China's Belt and Road Initiative has laid the groundwork for its global economic expansion and potential challenge to US financial dominance.
In a world where geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainties are at an all-time high, understanding the macroeconomic landscape and the role of Bitcoin in shaping the future of finance is critical. In this blog post, we delve into the insights shared by Marty Bent on the TFTC podcast, where he engages in a thought-provoking discussion with his guest, Kane McGukin, exploring the geopolitical chessboard, the shifting power dynamics between nations like China and the United States, and the impact on the global financial system.
The conversation highlights the intricate relationship between geopolitical strategies and economic policies, with a particular focus on China's increasing influence on the global stage. Kane, who has been studying these topics for nearly two decades, provides a historical perspective on the rise and fall of superpowers and their currencies. He draws parallels between the past and present, noting how countries like China are positioning themselves to challenge the US dollar's hegemony by establishing strategic partnerships and initiating currency swap deals.
In conclusion, the podcast discussion sheds light on the complex interplay between geopolitics, economics, and emerging technologies like bitcoin. It calls for a reevaluation of traditional financial systems and a move towards fostering skills, work ethic, and sound monetary principles that can lead to a more productive and equitable global society.
0:00 - Intro
5:29 - Kane’s background
9:26 - China’s geopolitical standing
28:01 - Hyperconnected world changes things
33:22 - Transitional state
38:50 - Messianic money
42:00 - Weaponized dollar
48:56 - What should America do?
54:31 - Teaching values and skills
1:05:58 - Propaganda and tinfoil
1:11:01 - Optimism
1:17:50 - Wrapping up
Marty: [00:00:00] Logan just gave me the thumb up cool.
Kane: Cool. All right. It's funny. We say,
Marty: we say thumbs up, but it's usually just one thumb up.
Kane: Yeah, you're right. Well, it's like baseball, you know, foul ball heads up and everybody looks up. Welcome
Marty: to the show. We've been DMing on Twitter for years now. I'm excited that we finally got this
Kane: together.
Yeah, Marty, I appreciate you having me on. Uh, I know DMs are always good, but, uh, sometimes I'm pretty good at, uh, forgetting about them and coming back to them. So thanks for having me on. Thank you for
Marty: coming on. What incited this was I wrote a newsletter November 20th, so three weeks ago now. Geopolitical chessboard reshuffling.
Talking about, um, essentially what's going on in the geopolitical landscape with countries like Saudi Arabia and China beginning to come closer together. The U. S. seems to be shooting itself in the foot from the geopolitical posturing. Many people are, [00:01:00] for lack of a better term, getting really pissed off with the United States, particularly its foreign policy.
And this will have an effect on the global macroeconomic landscape, especially as it pertains to The U. S. dollar, its reserve currency status, and the U. S. hegemony, which it has had for, for many, many decades now. So you were telling me right before we hit record, you've been diving into this subject more broadly for almost 20 years now, 16 years.
Kane: Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, if I take it back, really, even before financial markets, so I was a big baseball nut, Always read financial history as a kid. I mean, not financial history, but baseball history as a kid. Um, twenties, thirties, mostly Yankee stuff. Um, and then I think like mid nineties started coming across kind of steroids and baseball and diving down that rabbit hole and everybody's like, ah, it doesn't exist.
And you know, then 2010. [00:02:00] It was obvious, but nobody cared. So I was an adult after college, um, did a couple of things kind of in the financial realm, real estate, that sort of stuff, but got over, I always enjoyed trading in the markets and started working in just traditional wealth management, nothing special.
Um, But went down that similar rabbit hole with the financial system, how things work, how markets work, how we were trading different assets across different desks and that sort of thing. Um, and I came into business in kind of like I don't know, 05, 06, so right in front of just the, the monsoon of 2008, um, and came in at Bear Stearns.
We, again, it was a local office, wasn't in New York, um, and we were doing trading and, and whatnot. And so just seeing it firsthand and, and not having any idea what's going on. And, and so I took that same approach, go back to the foundation. Figure out how this stuff works, what is it? And [00:03:00] um, through 2007, uh, 8, 9, 10, we had some hedge fund clients, had some, um, big institutional clients, insurance companies, those kind of things.
And, uh, I started reading all the emails from just the bailouts and, and particularly the Lehman, um, the Lehman kind of issues and the dick fold emails. And then. That just kind of rabbit hole, just like with steroids and all this other stuff that I didn't understand and credit default swaps and derivatives and, um, gold and all that kind of stuff.
And so that sort of led to the, the tweets and whatnot that we're talking about in, uh, going on with China and the geopolitical wars and the currency wars and all the hacking. So I'll kind of pause right there, um, let you jump back in. See, you know, we'll kind of get that rolling.
Marty: Yeah. And I think [00:04:00] China's always perplexed me.
I said this, I think it was on the spaces last week we were doing for the Bitcoin times energy edition. Somebody is asking me about the Chinese real estate market and whether or not it was imploding. I said, it seems like it is, but I don't know. You hear news out of China or I do. Um, and I never know what to believe that I think the great Chinese firewall is very successful, um, at sort of making it so it's not obvious what's going on, uh, to the outside world.
And it seems like you're honing in and have done a lot of research on China. So what's your, uh, I guess let's focus on China, its place in the world, what it's trying to do. What it's economic situation is in reality and how that it will affect the geopolitical landscape moving forward
Kane: Yeah, I think a big picture right just like you said if you listen to Jim Chenos who was a great hedge fund manager 80s 90s 2000s he's been [00:05:00] short China since as long as I can remember So if you were an investor and you kind of took his advice, you'd be out of money at this point, right?
And China still exists. So, um, short sellers are great. Uh, they're great for the markets. I agree with them. I like them. I kind of believe in that tendency, but. You know, you can be right and wrong at the same time. And so if you couple that with, I think Ray Dalio's works, kind of the most important, and it's really what got me back into just this general interest.
I mean, one thing macro went dead, kind of, and let's just call it the 2000 teens. Um, now macro is back in vogue, right? It's the thing, it's, it's Bitcoin, it's gold, it's, it's stocks, it's China, it's U. S., it's geopolitics. So it, it kind of brought it back, but Ray Dalio's work really is the foundation of that.
Because he doesn't say it explicitly, but when you read his stuff, he basically built most of the U. S. financial markets. [00:06:00] And then China kind of called him over there to build their markets. And I think at one point in some texts, he says, effectively, they asked him to kind of run. You know, one of the big committees or organizations that would kind of oversee the financial markets and he turned it down now, maybe a little bit incorrect there, but I read something around that, um, in some of his work.
Um, so he kind of built their market. So if there's one guy that knows. How all this stuff works and has relationships around the world is him. And so you kind of have to trust that and, and kind of lean into that. And so, um, to take it one step forward, just big picture without jumping down the rabbit hole, you know, his work says civilizations last on average, about 240 years.
That's where we are. Reserve currencies last 70 years, 100 years, give or take. That's where the dollar is. Um, and so then if you look at that cycle and technology and how that plays in, we're in the realm of all that. And [00:07:00] so education technology in the U. S. is kind of going like this. Yes. Everybody comes to the U.
S. to invest in technology and that sort of thing. But Europe's ahead of the curve, China's ahead of the curve, Trump's administration, I think it was like 2017 or 16, they did a deep dive into the financial system and what we need to do to digitize it. Well, China has been five years ahead. Europe is three or five ahead and we're just getting started.
And that's where all like the FedNow and all that kind of stuff's coming from. Um, so you look at it, you say, well, why would China want to do this? Well. They've been the sweatshop to the world for 30, 40 years. And they're kind of at a point where like, Hey, we're big enough. We have enough cloud people. We have enough partners.
Like we don't, you know, we want to sit at the table and the G7 used to be the G5. We want to be a part of this decision making process for the global financial system. And, you know, Europe, U S kind of Japan, other big players are like, nah, it's all [00:08:00] right. You just keep going and making the stuff. Let you have a little bone, but like, we don't need you in this kind of classic, just, you know, buddy, buddy system.
Um, and so that kind of gets us where we are today. And, and when you look at kind of, there is no such thing as a dollar. It's just a basket, right? It's the greatest financial network there is because we can use anywhere, but it's a, it's a component of other currency. So if the dollar's going up, those currencies are going down.
If the dollar's going down, those currencies are going up. And so then. You kind of step in to the seventies and that's when the financial system was really kind of breaking down off the back of Bretton woods and they created this, what was supposed to be a digital token, the SDRs, uh, special drawing rights.
And that was, again, a basket of currencies for central banks to trade back and forth IOUs with the dollar was a central component and then a few other people and guess who finally got a seat at the table? China. And so when you think about it that [00:09:00] way and you look at it that way, that's exactly how, in my opinion, you know, people can debate it, I could be wrong, uh, the U.
S. took power from Britain. In kind of the late 1800s, early 1900s. So you kind of have a confluence of a lot of different things. coming together where it's just like what we've seen before.
Marty: And then building on that line of thinking, if you fast forward from the 70s, obviously Triffin's Dilemma played out.
China became the sweatshop of the world, as you described
Kane: it. In fairness, we were in the early 1900s, 20s, and 30s. Yeah, but the industrial
Marty: revolution, right? Many stories of child labor here in the United States. And so is that repeat itself? And so you, I guess you have that 50 year transition where you hollow out your industrial base, move it somewhere else, flood the [00:10:00] world with dollars.
But then that industrial base builds up in China, gives them a lot of power to then try to wield, which seems like they're trying to do right now.
Kane: Correct. Correct. Yeah. And. And so to me, it's interesting. It's also scary because they have a different, you know, outlook on life than, than kind of we do here.
There's different political systems or different value systems. Um, in some ways their value systems are better, right? The Eastern medicine, Eastern healing, Eastern like, Hey, let's value our time on earth and, and let's, you know, last samurai, it's all about honing your craft. And then in America is like, dude, how do we just do this quick and easy and make a lot of money?
Right. So spiritually kind of honing your craft is. What we're supposed to be doing rather than just trying to get rich. So there's just butting heads.
Marty: [00:11:00] Yeah. So where, where do you think it stands right now? Like I mentioned the newsletter that you responded to, uh, I believe I mentioned in that the. Um, the Saudi Arabia, uh, I believe head of foreign affairs came out with a comment in regards to Israel, uh, in Palestine and said, Hey, we want peace in that area, we're going to try and broker it.
And our first stop is going to be China, which is a big signal. I think it's not the U S. Um, to go to the police officer of the world, which the U S has been for, for many decades. So that's a signal. And then in that same week, shortly after that, I think that that announcement happened on a Friday. And then next Monday was announced that Saudi Arabia and China had opened up a currency swap deal with each other, relatively small 7 billion of the course of the next two years.
But it is a step in a particular direction, um, away from us dominance. So, so what do [00:12:00] you think is happening? Do you think China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, others are, are recognizing how overextended the US is and are making some tactical moves to
Kane: Yeah, fill that void? I, I agree with that. So that's why I responded from, from time to time over the years.
I'll respond just lightly on some things that you hit on, but I think that's important because on the outside, right, if you read the Wall Street Journal, they kind of tell you what happened after the fact. But like early days, if you read the FT, they kind of give you the breadcrumbs of things that are happening that end up being issues six months, 12 months down the road.
So the news is telling us this after the fact exactly what you said, but the importance is that groundwork and the foundations for that to happen started in around 2013 with China's belt and roads initiatives. So this is goes back to where I opened with. So back then, and probably before then, [00:13:00] but it became in the papers, very, you know, big news, open news, people are just like, Oh, look at that.
But they were laying the foundation. So they're going around the world to Canada and getting access to oil sands and oil and energy. And they were going to Africa and getting access to, um, all these, uh, rare earth materials. Uh, for technology and lasers and things like that. And then we're going into Iran and Iraq and all the different oil countries and setting up these deals.
And so. First thing you had to do was set up that foundation, like, Hey, Marty, you know, I think you do a great job. Is there some way we can work together? Right. And get this resource. And when you look at it that way, and you kind of understand what the U S did in the 1920s and thirties was the same thing as we went around the world while there was a world war one building partnerships.
And who did we build partnerships with? We built partnerships with Hitler and Mussolini and all these [00:14:00] other guys that were bad people, but we had to have a way to build a relationship to create financial connections. And so, there's this great, I think I shared it with you, but this image, I don't know, I found it on the internet somewhere, in 2019 or 2020, it kind of describes how the U.
S. took power. And from 1919 to 24, they set up this massive global American financial investment. So if you look, so we had to create this dollar network, but the world is using the pound and, and, and other currencies, but primarily pound and Britain runs things. And so then you get everybody kind of using a little bit of your money here and there, these small 7 billion transactions, right?
Currency swaps and that you didn't have swaps then it was all gold, but, uh, there were various types of, so you've got that kind of, Hey, let's just get started and see if this works. And then from 1924 to 29. You establish and this it says establish control over the [00:15:00] financial system of Germany and that's where we're like funding Hitler and Mussolini with the Rockefellers and the Carnegie's and and all this is text like you can go back and read in different things It's kind of to make it simple.
You could go to that back and watch Alex Gladstein's Bitcoin conference talk right a lot of that is baked in there. So why did we you know set up the Red Cross? It wasn't to aid the world and help them out with medical issues and disaster. It was to create a way to get dollars into other parts of the world that didn't have access and create a debt system.
So then they're burdened to you, right? It's a way to create that network and, and to kind of bake that into Bitcoin, like Bitcoin's done that with the Bitcoin brand and created all these different places where Bitcoin's slowly being adopted in areas. That have financial issues. And so from 29 to 33, the image, you know, it says, then you provoke and [00:16:00] unleash a deep financial and economic crisis.
Well, that's where in 2009, you know, the world's kind of blown up, that's blown up and China's just kind of like, you know, they've got their issues as well, but they're kind of like, Hey, we have all these treasuries, we could nuke you, but then it will nuke everybody else if we sell them. So that's where you kind of get into this.
In my opinion, I call it the second greatest Trojan horse in history, where. You know, we give China dollars for basketballs and then they say, okay, well, like, these are cool. We'll use some, but we'll just buy your treasuries and get this nice rate and do that for 20 years. And then the world blows out in 2009 and we all of a sudden say, Hey, I don't know if we can pay you for 30 years at this rate, because like, this is an issue, would you swap your 30 years for 10 years?
And China's like, sweet. Cause I don't want exposure to you for another 30 years. And so they swap 30s [00:17:00] for 10s and they take that cash and start buying our land. And, and so you've kind of got exactly what we did in the late, uh, 20s and 30s, I think it was. And then the last step, let me get this picture back up because I always have trouble remembering it.
Marty: If you want to put that picture, if you want to DM it to me on Twitter or put it in the, if you can put it in the comments here, we can pull it up on screen as well. Alright,
Kane: hang on. Let me do that so you can edit this out
and I don't remember where I found this picture I've posted a number of times over the last couple of years There was a guy on the on Twitter that went back and found a website It wasn't the website that I got it from but and sent it to me. Alright, so I just DM that to you
So the last step Get that back up and then I'll come back to your screen from 1933 to [00:18:00] 1939. You've got financial cooperation with the Nazi government in support for its expansion for foreign policy. So the way, if you look through historical text and government documents and things, all kinds of stuff.
So we set up a financial system, we get everybody indebted. And then we didn't win World War II from guns. We won it by cutting off their financial access. And so let's fast forward to today. China's kind of done Most of these steps and in a worst case scenario like I you know, I don't want things to crumble.
Nobody wants kind of anarchy But if our civilization is towards the end and the reserve currency is toward the end and China has set up all these Financial connections around the world to get the resources needed to build and to grow they kind of fast forward once there's a monetary system and That that can handle global currency.
So I'll, I'll stop there and [00:19:00] you can kind of interject, ask some questions and then we can kind of get to a little bit of a point around, uh, what I think is important around Bretton Woods and, and Bitcoin and, and other, just the crypto ecosystem.
Marty: Yeah. Yeah. They're setting up this infrastructure in anticipation for a vacuum of power, and then the infrastructure will be able to suck that power in their direction.
Another thing I mentioned in that newsletter. That incited this conversation. I forget exactly which country it was. I forget if it was in Africa or Latin America. But they're gonna issue They're going to issue loans to countries that don't have great dollar liquidity. They're going to issue them dollar loans, but they're asking to be paid back in yuan on the back end, which is a roundabout way to drive yuan
Kane: demand.
So what is that, not to jump in, just because that's a critical point, very critical. So what is that? To me, that sounds like. Hey, we're the [00:20:00] red cross here. Some disaster relief.
Marty: You need dollars. You need to go buy some stuff internationally
Kane: here. Pay me back or you want.
Marty: So that's one thing I guess before we jump into like where this could go again, I'm trying to.
In my mind, extremely hard to read, like you can see a scenario where they're doing all this, but domestically things are terrible and they can shoot themselves in the foot. Like if you look at the, going back to the real estate crisis in China, it seems like it's materializing just like from first principles, seeing the videos of these ghost cities over the last five, 10 years that have been erected, uh, that they're ghost cities, they build them and nobody lives in them and have all this.
Exposure to the real estate market that seems extremely fragile. Like do you envision a scenario? We're trying to trying to do all this, but they just went too hard into bunk [00:21:00] economic policies domestically that it prevents. Yeah
Kane: It could totally it could totally be that I'm a little so I don't follow it as deeply anymore I'm a little bit perplexed on that point because on the one hand it You got a bunch of empty stuff.
What are you gonna do with it? Now, in World War II, we kind of had that same thing. We've got all these goods that nobody's gonna buy, so we call those soldiers home. Like, what do we do with this? And we built a middle class and so in China, they've got so many people, you know, there's most of the population is over there, right?
Between China and India, 8 billion people and most of us over there. So you got all these in one way, it's smart, right? In the US, we kind of do it dumb. You need a four lane highway. What do we do? We build a two lane road, let it cause traffic jams or it takes an hour to go anywhere. And then we come back and spend three years making that two lane road a three lane road.
That gets,[00:22:00]
that gets, you know, filled up again and we got traffic jams. So now we'll spend two years making a four lane road. Well, China went ahead and is like, well, we have however many billions of people in the hills of China. That are making 2 a day, we're going to build a 12 lane highway that has one car on it and an empty city.
And eventually those people will come into the city because that's where commerce happens. Now, does that play out? Possibly. I, I don't know. That's, that's where it kind of like for me to try to figure it out. There's not a way to kind of make a living off of it. So I just sort of stopped.
Marty: Well, that begs another question too.
I know we're using historical parallels here, but does the current. Situation as it stands today in 2023. Like, are there like, it feels like the world's more hyperconnected than it's ever been. Does that variable really [00:23:00] prevent like history from rhyming in the way that it did in the past?
Kane: So that's where, like my answer there is, I think that's, what's important about money.
And that's, what's important about Bitcoin. And that's what is important about understanding the Ray Dalio, big debt crisis and the, uh, changing world order. So the simplistic way that I think about it, and I kind of say to people, and I don't know if people understand or not, or if it even makes sense to anybody but me, but like money changes when the lifestyles and the speed of which people need access to money changes.
So if you look at money, gold is the only money ever to last throughout man time. Every failing civilization has had some form of a faster money that broke and got levered and rehypothecated and whatever, and then they default back to gold and it starts over. And so, when you look at, again, [00:24:00] the early 1900s, 1930s kind of happened because gold wasn't fast enough anymore to meet the needs of the roaring twenties and people, the industrialization, like how fast people are moving around.
So I wrote a article on that or Bitcoin magazine maybe a year ago and I'm kind of talking about that. And so then we put these dollars on top of gold and that worked. Until the fifties and then, you know, digital technology came in and we're starting to do some things digitally and then dollars couldn't move around fast enough.
So we created this thing called the credit card network, which was tapped in to the dollars, which were tapped, tapped into the gold. And then in the sixties, we got the internet. And we're starting to get some information flowing back and forth over the internet. And so then by the seventies, the credit card network and the dollars and the gold didn't work anymore.
And so that's where we created in the [00:25:00] fifties, the SDR and kind of this digital thing and ACH and Fedwire, ACH, Fedwire, all those things are just protocols, so if we think of their text based protocols, so if you think about what we're seeing now is like, wait. We have this digital network, Bitcoin, that solves the problem that, um, that, that major countries, Japan, um, U.
S., Europe, were trying to solve in the 70s, that will do all that. And we also have these things called cell phones. So I don't have to fly all around the world to have these meetings that we can't do anything about until three days later. We can get on zoom, you and I can have this conversation. So you bake all that in.
And so the speed with which people are moving around, we have, we have global people, like you and I can go on a trip to China tomorrow. Uh, we have global commerce corporations. They might be us companies, but the headquartered in [00:26:00] Ireland, cause it's a tax haven. Microsoft, all those guys. Um, or we have a bunch of Chinese people that have bought and Chinese individuals and corporations that have bought up us corporations and land.
Right. And so, but our money doesn't work that way. And then most of our lives, we spend it on Netflix and YouTube and Facebook and zoom and other things like this podcast, but our money. Doesn't attach in, but we have that 402 protocol that everybody gets all yipped up about, right? And so that's how if you have the TCP IP layer It's just information that allow voice and video and all that stuff.
And now we have this Bitcoin layer That's protocol on top of these other two protocols But this one actually carries text and value and so now you can use those parts of the internet like before you couldn't use VOIP VoIP and video and all that To better speed up transactions. Now I'm not talking about it [00:27:00] and the transaction per second with credit cards and kind of like the unsound parts of it, but people in business are moving at speeds, which our money can't.
But now we have these tools to make our money and create a level of soundness, right? When civilization changed that soundness. We have to come back to a soundness and everything has to get redistributed and I to me I think that's what we're seeing and if you look at the SDR basket, I posted a video not a video but a It was something about like the history of the dollar and you could just see it moving a couple of days ago It was a visualization and you can see the currency war playing out for the last hundred years And in the last 15 or so, you see China bringing back their seat at the table because they're now in that through the SDR.
So does that kind of answer your question there? Yeah,
Marty: uh, well, I think we can [00:28:00] dive even further down because that's one of my theses, like, I'm, I put a probability on it, but I don't, um, I don't think it's a foregone conclusion, but like that, what I've been saying is like, yeah, the dollar seems obvious, look at the federal debt, look at the unfunded liabilities.
That's a math equation that cannot be solved. We're not going to fix the dollar. People are starting to recognize that. We weaponized treasuries two years ago, or last year, when we froze Russians, uh, the Russians treasury assets. And people are looking for an alternative. You have Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, India, others buddying up, create their own SDR, their own basket of currencies, whatever it is.
So I could see a situation in which dollar dominance declines, and they try to do their basket, but it is fraught with the same problems that led to the demise of the dollar and every fiat currency before it. Up to this point in time. And again, going back to what we just discussed, which is this hyper [00:29:00] connectivity, like, I don't know, maybe I'm naive to think that the hyper connectivity would allow information to disperse where if the BRICS countries tried to do that, people will be like, why are you doing this?
We just did this with the currency before. Like, how does this not end in the same way? Uh, Like why don't we just use something like Bitcoin, but I could see a period where they do that They're somewhat successful for a period of time Implodes, maybe it's not 80 years. Maybe it's 10 years even and then people are like, oh, no Bitcoin is the obvious answer to this and then that's the perplexing situation that we're in because if all these countries were just to Swallow their pride and recognize that Bitcoin is a superior technology to do all these things and just to adopt adopted as quickly as possible.
They could solve a lot of the problems they're trying to solve much quicker.
Kane: Yeah, I agree with that. Like that's kind of the dog [00:30:00] chasing its tail, you know. But if you look at, again, to take it one step back to a little bit of a spiritual thing, if you read the whole Bible, so when the world got messed up in 2020, I grew up Christian believer, all that stuff, but I never actually read.
So in 2020, I was like, well, I only know one book that is messed up enough and has enough messed up stories that kind of might explain everything. And so when you read it cover to cover, you see everything we're seeing now, but thousands of years ago. And you, and when you kind of go back and, and let's just say you were a history buff, which I never even liked history.
Until I got into financial markets and by trade, I'm a technician, I'm a chartist, magic lines, and people are like, Oh, it doesn't work. Well, it doesn't work in traditional markets because they're so massaged and manipulated. I mean, the feds own data, the federal reserve. And New York Fed says we've been in a recession for a year and a half now, [00:31:00] but we just changed the definition.
And so this human psychology is embedded in every price of anything that we trade. And so when you see Bitcoin and just the broader crypto space, because that market is not as massaged over the last couple of years, you're seeing some of it. Um, you get natural price action. And the magic lines work great.
And so, um, the dog chasing the tail kind of component is every time civilization has changed, we go back to a sound money and over the next 80 years. And this is where the fourth turning kind of comes into it. We make the same mistakes and that sound money eventually becomes unsound. Now, I know it would be a little bit unpopular from the Bitcoin perspective to say that Bitcoin, you know, will ever become unsound, but since man has been on earth, that's happened to every money that we've ever had except for [00:32:00] gold and Bitcoin does a lot of the things that gold can't do.
So possibly Bitcoin becomes just like gold and you know, but in that realm, If there's a fear, it's like, if you look at gold, it went nowhere from 1980 till 2007. So for 27 years. And that was kind of from the suppression and the tools like futures and options and ETFs and the ways that the traditional banker and the traditional politician that everybody's so excited that they're Bitcoiners, they live by the rules that are outlined in tragedy and hope live by the rules that are outlined in power and control.
And so. For them to be involved in money to me is kind of a bad thing, right? And that kind of helps these transitions happen. Now, hopefully they're good and I'm wrong. And, and hopefully like Bitcoin solves all these problems and, and we can kind of get [00:33:00] back to a world where people can just focus on living and working and doing things they're passionate about rather than, you know, spending so much time on the hamster wheel.
So that was a long winded way of saying. You know, when money changes, we get those periods of 30, 50, 70 years where it's sound, but over that same time. It starts to become unsound again. And generally when you see that you get the civilization change.
Marty: Yeah. And I think that's the hope with Bitcoin is that, that it's, I mean, reference the Bible and Eric Cason and others have described Bitcoin as messianic money.
Like a, like a gift from God to fix these systemic problems with our monetary systems that humanity has had for thousands of years. And again, it could be naive, it could be too optimistic, it could be too idealist. But I do like to appease the idea that [00:34:00] Bitcoin is that messianic intervention. Um, maybe you don't even have to get biblical about it or spiritual about it.
You can just,
Kane: yeah. When money breaks, okay, so broken money is a symptom of broken principles and values. People will live in a world where principles and values are broken. We've been living in it since 1980, but they will only pay attention once the money breaks, once the inflation gets so hard where they, they like can't stick their head in the sand anymore.
Just remember the steroids conversation. Like around 2005, people were like, Oh yeah, there's steroids. But I don't really care. Cause I like going to a game where they hit 10 home runs because a one to nothing pitchers battle is pretty boring. Right. And I don't really care to see you guys still bases. But if you can hit three jacks in a game, like that's what I want to go to.
So people will live in that world comfortably because we like to be comfortable. We don't like to be uncomfortable, um, until the [00:35:00] money breaks. And so that's where not to be biblical, but that's where you take it and say, where's the common denominator between Bitcoin as a money it's rooted in core principles and values.
Immutability is like, you can't change this. You can't do this because the code says it. When you look at the Bible, it says you can't do these things because the code says it, because the laws of principle and value and work says it, because that's kind of really our purpose is to be on light and be on the earth to work at whatever skill we have, whatever passion we're not here to make and collect money.
So that's, to me, the correlation that's really cool about Bitcoin. It resets, hopefully, um, our entire civilization back to doing things that matter, like you're passionate, um, about all the things that 1031 and [00:36:00] TFTC, like, so you're part of that principles and values. And that's, that's really what like.
Even though they basically just brought the European financial system here, but that's what the founding fathers were about. George Washington and those guys, uh, were Alexander Hamlin were passionate about getting away from the evil and the rooted and the brokenness of money and starting again. Now, unfortunately they just took the same financial system, brought it over here.
And if you follow that paper trail, that's why the BIS is calling the shots and the feds just the execution arm.
Marty: No, that's the hope too, going back to what we were discussing earlier with China, going out in this belt and road initiative to set up all this infrastructure just to eventually have the world reserve currency, get all that power.
It's a lot of work. It's a lot of times, a lot of capital. It's a lot of [00:37:00] politicking just to have some sort of advantage within the monetary hierarchy. And I'd always wonder, and obviously, I mean, Bitcoin fixes this, it's like, does, like, what would the world look like if the global superpowers didn't have to politic and strategize that way?
They were just able to on a monetary protocol that was apolitical, that nobody had control of them, none of them did. And so then they're forced to go focus on more productive endeavors.
Kane: Yeah, exactly. And I think, um, to kind of bring that back, and one point you made about weaponizing the dollar. Right. So that was, to me, it was game on, uh, when was the hearing where Zuckerberg was in, uh, at Congress and they were like, you know, taking them around, pretending to beat him for the labor stuff.
Yes. Yeah. [00:38:00] 2019. Yeah. So I saw one snippet and I posted it and it's the most important snippet of all this. Yeah. And he basically backhands a senator or congressman or whatever. And the guy says something to the effect of, Son, I don't think you know what you're messing with. We use the dollar as a weapon to force other people to do what we want them to do.
And he said, and Zuckerberg said something back like, I respect that, and maybe I don't know what I'm doing, but I do understand that if you don't do what the world needs, You'll be forced to do what you don't want to do or something like that, right? And the guy had no idea what he's talking about. But to your point, that's what the dollar is now.
It's just a weapon. And we saw it with Russia. We saw it with China. And so, that's what money in a political system always is. It's just a weapon for control. And so, to tie that together with China, right? And to tie that together with the image that I sent [00:39:00] you about the steps the U. S. took to take that power.
So we do all these things between 1900 and 1940s. And then in 1944, we have Bretton woods. Once that dollar network is established. Raise your hands, say, Hey guys, I know we've been the sweatshop of the world, but, uh, let's just have peace and we got this thing called the dollar. It'd be great because then we could all just easily more easily transact.
China's doing that now with the swap line, right? And so somewhere we're having our Bretton Woods 2. 0 conference, but I don't know about, we'll read about it once it's done and maybe you know about it or not. But I think the smart countries, the global South, and this was kind of the tweet that Got us or DM that got us back, um, talking on this, the global South, in my opinion, if they were smart, and I think this is what China realized that our politicians that have been asleep at the wheel don't realize is with [00:40:00] something like Bitcoin, we can live in a world where multi currencies work.
Look, there's 180 currencies in the world right now. I think that's the number they don't work because they all depend on the dollar dollar goes up. Those guys punished dollar goes down. Those guys have a heyday, right? And that's where Triffin's dilemma comes in. You either support the world or you support yourself, and we're at that juncture.
So, the Global South, these smaller countries, can do these loans with China to get off the dollar, but now have a currency that nobody controls that they could use to be more productive, to be So it's like Bretton Woods 2. 0, right? And that's the importance of stablecoins. The importance of stablecoins is that they effectively bring back Euro dollars, which are broken.
That's why the Fed changed from, from Euro dollars to SOFR because they no longer had control of the money. Uh, I wrote an article in Bitcoin magazine about [00:41:00] that right before, uh, it may have been after Luna, but it was before, you know, the whole crypto ecosystem blew up because the FDF. I mean, it was LIBOR to SOFR, right?
Uh, well, yeah, but LIBOR, but LIBOR, but. All financial systems are based off L-I-B-O-R. So the whole Eurodollar market functioned around that L-I-B-O-R pricing and all that. Scandal was, I think 2010 or 12 when they had all the, you know, congressional hearings about desk propping up and pumping up L-I-B-O-R to mess around with the rates market.
So what the Fed, taking a full circle a little bit or a step back here, um, what the Fed missed is what technology did to interest rates in the fed's mind. Interest rates control the world. But they don't because most people don't have a loan, they don't need a loan. And once technology kind of post 1990s reached a point where you could start a business in your bedroom with a credit card and have an [00:42:00] 800 a month, uh, you know, rent, and that's all you had because somebody in the Philippines is shipping your product and you're creating it online.
So you got no overhead. You don't have this inventory. There's no longer a need for, for rates for most people. Right now you're in by home and all that kind of stuff, but by and large, they don't, so you can move that rate all around you want and it doesn't work. And so that's what Greenspan, in my opinion, kind of broke or misunderstood.
So you get into 2008 and you're like, well, this stuff doesn't work anymore. What do we do? And so they're massaging it with these desks and it all comes to light. And then department of justice puts some of JP Morgan's traders in jail for manipulating gold markets. Right. And, but people don't care. So meanwhile, China.
In the background, just kind of like, okay, we're still going to be the sweatshop and we're going to open some agreements so that they can come in and sort of, you know, fox in the henhouse [00:43:00] and be like, look, do you really trust these guys? They clearly don't know what's going on. Like, I'll give you a swapline if you want to use some money.
Now, China's, you know, back and forth, bans Bitcoin and then unbans it and then bans it again. And so you don't really know. That's the chess match. But, you know, there's just a lot of things that point to. Um, it's a new environment, right? 40 years of rate down. What if we went 40 years of rates up? Most of the stuff in the US doesn't work anymore.
Yeah, it's becoming abundantly
Marty: clear, which is. And so with all this in mind, we've been focusing heavily on China and the power moves they're making as an American citizen. Somebody cares about this country. What do you think America should do as all this is going on and Bitcoin exists? You
Kane: know, I think, um, Again, like you said, care about America.
You grew up in America. [00:44:00] We love America. Everybody loves it. It's still of all the places, like just look at the COVID lockdowns. Where would you have rather been? As bad as it was, right? You probably, I would guess, rather be in America. And we don't get to pick where we're born. We're all born into, and so we all have different ideologies that we believe in because of where we were born.
Um, but once you're born, you have the opportunity to move around and people move to America. So, I think the way, how do we fix that is one, we get rid of 90 year old politicians. Um, I love, I love old people. Um, but after the age of 60 to 65, most of the decisions that you would make on a forward basis don't match what the generations behind you will need.
You're a great mentor. You can say, Hey, I've already beat my head up on that wall. Here's the shortcut. Let me help you get it. You go, you know. Um, to me, that was what 2008 was about. It wasn't about global financial crisis. It was about [00:45:00] half the workforce wanted to do everything on a yellow notepad. And the only way you did anything was write on a yellow notepad and drop it in the UPS and ship it to somebody.
And somebody physically picked it up and put it on somebody else's desk. The other half of the workforce was like, you're spending three hours doing that. I'll do it 10 minutes with an Excel spreadsheet. And then I'll take the day off, right? No, you've gotta have people work. So, that's how, to me, the U. S.
fixes. Like, stop putting all of these bureaucratic red tape so, you know, Pelosi can have an internal trading desk. Like, let people be productive. So make money and systems and business work where people can produce. Remember, get back to the fundamentals and values and, and the reason why we're here on earth.
And, and I think when you have some money, uh, that happens because people aren't so focused on income. They're focused on production. So when I talked about The Last Samurai, uh, [00:46:00] great movie, right? Remember? Did you watch that?
Marty: I'm ashamed to admit I've not watched last summer. Yeah,
Kane: this weekend homework.
It's great. So Tom cruise, he's an American warrior and they go in and, and, um, I think it was Japan, uh, they were trying to get rid of the, um, the ninjas that was their army ninjas, right? Uh, it was like trying to get rid of cowboys. Would you rather have a cowboy or just like, you know, so they, US takes, um, takes guns in and like, Hey, why aren't you guys fighting hand in combat?
You could just shoot everybody and stand on the hill. So he gets captured. He's a fierce enemy. And the other general, uh, of, I guess the Knights army, not Knights, but the ninjas, he realized he's like, I recognize that guy. He has the same. Passion and hunger that I do. So he brings him back to his camp and learns from it.[00:47:00]
So like you and I, we were, we grew up in a democratic world. We believe in democracies and people having freedoms, but we can learn from, you know, good and bad from other societies, communist societies or whatever. Like, so that was kind of the two sides. There were polar opposites starting to learn from each other and they became friends.
And in that, Tom Cruise learns basically the ways of a ninja. And it took him like a year and he would just get his butt kicked every day. And he started to notice when he went around the village, like, wait, this guy's, you know, looking at every grain of wheat. He's not just like bundling up grain, throwing it because he can sell it real quick.
Cause that's what we are now doing in America. And so Bitcoin and kind of China and the value system is more of like. You know, [00:48:00] look at the guy that made our microphones, right? He probably just painstakingly goes over every inch. Maybe he just throws it in a box and sells it. I don't really know, but, uh, So, the reason why I say that movie is important because he finally has his, they're in a, they do practice, like ninja practice every day or whatever, warrior practice.
And the whole entire world slows down and he sees the moves before they happen. And he finally beats the guy. And so then he's like, I'm not a, you know, us warrior. I'm like a true value system warrior. And so he goes on and like fights a battle and they all get killed by the us people sitting on the Hill, shooting a gun.
Or actually I think he may have lived, but all of the. Other warriors get killed, but they had like, whatever, a hundred [00:49:00] guys versus 2000 and they almost won. I need to go watch that movie. Yeah, it's great. Sorry, I ruined it for you.
Marty: That's okay. I'll watch it anyway. I mean, you said something interesting there.
Like what really matters is production, not how much money you make, especially on our sound monetary system. I think. That's important to really internalize is if you're able to increase production by really bringing back opportunity cost and making more efficient capital allocation, a thing that actually exists, which doesn't exist now because of the manipulation of interest rates, people are more productive, hopefully prices go down and you don't need as much income to, to survive and thrive in this world.
You can lower your time preference and focus. Um, things that you're passionate about and bring actual value to the world.
Kane: Yeah. And I think a key question, I think everybody should ask themselves, right? If you have kids, um, do I want to teach my [00:50:00] kids values, principles, and work habits and skills that they can use at 20 or do I just want to handle money, right?
And so today it feels like the common belief in America is like, let's just handle money. That doesn't, that's probably the worst decision that we could do. But if I teach my kids a real skill, not saying they have to go be a plumber or carpenter or whatever, but if I teach them how to do it at some point, they will use that skill to build something, to do some work that matters.
And sure, like I'm as guilty of as anybody else, like focusing on income. Do I have enough? Like my neighbor's just got a new house. I should get a new house, like all that kind of stuff. But I think to answer a little bit ago, you asked like, what could America do is like in our education system and Dalio touches on this, teach skills.
Now we're like reading [00:51:00] Macbeth and all that kind of stuff three times over and I'm sure maybe there's some stuff in there that is a skill, but like teach skills, uh, because. Skills build wealth. Money doesn't. Money most often destroys it. I mean, like that's part of my career is being involved in wealth management and seeing how money impacts people emotionally.
Yeah.
Marty: That's one thing I'm very happy my father did in early age. It wasn't necessarily teaching me skills. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make. Maybe you don't have any skills to like, I'm not going to be able to teach my kid how to do woodworking or anything like that or. Change a motor. Uh, I don't have those skills, but maybe I could learn with him below that just instilling work ethic.
I started a paper route at 12 years
Kane: old. So, so you have a skill and you do it right. Is it's building businesses or help [00:52:00] people build businesses or finding investment opportunities, right? There's money and income that's involved with that and it's lucrative, but it takes real skill to be that kind of leader.
They can go help people figure it out. And so if you're dragging your kid along or your kid seeing you do those things and make those sacrifices, I mean, all I can say is one, uh, my business partner kind of introduced me to the phrase, Moore is caught than is taught. So Moore is caught than is taught. You may not be verbally teaching your kid anything, but every action he or she sees you do is teaching them everything.
Yeah. And, and that's. That's the thing that they're not going to remember what you said or how you said it. They might, but they're going. And I see as my kids get older, I see them do stuff and I'm like, huh, I know where they got that. He's sometimes good till it becomes bad. Right?
Marty: Uh, it's something I'm hyper aware of now is my oldest son.
He's almost four and he's becoming hyper aware of everything around him. [00:53:00]
Kane: Yeah, that's about when it is going on. It's uh,
Marty: it's scary. It's not scary. It was like, it really makes you contemplate like, all right, what example am I setting?
Kane: So let's put it that if, if parents and I go to a men's group and there's a whole, I can send it to you offline, a whole, this guy's phenomenal.
But we spent 52 weeks on money and we talked about money starting in like week 48. Right? Because money is a set of principles. That's why Bitcoin is awesome. Uh, it's not a number. It's not a digit. Um, there's, now we're on wisdom. Again, it's a biblical thing, and like, we go through Proverbs, and if you read the first seven Proverbs, just seven, and apply those every day, there will be no issues.
So if, and a large part of it is if parents took, so today, parents, how we fix America, parents have to take back control. The school is not there to teach my [00:54:00] kid. The school is not there to get my kid a job. The school is not there to make sure my kid learns to make an income. I am right. So if we teach them, more is caught than is taught, right?
If we teach them those actions that lead to it, then everybody would be successful. Value, there'll be productive work will happen because that's like the core thing we're supposed to do is work, put here to work, do good, be good. And, you know, we can't all be bazillionaires. We can't all be millionaires.
And, um, when it comes to money, like there's going to be poor people and there's going to be rich people and those people that figure out how to be rich. They should, and this is what corporate America is missing. They should do the hard lifting of creating the business, starting the business to hire people, right?
Cause that enriches those people to do work and they should send [00:55:00] down appropriately fair amount of money. So those people can have great things in their life and improve their life. And in the last 20 years, you're seeing CEOs hold all that money at the top and they creating an intensifying. That hamster wheel.
And that's what like happened post 1971 with dollars. Right. Is the exponential rate with which the hamster wheel sped up. And now, now we're at that point where it's just completely broken. Again, people will pay attention when the money is broken.
Marty: That's the thing. Like it's a bit messed up. Cause everybody does want to be rich now because they think that's the only way to live comfortably.
And it's like, you could solve the problem of living comfortably on a more modest income than you wouldn't have everybody trying to be rich and going back to like, do you want to. More is caught than is taught, um, [00:56:00] and like, just don't give your kids money, give them skills, like thinking of the TikTok generation.
Kane: Values, principles. So TikTok is very important. I am extremely anti TikTok, because I've done my homework, and it is a Chinese backdoor. And there was, I forgot how the government or somebody looked into it, and you know, whose partner, it's okay if Microsoft owns it, but not okay if, uh, I forgot the parent company.
Tencent. Yeah, 10 cent. Um, but in America, TikTok flips videos that waste your time and don't teach you a skill. So what are you catching? Junk. The Kardashians, the housewives of whatever, like just pure junk in China. Supposedly they're 14 to 16 year old. They don't, they have like a limited time they can use it, but what is it teaching them like engineering, math skills?
And so there was this poll, I didn't do deep research. So I just assume it's true. Um, where [00:57:00] they polled like the average 14, 16 year old in the U S what do they want to be an influencer? They polled the average 14, 16 year old in China. Are they TikTok users? Uh, what do they want to be? An astronaut. Like, which one of those two civilizations is going to be better in the next 40 years?
And that kind of fits into our empty cities and all that kind of stuff. It's like if the cities are empty, those kids will figure out how to build it. Do you think a A influencer other than Mr. Beast or whatever is running around in Africa doing the oil or water wells. Uh, but who's going to win there? If you're going to Vegas.
Yeah, if you're going to Vegas and those are your two options, which one are you putting?
Marty: Money on the engineers. Yeah, every time yeah It is it is scary to especially consider the social climate here in the United States Mm hmm could see [00:58:00] things devolving rather quickly though. I'd like to stay white pilled and optimistic I do believe that things can change rather quickly if people do wake up and I do think Inflation pressures are forcing people to ask hard questions that will lead them to wake up to Right.
This is broken. We need to fix it. Um.
Kane: I agree with you. Staying positive. Right now. I, I tend to like come across as negative and I just kind of like dive deep into the foundations and it becomes very clear like what the problem is. But most people, you know, like the steroid thing will live steroids in the PGA and go look at people's driving distance.
And it's not all because technology got better, uh, uh, an athlete is not better at 33 than they were at 25. It's not possible your, uh, one out of 50 will be right. Your genetic makeup declines starting at age 27 for the male. And actually I think it's before that, but whatever. Um, so [00:59:00] you, um, I just drew a blank where I went with that.
I can look, it got off tangent. What was it you said? We were,
Marty: uh, optimistic staying up. Oh,
Kane: yeah. So staying optimistic is, is, you know, building those habits back into everything that we do. And, and that's how we get out of the mess and, and if we can get leaders in society to kind of push back a little bit and, and people will start to wake up and be like, Oh, well maybe, you know, I don't need to just go on vacations and sit on social media all day.
Like I'd rather take some time off and live a life. Yeah. I
Marty: need something like JFK's, uh, school gym curriculum. Mm hmm. Get healthy people and yeah, no, we need better leaders too. When you look at all the politicians, [01:00:00] the 90 year old politicians giving speeches, they're so obviously vapid and their speak is just pure politics speak.
It's nothing inspiring. It's nothing worthwhile. It's all projection and propaganda. That's one thing the world is really lacking and people are finding it in independent media. That's why they're going to places like Joe Rogan and Jocko Willick and Jordan Peterson. Yeah, whoever it may be, it's because the people at the helm of the political apparatus just aren't providing that there's no.
Kane: So that's the inspiration there. Propaganda is an interesting word, right? Um, it's very interesting because now if you believe anything that wasn't put out by the FDA or the Fed or anything, like you're just a propagandist, right? You know, tinfoil hat guy. But if you go read the house of Morgan. And it goes [01:01:00] back to the 1800s and it walks through how J.
P. Morgan was built and blah, blah, blah, and all the funding of Mussolini and Hitler and all those things. Right. In the twenties, guess what that was propaganda. They actually use the terms conspiracy. Um, one of the guys, uh, totally drawn a blank here that, um, set up the federal reserve, there were two competing federal reserve plans.
The one that one was from. A German guy that came out here to bring banking to the United States, whose brother was, uh, head of the like German CIA. Okay. That doesn't not sound like somebody we should put in control of things, but point being is now like you're a conspiracy theorist in 2020. You and me were conspiracy theorists, right?
And this is where it sounds negative, but it's really positive. So a hundred years after. All those things happened in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. There are [01:02:00] documents, government documents, information, that say, hey, this was going on. These things that in that day, people said, that's not right, you shouldn't be doing it, and they were like, oh, you're just conspiracy theorists, let's shut you down.
It is now known to be true fact. So, in 2020, And, and, and post 2020, most of the things that we're finding out, even look at the COVID, the way the narrative around that has shifted, um, there was a Wuhan lab deal. There were scientists that leaked stuff, all that kind of jazz, right? Most of what Fauci talked about was not true, but it's still conspiracy and we're conspiracy theorists.
We're talking about it. So when enough time passes that people forget, and this is what the fourth turning talks about. Then we start to say, Oh, wow, that was bad. You know, the, what was conspiracy is the truth more often than not. And what is claimed to be the truth in the moment tends to be what is really the conspiracy when you go back and look at history.
And so I think that ties [01:03:00] into this whole conversation about dollars in China, because China realizes that. And that's sort of where I think TikTok is kind of that avenue to create that division and how you, you know, how do you win in a sport? You know, you understand the rules, you understand the other team, a little Sun Tzu, um.
And then you devise a strategy that either confuses or creates division, and then you go do your thing and you win.
Marty: I, uh, was pulling up a tweet that I want Logan to pull up because I think Dave Collum, um, defines conspiracy theory the best. I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe men, men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you don't think so, You're what is called an idiot. If you believe stuff, but fear the label, you are what is called a coward.
Kane: Yeah, that's perfect.
Marty: That's like when you break [01:04:00] down the actual definition of a conspiracy theorist, it is somebody who's making theories that men and women of power are conspiring to do things, which if you don't believe that they are, you are an idiot.
Kane: Yeah. And, and you're not willing. So this is where proof of work comes in, right?
You're not willing to go back and do some study. Do some work to understand that things happened and transpired, how they happened and how they transpired, and then what the real truth was. So like we should all be conspiracy theorists, you know, the whole idea that science follows a scientific method is just rendered completely false by 2020.
We didn't like create a hypothesis, test it, we just jumped straight to the test.
Marty: And this whole trust the science thing is just completely anathema to the whole idea of science in the first place. You have a hypothesis, you test it, and science is an ongoing [01:05:00] intellectual exploration. Set in stone. And I think it's always sunny in Philadelphia.
Eclipse been popping up recently or Mac, uh, just goes through history of like Galileo, Aristotle, Isaac Newton. It was like, they were the best scientists of the day. Everybody thought they were the smartest people and they
Kane: turned out to be a bitch. And, and a lot of those guys. Right. They were right on a lot of things.
And a lot of those guys, they ended up in jail for a period or, or just completely ostracized and blackmailed. Was it Aristotle's
Marty: or Socrates? Um,
Kane: I think all, yeah. Start to death. Yeah. Tesla too. I think, um, anyway, so that's just sort of. I think the big, uh, where we get back to the positivity, like the big opportunity and hopefully people in our power and our leadership will realize this and they'll stop like putting the brakes on Bitcoin and just the general crypto ecosystem.
So [01:06:00] not to say a dirty word, but like financial services is huge. You can be a hedge fund, you can be wealth management, you could be a derivatives trader, you could be a rates guy. So like crypto ecosystem is like saying financial services, right? Within financial services, their base layer assets, their risk assets, and their toxic assets.
Right. And we're just kind of like at the base layer asset. Now there's some risk assets and some toxic assets in there, but you know, we're there. So to get back to being positive, like how do we look through that? We say, well, how can this benefit the people and how can it generate work and jobs and things that we can focus on?
Right. And, and for smaller countries, Global South, second and third world countries, that's what U. S. was. But we were smart enough at that point and had real leaders. He realized we can create a dollar network and become, get our seat at the table [01:07:00] and become a leader throughout the globe and help set standards and policies.
And so that's the opportunity with Bitcoin is for those smaller countries. It's a way to opt out. It's a parallel network, so they can stay in if they want, maybe one day it becomes its own network, but I think, I mean own like single financial system, but there's no industry that has one winner. There's always multiple players and having a parallel network gives people options.
So you participate or you don't, or you cross, you know, and from one market to another, and that's kind of what China's doing with these, you know, dollar loans that, that return in Renminbi and Yuan. And
Marty: that's something I become more passionate about too, is particularly for Americans listening to the show, which is a majority of our audience base or international, we have a global audience, but the overwhelming portion of it is here in the United States.
And [01:08:00] it's, I don't know the exact answer to it, but I think history has proven that it's possible. It's like, don't wait on the government to do this. Bitcoin's open source rights are. taken and defended. They're not going to be given to you. So the government's not going to give us these rights at the end of the day.
Yes, they could create a somewhat lax regulatory environment to make it as easy as possible to go do what we want to do. At the end of the day, it comes down to the individuals. Actually building on this thing and then more importantly speaking up and fighting on behalf of it in the battlefield of intellectual debate and yeah, I really think that is the most disheartening part of the United States of America in 2023 is everybody so dependent on the government and the central banks to fix the problems that are Inherent in our system and it's just completely insane to me because it's very clear [01:09:00] That they created the problems in the first place, and to think that the arsonist is going to put out the fire is nonsensical.
It's literally insane to keep doing the same thing, going to the government, fix this, fix that, and expecting them to do it when they've broken everything.
Kane: And that's where, um, there's one thing that backs money, nothing else, right? There's two, but the same thing. Faith and belief. When you have faith and belief in something, you get it done.
When you have faith and belief that somebody else will accept this unit, whatever it is, you pick acorns. If I believe that Marty will accept acorns for the book on your shelf, and you believe that that acorn is worth more than that book, you'll accept it. But you will only accept it if you believe and have conviction that whomever else in your circle will turn around and accept it when you need a candy bar or whatever.
Right. And so faith and belief is all that, in my opinion, all that backs money. But what's important about that [01:10:00] is faith and belief is all that backs anything. So if you have faith, uh, strong faith, strong belief, strong conviction that you have the skills Morris Caldwin has taught to do good work that will generate income, you'll go do it.
But if you're filled with fear. Which unfortunately is what governments know because in the 20s, they started doing psychological studies on people. And they carried that through to the 60s where they did the really big ones at Stanford. And they created this thing called the internet, where they know exactly what we're searching, what we're looking at.
So they have a very deep picture into our psychology. And now the way the information and money travels around, they know what we're buying too. So they have like this intense, you know, stranglehold on fear. And the average person, as you look at, you know, again, take a spiritual, we don't have to get that way.
But if you look at the decline in spirituality, it follows the [01:11:00] dollar. It looks exactly, the two charts look almost identical. So you've got a population, a group of people globally. That have less conviction, faith, and belief, and more fear, who wins? Doesn't matter what money you use. Yeah,
Marty: and I have belief, and faith, and Bitcoin, because the underlying principles of that.
Scarce, it's digital, easy to verify, easy to secure, and that gives me faith to accept it. Yeah,
Kane: and it was working, because that's, to me, that's like the whole, You know, scientific method. Well, it's not really going to work in the West because it's harder than a credit card to just walk to the store. And if you go to Africa where a dude doesn't have access to a bank for a hundred miles, and he's got to cross an Anaconda and two tigers or a lion, what's he going to use Nokia flip phone with some Bitcoin on it.
Yeah. [01:12:00] So test, do you, you know, do your seven steps scientific method in those regions of the world. That truly need, you know, banking access, cause it's not a problem in America, like in, in Europe. And there are parts of banking that are broken, but bankers are always going to be around and they're always going to do what bankers do.
And, you know, financial systems have been involved since whatever, the 12, 1300s.
That's kind of it. Yeah. It's been great. Enjoyed it. I did too. Hope you, yeah. Hope, hope you enjoyed it.
Marty: Is there any, uh, parting notes we should leave the freaks with?
Kane: Uh, you know, go find faith and believe in conviction in something. Right, uh, more is caught than is taught. If you have kids, teach them. If you have friends, teach them.
Uh, you know, teach them through your work. And, uh, you know, hopefully that catches on and people are more productive. Um I do a podcast navigating Bitcoin's noise, a little [01:13:00] shameless plug, nothing, nothing great. Just a way to have general conversations. Don't sell yourself short. And, uh, right on Substack just came at gookin.
substack. com. And just primarily when things hit me like your email, uh, where, where some important points and, um, don't get too caught up in the noise and the fear and, you know, just kind of be who you are. If you
Marty: are, comes to the noise and the fear around Bitcoin, just always remember there's only 21 million Governments and central banks can't stop printing money and people need a solution.
It's very simple.
Kane: That's great advice.
Marty: All right That's all we got tonight freaks. Kane, thank you. Long time coming. Glad we got it. Glad we got it in the books We'll do it again at some point in the future.
Kane: Let's do it.
Marty: All right. Peace and love freaks.
