Parker Lewis examines the looming U.S. liquidity crisis, the limitations of Trump’s economic policies, and Bitcoin’s growing relevance as a hedge against systemic financial risks.
Parker Lewis discusses the inevitability of a liquidity crisis in the U.S. financial system, driven by the Federal Reserve’s policy of reducing base money amidst soaring national debt, now at $101.5 trillion against $7 trillion in base money. He argues that the Trump administration's economic measures, while helpful, are insufficient to address this systemic imbalance rooted in excessive leverage and monetary mismanagement. Bitcoin emerges as a potential hedge against such instability due to its scarcity and independence from traditional markets, though its limited adoption—less than 1% of the global population—hinders its safe-haven status for now. Lewis explores strategies like using tariffs or gold reserves to integrate Bitcoin into national policy but highlights challenges related to the dollar’s global reserve status and critiques Silicon Valley’s fixation on fiat-based ventures over Bitcoin’s transformative potential.
This podcast episode delves into the vulnerabilities of the U.S. financial system and Bitcoin’s potential as an alternative monetary system. Parker Lewis highlights the inevitability of a liquidity crisis and stresses the importance of education and adoption to unlock Bitcoin’s potential. As global debt rises and monetary policies falter, Bitcoin's role becomes increasingly relevant, with broader acceptance appearing both inevitable and essential for addressing systemic risks. The episode concludes with optimism, emphasizing Bitcoin’s power to educate and empower individuals while reshaping global finance.
0:00 - Intro
0:48 - Crossfit
2:39 - Recapping the debt problem
17:35 - Unchained & Fold
19:28 - Yield curve discrepancy
23:33 - DOGE can't help much
30:12 - Zaprite & SOTE
31:44 - Trump's plans and the Fed
48:52 - Bitcoin and inflation are insufficiently understood
1:10:41 - H1B psyop and Sam Hyde
1:15:37 - Silicon Valley mindset
1:21:20 - We're gonna get Shane Gillis
1:30:16 - Countering Tucker's CIA arguments
1:40:15 - Quantum tangent
1:43:11 - Crypto bananas
1:47:28 - Manifesting victory
(00:00) and the question in my mind is even with all this hope and optimism behind the incoming Trump Administration is there anything they can do to avoid liquidity crisis short answer is no what's impossible to predict is when and where what's possible to predict is the inevitability if you are taking dollars out of the system and putting them into a black hole Trump has talked about how our country is going bankrupt so he's very conscious of the debt but when I think about that relative to to what the Trump Administration can do on the
(00:32) margin it pales in comparison to what the fed's doing everyone has to mentally prepare what happens between here and 12 months from now might be particularly volatile be prepared freaks up and down how's CrossFit been first rip of 2025 and starting there it's been good can't believe you haven't made it into the gym I'm so disappointed so disint I can't do the high cardio stuff I puke I went once he came once you almost threw up after a 500 Meer row you did I did throw up but if Larry leard can do it and he's
(01:11) pushing 60 you can get in the gym I get in the gym I was at the I was telling you I was at the gym right before I a hold recap today I get to the gym I just CrossFit is not my not my thing gym 10an laundry gym tan laundry culture yeah it's hard for me to tan though is North Jersey or South South Jersey South Jersey I get confused most beautiful beaches in the world I will put my flag down and state that authoritatively the sand no better sand in the world than South Jersey you heard it here first Kate May County
(01:47) interesting but yeah it's good we've got uh you know bitcoiners going twice a week you know a little crew there so we need you to be a part of it yeah it's it's a terrible time too no it's perfect time 8:30 that's right when I have to get the kids to school well we actually timed it so that people could get their kids to school and then come so your kids go to school late I think they do what are they doing they do you're not allowed to drop them off before 8:30 oh yeah I think you get yelled at Will's kids get
(02:16) dropped off at like 7:30 or 7:45 yeah so so 7:30 would have been you know we got to create something that works for everybody yeah it doesn't work for me take your kids to different schools I got kicked out of the CrossFit group chat Justin I saw that is he making fun of me now yeah every time okay all right we're not here to talk about CrossFit I'm about to take a trip tomorrow it's the beginning of 2025 January 2nd sitting down to record this will probably be out next week but wanted to do a catch up with you first
(02:51) rip of the Year First Recording good way to start the year great way to start the year with mayor Parker Lewis and a question that's been eating at my mind is a lot of Hope and optimism for this incoming Trump Administration from an economic policy perspective but the string of our conversations dating back six years now I think technically maybe even longer seven years yeah 2018 I think was our first rip has been there's too much debt not enough dollars everybody's very bowled up on Trump's economic plan combination
(03:31) of tariffs lower income taxes the department of government efficiency coming in but as I was explaining to you right before we hit record we just talked about it on Rabbit Hole recap we're seeing delinquency rates for commercial mortgage back Securities reach highs not seen since post 08 you're seeing credit card delinquency rates approach 2000 pr08 levels we've obviously got this massive debt crisis that seems to be bloing out of control on top of that you have the FED having cut rates by 100 basis points since
(04:07) September and the 10-year treasury has not acted the way it historically has when the FED Cuts rates and is in perfectly inversely correlated with the FED uh rate Cuts yields gone up means people aren't very optimistic about the being able to control inflation and the prospects for the US economy over the next 10 years and the question in my mind is even with all this hope and optimism behind the incoming Trump Administration is there anything they can do to avoid liquidity crisis short answer is no I think there's nothing that they can do to
(04:52) avoid a liquidity crisis or the only thing that can prevent a liquidity crisis at this point is is the Federal Reserve preemptively creating a lot more base money and taking various measures to put those dollars into places that help prevent liquidity crisis and that everything that happens on the fiscal side from the Trump Administration or the outgoing Biden Administration and the respective treasury departments in my view sits at a kind of at a level that is secondary to what the FED does and so I think that there's always
(05:30) a argument for better Economic Policy than worse so anything that the Trump Administration can do to promote a more sound stable economic environment with the United States is a positive and and you know should certainly pursue but I view it as marginal to the 800 pound gorilla which is the Fed in its monetary policy so to kind of just catch everybody up in terms of like where we're at right now in terms of the fed and the money Printing and the debt creation I always like to just kind of set people of of of you know kind of what's been
(06:15) happening in the recent past but then in the broader context so about say in the end of 2007 there was about $53 trillion of of dollar denominated debt in the US system systemwide that's pre- crisis and at that point there was only $900 billion in in all of existence that's Bas money so approximately 50 to one but of that 900 billion only 350 to 400 billion was actually in the banks and the banks are the source of Leverage and I think of that money as as what's available to the banking system and so the the banking
(06:54) system could be thought of pre pre-financial crisis 2008 being leveraged 150 to so the financial crisis happens the Federal Reserve increases the supply of Base money by 3.6 trillion over three series of QE to take their balance sheet from approximately 900 billion to 4.5 trillion they subsequently over the period from 2007 to 2019 started taking certain of those reserves out I believe it was somewhere between um 7 to 800 billion but it squeezed the banks a lot more because it's coming dollar for dooll out of the banks and not all of
(07:33) those you know reserves that the FED has made available are sitting in the banks so they ended up taking out like 33% of the liquidity from the banks and then in September of 2019 there was the repo Market crisis where interest rates in that overnight lending Market went from 2 to 3% to 10% and that was really before covid the Inception of the wave of of money printing that happened between um 2020 and 2022 uh like the tail end of 2019 where the Federal Reserve then created five trillion through the course of of the co lockdown but really that
(08:13) liquidity crisis had started before covid so the Federal Reserve went from somewhere around 4 trillion in reserves to postco post money printing to about 9 trillion then in the spring of 2023 this the wave of Bank crisis happened um silkon Valley Bank failed First Republic failed signature silvergate for different reasons but the FED then put in their um BTF btfp btfp program to basically lend it par even if um the treasuries were underwater were underwater and they they began at that point point to put a a little bit more money back in the system
(09:03) but since then since they quelled that that series of Bank runs where everyone was fearful that if you weren't in JP Morgan or City Bank or Wells Fargo that your bank was going out of business once they quelled that they then began taking money out of the system again so from the post covid peak of money printing when there was n approximately 9 trillion in reserves they're approximately today 7 trillion so they've taken out2 trillion doll from the system from 2022 to today at that same time where the US system stands in total the
(09:46) reason why they have to put the money in is to quell the liquidity crisis which is a credit crisis where as they take the dollars out there become fewer dollars relative to the same amount of debt and then everyone figures it out they start heading for the exits it's essentially Rel leveraging the system so if QE is designed to work by first quing a liquidity crisis and credit crisis by provide providing more liquidity it's also designed to actually induce the expansion of credit and so where the system sits today is at
(10:23) 101.5 trillion based on a report that the FED just put out in the last month as of the end of the third quarter so that's systemwide federal state local corporate debt you know Financial non-financial Consumer Debt auto loans mortgages student loans credit card debt all of that is 101.5 trillion so when you think about that in context of pref financial crisis we started with this this credit problem this credit crisis too much debt not enough dollars a 52 trillion now that system is nearly doubled in size and and it doubles in it
(11:02) is induced by the creation of money so 101.5 trillion of debt stacked against 7 trillion actual dollars as base money and functionally what happens is the Fed goes from 9 trillion to 7 trillion the amount of debt doesn't go away the debt continuing to expand the federal government's run running $2 trillion deficits plus that as they take the base money out that 9 trillion going to 7 TR there's fewer dollars that are being competed for not just by the debt that exists but everyone in the economy but if you think
(11:39) about it simplistically of debt to Dollars it's functionally Rel leveraging the system and 100 divided 9 versus 100 divided by 7 is a significant difference it's it's a it's a significant Rel leveraging of the system so basically when we think about whether it's you know credit card delinquencies or commercial loan delinquencies or the tenure going up when they're lowering short-term rates the way that I think about it is the only thing that can influence the supply side of dollar interest rates is the supply of dollars
(12:16) and the FED controls that so while they may be quote reducing the short end of the curve like the the the overnight borrowing rates they're still taking money out of the system like it you know I haven't looked in the last week but up until this last month reserves provided by the FED were continuing to decline that more than anything is driving interest rates higher across the board because there are fewer dollars competing for more and more debt that exists and um the competition for those dollars becomes Zero Sum which influences
(12:52) interest rates so when I think about that relative to what the the Trump Administration can do on the margin it pales comparison to what the fed's doing and I don't personally believe that the FED understands the cause and effect of its actions it's not trying to create an allout liquidity crisis it's looking at inflation and all of these different metrics and probably not focusing as much as it should on the Rel leveraging of the financial system and the liquidity crisis that it's inevitably going to cause it's going to induce the
(13:24) need to print massive amounts of money to quell a credit collapse yeah yeah so went from I guess 11 to one leverage around 15 now yeah which is significant but it's it's that that two trillion of Base money that two years ago was available and sloshing around and it's impossible to know what that Tipping Point is right it was impossible to know in 2019 what the Tipping Point would be for the repo Market but then it shows up overnight and everything changes what's impossible to predict is when and where what's possible to predict is the
(14:08) inevitability of there being a liquidity crisis if you are taking dollars out of the system and putting them into a black hole while this metastasized credit system remains there and ever growing yeah hard to predict the wi pretty certain that the if is going to happen oh certain it's not an if it's it's a certainty it's just a it's a mathematical dilemma and that I I was when I say that it that it's difficult to predict when or where I mean that you know in the 2008 financial crisis first it was subprime but then it expanded out it was
(14:54) commercial paper it was everything you know kind of it snowballed and became a a waterfall effect and then in 2019 it was the repo market so you know it's like if they if they had a problem with mortgages in 2008 and then one of the primary instruments that they purchased between 2009 and 2014 their first qe1 2 and three were mortgages certainly they were going to have their eye on on the mortgage market and making sure that if something was coming becoming dysfunctional in the mortgage lending Market that they would they would have
(15:29) their eye on that ball in 2019 they were probably still looking at the mortgage market and seeing that things were normal in the mortgage market and then completely caught off guard when the repo Market broke and 2023 not recognizing that their interest rate policy was affecting the reserves of the banks with the treasuries that they yeah basically induced Bank runs yeah you know that as Banks had to sell assets to meet withdrawing deposits that they were having to realize these massive losses that the FED itself had
(16:07) created by rapidly increasing interest rates yeah that's just Frankenstein so so so when I say it's impossible to know where it's like there's somewhere in the credit system where like maybe they're focused on the commercial loan market and they have a plan because they're seeing the stress but there are functionally cracks everywhere because every dollar of credit is competing for the reserves of dollars and so it becomes Zero Sum they're taking dollars out of the system and then the the market generally each
(16:45) individual Market as well as the market in totality have higher interest rates because there's there's fewer dollars that are that are there to be able to lend and which critical functioning Market totally breaks first is impossible because it's a function of the market it's a it's a function I believe in 2019 what induced that or at least it was rumored was that JP Morgan pulled from the repo Market went into Cash went to cash and maybe the FED didn't know that or maybe they weren't you know coordinating that with
(17:21) the fed and so because it's Market driven you know somebody's supplying funding to roll over commercial loans say there's a big player and they decide nope no longer doing this then that market breaks so freaks this rip of tftc was brought to you by our good friends at bit key bit key makes Bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose it is a hardware wallet that natively embeds into a two3 multisig you have one key on the hardware wallet one key on your mobile device and block stores a key in the cloud for you this
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(19:20) that go sign up now at fold app.com slarty that's another interesting you brought up rollovers too that's I imagine the fed's got to be [ __ ] their pants right now and the treasury because they've again they've cut rates by 100 bips and the 10 years moved in completely inversely to those moves it's up 100 bips well the FED funds rate is down 100 bips and we have a lot of debt to roll over next year trillion I I think one of the numbers I saw out of the 36 37 trillion that we've already amassed I think something like three to
(20:01) five needs to be rolled over maybe even seven next year and the question is me my understanding I haven't been following this like a hawk as some others might you know dayto day I follow it kind of in the aggregate level is borrowing shorter terms issuing t- bills rather than longer term treasuries but somebody has to hold all that debt right that 36 trillion that exists just the federal government that 36 trillion is part of that 101.
(20:34) 5 trillion in terms of the total system and you know understanding that there's this difference between the FED dictating the reduction of short-term interest rates versus the market and the Market's willingness to buy and hold longer-term credit and longer term credit is how everything about the system is funded you know like if if you think about you know some people have revolvers and credit cards that could be pulled in a month but if there's a business issuing commercial paper it might be 30 days or if they you know if Apple's issuing debt it's a multi-year
(21:21) you know Bond fiveyear Bond seven-year bonds if someone's buying a morgage or taking a mortgage is typically 30 years so no one generally if they're relying on credit to fund their business is REI is doing it in a way that is on an overnight basis like no one you know no corporate credit is going to say well um planning my finances with this debt but this debt might not be there tomorrow Mo like most funding of individual balance sheets corporate balance sheets and government balance sheets is term debt and the
(22:00) reason for that is you want to know for an extended period of time that okay I've taken this money I've borrowed it when am I going to have to pay back obviously the federal government is quote unique in the sense that it's so intertwined with the FED that it can functionally rely on the FED printing money to not only directly purchase its debt but to fund the market with incremental dollars to be able to purchase it but that is a uh is a constant source of tension where you know in this case where you highlight the fact that the 10 year has
(22:37) gone up and the the federal funds rate has gone down it's because that 10year is actually competing for term financing in the market it's like someone has to be willing to hold it for a duration you know in this case a 10-year duration and they're looking at things like interest rates but also what other assets can I hold and you know is it worth taking you know a 4 and a half% or 5% return When I could own Bitcoin you know like that becomes a opportunity cost an opportunity cost and when real inflation is you know 5 to 10% or Worse probably
(23:20) then you're real you know you're you're really just holding nothing yeah no and I think I mean you wrote gradually then suddenly um and you don't know the whenn and I've probably said this before in the past so take it with a grain of salt but particularly like with the debt rollover in the 10-year not playing game with the FED funds rate we surpassed a trillion dollars in interest expense on the debt this year if they have to roll over 5 to seven next year at these interest rates you can see it easily blowing above one and
(23:59) a half trillion and then to your point about Bond holders whether it's public debt or corporate debt whatever it may be having to weigh the opportunity cost like how much of the decisions they're making on an ongoing basis as we head into or as we Veer into 2025 is like can I actually trust that I'm going to get paid back in 10 years on this government debt like look at the state of the fiscal side of the US economy and how much they've expanded the debt in recent years and even if they wanted to get very fiscally
(24:41) responsible bring in Doge to Cuts cut things like have they already amass too much where it's a runaway problem yes it's a it's a runaway problem I don't um I think that the the goals of Doge are are great virtuous but virtuous I think that there's a really nasty game of politics that will stand in the way right but then even if it didn't the way the FED system works is built on credit and there's basically if you looked at the expansion of credit over the course of the last 16 years since the financial crisis the expansion of the public
(25:38) debt has accounted for of that 50 trillion at least 50% I I can't remember what the federal debt was in 2007 I think it was around 20 no it had to be lower than 12 I was going to say 21 it was 12 yeah so if it's now if it say if it was 12 if it was 36 now then that would be 24 trillion of expansion I know it was four trillion when I was in high school which would have been don't AE yourself 2002 um so can you see Logan can you see what the federal debt was in 2007 there Google St Louis Fred federal debt any it's approximately 50% so the point I'm
(26:31) getting at is that if the federal government debt were not expanding like that's what's creating this overall credit expansion which is part of what the FED needs to it needs the total credit system to be growing if it's not growing it starts to collapse on itself and so if the there's this kind of Catch 22 where if the amount of debt that the fed the feder not the federal government not the Fed was creating suddenly like started to contract well that money is going to somebody you know it's getting out there
(27:07) into the economy so that itself you I don't think that they're going to be able to do it but like it's damned if you do damned if you don't like the system is so imbalanced and broken that if you you know what what's most likely to happen or what's a certainty to happen is they're going to print money but in this in this kind of scenario the fed's going to have to step in to buy the government bonds to they're gonna have to monetize the debt to control the interest rates and there that when you think about well
(27:42) should I hold a government piece of paper for 10 years that um not only has interest rate risk but has Market risk right because if you look at the actual marketto market value of the the 10e or the 30-year over the last 3 or four years there's massive marketto Market bosses everyone has always in my lifetime which now that I'm getting a little bit older you know starting to be multiple Cycles but there was always the idea of the fed put the fed put the fed put the fed put and then Jerome pal and the FED tried
(28:19) to you know really quote get out of it and they rais interest rates fast and they left them high for an extended period of time and the idea that the fed put is there is no longer assumed as religion it's dubious everyone knows that they're going to have to come in buy bonds but the individual Investor's mindset of there's a bunch of people that just got burned myself included am I going to be the one to take this gamble or should I just buy Bitcoin you know because that increasingly becomes the opportunity cost I can opt out of
(29:07) this I know they're going to have to print money I can I can even if you're considering a trade which I don't consider it a trade even if you're going to approach it as a trade so you're going to trade the fed and have to worry about whether it does something unpredictable like it did massively increasing interest rates or can I play that same trade and just buy Bitcoin because if you're viewing it as a as a a bet that the FED prints money you can just take the time and uncertainty of what the FED does and when out of the equation
(29:40) because anyone who's buying treasuries as a financial participant right now is doing so with the idea well the fed's going to have to come in and buy these and they're going to increase in value and the dollar is not going to lose its value as fast as the amount of money I'm going to be able to make on my Markt Mark gains so therefore I'm going to I'm going to gamble on on what when the FED steps in to have to buy all these treasuries and so just owning Bitcoin is a less risky proposition than trying to time the fed this rip was also brought
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(30:33) com that's drinks.com use the code tftc when you make your purchase and you'll get 15% off I'm telling you get on it freaks you're going to love this stuff and I mean with that in mind do you think obviously Trump had been coming in campaign on strategic Reserve many would argue that was simple political pandering to a base in a period when you're trying to amass vote do you think they recognize this though and that's why part of the reason why the Strategic Reserve is part of this this platform the Trump platform there's
(31:08) a recognition of this because that's the other thing like it is somewhat of a catch 22 for the federal government the treasury specifically they can't overtly come out to the market and say we're going to start diversifying some of our treasury assets into Bitcoin because we don't know what the stability of the US treasury bond Market's going to be like in the long term but is there some I don't know I from hearing Trump speak at the Bitcoin conference I'd say it was 9010 that he doesn't under he like there were certain
(31:52) things that he said that indicated oh maybe he get some of this and he's he certainly shifted significantly from where he was five or six years ago so he's no longer dismissive of Bitcoin in 2018 2019 he was dismissive of Bitcoin it's not money it's too volatile it competes with the dollar yeah the dollar strength yeah to 2024 and he's appealing to a base but he's saying other things like I want every Bitcoin to be made in America you know and you know I understand understand that this requires a lot of power we want to make cheap power so
(32:31) there's things that he's shifted on that signal there has been some positive progression of his understanding of Bitcoin but then when he says have fun playing with your Bitcoins and everything else you have to accept that there's a missing link where he's not really seeing the clear picture I think what's more likely is that he likes winning and bitcoiners win yes we do we keep winning we never get tired of winning he respects winners he respects people that are Fighters you know Bitcoin goes down and then it doesn't die and everyone's still
(33:19) out there saying you need to be saving in Bitcoin and I think he wants to win I think he I think he understands enough of it to know that there might be something here we can't afford to not be there so I think that while it's not well reasoned and well strategically thought out he has at least said something along the lines of like maybe we'll use this Bitcoin to pay off our debt you know I don't think he's you know mavelli thinking about how he's going to you know buy a bunch of Bitcoin then shift the world to a Bitcoin standard just yet
(34:02) um but I think he knows that it's something of substance and it's a base of people he needs to appeal to and that the US can't afford to not be there and so in my view I think there's this there's this important Detachment between the US dollar the Federal Reserve the the federal government and us treasuries and what's in in the interest interest of the US government and the US people and the American people versus what's in the interest of the fed and the Federal Reserve and it's a very messy situation where the federal government relies on
(34:43) the FED to finance it and so they're very much in bed with each other but their interests are actually distinct so if you looked at a scenario where El Salvador has been buying Bitcoin it has dollar denominated bonds and the actual owning of those Bitcoin is improving the credit profile of government now there's a lot of socioeconomic investment and governance that's changing to also make it a better credit but it has this Bitcoin and those Bitcoin can become part of the collateral that you might need to get your loans repaid the
(35:27) same can exist with us treasuries but you either you know they just either convert the 200,000 that they own to a strategic reserve and there's a question as to whether they really have clear claim on all 200,000 because I think like 100,000 of them are bitf xes bitf xes but regardless there's a difference between basically shifting what they currently hold into a permanent reserve and actually buying it cuz how do you buy it you either have to issue debt Deb or use some revenues from government operations or maybe take tariffs but you
(36:05) know somewhere you know it's there's a dollar of debt that either is growing or you know being repaid and so you're using those dollars to buy Bitcoin rather than either re you know repay debt or cause the debt to expand faster so I think that you know one of the things that was part of the fight in Congress was extending the debt ceiling I don't think that from what I've seen it doesn't seem like a high priority in the short term at least to cut spending to bring the debt to zero I think Trump has talked about how you know our
(36:46) country is going bankrupt so he's very conscious of the debt but I don't I don't see it um you know a shift in administration and then L the proclivity of Congress and the president to get together to spend as much as the government's taking in will change says the idea of issuing treasury debts and taking say 10% of the proceeds buy Bitcoin to hold within the bond does that make sense to you that be I think it makes sense for everybody but the calculus has to be different for the the US government because of the US dollar now in my view
(37:30) the US dollar and the interest of the US dollar and the Federal Reserve are distinct from that of the government while also accepting and recognizing that one funds the other that if you were going to shift to we're going to start holding Bitcoin and we're going to use dollar you know we're either going to use dollars to buy them or um just not sell what we what we hold that there's a consequence to the dollar status if the if the US government is doing that so anybody else that has dollar denominated assets if they could do that and they're
(38:14) comfortable with the leverage and the timing of the leverage and they're comfortable with the Bitcoin volatility it makes a lot of sense but even though the Federal Reserve is the issuer of the US dollar many people even though I think it's technically Incorrect and foundationally incorrect think about the US government as the issue of the dollar it does extract a lot of power from the dollar that other parties don't one for one and so I think its decision to issue us treasuries and buy Bitcoin has different consequence
(38:45) than anybody else not just the value of Bitcoin but to the value of the dollar yeah well the dollar at this point is a pure Confidence Game so any signal that you're not as confident in the dollar as the US government and I I think it's very important anybody listening to this watching this just just think about this if anybody was like if the US government said hey we're going to own Bitcoin it's going to help us pay off the US debt what are the holders of the US debt supposed to think what why don't I just hold Bitcoin
(39:15) hold Bitcoin rather than your debt yeah no it's it's it's a rock in a heart's place but I do think there is going to be a lot of social Framing and it's it's not going to be clean it's definitely going to be messy but I think what you're really focusing in on here again is something if you're listening or watching this to take home from this conversation and to really internalize the US government and the Federal Reserve have distinct motives and things that drive them there's big overlap but at a foundational level they are distinct
(39:55) they are they are not one and the same yeah um and somebody holding the US government holding Bitcoin would in theory improve the likelihood that more value is ultimately returned to credit to creditors of the US government than if it didn't um because Bitcoin is more valuable than the dollar I thought that sailor had an interesting point where he talked about selling all the gold and using that to buy Bitcoin which is an interesting idea I still think that there's a consequence for the dollar even if they did that but um part of Cynthia's plan
(40:37) too right to maybe it's still buy as much as I don't know not I didn't think that the Bell gold go to the fed and get the gold notes which are currently marked at $42 an ounce mark them the market and then use some of that gold to to buy Bitcoin that that might be the case I'm not 100% sure yeah if it were me I'd just take the tar I'd sell it by taking the tariffs and say that we're going to buy Bitcoin and China's going to pay for it I like that it's good framing I think people will get behind that framing yeah
(41:11) becomes a lot easier this is like now you got my mind racing too like would it be better for the US government and to Stave off any potential run on the dollar system because they're signaling that they think bitcoin's a better store of value than us treasuries would it be better just from a regulatory perspective like eliminate cap gains eliminate income tax as much as possible and essentially encourage people to adopt at an individual and business level Bitcoin and build payments and treasury systems at the individual and Company level on
(41:55) the private side let individual Americans accumulate Bitcoin debt situation just let it run wild and hope at the end enough American individuals and businesses have Bitcoin that it doesn't even matter if the dollar goes crazy does that make sense yeah I I mean I think it does I think that it might be politically easier I'll say two sides it might be politically easier to say hey look this is money um we're not going to tax it so you know and what they would likely do is I think that in a prior bill that Senator lumus had been working on there
(42:38) was a dimin DI Minimus exception which I think was $600 which I think is far too low maybe it was something like if you're buying a real good or service there's not tax but if you're trading it for dollars there is a tax so that it's more directly tied to Commerce like hey if you use this Bitcoin to buy a car it's not taxable but if you're just selling it for dollars and it is I think that politically that would be and optically make more sense I think that even something like that probably gets killed because there's some other lobbying
(43:21) power that maybe it's people who you know are issuers of stock they're like wait you're taking capital gains off Bitcoin you can't you charge capital gains on stock if you're taking it off of Bitcoin you know so there there's enough I think there's enough private interest that would actually try to hinder that hinder that and that's why the most likely thing the easiest thing I think is just an executive order that basically says we're not selling the Bitcoin and we're creating Reserve I I think anything beyond that just becomes
(43:50) a lot more politically challenging of like how do you acquire it what are you selling what are the consequences because there AR a ton of consequences just to saying hey this is a permanent reserve and I think that that is significant in itself that instantiates Bitcoin in a big way without the federal government having to go out and say we're going to sell something else to buy Bitcoin and I think that the consequence for the dollar in a negative way is extended out if they just do that yeah because if they were to do that setting aside the
(44:24) what the federal government does with the debt crisis because at a certain point you just have to admit that you're bankrupt and that people aren't getting paid back but at some and then at some some point either the Market's going to force that on you or you're going to come up with a plan before the market forces it on you my view and I don't exactly know how you would do it is that it goes a lot better if you pulled the plug rather than having the market pull the plug on you if you think about a company that that does a
(44:58) prepackaged bankruptcy or a restructuring before they've actually gotten to a point of a default that they can't cure they actually have a lot more negotiating power in that world so I don't know if that's what Trump is going to do maybe he you know what he what he seems to be doing with whether it be like the Panama Canal or Canada or Greenland you know maybe he you know wields the the power of the office to negotiate external debt away you know which isn't ridiculous as an idea well I mean let's brings up an
(45:44) important point which is his selection for treasury secretary been following Scott bent the that guy has zero understanding of Bitcoin by the way exter to bitcoin have you've been following his posturing at all or some some on his I I've seen a few Clips not not following closely well I think very aligned with what you were just describing he's been openly talking about on podcasts and at events specifically within the last 12 months about a Brett Woods 2.
(46:21) 0 like the need for for that like a basically soft recognition that us government's not going to be able to pay off the debt we need to get the world powers at the table to essentially figure out how to reset this interesting and he's talked about that in the con context of the currency or the debt Breton Woods was really Britain Woods 1.
(46:46) 0 was everything being pegged to the dollar in the World Monetary order rather than the debt scenario but I'd be I mean I'd be interested to go back and listen to some stuff that he said well imagine this time like again how intertwined they are distinct but very intertwined imagine this time around specifically considering how big the problem is that' have to be they're likely yeah needs to be a negotiated yeah settlement and recognition and it's not unique to the United States government functionally every government's in debt that in a way
(47:18) that can't be repaid now because the US has been the reserve currency they've had this drug that they could abuse more so than than everybody else so it's not unique to the United States but the problem might be as bad here maybe you know here in Japan probably less so in Europe but similarly in Europe I would not want to be in Europe I wouldn't want to be in Europe either Europe seems pretty terrible right now I want to be in Texas but what do you think this means for Bitcoin I mean let's shift from the focus on
(47:58) the Trump administration's policies the treasuries policies the FED policy its potential effect on bitcoin but take a a zoom out tomorrow is Bitcoin suet 16 is a it's a protocol that's been live in in the wild January 3rd 2009 tomorrow is January 3rd 2025 Bitcoin turn 16 seems like to reaching a state of maturity at least from acceptance that it is here to stay and it is an asset worth holding whether you're an individual company a nation state whatever it may be and you have to imagine everything we just talked about
(48:37) for the last however long 45 minutes whatever it may be is on the minds of governments individuals companies across the world and granted it is a very short period of time but um since September Bitcoin is significantly increased in value who knows that that's just typical cycle but the 10e going up and it's going up with the dollar right now Dixie's pumping Bitcoin is going up as well it seems like it's moving a ways it hasn't historically compared to um traditional markets particularly connected to the fed and and the debt is Bitcoin going
(49:20) to manifest as a true Safe Haven asset in the short term no okay yeah it's just it is too under owned to behave as a short as a get into that paint the picture of how under owned Bitcoin is I would say that it would be a stretch if 1% of the population had any material exposure to bitcoin I can't remember who uh um like one Benchmark I would use is like in the Microsoft shareholder proposal it was 99.
(50:09) 5% that said no yeah but granted historically shareholders voting against board proposals is like that percentage like this never happens okay but H how many of the S&P 500 companies own Bitcoin less five is micro stry in yet or they're in NASDAQ I don't think M Square Tesla yeah who else I is micro strategy in the S&P no they're the N but even if they're not it's like let's or even if they are if it's square square block Tesla um M assum micro strategy is is there another one no less than 1% of the S&P 5 yeah so less than 1% of the S&P or five yeah five would be 1%
(51:04) so it's a good Benchmark to say no more than 1% of the population has really figured it out and you know Tesla hasn't figured it out either you know they owned some but they sold 75% of what they held they bought like 40,000 Bitcoin and then they now have 10,000 now they've probably learned something about Bitcoin in the interim and probably have a much better understanding about it now than when they bought it but since Tesla bought Bitcoin in 2021 not a single fortune or not a single S&P 500 company has disclosed that they bought Bitcoin
(51:46) if they are it's one or two but I don't know one by name and I think we would know it so the idea of something being a safe haven I think about it as people are already piped into this asset whatever that safe haven are and when something happens that becomes disloca in traditional markets or causes people to become more conservative they shift their allocations to the things that's more conservative and they're already piped into that they they already own infrastructure built out for those flows to flow through yeah there's INF exactly
(52:28) there's infrastructure the people that that want to own the asset already do and they're increasing their exposure in that time of fear or in that time of something occurring to need whatever you go to for a safe haven so if less than 1% of the world is really piped in and it doesn't mean it's like yeah you can buy you know virtually the entire world's piped in to be able to buy ibit the the Bitcoin ETF but if one in if fewer than one in 100 understand Bitcoin how do you flee to the thing that is quote supposed to be
(53:09) the safe haven asset if you don't own it in the first place that that that that fleeing is typically oh I'm going to increase my exposure to this safe Thing by 5% well 99% of the world has zero functionally so it by definition is not a safe haven it's the one thing that's not correlated dollar will be the one thing that continues to be not correlated to Dollar because it's the one thing that's actually competing with the dollar um so I think it's going to continue to behave like it has over the last 16 years but also the last four
(53:40) years which is it's going to go up as more people figure it out and then some of those people are going to sell or existing holders are going to smell small percentage so there's going to continue to be Cycles in the short term and that it feels like we're still in the very early part of a adoption wave that roughly 100K feels stable and boring now and there might be something that happens you know March of 2020 where there's a liquidity crisis and Bitcoin goes down maybe it goes down again to 70 or 60 but it balances back and then far
(54:15) exceeds any other assets when they print money so I don't necessarily think that's going to happen I'm just saying something like that's possible because there is a looming dollar credit crisis depending on what the fed does and what the FED has shown us to do is that from 2008 to 2020 they moved a lot faster or 2019 really so I would expect them to move even faster this time maybe they preempt it maybe they start printing money before it becomes apparent and there isn't that real acute liquidity crisis that's interesting that's a
(54:48) that's a change of thinking for me you've always said they'll never print until they the problemz I don't they do I don't think that they will they've always waited for the problem but what what they shifted from 2008 to 2020 and Neil kashari I would say was probably um key in this where he is basically signaling alarm saying like we can't allow it happened in 2008 to happen and if we wait it's just going to make our problem larger and then we're going to have to do more eventually so that that psychology has shifted my view is is
(55:27) that it is very difficult politically optically for the FED to go print a bunch of money when food inflation is 10 to 20% every time I go buy food I think how are people not feeling like the Dollar's hyperin lating every time they buy food it's insane right I think people do feel like it I I think you listen to the warm Mode episode uh uh I need to watch the last 30 minutes I've listen the first two and half I think that was a great insight into I mean shout out billion Spud but two guys really haven't been focused on oh actually know I did yeah I
(56:00) watch I watched the the the whole thing yeah yeah I mean but Spud talking about how much paint has oh yeah no that was a great part yeah where he was talking about um where you know they basically take that on and it's a risk you know it's an upfront cost and it was something like you know paint going from like $20 to 100 like good paint he like no one you can't you don't can't use good paint anymore it's 5S yeah something like that yeah um so I just kind of go off on that to say that it it is difficult optically for them to come
(56:35) out and print a lot of money without there being some Market event that allows people to say yeah I understand that there's inflation but the market was crashing so they had to do it so I still think until they until they cross that Chasm it's more likely that they wait for there to be a clear a liquidity crisis to then step into print money I'm just saying that they certainly shifted from 2008 to 2020 and maybe they go the step further this time I'm raising that to say in the context of Bitcoin everyone always have
(57:14) to has has to have their head on a swivel you have to be cognizant of something like March of 2020 where Bitcoin went from 8,000 to 4,000 right before the having right so many people it was two months before that 2020 having May of 2020 and and Bitcoin bounced back and then massively outperformed every other you know broad asset or index I think you know if Bitcoin went from eight you know adjusting from that 8,000 down to 4,000 then back to 8 bitcoin's up approximately 12 times and something like the S&P is probably
(57:51) up 75% or two you know one one m M something like that could happen again but it still feels like we're right in the pocket early pocket of an adoption wave so while something like that might happen in a in an acute crisis it feels like there will be significantly more adoption from here but more adoption from here means it going from 1% to 2% or half a percent to 2% that's crazy to think like a doubling of adoption to 2% yeah to 2% so I think in that world like Bitcoin can't be the flight to safety because it's one
(58:32) definitionally under owned and then it being under owned is the best signal for not understood yeah did you read Ross's letter he sent it to me I need to I still need to read it okay yeah I was going to read it tonight I I read some of the xers but I was going to read the whole thing tonight it's really I highly recommend if you haven't read Stone reg's annual 2020 4 investor letter written by Ross Stevens um founder and CEO of Stone Ridge uh go read it but the reason I bring it up is in external to the letter I think one
(59:11) of the trends I've been paying attention to I know we've been talking about this on the side off and on over the last year but I can't get my mind off of it is this idea of giving bitcoiners the ability to not have to sell their Bitcoin like unchain is the perfect example like the The Landing desk giving you the ability to get dollar liquidity without selling your Bitcoin and it seems like more products are coming to Market that are going to enable that which should hold Supply off the market for longer who knows how much Supply but I think in
(59:47) terms of building the infrastructure that would make Bitcoin a potential Safe Haven asset in the future these types of products in uh Stone Ridge talking about nid dig spinning out a product that allows you to get lower interest rate loans and they're essentially um leveraging premium payments on insurance products that they have exposure to to enable that type of dollar liquidity for for bitcoiners I think that's great you I think all sorts of maturation and capital markets development in around Bitcoin and for
(1:00:26) people that hold Bitcoin helps accelerate the normalization and Adoption of Bitcoin so I think that's good nothing can get around the fact that someone first has to understand Bitcoin there will be a time we always come back to this there will be a time we always come back to this when people adop Bitcoin like they pick up the phone and use it and they don't have to understand it but we're not at that time yet that's why I like these products though because they're focused on people who do get Bitcoin no I I like
(1:00:59) the product too I'm just saying that to to um to shift Bitcoin forward we need more adoption so you put out the comment about you know 2025 is going to I'm going to be even more militant about helping people understand Bitcoin that is that a good goal that great goal but that one in a 100 problem realistically it's probably more like 1 in 200 it needs to become 1 in 100 2 and 100 three and 100 and what drives us from where we're at to that point is some prior understanding of Bitcoin so somebody listens to a podcast somebody reads a
(1:01:49) book somebody goes to a conference and Hears A talk and then something happens in the real world the FED starts printing money more the damn those bitcoiners were right they said they were going to have to print money and then they did and and this printing of money is tied to bitcoin or you know somebody hears somebody talk and talk about how the money printing is what causes inflation and the way to protect yourself against Bitcoin and then damn they go to the grocery store and the eggs are $15 a dozen rather than $9 a dozen or eight or
(1:02:23) seven whatever it is they they keep getting higher and then someone looks like in bitcoin's $200,000 and they say it okay I've connected this prior knowledge to Something in the real world that's allowed Bitcoin to unlock for me that the way to really accelerate is getting more people understand Bitcoin and that that is a function of Education yeah and unfortunately for us the Silicon Valley Tech Bros behind Trump are distracting people I saw you Tweeting at jamath the other week yeah yeah it's bad I think so I mean he quot
(1:02:57) tweeted Kyle Sani who was pumping the helium token in his talk yeah explaining it doesn't help people understand Bitcoin right um do you think that's self- serving or do you think he doesn't understand Bitcoin I think he doesn't understand Bitcoin and I think it's also self-serving I think he you know from his prior podcast he's a salon bag holder in his own terms to the tune of like he made a comment that made it seem like he owned a billion dollars which is a lot but you know he's someone that is out there positively talks about
(1:03:35) Bitcoin but I would say has a Fiat mindset he wouldn't make the comments that he does about other grifting things if he really understood Bitcoin if he did then he's just a sociopath which he might be but I I think it's more likely that he doesn't understand Bitcoin he's you know right or wrong no fault of his own Fiat minded you know he wants to issue a 100e bonds Venture investors think like they still dollars their unit of account they they think that the dollar their bank accounts going up in dollars even if
(1:04:09) they're translating Bitcoin to dollars is this the measuring stick of success not necessarily like in bravado but I'm playing the game and I'm winning the game I'm winning the game means I'm creating value if I'm accumulating more money which of course it's not because they're just printing more money but I think that that I think the more likely explanation of that Silicon Valley grift mindset which is functioning all them the other thing I said was that Silicon Valley is largely a monoculture it's all group think they
(1:04:41) all one person does something or one Venture firm does something and then everyone focuses on that theme and they and I have not met one Silicon Valley traditional VC that understands Bitcoin not one not one I don't know if you have I'm sure I'm sure there somebody out there but not in that you know um Sequoia a16z Benchmark whatever the other ones are um that they all got on this combination of blockchain Revolution and ethereum and they sold that story to a bunch of people and those people happened to be the people that are
(1:05:20) around Trump Peter teal said that he sold all of his Bitcoin or fun all in his stuttering way and then these people can't talk Peter Peter teal is the guy behind Vance right and David Sachs you know he probably speaks the most cly about Bitcoin but still he's got blind spots he invested in multi-coin right so I do think that it is a they also invest props them they invested in fold like they're in yeah and I believe they also uh invested in River I think too I think could be wrong could be I think they invested in voltage so but still
(1:06:03) when you have somebody going out there and then thinking that there's some fundamental value in salana it's kind of it might be one of those things where they are making calculated risk assessed well what's the probability of this versus that without it's Tech investors thinging it's Tech Invasion not monary and that there's a probability of success and if successful then this will have a postive out that will outweigh the failures of these other nine Investments my point is that the that Tech Circle that's around
(1:06:36) Trump seems to be more of the Silicon Valley group thing that doesn't understand the money side of Bitcoin and I think that that could stand in its way but it's not going to stand in the way from somebody buying the Bitcoin standard or you know listening to a podcast because there's actually a there's truth and objectivity in the world and and despite all the noise people are finding the truth and what it feels like to me like the year of 20125 even though Bitcoin is so under owned and so misunderstood or is under understood word no uh
(1:07:14) underunderstood no uh it's certainly under owned that other word not a word but that little understood people do not understand it the very few people understand coin that it does feel like for whatever the critical mass cuz I've always thought that the critical mass is somewhere like five out of like 5% of people that once 5% of the population gets it once it's one out of 20 it just snowballs and that's when there will just be the you know one exit of the crowd of theater somewhere around one and 12 people so if it's one and that
(1:07:53) that it might maybe it's one in 100 Maybe and one out of 100 I don't know but there's going to be a Tipping Point and it's not the majority it's somewhere a lot earlier than people think that it feels like we're getting closer to the point where it's where critical mass of people that have not yet accepted the reality that bitcoin's the new world order the new form of money who whoa be careful throwing that around what do you mean throw out New World Order we're not we're not we're not the new world order here I even know what
(1:08:26) that you're going to get you got like conspiracy theorist going to be like yeah yeah you're we now okay but I'm saying it feels like uh you're in U you know the new like the new standard of money the new monetary order the new monetary order that no one controls it you just all have to play along now um that people who've been paying attention but that have been denying feel like they're in a straight jacket like they they want to keep finding some problem with Bitcoin coin and as it finds equilibrium at approximately $2 trillion
(1:09:01) and as the idea of a strategic Reserve is being talked about for a number of different countries and Ralia is coming out saying it's a it's a it becomes a hard to deny and you just see like when I make the straight jacket analogy it's like there's there's less and less wiggle room to to deny it you're just kind of taking a lot of energy to not uh make a lot of Headway that the people that are curious about it it's easier for them to find a resource and understand it and it's becoming that much harder to deny and it feels like we're close to
(1:09:37) that critical mass so now I really like your comment on the the monoculture and in Silicon Valley and that Community if you will being disconnected from the reality of the Common Man the everyday American citizen I think that popped up over Christmas with this whole H1B Visa that's a s up why is it a s up because they somebody wants you focused on it we we talked about this in text didn't we yeah we did but now we're podcast yeah what do we discuss uh it's a s up against what's distracting us from where we come to conclusion
(1:10:14) um deporting violent illegal criminals and securing the southern border that there was some interest that wanted it to be about oh you just don't like immigrants and so the whole H1B thing came out of nowhere was was not I feel like Trump's made some comment about in the past but like it was it was non-existent on the campaign yeah forc the issue and then suddenly V ramaswami makes a dumbass tweet and then somebody else put out a tweet about what's the guyun serum I don't know I don't know but that guy um so it's a s up but go
(1:11:01) on I was going to say like highlight I'm was going they want people focus on that rather than the bigger issue which is the B Southern border locking it down and deporting violent illegal criminals is the number one priority yeah but I do think there is some validity to the idea that the there is but that's why it's s up yeah there's got to be some validity okay to distract everybody okay focusing on the validity validity is that Silicon Valley completely disconnected from and going back to be's tweet which I think
(1:11:33) was had ve on um a couple years ago I think he has good intentions but it was completely misguided with this tweet and this idea of I think he has enough self-a awareness to realize that he really [ __ ] up yeah but idea the silver lining of it was people were like all right you're going to put this out there let's go search the H1B Visa database and see who's is actually coming in Via this program and it was obvious that it is being abused to the point where it's essentially just corporations trying to bring in people
(1:12:05) to pay them lower wages uh at the expense of the American I do think that that's again not the intention of the program but likely solution I thought it funny we were we were texting about how was a scop and then I was sitting on my porch and the the post the postman walks up to my door speaking some foreign language that I couldn't even tell you what it was I'm like why is this the US Post Office wasn't even like FedEx or DHL wasn't a private Corporation I was like why is this like he was literally actively on his um you
(1:12:44) know Bluetooth Bluetooth talking to somebody in a foreign language like why is this the postman this is America but anyways I do think that it is and it was part of the um again I'll accept the scop but the who was the guy Sam Hyde yeah I never heard of Sam hide oh he's but it was great that he's the ghost of Kev he's the ghost of Kiev Samuel aled is he no I mean Sam hiide I've I've been on a Sam hiide for for it's like a millennial um most famously known for his comedy but I think if you understand his comedy Logan correct me if I'm wrong
(1:13:22) your thoughts on him but I think at the end of the day like a very uh impressive I don't want to call him philosopher or whatever but like he he thinks very hard and he's very articulated about this and I think comedy is the medium through which he gets a lot of these political ideas like he gave a TED Talk yeah so well i' had never heard of him yeah so the first of my knowing him was you put that tweet out several people did but he put that out on Chris uh New Year's Eve right it's like a 45 minute video everyone should watch it you know
(1:13:56) it'll propagate scop but in the interest of that go ahead but he talks about in that how it's a very Marxist idea to think about individuals as economic units and that if you're just thinking about them as economic units then you're missing the point that that you have to believe that there's worth in each individual and that if you don't care about the American and one of the broadest point he was making was that if you don't care about the American people first and foremost and you're just focused on Americans idea you're not equipped to
(1:14:33) lead um but tying that back to Silicon Valley investors it does feel to me and and part of it might be biased by my own frustration that there is very much a group think and no one seems to be able to break out of it to understand Bitcoin to then lead the way in helping all their peers understand that they've missed this or they've misunderstood what's happening here that if this the Silicon Valley mindset feels very and also like not just talking about Silicon Valley VCS but what they're Capital produces what yeah
(1:15:17) what what they what they focus on building as a as a region they used to create value now it feels like they are more Fiat than anybody that they think about everything as a Fiat unit economic unit and they're optimizing to make Fiat money and to track the Fiat scorecard because the accumulation of money in a sound money environment is associated with the production of value that if nobody could produce more money the person that has the most money has produced more for others than they've consumed from them so there's something
(1:15:57) Noble in that but if you live in this broken world where you can acquire money without actually delivering value then it becomes very pernicious as an economic incentive but if you don't know that you still might be chasing that end goal of well if I'm accumulating more dollars that's a signal that I'm delivering more value and it might not be the case it feels like the Silicon Valley investors have this very Fiat minded of focusing so much on the economic unit and failing to understand that they stopped actually creating things and
(1:16:32) creating things of value and that that's just a unfortunate reality and hope hopefully they come out of it and um realize that there's a difference between making money and producing value if you're producing real value you will also make money but you can make money without producing things of tangible value and in this world of crypto and Fiat they've optimized for trying to make Fiat rather than produce value yeah no we actually bookmark this let's keep checking in on this just thinking like post 08 like Wall Street Financial
(1:17:12) system rightfully so is the boogy B the not the Boogey B but the the thing that people pointed out was like you created this problem you hyper financialized the global economy and levered it up and destroyed it and it's funny just soci sociologically post 08 like there was a big Confluence of factors leading to this I think one major factor was the disdain for for Wall Street and many people started focusing on Tech so it'll be interesting anthropologically at some point in the future to do a retrospective and just see if that shift
(1:17:51) of talents and people not recognizing that the problem at the cour of it was the money it just shifted from Wall Street was probably still uh a material part of the problem today um but a lot of it shifted to Silicon Valley and Tech as a sector yeah I thought about how when I came out of college the the brands that were most pristine if you were associated with the brand that was a signal that you were the best it was Goldman Sachs it was Google in a different ball game it was Harvard and it was anything having to do
(1:18:38) with Silicon Valley like if you work for Andre and horror wents before it was a16z that was the equivalent of Goldman Sachs on Wall Street and again it might just be my echo chamber but for each of those like Google A6 Z and Goldman or Harvard their brands are now counter signals for people that are out of the Matrix that if you're still using those as your benchmark then you're both chasing the wrong thing and it's also there's a growing number of people that look at you and say like oh you that was what you wanted to pursue like how why
(1:19:23) wouldn't you do something more noble than that or or something more worthwhile so it's interesting how that shift where it was the disdain of Wall Street after the financial crisis but it might increasingly become this super out of touch we're going to change the world kind of fraudulent Silicon Valley Mantra yeah and I am curious I mean I you know I am hopeful that that change Trends the way that we got on this was that the people around Trump that inner circle are all these Silicon Valley Tech people who seem to for the life of them not be able
(1:20:01) to understand Bitcoin I hope that changes it's not like Dam you know may they all be damned and burn the boats burn the bridges hopefully they figure not trying to burn Bridges here silic Stoke a critical conversation discussion that will hopefully be G going and that's I think we've talked about this that's one thing I worry about with this the people surrounding Trump and this Administration as it pertains to economic policy and crypto policy quote unquote hate that I even have to say that like it should be
(1:20:32) Bitcoin policy yeah the thing we got on this point of it's not going to be those people that help accelerate us towards a better understanding of Bitcoin those people that are around Trump maybe RFK Jr maybe Vivic but certainly not Vance certainly not saxs who he's made his head of quote crypto and Ai and all those people in the the circles around teal Vance Sachs because they're a monoculture while that's the case I think everything's lining up like the you know the stars are aligning of unlocking a massive wave of
(1:21:10) people who do real things and create real value in the real economy to understanding Bitcoin I think it's the beauty of of Bitcoin as well is while certainly I think we would both agree that we would prefer for this incoming Administration and the people being placed in particular positions to really grock Bitcoin and understand it the gravity of it and the importance of putting forth good policy I think again going back to the war Mode episode like more education getting to the minds of people like billion Spud and Their
(1:21:48) audience and the small business owners that's Z right is that the other guy's name Spud that's his nickname yeah okay Andrews is real name yeah when I was trying to find his name to write a note in the book for him I was like I mean I've always listen to podcast but I don't even know the guy's name yeah um point being like you don't need while it would be preferable for those people to put forth sensible and um policy not get distracted by broader crypto ground up people getting this information information you see to zap
(1:22:26) right every day is happening yeah I think that information is getting out there and I think maybe it's that uh because I I do think you and will going on the warmo podcast and having that long discussion it brings really important information to warm Mo's audience in war Mode's own voice and in billian Spud's voice you know of trying to understand it and reason through the questions and asking and I think one of the things that was most consequential about the 2024 Camp campaign cycle was Trump going on all the
(1:23:07) podcasts so I think that one of the things that hopefully continues to happen in 2025 is not only someone like yourself and tftc getting more and more bringing more people in to the tent like having people like Sam and Courtney who you had on discuss Health bringing kind of people into our world but then also us going on more mainstream podcast and talking to their audiences to help them on hopefully Rogan having somebody on that's a Bitcoin that actually understands it that that as a strategy to having people understand the message
(1:23:47) is having somebody else be able to ask questions that's actually you know not in initiated or doesn't yet fully understand what's there but getting to ask the questions to be educated themselves like there was the podcast that uh who was it like breed love went on a podcast with um Danica Patrick you know getting more bitcoiners to go on you went on Dan Patrick's podcast yeah which you know she's got a huge audience and so I think I expect that more of that will happen are you ready for Rogan what's I think it's got to be you or
(1:24:26) safe I mean you are Austin I me I am I am an Austin but uh I think safe would be best you know if safe can't make the flight then I'd be B team but I want to say don't do not no I'm just saying that push yourself to the B Team hey safe was on CNBC finally finally he did a great job too did a great job and squawk Joe squa was drooling over drooling so that was great speak this uh Matt mccusker Billy's brother we got to get it on the books we're talking to his brother we're going to schedule yeah isn't he going to be in
(1:25:03) here yeah he's here okay he's going to come in got yeah so I think just the the Grassroots of getting there's no way around it it's like there Trump being in office the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve more people talking about strategic Bitcoin Reserve certainly positive the circles around him not positive to accelerating Bitcoin all of it is more positive than if Elizabeth Warren was functionally running the administration policy I like to think or the framework I would have is that Bitcoin doesn't really need favors and
(1:25:39) accelerance people can make our lives miserable if they want to make our lives like Elizabeth Warren running policy would be a disaster and just as an individual make our lives harder so just taking that pressure Away pressure away will be great for Bitcoin over the next four years even that over a long enough time Horizon would accelerate Bitcoin as well the trying to strangle It ultimately ignites the fire but it can make a lot of people's lives miserable in the interim particularly people that are building Bitcoin Tools in this
(1:26:21) jurisdiction so from that standpoint it's hugely positive they they don't need to do anything else other than not continue operation choke point 2.0 and otherwise really try to restrict Bitcoin from a tax policy or what the IRS is trying to do right now so I think it's a huge positive all of that exists as a baseline the true accelerant of Bitcoin is more people understanding it and so if we're going to be militant we're going to need to get people in this studio and go out into the world and talk to other people's podcasts yeah that's Trump led
(1:27:00) the way we need to follow that's your advice from milon Marty let's get all more podcasts you have you have you bring those people in like Matt mccusker Shane Gillis I expect Shane Gillis and Matt megusar to be in this room they're pretty busy men you know they're busy men but they're making a lot of money they need to be preserving that purchasing power because yeah well they got it good they need to they need to be maximizing it too much and then going on their podcast you know you getting them you doing you
(1:27:32) and will going on the war mode and having it be I don't know what you call that a simal cast or cross post they Haven posted on their feed yet we need to I need to text Billy Billy get it up yeah that that cross post but if you go on the YouTube it's all they they have a rabid fan base yeah we're in it but it's been crazy to see the YouTube comments of here for war mode actually learned something was cool yeah they need to they need to get that actually cross posted so I'm saying that that would be good you going
(1:28:01) on we need stop talking about me you all of us yeah everybody that that will be the if you want to militantly accelerate sitting down with somebody that has an audience of a million people hey call her daddy I'm here no don't do that way I'm here Mark Cuban looked so pathetic it's cuz he is wait wait did he go on the callor daddy no no did he go on Haw Tua he went on Haw Tua she hasn't shown up she she launched that Meme coin and went dark for better part of a month now this Ed a sign of the Fiat economy when HW Tua can become a that's a
(1:28:38) scop it's just I whether it's a s she went from like man industry interview the biggest podcast it's not the biggest podcast but it's just a podcast yeah but the fact that Mark hbin had the humiliation ritual of going on that podcast gu like might might make it all worth it do you think Market's Bitcoin no do you think we'll get Kyle to understand Bitcoin this this cycle the year 2025 do we get Kyle I say yeah come on Kyle the year 2025 Kyle bass understands Bitcoin he comes around I believe this is the year Kyle I'm optimistic it's not some
(1:29:19) Chinese s up we can walk through we were I was joking with somebody that um oh somebody somebody thinks it's a Russian s someone like um who is it some big Wall Street investor thinks thinks it's a Russian sop like I a household name I was like yeah it's kind of funny because that person thinks that it's a Russian scop Kyle thinks it's a Chinese scop others think it's an NSA Tucker Carlson thinks it's a CIA yeah so here you got three people you you know pointing the gun it's like oh it's China oh it's Russia oh it's the US it's like guys don't you
(1:29:59) see what's happening here like it just is and it works and if there three different of these you know high profile thinkers are thinking that it's you know one of the US China or Russia that all have conflicting interests like there can't be a story that it's one of the three of them and it's more likely to be none of them and the reality of the situation is it it has Bitcoin has to work you have to assume that it was and then be able to reason to yourself of knowing why even they couldn't stop it wait wait let's
(1:30:35) get dig into this because I love the way you explain this and this is you need to like write this is for tuer Carlson is is the next is is the next gradually than suddenly essay okay why the Govern why a government didn't create Bitcoin or even if how would you how would you phrase the chapter so I don't know what I would name it but but my my understanding is that Tucker Carlson thinks that the CIA created bitcoin or CIA or NSA that's his hang up and I don't really care other than he has a big microphone so it would
(1:31:04) be helpful for him to understand it but that the logic that you have to approach it with is that for Bitcoin to work now I don't think that the CIA created bitcoin but in order for you or anyone to adopt Bitcoin is money you need to approach it from the perspective of as a thought exercise let's assume that the CIA created bitcoin now I need to evaluate whether there's any consequence to that if the if this if if I'm correct Am I Wrong assumption that the CI did CIA did create it could they stop it because the only way that Bitcoin is viable
(1:31:54) money is if they in fact did create it and if they in fact couldn't stop it if there was if there was nothing that they could do to undermine it only in that scenario could Bitcoin be viable as money because it has to be the scenario that whether or not whoever created it whoever created it could not now undermine it whether that was Satoshi Nakamoto a genuine person that altruistically wanted to do some good in the world or the most or Satoshi Nakamoto the CIA spook right it has to it has to have been either of those two
(1:32:34) characters and not be possible for either of them to either of them to prevent regardless of who that entity is in in anybody's mind and that in order to be able to reason through is there anything that ex interests the US government government the CIA the the state of Russia the state of China is there anything that any one of those interests could do individually or together to prevent Bitcoin requires some first principal understanding of how the Bitcoin network works and why it works being able to visualize
(1:33:17) these this construction of nodes that are very ephemeral that can come and go and be spun up on new hardware and disappear Keys having copies and being in multiple places and then that being the how of like how the network actually works and passes messages and why it works and being so redundant and why it would be impossible to stop by any individual actor or groups of actors and then the critical why it exists of why the world needs sound money and why everyone has an incentive to adopt a form of money that can't be printed and then why
(1:33:55) everyone has an incentive not in terms of the greater good but in terms of their individual selfish interest to ensure that nobody else can cheat that everyone has the incentive to prevent everyone else from printing money and because everyone has that individual interest that's why the Bitcoin network from an economic incentive P perspective is so sound that in order to go back to the challenging of if the CIA created it can they now stop it but it requires that that knowledge and so I do think it's a good thought exercise for someone
(1:34:30) that's hung up on well what if the government created it's like well assume that they did the only way it works for anybody that's adopted it to this point they've had to reason through that they've had to come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter who created it in order for it to be money regardless of the who no one can stop it steal man' agree with everything you just said but Satoshi CIA spook accumulated a million Bitcoin is he just getting un does the US government just get an unfair Advantage no does anybody who held Bitcoin earlier
(1:35:13) get an unfair Advantage yeah okay that's what Tucker's gonna say when you're on Tucker Carlson we're manifesting right now Logan manifest with us hold your hands up like this there you go what's he going to say he's going to say I think this is a poor Steelman I don't I'm not saying it's a good steel man I could just see like this is what somebody's going to say wait wait repeat it like is it fair that US Government launch just accumulated a million coins before every Other Nation So my answer to that running with
(1:35:43) the not saying that we believe this this CIA satosi The Spook best understanding he's a innocent young American or Western European that speaks English and created a Bitcoin because there's a problem with printing money that's almost certainly what happened but again for this thought exercise to help people who get hung up on the idea that maybe it was the NSA or maybe it was the CIA we walk through the logic of you have to assume that they did and then be able to understand why even in that case they couldn't stop it okay assume that
(1:36:20) they didn't and Satoshi is rumored to have a million Bitcoin you say no if you created sound money for the world that worked and everyone can voluntarily opt in no one has to use the system and there's 21 million would the person who or entity that created it get 5% because they can the beautiful thing about it is no one can create money and you can only spend the money once so if you don't use that money to create things of value then it just gets eventually distributed so if you think about it as an individual entity it's
(1:36:58) the exact same dilemma which people are going to come to and say you bought Bitcoin when it was $1,000 this isn't fair you have a hundred times as much Bitcoin as much purchasing power or maybe not well in many cases it becomes orders of magnitude harder to accumulate the same amount of nominal Bitcoin with each passing cycle so the answer to that is that the people that valued Bitcoin before everyone else afforded everyone in the future the ability to Value it and securing private keys and carrying those private Keys forward to be able to
(1:37:44) spend and spend the units of economic value to facilitate trade and create things of real world of real world value everyone should get that benefit because they afford it everyone else in the future not just in the rest of our lifetimes but everyone Beyond there right so I think that you know there's always there's going to be people that say it wasn't fair like holding Bitcoin was easy or seeing Bitcoin before it was easy to see was easy but that that dilemma of people that were early to bitcoin like it's applicable to us to
(1:38:22) Spook yeah 2010 is applicable to satos The Spook so if Dustin traml one of the first Bitcoin miners on the network got a lot of Bitcoin then he valued Bitcoin before everybody else and he afforded everybody else the ability to because he valued it right so it's to everybody's benefit because it's this infrastructure and utility that applies to a billion people in the world and so even the last person that adopts Bitcoin that's alive today in future Generations is going to benefit for what people very early did so of course it's great and if
(1:39:05) the guy Satoshi came back and dumped a million Bitcoin on the market that two would be good for Bitcoin there wouldn't be a risk when can we expect the SAA I've got a long listed to-dos I think you put this one up to the top I like this one I I thought I was thinking that the quantum Quest would be Quantum so but it gets people I've had people that were hardened you know Harden Bitcoin they they're in three different people that are close to me and be like hey we're good with this Quantum stuff right so I think that
(1:39:41) it's one that was also something that chamoth yeah came out and talked about like when I saw that uh Google came out with this Willow cancel all my meetings I had to cancel all my meetings and do the calculations to be like when does this break Bitcoin and what I what the math says is and there's there's some you know questions around the Collision resistant or whatever talk the these [ __ ] artists you're giving like a trump impression for Chamas I feel like sometimes I feel like sometimes you do like a an Irish I don't know there's some there's
(1:40:17) yeah okay whatever but my point is that um that that one gets people yeah that chouth said is like Bitcoin could be broken in three to five years and what those people never you know do the math on as Silicon Valley quants and in tensas is like when does JP Morgan break then when does the US the digital US dollar system stop working because it's built on HTTP literally they always do this on bitcoin because there's so stupid but so I feel like the quantum question I don't I don't feel like I individually can write it but I think
(1:41:01) from a logical standpoint I'll be able to create a very logical hierarchy to help people reason through it and it gets a lot of people I'm going to talk to Jimmy about like him writing like the technical aspects and then me kind of providing that logical architecture so that was going to be the next one but what would the title of the Satoshi The Spook Bitcoin I will figure it out but I agree that that's a good one even the the idea is even if a spook created bitcoin Bitcoin can only work if the spook can't stop it and so you need to understand
(1:41:43) why that needs to be your adversarial thinking because it is true you have to assume adversarial that your enemy created it yeah you know and if you're a case your Spooks your enemy then assume the Chinese CCP created [Music] assume Putin made it in a Bas assum the CIA and then try to figure out why what if Mar invented Bitcoin I think i' have to dump it I think I think that would be you should have seen him I I didn't watch the HW Tu podcast I would never do that but just watching the two-minute clip that was on twit
(1:42:24) that guy could not have created bitcoin even before that he said that he he would rather have bananas than Bitcoin he can at least eat bananas he's playing didn't Justin Sun buy the $6 million banana and then eat it yeah yeah I talked to him about it after you did he tell yeah apparently like the art installation did he do that because of Mark cubin I don't know if he did that because I don't know um but apparently he was telling me like it's he has copyrights to the inst like that it's like the design of the installation is
(1:42:57) copyrighted so like you can take duct tape and tape it to a wall and literally have museums friended out and he gets like copyright royalties on that this is this is very Fiat oh yeah I don't even want to he was describing I was like wow this incredible I have see I have I have friends that are in Normy land tra trafi friends like combination of hedge fund private Equity wealth management are they getting yet no they they see things like that and they're like this is Bitcoin that that's that's the reality of the majority of America they see
(1:43:34) things like the shitcoin crypto guy buying the banana for a million dollars and saying he's going to eat it and they associate they literally will text me that and be like this is Bitcoin and I say no that's Fiat okay we've got our third essay for gradually on suddenly volume two banana on the wall is not Bitcoin yeah crypto is not Bitcoin no I think I think we're close we're close to volume two here it is shocking how many people see the most degenerate things nfts bananas crypto shitcoin guys buying them for Millions all the
(1:44:19) grift nothing none of as Bitcoin and people have this mental Association that that is Bitcoin that that's real that's what we're up against here mil Mar is going to come out May that militant for Bitcoin adoption but should we be more militant towards the [ __ ] coiners I I think part of the militant we got to be we got to be positive here yes but we have to reinforce in each one of those venues or Communications in an Express way that this is this is something different and hit it head on because if you think that
(1:44:58) you're doing that without being Express and hitting it over the head 10 times someone I've sat in conversations where 2our session I'm explaining Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin saying things like you money converges to one and then a wealthy dude will introduce me to his friend and say hey this is Parker he's my crypto guy like how's it feel to be somebody's crypto guy so it's it's bad it's gotten so some days it's made me want to quit I'm not your crypto guy but uh thanin your buddy guy but um so but that's just reality you can Hammer the Bitcoin
(1:45:40) message Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin if you are not expressed that this thing crypto is snake oil it is grift and when I'm talking about Bitcoin is only Bitcoin and helping them look into the camera understand that it is that grift and Bitcoin isn't crypto and like when with the paint stuff with it wasn't even paint it's just duct tape and a no I'm talking about bil Billy M oh the paint you know of helping them be like and like this other stuff is nihilism like you don't need two forms of money they're just trying to get your
(1:46:10) Bitcoin that that's an important part of the message so I think we got that through to them I think CU H there's so many factors New Year stop doing drugs kids stop doing drugs Bitcoin is not crypto crypto is not Bitcoin There's real signal here there is there is it was a great way to start the year yeah glad we did it first rip in the saddle good way to accelerate for our own so like it's kind of got got me focused for today I rather than rather than wait till Monday to to really re-engage I was like no I'm going to get
(1:46:45) some [ __ ] done today so we're getting [ __ ] done it's a new year militant Marty's here Parker's going to be on Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson by the end of the year you heard it here first we're going to get Shan Gillis in the studio Parker's manifesting that for us is it going to be great yeah if Shen Gillis is 2025 will be the year that Kyle bass understands Bitcoin I can't I feel like some bitcoiners is going to go on Rogan and we'll get Shane Gillis and Matt mccusker in the tftc studio let's make those three a pretty
(1:47:17) humble goals humble yeah and we'll get to 5% we're going to get the 5% Tipping Point too mil enough you got to be militant freaks I don't know I feel like if we just get to two I'd say it's probably half a percent so if we just get to 2% double it quadruple it if we're at half perc oh half to two yeah yeah that would be a good goal all right all right I think we solved everything we need to accomplish in 2025 here we just laid it out yeah too much debt not enough dollars nothing to Trump beware liquidity crisis okay guys it seems like
(1:47:55) it's coming I've got this spy spidey sense tingling right now that head on a swivel Phil gger had a great tweet where he said um he's like bitcoin's gonna go to 100K and he had a few other comments he's like and then it's going to crash back to 58k gang so I'm not saying that's going to happen but mentally prepare everyone has to mentally prepare the FED has been draining dollars out of the system amount of debt has continued to go up if they continue to do that without preemptively digitally creating more dollars there are consequences to
(1:48:37) starving a debt dollar debt denominated system from dollars and they've been doing that for going on three years now leading indicators are screaming right now yeah but Bitcoin Remains the answer in all cases it will only accelerate the need to print money if they do but you have to can't get can't get caught off sides survive all weathers so you think my super cycle posturing is pretty pissed poor no I'm not saying that I'm just yeah what happens between here and 12 months from now might be particularly volatile be prepared freaks up and down
(1:49:13) go by gradually then suddenly buy the book get it for your friends once you have them we're in the process of writing volume two right now as we sit here so goodbye peace and love for