Digital Asset News covers stable coin growth, crypto banking barriers, and portfolio strategy
Rob from Digital Asset News discusses the rapid expansion of stable coin infrastructure, new crypto bank charters, and answers viewer questions on DCA strategy, taxes, and security.
Summary
Rob from Digital Asset News presents a broadly optimistic case for digital assets, centered on the argument that the structural barriers that have historically hindered crypto adoption are being dismantled. He highlights Visa's deep integration into stable coin settlement and onchain lending, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's approval of multiple crypto trust charters, and Circle's acquisition of Singapore-based Tazipay to expand cross-border payment infrastructure. He also covers Bitcoin's weekly bullish signal, the ongoing debate about whether the cycle bottom is in, and a sobering report about a violent robbery in Mexico in which a musician's entire family was killed over a Bitcoin hardware wallet — which Rob uses to make a point about diversified storage. The Q&A section covers tax strategy, DCA methodology, iTrust Capital's response to alleged data breach claims by on-chain investigator Zach XBT, and the merits of rotating crypto gains into real estate.
A featured clip with CPA and attorney Mark Kohler illustrates how selling $400,000 worth of crypto (purchased for $100,000, resulting in a $300,000 taxable gain) and reinvesting the proceeds into a short-term rental property can generate a roughly $192,000 write-off through bonus depreciation under the One Big Beautiful Bill, potentially zeroing out the tax liability. Rob also discusses at length his personal strategy of rotating crypto gains into real estate for cash flow, which he then redeploys into crypto — presenting this as a way to maintain dry powder and reduce emotional dependence on crypto price action.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Market Overview and Bitcoin Technical Signals
We're in the right place at the right time as we're starting to see that the barriers that were really a hindrance for digital assets are coming down. Today we're going to take a look at just how much they're coming down, and how as we move forward we should really be taking a look at the rails that things are being built on.
As a quick reminder, the Hunter Biden laptop memecoin is not doing too hot. I was talking to my friend Bobby about buying it as a gamble — because this is all just gambling — and I thought $50 or $100 wouldn't be bad. But I had to go to my CPA today, got out, and saw it's down 99.1% in 24 hours. Maybe this is the end of meme coins, but I doubt it. People still love to gamble and speculate, and that's pretty much where we're at with that one.
If you take a look at today's markets, things are just down a little bit. Bitcoin is still hovering around that $78,000–$79,000 range. We've had a couple of different guests on. We had Rob Art a couple of days ago — he pretty much said he doesn't think the bottom is in yet. And then we had Matt Crosby from Look Into Bitcoin, and he's saying that what we're seeing is that the bottom is in. So it's anybody's guess. I personally keep buying on Monday, and if the price goes down, I buy more. If the price goes up, I buy a little bit less. But in the grand scheme of things, I still see Bitcoin as a very valuable asset moving forward.
The traditional market is down about 0.4% or so. But as a quick reminder, looking at Ivan's Bull Mania — Bitcoin has flashed bullish for the first time in a long time on the weekly. Now, I'm not a big technical analysis guy, but even I can figure this out. The green line is when things are bullish and the red line is when it's bearish. That looks like what it is. So this is looking pretty good as far as bullish signals returning. Ivan's Bull Mania did a pretty good job calling it all the way down to around $21,000 and then all the way up to around $107,000. Not too bad as far as calling it.
This is also Wes Smart Money Crypto's SMC bot, and his bot did a great job too. I wish I would have believed these guys back then. You can see it had the sell point right at around $116,000 — that's pretty good. And now it's saying to buy again. These are all indicators. Indicators aren't perfect, but it's looking pretty good.
Stable Coin Growth and the Visa Integration
Today, what we're talking about is friction and just how the walls and the barriers are coming down. Visa — the largest transaction volume processor in the globe for peer-to-peer payments, outside of Swift's $150 trillion annually — has been tracking the stable coin market specifically, and all the different rails being built on it.
We can see that 2026 isn't even over yet — we still have about three and a half months to go — and stable coin transaction volume, as depicted in Visa's onchain analytics dashboard, is continually growing since 2020. Stable coin transaction volume is going in the right direction. Volume at retail size, adjusted, is going up and to the right. Everything is pretty much increasing, and we're not even out of 2026.
I want you to notice this: the stable coin transaction volume has two clear winners, and far and away the biggest are Tether at $4.2 trillion and USDC at $7 trillion. Then everything just drops off — you've got FDUSD and PayPal USD in the billions, but nowhere close. As for transaction volume by blockchain, 2026 is leading the charge and we still have three and a half months to go.
It all comes down to this: what are the big rails being used by Tether and USDC? Well, it's four: Binance, Ethereum, Solana, and Tron. Now, my thesis for Binance has been slipping lately as this upstart called Base gets in there — that's Coinbase, Brian Armstrong's product. You can't really invest directly into Base unless you want to invest into Coinbase stock, which you're welcome to do. But you can see Binance is still there. Ethereum is hitting on two cylinders for both USDC and Tether. And then Solana and Tron round out the top four.
For these rails and the friction they face, it really comes down to how we're going to integrate this into the traditional payment system and the traditional payment rails. That's what has been kind of killing crypto — it's been more difficult. So here's what's changed.
Crypto Bank Charters and the OCC Approvals
Jack Dorsey and Block applied for a bank charter to custody Bitcoin, and they got approved by the OCC. Block filed with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on September 4th to charter Builders Bank and Trust, an uninsured national trust bank. It's provisional approval, but it usually goes through. It would custody Bitcoin and other digital assets and settle stable coins, taking no deposits and making no loans.
Essentially what they're doing is saying: we don't like using banks for what we're doing. We're going to make our own chartered bank and try to make things easier for ourselves — and for the different institutions that want to use us. We're going to drop all the friction because institutions can just come to us and we can do everything for them. We can do stable coins, we can do Bitcoin. I thought it was very odd that Jack Dorsey even allowed stable coins, since I don't think he's a big fan of them, but he sees where things are going, so he's like, "All right, let's just do it."
The big thing is this: the OCC conditionally approved five crypto trust charters last December. I had forgotten about this. Circle — which we just looked at for USDC — Ripple, hey XRP Army, there you go. BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos. There were three more in February, including Crypto.com, Stripe's subsidiary Bridge, and also Coinbase. Currently pending are applications from Morgan Stanley, Payoneer, Zero Hash, Kraken's Payward — which is essentially their own bank — and the Trump-linked World Liberty Financial. I'm going to go out on a limb and say World Liberty Financial will probably be approved on top of everything else. But again, this is dropping the barriers and the friction so that institutions and big players can actually use the rails to make things super simple.
Visa's Onchain Lending and Stable Coin Settlement
It's not just that, which is pretty good. Visa is tapping onchain lending to finance stable coin programs and they're going all out for it. Visa is using settlement data to help lenders evaluate financing for stable coin-linked card payments. Its stable coin settlement volume has exceeded $20 billion — and that's not the important part. The important part is how fast that amount has grown.
Visa says an early financing model involving Credit Kuupe has supported more than $2.5 billion in settlement since 2023. Visa said lenders can use Visa Net settlement data alongside blockchain transaction records to assess a payments business's performance and determine financing terms. So when a business wants to use rails outside of the traditional banking system, now they have more options and it's a little bit cheaper than what they've done before. When you get a good deal and the service is a lot better, which one would you go for? I think there's a rationale for why.
To finish this up, this is a quote from Rubel Varodkar, Global Head of Growth Products at Visa. He states: "We're seeing how trusted payment data and onchain tech can work together to unlock new forms of liquidity — helping businesses access capital in ways that are more transparent, programmable, and aligned to the speed of modern commerce."
Visa has been straight as an arrow looking forward on a couple of different things and they've been proven right so far. Back in October, when we had the all-time high, there was an article: "Visa thinks stable coins can break into the $40 trillion credit market." And now here they are going about it. And then just recently in July, Visa unveiled a stable coin platform for banks and fintech companies. I didn't even know they had that going on. So I think behind the scenes there are more things happening than we can process or even remember.
To finish this part up: Visa said onchain lending has processed more than $694 billion in stable coin loans since 2020. Payment volume across more than 160 stable coin-linked card programs grew nearly 200% year-over-year. If you're a business owner, a bank, or a fintech company looking at which sector is growing the fastest, there it is. Stable coin settlement volume rose more than 15-fold to an annualized rate above $20 billion.
I like the direction that things are going. I like that Visa is coming into it. I like that these charter banks are coming in. There's an old saying: gradually, then suddenly. We've waited for quite a long time, and I think this is the right time, the right place, and the right cycle.
Circle Acquires Tazipay for Cross-Border Payments
It doesn't stop there. Circle — which we just talked about for USDC — has acquired Tazipay for roughly half a billion dollars to strengthen their local payment network. If you're wondering about cross-border payments, here you go. Tazipay, which I had never heard of in my life, is a Singapore-based cross-border payments company that was bought up by Circle to enhance its Circle Payments Network and its compliance framework. The transaction will utilize Tazipay's local banking relationships, settlement channels, and frameworks across more than 100 different markets. Tazipay processes over $25 billion in stable coin payments annually, and that is a pretty big win.
The most telling thing here is this: the underlying assets — Circle, USDC, and stable coin payment infrastructure — are now competing with the likes of Visa and Mastercard. So friction is coming down, but it's going to be a war between stable coin issuers and the Visas and Mastercards of the world as they try to compete, because they don't want their lunch eaten by startup fintechs.
Top Performing Assets Over the Last Decade
The reason I talk about things other than just Bitcoin — which is a great topic — is that I still think there are some use cases for altcoins and for what I call the best finance denominator. It just comes down to this: if you're going to invest in something, you've got to outpace inflation.
This is from Charlie Bilello, and he takes a look at the top performing assets over the last 10 years. It wasn't Bitcoin over 10 years — it was Nvidia, and of course the AI play is a hot commodity. I think it's only going to get better, though at some point we're going to have to have a big pullback. But so far, AI is looking pretty good and Nvidia is crushing it. Then comes Bitcoin over the last 10 years. If you want to go back 11 or 12 years, okay, you've got me. But over the last decade, that's what it is. AMD at 8,000%. Tesla almost 3,000%. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, Amazon, Meta, the S&P 500, and gold rounding out most of the rest. And then there's this term right here: US inflation at 39%. If you're not keeping up with inflation on the assets you're buying, you are falling behind. That's why it's important to take a look at some of the fastest-growing forces.
Q&A — Market Timing, DCA Strategy, and the Cycle Bottom
Mattio asks about the golden cross and DCA week. Golden crosses don't usually do that great as far as price action. Usually people say "oh, golden cross, sounds pretty good," but usually there's a little bit of a falter. Coming up, I think there is some tremendous upside, but I don't personally believe we've hit the bottom yet for the cycle. I still want to see what Q4 brings. There are a lot of people out there just like me who think there's probably another big pullback coming. Nobody knows. That's why I've bought Bitcoin below the 200-day moving average — and historically speaking, it's a pretty good time to do that if you just stick around for the long run.
LC3 asks whether there has been a legit black swan this cycle. The tariffs — I don't think that was a black swan per se. It was an administrative decision. Some people say it's the worst thing of all time, some say it's the best, some say it's massively inflationary, and some point to different documentation saying it's not inflationary. All I know is that my portfolio is up. As far as legit black swans, not really. Which makes me wonder what the heck happened in October. I think about this all the time. What happened to drop Bitcoin so massively from October 6th through the 10th? Was there a hack? Was there some type of quantum computing issue beyond FUD? Was there a massive liquidity issue? Was it an M2 money supply issue?
If I take a look back at it, the traditional markets were ripping. The S&P 500 was hitting all-time highs. Gold was right about to really start taking off. And it really just comes down to a bunch of market makers. The only thing I could see that's in the middle is Binance. I don't know what happened there, but it just seems like everything was in place. We had the ETF in 2024. We had a pro-crypto stance in government. There weren't any exchange collapses. There was no massive project hack like a Luna situation. There wasn't traditional finance getting in early like in 2018 when they listed the futures. So I look at it and think: did we really drop 50%, or was that something that was either orchestrated or did the market just get super skittish and go down the tubes? Whatever it was, it dropped us pretty low — and that might be a godsend for some of us because we can buy and buy and buy. The question is when do we hit the bottom? Some people say it's already done, some people say it's not.
Rusty gives a good reminder: December 16th is the Fed decision, and 60% say they will hike rates. Wouldn't it be something if they come out and do nothing? If Kevin Walsh comes out and says we're not going to raise rates, the market will rip. Maybe not 25–30–40%, but it'll go up just a little.
Got Sat asks whether Digital still has room to grow. If you don't know about this one: all the Celsius debtors and creditors — like myself — were actually given stock in Digital. At first it was about Bitcoin mining, and now they've switched over to AI operations and Bitcoin mining combined, kind of like what Mara did and a host of other Bitcoin miners. Does it have room to grow? Every company has room to grow. It really comes down to what the earnings are, which aren't too bad, and also what kind of speculation we see. So it can rip. But if you'd like to take some profits like I have — I sold some — then go ahead and do so. Nobody ever went broke taking profits. Maybe it'd be good to take some off the table. There's nothing worse than losing twice.
Rob asks about profits being a melting ice cube. I've got to stop saying "profits" because Matt Crosby over at Look Into Bitcoin had a really good comment. He said, "I'm in rotation." So as Bitcoin goes up, he's going to rotate into cash, sit and wait for things to move around, then rotate back into Bitcoin or into whatever asset he wants to get into. He said, in all honesty, we're never really going into profits and that's it. It's always the same — we have to move, we have to invest our dollars because dollars pay the bills and you can actually get things done.
People say, "Well, I just use my credit card, which is Bitcoin-backed, then use the Bitcoin." You can do that, it's fine. But at some point people want to rotate out of Bitcoin into cash to have dry powder. And then if things go down, they can rotate from cash into Bitcoin or into gold or into silver or even copper — which is massively needed in the age of AI, especially for cooling.
I personally rotate into cash, then into real estate, and then the cash flow that real estate generates gets rotated into crypto. So it's a big process and you never feel like this has got to go up or my life is over. It's nice to have different streams of revenue coming in. It makes you relaxed, that's for sure.
Rob asks about thoughts on quantum computing companies and their stocks. On this one, I don't really have an opinion. Quantum computing — I worry it's closer than we think, especially with AI. I'm hearing every day about some new breakthrough that AI is doing. What I'm more interested in is what AI can do for healthcare — not just helping people live longer, but to heal and be made whole. Imagine all the people who unfortunately have sickle cell anemia, cancer, dementia, cardiac or renal problems, dialysis — that's the more important thing for me. Quantum computing can accelerate things and I think it's going to be here faster than we think, but I don't have a strong opinion on it.
Tai asks if Rob is still buying Bitcoin through Cash App. Yes, every Monday. People ask why, because it seems expensive when you do it one-off — the fees are high and the spread sucks. But Jack Dorsey, and I think he set it up this way, if you buy through Cash App on a recurring basis, the spread is nothing and the fees are nothing. I think Jack set that up because he wanted people to continuously buy Bitcoin. If you set up a recurring payment like I do every Monday, you don't really see the fees or the spread at all. It just goes in there.
The big thing though is taking your Bitcoin off and putting it into some type of storage, or maybe using something like iTrust for a custodial service — which uses Coinbase Prime, the same as BlackRock and Strategy.
A viewer says Ben turned out to be wrong. I still think Ben said that in the second half of the cycle year following the all-time high — which would be 2025, meaning July 1st and afterwards — is not a bad time to buy. He still thinks, and I still think, that Q4 will have some kind of drop-off. I don't know if he's buying or not. I'm personally buying. Even though I believe something's going to happen, I have to hedge my bet because I don't know what's going to happen. So I kept buying, but I have a good amount of dry powder. What's nice about the short-term and medium-term rental properties we have is they have good cash flow, and as time goes on I can take that chunk and put it in if we do have a big pullback. And what's great about the pullback is that because I dynamically DCA, I can buy more as I take a look at the risk levels.
As far as Ben being wrong — I don't think he's wrong. We still aren't out of Q4 yet. But even if me and Ben were both wrong and Q4 wasn't the bottom, maybe the bottom was July 1st or whatever it actually was. As long as we're DCAing, I think it should be okay. At the end of the day, it really comes down to: am I up on my portfolio or am I down? That's really all that matters.
Tyler Dan asks: how do I keep myself DCAing when I'm scared to miss out on a lower low? Just do what I do. I set it and forget it like the Ronco food dehydrator. On Mondays I wake up around 4 or 4:30, walk the dog, come back in, have coffee, and then my order hits at 6:30. I'm able to take a look at the risk levels and if nothing's changed, I don't do anything. It just goes off without me even having to think about it.
There were some times when things were really getting lower and lower and I was spending a lot — not just a little bit more, but like 4x of what I usually spend, and one time I think it was 8x. So what do I do when I'm scared to miss out on the lower low? You can do it two ways. Say you've got $1,000 — there's nothing wrong with spending $50 every week to buy. So you spend $200 over the month, you've got $800 coming up. Maybe the lower low happens, maybe it doesn't. But at least you've got that $200 in, and then you can just keep buying as time goes on.
Tax Strategy — Rotating Gains into Real Estate
Chris asks: do you pay tax when you rotate? You do pay tax. Well, it depends. There are a lot of different options. Did you know that you can take the gains you make from capital gains on the different assets you sell and put those into your business or into things like Bitcoin mining, and then deduct that from your taxes? Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, you can do that. Also, you can — I'm going to play a clip. This is me and Mark Kohler. Mark Kohler is a certified CPA and attorney, and he talks about rotating your gains into things you can actually use, specifically real estate. About three minutes long, this will help out.
Mark Kohler: "So the goal is to make an investment that creates a write-off and allows us to zero tax, continue to build. It's possible. Here's a classic example. Let's say I've got $400,000 — I'm selling $400,000 of, let's just say, crypto — and I bought it for $100,000. So I have a built-in gain. They call that a basis. That's $300,000. I'm going to pay tax on $300,000. I'll probably write a check for $100,000. How many of you would like to pay $100,000 to the government? So here's our basis, here's our bait. What is our option? What I would do is sell that crypto. Let's diversify. We're going to get back into crypto. I want to have a write-off of $300,000. This is our target. What I'd love to do — hear me out — a lot of my crypto investors start to discover that real estate is an incredible balance based on the market. It's a diversification, and I'm not giving up on crypto. I realize I need more stability, so I'm going to find a balance. So I sell a little crypto and I go buy a short-term rental property. I see an Airbnb down the street that I like and I go out and buy a short-term rental. You might be out $600,000. So you go buy this short-term rental, you put down $200,000 — 30% — and now you have a mortgage of $400,000. I have so many crypto clients that are investing in short-term rentals. And here's why. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill from Trump and Congress, I can depreciate this thing — whatever the building value is — 100%. So if I take off the land value, land is land. That means I have a building worth $480,000. I can't write off the land. I get to write off the building. So I buy the property, pop it on there to create cash flow. It's a smart investment. I want to find somewhere a little bit here, and then I can do what's called a cost segregation analysis. Probably runs you $3,000 to $4,000. But this property — I get to write off under the One Big Beautiful Bill. The average on this is around 30% to 40% of $480,000. We're looking at $192,000. So I buy a short-term rental with my crypto sale and I get a $192,000 write-off. So here's the trick, everybody. I'm going to sell a little crypto — a portion of it. I'm going to reinvest, use some leverage, create a cash flow property, get a kick-ass write-off for more than the cash I even put into it. Then I build another asset class, offset my gain. I could do it with oil and gas. I could do a small business. I could buy an RV out. So many options here — quality assets and offsetting the gain."
Thanks to Mark Kohler for that one. I like that clip because it shows you that there are different options instead of sending your hard-earned money — that you made from capital gains because you took all the risk — to the government, where it goes into a black hole and nobody knows where your money went. So, to answer your question, Chris: do you pay tax? You do, but there are options for you. You have to find those options.
Secret Squirrel says: I believe Rob lives in Puerto Rico and there's no tax. There is tax. There is corporate tax. I still have to pay Social Security and Medicare tax. But for capital gains tax, depending on what you're into, it's zero. So for me, it's zero. However, you have to live in Puerto Rico, which I've got to tell you is probably the best thing of all time. It's easy to live here. Besides the drought going on right now, which sucks, it's a great place. If you like waking up, going to the beach, and relaxing, that's it. If you have employees, you have to pay certain amounts depending on how much you actually make. And you are required by law to donate up to — I think it's $10,000 minimum — to different nonprofit organizations. But I have no problem with that. I'd rather give my money to a nonprofit than to the government, that's for damn sure.
iTrust Capital and the Zach XBT Data Breach Allegation
Geekd asks about Zach XBT claiming that iTrust Capital is lying about being hacked. Let's take a look at that quickly. Zach XBT has his own Telegram group, and he posted a community alert stating: "I've reviewed evidence that two US-based investment platforms, Bitcoin IRA and iTrust Capital, allegedly had data breaches this year but appear to have not disclosed the incidents publicly. The leaked info included personal details, portfolio holdings, banking details, custodian details, verifications, etc. Example: a threat actor named Tiffany targeted a Bitcoin IRA user and stole $1.2 million using the database in June. I reached out to both companies for comment on August 21st but have not heard anything back."
I immediately called my contacts over at iTrust Capital and said, "Hey, what's going on?" They said they don't know, because that's not them, and that no one had reached out to them. They put out this statement: "The circulating reports that iTrust Capital experienced a recent undisclosed data breach are not true. We would notify clients directly if a data breach ever occurred." They also said: "We routinely send emails and notifications to all clients to remind them of account security best practices and to be on the lookout for any bad actors that try to phish for personal info. It's important to stay vigilant with your account details and update personal email. As always, iTrust's secure closed-loop system is designed to mitigate risks and prevent bad actors from draining client accounts through phishing, theft, and other social engineering-related scams."
When I reached out to them, I talked to a couple of the guys and they said, "Yeah, we don't know why he's saying that. We've had people reach out to him." I have checked his Telegram group every couple of days and there's been no follow-up. That post was very weird. The last one was September 6th where he talks about a community alert about multiple verified Woox users reporting withdrawals — but nothing else against iTrust.
I will say this lastly: I have iTrust for custody and my Roth IRA. And I've said this many times before — to pull out your cash, because once you do custody, you can't pull out the original crypto. If you have any questions about it, there's a link in the description with a phone number and you can contact the guys at iTrust and a real person will talk to you.
When I went through this, I put in X amount of Bitcoin. And then to get the Bitcoin out — because I had a really good real estate deal and had to take the funds — I couldn't take Bitcoin out. I had to take dollars. That's how they set it up, which is smart, because with Bitcoin you get hacked and it can go through a mixer and it's gone. But for cash, it's a hell of a lot harder. It took me 10 days to get it, and the hoops I had to jump through to get my own money were a lot. They set it up that way to be a pain in the ass because it stops everything from going any further. Because they are big on compliance, I was like, "Well, this sucks, but I'd rather go through the sucky part than lose everything in some exchange hack." So that's the information I have. If Zach XBT wants to elaborate and talk more about it, I'd love to hear it.
Physical Security — A Warning About Crypto Storage
Muhammad brings up another privacy token. This is pretty bad, but it needs to be said. This is a report I saw from Coin Bureau. Someone murdered an entire family in Mexico to steal a Bitcoin hardware wallet reportedly holding $1.5 million. Jonathan Melendez, keyboardist of the band Oh Camilo Séptimo — his pregnant wife, their three-year-old daughter, and their housemaid were killed by someone who knew about his holdings stored at home. The only one to survive was the six-year-old son.
Most of us have kids. We remember what it was like when our sons or daughters were six years old — one of the best times, life was ahead, everything was good. Imagine being a six-year-old kid and your entire family got wiped out. Hopefully he didn't see it happen, but even if he didn't, it's the worst thing of all time. Two suspects were arrested within 12 hours. It pays up to seven years per victim. Who cares? That kid's life is essentially forever altered in a very negative way.
Violent crypto robberies are surging, with over $30 million stolen through physical attacks on crypto holders in the first half of 2026 alone, per Chainalysis. This is a really bad story, but it's something I think everybody should be exposed to — and why you need to protect yourselves. That's why I've done what I've done for a long time. People say, "Why do you roll things into real estate? Doesn't real estate suck?" Well, one good thing is that with real estate, at least they can't wrench-attack me and take over my title.
This is also why I diversify my storage. It's in some cold storage, it's in a Trezor, it's in a Ledger, it's in an ETF, and it's in iTrust. I know when people say "an ETF — not your keys, not your crypto, bro, what are you, some paper Bitcoin holder?" I guess so. But essentially it comes out of this: not your keys, not your problem. Talk to this guy about problems and I'll let you make your decision. Yeah, crappy, but that's just how it is.