a big culture of anonymity and privacy, partly because of the risk that holding bearer asset keys creates. This is my personal most feared thing as an individual, right? I've got a podcast. I take great steps to be private with my personal information. I think our audience will know I never really talk about personal information. But it's a huge risk. And I mean, there's the stuff in France. Like there were the French official tax officials like selling identities to criminals, right?

35:51Alex Thorn:Like KYC creates the risk here. Yes, KYC. I mean, different countries. I think Scandinavia has had situations where they literally publish home addresses. I think that's the law there in like Norway or something. Exactly. And it led at least to a husband-wife, I think, being murdered there. And so, look, I think. Jameson Lopp tracks reports of these attacks on GitHub. And I've shared this with him, but we actually use that listing and it's part of our actuarial data. That makes sense. Oh, wow. That's incredible. So that information has been brought and incorporated into Lloyd's tracking. Well, it's an open source, like globally contributed to database of such attacks.

36:30Now Lloyd's is also aware. So where I was going is that because we started covering wrench attacks, I became much more aware of wrench attacks, obviously, and much more knowledgeable. which led us that now we separately also sell kidnap and ransom insurance. Oh, wow. So it has a few things that make it extra, I guess, oriented to Bitcoin owners. But it is a traditional kidnap and ransom policy that covers not just your Bitcoin if it gets stolen, but ransom payments if it's in another currency, if your family is, you know, if they have to gather funds, it covers that. So it's things like that that, you know, we started as Bitcoiners trying to make Bitcoin custody safer and make it easier and safer to own and hold Bitcoin.

37:20And then from there, we learned ultimately that actually kidnapping risks are a lot more complicated than just the asset itself being stolen. There's a lot of costs. There's a lot of risks. And so then, you know, we start serving more institutional customers. We are just a month or two away from being a qualified custodian. Wow. Congratulations. Thank you. That's a huge change. So we have a lot of institutional customers who came to us last year. They were very interested in the custody model. They were very interested in insurance. They wanted the insurance. And then towards the end of the conversation, they'd be like, you're a qualified custodian, right?

38:00And we'd be like, oh, we're not actually.

38:03Alex Thorn:You need a trust company typically, right, in a certain jurisdiction. either need a state chartered trust, which is being recognized as providing that, or an OCC chartered trust. So we'll be a state chartered trust here and then move towards OCC after that. And actually, this Securities and Exchange Commission, I believe, has given the guidance to formalize. State chartered trust had been thought by many to be qualified custodians, but the SEC had always been like, not as clear. I think this one now has explicitly said they are considering observing it yeah as that yeah so it's good there was a hearing maybe 10 months ago or something where i think both sides of the argument had opportunity and yeah i believe that was uh kind of where they landed because it's one of these annoying things where it's like not that explicit it's sort of like you as the uh investor or whatever you make the determination that you're using one the the funny thing is that it's you know bitcoin is a commodity that's right Well, the prior SEC had proposed an expansion of the custody rule to say that basically everything had to be in qualified custody, not just digital assets and commodity-based digital assets like Bitcoin, also like gold.

39:19Alex Thorn:And they had said private investments. And I was like, well, think about that. That's like if I am an investor in Anchor Watch right now as a pre-public company. What am I receiving for my security? Well, it's like a PDF, basically. It says it's a legal document. So what, how I'm supposed to ship that PDF to State Street to hold on my behalf? It's ridiculous. Anyway, that was rolled back by this SEC. So that makes it better. At least a little logic. And you had told me before, and you said you could say, you guys just closed a new funding round for Anchor Watch. Congratulations. Thank you. Just this past week, we closed our Series A fundraise from a strategic investor who took the round.

40:02And we're going to be expanding our insurance breadth. We will use our custody platform for new financial products. So I think a lot of changes will come of it.

40:16Alex Thorn:You guys started as a Bitcoin security and insurance company, and now it sounds like you're a security and insurance company for Bitcoiners and others. Well, so absolutely expanded. So what I like to visualize is a picture of the Venn diagram with insurance and custody. What everybody knows Anchor Watch for is the overlapping part, insured custody. And so that's pretty much what we're known for right now. And what this year is going to be about is expanding our capabilities to fill out the entire Venn diagram. So we've got all sorts of custody related capabilities that are different financial products require a custody based layer.

40:58And then there's all sorts of insurance opportunities that are directly related to Bitcoin and some that are not. And so we'll expand to fill out that. So really, AnchorWatch is kind of looking to be the first company that you think of when it comes to custody or insurance.

41:17Alex Thorn:I love that. That's a good visualization, the Venn diagram. Becca, let's go to our second topic. I'm going to jump right in here. You have cancer, and you've written, and you've been fighting cancer. I know we were joking that this transition was going to be like, that's all right, we've gotten that out of the open. You've been battling cancer while also building AnchorWatch, which we'll talk about. That's incredible. But also you've been very public sharing your story as you discovered the disease, have been getting treatment for it, and the twists and turns on X. And I found that extremely inspiring.

41:49Thank you.

41:49Alex Thorn:That you would share and you've shared so much. And people are very afraid to talk about this topic, but you aren't. And I think that's part of the inspiring thing. And I wanted to talk to you about what this experience has been like. I mean, what's kind of funny about the decision to be public about it. So initially, it was a very quick decision. I made this decision just a few days before Bitcoin Las Vegas. Yeah. Because I had kept it a secret just for a few weeks. I found out I hadn't even told my family yet. I was trying to get a firm diagnosis before I did that to them. And it did a lot of emotional damage.

42:30Just a few weeks. You mean holding it in and not sharing it? Yeah. Just a few weeks that, I mean, I could feel it damaging my mental health. It was just I was in this very dark place and I was afraid of dying. Right. And it kept getting worse. You know, it had started as you have breast cancer and you need a mastectomy. And then it just kept going to you have the second most deadly form of breast cancer. And the stats were terrifying. And I just needed I just needed hugs. Right. I just needed support. I needed smiles from my friends. And so we were just a couple of days from going to Las Vegas.

43:12And I knew so many of my friends from the Bitcoin industry were going to be there. So I just I just let it rip on on Twitter. um but since then i think you know i just said mastectomy i a lot of i think my decision to

43:28Alex Thorn:talk about it publicly is because it's embarrassing what do you mean um well having a mastectomy is embarrassing i you know i i was mutilated it's it's um losing your hair is embarrassing like it's all the visual um all the visual identifiers of being a woman and being and femininity uh were taken from me abruptly um in the heights of of you know young middle age right like we're founding a company and right and um and uh not yeah founding a company and then not being able to give it 100 % every single day. And maybe people are going to think that I'm lazy or that I'm not as good as they thought I was at my job.

44:24And so I think by writing all of that, you know, these things are embarrassing. Like, I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed. But you know what's not embarrassing? Cancer. Not at all. Cancer is not embarrassing. Cancer just sucks. And so it was just easier for me. It was just easier for me to admit that this is happening to me. And very quickly, you know, I saw stats on how many new cases of cancer there are every year. And one of the first things I did actually before I went public on Twitter that same day as I called an investor call and I talked to the 40 something investors and told them, you know, told them about it.

45:16And

45:20yeah, it was truly, I feel an enormous amount of responsibility for the company, for my team. You know, people that have really committed to Rob and I to build this together and their families, right? Like their children. One of the things I took from working at Starbucks that was special about working there and working near to Howard Schultz is that he sincerely believed and taught us at corporate that our job is to keep our team, keep our baristas employed, right? And so I've taken that very strongly into my own company, that keeping our guys employed, keeping their children fed is my responsibility.

46:11And so cancer just interferes with every aspect of your life, every aspect of your life.

46:19Alex Thorn:So deciding to go public about it, and it wasn't just the initial. And you talked to Danny Knowles very early. Was that the first? I mean, no, you went on Twitter first, right? I went on Twitter first. I talked to Danny. We love Danny, by the way. Shout out Danny. What Bitcoin did. Great podcast. I know, such a great podcast. Yeah. I ended up talking to him. He flew to Seattle and did it in my home, which was amazing. Like, amazing. The night that I had found out that I wasn't stage four, which would have been 95 % mortality in three to five years, and found out, no, just stage three C, 45 % survival, 55 % mortality.

47:09Which, you know, two weeks earlier was so terrifying. I was first told I had 99 % survival mastectomy, but 99 % survival. So I was only horrified by the mastectomy. And then as the tests keep happening, I remember I dropped from 99 to 84 % survival. And I was like, oh.

47:33Alex Thorn:Like that's still high, but that is lower. Like I don't do things that have a 16 % chance of dying. Right. Typically. Right. And so it just kept getting worse and worse. But people like the I got so much from it immediately. From doing the podcast with Danny. From sharing. From sharing. You know, the thing I really with Danny, we talked about adopting my son. Right. And that was, yeah, that was just at the moment it felt so important because I suddenly I was like, what if I might die? I might die on him. Right. And I want him. I want this record of how much I loved him and how hard I worked to get him home.

48:28And at that moment, it was so important to me. And actually, Peter, he's the one that said we should record a show. It had never happened, but Danny immediately stepped up and did it for me. And I just love him for doing that. It was a great gift.

48:44Alex Thorn:It was an intense and beautiful episode. Yeah, it really was. And I can't say enough. I mean, go on Becca's X and read her articles. I mean, sometimes you post it as a post, but you've got plenty of them. It just makes it easier to find. It's nice because you can find. So check out the highlights because she's documented so much of this journey from finding out to the twists and turns of the diagnosis and then the treatment. How have people reacted in the Bitcoin community or in the public community to your writings and story? Overwhelmingly. It's been a great gift. people have reached out in every way i made a decision early very early in the first few weeks i made the conscious decision i will accept any form of kindness from anyone who offers it to me friend or enemy different religion i don't care if somebody took their time to offer me their uh their energy and their love in any form i would accept it and And I think that's an amazing attitude.

49:55I'll give myself a pat on the back for that because what it meant is, with the exception of the ivermectin crew, I'll set those.

50:07Alex Thorn:Actually, I've seen you debunking some of it. It's a never-ending. Oh, have you heard that ivermectin might solve your cancer? And they're rude about it. They're rude about it. Very weird. They're aggressive. That's a funny side story. Yeah, it just, it put me in this mental space to accept energy. right positive energy um and energy is catching right so um you know i reached out and i said i'm scared like i'm scared and everybody gives me this amazing energy and this love and this encouragement and it really does build me up and there were days that i uh back then that i was so scared and I would literally think through running into friends at Vegas last year, other places I ran into people and I would think about literally just getting a hug from them and seeing my friend's face where they told me it would be all right or they empathized with me or I could see their fear, right?

51:10I could see their fear for themselves, right? They could see themselves in me or see their fear for me. And it gave me real strength, not fake. Like it really on some days, it's what built me up. And, you know, people shared very personal things about their own journeys and their own lives. And, you know, I use the phrase that, you know, I want to bow down to people who have survived like 95 % mortality because I was just near to that. And it was so scary. And then I bowed down to people who, who lost the battle. And, um, and I, you shared with me, uh, you know, that you had lost your dad when you were young and, uh, And that in particular, you, telling me that, it made me feel such respect for him.

52:17This man I've never met. Because everybody was telling me how tough I was. And I am. I'm really tough. You are. I'm so tough. but I still was maybe going to die and I thought about this idea that you're tough so you will live which implies that the people who didn't live are not tough and on their behalf I was so insulted I was so insulted on their behalf of thinking about your dad and other people's parents and thinking about leaving your children younger than you want to and not senior grandchildren and um and how very tough he must have been to face that and uh it gave me a lot a different kind of strength than you might imagine because um Um, it, it gave me the peace that if I die, I can go out still tough, you know, because I had to see that in him and other people.

53:33So people sharing those stories with me, um, you know, some people will never know, uh, the strength that they gave me, the little things they, they shared with me, the little phrases that I kept, the gifts that were sent, the flowers that were sent. It was massive. And it now gives me the strength to do that for other people.

53:58Alex Thorn:Well, that's beautifully well said, Becca. And you have given a lot of people strength. And I think everybody knows somebody, or you even said either everybody knows somebody who has dealt with cancer or even passed away from cancer, or you will. Yeah, a lot of people, you know, the industry is very male. And I remember in that investor call. The Bitcoin industry. The Bitcoin industry is very male. And, you know, thinking about, you know, many of my friends, you know, their wives, right? And breast cancer is. One in eight, I think, women. And hopefully they'll be much older than me. But, you know, I hope by sharing especially the embarrassing parts, right, that, yeah, if and when their wives go through it, that they will be better able to support their wives with this disease that is just particularly brutal to your mental self-image for a time, for a time.

55:06Alex Thorn:I think it definitely is a resource and I know many people feel that way including myself so well let's let's fast forward a little because you've just been posting recently about the current state of your treatment how is it going now that I know there we alluded to and you know a bunch of twists and turns in the diagnosis like where do you stand today well I am still mid-treatment, but I am in a much improved situation. So even if I've been talking a little different and not being like, I might die, I now think I won't die, which is great. So initially the diagnosis was I had two forms of breast cancer.

55:47One was DCIS, which is common and not deadly because it's not invasive. It still requires a mastectomy, but once you get it out of there, it's gone. And it can't metastasize. Then I also had triple negative breast cancer, which is the second most deadly form. It's a death sentence if it does go to stage four and very dangerous otherwise. So I had the mastectomy in December. And in January, the pathology from the surgery came back. And it definitely ended up being very interesting. The diagnosis to start with had been very interesting to the point that I have multiple hospitals. So I've got two hospitals in Seattle, plus I am a patient at Sloan Kettering in New York, which is second in the world.

56:34So when we did the pathology, everybody kept saying, like, wow, this is interesting pathology, Becca. Wow. So fascinating. So here's what happened. You get scored. It's called a residual cancer burden score. And you're scored either a 0, 1, 2, or 3. If it's 0, it means they did not find a single remaining cancer cell, living cancer cell. And it means the chemo got all of it. And as far as they know, it's gone. If it's a 3, it's kind of the opposite. They can see very little cancer actually died. Almost all of it is still alive. And then 1 and 2 are somewhere in the middle. Right. And my tumors had not physically shrunk.

57:20I could feel them under underhand. And mostly when I talked to triple negative survivors or my oncologist would say so. When you're on the Adriamycin in particular, the type of chemo that I was on, that tumor is going to shrink underhand sometimes immediately, like within the first. Getting smaller. Overnight. Yeah. And so by the time you have your second treatment three weeks later, you're like, yeah, it's smaller. It is definitely smaller. I did not have that at all.

57:49Alex Thorn:So were you worried at that point that it wasn't working? Yeah, in October, I mean, it was a panic attack. But there was a night in October that I just melted down. And that is the night that I faced mortality. And I pictured myself like I just crumpled down the wall. I just slid down the wall and I just sobbed for hours. And I looked across my house and, you know, pictured myself laying on the couch with my head laying in my mom's lap. Right. And just pictured how it would be. And my family around me. And so, yes, I was very scared. I was very scared. It didn't feel like the treatment was working.

58:36Alex Thorn:No. So now you were in pain from the treatment. Well, but I wasn't. I mean, chemo was not fun. I didn't mean to say this. I forgot. One of the most interesting things you wrote about was how you weren't like getting the normal chemo symptoms. Side effects. Right. Yeah. Right. I mean, I got some of them. Yeah. I mean, obviously my hair was gone. You know, some things were normal. I'd say there were two things. Some things happened, but I'm just tough. And so I'm like, what? But is this it? Is this nine styes? Is that it? I know that you were saying that. I remember that. I was like, that doesn't sound very good, nine styes.

59:14Yeah, that was bad. Yeah, but not just how I felt, but also my blood work.

59:23Alex Thorn:It was also strange. Very good, yeah. My counts didn't drop as much. And when I took a break, I rebounded not just a little bit, but I rebounded all the way into healthy for a healthy person. All of this part of the strange pathology. Yeah, strange pathology. So at the end of the day, what they found, and it went to tumor board at all three hospitals, is that they scored me an RCB2. So that's what the algorithm scored me is a 2. Not great. 50-50. But if you then start reading the details of the pathology, the triple negative, which was the dangerous one, they got a complete response on. So that was a zero?

1:00:07It should have been a zero. Yes. But what they found is there was actually a third type of breast cancer that they found called triple positive. So the situation now is, and the reason it ended up being so interesting, intellectually interesting, is that there are different protocols for different cancers based on where in treatment they're found and all this is very data-driven. We had a situation where the chemos, I took four different chemotherapies. Some of those chemos were the same ones you would have given triple positive, but not all of them. And so the triple positive was not new cancer because it had been partially treated, but it hadn't received protocol.

1:00:53And so there was a lot of debate on like, what do we do? Do we go back and finish protocol? Do we repeat protocol as if it's a new cancer? Do we just pretend that she had the hat? Right. And so really, it actually gave me a lot of comfort because so many eyes.

1:01:11Alex Thorn:Sounds like a very thoughtful. Well, it was first principles. So they really had to say like, okay, we can't just go by the stats. We have to think about how this particular cancel. It's like a new situation, basically. So you've got the smartest cancer doctors and researchers debating with all the tools at their disposal. Yeah. And so I still actually, I got a call most recently from Sloan Kettering just this week confirming that they had decided that I don't need radiation, which was amazing. So now the situation is I am actively on chemotherapy for this entire year. So I've got 12 months, 14 treatments of this chemotherapy.

1:01:55I just had the third one on Monday. It's, you know, my hair's growing back. It's thick, isn't it? It's really good. You know, I definitely have kind of GI symptoms. I'm tired. Um, but overall I feel good. Uh, I had this terrible kind of myocarditis over the winter. That was a symptom of immunotherapy and that's, uh, been improved, but really I, I feel really good. And, um, there are days now I forget that I have cancer and that's cool. Like that's really, it's a nice feeling to get, you know, there were times last year that I would make it maybe two hours and I would realize I had forgotten for two hours and you would literally then be like oh crap I have cancer yeah I have cancer and but I would think about those two hours like really nice like that was nice yeah like I had two whole hours there and so now I'll like oh maybe until I see myself in the mirror uh and see my see my hair uh and remember um but at this point even though I'm still in the middle of it, the emotional, the facing mortality, uh, incident for me has concluded.

1:03:19It could return, you know, one of the crazy things I haven't shared this super publicly. Actually, I haven't shared it publicly, but I, uh, have known since I was 13 that I was going to have breast cancer. I just...

1:03:36Alex Thorn:You had a sense of it? There's a whisper. And I just knew. My mom's mom had died from thymus cancer, which is behind your sternum, when she was 40. And I presume that kind of planted the seed. But, you know, when this happened, And, you know, the whisper, like, I felt the lump. I saw it in a picture at the 100K party, actually. That's how I became. Really? Someone took a photo from Michael Saylor's house. Yes. And you were looking at the photo and you were like, what's that? And then you reached down and fell? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Because I was wearing a very low cut dress. Wow. And yeah, there was just, you know, I was choosing what photo to put on Instagram.

1:04:25I want to look good.

1:04:26Alex Thorn:But you hadn't felt it before that. Wow. And it was just like a little shadow. Yeah. And so I was just looking at it on my own phone. Yeah. Oh, no. Wow. Oh, no. Wow. Yeah. And so the whisper was like, yep, it's cancer. It's cancer. And I still put it off a few months, which I wouldn't recommend. I don't think that ultimately will have impacted me one way or the other. It's not productive. I wouldn't recommend it. Yeah. That's true, by the way, for all medical questions, I've found. Part of, I think, maturing and getting older is actually going to the doctor. I can't tell you how many 20-somethings are like, I haven't had a physical in five years.

1:05:12Alex Thorn:I'm like, look, I know you're like 25, and it's probably fine. But I do all of the stuff now. You do not want to mess with that. And so many people, too, have told me they've gotten scans because of me, men and women. Yeah. And nobody has told me they found cancer because of a scan, but they have multiple people have found pre-cancer. And so, you know, that's gratifying. In terms of what's really gratifying, though, I would say is more what's happening more and more is people will reach out to me. People who know me typically will reach out to me and tell me that their somebody, their brother, their friend has been diagnosed with any sort of cancer.

1:06:02There's many types. Yeah, and just could I talk to him? And I always do, and I find it helpful for me too because I've been fairly emotional with you today, but for the most part, I don't cry much anymore. Oh, no, you're a tough cookie. That's very clear. Well, I've cried plenty about cancer, but not recently because mostly I'm in a good place. What still makes me cry about my situation is just looking back at that girl last year, like how scared she was. Yeah. And I cry for her. Yeah. Because that's a terrible place to be. It was a tough time. It's a terrible place to be. And so being able to talk to people right during that time and tell them some things that will not make it better.

1:06:52I'm not trying to make it better. And you can't wave a magic wand. Yeah. And because I know I can't make it better, what I can do is really quickly, because things move so fast when you find out you have cancer, especially if it's aggressive cancer, is I can give you a ton of information about what you should do right now. And what to expect. And right now. Yeah. Like, if you have something weird, go about getting a second opinion. Here's why. And here's why you need to do this tomorrow. Not in a week tomorrow. Here's this. Here's that. And just, and like, you got this. You're going to be okay.

1:07:28Just fight. Just go. Just get after it. Just go. You're going to be okay. Let me know if you have questions. Just go fight. And, you know, I was very athletic. I was a team captain and it just feels a little bit like being captain now of the cancer squad and, uh, and being able to, um, you know, everybody has to fight their own battle. Nobody can do this, but, uh, to give them a little boost, a little bit of information. and you know there there's one I won't I won't share his name because I don't know if he's publicly shared but there's somebody in the Bitcoin industry who was diagnosed maybe three months ago and so he we're we're working with his company and and so he knew all about my cancer and he reached out to me directly and, um, and, uh, I, I gave him the talk, right.

1:08:33I gave him the spiel and then we were texting a little bit and I, I told him, you know, you need to look around you and, and appreciate your particular blessings, which might be different from my blessings, but your particular blessings that are going to put you in a great position to fight this disease. And when I then found out that I had a third type of cancer, he texted me and he repeated my own words back to me. And, you know, they were pretty good advice. They were pretty good advice. And And this gentleman has taken on the role of my cheerleader, even though he has cancer himself. And he's crushing it himself.

1:09:31And he has the great attitude and the high energy, just not out in public the way I've been. But having this opportunity, you know, where I've comforted women about to lose their hair. You know, a beautiful young woman who looked at my head and started crying and how hard that was to be the source of her tears.

1:09:58Alex Thorn:You wrote about this one. I remember reading this. But then be able to comfort her as well. And so to be able to do those things and then really feel it come back to me, it just, it's a blessing. I think the fact that I'm not surprised at all that you're seeing people in similar situations benefit from your story and your sharing of it because, you know, the Becca that was so scared or the newly diagnosed person, they don't know what to expect. They don't know what their life is going to be like during treatment and all of that, the sort of even logistics of it. But they also have not confronted their mortality most likely before.

1:10:46Alex Thorn:And hard and obviously your actual life and doing it has been hard and scary. but to share even when it was scary, I think, is so many people need to hear what, you know, how to get through and get to day two and three and every day after that. And it's something I will rely on if I ever face something like this as well. It's amazing the little things that matter and have made me very aware of the information that's lacking. One of my friends and investors cam duty who is in the the bitcoin space i saw him the night before i started chemotherapy uh and i was so afraid of chemo yeah right like it's just you get these lists of so here's what it's going to do to you right the phrase take you to the edge of human suffering was used so it's like you know you're getting this like okay like i'm just gonna be under attack and then here's the side effects it can cause heart failure young lung failure eye failure permanent diabetes liver failure like one of those uh the jokes about like um pharmaceutical side effects on tv they're like do you have a pain in your finger take this drug and it's like side effects are like bleeding from the face exactly the old die yeah right and so it's you i just had this picture of sliding into unhealth and then it's going to become stage four and then I'm going to die.

1:12:20Right. And, and so that's, that's the, it was so scary. And, and Cam was like, you're going to crush this. And I was like, I hope so. And he's like, no, you are, you're going to crush it. My friend started running ultra marathons as a way to, uh, as a way to, you know, uh, combat stress when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor or something. And, uh, and I was like, you mean he, he just started, he's like, yeah, yeah. He started during chemo. That's when he became a marathoner. And, and until he told me that, you know, he's not a medical guy. It was just a thing that a guy told me until he told me that I actually had no concept that remaining athletic or pursuing fitness or pursuing strength while on chemo, while on cancer was even feasible.

1:13:13And so just him telling me that, just that was enough that I was like, well, then I'm, well, then I'm going to be the fittest I've ever been on chemo then. Like, why didn't anybody tell me that I, that I'm not going to waste away?

1:13:29Alex Thorn:You thought it would waste away and then you get bad news. And then you're just, But it turned out, it's so interesting how the sharing, people just really don't like to talk about scary things like disease and death. But they should because I've learned so much about how impactful people sharing with you has been. And we know and I continue to say how impactful your sharing has been. And I love that point. It's just one little thing. It turned out that you can do things still. I mean, it potentially changed my health, right? I went to the gym every day I could. There were only two and a half months I couldn't, and it was because of myocarditis.

1:14:18And now I'm back at the gym, and I feel it, right? I heard Sloan put out a study about fitness, and they said three months of average chemo. And I did the hardest chemo. Three months of the average chemo causes 15 % fitness loss, which is about a decade of fitness loss. So I will be on chemo for just under two years. And I feel it. Like, I feel it. And I feel like I am fighting for my health. But I am fighting because I know I can. Because I know it will work. I know my body can heal. um and yeah so i mean maybe maybe as i completely move through this phase and beyond this phase um maybe you know maybe there's something to do there um interesting but uh yeah like um look cancer treatment is amazing yeah and and the thing that everybody is so scared about chemo the chemo is just as brutal the anti-nausea medication is miraculous it works yeah so the chemo like the chemos i was on are the same ones from movies in the 80s right they're just as brutal it's just that the anti-nausea meds that they load you up on they're great and they made it manageable.

1:15:43So anyway, so I think, um, yeah, there it's, I don't know how it will ever not be somebody's worst day when they hear that word. Um, but the reality is most people survive cancer. Um, and, uh, I think your experience as you go through it, uh, and the treatments for it is, it's very unpredictable because remember you're poisoning your body right so just your systems you're hoping you also poison cancer while you're at it right but a lot of collateral damage yeah but um you know i i think it will have positively you know i you hear people say that and i can now understand why um because i had this opportunity to confront mortality now instead of being forced.

1:16:36Now it's the opportunity to have considered my relationships, considered my choices, consider the rest of my life, consider how badly I wanted 10 more years, right? When I looked back at 10 years and how much I've grown as a person, how much I wanted 10 more years. And so now here I am. I've got them. I've got them. What am I going to do with them? It better be spectacular. That's the plan is something amazing.

1:17:07Alex Thorn:This has been an incredible conversation. And thank you. I've said it a couple of times. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for talking to me on this podcast. I appreciate it. And everyone should follow Becca on X. Tell them your X handle. It's Becca Amelie, B-E-C-C-A-A-M-I-L-E-E. And you can follow Anchor Watch as well. That's right. Anchor Watch. and we're in your corner thank you i love following your story and like you said that we said you can read i mean you've got write-ups throughout all of these of just very honest um and i i also as a writer myself i really understand the sort of the need to get it out right you couldn't keep it in yeah um that's so helpful i find writing i mean even though i you know mostly write about you know arcane financial regulatory policy i had never done it before it's really therapeutic.

1:18:00Alex Thorn:I think people who don't, and it's hard. Writing is difficult. Like it's a muscle in your brain that doesn't, you know, you have to work at it. But your writing has been very powerful and helpful as well. Yeah, I appreciate it. Becca Rubenfeld, co-founder and COO of Anchor Watch. Thank you. That's it for this week's episode of Galaxy Brains. Thank you to our guest, Becca Rubenfeld from Anchor Watch and her friend, Bim Netta Beebe from Galaxy Trading. Everyone have a safe and happy weekend and we will see you next week.

1:18:32Alex Thorn:Thank you for listening to Galaxy Brains, the weekly podcast from Galaxy Research. I'm Alex Thorne, head of firmwide research at Galaxy. Follow me on X at Intangible Coins. Follow Galaxy Research on X at GLXY Research. Read our written reports at galaxy.com slash research. And don't forget, if you like Galaxy Brains, to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more. We'll see you next time.