Bitcoin: The End Of The Beginning

[0:02] Y [screaming]
[0:05] boom boom.
[0:08] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to
[0:11] another episode of the Jack Malers's
[0:14] Show. I am your host [screaming]
[0:19] boom boom.
[0:22] >> Screwed it up again. Not a professional
[0:25] podcaster. I am your host Jack. It is
[0:28] Monday. Honestly, we should just make
[0:30] that part of the ritual. Just echo my
[0:33] voice in your ear as if the first yo
[0:36] isn't obnoxious enough. I'm Jack. You're
[0:39] listening to my show. It's Monday. I
[0:42] call this Mailbag Monday. Real quick,
[0:45] the show's growing like crazy. I just
[0:48] want to say thank you guys. I see you
[0:50] guys. Like I was walking to the gym. I'm
[0:52] going to the grocery store. I've been
[0:53] traveling. So, I'm not in the empty
[0:55] closet as you guys can see. I'm in a
[0:56] different destination because Bitcoin
[0:58] never sleeps. You got to grind. We got
[0:59] to push. The world's not going to change
[1:01] on its own. We got to push the world in
[1:03] the direction we want it to go. And I
[1:06] see you guys everywhere. And so often
[1:09] you guys give me encouragement for this
[1:11] show. So I just want to say I really
[1:13] appreciate it because for those of you
[1:15] that are new to the show, um I've been
[1:19] in Bitcoin for 13 years. I'm the founder
[1:21] of two Bitcoin companies. I make my
[1:23] money that way. I support myself and my
[1:26] family and my necessity throughout life
[1:28] that way. This is for fun. This is for
[1:31] me to be able to contribute to the
[1:33] conversation and contribute to the
[1:35] corner of the internet that I'm most
[1:36] interested in. And uh what it's become
[1:38] is just a joy. So this is your all
[1:41] signal, no noise live stream from the
[1:46] CEO of two big Bitcoin companies and a
[1:48] guy that's been around for 13 years. And
[1:50] uh what we're building together is just
[1:52] a joy. I run into you guys on the street
[1:54] and you're like, "Man, money is our time
[1:56] and energy in an abstracted form." Or,
[1:58] "Man, don't get worn out, don't get
[2:00] shaken out." Or, "All truth, no
[2:02] bullshit." It's just the coolest thing.
[2:04] So, if you guys do ever see me, come
[2:06] give me a hug. Um, what a movement. What
[2:08] a movement. No ads, no funny business,
[2:11] all truth, all signal. All right, with
[2:15] that, let's go. What are we waiting for?
[2:18] I almost forgot to read you guys the
[2:20] market data. Uh, I'm talking to you all
[2:23] at a Bitcoin price of $16,180
[2:26] US. That puts Bitcoin's market cap at
[2:30] 2.12
[2:31] trillion. Our all-time high remains the
[2:35] same at $126,160.
[2:38] We made that all-time high on October
[2:39] 6th, 2025, almost two months ago. We're
[2:44] about 15%, a little more away from that
[2:46] all-time high. So, nothing too crazy.
[2:49] We'll talk about how everyone's freaking
[2:50] out in a second, but it's really nothing
[2:52] too bad. The block height, for those of
[2:55] you that are like 600 p.m. Eastern, what
[2:58] is that? Since Satoshi started the time
[3:01] chain, I only keep track of time in
[3:03] Bitcoin blocks. Well, the last Bitcoin
[3:05] block mined since I hit stream was
[3:08] Bitcoin block 922,112.
[3:13] So, when our great great great great
[3:14] great grandchildren are listening back
[3:17] to this, you're like, "Man, this guy was
[3:18] nuts. When was he recording this?" It
[3:21] was before Bitcoin Block 1 Million is
[3:23] when I was recording it. All right,
[3:26] let's go.
[3:29] Today, EP Today's episode is titled The
[3:32] End of the Beginning. This is a quote
[3:35] that I said over the last few episodes,
[3:38] and I've seen it quoted on Twitter. I've
[3:41] seen it quoted on Noster and so I want
[3:44] to emphasize it today. I fundamentally
[3:46] believe that in regards to Bitcoin
[3:50] story, we are entering the end of the
[3:54] beginning, the end of the start, the end
[3:57] of the infancy stage and phase of
[4:00] Bitcoin. very soon. I don't think you
[4:03] can be early to Bitcoin in a post ETF, a
[4:07] postc corporate treasury adoption, a
[4:10] post nation state adoption. There are a
[4:13] lot of signs in my opinion that are
[4:16] pointing to the fact that this is the
[4:18] end of the beginning for Bitcoin and the
[4:21] beginning of the end for fiat currency
[4:23] in the existing financial system, the
[4:25] post 1971 US dollar to be specific.
[4:30] Okay, let me uh I'm in a hotel here and
[4:34] I see I've got messages from Dylan. All
[4:36] right, my internet's working. Okay, I
[4:38] was worried I had a bunch of new
[4:40] messages. I was worried my internet or
[4:42] or I screwed something up. Not a
[4:43] professional podcaster, but we make it
[4:46] work. All right, let's go. Chapter one.
[4:48] The distress is real. So, I alluded to
[4:52] the fact that the market is down a
[4:54] little bit. We're 15% off our all-time
[4:56] highs, but the the mood, the energy, the
[5:00] aura, the vibe in Bitcoin is off. It's
[5:04] down. Now, I'd referenced earlier, I've
[5:06] been in this game a long time. All
[5:08] right? I may look like a kid, and I may
[5:11] be a lot younger than a lot of you guys,
[5:14] but I've been around the block when it
[5:15] comes to Bitcoin. Okay? This stuff
[5:18] doesn't worry me at all. I've seen it
[5:21] happen. And I mean literally, I've seen
[5:23] Bitcoin go down 80% from its all-time
[5:27] high. Four times. I've lived through
[5:29] that. Four times. And so this is all
[5:35] normal. We'll explain. I'll actually
[5:37] explain exactly what's going on in the
[5:38] market today on this episode.
[5:42] But for all these other new market
[5:44] participants, for all the newer
[5:45] Bitcoiners, for all the Wall Street
[5:47] folks, it feels anxious. Okay. There was
[5:50] an awesome post written by Jordi Visser
[5:53] that talked about this. He referenced
[5:54] this as Bitcoin's IPO moment, meaning
[5:58] there's a lot of liquidity distribution.
[6:01] Bitcoin has entered the main stage. It
[6:03] has ETFs. It has corporate adoption. And
[6:05] a lot of the earlier Bitcoiners have a
[6:07] chance to offload and realize some
[6:09] profits, take some of the gains that
[6:12] they've made and realize them with
[6:14] serious liquidity and demand
[6:16] backstopping it. You know, it was
[6:19] previously
[6:20] virtually impossible to sell $10 billion
[6:24] worth of Bitcoin in a day or in a week
[6:28] until recently. And we're starting to
[6:30] see some of that distribution happen as
[6:33] if it was like an Apple IPO or Amazon
[6:35] IPO where after these things IPO,
[6:37] traditionally the market finds a top and
[6:41] then it declines a little bit and it
[6:43] stagnates around its IPO price. It
[6:45] doesn't just shriek through because a
[6:47] lot of the early investors, the early
[6:49] employees, they want to realize some of
[6:51] all this wealth they've made and get a
[6:53] house and get a car and pay off debt,
[6:55] put their kids through school. And so
[6:57] this is the first paragraph. I just
[6:59] wanted to read it to you guys. The
[7:01] distress is real. The sentiment in
[7:03] crypto, well, this is just a Bitcoin
[7:06] podcast. The sentiment in Bitcoin right
[7:08] now is frankly brutal. The S&P 500 is
[7:11] flirting with all-time highs. The Nasdaq
[7:13] has been on a tear. Gold just broke
[7:15] through $4,300.
[7:17] Tech stocks are rallying by every
[7:19] traditional measure. We're in a riskon
[7:22] environment. Money is flowing into risk
[7:24] assets. Investor appetite is healthy.
[7:27] And Bitcoin, Bitcoin is doing nothing,
[7:31] sideways, consolidating, grinding,
[7:34] boring. Choose your own description.
[7:36] None of them hide the frustration that's
[7:39] permeating the community. Twitter is
[7:42] filled with variations of the same
[7:43] anxious question. Why isn't Bitcoin
[7:46] pumping with everything else? The
[7:48] cognitive dissonance is palpable. We
[7:50] have Bitcoin ETFs that launch
[7:52] successfully and see inflows every
[7:54] month. Institutional adoption is
[7:56] accelerating. The Genius Act passed and
[7:59] clarity is coming soon. There's no
[8:01] regulatory crackdown, no major hack, no
[8:04] fundamental narrative breakdown.
[8:05] Everything that was supposed to matter
[8:08] happened. Yet, here we are watching
[8:10] other assets rally while Bitcoin treads
[8:13] water. And even when I came to live
[8:17] stream, and I see a lot of you guys
[8:18] early on in the chat, for everyone that
[8:20] wasn't typing out, yo, was what the
[8:23] hell, man? Enough talk. When's Bitcoin
[8:26] going to moon? What the hell? This isn't
[8:27] what I signed up for. So, this is a lot
[8:29] of the mood. And I went on and I
[8:30] captured some whale panda who's been
[8:33] around in Bitcoin for as long as I have.
[8:36] his Twitter recently is just exactly
[8:39] that. And you know, I have nothing bad
[8:40] to say about him. I'm just joking. But I
[8:42] mean, here's a tweet. Another day,
[8:45] another abysmal performance.
[8:48] Quote, "But it's only thanks to the ETFs
[8:50] that BTC recovered after FTX." End
[8:52] quote. FTX didn't have any Bitcoin on
[8:54] the books anymore. It was a normal bare
[8:57] market low, same as the other bare
[8:58] market. It's the bull market after
[9:00] introduction of ETFs that failed. Next
[9:03] tweet from Whale Panda. This is what
[9:05] mental illness looks like. [laughter]
[9:08] This is also why this market is no
[9:10] longer fun to trade and why I keep
[9:12] saying that Bitcoin looks cooked. Next
[9:16] one. This genuinely makes me sad. Oh,
[9:20] the horror as he shows the gold price
[9:24] going up and Bitcoin trending sideways.
[9:28] Now, this one from someone named Charles
[9:30] Edwards. For the first time in seven
[9:32] months, net institutional buying has
[9:35] dropped below daily mine supply. Not
[9:37] good, you guys. Bitcoin's gonna fail.
[9:40] We're all gonna die. That's what it
[9:43] feels like when you go on the internet.
[9:44] It's ridiculous. Um, now Jeff Park
[9:48] tweeted and quote tweeted Jord's idea
[9:50] that this is Bitcoin's IPO moment.
[9:53] Meaning, guys, first of all, let me take
[9:55] a step back. uh for the price to trend
[9:58] sideways
[10:00] that means there are as many buyers as
[10:03] there are sellers. If the price goes
[10:06] down that means there are more people
[10:09] interested in selling Bitcoin than there
[10:11] are buying Bitcoin. When the price goes
[10:14] up that means there are more people
[10:16] interested in buying Bitcoin than
[10:18] selling Bitcoin. Sometimes it's that
[10:22] simple. Take it from a college dropout.
[10:25] You don't need to have a PhD in central
[10:28] bank monetary policy. You didn't need to
[10:30] go to Harvard to learn economics. That's
[10:32] how markets work. Okay? And so the
[10:35] reality of this market recently is that
[10:37] people have been selling. Someone has
[10:39] been selling. Some cohort of people that
[10:42] previously owned Bitcoin wanted to
[10:44] realize their wealth in other assets
[10:47] besides Bitcoin. Okay. So Jeff Park
[10:51] tweeted, "This is such a great read. In
[10:54] addition, if OG sellers are maximally
[10:56] profit- takingaking, the question is why
[10:58] specifically now beyond current gains
[11:01] and enhanced liquidity, but also future
[11:03] expectations. OGs are a special group of
[11:06] investors. They saw something nobody saw
[11:08] before and took an early chance in size.
[11:11] This implies that the very risks these
[11:13] sellers are seeing may be the same
[11:15] rewards they once underwrote as one of
[11:18] the earliest cohort of buyers. which
[11:19] means by definition the factors must be
[11:22] non-conensus, improbable and
[11:24] existential. Worth thinking about this
[11:27] framing as well. So this is again like
[11:32] what are these OG Bitcoiners seeing in
[11:34] the market that's terrifying them or why
[11:37] are they acting in ways that we aren't
[11:40] the us these other people. There are
[11:42] people that have been around for 10
[11:44] years, 15 years in Bitcoin and they're
[11:46] all of a sudden selling. What's going
[11:48] on?
[11:50] Right? Because the the reality is these
[11:53] older Bitcoiners are realizing their
[11:56] gains. They are the ones applying some
[11:58] sell pressure. Okay. I responded to this
[12:00] tweet and I said this.
[12:03] I wouldn't underestimate the value of
[12:05] the first Bitcoin friendly
[12:06] administration in the United States. For
[12:09] years, Bitcoiners have been debanked,
[12:12] audited, and treated like criminals.
[12:15] Guys,
[12:17] I've been around that long. People
[12:19] classify me as an OG Bitcoiner. I can
[12:22] tell you what's going on.
[12:24] My family was harassed by the IRS during
[12:28] the entirety of the Biden
[12:30] administration,
[12:32] audited, done nothing wrong, paid every
[12:35] tax.
[12:38] Not only am I not a criminal, I'm a net
[12:41] producer to society. I run profitable
[12:44] businesses. Anyone that owns Bitcoin is
[12:46] a net producer to society because they
[12:48] have excess cash that they can use to
[12:50] save.
[12:53] So, as someone who's been buying Bitcoin
[12:56] for 13 years, I am a net producer to the
[13:00] those around me. I run businesses. I
[13:02] employ people.
[13:05] Nothing about me is a criminal. harassed
[13:08] me and my parents. Harassed.
[13:13] I, as I told you guys on this show, was
[13:16] thrown out of JP Morgan Chase. My father
[13:19] has been a private client of Chase Bank
[13:22] since I was born.
[13:25] I have therefore been a private client
[13:27] since I was old enough to have a bank
[13:29] account.
[13:31] One day, Chase Bank reached out to me
[13:34] and said, "Get out. get as far away from
[13:37] us as possible. And I said, "Why? I'm a
[13:40] client. What? What's happening? We're
[13:42] not allowed to tell you. Just get away."
[13:45] Okay. So, the point is early Bitcoiners
[13:50] have been harassed, treated like
[13:52] criminals, audited. Okay.
[13:55] This is the first time in the history of
[13:58] being a Bitcoiner where it's actually
[14:00] encouraged.
[14:02] And by assigning some relationship to
[14:05] the asset class, by admitting that you
[14:08] own some of it,
[14:10] there isn't a threat. They're not going
[14:12] to try and literally bully you with
[14:15] different pockets of the government.
[14:17] So, I ended the tweet by saying, "For
[14:20] many, this is the first time it feels
[14:22] safe, even in courage, to be a
[14:24] Bitcoiner. I think what we're seeing
[14:26] isn't necessarily profit taking at a
[14:28] round number, but early Bitcoiners
[14:31] finally feeling comfortable moving some
[14:32] old coins, realizing some wealth, and
[14:35] stepping into the light. To be clear,
[14:37] I'm not selling a single SAT. You guys
[14:40] know that I've never been more bullish.
[14:42] I'm doing the opposite. But I'll tell
[14:44] you guys the truth. I've sold Bitcoin in
[14:47] my past before I built Strike, before we
[14:49] built Strike Lending, before I'm in the
[14:51] position I'm in today.
[14:54] Hell, like people people think sometimes
[14:56] that like I was born into, you know, all
[15:00] the experiences I have now. I lived
[15:02] through mistakes, guys. I paid six
[15:05] Bitcoin for a painting once that was
[15:08] worth like $200.
[15:11] That my my old roommate now jokes like,
[15:14] "Oh, this painting is worth like over
[15:17] half a million dollars." No, it was a
[15:19] couple hundred painting. I should have
[15:20] never spent that Bitcoin. But I would I
[15:23] just got into Bitcoin. I didn't know any
[15:24] better, right? The empty closet, the
[15:28] house I have now. How do you guys think
[15:30] I paid for that? Bitcoin. Okay. And so
[15:35] the the point of all of this is, you
[15:38] know, me, my family, we've been in
[15:40] Bitcoin for a long time. You realize
[15:41] some of the wealth and then all of a
[15:43] sudden it attracts the IRS. It attracts
[15:45] it attracts
[15:47] getting debanked. My business has been
[15:50] debanked three to four times, depends on
[15:53] how you count, at least three times.
[15:55] I've now been debanked by like too big
[15:58] to fail banks that I've been a client of
[16:01] since for 20 years.
[16:05] And so I I I really think people are
[16:08] being way too dramatic and they're
[16:10] overthinking this. And I think that the
[16:13] I the the thesis Jordi Visser's thesis
[16:15] that this is Bitcoin's IPO moment is
[16:17] absolutely correct. For the first time,
[16:19] early investors, just like think of
[16:22] Apple, early investors into Steve Jobs,
[16:25] early employees like Steve Waznjak, they
[16:27] finally get liquidity when they IPO,
[16:30] they finally are comfortable realizing
[16:31] their wealth. There isn't uh there isn't
[16:34] a stigma against them. As early
[16:36] employees, you're not supposed to sell.
[16:38] You're supposed to be allin. You're
[16:39] supposed to show conviction in the
[16:40] business. You're not supposed to trade
[16:42] upside for a bigger house. You're
[16:43] supposed to build Apple out of a garage,
[16:46] right? Where's the blood and sweat
[16:48] equity? Where are the tears? Where's the
[16:50] sacrifice as an early employee in some
[16:52] of these companies? But when you IPO,
[16:54] it's encouraged. Get yourself some
[16:56] wealth. Get yourself a house. Get
[16:58] yourself a car. Go get go get an
[17:00] engagement ring. And that's what, in my
[17:03] opinion, that's all Bitcoin is
[17:05] experiencing right now. you finally have
[17:08] someone taking the other side of this
[17:10] liquidity, which is Black Rockck. And if
[17:12] you have billions of dollars worth of
[17:14] Bitcoin, you can finally take some of
[17:17] that and get a house. Let me tell you
[17:19] guys something. The amount of estate
[17:22] planning. So, I'm going through it
[17:24] personally. My family is going through
[17:26] it. A lot of Bitcoiners are going
[17:28] through it of like, wow, h like what do
[17:33] we do now?
[17:36] that's happening now. And so I just
[17:39] wanted to touch on the vibes in the
[17:41] industry.
[17:44] I do not think that early Bitcoiners are
[17:47] like, "Oh no, Bitcoin's broken. Let me
[17:49] sell." In fact, you know, at least in my
[17:52] network, and I am one of these people,
[17:54] that's not happening like at all. In
[17:56] fact, I've never been more bullish,
[17:59] which I'll get to as to why. Like, in my
[18:01] entire life, in my career in Bitcoin,
[18:06] I really think that this is the first
[18:08] time people are encouraged to be
[18:11] Bitcoiners, realize some of their
[18:13] wealth, and redistribute it. So, this is
[18:18] this you guys saw we we covered this on
[18:20] the show, but someone sold $9 billion
[18:23] worth of Bitcoin in a few days and
[18:26] barely moved the price if at all. Again,
[18:29] guys, this would have never been
[18:32] possible before, ever, ever. And I'm
[18:35] highly confident that this person was
[18:37] either realizing a portion of their
[18:39] Bitcoin wealth and rotating it into
[18:41] assets like real estate or something
[18:44] else that is meaningful of a a form of
[18:46] utility. I I also don't think Bitcoiners
[18:49] are rotating out of Bitcoin to save in
[18:52] something else. I'm highly confident in
[18:53] that as well. But there are utility
[18:55] services. People like flying planes.
[18:57] People like riding boats. People like
[18:59] living in nice real estate. There's all
[19:01] sorts of util people like buying sports
[19:03] teams.
[19:05] So utility value. These are experiences.
[19:08] Um but this is the slide I I really
[19:10] wanted to end this with. So this is what
[19:13] you're seeing is in the orange yellow
[19:15] line here is the price. In the green is
[19:18] long-term holder supply. And so what you
[19:21] can visually see this chart tells a
[19:24] million stories. So the first one is you
[19:27] can see in these little dips in the
[19:29] green is when long-term holders are
[19:33] selling in realizing some of their new
[19:36] found wealth and you can see it's
[19:38] directly correlated to the tops of these
[19:41] cycles, right? So Bitcoin traditionally
[19:44] finds a crazy high top. So let's
[19:45] actually go through my story. So I got
[19:47] into Bitcoin with my dad here in early
[19:51] 2013, late 2012 range. Okay,
[19:55] Bitcoin goes all the way up to $1,200.
[19:59] Okay, so you know, mind you guys, I'm
[20:03] freshly dropped out of college. I'm
[20:04] buying Bitcoin well under hundred bucks.
[20:06] Bitcoin goes from, let's pick, use round
[20:08] numbers. Bitcoin goes from $50 to
[20:12] $1,200, $1,300. I I forget what the peak
[20:15] was on Mount Gaus, but call it 12-300
[20:18] bucks. Okay, so you get you can see it
[20:20] right around here.
[20:22] Okay,
[20:24] next
[20:26] it goes all the way down to $250. And
[20:28] you can see some people realize some of
[20:31] that wealth in this dip. Then it goes
[20:32] from $250 to 20,000. And oh my god,
[20:35] 20,000. All of a sudden, this is
[20:37] life-changing money for some people. And
[20:38] you can see it realized in this dip.
[20:40] Then it goes from $3,000 it fell to to
[20:45] 69,000 70,000. And you can see how much
[20:48] was realized in this dip. Now, let me
[20:50] move my big ass head out of the way real
[20:53] quick. Hold on.
[20:55] Now,
[20:58] we have breached
[21:00] 100,000 and we've just been grinding.
[21:03] Now, do you guys see how much has been
[21:05] realized by OG's and the price isn't
[21:10] dipping?
[21:12] The price isn't dipping. So, a few
[21:14] thoughts, guys. The way Bitcoin is
[21:15] distributed. So people say Bitcoin is
[21:18] distributed through mining, which is
[21:19] true. Proof of work. Ingenious invention
[21:21] by Satoshi. But Bitcoin is also
[21:23] distributed by people selling.
[21:27] You understand? Like
[21:29] the way I like to visualize Bitcoin's
[21:32] evolution in being fairly distributed is
[21:35] there's a lot of people in this world
[21:38] that have a lot of big houses, a lot of
[21:40] private jets, a lot of gold, a lot of
[21:44] equities, right? Like think about Mark
[21:45] Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg has a lot of
[21:49] big houses, a lot of stock in Facebook,
[21:52] a lot of private planes, a lot of cool
[21:54] boats, a lot of stuff that required time
[21:57] and energy for him to acquire. Right
[22:00] now, what does he not have? Bitcoin.
[22:03] And think of an OG Bitcoiner. An OG
[22:05] Bitcoiner who was maybe let's let's use
[22:07] the stereotype, which you know is
[22:10] sometimes unfair, but let's use a
[22:11] stereotype. an OG Bitcoiner that was in
[22:13] a college dorm room or their parents'
[22:15] basement that had [ __ ] all but was
[22:17] mining early. Okay, they have a ton of
[22:22] Bitcoin, billions of dollars, tens of
[22:24] billions of dollars of Bitcoin, but they
[22:26] don't have really nice houses, private
[22:29] planes, a ton of equity in companies
[22:32] that they're running or have founded.
[22:34] And so there's a natural exchange.
[22:36] Eventually, OG Bitcoiners are going to
[22:40] turn some of their Bitcoin wealth into
[22:43] real utility assets like houses, like
[22:46] boats, like planes. And eventually, all
[22:49] the people that have all of these
[22:53] monetized assets that aren't actually
[22:55] money that they're using to save, they
[22:57] will demonetize those assets. So,
[22:59] they'll sell the houses they don't
[23:00] actually live in. They'll sell the
[23:02] Facebook stock that they're not actually
[23:03] saving in. They'll sell the gold that
[23:06] they're not actually using as money and
[23:08] they'll monetize Bitcoin. And so it's a
[23:10] very natural swap. And so what you guys
[23:12] see in this chart is this is what we
[23:15] call an adoption curve. So Bitcoin goes
[23:18] up, it attracts new entrance. Those new
[23:22] entrance need supply. The supply doesn't
[23:24] come out of the ground because we can't
[23:25] get Bitcoin out of the ground. We can't
[23:27] get Bitcoin out of the factory. We can't
[23:29] get Bitcoin at the Federal Reserve. It
[23:31] comes out of the market, guys. comes out
[23:32] of the hands of people like you and I
[23:35] and these people like guys I I'm not
[23:38] going to point out where in the chart I
[23:40] got my empty closet house but that's my
[23:42] story too at so at a certain point in my
[23:44] life I was like man I I want a cool
[23:48] house now should I have waited until
[23:51] Strike launched Strike Lending and
[23:53] borrowed and financed it that way
[23:55] instead of the way I did yeah but I was
[23:57] young and whatever oops whatever but the
[24:00] point is I don't even really regret it.
[24:02] It's a beautiful place. My girlfriend
[24:04] and I have tons of memories there. It's
[24:07] very likely going to be the home that
[24:09] we, you know, are going to be living in
[24:11] when we get married and have children
[24:13] initially. So, I don't regret it. I
[24:16] traded in some of my newfound wealth for
[24:19] a utility asset that's provided me
[24:21] safety, memories, and a place to start a
[24:24] family. And that that's that's all
[24:27] right. This rant is getting a little
[24:28] long, but that's all I I I literally
[24:31] think that's all that's happening. And
[24:33] the mere fact that Bitcoin remains above
[24:35] 100K
[24:37] during all of this realized selling is
[24:42] absolutely insane. I cannot begin to
[24:45] express how bullish this is. Look at
[24:47] every other time
[24:50] wealth
[24:51] from old Bitcoin holders was realized,
[24:54] it was a bare market. This goes to show
[24:57] you guys the amount of institutional
[24:59] demand, the amount of maturity that
[25:03] Bitcoin has as an asset class is
[25:05] absolutely insane. It's absolutely
[25:07] insane. So, I'm just turning on a lamp
[25:09] here. It's getting a little dark where
[25:11] I'm at.
[25:12] There we go. Um, so anyways, I know it
[25:17] feels grim. I know it feels bleak,
[25:20] especially for those of you that are
[25:21] new. I've been through it. I've been
[25:23] around the block. This contextualizes
[25:26] it. The reality is this is how Bitcoin
[25:28] gets adopted. Bitcoin's initially
[25:30] distributed through mining, but then
[25:31] it's further distributed through people
[25:33] exchanging bitcoins for real world
[25:36] utility assets. And people that have
[25:38] real world utility assets need bitcoin.
[25:40] And there's going to be a natural
[25:43] natural distribution mechanism over
[25:45] time. Okay. Now, let me go on to why I
[25:49] am so bullish right now. because all
[25:52] that's happening in the current
[25:53] financial markets
[25:55] and all of the selling in realized
[25:57] profits because again if you get a US
[25:59] president that's saying I'm supporting
[26:01] you being a Bitcoiner. I'm going to get
[26:04] you know what what do you say the
[26:05] Elizabeth Warren regime off your back
[26:08] and I know these things are funny and
[26:09] like you know like I said I'm not
[26:11] necessarily a Trump guy. I'm not
[26:12] necessarily a Democrat guy. I'm an
[26:16] orange guy. I've told you guys this. I'm
[26:17] not I don't align with any particular
[26:19] political agenda. Um not not my thing. I
[26:22] actually don't think politics are the
[26:24] best way to change the world. I think
[26:26] open source software and technology is
[26:28] obviously.
[26:29] But when you have a president that
[26:32] actually means that and says that, it's
[26:34] very encouraging to people that
[26:36] initially thought they were like
[26:37] criminals or if they deposited a lump
[26:40] sum of their Bitcoin on an exchange,
[26:42] they were going to get harassed or
[26:44] kicked out of banks or treated
[26:45] differently or threatened physically.
[26:48] Like all of that was true. So just
[26:51] anyway, all right, I'll I'll stop. But
[26:54] you know, the the fear-mongering of
[26:56] like, oh, Bitcoin OGs know something we
[26:58] don't. and like Bitcoin's going to die.
[27:00] It's outrageous. And the fact that we're
[27:01] still above 100K while early Bitcoiners
[27:05] get to realize some of their wealth,
[27:06] exchange it for utility assets, and
[27:08] you're allowing folks from the
[27:11] traditional system that didn't have any
[27:12] Bitcoin, but had a bunch of other stuff
[27:14] like the Black Rocks of the world, the
[27:16] Fidelities of the world, public
[27:18] companies. They're now building Bitcoin
[27:20] positions. We're we're we're
[27:22] distributing and maturing this asset
[27:24] class all above 100K. It's insane. And
[27:28] now liquidity trap and the end of QT.
[27:30] Now we're doing all of this while the
[27:32] current financial system is officially
[27:34] starting to break which let's get into
[27:36] now. So this tweet from James Lavish.
[27:38] Good morning. After a month of
[27:40] increasing usage, overnight borrowing,
[27:42] which is the need for dollars, exploded
[27:44] on Friday to $50 billion, mostly in the
[27:47] afternoon session and not posted by the
[27:50] Fed, but captured on Bloomberg. This
[27:52] need caused SOFR
[27:55] borrowing rate to explode to 35 basis
[27:58] points above the Fed funds rate. While
[28:00] some increased activity is expected at
[28:03] the month's end, these are serious red
[28:05] flags that the financial system is on
[28:07] the verge of locking up unless the Fed
[28:09] adds liquidity soon. Have a great week.
[28:12] Now, I know that sounds like a bunch of
[28:14] jargon. So, why you guys tune in to the
[28:18] show is I'm going to explain it to you
[28:20] and why this is so incredibly bullish
[28:22] for Bitcoin. All of this is like so
[28:24] exciting to me. So, you can see in this
[28:26] image here the standing overnight uh
[28:29] repo facility. So, the SOFR uh it's
[28:32] spiked. You can see here the rate. Okay.
[28:36] So, let's get into what's all going on.
[28:39] So, this tweet from Lynn, uh, all the
[28:41] QEQT
[28:42] sofurreo stuff that's happening right
[28:45] now is basically just like back in 2019,
[28:48] except now the Fed has a standing repo
[28:50] facility. Both times a rapid TGA refill
[28:52] was a big catalyst. I have an explainer
[28:55] thread in 2019 and the repo spike below
[28:58] from back when it was happening. So,
[29:00] first of all, let's take a step back.
[29:01] Let me try and break this down for you
[29:03] guys. The reverse repo. So, you're going
[29:05] to see people on the internet saying the
[29:07] reverse repo is empty. The reverse repo
[29:08] is empty. This is crazy bullish. The the
[29:10] the system is breaking. The Fed has to
[29:12] start printing money. What is the
[29:15] reverse repo? Um, in plain speak, to
[29:18] keep it short, the reverse repo was
[29:20] created after the 2008 financial crisis
[29:23] when the Fed printed so much goddamn
[29:26] money that banks didn't actually know
[29:30] what to do with all the bank reserves
[29:32] that they had. Because think about it,
[29:34] the United States, whether you, you
[29:36] know, you think the Fed is independent
[29:38] or not, just call it the United States
[29:39] of America, creates a bunch of dollars,
[29:42] right? Those dollars end up as deposits
[29:45] in the banking system because whether
[29:47] those dollars are stimulus checks like
[29:49] we saw in COVID directly to the people
[29:51] or whether they're distributed in
[29:52] entirely different way, they end up
[29:54] realizing themselves in the economy and
[29:56] people deposit them in their bank. They
[29:59] buy stocks, they buy gold, they buy
[30:00] houses, now they buy Bitcoin. Right now,
[30:03] there was so much excess dollars at the
[30:06] banks that the funding rates were
[30:09] dropping below the Fed funds rate. And
[30:11] the Fed needed to set a floor of the
[30:15] cost to borrow. And so they created this
[30:17] thing called the reverse repo where
[30:20] money market bonds, government bonds, uh
[30:23] domestic banks can deposit into the
[30:26] reverse repo and lend to the Fed and
[30:29] that is riskfree. So if the overnight
[30:32] rates fell below the Fed rate, everyone
[30:35] just go to the reverse repo. Okay? So,
[30:38] think of it as a liquidity sponge, a
[30:40] place to take all the excess sloshing
[30:43] pre printed pieces of paper and park
[30:45] them to get a risk-free return and
[30:48] creating a floor for rates. Hopefully,
[30:50] that makes sense. You guys can ask
[30:51] questions at the end, but it's a it's a
[30:54] sponge for liquidity because the Fed
[30:55] printed too much money, so it's going to
[30:57] attract a bunch of dollars. Okay. Now,
[31:00] what you can see on this chart here is
[31:02] on the far left in 2021, this spiked.
[31:06] Why did it spike? Well, do you guys
[31:07] remember what happened in 2020, 2021?
[31:10] COVID, we're printing trillion plus
[31:12] dollars. And so the same thing happened
[31:14] as 2008 financial crisis. So much money
[31:18] was printed that the banks had a ton of
[31:21] reserves. So much reserves that they
[31:24] didn't know what to do with. There's so
[31:26] much bank deposits because everyone was
[31:28] getting stimulus checks. Money was
[31:30] coming from left, right, center, up,
[31:32] down, right? And so you can see a lot of
[31:35] that liquidity. Again, this is like a
[31:37] liquidity sponge ended up in this
[31:39] reverse repo.
[31:41] Now, Janet Yellen, so the former
[31:45] Treasury Secretary, so you know, last
[31:47] administration's version of Scott Bess
[31:49] and Scotty B,
[31:52] she was trying to engineer a way to
[31:55] inject some liquidity into the financial
[31:57] system back in this 2022 2023 range. So,
[32:01] you see where this thing tops out here.
[32:02] So, you can see it explode during COVID.
[32:05] so much liquidity printed, so much money
[32:08] printing which we all lived through and
[32:10] then it starts to stagnate and then dip
[32:12] down. It dips down because what Janet
[32:14] Yellen realized is if she issued T
[32:17] bills, so you know lending to the
[32:19] government short-term, short duration,
[32:21] and she made the T bills more attractive
[32:24] than the rate you were getting in the
[32:26] reverse repo. She could drain money out
[32:29] of the reverse repo and into lending to
[32:32] the government. It was very tricky and
[32:34] sneaky on her part. But when you hear
[32:37] someone say there's $2.4 trillion in the
[32:40] reverse repo, that's private cash that
[32:43] was parked there, excess liquidity,
[32:45] excess reserves that was parked into
[32:47] this reverse reco. So it's like a
[32:48] liquidity sponge. Okay. And then one of
[32:52] the reasons that you had the uh rates
[32:55] hike as fast as they did and you had US
[32:58] rates, so the Fed had rates at over 4%
[33:00] and Bitcoin went from 17K to 100K. Guys,
[33:05] rates are still extremely high in the
[33:07] United States. We've talked about on
[33:09] this show how the United States has some
[33:10] of the highest rates from any central
[33:12] bank or the dollar, the Fed. Again, is
[33:15] are they independent? Are they not?
[33:16] Whatever interchangeably, the Fed has
[33:18] some of the highest rates in the world.
[33:19] And Bitcoin's been bullish. It's almost
[33:22] 10xed in that time period. How is that
[33:24] possible? Where's the dollar liquidity
[33:26] coming from? They're draining money out
[33:29] of vehicles like the reverse repo. And
[33:31] so what Janet Yellen did is, hey, I'll
[33:33] issue T bills. And so if you're a money
[33:35] market fund, it doesn't you don't have a
[33:38] bias on where you're getting your
[33:39] risk-free return. You just want the
[33:42] highest number. And so when the Treasury
[33:45] is giving you a slightly higher number
[33:46] than what you're getting at the Fed,
[33:48] then they're draining money out of this.
[33:50] And so you can see the deposits leak,
[33:52] leak, leak, leak, leak, leak, leak,
[33:53] leak, leak. But now it's empty. And the
[33:57] emptiness is very important because it's
[33:59] really a proxy for how much liquidity is
[34:01] there in the system. Right? Janet Yellen
[34:04] needed to find a way to support the
[34:06] existing financial system
[34:10] and she did it by using this reverse
[34:12] repo facility draining over $2 trillion
[34:16] that was that was like a acted as a
[34:18] sponge for when all the printing was
[34:20] happening. She drained it all out and
[34:23] was able to puke it into the real world.
[34:26] But now it's gone. Okay. So, first let's
[34:28] start there. That's what the reverse
[34:29] repo is. And when people say, "Well, the
[34:31] reverse repo's empty. This is a huge
[34:33] deal." That's what they mean. It is a
[34:36] huge deal because the hack that the US
[34:38] government was using to give liquidity
[34:41] to the existing financial system
[34:45] without bringing rates down. So, you
[34:48] needed high rates because you want to
[34:50] fight inflation, but the existing
[34:52] financial system needs liquidity or else
[34:54] it collapses. It's a giant stack of of
[34:57] cards of dominoes. it's going to fall
[34:59] apart. And so that is what happened.
[35:02] Now, this is from Jerome Powell's recent
[35:06] meeting. This is from the Fed's website,
[35:08] and I quote, "While reserves appear to
[35:11] remain abundant, they are declining and
[35:13] will continue to do so since we began
[35:15] shrinking our balance sheet in 2022.
[35:18] This is known as uh QT, quantitative
[35:20] tightening. The quantity of reserves has
[35:23] not changed much as the excess liquidity
[35:25] in the system was absorbed and then sub
[35:28] subsequentially released by our
[35:30] overnight reverse repo facility. Okay,
[35:33] you guys following so far? That's the
[35:35] reverse repo facility we just talked
[35:37] about. Now, however, balances in that
[35:39] facility have declined to minimum
[35:41] levels. He's acknowledging that it's
[35:43] gone. So, further declines in our
[35:46] securities holdings will translate more
[35:48] directly into lower reserves.
[35:51] So, what he's saying is
[35:54] we began quantitative tightening. we
[35:57] began reducing our balance sheet. So you
[36:00] have COVID, then you get crazy amounts
[36:02] of inflation because they printed so
[36:04] much money. And so what the Fed is
[36:05] saying is we have to protect the
[36:07] American consumer's right to fair
[36:09] pricing. Now again, as a free market
[36:11] guy, this is absurd. We should abolish
[36:13] the Fed, but just allow me to co-play as
[36:16] Jerome Powell.
[36:18] We need to defeat inflation. So we're
[36:20] going to hike rates as fast as we've
[36:22] ever hiked them. And we're going to
[36:24] reduce our balance sheets of
[36:25] quantitative tightening. we're going to
[36:26] tighten like almost like uh artificially
[36:31] make the dollar scarcer. Think of it
[36:33] that way as a Bitcoiner.
[36:37] Now, what he's admitting to is the
[36:39] reverse repo facility that was useful to
[36:42] the market getting liquidity and making
[36:44] sure it had ample reserves is now empty.
[36:48] And so he's saying now if we keep
[36:50] reducing our balance sheet, we're
[36:52] starting to crush the reserves in the
[36:54] financial system and we might squeeze it
[36:57] to a point where there aren't enough
[36:59] reserves and the whole thing seizes up,
[37:01] which is what Lyn Alden referenced in
[37:03] 2019 and so does Jerome here. So I'll
[37:06] keep going
[37:07] now. However, balances in that facility
[37:09] have declined to minimal levels. So
[37:11] further declines in our securities
[37:13] holdings will translate more directly
[37:14] into lower reserves. Currently, reserve
[37:17] balances stand just below $3 trillion or
[37:20] about 10% of GDP. By comparison,
[37:24] reserves as a share of GDP stood near 8%
[37:28] of GDP in early 2019 prior to the acute
[37:31] funding pressures that emerged later
[37:33] that year. So, what he's referencing is
[37:35] what Lynn referenced in 2019. This exact
[37:38] same thing happened. Now, not like exact
[37:41] to the pixel, but the same exact flavor.
[37:44] different facilities but same thing
[37:46] there wasn't enough reserves in the
[37:48] existing financial system and the
[37:50] important metric here is it was about 8%
[37:52] of GDP the amount of bank reserves in
[37:54] the system versus the GDP right now
[37:57] we're at like nine and some change and
[37:59] when you see these charts shooting up
[38:01] and to the right it's screaming red flag
[38:04] it's screaming screaming mayday mayday
[38:06] SOS SOS there's not enough reserves
[38:08] there's not enough liquidity things are
[38:10] getting tight and when you look at the
[38:12] data and you listen to what Jerome Paul
[38:13] is saying he's admitting that it's
[38:15] happening again. Now, what was the
[38:17] reaction to 2019? We all saw it. Now, it
[38:19] was described as CO. Now, conspiracy
[38:22] theorists will tell you that CO was
[38:24] engineered so that they could print a
[38:25] lot of money. I'm not going to be that
[38:26] guy. No matter if it was left, right,
[38:28] up, down, the point is they had to print
[38:30] a lot of money whether CO happened or
[38:31] not. Okay? And so, the reaction to this
[38:35] is an insane amount of money printing.
[38:37] The Fed has no choice. And so he writes,
[38:40] "Note that reserves as a share of GDP is
[38:43] merely indicative." So he's saying,
[38:44] "Don't freak out. It's just indicative.
[38:47] It could potentially be useful. Get out
[38:50] of here. Not a measure of the ampleness
[38:52] of reserves. Assessments of where
[38:53] reserves stand relative to ample levels
[38:55] depend on a wide range of indicators."
[38:58] So he's saying, this is Jerome's last
[39:00] meeting, guys. I'm reading direct quote.
[39:01] It's from the Fed's website. He's
[39:03] saying, "Hey guys, remember when the
[39:06] entire market seized up and stopped
[39:08] working in 2019 and we had to quickly re
[39:12] Now whether it's QE or not, you know,
[39:14] there's there's pointless debates on the
[39:16] internet of what's QE. No, all the
[39:18] purists are saying that's not
[39:19] technically QE, I don't give a [ __ ]
[39:21] It's money printing. It's debasing the
[39:23] dollar. It's a scam." Whatever whatever
[39:25] variation of what happened in 2019 and
[39:27] what's about to happen now, in 2019, the
[39:30] market seized up. There weren't enough
[39:32] reserves. The Fed had no choice. They
[39:34] had to just go dump tons of liquidity
[39:38] into the system to provide ample
[39:39] reserves. Okay, this is the cost of
[39:42] borrowing tens of trillions of dollars
[39:45] over the last 20 to 40 years and doing
[39:49] [ __ ] all with it, losing it, wasting it.
[39:52] There's money missing.
[39:55] The reserves aren't there. In order to
[39:58] perpetuate this, they have to print the
[39:59] money. And the chairman of the Federal
[40:01] Reserve is sitting here telling you in
[40:03] broad daylight, remember what happened
[40:05] in 2019?
[40:07] It's happening again right now. And so
[40:10] I'm going to pause QT and end it. I'm
[40:14] going to start QE or some variation of
[40:17] it where I'm not going to call it QE
[40:19] because everyone in the world already
[40:20] knows what QE everyone knows QE is money
[40:22] printing. So I won't call it QE. We'll
[40:25] we'll make some other facility. the bank
[40:27] term funding program, the repo rate
[40:29] facility, all this garbage [ __ ]
[40:32] It's money printing at the end of the
[40:33] day as a Bitcoiner. That's all we care
[40:35] about.
[40:36] That's all we care about. Bitcoin is the
[40:38] best expression of this mess. Okay. So,
[40:41] I go on. So, when you guys see headlines
[40:46] like this, Jerome Powell, there's not a
[40:48] lot to benefit more from balance sheet
[40:50] runoff. So he's saying in zero hedge
[40:54] jokingly remarks translation we all
[40:57] remember September of 2019.
[41:00] So Dral is saying hey now that I think
[41:03] about it there's not much more to gain
[41:05] from QT from tightening from balance
[41:08] sheet runoff. We should stop that
[41:10] shouldn't we? And then he says, "Feds
[41:14] Powell, at some point we will want
[41:16] reserves to begin growing gradually."
[41:19] Guys,
[41:21] guys, listen to me closely.
[41:25] Bitcoin is absorbing record levels of OG
[41:30] selling and remaining above 100K. This
[41:33] asset is maturing. People are able to
[41:36] realize wealth creation
[41:39] and new entrance, fidelity, black rock,
[41:44] large sovereigns,
[41:46] governments, institutions.
[41:50] We're still above 100K.
[41:52] We're still one of the best performing
[41:54] assets this year.
[41:57] And the chairman of the Fed is telling
[41:58] you the market is about to seize up. Our
[42:03] facilities that we've used to inject
[42:05] liquidity are empty.
[42:08] Funding rates are are screaming
[42:12] Mayday.
[42:13] We need to stop QT and start printing
[42:16] money. They're saying it in broad
[42:19] daylight.
[42:20] This is from Fed trader Joseph Wang. The
[42:23] Fed sets interest rates as it sees fit,
[42:25] but it is losing control of its balance
[42:27] sheet policy to the growing fiscal
[42:29] deficit. Fed officials look to repo
[42:32] rates for signs of reserve scarcity,
[42:34] which influences their decision to
[42:36] shrink or expand their balance sheet.
[42:38] But repo rates are determined by supply
[42:40] and demand and not simply the level of
[42:43] reserves. Demand for repo financing
[42:46] continues to grow rapidly from the
[42:48] increasing fiscal deficit. While the
[42:50] supply of repo financing can only keep
[42:52] up with the help of the Fed. Okay. So,
[42:55] he's saying the demand for these things
[42:58] is so high because the government runs
[43:01] such a large deficit because we have so
[43:02] much debt because we're living in fiscal
[43:04] dominance. But the supply to meet that
[43:07] demand can only grow if the Fed prints
[43:11] the money, guys.
[43:13] That's how it's always worked.
[43:16] I am so bullish
[43:20] because despite the financial system
[43:22] having no liquidity. So you guys keep
[43:24] asking me why is Bitcoin dumping on a
[43:25] Sunday night? Why is Bitcoin dumping on
[43:27] a Friday? Because when these rate these
[43:31] lending rates spike, Bitcoin is telling
[43:34] you the truth. It's telling you there's
[43:35] something wrong.
[43:38] Bitcoin is the best. It's it's the it's
[43:41] a truth machine. It's the only free
[43:42] market we have. So on a Sunday night
[43:46] when banks are having a tough time
[43:49] finding overnight rates and there's no
[43:51] reserves in the system, Bitcoin is the
[43:53] thing that's telling you no bad help.
[43:57] And in on the contrary, when the Fed,
[44:00] which they've they're starting that
[44:02] process, we'll see how quick they go
[44:04] from, huh, it might be a good idea to
[44:06] stop QT and start QE to print print
[44:08] print. Bitcoin's going to run the
[44:10] fastest. I'm I'm telling you, I I will
[44:13] get on here and raise my hand and say I
[44:15] was wrong if that doesn't happen. But
[44:17] that's why I'm so bullish. Despite guys,
[44:20] four years ago, if Bitcoin was
[44:22] experiencing this market, Bitcoin would
[44:23] would have dropped 30, 40, 50%. The
[44:26] level of institutional buy, the fact
[44:27] that we're above 100K absorbing what
[44:29] we're absorbing is insane. It is
[44:31] amazing.
[44:33] So, Joseph continues, "Stable repo rates
[44:36] would ultimately require persistent Fed
[44:38] balance sheet expansion and effectively
[44:41] control of its balance sheet size to the
[44:43] fiscal authorities. This post reviews
[44:46] the supply and demand factors that have
[44:47] driven repo rates above interest on
[44:49] reserves and suggests that balance sheet
[44:51] expansion will resume shortly after QT."
[44:54] Okay, and this was the end of it. I I
[44:57] just want to read to you guys this part
[44:58] as well. A steady expansion of the Fed's
[45:01] balance sheet is the most likely way to
[45:03] meet the growing financing demands of
[45:05] the Treasury, which is just the US
[45:06] government. The Fed could do this
[45:09] through its standing repo facility,
[45:11] where it lends according to the needs of
[45:12] repo borrowers. The facility has so far
[45:15] seen limited takeup and does not appear
[45:17] to constrain repo rates. They could also
[45:20] buy treasury bills to add reserves into
[45:22] the banking system, who could then lend
[45:24] them into the repo market. It is also
[45:26] possible that commercial banks could
[45:28] increase their lending in repo by
[45:30] expanding their balance sheet and not
[45:32] just shifting the composition of their
[45:34] assets, but that is not likely under
[45:36] current regulations and spreads. The end
[45:38] of QT is coming soon and further growth
[45:41] in the Fed's balance sheet will
[45:43] necessarily follow shortly. I could not
[45:46] agree more. [snorts]
[45:47] He tweeted this. The Fed will need to
[45:49] expand its balance sheet by several
[45:51] hundred billion dollars a year. and and
[45:54] that is true because the demand for the
[45:58] debt that's required. So, you know, call
[46:00] it a trillion dollars a year. So, he he
[46:03] writes
[46:05] uh the end of QT may start in December
[46:08] to head offyear funding pressures uh
[46:10] structurally rising TGA and uh
[46:13] insatiable demand for repo financing
[46:15] leave them little no choice. So, the Fed
[46:17] doesn't have a choice. You're starting
[46:18] to hear it from Jerome Powell. It's in
[46:20] the data. It's in the numbers. Uh this
[46:23] is from the Fed's slogan. If recent rise
[46:25] in repo rates turns out not to be
[46:27] temporary, clearly not. Fed would need
[46:30] to begin buying assets. And then he said
[46:34] supported decision to end Fed balance
[46:36] sheet runoff. So we're all on board. No
[46:39] more QT. Get the money printers humming.
[46:42] Get them warmed up. Now I just want to
[46:45] uh one more kind of funny insight here.
[46:49] So Lynn referenced this. Joseph
[46:52] referenced this. There's been a few
[46:53] references to the TGA and the TGA
[46:56] growth. So the TGA stands for the
[46:58] Treasury General's account. Okay? And
[47:00] now you guys, you can, you know, there's
[47:02] a Q&A at the end of these episodes. So
[47:04] you guys ask me if I lose you at any
[47:05] point. The Treasury General's account,
[47:07] think of it like the United States
[47:09] government's checking account, okay?
[47:11] It's the account that Scott Bessant, the
[47:13] Treasury Secretary, finances the US
[47:15] government on. Okay? Basically, I now
[47:17] you know all of the, you know, fancy
[47:20] finance talking heads are going to be in
[47:21] the comments like, "Bro, what?" Listen,
[47:24] I'm trying to dumb it down. All right,
[47:26] think of it like the US government's
[47:27] bank account. Now,
[47:31] with this chart is showing the
[47:36] growth in the US government's bank
[47:38] account. Okay,
[47:41] our bank account, the US government just
[47:43] crossed a trillion dollars. Now the
[47:45] reason this is important is as the TGA
[47:48] growth so they're saying you know a lot
[47:50] of the reserve scarcity has coincided
[47:53] with the TGA's growth with the US
[47:55] government bank accounts growth
[47:56] imbalance the reason for that obviously
[47:59] is Scott Besson and the US government
[48:01] can impact dollar liquidity if there was
[48:04] not ample reserves and they wanted more
[48:07] liquidity into the system one way they
[48:09] could do that is spend down the TGA the
[48:12] US government can start spending money
[48:14] into the real world. Okay. So, what
[48:17] you're seeing here, so uh this chart
[48:20] reads, "First red arrow down in 2021.
[48:23] The USD weakens." So,
[48:27] next, read this tweet. The irony is that
[48:31] part of the reason for the funding
[48:33] strain in the econom, which we're
[48:34] talking about, the funding strain in the
[48:36] reserve system, is that the federal
[48:38] government remains closed. And so the
[48:40] Treasury's general account is running
[48:42] about $150 billion above normal, which
[48:46] has pulled reserves from the system and
[48:48] driven up funding costs. If I was a
[48:51] conspiracy theorist, I would say part of
[48:54] the reason for the government shutdown
[48:56] is to withhold this cash from the banks
[48:59] because a funding squeeze puts the Fed
[49:01] back into QE mode as quick as possible.
[49:05] This was fascinating to me.
[49:08] So, what this tweet is
[49:12] potentially implying, obviously there's
[49:14] a little conspiracy here, but the fact
[49:16] that the government is still shut down
[49:19] means that Bessant can't spend this
[49:22] money, can't give the the banks the
[49:25] liquidity they need. And if the banks
[49:27] are starved of liquidity
[49:29] and the the rates are becoming an issue,
[49:33] then Jerome Powell has no choice
[49:37] than to turn QT around and start
[49:39] printing money. And that's been the goal
[49:41] of the Trump administration this entire
[49:43] time. We've talked about on this show,
[49:46] there's clearly politics involved,
[49:48] right?
[49:50] Powell is and and and the Fed at large
[49:53] has become a political organization.
[49:55] There's no doubt about that.
[49:58] And so one way that the Trump
[50:00] administration and Besson can get the
[50:02] Fed on side is by remaining shut down.
[50:05] So people like, "Why is this shutdown
[50:07] lasting so long?" Now, I don't know the
[50:08] answer. You ask the Republicans, they
[50:11] say it's the Democrats. You ask the
[50:12] Democrats, they say it's the
[50:13] Republicans. But one hilarious
[50:14] byproduct, whether it's on purpose or
[50:16] not, it's a fact. is that the TGA is
[50:19] running way above normal, which dries up
[50:22] liquidity, which caused these rates to
[50:24] spike, which forces the Fed to print.
[50:32] And so, I bring you back to this, guys.
[50:34] Long-term Bitcoin holders have sold more
[50:36] than 400,000
[50:38] Bitcoin over the last 30 days,
[50:40] representing almost 2% of the total
[50:42] supply. Bitcoin is in a material supply
[50:45] distribution phase and the price is
[50:48] still holding above 100,000.
[50:50] Bitcoin is living through a liquidity
[50:54] strain in the banking reserve system of
[50:57] the current financial system and it's
[50:59] still above 100,000.
[51:01] Bitcoin
[51:03] has lived through
[51:05] QT for years,
[51:08] the fastest rate hike ever. And now,
[51:11] just now, only just now, is the
[51:14] financial system starting to break? Is
[51:15] there starting to be serious strain? Is
[51:17] the Fed forced to having to print money?
[51:21] And people are going to look at me and
[51:23] say, "Oh, the cycle's over. We've
[51:25] already experienced the top. I don't
[51:26] know why you're bullish." Listen, I
[51:29] don't give a [ __ ] about four years
[51:32] cycle. Oh, we're this many days from the
[51:34] having. I don't care. That's not how
[51:38] that I I'm bullish. sue me. And I'll
[51:41] tell you this, if Bitcoin doesn't have
[51:43] an explosive 2026, I'll come on here and
[51:46] be like, "Yo, I screwed up. I was wrong.
[51:48] And here's how and why."
[51:51] As far as I can tell, this is the most
[51:53] bullish setup ever.
[51:56] We're just chilling above 100K facing
[51:59] max sell and distribution of capital
[52:02] into
[52:04] extremely deep pocketed institution.
[52:06] This is an extremely liquid and mature
[52:08] market. Someone offloaded $9 billion in
[52:11] a day and it didn't move. It's insane.
[52:14] How many assets in the world can do that
[52:19] and the entire financial system is se
[52:22] seizing up as the government shuts down.
[52:24] So riddle me this guys. The Fed stops
[52:26] QT. They start some variation of QE. The
[52:29] government comes back on and the
[52:30] trillion dollars in our checking account
[52:32] starts to pour into the real world.
[52:36] The Fed starts printing money. Powell
[52:39] has to leave. Trump appoints who he
[52:41] wants and they start cutting, slashing
[52:42] rates 50 basis points at a time.
[52:47] And I'm supposed to be bearish.
[52:51] Nah, you got the wrong guy. I'm bull.
[52:55] I'm I've never been more bullish than
[52:57] now. I And I know. I get it. Like, oh
[53:00] yeah, of course you said that. All
[53:02] right. Well,
[53:05] the coolest thing about a free market is
[53:07] time will tell.
[53:10] Time will tell.
[53:12] I'm bullish. All right, let's go over uh
[53:16] some trade war stuff and uh some AI
[53:19] stuff before we wrap this bad boy up. Uh
[53:22] what China did to red America, the
[53:23] internet is doing to blue America. I'm
[53:25] going to keep cementing this idea on
[53:26] this show. Listen, China disrupted red
[53:29] America. Red America being the middle of
[53:31] America. Red America being manufacturing
[53:33] base of America, right? The rust belt.
[53:35] It's rusty because no one's
[53:37] manufacturing anymore. All of those jobs
[53:39] are in China. The reason that Apple
[53:42] doesn't produce the iPhone in Manhattan
[53:45] is because it would be far more
[53:46] expensive to do that than to produce it
[53:49] in China. China has cheaper labor, a
[53:51] weaker currency, and a stronger
[53:53] manufacturing base. These were all
[53:55] policy decisions made over the last 50
[53:57] years. This is the post71.
[54:00] We print money. We export the dollars.
[54:02] We do [ __ ] all. And the rest of the
[54:04] world bootstraps their manufacturing
[54:06] base and other natural commodities
[54:09] basically because we decided to be the
[54:11] world reserve currency backed by nothing
[54:12] and just print paper out of thin air.
[54:14] Okay. Now, what China did to red
[54:17] America, which is entirely disrupt the
[54:19] middle of America, all the wealth
[54:20] concentration lives on the coast. Now
[54:22] you're either tech and venture capital
[54:26] and whatever in California and there's a
[54:28] lot of wealth there or you are New York
[54:31] Wall Street financial markets hyper
[54:33] financialization and there's a lot of
[54:35] wealth there. The wealth in the middle
[54:36] of America is gone. You know you can
[54:38] make the argument that this is why Trump
[54:40] won the popular vote. He won the popular
[54:42] vote while not winning the coast where
[54:44] majority of the population is. He won it
[54:46] in the middle of America because the
[54:47] middle of America is pissed off. They
[54:50] don't have any jobs anymore. There's no
[54:52] manual labor opportunity anymore. You
[54:53] either have to be a Stanford engineer
[54:55] that drops out and creates Facebook or
[54:58] you have to be a Harvard educated
[55:02] economist financial dude that you know
[55:05] works his way up Wall Street in like a
[55:07] really pathetic and soulless way. Okay.
[55:10] Now, what China did to red America, the
[55:13] internet is doing to blue America. So,
[55:15] red America's main enemy is China.
[55:17] Trump's going to establish these trade
[55:19] wars. you know, he's going to blame
[55:20] everything on China. He got on 60
[55:22] Minutes yesterday and he said, "I want
[55:24] to be number one in Bitcoin because
[55:26] China is trying to be number one in
[55:28] Bitcoin." I don't even think that's
[55:29] true. Who knows if it is or not, but
[55:32] everything's China's fault. Trump's
[55:34] going to make tariff deals with China,
[55:37] trade wars with China. He's going to
[55:39] bring manufacturing back. He's going to
[55:40] bring back the middle of America. Now,
[55:42] think the same for the internet. So, the
[55:44] internet is disrupting Blue America. So,
[55:46] what's Blue America? Blue America is
[55:48] modern day media. Blue America is Wall
[55:50] Street. Blue America is uh accountants,
[55:54] lawyers, highly educated. Think how
[55:56] really the divide is do you have a
[55:58] university degree? Because how's the
[56:01] internet disrupting Blue America? The
[56:02] internet is disrupting Blue America
[56:04] because AI is taking the entrylevel jobs
[56:08] of the accountant, of the lawyer. Okay?
[56:11] And I'll show you guys the data in a
[56:13] second. entry-level jobs for university
[56:15] educated kids or young adults is
[56:18] dropping off a cliff. Okay, the internet
[56:20] is also disrupting modern day media. So,
[56:22] the Wall Street Journal, the New York
[56:24] Times, the Washington Post, they hate
[56:26] the internet. There's been a war against
[56:29] Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Google, Jeff
[56:32] B. There's a war against the internet
[56:35] because the internet is disrupting
[56:38] legacy media. Okay? And then Bitcoin is
[56:42] disrupting Wall Street. There was a war
[56:44] from the Biden administration on
[56:46] Bitcoiners, on people like me, kicking
[56:49] me out of banks, harassing me with with
[56:52] agencies like the IRS
[56:54] a war because
[56:57] I've outperformed, and I don't say I in
[56:59] an egotistical way, we all, assuming you
[57:01] guys are saving in Bitcoin too, we've
[57:03] all outperformed everyone on Wall Street
[57:06] just by saving in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is
[57:10] disrupting all these fancy hedge fund.
[57:12] Oh, Ken Griffin's hedge fund had an 18%
[57:15] return because he's smarter and richer
[57:17] and no. [ __ ] you. I've had a 50% kagger
[57:20] sitting in an empty closet looking like
[57:22] a 12-year-old
[57:24] disrupted. Boom. Goodbye. You're
[57:26] irrelevant. Nobody needs to understand
[57:29] your high frequency trade beta alpha
[57:31] mega [ __ ] uh hedge fund strategy
[57:35] that's returning a little bit more than
[57:36] the S&P 500
[57:39] just crushed your performance by just
[57:41] owning Bitcoin. And so that's the battle
[57:45] here and you guys need to understand
[57:47] that. So the internet or the blue
[57:49] America's main enemy is the internet.
[57:51] They're going to go battle against AI.
[57:52] They're going to battle against, you
[57:54] know, social media that's disrupting uh
[57:57] traditional media and they're going to
[57:58] battle against Bitcoin. And so, let's
[58:00] check in on that battle. Tens of
[58:02] thousands of white collar jobs are
[58:04] disappearing as AI starts to bite. This
[58:07] is from the Wall Street Journal. Layoffs
[58:09] at companies ranging from Amazon to
[58:10] Target are sending young and experienced
[58:13] workers alike into an unwelcoming
[58:15] market. Now, from Reuters, AI sets up
[58:18] Kodak moment for global consultants.
[58:20] Remember what happened to Kodak? Not
[58:22] good. Again, from Reuters. Foxcon to
[58:25] deploy humanoid robots at Houston AI
[58:28] server plant. Check out this graph,
[58:31] guys. So, I know a lot of you that I run
[58:33] into, you guys listen on the podcast
[58:35] apps. You actually listen at the gym,
[58:37] which I can't imagine bench pressing
[58:39] while I'm just shrieking in your ear.
[58:41] That's outrageous. But I'll try and uh
[58:46] vocalize the charts we're looking at so
[58:49] you can understand. And so on the left
[58:51] it's a it's a chart of junior employees.
[58:54] And what we're seeing is month after
[58:58] chat GBT3.5 was released, you're seeing
[59:01] these junior employees decline pretty
[59:03] sharply. Okay, actually very sharply.
[59:06] And so junior employees were growing
[59:09] along with senior employees up until AI
[59:11] started to mature. And now junior
[59:13] employees are dropping off a cliff. And
[59:15] you're seeing folks like Amazon, Target,
[59:17] they're laying off tens of thousands of
[59:19] employees at a time. Now, conversely,
[59:21] senior employees are actually growing at
[59:24] an exponential rate. And this in lies
[59:27] kind of what we've been talking about on
[59:28] the show is that there's really two
[59:30] versions of America. either you're an
[59:32] asset holder, you're educated, and
[59:34] you're a senior employee where there's
[59:36] tons of opportunity to utilize AI and
[59:39] build equity capital to use excess cash
[59:42] reserves or for-profit businesses and
[59:43] acquire Bitcoin. You know, we're living
[59:46] through asset inflation because the
[59:47] dollar has never been debased harder,
[59:49] right? And it's about to get even worse,
[59:51] as we just explained in the in the prior
[59:52] chapter here on the show. And so, this
[59:55] to me is staggering. And again, it fuels
[59:58] this civilization divide that I'll talk
[60:00] about next, which is you have young
[60:03] people that are disgruntled,
[60:05] disenfranchised, that feel like they've
[60:07] gotten robbed. They grew up through
[60:10] unprecedented
[60:12] levels of fiat debasement. They've
[60:14] accured unprecedented levels of debt.
[60:16] Household debt or individual debt are at
[60:18] record highs. Credit card debt, you need
[60:20] debt to own a car. You need debt to own
[60:22] a house. You need debt to go get an
[60:24] education nowadays. And now they're
[60:26] entering the workforce to finally
[60:28] realize all that hard work and sacrifice
[60:31] and some AI is taking their job. And you
[60:34] guys want to know why Mammi is going to
[60:35] get elected in New York?
[60:38] Guys, Mandami is the tip of the iceberg
[60:41] if this persists because you have all
[60:43] these disenfranchised, pissed off,
[60:45] younger, youthful generation, but
[60:48] they're not dumb. These are college
[60:50] educated people that are capable and
[60:54] smart. They feel like they've been
[60:56] misled. They feel like they've been lied
[60:58] to. They're saying, "You know what? [ __ ]
[61:00] this. Go take Elon's money and
[61:02] distribute it to all of us because we
[61:04] got scammed." And the problem is, the
[61:06] problem with all of this is they're not
[61:08] wrong. But Elon's not wrong either.
[61:11] That's a violation of property rights.
[61:13] What's mine isn't yours. There's no way
[61:15] the world can work with price fixing and
[61:17] governmentr run grocery stores. That's
[61:18] outrageous.
[61:20] The truth is, they're both wrong and
[61:22] they're both right. The problem is the
[61:23] money. Okay, the problem is the money.
[61:26] Now, if we go, this is manufacturing
[61:30] employment. Okay, and so this is not
[61:34] just look at the bottom axis here. So,
[61:36] for those listening on the far left,
[61:38] we're talking about 1970s and on the far
[61:40] right is current day. And you see around
[61:43] 2000, this dropped off a cliff.
[61:45] Manufacturing employment in the United
[61:47] States. It dropped off a cliff because
[61:49] this was China disrupting red America.
[61:52] This is the the the result of the post71
[61:54] dollar. If we say we want to be the
[61:56] world reserve currency which gives
[61:58] artificial strength to the dollar which
[62:00] means local labor is going to be way too
[62:02] expensive, right? Assets in this country
[62:06] are going to be way too expensive. Oh,
[62:08] you want to be able to live in the
[62:09] United States of America and get paid in
[62:11] US dollars? Well, manufacturing the
[62:13] iPhone or manufacturing the Ford truck
[62:15] or manufacturing
[62:17] a Tesla, anything, it's too expensive
[62:20] here. it gets offshored to China. So we
[62:23] just print a bunch of money, we ship it
[62:25] to China and in return we get real
[62:27] stuff. We get our iPhones, we get our
[62:28] cars, we get every we get our chips, we
[62:30] get our rare earths. And so you see that
[62:33] the middle of America or just the
[62:35] manufacturing base in America, the
[62:36] manual labor, the non-oled educated
[62:38] workforce got eviscerated, destroyed.
[62:42] this had that we had to print a lot of
[62:44] money for this by the way because all
[62:45] these people they have mortgages they
[62:48] have car loans they have credit cards
[62:50] just because you got disintermediated by
[62:54] China or by the internet doesn't mean
[62:55] you just get to sit on your couch all
[62:57] day suck your thumb and eat ice cream
[62:59] these are human beings you you guys want
[63:02] UBI print the money
[63:05] you want to make sure they don't default
[63:07] on all of their loans that Chase Bank
[63:09] and Bank of America and all these banks
[63:11] have given to print the money, right?
[63:14] So, this is what's happening to blue
[63:16] America. Now, this same chart, you guys
[63:19] want to see how aggressive
[63:21] something can happen? I expect in the
[63:23] 2020 the 2020s will be the 2000s. So,
[63:27] what happened in the 2000s for red
[63:28] America will happen to blue America in
[63:30] the 2020s. Employment will drop off a
[63:33] cliff. Oh, cool. You're an engineer. You
[63:35] spent four years at Stanford learning to
[63:37] code. Guess what? That's worth zero
[63:39] because an AI can code better than you.
[63:41] Oh, cool. You spent four years learning
[63:43] how to do everyone else's taxes as an
[63:45] accountant. Guess what? No one cares.
[63:47] Oh, cool. You want to be an entrylevel
[63:49] lawyer? Unless you're a senior partner.
[63:51] Nope. Doesn't matter. Unemployed.
[63:55] Oh, cool. You're a journalist.
[63:57] No one cares and no one believes you
[63:59] anyway. No one trusts legacy media. We
[64:01] all go to Twitter. Oh, cool. You're a
[64:04] Wall Street hedge fund bro. You can't
[64:06] outperform Bitcoin. Doesn't matter.
[64:07] We're all just going to stack sats and
[64:09] stay humble.
[64:12] Now, if we go look at this one, the
[64:14] tweet reads, "Less than one of the US
[64:17] population lives in parts of the country
[64:19] experiencing economic expansion right
[64:21] now." I'm going to read that again. Less
[64:23] than one of the United States population
[64:26] lives in parts of the country
[64:27] experiencing economic expansion.
[64:29] So, when we say, "Are we in a recession?
[64:31] Are we not? Are we in a recession? Are
[64:33] we not?" And I say, "Guys, there's two
[64:34] Americas. It depends which America
[64:35] you're talking about." Sure, there's
[64:38] parts of America that are booming. How
[64:40] many people actually live and are and
[64:42] are experiencing that? Not a lot. So,
[64:44] why is society so frustrated? Why are we
[64:47] seeing rising record levels of violence?
[64:50] Why are we seeing a level of socialism
[64:52] being adopted in a in a city like New
[64:55] York?
[64:56] Because almost all of the people are
[64:59] getting [ __ ]
[65:01] Sorry, just being blunt. You come to
[65:03] this podcast for the truth.
[65:06] I'm not going to massage it to you.
[65:09] Right? So now this leads me into a
[65:13] civilization is only as sound as the
[65:14] money that it's built on. We've talked
[65:16] about this last week. I said if it's fix
[65:18] the money, fix the world. What's the
[65:21] opposite of that? A broken money forms a
[65:23] broken society. So what are the costs
[65:25] that we have to bear from all this money
[65:28] printing, the post $71 fiat, the
[65:31] division of society? It creates hatred,
[65:34] anger, angst, violence. This is from the
[65:37] Wall Street Journal. The Pentagon orders
[65:40] National Guard to establish quick
[65:42] reaction forces for civil unrest and
[65:44] riots.
[65:47] The move comes after Trump ordered
[65:48] expansion of military units for
[65:50] responding to dis domestic disorder.
[65:53] Guys, the Pentagon and the president of
[65:56] the United States is asking for more
[65:59] military resources
[66:03] for inside the country.
[66:08] The Pentagon has ordered the National
[66:09] Guard to create quotequote
[66:13] forces in every state and territory by
[66:15] January.
[66:17] This is a like Q4 effort of the US
[66:23] No, our military is not focused on
[66:25] Ukraine. It's not focused on the Middle
[66:27] East. It's not focused on Venezuela. No,
[66:30] it's focused on us.
[66:35] Do you need more of an example of the
[66:37] level of societal breakdown and civil
[66:39] unrest we're living through? Un
[66:41] unprecedented levels.
[66:46] The riot controls units are a major
[66:49] shift for the Pentagon, underscoring the
[66:51] Trump administration's push to directly
[66:53] involve the military in responding to
[66:55] protests and other domestic missions
[66:57] that have been off limits except in
[66:59] emergencies. As many as 500 soldiers in
[67:02] each state or territory national guard
[67:04] organization will be assigned to deploy
[67:07] in the US on short notice and receive
[67:09] non-lethal training in crowd control,
[67:12] handling of detainees, and use of
[67:14] batons, stun guns, and body shields,
[67:17] according to the Pentagon.
[67:20] I've shown this graphic on here before.
[67:22] I showed it actually right after the
[67:24] Charlie Kirk assassination. I'm going to
[67:25] show it again. This is the incident of
[67:27] assassinations data.
[67:31] We have not seen this many
[67:33] assassinations
[67:35] since the mid 1800s.
[67:37] Do you guys know what happened in the
[67:40] mid 1800s?
[67:43] The Civil War.
[67:48] So, let's contextualize all of this. You
[67:51] have the middle of America that is
[67:53] disenfranchised, pissed, furious,
[67:56] violent because they've been disrupted
[67:58] by China. Their manufacturing jobs,
[68:01] their manual labor jobs were exported to
[68:03] benefit Washington DC, to benefit Wall
[68:06] Street, to benefit Palto and Silicon
[68:08] Valley. Make no mistake about it,
[68:10] printing money in the US dollar's
[68:12] current system was highly beneficial to
[68:15] those areas of America and it extracted
[68:17] the wealth from the middle.
[68:20] And those were policy decisions.
[68:23] This is no one's fault,
[68:25] but those that made these choices. And
[68:28] now you have blue America that's
[68:30] becoming equally as disenfranchised,
[68:32] frustrated, and violent.
[68:35] Their jobs are being taken by Elon Musk.
[68:38] You let Mum Dami tell it, that guy is
[68:41] he's rich for no reason. He got lucky.
[68:44] He doesn't deserve all that property.
[68:49] You've got AI disrupting the
[68:52] accountants, the lawyers, the engineers.
[68:54] You've got Bitcoiners taking down Wall
[68:56] Street.
[68:58] Jaime Diamond tried to ban me from the
[69:01] media.
[69:05] This guy, this college dropout,
[69:09] the guy in the empty closet.
[69:13] I'm such a threat. No way.
[69:19] So what does that result in?
[69:22] A broken society, violence,
[69:25] assassinations. Is it going to get to a
[69:27] civil war? I hope not.
[69:30] But understand what's happening.
[69:34] The daughters of today's world are
[69:37] resulting to only fans to finance their
[69:41] life.
[69:42] It is no longer part of the American
[69:46] dream to be a young woman,
[69:51] go get an education, be inspired by some
[69:54] craft, get married, have children.
[69:57] You turn 18, you sign up for Only Fans,
[70:00] and you sell adult content, pictures and
[70:02] videos of your body for subscriptions.
[70:05] That's the fiat world we've created.
[70:08] assassinations that are rivaling the
[70:10] times of the civil war. The Pentagon and
[70:13] the military increasing resources to
[70:17] look internally at our own country, at
[70:19] our own people.
[70:22] Less than 20% of this country is
[70:25] experiencing economic economic growth.
[70:27] Over 80% of this country is getting
[70:29] screwed, is feeling pain.
[70:33] The reason we do this show on here is
[70:36] because Bitcoin is the only equitable
[70:38] solution for all of us. The question is
[70:40] what do we do?
[70:43] Fiat call caused this problem. So the
[70:46] opposite of fiat is the solution. That's
[70:49] what Bitcoin is. The opposite of fiat.
[70:56] Uh Snap runs out of money on November
[70:58] 1st. Um, so these like EBT cards for,
[71:03] you know, those that are financially
[71:06] supported by the government. And this
[71:07] comes from Chicago. So
[71:10] again, Chicago's becoming a really tough
[71:12] cell. Um,
[71:15] you guys think these people are going to
[71:16] be pissed? You think this might incite a
[71:18] little bit of violence? You think these
[71:20] people are going to look at others to
[71:22] blame, riot,
[71:25] protest?
[71:27] They can't get groceries.
[71:30] Now, should they be financed by the
[71:32] government in the first place? No. But
[71:34] again, look at what fiat has caused.
[71:36] This is what we're solving. When people
[71:38] say, "Yo, calm down, man. Don't be so
[71:40] passionate about Bitcoin." I literally
[71:42] think Bitcoin is solving over half the
[71:44] world's hardest problems.
[71:47] If we live on a Bitcoin standard, we
[71:49] solve all of the things I'm talking
[71:51] about.
[71:56] All right. Lastly, an update on the
[71:57] trade war. It seems to be what this
[71:59] administration wants everyone to focus
[72:01] on. But I also want to just pull up, you
[72:03] know, I I want to reference where we
[72:05] started versus where we are now. You'll
[72:08] laugh. Okay, so these are recent
[72:10] articles um over the last week. China's
[72:12] industrial profits surged to 21.6% in
[72:15] September, the biggest jump in nearly
[72:17] two years. Wow. Doesn't sound like
[72:20] they're experiencing tons of pain, does
[72:22] it? from the Wall Street Journal.
[72:24] China's exports rise at fastest pace in
[72:27] six months despite the US tariffs.
[72:30] That's weird.
[72:33] Let the let the administration and
[72:35] everyone in the government tell it.
[72:37] We're sticking it to them. They're
[72:38] screwed.
[72:40] Doesn't seem like they're screwed, does
[72:41] it? Next, China manufacturing PMI
[72:45] contracts for the seventh straight month
[72:47] in October.
[72:49] None of this screams they're screwed.
[72:52] None of this screams they don't have
[72:53] leverage. None of this screams they're
[72:55] panicking. Interesting, right? From the
[72:57] Financial Times, external RENMBB loans,
[73:01] deposits, and bond investments by
[73:03] Chinese banks quadrupled to more than
[73:07] 3.4 trillion over the past five years as
[73:12] Beijing steps up efforts to expand the
[73:14] currency's role in global finance and
[73:16] reduce its exposure to the dollar. And
[73:18] so, we've talked about this all the
[73:19] time. One of the biggest weapons for the
[73:22] US is financial sanctions. If you have
[73:25] the world reserve currency, everyone
[73:26] prices things in dollars. It's the
[73:28] financial rail. So, it's how you
[73:29] transact. It's how you trade. And so, if
[73:31] you are a Russia, a China, a Brazil, an
[73:34] India, like the BRICS nations, if you I
[73:36] mean, anybody,
[73:38] you know, look what happened to Russia.
[73:40] Looks look what h has happened to other
[73:42] parts of the world. Cuba, sanctions are
[73:45] a threat to a country's stability. And
[73:49] so China and all these countries have
[73:50] been ddollarizing and using gold.
[73:52] They've been remonetizing gold to
[73:54] ddollarize. Okay,
[73:56] here is this is from the FT article. You
[73:59] can see the growth in the remb. So look
[74:03] at the red there. So you can see the
[74:05] dollar start to decline. Look at 2021
[74:09] decline.
[74:10] That's what happened in 2021. You guys
[74:13] remember the sanctions against Russia.
[74:15] Look at the growth in red. Interesting.
[74:18] Right
[74:20] now, this is all along the theme of like
[74:22] I think we're being sold that the US has
[74:24] all this leverage and that we got China
[74:27] right where we want them when we don't.
[74:29] I think we're sold a fake narrative. I
[74:31] think we're sold [ __ ] And I'm not a
[74:33] China stand. I'm not a China supporter.
[74:35] I'm an American. I'm not leaving. I'm
[74:37] fighting for what I think this country
[74:39] stands for. I think the internet and
[74:41] Bitcoin and AI is the best chance we
[74:44] have to, you know, fulfill the prophecy
[74:47] that is the West. So, do not do not even
[74:51] try me with that like, oh, you love
[74:53] China [ __ ] I'm just trying to give
[74:55] you guys the facts. The only the best
[74:57] way to make decisions is to operate from
[74:59] the truth. Okay. Now, this is China's
[75:01] now taking the lead in AI. So, what this
[75:03] graphic shows is who makes the open
[75:05] model of choice. The blue is the US, the
[75:09] red is China, and the orange is the EU,
[75:12] which is, you know, practically
[75:13] irrelevant. And you can see somewhere
[75:15] over the summer or early fall, so very
[75:17] recently, China has flipped the US. And
[75:20] you can see in the bar chart, just how
[75:23] prominent China is in AI. This was from
[75:27] Chamath Polyhapatia on the All-In
[75:29] podcast recently where he said, "We
[75:33] redirected a ton of our workloads to
[75:35] Kimmy K2 because it was really way more
[75:38] performant and frankly just a ton
[75:40] cheaper than OpenAI and Anthropic."
[75:43] So, China is seeing record growth in
[75:45] their export and manufacturing business.
[75:48] They're seeing record profits in trade
[75:50] surplus, which they're obviously piling
[75:52] into gold and ddollarizing.
[75:55] They're seeing growth in their local
[75:56] currency and their own payment rails for
[75:59] global trade settlement. And now they're
[76:01] starting to win the AI race.
[76:05] No, but we got Hey, we got it. Let
[76:07] Washington DC tell you guys we got them
[76:08] right where we want them. [ __ ] out of
[76:10] here. This is from
[76:13] Scott Besson and Tucker Carlson's
[76:15] interview. Let me scroll down so you
[76:16] guys can see. Six months ago. I want to
[76:19] make sure you guys can see this. I just
[76:20] highlighted it. Let me see. Can you see
[76:22] that? Yes. April 4th, 2025. Okay, so the
[76:25] administration freshly inaugurated,
[76:28] right? They're just introducing tariffs.
[76:31] Bessent Scotty B, our boy Scotty B, he
[76:34] was going on a press tour talking about
[76:36] how tariffs, we're going to stick it to
[76:38] China. I want you guys to listen. So,
[76:40] take yourself back six months ago when
[76:42] they were like, "Oh, we got them where
[76:43] we want them. China has no leverage."
[76:45] Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Listen to
[76:47] uh this clip from his conversation with
[76:49] Tucker Carlson.
[76:52] So, how is China as a nation going to I
[76:54] mean, this is such a big challenge. It's
[76:56] directly in their face. It's about every
[76:58] country on the globe, but it's really
[77:00] most more than any other country about
[77:01] China. I think it's fair to say. How are
[77:03] they going to respond? What's the
[77:04] retaliation look like?
[77:06] >> Well, I don't I don't know if they can
[77:07] retaliate for a couple reasons. If you
[77:09] look at the history, and I I used to
[77:12] teach economic history, and when you
[77:15] look at the history, we are the debtor
[77:18] nation.
[77:19] >> Yes. We we have the trade deficits. The
[77:22] surplus nation is in the weaker position
[77:26] because the Chinese business model and
[77:28] Tucker by the way the Chinese business
[77:30] model and the economy are the most
[77:32] unbalanced imbalanced in the history of
[77:35] the modern world. We've never seen
[77:37] anything like this in terms of their
[77:40] export level relative to their GDP,
[77:43] relative to their population. So I think
[77:45] it is going to be very difficult for
[77:48] them to try to change the model. They
[77:51] are trying they're in a deflationary
[77:53] recession/ depression right now. They're
[77:56] trying to export their way out of it and
[77:59] we can't let them do that.
[78:03] >> There's nothing China can do. We are the
[78:06] DT nation. We have all the leverage.
[78:09] They're screwed. Ladies and gentlemen,
[78:12] and and I mean no offense to this
[78:15] administration, to Scotty B. I think
[78:17] Scotty B is working his tail off and he
[78:20] has
[78:22] Oops, I just muted myself. He hasn't
[78:24] done the worst job. I prefer Scotty B
[78:26] over Janet Yellen. Let's be clear.
[78:30] But ladies and gentlemen, six months
[78:32] ago, and you heard me on this show. I've
[78:34] said the same [ __ ] every Monday.
[78:38] Some of you guys hate the fact that I've
[78:39] said the same [ __ ] every Monday, but I
[78:41] can't help it. It's the truth.
[78:44] The US does not have the leverage it
[78:46] thinks it has.
[78:48] The post 1971 dollar has decimated this
[78:51] country.
[78:53] Doesn't matter if you're left, right,
[78:54] red, blue, up, down, you're getting
[78:58] disintermediated. We've printed tens of
[79:01] trillions of dollars worth of debt. We
[79:03] have nothing to show for it. That loss
[79:05] has to be realized.
[79:07] We are in an extremely disadvantaged
[79:09] position. The literal Treasury Secretary
[79:12] of the United States did not know that
[79:14] six months ago. Had no idea. He got on
[79:17] the media and said, "We're chilling.
[79:20] China's screwed. All we had to do was
[79:22] this whole tariff thing." Don't know if
[79:24] you heard about it, but boom, magic. I'm
[79:26] like, "Houdini."
[79:30] It's crazy, guys. It's absolutely
[79:33] insane. But this just goes to show
[79:37] It's all [ __ ]
[79:40] Like, remember when inflation was
[79:42] transitory?
[79:44] Remember when the vaccines were going to
[79:46] solve everything? Now, remember when we
[79:48] had all the leverage over China?
[79:50] Now, I have
[79:55] the the thing is like people could say
[79:56] what they want. Bitcoiners have been
[79:58] right for a long time. Us on the Jack
[80:00] Mer Show, we've been right. Now, this is
[80:04] from yesterday. Scotty B. The grumpy old
[80:08] men at the Wall Street Journal's
[80:09] editorial board think China's rare earth
[80:11] restrictions were a surprise. China has
[80:14] been planning this for 30 years while
[80:16] the US was asleep at the switch. We're
[80:18] wide awake now, rallying our allies and
[80:20] de-risking global supply chains. I'm
[80:23] going to play this clip before I go
[80:25] nuts. Boy, what a quick change from
[80:28] China has no leverage. We got them right
[80:30] where we want them. It's called tariffs.
[80:31] We went from that to China's been
[80:34] planning this for 30 years. What, bro?
[80:38] Six months ago, you were This is a
[80:40] complete 180.
[80:44] It's crazy that these people run the
[80:46] government and control the cost of
[80:48] money. Nobody Nobody should be in charge
[80:51] of the cost of money, of our time and
[80:53] energy. This is outrageous.
[80:57] All right, let me just play this.
[80:59] I think it's naive for the Wall Street
[81:01] Journal editorial board, who I call a
[81:03] bunch of grumpy old men, to the think
[81:06] that the Chinese weren't going to roll
[81:08] out this these rare earth restrictions.
[81:10] They've been putting this plan together
[81:12] for 25, 30 years, and the US has been
[81:16] asleep at the switch. And now this
[81:18] administration, we're going to go at
[81:20] warp speed over the next one two years
[81:23] and we're going to get out from under
[81:25] the you know this sword that the Chinese
[81:28] have over us and they have it over the
[81:30] whole world and this time uh we have
[81:33] rallied the allies and so it is going to
[81:37] be a all the western democracies the
[81:40] Asian democracies and India are also
[81:43] going to join us in this in trying to
[81:46] form our own supply chains. We don't
[81:49] want to decouple from China, but we need
[81:51] to derisk. They've shown themselves to
[81:53] be an unreliable partner in many areas.
[81:56] I think it's naive.
[81:59] >> Okay. So, in 6 months, we went from we
[82:03] have all the leverage. We're the
[82:04] detonation. How is China going to
[82:06] rebuttal? What rebuttal? They don't even
[82:08] know how to spell rebuttal.
[82:11] To China's been planning this for 30
[82:13] years. Everyone else before the Trump
[82:16] administration was asleep at the wheel.
[82:19] And what's our solution? We're not going
[82:21] to decouple from China. Did you hear
[82:23] that? We're not going to decouple. Whoa.
[82:25] Not going to decouple. No threats.
[82:27] Everyone calm down. Put the guns down.
[82:29] Put the Put the rare earth restrictions
[82:31] down. [laughter]
[82:33] Put the Put those rare earth
[82:34] restrictions down. Everyone breathe
[82:37] through your nose, out through your
[82:38] mouth.
[82:40] We're just going to rally allies and
[82:42] reindustrialize so that we don't have
[82:44] such a reliance. Boy, was that a 180.
[82:48] Boy, was that a 180. Scotty B from the
[82:52] rafters.
[82:54] Bessent. China made a mistake by
[82:56] weaponizing rare earths because now the
[82:58] West will secure its own supply in one
[83:01] to two years. Yeah, if Vegas if
[83:04] DraftKings has a line on this betting
[83:06] market, I'm taking the over.
[83:09] Simon
[83:11] adds commentary. Except that China
[83:13] weaponized Rare Earths versus Japan in
[83:15] 2010. Yet here we are 15 years later and
[83:19] still scrambling. Mistake? Whose
[83:22] mistake?
[83:25] Yeah, I mean listen guys, the US
[83:28] government is too big. Government needs
[83:31] to be smaller. It's too bureaucratic.
[83:34] And we we've created a culture of
[83:36] printing money, no proof of work, no
[83:39] creating our own stuff. None of the
[83:41] world around us is real.
[83:45] That's why when people get radicalized
[83:47] with Bitcoin is you're like reborn again
[83:50] into the world that makes sense. You've
[83:51] exited Narnia. You've entered the real
[83:54] world. Proof of work, time, and energy.
[83:58] Low lower your time preference, health,
[84:02] family. Whenever I see you Bitcoiners on
[84:04] the street and you guys, Jack, check
[84:05] Jack. Oh my gosh, I've listened to this
[84:07] show. You guys are starting family.
[84:09] You're working hard. You're saving.
[84:11] Everyone in the fiat world, they're
[84:14] hysterical. They're violent.
[84:18] They have no savings. They're living in
[84:20] debt, no family.
[84:26] Oh man, I bring back I told you guys
[84:28] every episode, let's check in on the
[84:30] stages of grief. So Scotty B and the US
[84:33] at large was definitely in denial six
[84:36] months ago. We just listened to it.
[84:39] China rebuttal.
[84:41] Yeah,
[84:43] you know, you have better chance of, you
[84:47] know,
[84:50] can't believe it, man. All right,
[84:52] whatever. uh they were in denial
[84:55] then I would say there was some anger I
[84:58] would say now we're probably bargaining
[85:00] I think we're still in the bargaining
[85:03] well listen we're not going to decouple
[85:05] let's come to a deal slow down we're
[85:08] going to need those rarers
[85:12] but
[85:14] we're going to need to remanufacture
[85:16] allies one to two years I'll take the
[85:18] over and by the way here's the thing if
[85:21] it is one to two years, which as an
[85:23] American I hope so. The level of money
[85:25] printing, like guys, this is why I'm so
[85:28] bullish. Like, no matter how you slice
[85:31] it, the level of money printing is
[85:33] insane. And Bitcoin is the best
[85:35] expression of that.
[85:38] Eventually, we'll get to acceptance.
[85:40] Eventually, we'll be like, we're the
[85:41] United States. We're not China. We're
[85:43] gonna We need to live on open source
[85:44] software, distributed systems,
[85:46] artificial intelligence, Bitcoin, and
[85:48] sound money. We're gonna rebuild the
[85:50] West on top of sound principles that
[85:52] can't be corrupted. Bitcoin can change
[85:55] the world because the world can't change
[85:57] Bitcoin. It's it's a sound bedrock for a
[86:00] society that can prosper and have
[86:02] freedom ideology. We'll get there.
[86:05] That's acceptance. You know, after
[86:07] bargaining, there's going to be a stage
[86:09] of depression where there's immense
[86:11] amount of money printing. You've got
[86:13] unbelievable levels of political warfare
[86:16] between each other and inflation comes
[86:19] back in a major way and everyone's
[86:22] blaming everyone else. You've got Mamami
[86:25] running grocery stores on behalf of New
[86:27] York City trying to deprive wealth of
[86:30] people that have worked hard for it.
[86:32] That'll be depression. That'll be like,
[86:35] what has America come to? We are sad.
[86:39] everyone tuning in to the Jack Maller
[86:41] show every week, they were right.
[86:43] That'll be depression and then we'll be
[86:45] cool with it and we're we're going to be
[86:47] fine. We're going to build our way out
[86:48] of it. It's my prediction. All right,
[86:51] real quick. Strike. Um first and
[86:56] foremost, uh the this is the part of the
[86:58] show where I announce something to you
[86:59] guys because you're loyal and I love
[87:01] you.
[87:02] Uh but you don't go run to Twitter, uh
[87:05] because I'll announce it there in a bit.
[87:07] But uh we're bringing our lending
[87:08] product to the United Kingdom.
[87:11] We're bringing it first to businesses.
[87:12] So UK business lending is coming this
[87:15] week. We're starting at a minimum of
[87:17] 10,000 GBP. So if you are a business in
[87:20] the United Kingdom, you want to borrow
[87:21] against your Bitcoin access liquidity
[87:23] without selling it. You can now use
[87:26] Strike starting this week. So be on the
[87:28] lookout for emails, for tweets, for
[87:29] formal announcements. Um, for some of
[87:31] you it might not be live this very
[87:33] second, but uh I told you guys I'll give
[87:35] you the the secret alpha, the low, um,
[87:37] the announcements before the
[87:39] announcements on this show. So, there
[87:40] you go. And then also, everyone's given
[87:43] us incredible amounts of feedback on
[87:44] things like the strike card, on things
[87:46] like interest on cash, on things like
[87:48] line of credit, and so, uh, yeah, safe
[87:51] to say all those are coming. Um, and New
[87:54] York I expect to be very soon. Um, so
[87:58] exciting. I'll I'll answer any questions
[88:00] you guys have in a bit. This is already
[88:02] running kind of long. And then 21 again,
[88:05] we uh we continue to progress towards an
[88:08] approval of our spa transaction. Uh
[88:11] unfortunately, the government is still
[88:12] shut down, but um we're going to keep
[88:14] marching forward. So, you know, uh
[88:18] there's some people on the internet that
[88:20] are frustrated. Not I don't know. You
[88:23] know, I listen guys, I'm not uh I I I
[88:26] can only speak um
[88:30] yeah, I can't say much. It's the truth.
[88:34] Just the truth. Um me speaking more than
[88:37] I already do would uh just pose risk to
[88:42] what we're building. And so we're heads
[88:44] down. Again, we're not a treasury
[88:45] company in my opinion. Uh we're a
[88:47] Bitcoin company focused on financial
[88:50] services, operating cash flow. Um I'm
[88:53] very very excited to be uh to accomplish
[88:56] this chapter of approval and really uh
[89:00] show the world um what we're capable of,
[89:03] myself, Tether, SoftBank, and the rest
[89:05] of the team. But that's the update. And
[89:08] if you guys have questions, I'll answer
[89:09] them if I can. Um, but I obviously just
[89:12] want to acknowledge that I'm the CEO and
[89:14] co-founder of this business and we're
[89:15] busting our ass and I'm could not be
[89:17] more excited about all that we're
[89:19] working on. And uh, yeah, ask me
[89:22] whatever you want. All right. Uh,
[89:27] I am traveling as you guys can see, so I
[89:31] don't have unlimited amounts of time.
[89:33] Uh, Dylan knows that. So, let me pull up
[89:37] uh Oh, let me blow up my face. It's the
[89:40] feedback I always get is when I do Q&A.
[89:44] You guys can see me. Look at that. Look
[89:46] at this guy. Look at this chump.
[89:50] There I am. All right, let me pull up
[89:53] Q&A. I probably got What do you say, D?
[89:56] 15 minutes
[89:58] of Q&A. Try and keep it
[90:02] try and keep it as uh
[90:08] as
[90:10] efficient as possible.
[90:13] Q&A doc. Bang.
[90:17] Nope.
[90:19] There we go.
[90:22] Okay,
[90:30] sorry. Figuring it out. Not a
[90:32] professional podcaster. Okay, here we
[90:34] go. Q&A starts now. Uh, Macro, big fan.
[90:38] Thank you, man. I appreciate that. It
[90:40] really does mean a lot when you guys
[90:41] come up to me in person. It makes it
[90:43] feel all the more real. Tough question
[90:45] for you. Are you worried about an
[90:48] executive order 6102 2.0 0 attack on
[90:51] Bitcoin. As a custodian, is there
[90:53] anything you could do if this happens?
[90:55] Can we prepare for this? Um, first of
[90:58] all, am I worried about an executive
[91:00] order 6102? No, I'm not.
[91:04] Uh, as a custodian,
[91:07] is there anything I can do? Can you
[91:09] prepare for this? Yeah, you can prepare
[91:11] for it by taking custody of your
[91:13] Bitcoin. So, you know, I've said before
[91:16] in this show,
[91:18] guys, we're we're right, okay? We've
[91:22] consistently been right as Bitcoiners.
[91:24] We've consistently been right on this
[91:25] show. We're right about dollar
[91:28] debasement. We're right about the fiat
[91:29] system. We're right about low time
[91:31] preference, hard money. We're right
[91:33] about Bitcoin as technology.
[91:36] My plea to you is don't be wrong for the
[91:39] right reasons.
[91:43] You could be right about all of those
[91:45] things, but held your Bitcoin on FTX and
[91:47] you're wrong. You didn't monetize chaos.
[91:50] You didn't monetize the death of fiat.
[91:52] You didn't monetize the greatest
[91:53] invention of our lifetimes. You were
[91:56] wrong, but for the right reasons. You
[91:58] understood everything.
[92:01] You did the research. You sacrificed.
[92:03] You took risk.
[92:05] But you didn't hold your own keys. And
[92:07] so, how do you protect against this?
[92:11] Hold your own keys. I recommend Bit Key
[92:14] for those that are more beginnerish or
[92:17] newer, a little scared, and cold card
[92:20] for Bitcoiners that feel either more
[92:22] technically capable or just more
[92:25] competent overall in their Bitcoin
[92:26] journey. But you you do it by holding
[92:29] your own keys. And no, I'm not worried
[92:32] about an executive order 6102
[92:35] um for a lot of reasons. You know,
[92:39] gold played a very specific role when
[92:42] 6102 happened. You know, it was the
[92:45] world reserve asset. It was how trade
[92:49] was globally settled. Um there was world
[92:52] wars. There was fractional reserve
[92:54] running the also you it's very difficult
[92:58] to migrate with gold to move gold to
[93:01] store it on your own. None of these are
[93:03] true for Bitcoin. Countries have already
[93:06] tried to ban Bitcoin. China's tried to
[93:08] ban Bitcoin a half dozen times and it's
[93:10] worked zero. And so the physical risks
[93:14] of Bitcoin aren't there. The enforcement
[93:17] of something like this isn't there. And
[93:19] Bitcoin doesn't play the same role in
[93:21] the financial system to to the ne the
[93:26] United States is more incentivized to
[93:28] support Bitcoin than to attack Bitcoin.
[93:30] And we're seeing that right now. So, I
[93:32] think it's one impossible.
[93:35] Two, Bitcoin solves for all of gold
[93:38] failures. So, it's not probable, and
[93:41] three,
[93:42] it doesn't make any sense. It benefits
[93:44] nobody.
[93:47] Um, okay, Dylan. So, here here's the
[93:50] thing, guys. Dylan has some questions
[93:51] highlighted, so I'm going to bounce
[93:52] around between topics and answer
[93:54] everything he has highlighted, and then
[93:55] if I have time, I'll circle back to
[93:57] everything else.
[93:59] Um, Bitcoin and markets questions.
[94:01] Question for you, Jack. Do you think we
[94:03] are losing the orange pill battle with
[94:05] Gen Z? Do you feel podcasters are
[94:07] missing out on bringing people in with
[94:09] stories they can relate to?
[94:13] No, I I'll answer this in two parts.
[94:16] One,
[94:17] you know, this is a large reason I do
[94:19] what I do to be totally candid with you.
[94:21] Now, I feel like um listen, I'm not I'm
[94:26] not in my 60s.
[94:28] I don't wear a suit.
[94:31] I don't speak as if, you know, there's a
[94:34] gun to my head or as if I'm going to be
[94:37] graded by an English teacher.
[94:41] Um, now some people don't like these
[94:44] qualities about me, but some people
[94:45] relate to them. And I feel like it's a
[94:47] it's it's a very authentic rel I want to
[94:50] be authentic, relatable, and real. I
[94:53] think people are tired of politicians
[94:56] and fake. They're sick of it. No one
[94:59] wants another politician. No one wants a
[95:01] old white corporate
[95:04] executive in a blue suit
[95:08] not being authentic and genuine and
[95:11] honest. And so that's a lot of the
[95:13] reason I do this and uh I do all the
[95:16] media I do is because yeah, I do think
[95:19] that there, you know, it's a noble
[95:21] effort to go out and just be real, be
[95:24] like the only speck of truth in a sea of
[95:27] [ __ ] especially to the youth. No
[95:30] doubt.
[95:31] But do I think that we're losing? No.
[95:36] Listen,
[95:37] something that uh I've wrestled with
[95:39] early on in my Bitcoin career
[95:42] and that I see people struggling with
[95:44] today is as if Bitcoin needs to operate
[95:47] on their time. They're like, "I've
[95:49] understood Bitcoin. I get where the
[95:51] world should go. What's everyone else's
[95:53] problem moving so slow or not
[95:56] understanding it?"
[95:58] And the problem here is, guys, that we
[96:01] are on Bitcoin's time. Bitcoin isn't on
[96:04] our time.
[96:06] Bitcoin is going to be alive and well
[96:09] long after everyone listening to this is
[96:11] dead.
[96:14] And the point in me giving you that
[96:15] context is the world's going to adopt
[96:17] Bitcoin as it needs it.
[96:20] So if there's a bunch of youthful folks
[96:23] that don't have a desire for it yet,
[96:25] can't relate to it yet, don't understand
[96:27] it yet, all we can do is what we're
[96:29] doing now, recording every Monday. I try
[96:32] and accept every podcast appearance I'm
[96:34] offered. We build financial products at
[96:36] Strike that really help change your life
[96:38] with Bitcoin. Allow Bitcoin to actually
[96:41] be meaningful. Borrow against it,
[96:43] acquire it, have a crazy incredible
[96:45] savings account or with 21, enter the
[96:47] capital markets, the bright lights, the
[96:49] bigger stage.
[96:51] That's the best we can do. And you know,
[96:54] you know, Bitcoin operates on a need to
[96:56] know basis. It's really difficult to get
[96:58] someone to adopt something that they
[96:59] don't care about or they don't feel like
[97:00] they need. And so, you know,
[97:04] when I say like, man, I'm really
[97:06] bullish. I'm really excited because they
[97:08] have to print so much money. The f
[97:10] existing financial system is seizing up,
[97:13] the Fed's cutting rates, all these
[97:15] things is it's going to force people to
[97:17] need Bitcoin. The problems are getting
[97:19] exponentially more problematic.
[97:22] And what I talk about internally to my
[97:25] companies all the time, both companies,
[97:27] is you know, we have to build
[97:32] for the times when the world is going to
[97:34] need us. That's really the been the
[97:37] story. Like I'll take strike for an
[97:38] example. We experience these crazy
[97:40] levels of growth in spurts because the
[97:43] world all of a sudden because something
[97:45] breaks
[97:47] needs Bitcoin and needs us like
[97:49] dramatically all at once. And so, you
[97:52] know, I think the world will continue to
[97:53] adopt Bitcoin that way. I think Gen Z
[97:55] right now thinks it's Elon's fault,
[97:57] thinks Mumami is the solution or
[97:59] whatever flavor of this kind of
[98:01] socialism, only fans, violent rioting,
[98:04] protest, murdering people. And then
[98:07] eventually, like they're going to really
[98:09] need Bitcoin because all of that pain,
[98:11] all that frustration, all that
[98:12] mistreatment is misallocated.
[98:15] And we're going to be here. We're going
[98:16] to be recording this podcast every
[98:18] single Monday. no sponsors in a hoodie
[98:21] and a ball cap, just being real, just
[98:23] being human. And we're going to have
[98:25] products and equities in the capital
[98:27] markets ready to support them. You know,
[98:30] it's just how I feel about it. Um, you
[98:33] can't rush
[98:35] Bitcoin on the world.
[98:38] You're fighting against the physical
[98:40] realities of the universe. And and the
[98:42] coolest part about Bitcoin is we don't
[98:44] need the rest of the world to agree with
[98:46] us or align with us to make progress.
[98:49] Think about how much change, positive
[98:51] change we've given the world and how
[98:54] much positive change we've given each
[98:56] other just by adopting this thing. Like
[98:58] guys, Bitcoin changed my life in 2013 as
[99:02] an 18-year-old
[99:05] and the network was a fraction of the
[99:07] size it is today. Nodes on the network
[99:09] were a fraction the size it is today.
[99:12] So, Bitcoin changes the lives of the e
[99:15] of every individual or business or
[99:16] government that adopts it. So, we also
[99:19] don't need everybody. We want everybody.
[99:21] We want the best for everybody. But one
[99:23] of the cool things about Bitcoin is we
[99:24] don't have to protest outside the
[99:26] Federal Reserve building and say, "Adopt
[99:27] the Bitcoin standard. Adopt the Bitcoin
[99:29] standard." We can adopt it on our own
[99:31] individual merit and change our own
[99:32] lives one at a time. Uh Jack, I would
[99:35] love to hear your take on the mentality
[99:36] of spending SAT/Bitcoin as a medium of
[99:39] exchange. Isn't a medium of exchange
[99:41] part of Satoshi's vision? Peer-to-peer
[99:42] digital cash. Firstly,
[99:47] I don't care what Satoshi's original
[99:49] vision was. Now, I respect Satoshi.
[99:52] We're we're forever in debt to Satoshi.
[99:54] But I say that to say like Satoshi
[99:58] doesn't like doesn't get to define
[100:01] Bitcoin is a neutral utility. It's like
[100:03] a neutral like it's like the local park
[100:07] in your neighborhood. If someone says,
[100:09] if I go to play catch with my future son
[100:12] in the park, we're throwing the baseball
[100:14] around. Someone comes up to me and says,
[100:16] you know,
[100:18] the very people that built this park,
[100:21] their intent was to have picnics. And
[100:24] someone says, "No, but the the mayor at
[100:26] the time, her intent
[100:29] was to have movie night in the lawn."
[100:33] Say, "No." Well,
[100:35] her neighbors intent. And the point is
[100:37] like who [ __ ] cares? It's a public
[100:40] utility.
[100:42] Nobody owns it. Everyone gets to use it.
[100:45] You do whatever you want.
[100:48] If Satoshi first of all interpret
[100:52] Satoshi
[100:54] is useless and pointless. He's not
[100:56] around. He's gone. Did it purposefully.
[100:59] Wants to be left alone. Also was living
[101:02] a life of true anonymity.
[101:05] So, like their language was purposefully
[101:08] obuscated and weird at times. So, trying
[101:11] to interpret what their intent was is
[101:12] pointless. You're never going to
[101:13] validate it. There's no right answer.
[101:15] And it doesn't [ __ ] matter. If
[101:18] someone's like, "I use Bitcoin to
[101:20] gamble." It's not my place to be like,
[101:22] "You're using it wrong." According to
[101:24] this dude that we were supposed to
[101:26] interpret their language 15 years ago as
[101:29] they were writing anonymously to a bunch
[101:30] of lists, who cares? Use it for whatever
[101:33] you want. Now the way money works is
[101:35] it's highly competitive. If you save and
[101:38] use bad money, you get persistently more
[101:41] poor. Okay, that's just again these are
[101:44] physical realities. If you save and use
[101:47] dollars, your life gets more expensive.
[101:51] If you save and use Bitcoin, your life
[101:53] gets cheaper. So people will adopt
[101:55] Bitcoin as money because it's better
[101:57] money. That's just a fact. Whether they
[101:59] also gamble with it, whether they also
[102:00] do other [ __ ] with it. Now whether
[102:02] people want to use it as a
[102:06] a as like a spending ve vehicle as a
[102:09] medium of exchange
[102:11] again it just frustrates me when people
[102:13] say
[102:15] you're not you're saving Bitcoin you're
[102:17] not spending it you're using it wrong
[102:19] according to who? According to you well
[102:20] hey guess what jackass I'm not you.
[102:24] So,
[102:26] like
[102:28] I don't know. I think the reality is,
[102:30] listen, let me tell you guys something.
[102:33] I was the guy that was boots on the
[102:36] ground in El Salvador that worked with
[102:39] the Buchelli administration to adopt
[102:41] Bitcoin as legal tender, the first
[102:43] country in the world. I made that
[102:45] announcement at the Bitcoin conference
[102:47] with them. I was there. By the way, fun
[102:50] fact, I have it all filmed on a
[102:52] documentary. I purchased a documentary
[102:54] from the film crew. I own it. It's in a
[102:57] vault. So I have that whole sto I was
[103:00] there. That was me boots on the ground.
[103:02] And so when people say, "Do you support
[103:05] medium of exchange Bitcoin?" Yeah, I was
[103:08] there in a third world country grinding
[103:11] and sacrificing to make that a reality.
[103:14] So I absolutely support it. I was I
[103:17] built the first open-source lightning
[103:19] network wallet in the history of Bitcoin
[103:21] in my in my apartment.
[103:26] Yeah. Like in my apartment before the
[103:28] empty closet just grinding. Bitcoin's
[103:31] $300 a coin and I'm building [ __ ]
[103:34] open source lightning wallets. So yes, I
[103:37] do. Am I also the guy that has built one
[103:40] of the largest retail Bitcoin lending
[103:44] providers in the world that allows you
[103:46] to borrow against your Bitcoin so you
[103:48] can live on, you know, floated fiat
[103:50] currency while you save in Bitcoin?
[103:52] Yeah. Is that how I live my life? Yeah.
[103:54] Which one's right or wrong? Depends.
[103:57] What version of me are you talking
[103:59] about? What version of the world? What's
[104:00] the context? Where are you living?
[104:02] There's no right answer.
[104:04] The coolest part about Bitcoin is anyone
[104:06] can do whatever the [ __ ] they want and
[104:08] no one can stop them.
[104:11] And so I find it so frustrating and
[104:13] pointless. Like the people that are
[104:14] like, I'm in Bitcoin because it's
[104:16] libertarian currency, it's free markets,
[104:19] you know, it's, you know, humans aren't
[104:22] meant to be governed by any central
[104:24] authority, monetary policy, what we're
[104:26] allowed to put in our bodies, right? Let
[104:29] people do what they want and there will
[104:32] be natural consequences and the free
[104:34] market will order what is an unruly, you
[104:38] know, society, which is, you know, a
[104:40] bunch of freewilled humans.
[104:43] But then those same people
[104:45] will turn around and say, you're using
[104:47] this public utility wrong.
[104:51] So anyways, long story short, have do I
[104:54] spend Bitcoin? Yeah, if I run into a
[104:55] lightning, you know, a merchant
[104:57] accepting lightning, I scan the QR code
[104:59] every time. You know, recently I pay it
[105:02] with my cash balance on Strike. Now,
[105:04] I've I've leveraged this lending market
[105:06] that Strike has helped really pioneer
[105:08] honestly over the last year. We're I've
[105:11] leveraged that and we're building line
[105:13] of credit and all sorts of amazing
[105:14] things. I think there's Gresham's law. I
[105:16] think people are going to naturally
[105:18] spend the shitty money. get rid of the
[105:21] sh borrow acrude debt and spend the
[105:23] shitty money like what sailor's doing
[105:25] and hoard save and never touch the hard
[105:27] money.
[105:29] But anyways, I don't know. I just find
[105:31] it so contradictory that there's people
[105:33] in the Bitcoin community that's like,
[105:34] "Yes, I'm adopting this distributed
[105:36] money that's a public utility that's
[105:38] decentralized and no one can control.
[105:40] Oh, by the way, I'm here to tell you
[105:42] you're using it wrong."
[105:45] You're a dumbass.
[105:47] Uh, Jack, you say Bitcoin is the truth.
[105:50] So why didn't we get a pump when the
[105:52] trade deal with China was announced?
[105:54] What do you think that means? I I think
[105:56] that Bitcoin is reacting to the fact
[105:58] that there's no fiat liquidity in the
[106:00] system. Bitcoin needs dollars to go up.
[106:03] Lack thereof dollars, Bitcoin will go
[106:05] down. Like I've said before, I think
[106:08] that the biggest threat to Bitcoin is if
[106:10] the US government comes out and says,
[106:11] "We're fixing the supply of dollars. In
[106:13] fact, we're going to drastically reduce
[106:14] the outstanding supply and make the
[106:16] dollar scarce. We're never going to
[106:17] print another dollar. Uh we're not going
[106:20] to impose restrictions on how you can
[106:22] use dollars like with drugs or gambling
[106:24] or anything like that. Then Bitcoin
[106:26] would probably go up. It would it would
[106:29] grind. It would be more of a grind for
[106:30] Bitcoin adoption.
[106:32] You know, Bitcoin equals technology plus
[106:35] fiat liquidity. The technology piece is
[106:37] that you can have a digital bearer
[106:40] instrument. The technology piece is that
[106:41] I can cross a border with 12 words in my
[106:43] head and move a billions of dollars.
[106:46] Like that is disruptive. That is
[106:49] innovative. But the fiat liquidity piece
[106:51] has been the recent driver of Bitcoin's
[106:54] growth from $100 to $100,000. They just
[106:59] keep printing money. And so if there's
[107:00] not enough liquidity in the system,
[107:03] Bitcoin's going to react to that. It's
[107:04] going to tell you the truth. It's going
[107:06] to say, "Hey, like risk assets are in
[107:09] trouble.
[107:10] There is not enough reserves in the
[107:12] current financial system. The government
[107:13] is shut down, the Treasury General's
[107:15] account is way too full and the Fed is
[107:19] still in QT.
[107:21] And then my prediction is as soon as the
[107:24] Fed pauses QT, resumes QE or some form
[107:27] of money printing, continues to slash
[107:29] rates, and the government comes back
[107:31] online and the TGA starts to get spent,
[107:34] this thing is going to the bazooka moon.
[107:37] Bazooka, bazooka moon.
[107:39] It's just my take. What was it like back
[107:42] when the hundred, the thousand, and the
[107:44] $10,000 marks were broken? Did the OGs
[107:47] think the same way?
[107:49] Yeah, it was it was electric. Actually,
[107:52] let me uh
[107:54] Sorry, I know this might not be the best
[107:56] use of time, but I figure you guys would
[107:57] find this hilarious. Um, if you want
[107:59] some just OG
[108:04] OG stories, because I I used to wear a
[108:07] hoodie
[108:09] that was uh it was it was a Christmas
[108:13] sweater that was Bitcoin $10,000
[108:17] and I would wear it before we broke
[108:19] 10,000 and everyone's like, "You're
[108:20] crazy. You think Bitcoin's going to
[108:22] break 10,000?" Like literally like my
[108:24] friends are like, "You dropped out of
[108:25] college for this?" like, you know,
[108:28] because it would go it would go 1,200
[108:30] down to $200 and I'm wearing like a
[108:32] $10,000 Bitcoin hoodie and everyone's
[108:34] like, "Is this guy lost his [ __ ]
[108:36] mind?" Um, and I'll show you. My
[108:39] stepmom, aka the Bitcoin mom on Twitter,
[108:43] she used to post a selfie for every
[108:45] $1,000 Bitcoin would go up. Mind you,
[108:48] Bitcoin goes up and down thousands of
[108:49] dollars a day now, but when we went
[108:51] 4,000, 5,000, 6,000, she would take a
[108:54] selfie. you tweet it like, "Oh my god,
[108:56] can you guys believe this?" So, yeah. I
[109:00] mean, my dad always told me, "Trade the
[109:04] position, not the money, right?" Because
[109:06] at the time, Bitcoin's going up 10, 20,
[109:08] 30% in a day. Now, one a $1,000 move
[109:12] isn't even 1% for Bitcoin, right? So,
[109:15] trading the position, not the money.
[109:17] What that means is just because the
[109:19] numbers have gotten bigger, don't get
[109:20] intimidated. Don't get scared. Don't let
[109:23] it shake your conviction. Trade the
[109:24] position. Is your thesis still real? Do
[109:26] you still think the post71 is a cancer?
[109:29] Do you still think fiat is destroying
[109:31] society? Do you still think harder money
[109:33] beats softer money? And so, trade the
[109:35] position, not the money. Don't look at
[109:37] the numbers. Believe in your thesis,
[109:39] right? And so,
[109:42] shoot, I'm botching this because I can't
[109:44] find this hoodie that I used to wear.
[109:46] But, uh, I don't know if that's what you
[109:49] guys were interested in. um back in the
[109:51] day was fun. Um
[109:55] pretty crazy. 2017 was the craziest bull
[109:58] run I've ever experienced. I still think
[110:01] the 2021 bull run was kind of muted
[110:03] because of uh FTX and Sam basically like
[110:09] defrauding everyone. I think they put
[110:11] like a bunch of artificial
[110:14] cell pressure on uh
[110:17] Damn, this is so frustrating. on uh
[110:20] Bitcoin. If I was in my empty closet, I
[110:23] would just go grab my hoodie and I'd
[110:26] just put it on. Okay, maybe I wear it
[110:29] next episode. Sorry. Didn't mean to
[110:31] waste time.
[110:34] That's annoying.
[110:39] All right, I give up. I quit. Uh
[110:43] why would an OG sell when they could
[110:45] loan against it? Why take the tax bill?
[110:48] H there's all sorts of different
[110:50] reasons. I think first of all
[110:53] there's probably a lot of OGs that are
[110:56] waiting for JP Morgan or some or Strike
[111:01] to grow. Like if you have $9 billion of
[111:04] liquidity you need that means you're
[111:06] posting $18 billion if it's a 50% LTV
[111:10] loan with a custodian and it's like do
[111:13] you trust the custodian? Remember what
[111:14] happened to FTX? If you're that if it's
[111:17] that level, you know, you probably want
[111:20] Strike to mature a bit um to to finance
[111:23] that or you're gonna want, you know,
[111:26] some institutional grade like the
[111:28] biggest lender in Bitcoin at the
[111:31] wholesale level is Tether and and so,
[111:35] you know, maybe you're an American, you
[111:37] want $10 billion of liquidity, which
[111:38] requires at least $20 billion of
[111:41] collateral to be posted. You can't post
[111:43] it at Tether because they're offshore.
[111:45] Strike is really like one of the first
[111:47] onshore regulated trustworthy lenders.
[111:51] But, you know, maybe maybe the whale is
[111:54] saying screw it. Like, I'll take the 25%
[111:58] long-term capital gain to not have to
[112:00] post at least double the the collateral
[112:04] with a counterpart. What if they blow
[112:05] up? What if something happens? That's my
[112:07] best guess. You also have things like
[112:09] estate planning where they're they're
[112:11] they're organizing their estate and so
[112:15] they're it's not like they need the
[112:16] liquidity like what do you need $9
[112:17] billion for you may I mean maybe we're
[112:20] going to learn like someone just bought
[112:22] the [ __ ] New York Mets or I don't
[112:25] know right and then we'll be like oh
[112:26] there that that was that guy but you
[112:28] know usually that level of wealth
[112:30] there's estate planning um stuff like
[112:32] that um and so that's my best guess I
[112:36] don't know crazy thing is we're stillove
[112:38] of 100k like this mark the appetite for
[112:39] Bitcoin is substantial at in serious
[112:42] size and again like this has effectively
[112:46] been a Bitcoin bare market but the price
[112:49] has somehow chopped and gone up but like
[112:52] no liquidity in the existing financial
[112:53] system government is shut down whales
[112:56] selling distribution and we're still
[112:59] like above 100K insane Jack can you talk
[113:03] about ETFs as an on-ramp to Bitcoin
[113:05] should I encourage them as a starting
[113:06] point for friends what do you think
[113:07] about ETFs.
[113:09] I don't think they're a good starting
[113:11] point. Uh reason being is they're
[113:13] expensive relative to just buying
[113:15] Bitcoin. You pay an annual fee to hold
[113:19] the ETF. So the ETF is a security. You
[113:21] know, people like Black Rockck charge
[113:23] you something like 25 basis points a
[113:25] year. So every single year you have less
[113:27] and less Bitcoin. Now some people
[113:28] justify, well, it's in my brokerage
[113:31] account. Well, I trust Black Rockck. And
[113:32] that's fine. If that's what you want,
[113:34] you can do that. You could buy Bitcoin
[113:35] on strike and you don't pay an annual
[113:37] fee. You pay onetime fee and you hold it
[113:39] forever, cost free. You could withdraw
[113:41] it to cold storage, cost free. There's
[113:43] obviously the custodian risk. You know,
[113:46] again, hold your private keys. Don't be
[113:48] wrong for the right reasons. So, I
[113:50] wouldn't advise Bitcoin on Black Rockck,
[113:54] which is really on Coinbase. Um,
[113:57] just not my thing. Um, and then there's,
[114:00] you know, increasing utility value with
[114:02] just having Bitcoin itself, physical
[114:03] Bitcoin, like stuff like Strike's doing.
[114:05] You can physically borrow against it,
[114:07] line of credit. Um, so yeah, I I don't
[114:12] think it's the best place to start, but
[114:14] owning a Bitcoin ETF is better than
[114:16] owning the S&P 500 or it's better than
[114:18] owning dollars or treasuries. So, you
[114:22] know, context matters. But, uh, I think
[114:25] for a lot of reasons, it's an inferior
[114:27] option. you know, it was the option that
[114:30] Tradfi needed to like justify this
[114:33] shitty system they built. But for a
[114:35] normal person, just download an app and
[114:38] buy Bitcoin. It's cheaper, it's better,
[114:41] it's safer, it's like all the things
[114:43] that you should probably care about. Um,
[114:46] any plans to reduce strike lending in
[114:47] the in EU from the current 100,000 euro
[114:50] minimum? Yeah, of course. I mean, guys,
[114:52] listen, it's it's all regulation. So,
[114:55] Strike, we operate our product and
[114:56] service. We're regulated, we're
[114:58] compliant. I think that's part of being
[115:01] a trustworthy financial institution is
[115:03] we're not taking shortcuts. Uh, and what
[115:06] comes with that is, uh, it's just a
[115:08] grind with global regulation. Different
[115:10] jurisdictions, different rules. So,
[115:12] that's just a rule um, for now and we're
[115:16] working to lower it. Absolutely.
[115:18] Uh,
[115:21] question. How does Strike square up
[115:23] against Lava? Lava is offering an
[115:26] interesting card. Your thoughts?
[115:29] Um, I don't know much about Lava. Um,
[115:35] but I mean, I'll say this. Uh,
[115:42] what will I say? Be careful here.
[115:44] There's so many people like I I consider
[115:47] myself a pretty good guy. Um, I'm biased
[115:50] obviously, but you know, the amount of
[115:52] marketing in the Bitcoin industry that
[115:55] is effectively just like talking [ __ ]
[115:57] about me and things I do, there's even
[116:00] Bitcoin companies that talk [ __ ] about
[116:03] 21
[116:05] that has nothing to do with their
[116:06] business or them. They just are building
[116:10] they're just like building momentum
[116:12] against me. So, let me just caveat it
[116:14] with that. It's all like, you know, um I
[116:19] don't know much about Lava or there's
[116:21] all sorts of other companies that bring
[116:23] me up or bring us up. What I will say
[116:26] is, uh Strike is a regulated money
[116:30] service business, a regulated money
[116:32] transmitter, uh and we lend against
[116:36] physical Bitcoin, um in a regulated
[116:39] manner. To my knowledge or what I've
[116:42] been told, I'm not I think that's
[116:44] different than Lava and not necessarily
[116:46] in a bad way. I think they use DLC's, so
[116:51] some form of Bitcoin smart contracts,
[116:55] which uh could be cool. Um, but it's
[116:59] always been a little confusing to me
[117:01] because you cannot borrow against your
[117:04] Bitcoin without posting collateral in a
[117:05] way that's the person lending to you
[117:08] controls. Like I can't get a $500,000
[117:11] loan and give someone collateral if they
[117:13] don't control the collateral. So I've
[117:15] always been confused of like there's no
[117:17] such thing as like non-custodial
[117:20] lending. You need to give custody of the
[117:23] collateral to get the loan.
[117:26] And then the fact that it's a global
[117:28] product implies, well, it's
[117:29] non-custodial. It doesn't need to be
[117:31] regulated. But there's no such thing as
[117:33] that. So offering a global lending
[117:36] product at least from strikes legal
[117:38] opinion is illegal without getting
[117:42] necessary licensing and uh compliance.
[117:47] And then yeah someone said like you know
[117:49] I don't know if it was lava or not but
[117:51] so like there's uh you know people are
[117:54] giving like uh shortterm like um what
[117:59] was it like campaign like over the next
[118:01] two weeks rates at 5%. I mean, guys,
[118:04] like, you can't get a heliloc loan
[118:06] against your house from JP Morgan at 5%.
[118:09] I mean, I listen, I'll say this. Every
[118:12] day I sit in meetings with Morgan
[118:14] Stanley,
[118:17] uh,
[118:18] Soft Bank, Tether,
[118:21] uh, Goldman Sachs, like these are the
[118:23] meetings I'm in every single day. There
[118:25] is no Bitcoin lending market at 5%.
[118:30] And I, as I've said, I'm a stay humble
[118:33] and stack sats guy. If I'm wrong, I'm
[118:35] wrong. And I I don't know if it was Lava
[118:37] those five. Someone's like, "Oh, uh uh
[118:40] there's 5% Bitcoin lending." And then
[118:42] they clicked into the article and read,
[118:44] "Oh, it's only available for two weeks
[118:45] or something." Like, yeah, guys, there's
[118:47] no there's no such thing as that. Um you
[118:51] know, Tether and some other folks set
[118:53] the rates predominantly in this
[118:55] industry. They're not at 5%.
[118:58] So yeah, I don't know. My opinion is
[119:02] we're I mean Strike's a
[119:06] probably the biggest Bitcoin only
[119:08] company in the world by a large margin.
[119:10] We have millions of registered accounts.
[119:15] Uh extremely profitable.
[119:17] We're on the brink of getting our bit
[119:19] license. Probably the most regulated
[119:20] Bitcoin company in the world that allows
[119:22] us to
[119:24] uh offer these services. So, you know,
[119:26] if someone says, "Oh, we offer the same
[119:28] thing in Europe, but no minimums and
[119:31] everything everything is amazing." And
[119:33] it's like, well, I I don't know. So,
[119:37] that's my opinion. You know, when these
[119:39] and then, you know, Lava has done this
[119:42] to me in the past. I don't know about
[119:43] recently. And again,
[119:46] doesn't really it's become my life. I
[119:48] don't doesn't really matter too much to
[119:49] me anymore. But, Strike has nothing to
[119:52] do with these companies. I have nothing
[119:53] to do with these companies. A lot of
[119:55] Bitcoin companies marketing is to
[119:59] [ __ ] on me or imply we're not like you
[120:02] know Bitcoin companies used to be like
[120:03] they don't like they're rehypothecating
[120:08] or you know how do you know that your
[120:10] Bitcoin is actually there like implying
[120:12] I'm a criminal or implying I'm like Sam
[120:14] Bankman Freed. So that's all I'll say. I
[120:18] have nothing to do with these people. I
[120:20] don't have a bad thing to say about
[120:21] them. I don't know if I have a good
[120:23] thing to say because I don't know much
[120:24] about it. Seems a little strange to have
[120:26] a global lending product with no
[120:28] licensing and no real footprint and
[120:30] rates that like are short-term for two
[120:34] weeks only. Um yeah, I don't know. I
[120:37] don't know much about it. I don't know.
[120:40] But it's good. I mean, there's plenty of
[120:41] room. Um
[120:44] BU building Bitcoin Financial Services
[120:45] is a great business. Uh it's hard
[120:48] getting all these licenses and the scale
[120:50] that we've reached and compliant
[120:51] globally is difficult. But uh the more
[120:53] the marrier in my opinion. I don't know
[120:56] maybe I like I like a lot of these folks
[120:58] more than they like me for some reason.
[121:01] Uh hey Jack, will there be interest uh
[121:04] will there be an interestonly Bitcoin
[121:06] line of credit option? For example,
[121:08] payments start out as only the interest
[121:11] for the first four years and then you
[121:12] start paying back the principle and
[121:14] interest after. Yeah, totally. So you
[121:16] guys, so I've talked about line of
[121:17] credit, interest on cash. So you know,
[121:20] if you guys have a cash balance that you
[121:21] want to uh put into the pool of capital
[121:25] that we lend out, you know, we we can
[121:27] give you six, seven, eight, maybe 9% on
[121:31] your cash. Um, all that's coming. You
[121:33] guys are very clear about the feedback
[121:34] what you want. And then a lot of you
[121:37] even want a strike card. My question was
[121:39] like, do you want a card where you know
[121:43] uh like you're going to use our card
[121:44] over MX? really cuz I mean Amx is going
[121:47] to out compete us in rewards surely. Is
[121:49] it the utility value and you guys have
[121:51] even said yeah the utility you know some
[121:53] rewards would be nice but the utility
[121:54] value would even be incredible. So yeah
[121:57] just stay on the lookout we've got New
[121:59] York lending in California, Texas. We've
[122:01] got lending UK lending throughout the
[122:03] US. Uh hopefully getting our bit license
[122:05] uh uh we've been told very shortly. Um
[122:09] and then all these you know financial
[122:11] service products which are very
[122:13] exciting. Um, so yeah, all good. Uh,
[122:18] strike question. When can we see some
[122:19] more merch? That's a Dylan question. Um,
[122:23] I've been pressing Dylan on that for a
[122:25] while. I'm joking. I'm joking. I don't
[122:27] want to pick on Dylan. It's a Dylan and
[122:28] me question. I know that, uh, it's a Q4
[122:31] goal for us, uh, this quarter. So, um,
[122:34] we've got a few more months before, uh,
[122:36] the quarter ends. And I think part of
[122:37] our plan is, uh, is to get you guys some
[122:40] merch. So, definitely soon.
[122:44] Uh okay this question is categorized in
[122:47] other and then I gotta go. How do you
[122:49] maintain a positive mindset despite the
[122:52] disappointing performance we have seen
[122:53] this year?
[122:56] Um
[122:58] I don't first I don't know if I agree
[123:01] with the premise of the question. I
[123:02] don't know if the performance has been
[123:03] disappointing bro. Um,
[123:08] sure. In in this pocket of time, Bitcoin
[123:11] hasn't performed as well as gold for
[123:14] now,
[123:16] but over the last five years, Bitcoin
[123:18] has destroyed everything. So, you know,
[123:21] it's it's, you know,
[123:25] what I tell my friends I grew up with
[123:27] that, you know, still can't find a way
[123:29] to get themselves some Bitcoin despite
[123:31] literally growing up with me. So imagine
[123:34] over the last 13 years, every time you
[123:37] go to a Bears game or every time we go
[123:40] play pickup basketball, you just hear me
[123:41] yapping about Bitcoin. They still
[123:43] haven't bought any.
[123:46] And one of the things I tell them is
[123:47] like they say, "Oh man, it goes up and
[123:50] down. It's volatile. What if this that?"
[123:52] And I say, "Listen, if I told you you
[123:54] could buy something that starts here at
[123:57] the bottom left and ends up here in the
[123:59] top right, wait, let me see myself so my
[124:01] fingers are in there. starts bottom and
[124:04] ends up top. And the journey there is
[124:07] like this
[124:09] instead of like this, like a straight
[124:11] line that you all want.
[124:14] Who cares? Suck it up.
[124:18] I never said holding Bitcoin would be
[124:21] easy. I said it would be worth it.
[124:23] There's a huge difference. So to me,
[124:27] nothing has changed about my thesis.
[124:29] Nothing has changed about my worldview.
[124:30] If anything, I get more
[124:33] uh conviction when I see Bessant talk,
[124:36] when I see issues in the current
[124:38] financial system, when I see Jerome
[124:40] Powell's press conference. So, my
[124:42] worldview is only getting stronger in
[124:45] conviction. My thesis is only getting
[124:48] stronger in conviction. The things that
[124:50] I think are important, family, health,
[124:53] low time preference, savings,
[124:56] nothing's changed. And so, yeah, has it
[124:59] been like, is underperforming gold more
[125:02] difficult than when we like outperform
[125:04] it by 10? Sure. But like, I'm gonna kick
[125:08] and scream like a toddler. No, I'm gonna
[125:11] [ __ ] be a man, build even more
[125:13] products for you guys, generate more
[125:15] profits, stack even more Bitcoin. I'm
[125:18] going to call Tether and say, "Let's
[125:20] enter the capital markets and give the
[125:22] public markets a real Bitcoin company."
[125:24] Not a Coinbase, not a treasury company,
[125:26] a real Bitcoin company. That's what I
[125:28] That's what I'm doing. I don't know. Is
[125:31] that weird? Is that unique? I hope not.
[125:35] What? because Bitcoin's seen major
[125:38] distribution from early adopters like
[125:40] it's IPOing and we are like slightly on
[125:44] par with other assets as opposed to like
[125:46] blowing them out during like QT and
[125:49] tight liquidity where the financial
[125:50] markets are about to seize up and I'm
[125:52] supposed to be like, "Oh, screw it. No,
[125:56] I quit. [ __ ] that."
[126:01] I don't know. So, how do I do that? I
[126:03] don't know.
[126:05] Not be a [ __ ] I'm just kidding. I'm
[126:08] just kidding. I had to say it. Teeded me
[126:10] up for that one. You teed me up for that
[126:13] one. I don't know. Um I I I also think
[126:15] Bitcoin grooms you in that way, you
[126:18] know, proof of work.
[126:20] Nothing's for free. You don't just get
[126:22] to buy this thing and coast. Hard work.
[126:25] Hard work. Create value for others. Time
[126:27] and energy. I mean, I've become
[126:29] ruthless. like adopted carnivore as a
[126:33] diet. I like all sorts of, you know,
[126:36] biohacking, health, focus on family. I
[126:39] have two businesses now that, you know,
[126:41] produce. They're net productive to
[126:43] societies are profitable companies that
[126:46] Right. So,
[126:48] I don't know. Maybe it's just the
[126:49] Bitcoiner in me after all these years.
[126:52] All right, with that, I'm late to
[126:55] dinner. My dinner started seven minutes
[126:57] ago.
[126:58] This is how much I care about you guys.
[127:00] You see that? Love and affection on this
[127:02] show. Love and affection. JMS crowd over
[127:05] everything. Um, I love you dearly. You
[127:09] guys keep giving me feedback on our
[127:11] products at the companies. They are
[127:13] being incorporated. It's really the
[127:14] coolest relationship between a business,
[127:16] its CEO and founder, and the customers.
[127:19] So you guys like tune in, you troll me,
[127:23] you leave comments on YouTube, and then
[127:25] we just like build revolutionary
[127:27] products for you. That it doesn't get
[127:28] much cooler than that. So you keep
[127:30] asking me questions, letting us know
[127:32] what you need. And then as far as the
[127:34] show, giving me feedback. The show keeps
[127:35] getting better because of you guys. So
[127:37] this is again a little bit of a longer
[127:38] episode, a two-hour one, but the
[127:40] consensus is you guys like the detail.
[127:42] You like the longer winded. Maybe this
[127:45] was too long-winded. I'm not sure, but
[127:48] let me know. Love you deeply. Appreciate
[127:51] you all. And I'll be here next week.
[127:54] Wouldn't miss it for the world. Take
[127:56] care.