podcasts
Ian Carroll explores corruption, media biases, and the transformative potential of Bitcoin, especially amidst speculation about Trump's potential re-election bid in 2024.
In this episode of TFTC with Ian Carroll, we dive into the complexities of corruption, media inadequacies, and the shifting landscape of global control. The conversation addresses the pressing need to understand and dissect the maneuvers of the political, intelligence, and banking apparatus, especially as they grapple with losing grip and resort to clamping down on free speech. With the 2024 election on the horizon, speculation centers on the potential scenarios, including Trump's re-election bid, which offers a lens into the broader analysis of truth versus biased narratives.
The discussion with Ian offers an exploration into the intricate web of power dynamics shaping our world. We examine the narratives presented by political figures and the media, urging an unbiased approach to understanding current events and historical contexts. By addressing the potential of independent voices and decentralized systems, particularly Bitcoin, the discussion opens up avenues for optimism in what seems like a tumultuous period of transformation. The episode underscores the power of collective action and the importance of staying informed, proactive, and hopeful about the future, as we navigate through these complex times.
0:00 - Intro
0:14 - Trump and Fauci
10:20 - Intel agencies
13:46 - River & Unchained
15:01 - People are being forced to notice
18:40 - Optimism
21:30 - Evil masterminds and incompetents
28:59 - Ian’s research and perspective
32:54 - Gradually, Then Suddenly & Zaprite
34:31 - Currency wars
39:15 - Fix the money, fix the world
47:55 - Wallets, not ballots
50:55 - Strong towns and local business
54:01 - Poisonous food/healthcare loop
57:30 - Fiat standard
1:00:44 - The system is learning too
1:03:26 - Sound money mindset
1:10:42 - Pod 2.0 and Nostr
1:15:11 - Censorship resistance
1:19:18 - We’re so early
1:23:26 - Unrealized bank losses
1:27:52 - Truth For The Commoner
00:00:01:17 - 00:00:05:00
Marty
All right. Now we're live in. Welcome to the show.
00:00:05:03 - 00:00:08:24
Ian
Absolutely, man. Good to meet you. Thanks for having me on.
00:00:08:26 - 00:00:33:15
Marty
Well, I'm happy we were able to do this. I think, the work that you are doing is extremely important. Highlighting corruption and the inability of the media to cover big events going on in the world is more pressing as time moves forward, as the incumbent political intelligence banking apparatus loses control. They're really going to try and clamp down on speech.
00:00:33:18 - 00:00:49:17
Marty
And that's certainly happening throughout the first six months of this year globally. so I think the work you're doing is really important. I've been following you on Twitter for, I think, almost a year now, and I think, I think we need more voices like yours out there. So I'm so happy that you agreed to. Come on.
00:00:49:19 - 00:00:56:08
Ian
Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah, we're definitely just getting warmed up, too. There's a lot of 2024 left ahead of us.
00:00:56:11 - 00:01:01:07
Marty
Yeah. What, what do you think in that regard? Like, what are you looking out for? Obviously, we got the election here.
00:01:01:09 - 00:01:26:13
Ian
Yeah. I'm thinking about all the possibilities, and I tend to. I tend to speculate forwards on based on what we know now about what's happening right now. Like, the election is a good example with Trump. It's like we know a lot about Trump. and it's important to have a slightly like an unbiased take on Trump because there's a lot of people that have a really biased, negative take on Trump, and a lot of people that have a really biased, positive take on Trump.
00:01:26:15 - 00:01:44:24
Ian
And so in the case of the election, I try to look at hopefully just the facts and, and what we know about him and what we know about the prosecution and the various, you know, agencies and such that are interested in him not getting elected. And based on what we know, it's like going forwards. What are the possible like operations or realities that we might be seeing playing out?
00:01:44:27 - 00:02:06:22
Ian
And it's hard to say for sure what's really going on with the prosecution. But looking forwards, we can look for evidence of the various different, you know, possibilities to sort of hopefully by the time November rolls around, have a sense for like, what the hell they're doing and whether or not Trump is genuine in what he's saying and what team is he really playing for, which I don't think there's simple answers to any of that.
00:02:06:22 - 00:02:12:15
Ian
I think that it's a very complex milieu of reality.
00:02:12:18 - 00:02:26:03
Marty
Yeah, I've always been under the impression that Trump's just playing for Team Trump. yeah. He has really tapped into the populists like ghost, if you will. yeah. All right.
00:02:26:05 - 00:02:51:04
Ian
That's why I put it honestly, is Team Trump. Because like Team Trump, his personal identity. Like there is a lot of like America first and Trump's personal identity, I think. But I don't know if it's necessarily rooted in the real populist sentiment that Trump supporters want to extract from what they like, kind of put on to him. Because Trump is not like us, like he is not from our world.
00:02:51:04 - 00:03:09:01
Ian
He's not one of us. and I mean, sure, like he does speak in ways that sound like they support us. But I'm not sure that if you actually look at his four years as president, it's like, did he really actually look out for us? Like, I don't know.
00:03:09:03 - 00:03:26:24
Marty
No. And I mean, Operation Warp Speed is a big one. There's a lot of people. I brought it up on Twitter many times, like, hey, like, wasn't the Trump? Isn't Trump the guy who started Operation Warp Speed and people often hopped in the replies saying, oh, it wasn't really him. He didn't really have control. He was. He was more open.
00:03:26:24 - 00:03:30:01
Marty
But it's like, oh, I think he sort of did. Yeah.
00:03:30:03 - 00:03:52:27
Ian
yeah, he's a lot more complicit in that than a lot of people want to admit. And it's not necessarily that he masterminded anything. It's not necessarily that it was all his idea, or he was like, it's possible that he just got played. It's possible that his, you know, financial interests just leaned on him hard enough or that he wasn't informed enough to stick up for what needed to happen at the time it needed to happen.
00:03:53:00 - 00:04:17:05
Ian
it's not like I think people try to always go to black and white versions of what's going on when it's always more complicated than that. But yeah, operation. I mean, with Fauci's hearing coming up, Operation Warp Speed is big on my mind. And I've been doing a lot of digging into Fauci. I'm planning on doing a show about that later this week, because Covid reckoning is kind of hitting the mainstream media a little bit now in an important way.
00:04:17:07 - 00:04:22:05
Ian
and I don't like it's important that people don't forget about what the fuck that was now.
00:04:22:07 - 00:04:48:09
Marty
And I really hope. I mean, I'm, I want to even say cautiously optimistic. I don't think I have any hope that there will be a reckoning, but it does seem like the the public conversation around is certainly changing. And I think he had a large I think it was the Telegraph in London come out with an article yesterday, the day before saying, hey, like excess deaths may be driven by the vaccine, which is a big wow.
00:04:48:09 - 00:04:50:15
Marty
Like they're finally admitting it out here. Yeah.
00:04:50:21 - 00:05:17:29
Ian
Like, oh, shit. You mean that thing that we were all saying for years now? Yeah, it's it's neat how it's leaking out into the various foreign medias in countries that are not as controlled by American big pharma. And you can sort of see in real time the monetary reach of the like, sort of American based pharmaceutical establishment and sort of see where their, their like power system not necessarily ends, but where it fizzles a little bit.
00:05:18:01 - 00:05:24:12
Ian
And those are the places where we're starting to get honest reporting about what really has happened, because those countries are pissed, rightfully so.
00:05:24:14 - 00:05:42:21
Marty
Well, it all comes down to ad dollars, right? Because the US and New Zealand are the only two countries where these large pharmaceutical companies can actually advertise. And so in these areas where there's no financial motive in terms of ad revenue even possible, like it makes sense, they would be more open about these conversations.
00:05:42:24 - 00:06:06:21
Ian
100%. And during during the event, like there was a lot of political pressures and motivations, like on a global scale, like Western power sort of aligning around political objectives around the pandemic. And there was a lot more sort of, elements that encouraged cohesion about the lies. But now that that's all gone, it's like you're saying, it's like the dollars aren't there, the political motivation isn't there.
00:06:06:21 - 00:06:23:29
Ian
And they're dealing with because they're all dealing with the the fallout of these sort of like American. It's hard to even call them American. These like Western pharmaceutical companies malpractice essentially. and so they're left with all the consequences and no more motivation to cover it up, which is kind of exciting.
00:06:24:01 - 00:06:48:18
Marty
Yeah. Then, yeah, like I've had Ed Dowd on a few times throughout the years, and I'm sure you're aware of him, but I think what he's honed in on is at the end of the day, the insurance companies literally can't talk their way out of the the cost that they're incurring due to people's life insurance claims being claimed because they're dying at access rates.
00:06:48:18 - 00:07:07:06
Marty
And you literally have this large, vaccine rollout that many people took beginning to affect financial markets, particularly the insurance companies that like you, it's a problem that you can't hide in a balance sheet. I think it's it's being laid bare in terms of the financials.
00:07:07:08 - 00:07:10:23
Ian
Yeah, yeah. The money always talks.
00:07:10:25 - 00:07:49:07
Marty
Yeah. And I think with the emergence of RFK, when people think about his particular campaign is one thing or another, but I think the focus on Fauci and vaccines in general is really brought up the fact that and most people don't know this, but Fauci was front and center with the Aids crisis as well with AZT. And the fact that we gave this guy the reins of public health policy again after the disaster that was killing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, I think globally of individuals by forcing AZT on them, is is something that more people should be aware of.
00:07:49:09 - 00:08:18:15
Ian
Yeah. I mean, it's telling about how a lack of education reporting and historical understanding is critical to the sort of like mechanisms of control and manipulation that these people in power rely on because like for exactly what you're talking about right now. I'm partway through RFK spoke about Fauci right now. and if everyone knew, like just the most basic facts about Fauci's career, no one would have ever stood for him being the Covid czar.
00:08:18:16 - 00:08:42:10
Ian
It would have been the most ridiculous proposition ever. because his playbook is exactly what he's done his entire career. And what he did during Covid is like, blatantly fraudulent in the exact same way it's always been. But because no one knows those sorts of things, because no one reports on it, because there's incentives not to, everyone just got played all over again.
00:08:42:12 - 00:09:09:18
Marty
what do you think? Do you think justice prevails here? I mean, obviously, he was on the hill a couple days ago. Think he's going to be on again. But, I mean, it's obvious he overtly tried to skirt FOIA requests by telling people to email a certain way, to the point where he had individuals changing characters of their name to to like dollar signs.
00:09:09:20 - 00:09:17:16
Marty
and I yeah. what is, Global Health Alliance for eco Alliance.
00:09:17:16 - 00:09:19:02
Ian
Yeah. Eco health alliance.
00:09:19:05 - 00:09:36:23
Marty
Yeah. all these things are intertwined in the whole, like, lab leak theory. It's like it. I think it's become clear that it was most likely a lab leak, but even he still denying it on the hill, and I think I would say, like, from what I've seen, it seems like he's perjuring himself, like.
00:09:36:23 - 00:10:01:29
Ian
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty. I'm curious to see what comes out of, like, the Jim Jordan clip that's circulating right now. Like, Jim has obviously a lot of flaws. He's not a great politician either, but he did seem to sort of be intentionally trying to catch Fauci in a perjury, on the stand when he asked Fauci about whether he had downplayed the role of the lab leak theory or not, and Fauci clearly lied about his role in that.
00:10:02:02 - 00:10:23:06
Ian
so I don't know is I'm necessarily holding out for any successful reckoning coming out of what's going on right now. But one thing I do think about all the time is how we are currently in the midst of a technological like revolution, a fundamental shift in the way that all culture works and in the way that government works, because government is based on culture.
00:10:23:06 - 00:10:55:22
Ian
Right. And so I don't think that the people that sort of are pulling the strings of the various pieces of our world are, are young enough and wise enough to really understand the effect that social media and sort of like the new media landscape has on political structures and power structures. And I think the court of public opinion has shown time and time again that it has a ton of power in ways that are hard to guess before they actually play out here.
00:10:55:22 - 00:11:21:10
Ian
I'm going to move this a little bit so that it hopefully doesn't keep brightening up for my window. so I'm of the opinion that I hope that we're in an unprecedented time of us all collectively changing our minds and getting loud about a problem can hopefully do more than it's done in the past to make real change.
00:11:21:12 - 00:11:24:09
Ian
and I'm kind of optimistic about that.
00:11:24:11 - 00:11:48:23
Marty
I am as well. I mean, it's, in the digital age, particularly the social media age. I mean, this is a famous Rogan clip back in the day when he was talking about the internet and podcasting, stuff like that. But it's like literally a deluge of information. It's like a river that is massively wide. And you have one individual, the intelligence apparatus, the government, whatever it may be in the middle, like with a small net trying to catch all the fish.
00:11:48:23 - 00:11:52:10
Marty
It's overwhelming to an extent.
00:11:52:13 - 00:12:10:26
Ian
That's a good way to put it. And I there's actually one of the things I focus on the most in my reporting is intelligence agencies and their role in all of this, and I think that it's it's intentional and criminal, how undereducated the public is about what intelligence agencies actually do and how involved they are in our daily lives.
00:12:10:28 - 00:12:36:29
Ian
and I think that the more people that can wake up to the role that intelligence is not just the CIA like foreign Intel agencies to adversarial ones and allegedly allied ones, like every Intel agency has a serious interest in what the public thinks. Like that's that's the nature of the Cold War era. That's the nature of like, the nuclear age really is like now that real kinetic conflict is sort of dampened globally.
00:12:37:01 - 00:12:56:11
Ian
The inherent type of conflict you turn to is like cultural conflict and cultural subversion. And I mean, that goes back long before computers. But now that we live in this digital age, like cultural subversion happens in your Twitter feed, it happens in your Instagram feed, it happens on the news articles that are coming out to influence what we all think.
00:12:56:13 - 00:13:20:23
Ian
And every intelligence agency inherently is interested in that, like the foreign ones that are trying to subvert us, in a negative way. They obviously want to change what we all think to break our country apart, to break our culture apart. But then inherently, that means that our allegedly, like our intelligence agency that's supposed to be looking out for us the way you combat that is by them controlling what we see and think before enemies can.
00:13:21:00 - 00:13:29:06
Ian
And so it's it's inherently like our whole information space is, intelligence agency battlefield more or less.
00:13:29:08 - 00:13:53:26
Marty
The ghost in the machine, as they will. Yeah. Commonly referred to themselves and I that's why I honestly think Covid was one of the biggest missed missteps by this global intelligence apparatus, because it really willed people up to, holy shit, were being played on a massive scale. When you combine the fact that they covered up the lab leak theory with the vaccine roll out, historically, you've been told to get a safe vaccine to market.
00:13:53:27 - 00:14:19:01
Marty
You're going to need 10 to 15 years of testing. They're like, yeah, we can do this in nine months. That was initially why I was like, I'm going to hold off on this and then we'll do more research into who's involved. And it's like, I'm definitely going to hold off on this. And then on top of that, like the masking, social distancing, the humiliation ritual that people went through and then coming out the other end being like, Holy shit, I can't believe we did that.
00:14:19:01 - 00:14:38:10
Marty
What else are they lying about? And obviously what we focus on a lot here is Bitcoin. And when you see that the whole monetary system and financial system is a complete Ponzi scheme, and you're told that it's the most secure system, from a financial perspective that humanity has ever created. It's like, all right, what else are they lying about?
00:14:38:10 - 00:14:44:18
Marty
They're lying about essentially everything food, health, money, education.
00:14:44:21 - 00:15:00:28
Ian
I mean, that's actually a really important aspect to it, too. It's like Covid. There's a couple political things that I think woke a lot of people up. maybe like black Lives Matter or like the treatment of January 6th, the election, Trump, all that, Covid, sort of those more political things woke a lot of people up in that arena.
00:15:01:00 - 00:15:19:13
Ian
But then what you're talking about the monetary space is like, now that we went through that crazy crypto cycle that exposed a lot of, shall we say, shortcomings and questions, not necessarily just in crypto itself, but in like the way it was treated, the way it was influencing the world, like Sam Bankman-Fried, just a lot of sketchy stuff there.
00:15:19:13 - 00:15:41:19
Ian
That was sort of more like the more intelligent, tuned in people started ask a lot of questions, but then simultaneously we dip into like an economic like almost collapse like that affects everyone. The inflation that everyone's going through, that pain, like economically starts to wake everyone up to what's going on. Not just people that are interested in politics and not just people that are interested in crypto.
00:15:41:21 - 00:16:01:16
Ian
And I think that the GameStop thing that happened sort of in the middle, there is another example of something that sort of like woke up a sort of like niche but highly motivated crowd to start actually, like digging through what kind of crime underlies the whole market space. So sort of there's like a wakeup call for everybody now and it's, really refreshing despite that shitty a lot of it is.
00:16:01:18 - 00:16:38:29
Marty
Yeah. I mean, it's terrible to see people struggling financially. But I do think once you start really attacking the lower layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, particularly people's ability to feed themselves and shelter themselves, which inflation is significantly hindered over the last three years. People are forced to ask questions. I mean, that's one of the biggest trends on TikTok and reels over the last year, year and a half, as people doing the selfie videos in their cars complaining either about their their receipt at the grocery store or the amount of money they're making, compared to how hard they're working.
00:16:39:01 - 00:16:56:28
Ian
Yeah, it's kind of thing that everyone can understand and everyone feels right there in their lives, regardless of your age, your demographic. Like the only people that don't get that are the people doing extremely well. And not only is that a small group of people, but it's also sort of like inherently the group of people that are kind of in on it in certain ways.
00:16:57:00 - 00:16:59:19
Ian
Those benefiting off of the corruption.
00:16:59:21 - 00:17:23:12
Marty
You know. And so you said you're optimistic. I'm as well. And that's one thing I try to do here at TTC. And I think you do a good job of as well, which is I think it's important to recognize that all this shit is fucked up in the world, that there's corruption and there's many different stakeholders trying to manipulate you in many different ways.
00:17:23:12 - 00:17:44:23
Marty
But for a lot of people, it becomes all consuming and somewhat nihilistic where, they feel like I have no agency, I have no control. What we tried doing again, why we focus on Bitcoin and Bitcoin specifically, not cryptos. I view Bitcoin as a tool to build itself away from these problems of build your way out of these problems.
00:17:44:25 - 00:18:06:27
Marty
and I think that's what we need more of in the world is people like yourself, myself and other independent media, operators. And I never would like to refer to myself as like, a journalist or anything like that, but people putting out. Yeah, I agree dependently. let's be like, yeah, shit's fucked up, but we can build our way out of this.
00:18:06:27 - 00:18:18:05
Marty
And the most important thing is to recognize that things are messed up, and the people that got us into this problem are not going to be the ones that get us out of it. Like, we've got to do some things yourself.
00:18:18:08 - 00:18:49:00
Ian
which you're talking about, about this, sort of like the black pill versus optimism. I think it's not a coincidence that the Bitcoin community is as, as, like, on balance, is more engaged with sort of like personal wellness or health or fitness or like personal find it like they're Bitcoiners tend to be more tuned in to the types of things that like you can do for yourself in your own life to make your own life better.
00:18:49:02 - 00:19:07:27
Ian
and I think that that's a big part of this sort of nihilism is we, our culture and our education system and our, like, everything about the way that most Americans and people around the world live today sort of inherently pushes you to feel powerless and to just sort of be a drone and to not have any influence or saying what's going on.
00:19:08:00 - 00:19:31:03
Ian
And, and it's easy to feel that way when you're looking outwards at the world and looking at what you can't change out there. but the moment you start to look at your own life and think about, like what you can do for your own health or do for your own happiness, or do just to, like shrinking that bubble down can help that optimism immensely, because the world has always had a million horrible things and a million good things.
00:19:31:03 - 00:19:48:08
Ian
It's like, you know, we are 8 billion people all going through this experience of life together. And I think it's easy to find, like just because we have so much information now, it's easy to find all these problems in the world. But they were always there, like and in a lot of ways it was probably worse before because no one knew about them.
00:19:48:08 - 00:20:00:00
Ian
So it was like smooth operation for all these people that were trying to control things and now like it. Yeah, we know about more problems, but knowing is, you know, the beginning of solving.
00:20:00:03 - 00:20:24:11
Marty
So yeah, not only that, I'm not sure if you saw it during Covid, but me, I think it was the American mind did a two part series on mass psychosis, the first defining the problem and highlighting that the world was engaged in mass psychosis with the lockdowns and the Covid reaction. And then the follow up was, all right, how do you get out of mass psychosis?
00:20:24:11 - 00:20:55:07
Marty
And it's literally ridiculing these people because at the end of the day, I'd be interested to get your thoughts like, do you think there's some grand conspiracy or do you think there's just this projection of expertise and power that is, projected onto the public by these people in power? and at the end of the day, they're really a bunch of idiots who don't know what they're doing and are sort of just banking on the public's, sort of catering to social hierarchy to get what they want.
00:20:55:09 - 00:21:13:29
Ian
I love this question. I think about it all the time right now. and my take on it has evolved as my understanding of the world has evolved through the work I do. and where I'm at now is I think that the and, and I think that I'm on the right track and my, my opinion of this will only go deeper down this take is that I think it's both.
00:21:13:29 - 00:21:43:05
Ian
I think the answer is all of the above, as in if you like, if you simplify the the thought experiment here of like, is there a global conspiracy or a group of people controlling the world? It's like, imagine there's a thousand billionaires in the world. Like if there's a thousand people above a certain threshold of power, what are the chances that one of them is the kind of person that thinks big and is kind of shitty and evil and wants like, and thinks they know what's best for the world?
00:21:43:07 - 00:22:02:04
Ian
Like a Bill gates who, like, openly talks about how he is, you know, trying or even Elon Musk, like, these are the kinds of people that have plans for the world for what they see as making the world a better place. But it only takes, you know, a few people in those positions of immense power to think they know what's best for everyone.
00:22:02:06 - 00:22:25:11
Ian
And to also be evil and for what's best for everyone to be kind of shitty, like eugenicist type mindsets, for them to create what is essentially a global conspiracy, because you don't need everyone to be in on such a thing. Like, if you're a billionaire, you can orchestrate so many things. You can buy companies, you can start like nonprofits, you can influence politicians.
00:22:25:17 - 00:23:00:23
Ian
You have like, just look at the amount of influence that a person like Bill gates has amassed just by being really wealthy and having like an ego the size of fucking Mount Everest and just pushing his agenda onto the world. And I don't think that they're all on the same page. I don't think that there's like one table where everyone sits at and collectively makes a plan, but there are families, like we have very good historical precedent for family dynasties and sort of empire building that push and pull on each other that work against each other sometimes and with each other other times.
00:23:00:26 - 00:23:19:25
Ian
and I think that all of that plays out on a landscape where the vast majority of people of like the low powers of like the CEOs of the world, the, you know, just like the movers and shakers that are not at the top, a lot of those people are just like manipulable drones or they're greedy bureaucrats that, like greed, is a really easy manipulate or emotion to manipulate.
00:23:19:27 - 00:23:37:24
Ian
You know, if you have a greedy person with no morals, you can manipulate them all day. You just, you know, dangle the carrot in the direction you want them to take their company or whatever it is. And then you also have a lot of useful idiots that literally are just dumb enough to be misled. And I think that exists throughout every level of the power hierarchy.
00:23:37:24 - 00:24:12:18
Ian
Like a lot of us, regular folks are kind of by default, the useful idiot. Just by the way, we're all pushed around by propaganda. And so I think for any given issue, you can look at the various power players or wealthy companies or individuals that are interested in controlling that narrative or that space, that idea, and then just look at the ways that their desire to influence that, be it a thing like vaccines or be it a thing like the war in Ukraine, and then just watch their influence sort of push downwards through various types of connections and contacts down to us.
00:24:12:18 - 00:24:21:24
Ian
And it's not like it's one unified conspiracy, but there certainly is a lot of cohesion at some of the top levels.
00:24:21:27 - 00:24:47:19
Marty
Yeah. And as you're describing, that can help. But think of like ESG and Dei initiatives is something that is put forth and just depends on useful idiots at the middle management layer of the broader power, hierarchy, which would be the CEOs of a lot of these firms pushing ESG Dei initiatives that are completely counterproductive to human flourishing and meritocracy.
00:24:47:21 - 00:24:48:13
Marty
yeah. Know, they.
00:24:48:13 - 00:25:13:01
Ian
Always cloak it in like for the greater good, for the betterment of the planet or for, you know, they always cloak it in something that sounds altruistic. And I think in a lot of I think what that does is two fold is it allows people to trick themselves into thinking it will be better for everybody, but it also allows the people, like in power, like the CEOs, to sort of like explain to themselves their identity, to like, rationalize how their what they're doing is right.
00:25:13:04 - 00:25:31:20
Ian
even if they actually know it's like, this is actually bullshit. But like, I think there's like multiple levels of why you cloak evil in a, you know, in sheep's clothing. And for some people, it's just so there's like for them to give themselves excuses to go along with it. For other people, it's because they're dumb enough to go along with it.
00:25:31:23 - 00:25:48:03
Marty
Yeah. Now, my favorite. Hypocrisy within that broader ESG movement is actually Bill like I think Bill gates is objectively evil. Yeah. and I mean, you talk about his his father was an overt eugenicist. you know.
00:25:48:05 - 00:25:52:12
Ian
I mean, he's an overt eugenicist, too. He just uses new words about it these days.
00:25:52:15 - 00:26:18:14
Marty
Yeah. And, is his dad was a believer, like the population bomb theory, too. Like 1 or 2. Yeah. I think with Ted Turner, like, lower the population of the world. And my favorite Bill gates hypocrisy these days is he's a big environmental enthusiast. We need to transition our grids away from hydrocarbons, nuclear energy, coal, calls a hydrocarbon.
00:26:18:14 - 00:26:35:27
Marty
But we need to transition away from these reliable sources to wind and solar. And then on the other side of that, he's like, well, we're actually going to blot out the sun to, this year. So once you transition to solar power and they're going to block the sun, so you can utilize none of it. And it's like, wait a second or so.
00:26:36:00 - 00:26:55:02
Ian
Hold the phone. Yeah, he has a lot of those sort of it's crazy actually how many things come out of Bill gates his mouth that like literally two sentences next to each other, say the exact opposite things. And people pretend like he didn't just say it like another example with the eugenics talking point is like, I think it was a Ted talk.
00:26:55:02 - 00:27:14:11
Ian
He's he said these sorts of things in multiple occasions. But like in the first sentence, he'll say, we have 8 billion people and it's too many. It's putting immense stress on the environment. And if we do a really good job with vaccines, we can lower that number to like 6 million or whatever by 2040. It is like, is it the purpose of a vaccine to save lives, bill?
00:27:14:11 - 00:27:29:05
Ian
Like, what the fuck are you talking about? and I don't know, it's it blows my mind now that I'm, like, doing the digging and looking at the world more clearly. It blows my mind that people don't realize, like the problems with those sorts of, like, two sided statements.
00:27:29:07 - 00:27:47:21
Marty
Yeah. And so let's jump on that. Like the journey of the digging, like. Yeah. How how clear as the picture become for you. And what have you found as you've been digging in terms of how all of this is connected or maybe, disconnected, but moving in a similar direction?
00:27:47:23 - 00:28:17:23
Ian
Yeah, I'm in an interesting position because anyone that doesn't know my story, I'm, I sort of blew up on the social media scene, starting digging into things like Blackrock and stuff on TikTok. and I think I just hit sort of like that financial pain point that we were talking about, where everyone was starting to ask a lot of questions, and everyone was feeling the financial pain, and I jumped on the scene creating content that was like not just asking the questions, but all of my videos are based on showing evidence to support what I'm talking about behind, like in my videos.
00:28:17:25 - 00:28:39:06
Ian
and not necessarily saying I know anything, but just showing that I'm trying to learn it and giving them the sources I'm learning from. And I think it spoke to a lot of people. And and when I started, actually like just a little over a year ago now, little more I didn't like I was not particularly informed, I didn't I mean, I've got kind of a keen mind and I've got a good background in education, so I understand how to sort of like learn and teach myself.
00:28:39:09 - 00:29:01:14
Ian
But, I'm not like some expert or anything. And so it's kind of like I'm on the journey with everybody. And at first it was almost like I the picture seemed clearer at first than it is now, because the more you learn, the more complexity kind of like becomes clear, the more you realize that everything is not as simple as you would love for it to, to be.
00:29:01:16 - 00:29:32:08
Ian
but in another way, it does sort of start to paint a bigger picture like the picture does start to become clear, not as in, like we know exactly what's going on, or we know who's doing everything, but just in, in terms of like, I think my, my perspective has shifted from sort of a simplistic, incorrect picture that I thought was right to a far more complicated and hard to understand picture that's sort of more based on, like the forces that move in this world and the way force is exerted on culture and people and politics.
00:29:32:11 - 00:29:46:06
Ian
and so in a way, there's way more detail I don't understand, but the patterns are a lot more clear, and I'm a lot more, certain is the wrong word. I feel a lot more confident in my understanding of that picture.
00:29:46:06 - 00:29:53:28
Marty
Now. Yeah. And how would you describe your understanding? Like what?
00:29:54:00 - 00:30:15:10
Ian
I would describe my understanding of the world as sort of like a series of judgments of probability of, like sort of like a multi universe theory, as in, we never really know what's going on, even like when you like, have like, live your life in your little town with your family and stuff, it's like you never really know what everyone's motivations are.
00:30:15:14 - 00:30:37:13
Ian
You never really know what's true about history that you've learned in school. You don't necessarily know if the politicians are telling you the truth. And so I sort of look at the world as me assessing the probability of each different theory of what's going on and including, like what we're told is true. It's like, what's the chances that what we're being told is actually true?
00:30:37:14 - 00:31:00:07
Ian
You look at the evidence, it's like, yeah, I mean, maybe. And, and then I intentionally look at all the various conspiracy theories because what that is is inherently just someone trying to figure out what's going on. And it's not yet proven. And often they get proven and proven true. And so I just try to learn about everything and sort of keep each, sort of like line of reasoning or line of possibilities open.
00:31:00:09 - 00:31:21:10
Ian
it's like different tabs in the browser, so to speak. And as you see evidence for each one, that one seems more likely and they tend to tie together. and I don't know, I'm just kind of like a nerd for complexity. So I think that the way I see the world is like a whole bunch of open questions with varying degrees of probability to support them.
00:31:21:12 - 00:31:29:12
Ian
And, you know, sometimes that hierarchy all rearranges. But, yeah.
00:31:29:14 - 00:31:54:21
Marty
Yeah, it's, I think I've had a similar, journey myself for, I think, a, I thought it was like this grand conspiracy that was very obvious. I guess the Davos class, like, all getting together and you learn about some of these people, some of them are objectively idiots and then others or. Yeah, they're more apt at actually getting things done.
00:31:54:21 - 00:32:36:25
Marty
And then you have countervailing forces, like one of my favorite theories that we've talked about on the show over the last couple years with Tom Luongo from the Gold, Goats and Guns podcast, is he's pretty well convinced that what we're seeing here in the US, in terms of Federal Reserve policy over the last two years is fact by Jerome Powell and the commercial banks that that own the Federal Reserve sort of attacking the Davos class, in their banking system because, if they get their way, a Cbdc will come to market, which will cut out the commercial banks and the commercial banks are owners of the Federal Reserve and are using Jerome Powell
00:32:36:25 - 00:32:44:11
Marty
as this weapon against the European centric view of a future built on central bank digital currencies and interest.
00:32:44:11 - 00:32:45:07
Ian
Yeah.
00:32:45:09 - 00:32:57:21
Marty
Yeah. And that would, and a couple of years ago, I would have been wholly convinced that they were acting in concert with each other. Yeah. It seems like there's a very strong theory.
00:32:57:23 - 00:33:14:07
Ian
That's a cool theory. And I think that it hits at the core, like one of the most fundamental, I think there's like fundamental building blocks of how we look at the world that the more informed you get, you realize what are the most important parts of the world, because those are sort of like the things that move everything else.
00:33:14:12 - 00:33:35:07
Ian
Like, yeah, the war in Ukraine is important. That's a big block. But currencies are far more important. And if you don't understand what is happening with the US dollar and with currencies and the people that control currencies, then you probably aren't getting the full picture of what's happening with that war, let alone the full picture of what's happening, like with some small company over there.
00:33:35:10 - 00:34:05:08
Ian
and I have had a similar take to you is it's like, yeah, they're all the Western currency. elite are probably working in concert, but you're right, that or, like that, it feels like we're in the stages of. These powerful people know that currencies live and die in cycles and no currency lasts forever. And the US dollar is clearly the,
00:34:05:11 - 00:34:27:10
Ian
You know, in the end stages of its life cycle. And so I think that I don't know which like what version of it we're in, but we're in some version of the people that understand those things, like the central bankers, the banking families that have been doing this for generations. They understand that the US dollar is going down and it's time to replace it at some point in the next, you know, 20, ten, 100 years.
00:34:27:12 - 00:34:58:24
Ian
And so I can only imagine. And from the evidence we see in the world around us, there are a number of different factions vying for the next currency cycle, of the world. And you can trace that backwards in history, you know, back through the pound and back further into history. And it only tracks that moving forwards. It's not like if if some idiot like on the internet, like me, can figure out that, you know, we're going to need new currency in the next hundred years, then I guarantee you the central bankers know that.
00:34:58:24 - 00:35:11:16
Ian
And it's their job to try to, you know, control the next currency, whatever it is. and yeah, it makes a lot of sense that they would not necessarily all be aligned, even if they seem politically aligned.
00:35:11:19 - 00:35:34:10
Marty
Yeah. I mean, because it's a massive opportunity to control the reserve asset in the world, whether it's the dollar, a central bank, digital currency now with the seizing of Russian treasury assets a couple of years ago, you had the BRICs plus countries trying to band together to put together their own currency system. I think all of them, whether it's the dollar, I think the dollar is doomed.
00:35:34:15 - 00:36:01:27
Marty
And I think, yeah, the paintings on the wall. Most people recognize this. And if you look at treasuries and understand how the Treasury markets operate and how they should be operating, particularly, with gold prices, like we've had a massive divergence, in Treasury yields and gold prices over the last year, year and a half. that's a product of all the countries that watched us take Russia's Treasury asset.
00:36:02:00 - 00:36:38:13
Marty
It's like, we probably can't hold treasuries. So China's been massively stacking gold while they're dumping their treasuries. And and at the same time, you have like the Europeans trying to bring the Cbdc to the fore. and I ultimately think all of them are going to fail. And that whether or not I'm pretty confident that Bitcoin will supplant them, the timeline, less way less confident on but when you think of the world of money, like that is what we have outside of our studio in Austin, which obviously I'm not in right now, but fix the money, fix the world.
00:36:38:13 - 00:36:50:27
Marty
I think a lot of the core issues that exist in the world today stem from the fact that central banks and governments can print money in debt. I mean, just do whatever they want with it.
00:36:51:00 - 00:37:09:04
Ian
I think that that is the core issue. I don't talk about it that way on my platform all the time, because I think that that goes over a lot of people's heads. It's not as in, it's too complex for them to understand. It just doesn't necessarily align with everyone's worldview. but I think that once you start to do the digging on how everything connects, I.
00:37:09:04 - 00:37:11:12
Marty
Was that was some weird synchronicity right there.
00:37:11:16 - 00:37:12:28
Ian
Bingo.
00:37:13:00 - 00:37:14:22
Marty
Yeah.
00:37:14:24 - 00:37:41:27
Ian
and, once you get deeper into learning how everything works, I mean, especially once you learn about money, it's like money is just the tool by which we interact, right? Like you can't have a system of of humans or any actors interacting in any sort of like exchange based way. Like the moment you have property and people, you money is the thing that binds us all together and whoever can.
00:37:41:27 - 00:38:06:24
Ian
It's not just like a lot of people think of it as just these things that we exchange, like just the money itself, but it's not. It's like the contractual agreement between people to work together to cooperate. And without a system of contractual cooperation, there is no society. There is nothing. And so whoever controls the system by which we cooperate, that's like you.
00:38:07:01 - 00:38:35:28
Ian
You have leverage over every facet of society of, you know, in every way it's. And so the way I see it is, powerful people figured that out ages ago, like centuries, millennia ago, like ancient Babylon shit. But now, today, we're at a time where for the first time in in history, it's not just that we have like.
00:38:36:00 - 00:39:13:18
Ian
Yeah, gold, you know, metals, physical currencies are pretty rad. And they do do a lot for sort of like democratizing commerce in like a way that the various versions of fiat currencies throughout history have not. But now that we have a technological currency that's based just on mathematics that is inherently ungovernable and uncontrollable. And even if like so, there are like conspiracy theories that like, there's Eastgate and then there's conspiracy theories that Bitcoin was like a CIA operation and everything.
00:39:13:25 - 00:39:44:08
Ian
And it's like, even if those are true, the technology itself is just the idea. It's just the inherent idea that mathematics makes the most sound type of money. There it is. And it's irreplaceable. And it can always be spun up again, even though I don't think Bitcoin is like I think that Bitcoin is exactly what we need. and so regardless of what these big power players try to do with our currency cycle moving forwards, the cat's already out of the bag.
00:39:44:11 - 00:40:08:03
Ian
And the only way that they could stop the crypto. So, the decentralization of currency control would be at gunpoint all over the world simultaneously with an iron fist. And it's like, that's not going to happen. It's it's just not possible. So I don't think that we're going to a world where it's like Bitcoin is the currency and the only currency.
00:40:08:03 - 00:40:23:27
Ian
I don't think that's going to happen by any means, but I certainly think we're going to a world where Bitcoin is like the currency. and there are lots of other currencies. I'm sure there will be lots of cryptocurrencies. I bet there will be government fiat currencies still of various sorts, even though we're about to watch a lot of those crash and burn.
00:40:24:00 - 00:40:37:07
Ian
I mean, hell, maybe we'll go to an all all bitcoin and digital currency based situation, but regardless of what happens, Bitcoin is out of the bag and there's no putting that back in the bag.
00:40:37:09 - 00:41:10:00
Marty
No there isn't. And when you factor in the fact that Bitcoin exists, it's out of the bag. It's been around for 15 years. You layer on the digital age, particularly communication, social media, content distribution like we're doing now on podcasts, YouTube, Rumble. It's just going to get out there and be easily accessible to other people. The fact that we can coordinate, on the internet and then you layer on like the that situation globally.
00:41:10:00 - 00:41:49:04
Marty
And if I were, it seems like to me, particularly post-Covid, that, the prevailing forces that are either fighting each other or working with each other at different points in time have completely lost control. And I think it's mainly a factor of the digital age and the fact that we can all communicate. and when you begin to really internalize the amount of debt out there and the fact that, like, I mean, the US Treasury market and the US dollar are overt Ponzi schemes that will never be paid back or never be the debt won't be made whole.
00:41:49:06 - 00:42:16:23
Marty
and the currency has to hyper inflate to, to service the debt and so both are, are pretty much screwed at the end of the day. And if I'm actually sitting in these positions of power and you're losing control, I think I think the path of least resistance to avoid social upheaval and something like a French Revolution, which I don't think anybody wants to see, maybe many people will, will laugh about it like we need a French Revolution.
00:42:16:23 - 00:42:19:23
Marty
But I don't think people really understand the history of how terrible it was.
00:42:19:24 - 00:42:22:20
Ian
Yeah, it's not the way.
00:42:22:23 - 00:42:44:08
Marty
but if I'm in a position of power and you see Bitcoin is here and you have these massive debt problems, like, and you want a quote unquote soft landing, like the path of least resistance is to just let it flourish and by let it flourish, I mean just let people use it and then, fix the inherent problems that exist throughout the global economy that were created by fiat.
00:42:44:11 - 00:43:02:23
Marty
there will be a lot of repricing in debt markets and, and asset markets. People will be scooping up things for, for pennies on the dollar. But the fact that Bitcoin exist is actually a great escape route for this power structure that is to me, obviously lost control.
00:43:02:25 - 00:43:24:15
Ian
That's a really good point. And I think that a lot of people try to address this question of like, will there be Bitcoin adoption by the mainstream? Like, I think a lot of people always want everything to happen instantly. Obviously, they want easy answers that are instantaneous and especially in finance, it's like regular people, myself included, before I started to learn more.
00:43:24:18 - 00:43:52:17
Ian
It's so easy to look at the financial world and assume that a thing would happen in a month like that, that you know, people would see that this is happening and like they would shift. But but that's it's inherently not that way. Like, like a lot of types of trades and contracts take years. but then a lot of like the power structures that are holding on to the legacy systems are like 70 year old men that don't want to give up their power and aren't smart enough to to realize what you just said.
00:43:52:24 - 00:44:17:04
Ian
And then there's like a lot of 50 year olds in their 60 roles that are starting to get the picture of like, yeah, the writing is on the wall, but I think that it will take a certain dying off of the stubborn elders of the system, combined with sort of like a rising up of the more progressively minded, or at least open minded, youngers of the time to sort of fully enact that shift.
00:44:17:06 - 00:44:45:18
Ian
because I think inherently there's a lot of like dinosaurs in politics and finance right now that just could never even begin to grasp that Bitcoin even is an option for them to get out of the predicament, let alone accept that truth as sort of like a accepting defeat in some ways. but it's inevitable. And like, I think that what you just described is, is actually like such cogent take on it that that there isn't another way out.
00:44:45:18 - 00:44:55:12
Ian
Like, you could try to invent a new fiat currency and lie to everyone as though it wasn't just another fiat currency, but the cat's kind of out of the bag. Now.
00:44:55:15 - 00:45:19:25
Marty
Yeah, it's again, I'm going to go to the arsonist to put out the fire. I mean, that's that's another thing I try to highlight, particularly for people who are extremely politically engaged and fall into the trap and the false framing, I would argue, of Partizan politics. Red team versus blue team. It's like you're wasting your time and your energy and to meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
00:45:19:25 - 00:45:44:27
Marty
It's one big, you know, party system potentially controlled by intelligence agencies and a bureaucratic system that's been erected over decades. That really doesn't change at all with with a new president or, a majority in Congress or the Senate. and like, just focus on things that you can actually control, like Bitcoin is a vote in a sense, and that you're voting like, hey, I don't want to operate in this fiat system.
00:45:44:28 - 00:45:52:10
Marty
I'm going to go build upon this open source protocol and the layers above it to to solve these economic issues that exist.
00:45:52:13 - 00:46:26:05
Ian
I think that in a similar vein, I think that monetary voting is the most effective form in all of the forms of monetary voting. And a huge part of what I've done with my channel is actually digging into what corporations own all the products on our shelves, who owns sort of like all the various pieces of our daily lives, and then trying to find like small businesses, family and founder owned businesses, businesses that are not giant publicly traded mega corporations that are all managed by the same, like five top shareholders like all the management firms.
00:46:26:07 - 00:47:05:12
Ian
Because when you when the more that we can get regular people voting with their dollars into companies that are managed by real, regular people that care about their employees, that live in a community that creates a circulation of currency within, like regular people within our our economy. That is completely different than when you spend money on a giant corporation that goes up into like the shareholders coffers and those like that system is inherently built to sort of keep insiders at the tables at the top, and to have them managing the companies in a way that is sort of like a giant illusionary monopoly game where, like all the competitors in an industry, like all the
00:47:05:12 - 00:47:31:00
Ian
big pharma companies, their boards of directors are all elected by the same management firms, by the same top shareholders. And so, like, how much competition is there really in that system? And it's a system that inherently breeds corruption and incentivizes greed and voting with your dollar to put our commerce outside of that system back into regular business owners, like regular people.
00:47:31:02 - 00:47:54:08
Ian
I think that's it's just another example of like voting with your dollars by investing in cryptocurrencies and holding cryptocurrencies. Same exact thing. It's like take your money out of the banks. We've all seen what banks do these days. and we're about to see more of that I think this year. and I think that any time like yeah, political voting is cool, but voting with your dollar is far more powerful.
00:47:54:10 - 00:47:59:14
Marty
Yeah. Have you ever read, Strong Towns by Charles Cameron?
00:47:59:16 - 00:48:01:05
Ian
I have not.
00:48:01:07 - 00:48:25:00
Marty
That's, an incredible book that really highlighted, like, the economics of what you just described. in the most lucent way that I've ever, ever heard it described. And basically the concept part of the book, you really compares like small towns, strong towns, like what you want to focus on from a small business perspective as revenue per square foot.
00:48:25:00 - 00:48:49:20
Marty
And in a couple of chapters in the book, he highlights that superstores like Walmart and Target their revenue per square foot is abysmal. But since they're these large conglomerates that they can eat that that margin hit. but essentially when you go into shopping these, these conglomerates within your small town, like they're taking that money and sending it back up to, to corporate, that's not staying in your town like you just described.
00:48:49:20 - 00:49:18:26
Marty
And so you can make an economic argument that it actually, if you want to live in a better town, like you should focus on these small businesses because they, in terms of revenue per square foot, are much more efficient. And that money, like you said, stays within the local economy. And that's one thing. Again, you talked earlier about Bitcoiners really understanding the money problem, then seeking out, and looking out in the world and trying to figure out where everything else is messed up.
00:49:18:26 - 00:49:51:07
Marty
And food, and healthy living is definitely, I think, one of the first that the Bitcoiners gravitated towards. And you're seeing it with the The Beef Initiative, which is, an initiative to, connect local ranchers with consumers in their, their local areas. And then at the same time, educate them about the ranchers, about Bitcoin and why they should consider putting free bitcoin on their balance sheets to to make sure that they are financially viable into the long, long run.
00:49:51:07 - 00:50:21:21
Marty
But, down in Texas, where I'm typically I it's been an incredible, incredible, increase of quality to the food that we're eating just by that simple practice of going, shaking our ranchers hands and deciding consciously to to buy locally instead of from Whole Foods. And that's not to say that we don't get a Whole Foods or grocery stores, but I think 60% of what we buy is local, which is a far bigger percentage of what it was 2 or 3 years ago.
00:50:21:24 - 00:50:45:16
Ian
Yeah. It's cool how the sort of like the networks started, built like the internet allowed us to build networks of information and connections online, and that allowed us to learn a whole bunch of new things and share all that together. And that is now sort of like re self-replicating into real life as what we have learned as a collective is changing the way that we all live in the real world as a community.
00:50:45:22 - 00:51:13:04
Ian
And those types of connections are now reforming where like people are that being incentivized to, you know, form companies that tie people together, that like support local businesses that like, that's so bullish, in my opinion, on humanity. because like, I mean, to kind of like harken back to some we were talking about earlier, the food stuff, like the poison in our food and the big the health care conglomerate connections to the food and big agriculture poisons.
00:51:13:06 - 00:51:44:05
Ian
That is one of the like, I struggle so hard not to just believe that that is literally a, like, evil demonic conspiracy theory. Like, like the amount of sort of interplay between our care system and our food systems is just inherently evil shit. And it's so unbelievable that it would just sort of like happen by chance that way without like some form of literal collusion between the industries.
00:51:44:07 - 00:51:55:19
Ian
And I think it is perfectly like plausible that it's just profit, greed and corruption, just like cycling over the decades. But man, it's this dark.
00:51:55:22 - 00:52:31:11
Marty
No, it really is. I mean, I think I think they're trying to I mean, they're obviously some parts of this broader faction are trying to control food because, again, whether it's ESG, the focus on energy systems and ushering in less reliable energy systems so that people are more dependent on the state or food systems like food health as wealth and now what you eat literally affects how clearly, clearly you can think, and I am a believer that there is a concerted effort to completely poison people with the food.
00:52:31:11 - 00:52:51:29
Marty
And you just look at there's four major slaughterhouses here in the US. You look at the high fructose corn sirup that's in everything, the seed oils that are in everything and what they're doing to people's bodies. And you can see it in the obesity stats and the heart disease stats, like there's an obvious, corruption of the food system that is literally killing people.
00:52:52:01 - 00:53:08:14
Ian
I mean, it's like you can just point to each ingredient and, like, look at its side effects and look at how many people are eating that ingredient. And you can directly translate that into like x number of billions of dollars in the medications that cure that thing. And the problem, I mean, I'm kind of just putting that this in together in my mind right now.
00:53:08:14 - 00:53:30:26
Ian
But like, if you have a health care system that is based on the model of a publicly traded company, like as in all of our big health care, our it's all publicly traded like pharmaceutical companies, hospitals. And like all of that, being publicly traded is inherently building it on the model of the line has to go up every year.
00:53:30:26 - 00:53:59:07
Ian
Right. But the fundamental principle of health care sciences is that the line is supposed to be going down every year. We're supposed to be getting healthier every year as scientific technology like expands our health and our our, like not just our health care, but our health span. And so inherently, if we have a good medical system, there should be less and less profit in the health care industry every single year because there's not as much need for it.
00:53:59:14 - 00:54:30:13
Ian
And so there's just this fundamental, mismatching of the way that health care is incentivized versus the actual goal of a health care in the first place. And you're never gonna wind up having, having a apparatus designed to make profit that profits off of curing sickness that will never lead to having less sickness. Like, obviously.
00:54:30:16 - 00:55:01:29
Marty
Now it's that it's a Fiat standard. It's, it's financial system driven by quarterly financials and that are attempting to produce cash flows and Ebit, that leads to stock value appreciation that outpaces inflation is all driven lot like what is our benchmark. It's inflation. And they're printing money. And if you are deemed to be a successful company that helps people preserve or hopefully increase their purchasing power, you're you're basically racing against the, the basement of the currency.
00:55:02:02 - 00:55:21:13
Marty
And like just what we have to do is flip it. It's like, all right, what if we lived in a world with sound money where your money gained in purchasing power and you weren't really racing inflation to produce these results, which is creating a perverse incentive system, which is, incentivizing you to create lifelong patients instead of healthy people.
00:55:21:15 - 00:55:48:03
Marty
Yeah, look at that change. and it's heartening, even like the food like that goes back to the money, too. Like it's not a coincidence that we were ripped off the gold standard officially in 1971. And then the food pyramid came out not too long after. And the idea there is that again, going back to what I said earlier, people really begin to react when the lower layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs get attacked.
00:55:48:03 - 00:56:12:20
Marty
And so food prices going up needs to be averted at all costs. And so you launched a food pyramid and you just create these cheap substitutes that you tell people are healthy. And so they get low and they start eating that. And the grocery bill is cheaper because the good stuff that is harder to produce because you have a shitty currency, it's more expensive if you tell them the cheap substitutes are better, like they're going to feel like they're saving money at the grocery store.
00:56:12:20 - 00:56:31:20
Marty
But over the course of 50 years, it's made people woefully unhealthy. And it's a terrible decision, too, because on the back end, you described this earlier, like the health care cost of treating all these unhealthy people. you sort of created another massive problem that's going to be, which is our right. Yeah.
00:56:31:23 - 00:56:55:21
Ian
Like health care is by far the biggest expense. A lot of people try to like, act like the American federal budget is mostly military spending, but it's not health care is way is by far the biggest expenditure on the American budget. And and so that's like all of us paying this medical industry the big pharma to like basically like a lot of what they do is actually sort of like we pay for.
00:56:55:24 - 00:57:12:19
Ian
I mean, Fauci is a good example for his playbook throughout his whole career, is to use taxpayer government money to do all of the expensive research and development of new drugs that may or may not work, because that's the part that a company wouldn't want to pay for, is the part that's like, I don't know, it's like experiments.
00:57:12:23 - 00:57:33:22
Ian
Who knows? It's going to work. They get all that done on taxpayer dime. Then they hand the patents off to a pharmaceutical company. Once the drug is ready to get made, they keep they get a kickback now because they've now got patent rights over these products that they created with our taxpayer dollars. And then the pharmaceutical company just goes, hey, I'm on the drug, produces it, having skipped all that overhead.
00:57:33:29 - 00:57:40:01
Ian
And then they just make a shitload of money giving us the drug that we funded ourselves. And they inflate the prices on it.
00:57:40:04 - 00:57:41:15
Marty
It's like.
00:57:41:17 - 00:58:04:01
Ian
It's like such a, I think that a lot of people kind of ask, like, how did we get here? Like, how the fuck did we get to this much corruption? And and it there's I see it as sort of two sides to that answer is in like, yeah, there's the frog in the water getting slowly cooked like the fire slowly heats up the water and you boil so you never really realize you're getting cooked from our perspective.
00:58:04:04 - 00:58:23:16
Ian
But I think a lot of people don't necessarily flip the script and think of it from the other, like these evil motherfuckers perspective of like, it's not like they had a full playbook from the start, and they've been orchestrating the same exact plan since like day one, but rather that they're learning as they go to, like they're playing this game.
00:58:23:16 - 00:58:47:18
Ian
And as new technologies come out, they realize how they can use that. They make mistakes, they adjust. And I mean, the food pyramid and the way that food has evolved is a good example, where it's like after World War Two, there's all this industry producing these things that are not like, not there's no market for them anymore. And a lot of those things that were made for the war industry then got repurposed into the fucking food industry.
00:58:47:21 - 00:59:07:13
Ian
and then that gives rise to a bunch of like, let's say, questionable health outcomes. And then the medical industry is like, oh, that's pretty profitable. How can we incentivize more of that? And so over time, the system has evolved out of sort of like us getting slowly cooked and then realizing, learning how to slow cook, so to speak.
00:59:07:13 - 00:59:25:27
Marty
Yeah. Not show me the incentives and I'll show you the alchemy. You can apply this to anything you get, like education, right? Like when Obama came out and said, hey, millennials, you've been told your whole life you got to go to college, get your degree. So we're going to we're going to we're going to subsidize that income, get federal loans.
00:59:25:27 - 00:59:42:29
Marty
We're not going to ask any questions. Then the university sees as like, oh, the government's just going to give these kids all the money that they need to come to our universities. So we're going to jack up our prices. And that's why we've seen that tuition costs go up, by obscene amounts over the last two decades. And then.
00:59:42:29 - 00:59:44:10
Ian
Quality go down to you could.
00:59:44:10 - 01:00:15:21
Marty
Say, yeah, who cares? Oh, you increase your inflation, you create this whole middle management layer within universities, and the administrators take over and completely corrupt the, the curriculum. And and again, like perverse incentives, like, since you're going get all this money now you're incentivized to, essentially show high school students like we're really good universities. You have great inflation, like, oh, the average student here gets like a 3.5 to a 4.0, like we only have the smartest people.
01:00:15:27 - 01:00:25:19
Marty
Really. In reality, they're just dumbing down everybody, making it easier and not even making it easier. Yeah. Throwing in bell curves that inflate everybody's grade.
01:00:25:22 - 01:00:47:07
Ian
You actually made me kind of think of when you said when you talked about incentives here. I, I've been kind of keying into this thing about Bitcoiners as people for a little while now. and you totally fit this pattern, too. It's like Bitcoiners tend to have this, like, really, like, chill vibe. Like a vibe of, like, not being in a hurry to get anywhere, so to speak.
01:00:47:11 - 01:01:16:04
Ian
And obviously I'm generalizing, but like a lot of times I'll meet, meet Bitcoiners and there's just this air of like, not the rat race about it. And I hadn't quite put two and two together before to realize that, like everyone that operates from a fiat based worldview is inherent, incentivized by inflation. Even if they don't understand inflation, they're just incentivized by the inflationary nature of fiat based life to always be needing to like, get the next thing done.
01:01:16:04 - 01:01:32:11
Ian
Always. I got to go to work, I gotta make my money. I got to pay my bills. Because you're like every piece of our understanding of society has been built on this mindset that comes out of like, if you don't go fast enough and hard enough, it's all going to get away from you because inflation is inherent to the system.
01:01:32:17 - 01:01:56:00
Ian
But the moment you flip to a sound money where it's actually the opposite, it's almost like the the more you chill out and trust the system and invest, the better. It's like, the more the more abundance you have. You just inherently wind up with this like different. I'm saying like I would, I'm saying is that I'm starting to observe it in people that truly understand Bitcoin.
01:01:56:03 - 01:02:06:06
Ian
Almost everyone that I meet is just inherently, like, not stressed and not in a rush because the longer I wait, the better everything gets.
01:02:06:09 - 01:02:38:29
Marty
So tiny preference, the power of low time preference. And it's funny, I got took me, it took me a while. Not a while, but like it when that concept of love time preference is like sitting, waiting and staying humble and stacking sats is one of the phrases that that Bitcoiners use. once you see it, once you've been around for a cycle or two, like you can see it like literally in your net worth and the Bitcoin that you saved, if you've had the luxury of or had the ability or say, luxury and everybody's had access to Bitcoin for well over a decade now.
01:02:38:29 - 01:03:10:18
Marty
But if you've had the ability to save in Bitcoin, you've seen the products of sitting and waiting, paying out massively towards your benefit. And yeah, I think that's that's a key thing that people really need to recognize who are stuck on the hamster wheel is like your time preference is artificially, geared towards high time preference. Like you, you have to go out there and rush and try to make as much money as possible, because you're saving in a currency that's being debased at an increasing rate.
01:03:10:23 - 01:03:14:22
Marty
And. Yeah, it's,
01:03:14:24 - 01:03:37:05
Ian
I mean, there's a whole other incentive scheme, too, to saving something like Bitcoin where you realize that it's not just that you're stacking SATs, it's that you're also learning to be conservative with your SATs because you know that in the future, they will be worth more than they are today. And so there's almost this like reverse incentive scheme of like like, yeah, I can use them as a currency right now too.
01:03:37:05 - 01:04:00:22
Ian
But like maybe I don't need like do I really need that thing? Like, do I really need all this bullshit that's in my life? Or would I rather keep the stack as tall as it is? because that's not we're not necessarily incentivized in that same way with dollars at all. Like your dollars aren't going up. Like, yeah, people are incentivized to save just from the intellectual reasons why you should save.
01:04:00:24 - 01:04:19:03
Ian
But the moment that you're saving in a currency like Bitcoin, there's this whole other like mental awareness of conservation. And like less is more like, you know what I mean? It's like suddenly you're very motivated to save and to just chill out and not consume so much.
01:04:19:06 - 01:04:48:01
Marty
Not only that, it drives a, again, a large sense of optimism in my life because you just play it forward like, all right, if this load time preference sit and wait is work for me individual individually, if you play that out and you think about a town adopting bitcoin, a nation adopting bitcoin, the world adopting Bitcoin like it has that like profound effects on how society coordinates and actually makes decisions and fixes.
01:04:48:01 - 01:05:12:02
Marty
Again I think everything is incentive driven, whether it's the corruption that exist, at the highest levels of the power structure or individually, like trying to pay your bills and build a family, whatever it might be. Incentives run, every decision made at every level. And Bitcoin, I just think, fixes the incentive system and forces people to think like you just mentioned.
01:05:12:02 - 01:05:33:22
Marty
Like you think about all the money that's been printed and thrown at a bunch of bullshit in education, health care, food, war, whatever it may be like. If you can't print money at will to fund all those things, they're not going to be funded. Like if you have a hard currency that's extremely scarce, people have to begin to weigh the consequences of opportunity costs.
01:05:33:22 - 01:05:50:27
Marty
Like, if I spend my Bitcoin on this and it actually doesn't produce value for people at the end of the day, there's a good chance I don't get that Bitcoin back. and so you're forced to really allocate towards things that are actually going to increase productivity and quality of life at the end of the day.
01:05:51:00 - 01:06:28:21
Ian
You kind of just put something together in my mind. To the more you talk about incentives and how like that sort of inherent optimism, when you look forwards at what will inevitably result of the sort of decentralized incentive scheme of Bitcoin, the sound incentive scheme of Bitcoin. And when I juxtapose when I transpose that to the decentralized media that we are talking about a lot here and like the way that that our information space is opening up, that is a similar like inherent restructuring of incentive schemes, because a lot of people are always asking me like, how are we going to like overcome?
01:06:28:21 - 01:06:46:12
Ian
Like the banking cabal? How are we going to like stop the war? Like all these like kind of political and information questions is and it's like, yeah, maybe there's some easy, quick answers. But the real answer is like, you have to change it long term by changing our, like, cultural incentive schemes, by changing the way that we all choose to interact and choose to engage.
01:06:46:15 - 01:07:15:21
Ian
And like in a similar way, when you decentralize the media, everyone's incentive scheme incentives are different. Like Don lemon tries to come to on X and do the same old mainstream media bullshit, and suddenly no one's paying attention because it's like, we don't care what you have to say because we have a whole new like, the world is decentralized here, and obviously there's growing pains and there's there's there's a lot of complexity involved in the transition from centralized to decentralized systems.
01:07:15:23 - 01:07:33:09
Ian
But when I look at it in the money system and what you're describing about Bitcoin there, when I look at it in the media space and what it's doing there, it's like I just I feel like it's this sort of like concurrent revolution across all of our spaces where we're technology's allowing us to decentralize all the main systems.
01:07:33:09 - 01:07:39:27
Ian
We we use. And I think it's inherently bullish in every direction.
01:07:39:29 - 01:07:43:28
Marty
Yeah. Well, you ready to go further down the rabbit hole? Yeah. Let's go.
01:07:43:28 - 01:07:44:29
Ian
Dude.
01:07:45:02 - 01:07:54:15
Marty
What are your, what's your knowledge about the intersection of these two spaces. So like, are you aware of podcasting 2.0 or new communications.
01:07:54:18 - 01:07:57:29
Ian
A little like nostre type of things.
01:07:58:01 - 01:07:59:00
Marty
Yeah.
01:07:59:03 - 01:08:03:02
Ian
Minor. Really? I would love to learn more.
01:08:03:04 - 01:08:27:28
Marty
Well, I mean, so I'm sure you've heard, like, the web 3.0 meme and crypto theory, I'm like, oh, you can tokenize your soul or whatever and monetize and like create your own token. I think the, the idea of web 3.0 makes a lot of sense, but the implementation that many crypto projects have, brought to the market is completely wrong.
01:08:28:01 - 01:08:58:13
Marty
I think really what we need to do is combine open content distribution protocols with Bitcoin, essentially, and we beginning to see that manifest in multiple ways. And I think the two most popular would be podcasting 2.0. which Adam Curry, The Godfather, the inventing, the inventor of podcasting. He's a bit coiner and he's been working, with a movement of open source developers to implement, integrate, excuse me, Bitcoin into RSS.
01:08:58:13 - 01:09:21:08
Marty
And so when I send this podcast out to, when I publish this, it'll go out via RSS and in my RSS feed, I have a Bitcoin address. And now there are podcasting apps that are popping up with bitcoin wallets and people who are listening can send me Bitcoin if they like a particular episode. And so there you have this meritocratic signal in terms of filtering out good content versus bad.
01:09:21:08 - 01:09:41:28
Marty
If people are parting ways with their Bitcoin to signal that they like the particular episode, the cream sort of rises to the top because, you know, the incentives aren't likes or retweets. It's like I'm giving you Bitcoin because I got value out of the content you put out there. And so you have this little monetary signal going out to the the rest of the market.
01:09:41:28 - 01:10:17:26
Marty
And then similarly on Noster, which is an open source communications protocol that's decentralized as well. They've done the same thing where you can put a Bitcoin address in your profile. And as you post on Noster, people can signal with Bitcoin about the quality of the content that you're putting out there. And so you have open content distribution in RSS and Noster, combining with open source money to create like a new way to have the cream rise to the to the top in terms of like content that people are getting value out of.
01:10:17:29 - 01:10:42:29
Ian
Dude. Yeah, I mean, it makes so much sense. And I've been while you're describing it, I've been trying to in my brain sort of like figure out what's the difference between that when you're using Bitcoin versus that when you're using dollars. and I think what I'm arriving at is that the Bitcoin world is like a sandbox box where there's only this much sand in it, and the grains of sand we've got are all the sand we're going to get.
01:10:43:01 - 01:11:02:14
Ian
And so what we're doing there is we're sort of like pushing little piles of sand around to vote on the cultural landscape that we think is valuable. Right to vote on the ideas we think is valuable, the companies we think are valuable. But it's never going to leave the sandbox, and there's never going to be a whole bunch of new sand dumped into the sandbox.
01:11:02:16 - 01:11:33:13
Ian
and that creates a really different, like, just background incentive scheme for why and how you, you know, promote someone, give them some sets and like kind of push that sand around to shell out to like vote for what our world should and does look like. Whereas when it's dollars, you're like sort of inherently giving away a thing that we all sort of think of is like it's going to disappear because it will it'll inflate away to nothing, but also like it'll leave your hands and go to a place where it's never coming back from, like some bank account of some billionaire that is kind of causing the inflation in the first place.
01:11:33:15 - 01:11:55:19
Ian
Like dollars inherently all flow upwards into dark corners that they will never leave. And like some circulate for a while, like some go back and forth between regular people for a while. But inevitably, like the the thing causing inflation is all these like dark bank accounts at the top that are just collecting all of our inflated shit. And, and so in a way, it's like it's never coming back.
01:11:55:19 - 01:12:11:10
Ian
It's like having like it's like sandbox leaking out the bottom all the time. And everyone's always bringing in new buckets. And that's inherently not as fun as, like a creative space to sort of like build it, build piles and sort of like push things around because it's all just falling out the bottom all the time.
01:12:11:13 - 01:12:28:04
Marty
No. And that's, that's only one aspect of it. The other aspect too, is like, if you're out there producing content that people don't like, they just simply cut off your access to this fiat rails. We've seen this throughout the I mean, I've had it happen to me on YouTube, during Covid, we got demonetized. Oh yeah, like 2 or 3 times.
01:12:28:06 - 01:12:49:22
Marty
And we've seen it with Wikileaks. We've seen it with Alex Jones and many other content creators out there. And that's the beauty of this implementation as well, is that it's an open source, peer to peer protocol. So I put my address. Yeah, I put my address in my RSS feed and I control it. There's nobody can say you can't send money to this address because we don't like what he's saying.
01:12:49:29 - 01:13:05:13
Marty
Like, nope. there's nobody between me and the the listener is sending us Bitcoin, which is a whole nother like incentive driver in terms of getting good information out there because you can't be censored by the the payment rails.
01:13:05:15 - 01:13:25:29
Ian
And if you choose to create, if you choose to build the platform in a way that the more the more payments receives is like the boost that the algorithm gets, like the popularity is tied to how much people are valuing it. There's no censorship that can be applied to that because it's an open source blockchain. Vote for the content.
01:13:26:02 - 01:13:36:25
Ian
And so it's not like you can boost it. You can't shadow ban it. It's just the number is what it is and it's on the blockchain. So you make good shit and good shit spreads. That's really interesting.
01:13:36:28 - 01:14:00:08
Marty
Yeah. That's the I think we're at the the precipice of people beginning to wake up to this. And I think it's going to be accelerate, particularly in election year. That's what's I think. Yeah, that's what's going to happen. That's why I've built everything that we built here at TFD from like inside out, like as robust as possible with Bitcoin at the core.
01:14:00:10 - 01:14:21:10
Marty
we do we do fund a lot of what we do here via advertisements. We tried to, partner with companies in the bitcoin space that we trust and we use and that we think other people should be using. but when we send our invoices out, you can pay in fiat, but we also have the ability to pay in bitcoin, putting a Bitcoin address in the RSS feed.
01:14:21:10 - 01:14:39:22
Marty
And then putting stuff on Nostre that can be monetized there. Like we want to make sure that we have this unanswerable decentralized rail to receive money in case we say something at some point down the line where stripe or our corporate bank account gets taken down.
01:14:39:24 - 01:14:45:00
Ian
Yeah, I think I haven't done this yet. Actually, this is done. I think every day list for this week, it's.
01:14:45:00 - 01:15:00:12
Marty
Still very it's still very early. But I think every content creator really those of us who are I think you especially, you're pushing the edge of of what is wrong. Think, should have a fallback option.
01:15:00:14 - 01:15:17:05
Ian
Yeah. We're we're putting that's. No it's going on the screen here. Yeah. My buddy my buddy Ben Wireman has been, has been poking me to get on Noster for a while. And that's going to happen. Have you, have you emailed or not emailed? Have you interviewed Nicole Shanahan by chance, RFK junior VP?
01:15:17:07 - 01:15:18:05
Marty
I have not now.
01:15:18:06 - 01:15:40:18
Ian
You really shit, dude. She's a bit coiner and her partner is Jacob. I forget his last name. the who is in charge of Lightning Labs for a long time, and they are so, so, like RFK, Junior's whole campaign is very pro crypto, and they've got a lot of, like, awareness and progressive takes on it. But like, I interviewed Nicole Shanahan a week ago or so and got into it a little bit with her.
01:15:40:18 - 01:16:00:09
Ian
And it is it was immediately apparent that her knowledge vastly outpaced mine, and that she has a ton of really interesting takes on Bitcoin and has been in it for years and years and years and years and years from like a legal standpoint and all that is like it was a really just a conversation. And I did not even have the technicals to follow her halfway down the places that she could have gone.
01:16:00:16 - 01:16:05:09
Ian
I think you'd really enjoy it talking to her. I mean, probably Bobby too, but yeah.
01:16:05:12 - 01:16:29:28
Marty
I've, I've done a Twitter spaces with Bobby before, with a bunch of other Bitcoiners, probably about a year ago now at this point. But yeah, not technical and no, I think that's why I've been, like, beating this drum for seven years now. It's actually the newsletter I started. The predated this podcast will turn seven this week, and, it is,
01:16:30:01 - 01:16:49:06
Marty
It's so obvious to me again, going back to the incentives, the monetary incentives, the injecting that monetary tool into content to to monetize directly like it changes the incentives of content creation. I've worked a lot in the mining space, and so I've learned more about energy systems the last six years than I ever thought I would in my life.
01:16:49:06 - 01:17:17:18
Marty
And you really understand the connection of the digital world, the Bitcoin blockchain and sending transactions digitally and the physical world, or the energy it takes to actually, add blocks of transactions to the network and the symbiotic relationship that Bitcoin mining brings to energy systems. It's extremely positive. and it's extremely misunderstood by the mainstream. I think boiling, it's.
01:17:17:18 - 01:17:50:10
Ian
Intentionally obfuscated and yes, mis painted right? I mean, I think, I think that the centralized powers realized way too little, way too late, how big of an issue Bitcoin was for them. and I think Satoshi and the various players in the early days of Bitcoin, I think that they very wisely built off fast enough and quietly enough for long enough that like by the time that the centralized powers realized what they had on their hands, they already weren't able to stop it.
01:17:50:10 - 01:18:19:10
Marty
Like, it's totally Satoshi's. Don't kick the hornet's nest. Nest, comment is very prescient. And you can tell. Yeah, he or the group of people that made up Satoshi, whatever it was, thought really hard and critically about these problems. And that's the other beauty of the two incentives, like, I think that's one of the great things that Bitcoin does, is it holds up a mirror to the power structure and really puts them in this predicament.
01:18:19:13 - 01:18:58:27
Marty
because they're like, we want to be environmentally friendly. We want, we want like equal access, equal opportunity for people. We want to fix, the wealth gap and help people in the lower stratum of the economic ladder to, to build themselves up. And Bitcoin literally enables all this. If you're pushing ESG and you really care about stewarding the environment, it's like, well, Bitcoin mining, make sure that we're as efficient as possible with our energy systems, whether that's mitigating flare gas and oil and gas fields, or making sure that grid systems are robust and have enough revenue to reinvest in themselves, like you can't you can't deny the bitcoins in that positive there.
01:18:58:27 - 01:19:24:26
Marty
And then if you really care about social inequality and wealth inequality, well, like Bitcoin gives any individual who so chooses to preserve their purchasing power and a hard money. And historically that has worked out very well for the people that did. So you're trying to say it's bad and you want to solve these problems. Like, and that's why I again, I'm incredibly optimistic in people get caught up in the 24 hour news cycle and get very black pilled.
01:19:24:26 - 01:19:37:23
Marty
But it's like if you take a step back, it's it's happening. Bitcoin's $1.5 trillion market cap now, nobody thought it would be this large five years ago, let alone ten, 15 years ago.
01:19:37:26 - 01:19:42:04
Ian
Oh, it's going to get a lot bigger, too. You're gonna get a lot bigger.
01:19:42:07 - 01:19:42:14
Marty
And I.
01:19:42:14 - 01:19:43:08
Ian
Don't think people realize.
01:19:43:16 - 01:19:47:28
Marty
How quickly it's happened. I think it's like 15 years is not a long time now.
01:19:48:01 - 01:20:13:19
Ian
And I think that a lot of people think that don't realize how early on in the in the progress we still are. It's like, I think a lot of people have this bias towards thinking that like, what the mountain we see below us is inherently probably the whole mountain when it's like, not like it's very likely when you look at the bigger picture that actually we are still very much in the first chapter, very much still early adoption, like there is a lot of mountain ahead of us.
01:20:13:21 - 01:20:15:22
Ian
it's it's wild.
01:20:15:25 - 01:20:17:15
Marty
Yeah. I mean.
01:20:17:17 - 01:20:24:18
Ian
But yeah, think about how many companies and business like and people and governments have not adopted it yet.
01:20:24:20 - 01:20:49:07
Marty
No. And that that's the thing to I think we're particularly at a point in time where the career risk for people, particularly working in corporations and institutions, it's flipping where for the first 15 years people have been able to look at Bitcoin and say, it's too risky. I don't want to get involved. I'm not gonna put my client's money at risk here.
01:20:49:07 - 01:21:13:02
Marty
And I think we're at the point now where if we have another one of these cycles and people have not adopted Bitcoin into their corporate treasury strategy or enabled, individual investors whose money they're stewarding to get access to Bitcoin, people are gonna be like, you're fired. Like you literally missed out on like, the best, the best returning asset in human history.
01:21:13:05 - 01:21:14:12
Marty
and that's that overlaid.
01:21:14:12 - 01:21:20:26
Ian
Well, there's probably more bank failures on the way. Like there's more fiat financial turmoil on the way.
01:21:20:29 - 01:21:24:05
Marty
And you see the the most recent FDIC report.
01:21:24:07 - 01:21:31:27
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. But 137 three if I forget my numbers here of how many trillions of unrealized.
01:21:31:29 - 01:21:34:26
Marty
500 and that's, I believe 17.
01:21:34:27 - 01:21:41:13
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. 517 trillion of unrealized losses, which to be fair, like it got reported as the like.
01:21:41:13 - 01:21:43:28
Marty
So like half a trillion right.
01:21:44:01 - 01:22:01:22
Ian
Yes. It's 517 billion. Thank you. And it got reported as though it was like it came out of nowhere and it just dropped. It's like to be fair, the amount of unrealized losses in the banking system has been about that high for quite some time now. but that stress is weighing heavily.
01:22:01:25 - 01:22:32:29
Marty
Yeah. And as Jerome Powell keeps these rates higher for longer, it's only going to the the stress is only going to get much more intense from here. And you're beginning to see cracks. You're beginning to see realize losses. I'm not sure if you saw, but Deutsche Bank sold an office building they bought in Manhattan this week. I think they bought it in 2014 for 550 million, and sold it for, I think, at 60% below that, things like 130 for that would be more than 60%.
01:22:33:01 - 01:22:36:19
Marty
it took like a 60 to 80% loss on that. That's a realized loss.
01:22:36:21 - 01:22:57:26
Ian
Yeah. And, you know, the vast majority are still unrealized, and some of them are probably even unreported because there's so much self-reporting in this system. There's so much, manipulation of balance sheets to make, you know, the various leveraged positions everyone's holding kind of hold their water. I mean, I, I mean, I'm a little biased because I come from the GameStop community.
01:22:57:26 - 01:23:19:14
Ian
And so I, I've done a lot of digging into sort of like how much, risky betting is happening in the markets in various ways, how much sort of like swaps are being used to kind of hide positions so that collateral looks bigger than it is, and leverage looks more managed than it is. But I mean, it's man, it's just takes like one, one flick to knock the wrong dude over.
01:23:19:16 - 01:23:34:24
Ian
Like how Archegos blew up and then Credit Suisse blew up. And then it's like quickly like put a plug in it. I mean, you know, this was yeah, they were asking for I forget how much money, but they were needing, needing a bailout from the, the government like 2 or 3 months ago.
01:23:34:26 - 01:24:05:01
Marty
So yeah. And I'm not sure if you caught this, but, the fed, in a sly, roundabout way and the Treasury really papered over the unrealized losses problem by taking treasuries out of the reserve ratio a couple months ago. And so, like the TFP program was ending in March and people thought they were going to extend it, but instead of extended it or like, hey, we're staying true to our word, running the TFP program and slightly behind the scenes, they're like, all right, you don't need treasuries to count your reserve ratio anymore.
01:24:05:02 - 01:24:07:03
Marty
You can buy as many as you want and we won't care.
01:24:07:03 - 01:24:31:07
Ian
Yeah, they it's a recurring strategy where they just, you know, create a new loophole, find a new way, like, you know, change the reporting, change the way you report inflation. and it's cool now to, like, have gone from a place where I was basically just max ignorant maxi to being, like, involved in communities and all the different niches of like, thought where I'm like, no expert at anything.
01:24:31:07 - 01:24:51:10
Ian
But like in, in my financial network of homies that are doing this, digging in the financial space, like there's so much digging into the publicly available information to expose those loopholes and to get that information out to people like me to help get that information out to other people around. It's like, it's so cool that they can't hide that shit anymore.
01:24:51:12 - 01:25:12:21
Marty
Yeah, that's to that point, too. That's something that and the strategy of this show specifically over the last three years, I would say, is really like in the first four years of the podcast, are really Bitcoin focused Bitcoin developers, Bitcoin, CEOs of companies in the Bitcoin space talking about Bitcoin specific news. But I think three years ago, particularly during Covid, it was like all right.
01:25:12:21 - 01:25:37:12
Marty
Like I think everybody in Bitcoin has heard all of this. Like we need to go get people like you all who are in these tangential sort of niches, these verticals. And we need to begin cross-pollinating these ideas because I think desperately we're all putting this together. I think if we were to combine that and then combine forces, but information share like, hey, this is how we think bitcoin like game like GameStop is like a big thing.
01:25:37:12 - 01:26:05:17
Marty
As GameStop was going down, everybody in Bitcoin was like, we get what you're doing. Philosophically, we agree with you philosophically, but the answer is not to try to destroy the system within the system by squeezing the shorts. It's like they're going to fucking manipulate the system. No matter what happens. I get to work outside. And that's what I think a lot of Bitcoiners, when GameStop were going down, we're like, guys, this is great, but not the solution over here.
01:26:05:22 - 01:26:08:16
Marty
And I think it's time. I mean, they.
01:26:08:19 - 01:26:16:03
Ian
It created a lot of bitcoiners too, as they saw how broken the system was. A lot of GameStop people started to learn about crypto now, like, oh.
01:26:16:04 - 01:26:30:22
Marty
You turn the Pi button off. It's like, oh, you have do you have the black thing? And that's that. Actually, a lot of gamblers are in Bitcoin because the Black Friday in the poker world, same thing happened. They just turned off the withdrawal money button and they're like, what the hell just happened?
01:26:30:24 - 01:26:47:22
Ian
I mean I agree with what you're saying about how like, I think a lot of people are starting to realize that we have a lot more in common, like among our different niches and across our different verticals than we might have at first thought. And the more that these spaces are, maybe I just see it more because I'm kind of a cross pollinator and in the nature of my content.
01:26:47:29 - 01:27:10:08
Ian
But it's so cool to start to like, like, share audiences and sort of like cross ideas over where, like, like a lot of us are on. I mean, I think maybe a lot of it is sort of like, not necessarily libertarian is kind of a charged word, but like liberty, like populist people focused initiatives and solutions to problems that we all share.
01:27:10:10 - 01:27:29:21
Ian
that is like universal across so many different spaces right now. and so it's cool to sort of like, get everyone talking together and learning from each other because you can't be an expert at everything, you can't know everything, but there is someone, somewhere that is an expert on everything and knows just about everything.
01:27:29:23 - 01:28:00:07
Marty
Yeah. And this is this is what gives me hope. And it feels like rat like, again, going back to Covid, maybe the most massive inflection point, 100%. yeah. I lived through 911. Great financial crisis. But, I don't know what it was about Covid. Maybe it was a culmination of the last 20 years with going all the way back to nine over 11, rolling that into the great financial crisis, rolling that in the Covid.
01:28:00:11 - 01:28:33:09
Marty
I think for me, a millennial in my early 30s, like I was very aware of each event as it was happening. You had the compounding effect of all those. And then finally, Covid being the cherry on top. It's like, all right, this is completely insane. Like we need to begin seeking alternatives. And over the last three years, post Covid, you had people running in their their own siloed verticals, GameStop, people focused on, bodily autonomy and fighting the vaccine and bitcoiners, as well.
01:28:33:09 - 01:28:56:20
Marty
And now everybody's sort of coming out of the hole, their own vertical, like looking up and seeing like, oh, we're like, oh, these guys are on to something today. Maybe we're at like in a transitionary period. It's like, all right, we've all gone and done our homework about these verticals that we know very well. you know, we know a lot about now, let's, let's get up and try to work together to solve these problems outside of the system, which I think is possible.
01:28:56:20 - 01:29:18:00
Marty
And I think that's another thing I say a lot on this show is like, we're going to win. and it's like to instill confidence in people. So many people have been dejected. Like, this is a daunting these are daunting problems to try to solve. The power structure is too powerful, but it's not the case at all. We can actually do this if you put some effort behind it and work smartly.
01:29:18:02 - 01:29:57:01
Ian
Yeah, I mean they are daunting, but like we got this and you know, when you put all of our like when you put hundreds of thousands, even millions of brilliant people together into like a connected network of, of free thinking forwards moving like, that's like we can solve some daunting problems and we already are in half. and I think that what you're saying about Covid being like the inflection point is spot on, because every one of those other issues or like events was massive and did change everything, but it didn't like Covid affected regular people in a tyrannical way en masse around the entire world.
01:29:57:01 - 01:30:19:16
Ian
And so every one of every sort came out of that with a shared experience of like the, the regardless of how much you bought it or not. It's like there was still a shared experience of sort of like awareness of the corruption above us and awareness of like the separation of the classes. And it not being, well, some people are still trapped in the left and right, but like a lot of people woke up to that.
01:30:19:16 - 01:30:35:23
Ian
It's actually top and bottom. And that's where I think all these verticals are starting to blend where it's like, yeah, we're all down here together and I think we need our own solutions. And then we looking around, it's like, oh shit, you've already got a solution to that big part. And like, oh fuck, this guy's got a solution to that part.
01:30:35:25 - 01:30:40:13
Ian
And it's it's it's a really fun time right now. It's a little stressful, but it's super fun.
01:30:40:16 - 01:31:01:03
Marty
It's stressful. And again, like I said earlier, like you have to be aware of these problems and they are daunting. But you have to like I think the world needs more optimism too. because I think that's a self perpetuating feedback loop too. It's like, again, instilling confidence in people. Once people are confident they recognize there's alternatives, they begin using those alternatives and building on them.
01:31:01:03 - 01:31:22:21
Marty
Then that gives them more confidence. And it's like, oh, we may actually be able to do this. And I think that is what the power structure fears the most. And funnily enough, what they use the most is fear. Try to scare the shit out of people so that they don't even look in the stuff. Bitcoin's only for drug dealers and in terrorist like stay away from that.
01:31:22:21 - 01:31:32:23
Marty
It's destroying the planet. and they're trying to scare people away from it because then they're scared that its power is such that it can replace them.
01:31:32:25 - 01:31:42:01
Ian
Yeah, yeah. It's, there's nothing more powerful than than a informed and, like, energetic, motivated population.
01:31:42:03 - 01:31:48:13
Marty
Like, be optimistic people. We got this. We do.
01:31:48:16 - 01:32:05:18
Ian
Yeah I and for me I mean people ask me that all the time. Like how do you stay so optimistic when you're always reporting on this corruption of bullshit? And it's kind of just like the default. It's like, how could you not like there's no way forwards. The more you learn about how much is wrong with the world, like there is no other way forwards than to laugh and to take it on.
01:32:05:18 - 01:32:17:20
Ian
It's like, bring it on guys. Like whatever. Like, you know, history is history. Time like the world is the world. We'll take it like we got it. Because if you don't look at it with optimism, you're not like you have no chance whatsoever.
01:32:17:22 - 01:32:33:27
Marty
No. And that's what pisses them off the most is when, I gave a presentation on CFTC and like, the media company we're trying to build and the topics that we talk about in Q&A, somebody asked me like, are you afraid of the power structure? It's like, no, that's what they want, I think. And you have to recognize that's what they want.
01:32:33:27 - 01:32:51:12
Marty
And if you allow them to make you fearful like they win and it is big if you just be like, I'm not afraid. Like we're going to talk about this and we're going to do these things and not care. about the hammer coming down on us may come down, but, you can't show fear.
01:32:51:14 - 01:33:06:14
Ian
Now bring it on. We've, you know, hammers come down before and we're starting to build systems and networks and, you know, payment strategies and such that start to make it a little less and less relevant until eventually the hammer is not going to be relevant at all.
01:33:06:17 - 01:33:22:05
Marty
Yeah. It's a beautiful time to be alive in. Yeah. I don't want to take up too much of your afternoon here. I know, we threw this together somewhat last minute. but this was an incredible conversation. Thank you for the work we do. Thank you for coming on.
01:33:22:07 - 01:33:35:13
Ian
Yeah. Thanks, dude. It's cool to be. Not every podcast that you go on is sort of like a a process of putting new pieces together and like, like arriving at new conclusions. Mid podcast. this is a ton of fun. I've got a lot of cool digs to do now.
01:33:35:15 - 01:33:46:13
Marty
Yeah, well, we'll have to do this again. And yeah, if you have any questions about Bitcoin Nast or whatever it may be, feel free to hit me up. and as you can tell, very passionate and committed to this,
01:33:46:16 - 01:33:51:04
Ian
Hell yeah, brother. Appreciate it, man. All right. And I will talk to you again soon.
01:33:51:06 - 01:33:53:08
Marty
All right. Peace and love freaks. Okay.
