Bitcoin: The Last Honest Market

[0:02] Yo, welcome back to another episode of
[0:05] the Jack Malers's Show. Guess what my
[0:08] name is? If you guess Jack, you're a
[0:11] genius. You are listening to yet another
[0:15] edition of Mailbag Monday, episode 124.
[0:20] For the loyal, for the faithful, you'll
[0:22] notice I am not in my empty closet this
[0:25] week, and this show is not live this
[0:28] week. I apologize for that. Those that
[0:31] listen to my BTC Prague keynote may have
[0:34] a little bit of hint or a clue. I am
[0:37] touring wedding venues with my fiance. I
[0:41] said during my Prague keynote when I get
[0:43] home to take a look at some wedding
[0:45] venues. I was confessing my love as I
[0:47] always do for my fiance, my excitement
[0:50] about family. So, we're taking a look at
[0:52] some venues and hopefully picking a spot
[0:55] where we are going to start our family,
[0:57] which is very, very exciting. But
[0:59] unfortunately, this week conflicted with
[1:02] when I usually do the live stream. So,
[1:04] you guys know me, proof of work over
[1:07] everything. If I tell you I'm going to
[1:09] show up, I show up. Man of the people,
[1:13] they say. You said it, not me. Just
[1:17] kidding. I wish you guys said it more.
[1:19] I'm usually the guy that says it. Um,
[1:21] but anyway, we'll be back to regular
[1:24] schedule programming next week. Sorry
[1:26] about the pre-recording. It is Monday.
[1:28] Call it about 400 p.m. Eastern. I would
[1:31] never record this on a day that isn't
[1:33] Monday. Let the markets open on Monday.
[1:35] No show is going to be stale. I'm going
[1:37] to show up every single week. Battered,
[1:39] bruised, whatever it is. Um, but I do
[1:42] apologize for not being live. Being live
[1:43] is always my preference. Having fun in
[1:45] the chat, doing live Q&A. So, bit of a
[1:47] shorter episode. will still be really
[1:49] fun. We'll do some market updates, take
[1:50] a look at the strength of the dollar,
[1:52] how that's impacting assets. I have some
[1:54] fun insights for you guys. So, we'll
[1:56] take a look at macro and markets. And
[1:58] then on my flight here, I actually I
[2:00] couldn't sleep, so uh I started an
[2:03] essay. Um I call it Bitcoin, the last
[2:07] honest market left. Uh and I've been in
[2:10] this industry for almost 14 years now.
[2:12] So, I rock a baby face, but I've got a
[2:14] lot of experience. And this bare market
[2:17] to me solidifies a lot of learnings that
[2:20] I've had in my career in Bitcoin. And I
[2:22] wanted to write them down. So, I spent
[2:24] the flight almost finishing an essay.
[2:27] I'll preview that essay a little bit.
[2:28] Um, I'll give you guys some strike
[2:30] updates and then I got to get in the
[2:32] shower and I got to get out of here.
[2:34] Okay. So, with that being said, let's
[2:36] time stamp this bad boy and get this
[2:38] show on the road. I am talking to you
[2:40] all at a Bitcoin price of $60,440.
[2:44] And again, it is Monday, June 29th, 4:04
[2:48] p.m. Eastern, a few hours before when I
[2:51] would typically hit live. That puts
[2:54] Bitcoin's market cap at 1.21 trillion
[2:57] US.
[3:00] Okay, all-time high obviously hasn't
[3:02] changed. All-time high remains at
[3:04] 126,160.
[3:06] We are 52.1%
[3:09] down from that all-time high that we
[3:10] made on October 6, 2025. It's been 266
[3:14] days now, almost a full trip around the
[3:17] sun since Bitcoin made an all-time high.
[3:20] Last but not least, let's time stamp
[3:22] this bad boy in Bitcoin time, which is
[3:25] block time. The last block mined since I
[3:29] hit record, not stream, was block height
[3:32] 955 95,000,
[3:35] excuse me, 971.
[3:39] Okay, without further ado, let's go.
[3:43] Uh, as I mentioned, I'm titling this
[3:45] over what I think will be the title of
[3:46] my essay, and I hope to publish it this
[3:48] week. Uh, we will see. Huge week. Uh,
[3:51] Strike has two massive product
[3:53] announcements, which I'll get to at the
[3:54] tail end of the episode. So, if I can
[3:57] get it out this week, that'd be dandy.
[3:58] If it doesn't get out this week, it
[4:00] means I'm just way too busy, but it'll
[4:02] go out next week. And I call it Bitcoin,
[4:04] the last honest market. Before I wax
[4:08] philosophical in your ears, uh the four
[4:11] questions we start every week with and
[4:13] we kick off a little bit of macro market
[4:16] updates. What are the four questions?
[4:18] Loyal listeners, you guys will know it
[4:20] off the top of your head. Question one,
[4:22] is the straight of harm still closed?
[4:24] Question two, is the conflict still
[4:26] ongoing? Question three, are global
[4:28] supply chains still being disrupted? And
[4:30] question four, can global debt survive
[4:32] this level of disruption? Unfortunately
[4:35] for us that don't love war, don't love
[4:38] human suffering, don't love human death
[4:41] at the behest of government, it looks to
[4:43] be as if the conflict is still going.
[4:46] And so we're not going to spend time on
[4:47] this show chasing political headlines,
[4:51] chasing mainstream media interviews.
[4:52] We're not even going to waste our time
[4:54] if the questions or excuse me, the
[4:56] answers to these questions remain the
[4:57] same. Uh this headline was this morning,
[5:00] Monday morning, June 29th, from Axios
[5:03] saying that US and Iran agreed to pause
[5:06] strikes in planned talks this week. Is
[5:08] it deja vu? Guys, I've been saying the
[5:11] same thing for months now. You're going
[5:13] to be told that the conflict is just
[5:15] about to end. Trust us. Somehow they
[5:19] keep agreeing to agree to agree to agree
[5:22] to talk about agreeing to planning on
[5:24] agreeing to pausing to only yet agree an
[5:27] actual agreement but the actual
[5:29] agreement has not cometh is this deja vu
[5:34] honestly who knows or cares uh politics
[5:37] are a shitcoin um but it's a new week
[5:41] same updates US and Iran are agreeing to
[5:43] agree to an end of the conflict uh and
[5:45] it is no coincidence this was again
[5:47] announced announced on Sunday night as
[5:50] at least from the US side. I can't speak
[5:51] to the Iran side. I'm not as familiar
[5:53] with local politics and messaging and
[5:56] the Iranian stock market or the state of
[5:59] that. But Trump obviously plans his
[6:03] media engagement around market open,
[6:05] market close, futures open. And so
[6:07] Sunday night seems to be the time when
[6:09] we get new promises and an agreement for
[6:12] an agreement and an agreement that sits
[6:13] on top of an agreement that will later
[6:15] upon be agreed to uh is announced. So is
[6:19] the strait still closed? Relatively yes.
[6:21] Is the conflict still ongoing? Seemingly
[6:23] yes. Are global supply chains disrupted?
[6:26] Yes. And can uh US and more broadly
[6:30] western uh debt markets survive this
[6:32] level of disruption? My prediction is
[6:34] no. Um oil has come down significantly.
[6:38] We've attributed that primarily to the
[6:40] depletion of the reserves across the
[6:44] west. Uh US oil reserves are at its
[6:47] lowest point since the early8s. Um I do
[6:50] not think that oil is this low because
[6:53] the sweet sweet oil nectar is flowing. I
[6:56] think we're depleting uh emergency
[6:58] reserves. But we'll talk about that next
[7:01] week if we get any material updates. But
[7:04] uh yeah, I'm not chasing politicians
[7:06] around. Screw that. So, let's get into
[7:08] market updates chapter 1. What is moving
[7:10] and why? Um I felt like continuing my
[7:14] theme here of looking at the dollar. I
[7:16] think all that matters right now is
[7:18] taking a look at the strength of the
[7:20] world reserve currency. Last episode, if
[7:23] you haven't seen it, I check it out for
[7:24] reference because I will reference it
[7:26] this episode. But just to try and keep
[7:29] this one short, the dollar is the world
[7:31] reserve currency. We all know that um
[7:33] that means a lot of almost all of the
[7:37] world's debt is denominated in dollars.
[7:40] When the dollar strengthens that makes
[7:43] it harder for those that borrow in
[7:46] dollar denomination to service said
[7:48] debt. So imagine you owe money. And we
[7:53] know on this show, and I'll make it
[7:54] clear in a bit, money is time, energy,
[7:58] human effort, human labor, human dignity
[8:01] in an abstracted form. And so if the
[8:05] money goes up that you owe, then you owe
[8:09] more human effort, more human energy,
[8:11] more human time, right? More human
[8:13] labor, right? Imagine if you owed
[8:16] someone, let's say when I got into
[8:18] Bitcoin 14 years ago, I pledged to owe
[8:21] someone 1,000 Bitcoin, which back in my
[8:24] day, that was like a reasonable, that
[8:26] was, you know, thousand Bitcoin. I I
[8:28] told you guys I had casually spent six
[8:31] Bitcoin on a painting. I think that was
[8:33] in 2015. So, okay, fine. Let's do six
[8:36] Bitcoin. Let's say I told the artist,
[8:38] "Hey, I'll owe you the six Bitcoin in 15
[8:40] years." Well, obviously the money that I
[8:42] owed has strengthened, which now is a
[8:45] lot more human effort, time, energy, and
[8:47] labor than back in the day that was like
[8:49] a couple hundred bucks. Now, let's see
[8:53] what is six Bitcoin. Six Bitcoin is
[8:56] $362,000.
[8:58] So, I guess at home, I'm sitting on a
[9:00] $362,000
[9:02] painting technically. So the point is if
[9:05] the money that you owe strengthens
[9:08] well servicing that debt becomes harder.
[9:11] So what do we typically see when the DXY
[9:15] the dollar index strengthens? Well, we
[9:18] see a selloff in assets because it's not
[9:20] that easy to become materially more
[9:23] productive as a person, as a company, as
[9:26] a government. It's hard to be like, "Oh,
[9:29] the dollar strengthening. Well, I'll
[9:30] just invent an incredible business or
[9:32] I'll just find unbelievably valuable
[9:35] natural resources under our soil.
[9:38] Typically, what happens is you dig into
[9:39] your savings. You dig into your assets.
[9:41] You dig into your war chest. And so, you
[9:43] start to see to service these debts and
[9:46] to respond to a strengthening dollar, a
[9:48] selloff in stocks, a selloff in bonds, a
[9:51] sell-off in Bitcoin, a sell-off in gold.
[9:54] And so, Bitcoin, as it always does, it
[9:57] has been leading the market. So, it's
[9:59] usually first to fall and also first to
[10:01] rise because it is the only true fair
[10:04] market and free market we have left. But
[10:06] everything seems to be following. Gold
[10:08] is off its highs tremendously. Silver is
[10:11] actually down more year to date, I
[10:14] believe, than Bitcoin and is further
[10:16] from its highs than Bitcoin. I think
[10:18] silver is at this point approaching 60%
[10:21] off of its highs. Bitcoin, as we just
[10:23] went over in the intro, is 52%.
[10:25] And so, that's what we are seeing. And
[10:27] on the image here, you can see the US
[10:30] dollar index is breaking above 100. And
[10:33] this chart spans all the way back to a
[10:36] decade ago, 2015. And you can see very
[10:39] rarely is the US dollar index ever able
[10:42] to sustain itself above 100. It's
[10:45] typically been below. Now, if you I'll
[10:49] make a maybe longer form segment on a
[10:52] future episode about this. The problem
[10:54] is the world reserve currency can't ever
[10:56] be too strong or too weak. If it's too
[10:58] weak, you're going to get an abundance
[11:00] of credit, an abundance of dollars.
[11:02] That's going to contribute to inflation,
[11:04] to unsustainable levels. If it gets too
[11:06] strong, then you're going to force
[11:08] austerity, tight monetary conditions,
[11:11] assets are going to sell off. And this
[11:13] whole idea that we can have permanent
[11:15] debt and somehow strike the perfect
[11:19] balance that's centrally planned by a
[11:21] bunch of unelected private bankers. So
[11:24] you can't get too weak, you can't get
[11:25] too strong. And you can kind of see this
[11:27] in the image that I have on the screen.
[11:29] The dollar will get above 100 on this
[11:32] index and then it'll have to crash below
[11:34] and then it goes up and then it goes
[11:35] down. It kind of chops and central
[11:37] planners try and perfectly manage the
[11:40] environment that us humans must
[11:41] perfectly exist in. Now, obviously, my
[11:43] opinion is what we really need is to be
[11:45] governed by mother nature and a free
[11:47] market. We don't need central planners.
[11:49] But why is Bitcoin selling off? Why is
[11:51] the NASDAQ starting to struggle? Why is
[11:53] gold off? Why is silver off? Why are
[11:56] assets more broadly selling off? It's
[11:59] because of a strong dollar. And the
[12:00] dollar seems to be reacting to Worsh.
[12:04] Ever since Worsh was going to be the Fed
[12:07] chair, the dollar has strengthened. And
[12:10] he it the dollar is responding to a guy
[12:13] that's claiming to be hawkish, a guy
[12:15] that's claiming to hike rates. I'm going
[12:18] to call his bluff in a second. But just
[12:20] keep this in mind, guys. Like, why is
[12:22] bit could Bitcoin go to 55K? Could it go
[12:24] to 50K? Absolutely. Could this be the
[12:27] bottom? Absolutely. My recommendation
[12:29] remains the same. Turn on those DCAs.
[12:32] We're living in this era right now where
[12:34] the dollar is starting to strengthen.
[12:36] It's reacting to the Fed's messaging
[12:38] which is reacting to inflation which is
[12:41] caused by a lot of credit creation,
[12:44] money creation, and a conflict in the
[12:46] Middle East. It's a perfect time to DCA.
[12:48] It's a perfect time to lower your time
[12:50] preference. It's a perfect time to build
[12:52] on that conviction. It's a perfect time
[12:54] to earn more than you spend. It's a
[12:56] perfect time to find a way to be more
[12:58] valuable and bring in more income. in a
[13:00] perfect time to reduce your expenses and
[13:03] try and spend less. Grow that profit
[13:05] margin. Stack those SATs. Okay, so let's
[13:09] get into some of the details. Let me
[13:10] tell you guys why I think the Fed is
[13:12] full of [ __ ] And you guys already know
[13:14] my thoughts on central planners, on the
[13:16] Fed. I think we should abolish the Fed,
[13:18] but specifically why I think their
[13:21] hawkish rhetoric is smoking mirrors. And
[13:24] I don't buy it for a second. I think the
[13:26] dollar is overreacting and will have to
[13:29] come lower at some point. Could be
[13:31] tomorrow, could be next week, could be
[13:32] next month, could be next quarter, but
[13:34] it definitely can't be next decade.
[13:35] Okay. Um I think the Fed is trapped. So
[13:38] my idea is with this slide at least is I
[13:42] just want to show you guys how the US
[13:45] government, the US Treasury has really
[13:47] pivoted to finance financing itself on
[13:50] what we call the front end of the curve
[13:52] via bills. So you can issue debt what is
[13:56] called long duration. So a 10year a
[13:59] 30-year or you can issue bills stuff
[14:02] that's as good as cash call it cash or
[14:06] cash equivalent. this you know you can
[14:08] issue like a threemonth okay now the US
[14:11] government especially under the Biden
[14:13] administration with Janet Yellen
[14:16] very slowly and then quickly suddenly
[14:20] and then all at once started issuing a
[14:23] lot of the debt and financing itself on
[14:25] the front end on the short end. So
[14:26] issuing a lot of bills and you can see
[14:28] this if you look at the chart on the
[14:30] left and also the right but both are
[14:32] good visuals is the amount of
[14:34] shortduration debt that the government
[14:37] is issuing. Um and it's funny because
[14:40] Scott Bessant when he wasn't part of the
[14:42] government was [ __ ] all over Janet
[14:45] Yellen saying you're an idiot. What are
[14:46] you doing? You're putting us in a
[14:48] terrible position. You know how hard it
[14:50] is going to be to roll that over? And
[14:53] that's what the the chart in the visual
[14:55] on the right is illustrating is just how
[14:58] hard it is to roll this debt over the is
[15:02] for those listening this is Financial
[15:03] Times Treasury rollover risk now runs
[15:06] into the trillions privately held
[15:08] marketable US Treasury debt it's
[15:10] maturing within one year and it
[15:13] succeeding 8 trillion and uh what what's
[15:16] fascinating here guys is
[15:19] this also tells us how confident people
[15:22] are in the creditworthiness of the
[15:26] United States. And obviously the United
[15:28] States can always print what they owe.
[15:30] So it's not that you're not going to get
[15:31] the actual dollars you're owed, but the
[15:34] question is how much are those dollars
[15:35] that when you actually get them in hand,
[15:37] how much stuff are they going to get
[15:38] you? How much groceries? How much eggs?
[15:40] How much vacation? How many children can
[15:42] you afford to have? What sized house are
[15:43] you can you live in? How much can you
[15:45] travel? I've talked about, you know,
[15:48] everything in our lives is a derivative
[15:50] of energy. The story of humanity is
[15:53] being able to commercialize energy from
[15:55] the big orange and yellow thing in the
[15:57] sky, the sun. And our life in this
[16:00] market is who has what right to consume
[16:04] what amount of energy. You want to drive
[16:05] a car, you want to fly a private plane,
[16:07] you want a big house, you want a bunch
[16:09] of televisions, you want the newest
[16:10] phone, you want a bunch of kids. All of
[16:12] this is a claim on energy expenditure.
[16:16] And so the question is, well, how good
[16:20] is the United States going to be at
[16:21] paying me back in energy terms? Not in
[16:24] dollars. Of course, they can print
[16:26] dollars. That's nominal. In energy
[16:28] terms, that's what any money should be
[16:30] good at is protecting your right to
[16:32] energy consumption. If the money
[16:34] deteriorates against energy consumption,
[16:37] it's dog [ __ ] bad money. And that's what
[16:39] we call inflation. And so the fact that
[16:41] the US government has had to pivot its
[16:44] issuance to the front end, meaning
[16:46] nobody wants a 10-year relationship with
[16:48] the US government, nobody wants a
[16:50] 30-year relationship with the US
[16:51] government. You'd have to be batshit
[16:53] insane. If I am going to lend to the US
[16:56] government, I'll take three months.
[17:00] I want a bill. I do not want a 30-year.
[17:03] And so one, it's showing Scott Besson
[17:06] came in after talking all this [ __ ] and
[17:09] not only did the same thing, he's doing
[17:11] it more. And that tells us something
[17:12] very clean. The US government doesn't
[17:14] have an option to issue long duration.
[17:16] That market's dog [ __ ] There are no
[17:18] lenders to the United States over any
[17:20] long durated period. Anyone that is
[17:22] willing to have counterparty risk with
[17:23] the United States and face any potential
[17:25] inflation and debasements of the
[17:27] currency is only willing to in a matter
[17:29] of days or months or even really really
[17:32] low numbers of years, one year, two
[17:34] year. Okay? And that's what this shows.
[17:36] And it puts the uh both the Fed and the
[17:40] Treasury in a really really interesting
[17:42] position because the idea is higher
[17:45] short-term rates will meaningfully
[17:48] accelerate the US and the rest of just
[17:51] the Western world's uh global sovereign
[17:53] debt bond market crash or crisis. Right?
[17:57] The higher the dollar goes, everything
[17:59] else goes down. So, as I just explained,
[18:02] stocks, assets, etc. until the United
[18:04] States is enforced to inject liquidity
[18:07] and cap it. So the Fed is trapped here
[18:10] and obviously if they raise rates, you
[18:12] know, these things pay the the Fed's
[18:15] rate. So it is going to be a direct kick
[18:18] in the nomads uh if the Fed actually
[18:22] raises rates here. So it's just they're
[18:24] relatively trapped. Um another thing to
[18:26] keep in mind, and I've talked about this
[18:28] before on the show, who's buying the US
[18:31] debt? In other words, who's lending the
[18:33] United States money? And these two
[18:35] visuals show very cleanly that it is not
[18:38] foreign official institutions. So, you
[18:40] know, typically over the course of
[18:42] history in this postw World War II era,
[18:45] it is we'll be the world reserve
[18:47] currency. I'm saying we as an American,
[18:49] we'll be the world reserve currency and
[18:52] we will cease to produce locally. will
[18:55] enact this idea of globalism where you
[18:57] guys produce stuff so that you guys can
[18:58] have jobs, you guys can monetize
[19:00] whatever valuable commodities you have
[19:03] on your soil. You export that to us. We
[19:06] import your [ __ ] and we give you
[19:08] dollars. And it was our way of saying,
[19:10] let hey, let's help everyone get back on
[19:11] their feet. World War II decimated the
[19:13] whole world. The US came out as the de
[19:16] facto winner or the deacto strongest
[19:18] country, the empire. And we will not
[19:21] dominate global markets, produce
[19:23] everything, and continue to kick your
[19:25] ass. We will just print money out of
[19:27] thin air in an effort to help bootstrap
[19:29] you guys can stand on the back of the
[19:31] strength of America. And in return, when
[19:34] you guys get all these dollars that
[19:36] we're exporting, you can recycle it into
[19:39] our bonds. So you can take the money
[19:41] that we're giving you and lend it back
[19:43] to us. Now, that game seemed to have
[19:46] died long ago. and specifically around
[19:48] the 2008 financial crisis when the
[19:50] United States took particular advantage
[19:53] of being the world reserve currency
[19:54] being able to print not only money but
[19:57] again human time, effort, energy and
[19:59] labor out of thin air. It seems like
[20:02] everybody around the world, all of our
[20:03] trading partners and counterparts, both
[20:05] allies and enemies, everyone was like,
[20:07] "Fuck this. They're going to debase our
[20:10] time, our energy, our effort, our labor
[20:12] to bail out their banks, to bail out
[20:14] Wall Street. They're not necessarily
[20:16] enforcing the ideals of property rights,
[20:19] the ideals of free markets. This is a
[20:21] scam. This is garbage. And you can
[20:23] visually see that in the chart on the
[20:25] left. So in the blue is the growth of
[20:27] federal debt. And you can see it takes
[20:29] on a whole new growth trajectory post
[20:32] 2008 financial crisis. In the red is the
[20:35] rest of the world, particularly
[20:38] securities held by foreign official
[20:40] institutions, sovereigns. And you can
[20:42] see that when people say, "Oh, China
[20:45] stopped buying US debt recently." No,
[20:47] not recently. They stopped buying it
[20:49] like a decade ago. China's been, and not
[20:53] only China, but they're obviously they
[20:54] run the biggest trade surplus. They're
[20:56] the world's factory, so they're the most
[20:58] relevant when I talk about these things.
[21:00] China's been building towards a neutral
[21:03] monetary standard, a hard money standard
[21:05] for quite some time now. Gold is the
[21:09] money that they've elected to build
[21:11] around. Again, Bitcoin either wasn't
[21:13] invented yet, wasn't known yet, or still
[21:15] now to this day probably isn't quite big
[21:18] enough yet. Um, China definitely has
[21:20] been mining Bitcoin and has Bitcoin to
[21:22] be clear. Um, but they've been rotating
[21:24] out of US treasuries for quite some time
[21:26] and you can see that in the red line
[21:27] that post 2008 that number's been flat.
[21:30] Everyone was like, "Oh, cool. [ __ ]
[21:32] this." Well, then the question is, if
[21:34] the US keeps issuing this debt, so the
[21:36] blue line keeps going up, but the red
[21:38] line remains flat, who's buying this dog
[21:40] [ __ ] and you go to the right and you
[21:43] see since 2016, the private sector. So,
[21:46] what you're looking at on the right is
[21:48] foreign portfolio holdings of US
[21:50] long-term treasury securities of
[21:52] nonofficial foreign. So, these are not,
[21:56] this is not nation, states, and
[21:57] sovereigns. This is the private sector.
[22:00] So the private sector has clearly taken
[22:03] over lending to the United States or in
[22:06] said another way buying US debt. So as
[22:09] the US continues to issue these debt
[22:11] notes, it's the private sector who is
[22:13] buying it. So if I go to the next slide,
[22:16] what does that mean, Jack? Who's buying
[22:18] this dog [ __ ] Uh it seems to be
[22:21] leverage from hedge funds and from the
[22:23] domestic banking system. So this
[22:26] screenshot u says 37% of net issuance of
[22:30] notes and bonds since January 2022 has
[22:33] been absorbed by Cayman Island hedge
[22:35] funds scaring. So just to be clear
[22:40] there's something called the carry
[22:41] trade. It's it's effectively an
[22:42] arbitrage trade and you can make a tiny
[22:45] tiny tiny tiny amount of money running
[22:47] this trade. Like let's say the
[22:49] difference between asset A and asset B
[22:52] is a penny. And so I can buy asset A for
[22:56] one penny cheaper than I can sell it as
[22:59] asset B. And I make one penny every time
[23:01] I do that. Now, why leverage? And how
[23:04] does this scale? Why would Wall Streets
[23:06] be Wall Street hedge funds be interested
[23:08] in this? Well, I guess they're
[23:09] technically doiciled in the Cayman
[23:11] Islands. What's interesting about this?
[23:13] Well, if you can use leverage, then you
[23:14] can scale one penny. One penny times a
[23:17] billion every day turns out to be a lot
[23:20] of money. And so what these hedge funds
[23:22] are doing is they're taking advantage of
[23:24] what's called the carry trade and
[23:26] they're making a tiny amount of money
[23:27] but scaling it to a massive size with
[23:31] leverage. Now let me continue to read my
[23:34] slide. Scaring capital out of stocks
[23:37] into US treasuries will not and cannot
[23:40] work. Stocks declining will drive a
[23:43] fleeting bid in the 10-year US Treasury
[23:46] and then 10-year US yields will get
[23:48] aggressively or 10-year US treasuries
[23:50] will get aggressively sold alongside US
[23:53] equities sending the 10-year US Treasury
[23:55] yields higher in equity as equities
[23:58] decline. And this is a pattern we've
[24:00] seen multiple times. So, let me just
[24:01] break that down quickly. Uh the point is
[24:04] these guys are all levered and they're
[24:06] levered against a capital base, call it
[24:09] a portfolio of stocks. If the stock
[24:12] market sells off, so if the dollar
[24:14] continues to strengthen and the dollar
[24:16] is strengthening because Wars is coming
[24:17] out and saying, "I don't like inflation.
[24:19] I'm not opposed to hiking rates. I'm not
[24:21] opposed to tightening monetary policy,
[24:24] putting pressure on assets." Well, then
[24:26] the assets start to get weaker, as we've
[24:28] seen, gold, silver, Bitcoin, the NASDAQ.
[24:31] When the assets get weaker, these guys
[24:34] delever. Leverage and volatility don't
[24:37] like each other. Don't they don't mix
[24:38] well. Okay? If you know, as a Bitcoiner,
[24:41] if you've survived a few cycles, you
[24:42] know exactly that. And so, as markets
[24:46] get more volatile, in particular, more
[24:47] weak, then these guys delever. And if
[24:50] they delever, it's as clear as day from
[24:53] these charts, there's nobody buying US
[24:56] debt. And so the US will either have to
[24:59] seize spending any money and the empire
[25:02] collapses overnight or they have to
[25:05] print the money to make everybody whole.
[25:07] But make no mistake, people can look at
[25:09] the amount of debt the US has issued and
[25:11] be like, "Wow, there must be a lot of
[25:13] demand around the world for this debt."
[25:15] And that's [ __ ] You just pull on
[25:17] that thread a little bit and you realize
[25:20] there's zero demand for the debt. Not
[25:22] only is there zero demand, it's all
[25:24] leverage hedge funds that are now only
[25:26] willing to buy the front end, the bill,
[25:30] the threemonth. Nobody wants a 10-year.
[25:32] Nobody wants a 30-year. Nobody wants
[25:35] counterparty risk against a debasing
[25:37] dollar, debasing fiat printed pieces of
[25:39] paper. Nobody wants that. And the data
[25:44] backs this unequivocally.
[25:46] So, back to why I'm calling [ __ ] on
[25:48] the Fed. There's 0% chance these guys,
[25:52] well, I don't want to speak in such
[25:53] absolutes. I'll get blasted uh someday
[25:56] if I'm wrong. I have no idea what the
[25:58] future is, guys. This show is fun for
[25:59] me. My strong intuition is that the Fed
[26:04] has no chance at remaining hawkish and
[26:07] actually hiking rates and actually
[26:09] giving material strength to the dollar
[26:13] and crashing the stock market, crashing
[26:17] uh asset prices, delevering these hedge
[26:20] funds and removing what is the only bid
[26:23] left in the US debt market. There's no
[26:27] way. I mean they the Fed would quite
[26:29] literally be destroying and killing Pax
[26:33] Americana as we know it. My better guess
[26:36] is that the Fed is establishing
[26:37] themselves as someone truly independent
[26:40] which obviously the Trump wars worsh is
[26:43] just Trump's puppet. The Fed is
[26:45] establishing themselves as truly
[26:46] independent giving themselves some uh
[26:48] idea of credibility and what they're
[26:50] going to do is reenable the banking
[26:53] system to contribute to buying this
[26:55] debt. And the way that they can do that
[26:56] is allow the banking system to expand
[26:58] their balance sheet with leverage. And
[27:00] the banking system can do what the hedge
[27:02] funds are doing and start buying a ton
[27:04] of US debt. Uh and that will that's
[27:06] obviously highly inflationary, a lot of
[27:09] credit creation, a lot of cheaper
[27:11] capital. Uh and that'll send Bitcoin to
[27:15] the moon. Um but until then, Worsh is
[27:17] not going to come out and just start
[27:18] cutting rates into inflation. Right now,
[27:21] since the Iran war, Trump is as
[27:24] unfavorable as he's ever been as a
[27:26] politician going into midterms. He's his
[27:28] popularity has never been lower. And a
[27:30] lot of that is because the Iran war
[27:32] because this I mean this conflict is an
[27:35] affront to every single campaign promise
[27:37] he made. We were going to get the
[27:38] Epstein files. We were going to stop all
[27:41] wars around the world. We're going to
[27:43] reshore. And all of a sudden, everyone
[27:45] got a ton of inflation, a conflict in
[27:48] the Middle East. We never saw the
[27:49] Epstein files and he can't seem to end
[27:52] this thing. Now, I'm not I've said
[27:55] before, I'm not left, I'm not right, I'm
[27:56] not blue, I'm not red, I'm orange, I'm
[27:58] neutral, I'm free market, I'm less
[28:00] government. Um, but in my opinion, the
[28:04] reason War is doing what he's doing is
[28:07] because Trump needs some credibility or
[28:10] not not Trump. I'm not gonna pe people
[28:12] are just so, you know, religious about
[28:15] this stuff. The US government right now
[28:18] in the administration that's currently
[28:20] in office is seeking some credibility.
[28:22] The Fed should establish itself as
[28:24] independent. The Fed should acknowledge
[28:27] inflation,
[28:28] tell the people that there will be an
[28:30] attempt to fight it. They're not just
[28:31] going to cut rates in your face because
[28:33] that will again discredit everybody in
[28:35] office. Discredit Worsh immediately. It
[28:38] would be such a violent foul now that
[28:41] inflation is back and impacting people
[28:43] materially. Everyone's going to the gas
[28:45] pump and they're heart is dropping in
[28:47] their stomach and while they deregulate
[28:51] the banks and enable more buying and
[28:53] more credit creation and more ways to
[28:55] finance all this AI stuff. So, I'm
[28:58] fading all this hawkish [ __ ] I'm fading
[29:00] a permanently stronger dollar or some
[29:03] arrow where the dollar the DXY is going
[29:05] to remain above 100 for any sustained
[29:07] period. But that's why assets are
[29:09] falling. Markets are trying to
[29:10] understand what's going on, where the
[29:12] credit's going to come from. But this is
[29:14] not sustainable unless they want to send
[29:16] the world into austerity and crash Pax
[29:19] Americana, which is also fine. I mean,
[29:21] Bitcoin will still win. It'll just be a
[29:23] much more interesting journey to get
[29:24] there. But my bet is that politicians
[29:26] are liars. They're glorified marketers
[29:29] and they're highly manipulative to the
[29:32] people in an effort to ultimately
[29:35] socialize losses, debase our time and
[29:37] effort, inflate everything around us um
[29:40] to win elections. That's always going to
[29:42] be my guess. Now, uh on the back of this
[29:45] idea of the stock market assets selling
[29:47] off, I just wanted to highlight this
[29:49] insight. Um this from Forward Guidance,
[29:52] uh the podcast, highly recommend. Uh
[29:56] this was really interesting to me. So
[29:57] these hyperscalers, these big tech
[29:59] companies, um you can see their capex
[30:01] versus their buybacks. So these
[30:04] companies call it, you know, let's do
[30:06] Meta or Amazon or Microsoft or Google or
[30:10] any any of these big massive companies.
[30:12] Um these companies were unbelievable
[30:15] because they were such low cost, high
[30:17] margin, high growth, and they were
[30:20] taking all of this cash they were making
[30:22] and they were plowing it back into their
[30:25] stock stock buybacks. And so you get a
[30:27] massive multiple for that. Um, one, you
[30:30] know, forward cash. Uh, so forward
[30:32] earnings, you're going to get a
[30:34] multiple. These businesses are growing.
[30:36] They're technology companies. So their
[30:37] TAM, their total addressable market is
[30:40] huge. Billions of people globally. Their
[30:42] costs don't scale with the business. So
[30:44] if they find ways to enter new markets,
[30:46] launch new products, monetize new
[30:48] people, typically the only cost they
[30:50] have is like rent and engineering
[30:54] salaries. It's not a very capitalally
[30:56] intensive business. And so you also have
[30:58] to price in the fact that there's a
[30:59] buyer of last resort for the stock
[31:01] you're buying. Is I'll buy the stock
[31:03] before Meta's next earnings plow
[31:05] billions of dollars more purchasing
[31:07] power into the thing I'm buying today.
[31:09] Now, you can see that this has
[31:11] drastically tailored off to zero and
[31:14] capex. So these businesses and like how
[31:17] much their company costs to run has
[31:20] skyrocketed.
[31:22] And again, it's because AI changes who
[31:25] these businesses are fundamentally. They
[31:28] go from lowcost technology companies
[31:30] that just need to pay their cloud bill.
[31:32] Well, they are the cloud, but pay their
[31:34] electricity bill, pay their engineering
[31:35] salaries, and they just print money on
[31:38] money on money. Margins grow, grow,
[31:40] grow, grow, grow. Cash grow, grow, grow,
[31:42] grow, grow. Buybacks grow grow. All of a
[31:45] sudden, they're getting into purchasing
[31:48] commodities, purchasing hardware,
[31:49] needing to build out power
[31:51] infrastructure themselves. That is
[31:53] extremely capitalally intensive. These
[31:56] businesses also are now picking a fight
[31:58] with Moore's law, which is going to be
[32:00] really interesting. Moore's law doesn't
[32:02] really care about how much money you
[32:03] have and how much money you can print.
[32:05] Um, that's just physical reality. And
[32:07] so, these cash generating businesses are
[32:10] turning into debtridden balance sheets.
[32:12] And these companies are now raising like
[32:14] Google's raising money at the market via
[32:16] common stock. They're raising bonds.
[32:19] They're raising debt. And that's
[32:21] changing these businesses materially.
[32:23] You're going to get a far smaller
[32:25] multiple if you've gone from really high
[32:28] margin, really low cost, really high
[32:31] growth, really cash flow positive,
[32:34] really intense buybacks to far less low
[32:38] cost, like actually not low cost at all.
[32:41] unclear what the growth profile looks
[32:43] like, unclear what the mode is, unclear
[32:46] if you're the winner, unclear how
[32:48] expensive this will be, unclear how it's
[32:50] going to be financed. All of a sudden,
[32:52] you're not necessarily cash flow
[32:54] positive. You're tapping debt markets.
[32:55] You're tapping common issuance, which is
[32:58] dilutive. And so, this changes how
[33:00] valuable these businesses are on a
[33:02] multiple basis. And this is a chart of
[33:04] the NASDAQ, and we're starting to see
[33:05] weakness. You know, I write here, don't
[33:07] look now, but the NASDAQ is starting to
[33:10] show weakness despite a strong tech
[33:13] narrative. If you just, you know, scroll
[33:15] Tik Tok and read mainstream media that's
[33:18] like, "Oh, tech is booming. AI's here to
[33:20] stay. Elon's the most impressive person
[33:22] on the planet." All of that could be
[33:24] true. But markets, you can try and
[33:26] centrally plan them and control them to
[33:28] the best of your ability. But they don't
[33:29] lie. Words are easy. Thoughts are easy.
[33:33] People can tweet whatever they want. It
[33:34] costs them nothing. But that's why we
[33:36] have money. Money is put it put your
[33:39] time, energy, effort, and labor on the
[33:41] line.
[33:42] When people say put your put your money
[33:44] where your mouth is, that's what that
[33:46] means. Put your human dignity where your
[33:48] beliefs are, [ __ ] And we can
[33:52] see that the NASDAQ's starting to
[33:53] struggle. And the NASDAQ specifically is
[33:55] a reflection of tech. We're back to
[33:58] early May levels. And it looks like, you
[34:02] know, I have the RSI shown at the bottom
[34:04] there. It looks like the market is
[34:07] starting to slow down from a momentum
[34:09] standpoint. And so again, people say,
[34:11] "Oh, Bitcoin's getting killed and tech
[34:14] stocks are smashing highs." Yeah, be
[34:17] careful. Bitcoin is a leading indicator
[34:20] because it's the last functioning smoke
[34:21] alarm that we have for the truth. So,
[34:24] Bitcoin's going to be first. It doesn't
[34:26] mean it's going to be only. Don't
[34:28] mistake in Bitcoin's action as unique.
[34:31] It's probably just ahead of its time.
[34:33] That's probably just first. And so I'll
[34:34] repeat it again. With this strong dollar
[34:37] activity, which is on the back of Worsh
[34:40] being much more hawkish, claiming he's
[34:42] not afraid to hike rates to fight
[34:43] inflation, which is on the back of Trump
[34:47] and this Iran conflict and oil shock and
[34:50] depletion of reserves. You know, this is
[34:53] causing Bitcoin, gold, silver, and now
[34:56] the NASDAQ to show weakness. And you
[34:58] kind of have this perfect storm where
[34:59] you have these massive tech companies
[35:01] that were able to just plow cash into
[35:03] buybacks. They're now getting rerated
[35:05] and repriced because they are
[35:06] capitalally intense businesses to run
[35:09] that are fighting physical reality like
[35:11] Moore's law. It's unclear how they're
[35:13] going to monetize, what their modes are,
[35:15] who's going to win. These businesses are
[35:17] getting lesser multiples. Now, if the
[35:20] stock market starts to show material
[35:22] weakness, we know that that's going to
[35:24] delever the hedge funds that are just
[35:27] levered to their eyeballs supporting the
[35:30] US debt markets. You see how all of this
[35:32] rhymes? And so, sure, the the the Fed
[35:36] can huff and puff and pound their chest.
[35:39] I call [ __ ] There's no way that
[35:42] they can sustain this. And with Bitcoin
[35:44] at 60K, I'm actually very impressed by
[35:46] Bitcoin. It could go to 50. It could go
[35:48] to 40. whatever. What am I doing?
[35:50] Turning on my DCA, staying humble,
[35:52] stacking stats, which I'll get to in a
[35:54] second. I'm seeing weakness across all
[35:56] markets. I'm not looking at Bitcoin and
[35:58] feeling bad for myself. I'm looking at
[36:00] Bitcoin and appreciating the fact that
[36:01] Bitcoin is able to so clearly tell me
[36:04] the truth before anybody else. But
[36:05] there's weakness across all assets that
[36:08] is going to make it very difficult for
[36:10] this highly indebted sovereign, the
[36:12] United States, to issue this much debt,
[36:15] which they must.
[36:17] So there's there's just this is not a
[36:19] sustainable option. This is a very short
[36:23] blip point in time in my opinion. We'll
[36:25] we'll we'll obviously see if I'm right.
[36:27] I'm not always right. Um but that's how
[36:29] I would really reason and logic with
[36:31] what you guys are seeing in the markets
[36:32] today. And let's take this back to Main
[36:34] Street and the people before I move on
[36:36] to the next chapter. Um people are
[36:38] struggling. Okay, so on the left you
[36:41] have savings and investment as a
[36:42] percentage of gross national income. um
[36:45] it continues to grind like to near
[36:48] negative numbers. So people don't have
[36:51] savings. Now on the right I have US
[36:53] credit card accounts delinquent by 90
[36:55] plus days. This has jumped to 13% which
[36:58] is the highest level in 15 years and
[37:00] it's approaching the highest level ever.
[37:03] So people are increasingly unable to
[37:06] save. This is due to inflation. This is
[37:08] due to a debasing currency. This is also
[37:10] due to not a lot of opportunities to be
[37:12] productive in the marketplace. As we
[37:15] know, wealth continues to concentrate as
[37:17] you have the catillion effect printing
[37:19] money. The rich get richer, the poor get
[37:22] increasingly poor. And when I say poor,
[37:24] I mean increasingly unable to afford
[37:26] assets and and save for their future.
[37:29] And other ways to evidence this is that
[37:32] the only way to sustain a life now is
[37:35] through consumer debt. So you don't
[37:37] actually own your house, you have a
[37:38] mortgage. You don't actually own your
[37:39] car, you have a car note. You don't
[37:40] actually buy your groceries with cash,
[37:42] you're using a credit card. and del
[37:44] consumer credit delinquencies are
[37:46] rising. And we've talked about how
[37:49] consumer credit delinquencies are going
[37:50] to go up as a combination of
[37:53] a probable recession. You know, we
[37:56] probably are in or have been living
[37:59] through a recession in recent years,
[38:02] just not by the technical definition.
[38:03] They they love changing the definition
[38:05] like they do CPI and all this garbage.
[38:08] but a weaker economy in this K-shaped
[38:11] economy where obviously if you're Mark
[38:13] Zuckerberg you're doing great and if
[38:15] you're a main street employee you're
[38:17] probably struggling. So in the lower of
[38:20] the K, you've got these recessionary
[38:22] tendencies which is going to add towards
[38:25] credit delinquencies for the main street
[38:27] consumer. And then you've got AI that's
[38:29] actively disrupting the job market. And
[38:32] the combination of those, if
[38:33] delinquencies go up too much, remind you
[38:36] that's what bank balance sheets are.
[38:38] They're writing these loans that they're
[38:39] giving people at par. They're valuing
[38:42] the the loans on their balance sheet as
[38:43] if they're good money. But these are not
[38:45] collateralized loans like what Strike
[38:46] issues. These are uncolateralized credit
[38:50] based on your ability to hopefully keep
[38:53] your job, be able to save money, and pay
[38:55] them off on time. And bank balance
[38:57] sheets will blow up if delinquencies get
[38:59] too high. So, I I feel like um I'm
[39:05] bouncing the rock around too many
[39:06] places, but the point is this is a
[39:09] highly levered financial system that's
[39:11] driven by debt. And there's no way to
[39:13] square this without debasing the
[39:15] currency and printing money inflating
[39:17] this debt away. So they try and make the
[39:19] dollar stronger. Not going to work,
[39:21] right? Either the hedge funds financing
[39:23] the US debt markets are going to get
[39:24] delevered. Uh credit card delinquencies
[39:27] and just consumer credit uh is going to
[39:29] run delinquent and blow up the bank's
[39:30] balance sheets. There's just too much
[39:32] leverage. It's too much debt. There is
[39:34] no grow your way out. All of that is
[39:36] absolutely garbage. We can pay
[39:38] everything back, but it's going to be in
[39:40] dollars. And those dollars are going to
[39:42] be debased heavily. It just has to. So,
[39:46] uh, furthermore, I thought this was
[39:48] astounding. So, this is the University
[39:50] of Michigan. This is the same, uh,
[39:52] survey that does consumer sentiment,
[39:54] same university in America that does the
[39:55] consumer sentiment that I referenced.
[39:57] This is expected change in business
[39:59] conditions in a year, worse. So, do
[40:03] businesses think they're going to be in
[40:05] a better place over the next 12 months
[40:07] or in a worse place? and they think
[40:08] they're going to be way worse off. And
[40:10] this is, look at the data. This dates
[40:12] back to 1980. So, we're talking about
[40:14] over 40 years of economic data of of the
[40:18] survey conducted by the University of
[40:19] Michigan. And the expected change in
[40:21] businesses for the worse is
[40:23] skyrocketing. So, businesses are not
[40:27] confident in their future. They're
[40:28] seeing less business. They're seeing
[40:30] less activity. And again guys, it's
[40:32] pretty obvious like if people are not
[40:34] able to save and are going delinquent on
[40:36] their credit cards, they're probably not
[40:39] going on as many vacations or probably
[40:41] not shopping in as many. And I could
[40:43] have had a lot more charts in here. I
[40:45] don't have the time, but a lot of the
[40:47] economic activity is driven heavily by,
[40:49] you know, the top percentile. So the
[40:52] wealthy are getting wealthier and
[40:53] spending a lot more money. And so if
[40:56] your business depends on a certain
[40:58] cohort of people, it's really really
[41:00] really struggling. So we're getting
[41:02] aggressively more K-shaped. And I I
[41:04] think that this chart is just crazy. It
[41:07] says a lot. So anyway, oh my Lauram
[41:10] Ipsum is still here. Let's see. Bitcoin.
[41:13] Bitcoin. Uh let's take a look at Bitcoin
[41:16] uh and just do just do a little test and
[41:20] a little visual on where we are. So,
[41:22] Bitcoin is back to its 200 uh weekly
[41:24] moving average, which tends to be where
[41:26] bare markets historically kind of bottom
[41:29] out as you guys can see here. Um, I
[41:31] don't know. Listen, I'm not a chart guy.
[41:33] I'm not a line drawer. Uh, I think the
[41:36] point that I wanted to convey here is
[41:39] this is what stay humble and stack stats
[41:40] is all about. This is what inspired me
[41:42] to read the essay I'll release and that
[41:44] I'll preview here in a second. But, um,
[41:47] I don't believe like you have to ask
[41:49] yourself some fundamental questions.
[41:51] One, is Bitcoin dead? Do you think it's
[41:52] going to zero? If so, I don't know why
[41:53] you're listening to this. Two, if not,
[41:56] what are you waiting for? This is
[41:58] exactly this is the the moment a
[42:00] Bitcoiner dreams of. You you have to get
[42:03] you know, bare markets are right of
[42:04] passage. They're very painful, as I'll
[42:06] talk about in a second. And there's
[42:08] there's real reasons as to why they're
[42:09] so painful, but they're excruciatingly
[42:12] painful. And you have to earn your right
[42:15] of passage. God damn it, this thing is
[42:17] so annoying. You have to earn your right
[42:20] of passage. Uh and then once you get
[42:23] over that hump, you take your ego
[42:24] humbling. You you you build humility. Uh
[42:27] then you just got to turn on your DCA
[42:29] stack sad, stay humble, earn more, spend
[42:32] less. This to me looks like Bitcoin is
[42:34] beginning to bottom. Now, I say
[42:35] beginning, it could go much lower. It
[42:38] could be the bottom already. You may
[42:39] have already missed the bottom. I don't
[42:41] know. And the point is, at least for me,
[42:44] I don't care. I'm not a trader. I'm not
[42:46] a a line chart drawer. I I that's not
[42:50] how I spend my time. You know what I'm
[42:51] going to do after this? I'm going to go
[42:52] check out uh some place in a green hill
[42:56] to see if I can start my family there.
[42:58] That's where I'd rather spend my time.
[43:00] Um Bitcoin is cheap no matter the price.
[43:03] I get it. But this to me is starting to
[43:05] feel like a bottom. The macro math is
[43:08] starting to work out as to okay, I
[43:09] understand why liquidity is tight. I
[43:11] understand why central planners are
[43:13] doing what they're doing. I understand
[43:14] this is no longer sustainable. I
[43:16] understand why assets are are selling
[43:17] off. I get it all. Bitcoin is a bargain
[43:21] right now. And as my dad uh told me and
[43:25] I continually repeat to you guys,
[43:27] markets either try and scare you out or
[43:29] wear you out. And the scare you out part
[43:32] happens in an instant, right? Like when
[43:34] Bitcoin went from 120K to 90K and then
[43:37] from 90K to 60K, that was like overnight
[43:39] moves and everyone's puking and on the
[43:41] timeline like, "Oh my god, is everything
[43:42] okay? Was there a bug found in Bitcoin?
[43:44] That's scare you out. Like, you know
[43:45] what? I can't even tolerate this
[43:47] anymore. I can't sleep. I can't focus on
[43:51] my family. Now, the wear you out is just
[43:53] time, guys. Bitcoin's been the same
[43:56] price that it is now since February.
[44:00] And people are just getting worn out.
[44:01] Everyone's fighting with each other.
[44:02] Everyone's trying to point the finger.
[44:03] Whose fault is it? Everyone's wearing
[44:06] each other down. It's like, "Okay, I get
[44:08] it. I get it. I'm still here. My DCA is
[44:11] still on. you just go back up. And it
[44:13] might take it could take months. It
[44:16] could take a year. It could also take
[44:19] one more day. It could have already
[44:20] happened. And so my message is just
[44:23] don't get scared out. Don't get worn
[44:24] out. This is what has really motivated
[44:26] me to write this essay is some of the
[44:28] things I've learned. Bare markets are
[44:30] tremendously painful opportunities,
[44:33] right? If it were easy, everyone would
[44:35] do it. You know, when Bitcoin goes up,
[44:37] they say you're lucky. When Bitcoin goes
[44:39] down, they say you're stupid.
[44:42] ignore it. Turn on those DCAs. I think
[44:44] Bitcoin's a bargain here. You're not
[44:46] going to regret buying now later on.
[44:49] See, I also have my Lauram Ipsum here.
[44:52] Um, and to illustrate this further, uh,
[44:56] Bitcoin is at Q6, meaning just 6% of the
[45:00] days are lower than this 200 week that I
[45:03] referenced. So, you're saying, well, on
[45:06] a relative basis, how cheap is Bitcoin?
[45:09] Well, saying that you're going to wait
[45:10] for a better price is saying, you know,
[45:13] Bitcoin's not not cheaper than its 200E
[45:16] moving average on 6% of the total days
[45:19] of Bitcoin's existence. So, it's like,
[45:22] okay, are you that good at picking
[45:23] prices? Are you that good at analysis?
[45:25] Are you that good at being awake at 2:37
[45:28] in the morning when the perfect bottom
[45:30] is printed? I don't know if you are. I'm
[45:33] not. I'm not. I am totally okay with
[45:37] buying in a range when it's 6% a days.
[45:40] Now, don't take me as an example because
[45:42] I buy every day. I buy the top, I buy
[45:43] the bottom, I buy the this, I buy the
[45:45] that. What I do is I work hard, earn
[45:49] more than I spend, and save. That's what
[45:52] I do. And then I focus on [ __ ] that I'm
[45:53] actually interested in. I I'm not I'm
[45:55] not interested in turning a chart into
[45:58] an art project. That's not what I like
[46:00] spending my time doing. But just for
[46:02] reference, guys, Bitcoin is
[46:05] the only functioning liquidity smoke
[46:08] alarm we have left. Don't let it scare
[46:11] you. Don't let it wear you down. It's
[46:14] just telling you the truth. I try and do
[46:17] this show to make sense of the rest of
[46:19] the markets. Here comes gold crashing
[46:21] down. Here comes silver crashing down.
[46:22] Here comes the NASDAQ crashing down.
[46:24] Bitcoin's not different and unique in
[46:26] that sense. It's just early. It's just a
[46:29] free market. Don't get scared. turn on
[46:31] those DCAs, stay solvent, and then the
[46:34] next chapter, um, I want to talk about
[46:37] just some learnings I've had from bare
[46:39] markets, um, and Bitcoin generally
[46:41] speaking. Um, I'll have a much, uh,
[46:44] longer form essay as I mentioned, but I
[46:46] figured I would, I don't know, this show
[46:48] I like, um, cutting you guys in on
[46:51] whether it's, you know, early launches
[46:52] of features or early ideas I have. It's
[46:55] good for me to bounce it off uh willing
[46:58] ears, get some feedback in the YouTube
[47:00] comments and uh also just give you guys
[47:03] for supporting me and give you guys kind
[47:05] of early access in a way. Um so the
[47:08] title of my essay will probably be
[47:10] Bitcoin the last honest market. Um and
[47:12] it's my learnings from my near 14 years
[47:15] in Bitcoin. I think I've I've talked
[47:19] about this in prior episodes. I I talk
[47:22] about this pretty much anytime anyone's
[47:23] willing to listen, but my point is
[47:26] Bitcoin is not only the last free market
[47:29] we have left, but it's the most honest
[47:32] market we have in the world. And what I
[47:35] write here is Bitcoin is one of the only
[47:37] remaining places where modern people
[47:40] encounter unmediated reality, a truly
[47:43] free market, not just for an asset, but
[47:45] for money itself. And I've talked about
[47:47] this before. the world and what the
[47:50] asset is generally about is I think
[47:52] modern day society
[47:54] is conditioned
[47:57] to think that things like entropy and
[48:00] volatility aren't natural. You know,
[48:03] entropy is the um
[48:08] how do I say it's the natural state of
[48:11] the universe. Um things change. I I've
[48:14] I've done the lawn mower uh a as as an
[48:19] example um in in the past and and that a
[48:24] lawn if left uncared for it gets
[48:30] messy. Um a tree sprouts in in an area
[48:33] that you didn't think it gets uneven. It
[48:35] gets chaotic. It gets ugly. Um entropy
[48:38] is the tendency of things to move from
[48:42] order to disorder, from smoothness to
[48:45] unevenness, from certainty to surprise.
[48:50] Like um what are some more examples?
[48:54] your room.
[48:56] Your room gets messy. Your body gets
[48:59] older. Uh your lawn gets wild. Your
[49:02] machine breaks down. Uh a forest will
[49:05] change. The weather will change. Life
[49:08] does not hold still. That's the point.
[49:10] And the point is that that's a flaw.
[49:14] That's not a flaw in the universe. The
[49:16] point is that is the universe. Okay?
[49:20] Order exists in our world, but order is
[49:23] not free. Order requires energy. So,
[49:28] someone has to clean your room. Someone
[49:31] has to mow your lawn. Someone has to
[49:34] maintain the machine from breaking.
[49:37] Someone has to pave the road. Someone
[49:39] has to regulate the temperature. If it's
[49:41] too hot outside and you want a room with
[49:45] air conditioning, somebody has to build
[49:47] that and regulate that. Someone has to
[49:50] irrigate the field. Someone has to
[49:52] repair what time keeps wearing down.
[49:56] Smoothness is manufactured. Volatility,
[50:00] entropy is natural. And modern day
[50:04] society, I think, has been conditioned
[50:07] to believe the opposite. That a
[50:09] perfectly mowed lawn is the natural
[50:12] state of mother nature in the universe.
[50:14] Right? And that's just not true.
[50:18] And you know things like uh circuit
[50:21] breakers in the market. Uh markets are
[50:23] closed on weekends. If if if a stock
[50:25] crashes too much, the market gets turned
[50:28] off. If someone blows up too fast, they
[50:32] get a bailout. If there's too many
[50:33] losses, they're socialized.
[50:36] Right? Central planners and governments,
[50:39] the bigger they've gotten and the more
[50:41] involved they've gotten, have tried to
[50:43] strip out the volatility and the entropy
[50:46] from the world. But you cannot remove
[50:49] what is natural. We are a function of
[50:51] and a product of the universe. We are
[50:54] not its master.
[50:58] And so you are masking it. You're not
[51:00] removing it. And so we have a world
[51:03] where there's a lot of pain and
[51:05] absorption of losses and volatility, but
[51:08] it's being realized in different places.
[51:10] like, okay, the stock market isn't very
[51:12] volatile, but assassination attempts,
[51:14] especially politically driven, are
[51:16] rivaling the civil war era. So, you
[51:20] can't remove volatility. You just move
[51:23] it to be realized somewhere else. Now,
[51:25] it's being realized in the social
[51:26] contract. And so, the whole idea of my
[51:28] thesis is that Bitcoin is the only
[51:31] remaining place where modern-day people
[51:34] get to encounter reality in an
[51:36] unmediated way.
[51:38] That's why it's so emotional and it can
[51:41] be so euphoric and so painful. And as
[51:43] I've said on the show before, Bitcoin is
[51:46] like experiencing the world truly as it
[51:48] is. Cuz every other lived experience in
[51:50] this centrally planned, overly governed
[51:53] reality that we live in is almost like
[51:55] there's padding for you. You're never
[51:58] going to get too hurt. You're never
[51:59] going to feel too good. You're also
[52:01] never going to feel too bad. You're
[52:03] going to kind of eat within the lines,
[52:04] live within the lines, earn within the
[52:07] lines, behave within the lines. No blade
[52:10] of grass is going to grow taller than
[52:12] any other. Every loss we're all going to
[52:14] share. Bailouts, stock market shutdowns,
[52:18] etc. So, anyways,
[52:21] my point is, as I've said before, money
[52:24] is not just something that you can mark
[52:26] in an Excel sheet. You can try and you
[52:28] will fail. Money is human time, human
[52:31] energy, human labor, human sacrifice,
[52:34] human effort, human judgment. It is
[52:37] human dignity. It is human dignity in an
[52:40] abstracted form that we can trade and
[52:42] move across space and time. How do I
[52:45] move my time and energy that I've spent
[52:49] from A to B, from California to
[52:52] Illinois, from New York to Singapore,
[52:54] and then how do I move it through time?
[52:56] How do I take the time and energy and
[52:58] labor and sacrifice and effort I'm
[53:00] spending now in the year 2026 to the
[53:03] year 2036?
[53:05] Not necessarily from consumer to
[53:07] merchant, not necessarily between
[53:09] trading partners, but in time. How do I
[53:12] carry forward the value I'm creating
[53:14] today for a hundred years from now?
[53:17] right now. Modern day markets that
[53:20] aren't Bitcoin,
[53:22] they are centrally managed, smoothed
[53:24] over, subsidized, interrupted,
[53:26] protected, and just generally sedated,
[53:29] right? It is they've distorted the
[53:32] reality that is natural. And I make the
[53:36] argument in the essay that fiat
[53:38] suppresses volatility, which accumulates
[53:41] fragility.
[53:43] So, it kicks the can.
[53:46] It creates an extraordinarily fragile
[53:49] system where all of a sudden you're
[53:50] seeing assassination temps, rise in
[53:53] crime, rise in homelessness, rise in
[53:55] metabolic disease. You can't People say,
[53:58] "Oh, oh, Bitcoin's more volatile." More
[54:01] volatile where in its price, yes, but
[54:04] what about in the social contract?
[54:06] Bitcoiners do not murder each other.
[54:09] Bitcoiners are healthy. Bitcoiners build
[54:11] family. So you cannot remove the entropy
[54:14] and volatility from the universe.
[54:19] We are childs of the universe. We are
[54:21] not the masters of the universe. And
[54:24] this goes into my rants about ego.
[54:27] To think you are smarter than the
[54:29] universe. To think you're the master of
[54:31] the universe
[54:32] is a failure of ego before anything
[54:35] else. You are not bigger than
[54:40] the world as it is. You need to accept
[54:43] the world as it is. And so Bitcoin takes
[54:46] this opposite approach of fiat which it
[54:49] exposes volatility naturally by removing
[54:52] any central planner, any third party,
[54:55] any trusted node and that allows it to
[54:58] build resilience. So where fiat tries to
[55:01] hide volatility, it accumulates
[55:03] fragility. where Bitcoin allows for
[55:06] volatility. It actually builds
[55:08] resilience. And so that's why these
[55:09] things over time move in opposite
[55:11] directions. As time goes on, fiat gets
[55:14] more and more fragile and Bitcoin gets
[55:16] more and more resilient. Fiat gets less
[55:18] and less valuable. Bitcoin gets more and
[55:20] more valuable. And I made this point
[55:23] already, but volatility is not
[55:24] unnatural. Volatility is reality. And I
[55:27] like entropy because volatility sounds
[55:30] like a economic markets term. in and re
[55:32] and the reality is it's it's really all
[55:34] about entropy is that entropy is a
[55:36] natural law of the world that we were
[55:38] born into. Um and so the lawn analogy is
[55:42] usually pretty good is an engineered
[55:45] lawn means it's perfectly mowed, it's
[55:46] uniformed, it's controlled, it's
[55:48] predictable, but that requires constant
[55:50] intervention to stay that way. And as I
[55:52] said, if you want to create controlled
[55:54] environments, it's not free. It costs
[55:57] energy. either your energy like you have
[55:59] to clean your room or you have to pay
[56:03] someone to clean your room and that
[56:05] paying someone is still an energy
[56:07] expense because we talk about time and
[56:09] energy in an abstracted form is money.
[56:11] Again, that's the whole point guys is
[56:13] that energy expenditure is how the world
[56:16] works and a uniform world is not
[56:19] necessarily a bad thing. Like for
[56:21] example, medicine is uniform to prevent
[56:25] from disease. Housing is uniform to
[56:28] prevent from temperature, right? If I
[56:30] didn't have housing in Chicago, I would
[56:32] die in the winter because it's too
[56:34] [ __ ] cold. So, not all uniform is
[56:37] bad. I am fine accumulating time,
[56:40] energy, effort, labor, and dignity in
[56:41] money and then spending my energy either
[56:44] literally by doing work myself or with
[56:46] my capital to build and live in a house
[56:49] to afford medicine in case anyone I love
[56:52] or myself gets sick. But there's a
[56:55] difference between uniform
[56:59] like a a across the board socializing
[57:02] all losses and a selective free market
[57:04] ability. Does this make sense? So if I
[57:08] go on um obviously to remove volatility
[57:12] you need control and Bitcoin is
[57:14] engineered to remove any any control of
[57:19] anything. No one can control [ __ ] And
[57:22] so in my opinion, Bitcoin chooses
[57:24] freedom. And
[57:27] now back to bull markets and bare
[57:29] markets. And kind of the point of this
[57:31] essay is what I tell my companies
[57:33] internally all the time is that in
[57:35] Bitcoin, bull markets will get better
[57:37] than you can ever imagine. However good
[57:40] you think things can get, it will get
[57:42] better. And this goes to show that we're
[57:45] not conditioned to really truly
[57:47] understand the world as it is. we are
[57:50] preconditioned to kind of understand the
[57:51] world as it's been engineered by
[57:54] government and central planners for us
[57:55] to consume it. So in my experience as a
[57:58] Bitcoiner and by the way I'm not
[58:00] speaking to you guys as like a you know
[58:02] religious I like I'm just speaking from
[58:05] my own experience uh because like we
[58:10] just don't know how truly good life can
[58:12] be. We don't. We live in a very
[58:16] centrally planned and crafted
[58:18] environment. So in Bitcoin, bull markets
[58:22] can get better than you can ever
[58:23] imagine. There's no ceiling of
[58:25] permission. There's no committee.
[58:26] There's no central planner. There's no
[58:28] one standing between an open network and
[58:30] the world. So an example that I lived
[58:33] through, I thought the 2021 bull market
[58:36] was going to be good. Co was extremely
[58:39] painful. Bitcoin fell from like $10,000
[58:41] a coin to $3,000 a coin like overnight.
[58:45] It was painful. Puking my guts out. Uh
[58:47] the lady I was with at the time had
[58:49] cheated on me. I mean, it was an awful
[58:51] time. Awful time. Um however, as good as
[58:55] I thought it was going to be, I did not
[58:58] think that an open- source monetary
[59:00] network would help give a country hope.
[59:02] Never in a million years, guys, did I
[59:05] think that I would help contribute to
[59:07] making Bitcoin legal tender in El
[59:08] Salvador that I would get calls from the
[59:11] World Bank and the IMF.
[59:14] That a country that has been through
[59:16] civil war, currency destruction,
[59:20] gangridden violence that made it one of
[59:21] the most dangerous places in the world.
[59:24] Never in a million years did I think
[59:25] Bitcoin would be at the core of a
[59:28] country reviving itself.
[59:30] hope, safety, freedom, never, ever,
[59:34] ever. And that I I would somehow be a
[59:36] part be a part of that ever.
[59:40] So, however good you think it can get,
[59:44] it can get better. Like that was not in
[59:48] my worldview or my map of the world
[59:52] because I grew up in a like very tamed,
[59:56] conditioned environment, centrally
[59:58] planned. Um, now the other reality that
[60:01] I tell my employees is it's the same for
[60:04] the downside. However bad you think
[60:07] things can get in a Bitcoin bare market,
[60:10] they will get worse. Trust me,
[60:15] fraud is bigger than you ever thought.
[60:17] Leverage is more hidden than you know.
[60:20] Confidence disappears a lot faster than
[60:23] you think. The truth arrives violently.
[60:28] There is nobody that's going to protect
[60:30] you from the brutal reality that is the
[60:34] universe.
[60:36] Trust me.
[60:38] When they decided to uh raise rates and
[60:42] hike rates as fast as they've ever hiked
[60:44] them before post the COVID inflation
[60:46] boom. Yeah. I thought Bitcoin would have
[60:48] a bare market. Of course. Did I think
[60:50] that Sam Bankman been freed stole 10
[60:53] billion dollars from individuals all
[60:55] over the world and this guy that was
[60:59] parading around as the next genius was
[61:02] secretly funding government campaigns
[61:06] and all this crazy [ __ ] No, nobody had
[61:10] that on their bingo card. Nobody.
[61:13] However bad you think it can get, it
[61:15] will get worse. And again that is
[61:17] because there's no padding central
[61:19] planning in carefully crafted uh
[61:22] engineering the volatility and the
[61:24] entropy out of your experience. Okay.
[61:27] And so the bull market shows you what is
[61:30] possible. Shows you how how the power of
[61:34] things like hope, love, connection,
[61:37] ambition. It shows you what's possible.
[61:39] Bitcoin can truly save the world. I
[61:43] think Bitcoin can truly fix some of the
[61:44] world's hardest problems. Fix the money,
[61:46] fix the world. It can unite us all. And
[61:49] it can do it peacefully. I mean,
[61:51] something like El Salvador is just so
[61:53] inspiring for me and and hopefully it
[61:55] was for others. Um, but the bare market,
[61:59] conversely, is a it really tests who you
[62:02] are as a person. Okay. So I I make the
[62:06] claim that Bitcoin does not just repric
[62:08] assets, it also reprices character like
[62:12] Sam Bankman Freed for example. Um now
[62:17] a little story about me. If I'm going to
[62:19] use the 2021 bull market in El Salvador
[62:21] as what's possible in bull runs, I'll
[62:24] give you guys an example of what I
[62:25] learned about myself in bare markets. So
[62:27] in the last bare market, 2022 was one of
[62:29] the hardest times in my life. Um I'll
[62:32] give you guys a quick story. Obviously,
[62:33] if you have questions, leave them in the
[62:35] comments. I can, you know, maybe do the
[62:36] live Q&A, go deeper into any of this if
[62:39] you want. But in the Bitcoin conference
[62:41] in 2022, I made an announcement that uh
[62:45] we had partnered with NCR and Blackhawk
[62:47] on a bunch of merchant adop adoption
[62:49] stuff. And uh I mean those relationships
[62:53] were real to be clear. Um the
[62:56] announcement was definitely premature
[62:58] and very unfortunately I couldn't get
[63:02] the products to market. Long story
[63:04] short, the partnerships began to fade as
[63:07] they hiked rates and asset prices
[63:10] started to crash. Everyone's stock was
[63:11] down. Bitcoin was down. Assets were
[63:13] down. Companies R&D departments got
[63:16] fired. Everyone's crypto departments got
[63:18] fired. The partnerships never saw the
[63:21] market and I was trashed for it.
[63:24] Everyone's like, "You
[63:26] are a glorified marketer. You're a kid
[63:29] that's co-splaying in a hoodie. You're
[63:31] an [ __ ] You're Nepo baby." All the
[63:34] all the stuff I get today. Um, and what
[63:37] was really hard for me at the time is,
[63:39] and by the way, Strike was like barely a
[63:42] year old, tiny company, and I was a kid.
[63:45] And so we like, I don't even think at
[63:48] the time we had generated a penny of
[63:50] revenue. So, not only were we not
[63:52] profitable, we were hardly a business.
[63:54] And I had no idea at the time, you know,
[63:57] I had the El Salvador thing had
[63:59] happened. We had partnered with Twitter
[64:01] uh to integrate the Lightning Network
[64:03] when uh Jack, the other Jack was still
[64:05] uh the CEO and I had um been surrounded
[64:09] by a lot of people like Saquon Barkley
[64:11] became a buddy of mine and and he became
[64:13] a Bitcoiner, Diplo, the DJ, like so
[64:16] there were celebrities around me. I was
[64:18] surrounded by people that um I don't
[64:22] know in hindsight it was what it was. Uh
[64:25] you know when things were going well um
[64:28] you know Bitcoin was the hottest thing
[64:29] in town everyone wanted to be around
[64:31] Bitcoiners and I didn't understand I I
[64:35] thought I literally thought you know VC
[64:37] money was unlimited. You know back in
[64:39] the day people were saying just focus on
[64:41] growth. Who cares about profits? You
[64:43] could always just raise money. And that
[64:45] bare market punched me so hard in the
[64:49] face. And my first reaction is obviously
[64:51] these people are wrong. How can they
[64:54] call me these things online? I'm not a
[64:57] I'm not a this. I'm not a that. And then
[64:59] eventually the bare market forced me to
[65:02] look in the mirror. It was very
[65:05] devastating because again there's nobody
[65:07] there to save you. There's nobody there
[65:08] to bail you out. You have to face you.
[65:12] And that was very painful. Um, but
[65:17] I
[65:19] I wouldn't trade it for the world
[65:21] because I think to myself, I acquired
[65:24] the most valuable lessons arguably that
[65:27] I've ever acquired in my life. And
[65:31] I ask myself frequently, if I didn't
[65:34] acquire them then,
[65:37] how expensive
[65:39] would it be for me to acquire them in
[65:41] the future? I had to learn what it meant
[65:43] to really build a company. I had to
[65:46] learn what it meant to really surround
[65:48] myself with good relationships and good
[65:50] people. Who to really get advice from,
[65:52] who to really trust.
[65:54] Um, what parts of me were valuable that
[65:58] I appreciated as a man and what parts of
[66:01] me were childish and needed to mature.
[66:04] And so, I'm the man I am today and I've
[66:06] built the businesses I have today
[66:08] because of those experiences. But boy
[66:10] were they painful. And there was no
[66:12] central planner or intermediary or
[66:14] padding to save me from every ounce of
[66:17] emotion that I needed to feel. And so I
[66:20] read on the slide what the last bare
[66:22] market showed me was that I confused
[66:24] momentum for competence. I confused the
[66:26] fact that the bull run brought things
[66:28] like Al Salvador and Twitter integrating
[66:31] lightning as a continuous roll out of,
[66:35] you know, crazy ambitious partnerships
[66:37] and cool ideas. I confused attention for
[66:40] proof of work. Thought my job was to get
[66:43] up on the Bitcoin conference and be a
[66:45] visionary and be entertaining and not
[66:48] listen to customers. So I wrote here I
[66:49] was building for applause instead of
[66:51] customers. These are very painful things
[66:53] to realize and I was very embarrassed,
[66:56] very shamed. Um super difficult time for
[67:00] me. Um but like I said necessary and it
[67:03] makes me think like without Bitcoin I
[67:05] would have never learned these things
[67:06] about myself. What man would I be
[67:08] walking through the streets today if it
[67:10] wasn't for Bitcoin? And what type of
[67:13] father will I hopefully, you know, knock
[67:15] on wood, God willing, will I be to my
[67:17] child if it wasn't for Bitcoin?
[67:20] So, yeah, I just I don't know.
[67:23] Hopefully, this is resonating with you
[67:24] guys. Like, you really um appreciate
[67:27] bare markets for what they are. You
[67:29] you're getting a very raw and real
[67:31] relationship with the world that
[67:33] surrounds you and uh it's invaluable.
[67:37] I like I would be so lucky to learn the
[67:41] same level of things about myself this
[67:43] bare market as I did the last one. Now
[67:45] some parts of it are going to be really
[67:46] hard, really painful,
[67:48] but invaluable. There's no other way to
[67:51] acquire this level of knowledge in this
[67:53] type of experience because in my opinion
[67:56] the rest of at least you know where I
[67:57] grew up in America, it's just so
[67:59] centrally planned. So the bull market
[68:02] convinced me that I was right and
[68:03] convinced me that Bitcoin is what I
[68:05] thought it was. That it is hope, that it
[68:08] is fix the money, fix the world, that it
[68:11] is resilient, that it is open source,
[68:14] that it is peaceful. Right? The bull
[68:16] market to me convinces us that we're
[68:18] right. But the bare market forced me to
[68:20] become more useful. It's a challenge to
[68:23] every single bare market. It's a
[68:24] challenge to my character, a challenge
[68:26] to my beliefs, a challenge to my ego, a
[68:29] challenge to
[68:31] how useful I can be to the world around
[68:33] me, to those around me, to my customers.
[68:36] I mean, it really forces you to look in
[68:38] the mirror and challenge what you know
[68:41] about yourself. Where was your ego
[68:43] bigger than you thought? Where was your
[68:44] your risk or your leverage bigger than
[68:47] you thought? Uh, it it it really hardens
[68:50] you. And
[68:52] in my opinion, bare markets are how for
[68:55] this very reason Bitcoin metabolizes
[68:57] illusion. So any leverage, fraud,
[69:01] taurus, fake yield, fake confidence,
[69:04] fake conviction, um this is how Bitcoin
[69:06] burns it off. And again, this is, you
[69:09] know, if you contrast this to fiat, fiat
[69:12] doesn't have this kind of self-healing
[69:13] mechanism. And so fiat is riddled with
[69:17] fraudsters, leverage, tourists,
[69:20] politicians, fake everything. It's a
[69:23] total, utter, and complete scam that has
[69:25] probably introduced one of the more
[69:27] devastating chapters to humanity.
[69:30] And so if you want to strip out
[69:33] volatility in markets and you don't want
[69:36] to let the banks fail, you don't want to
[69:38] let the free market deliver the
[69:40] consequences necessary, then you're
[69:41] going to get volatility in obesity
[69:43] rates, metabolic health, divorce rate,
[69:45] child per woman, uh assassination
[69:48] attempts, crime, murder, school
[69:50] shootings. That's where you're going to
[69:52] get it. And for Bitcoin, I don't want
[69:55] you guys like I guess and and I
[69:58] hopefully my essay does a better job
[69:59] here um because I'm running out of time.
[70:01] But what I've learned is to really truly
[70:04] appreciate what Bitcoin is, which is it
[70:08] optimi it it's built to allow for the
[70:11] volatility and entropy that is real and
[70:14] honest. That's why I call it the only
[70:16] honest market left because it's it's
[70:18] even a step deeper than being a free
[70:20] market. Yeah, free market. You could
[70:21] say, okay, the US capital markets can,
[70:23] you know, get a little bit more free and
[70:25] then, you know, what are we comparing
[70:27] apples to apples here? No, but it's an
[70:29] honest market, meaning it gives you an
[70:31] unmediated relationship to the world.
[70:35] And it's really, really valuable because
[70:38] I don't know how else I would get that
[70:40] as a man or a woman, obviously, as a
[70:42] person. You guys know what I mean. So,
[70:43] fiat preserves illusion with more debt.
[70:46] Bitcoin clears illusion with truth.
[70:49] Stay humble and stack stats is not a
[70:51] meme. It's a survival ethic for reality.
[70:56] The stay humble part means do not
[70:58] confuse a bull market with genius. Kill
[71:00] your ego.
[71:02] Build humility.
[71:04] The stack ads part is keep doing work
[71:06] even when no one is clapping. Like right
[71:09] now, nobody's cheering on Bitcoiners.
[71:11] Everyone thinks we're stupid. the Peter
[71:14] shifts, the mainstream media,
[71:16] everyone's, you know, oh, look at
[71:17] Bitcoin's Kagger now. You're better off
[71:19] over the last five years, blah blah blah
[71:21] blah blah. So stay humble is don't
[71:24] confuse these bull runs where life gets
[71:26] bigger and better than you ever thought
[71:29] it could with genius or self-mplat.
[71:35] Like the the question at the end of the
[71:37] day is what's left. Like in my opinion,
[71:42] that's sort of the question.
[71:46] Hold on, let me pull up some of my
[71:47] notes. Yeah, I write in my essay here.
[71:51] What is left when the price is down?
[71:54] What is left when the tourists leave?
[71:56] What is left when the critics are loud?
[71:58] What is left when the applause
[72:00] disappears? What is left when your net
[72:02] worth is down, your reputation is
[72:04] questioned, your confidence is shaken,
[72:06] and your timeline is broken? What is
[72:08] left? That is the bare market. It's the
[72:11] mirror. And mirrors are not cruel.
[72:13] Mirrors are not bad. Mirrors are honest.
[72:16] And what hurts is seen clearly.
[72:19] So I I think Bitcoin is a moral
[72:22] environment. And I've talked about this
[72:23] in prior keynotes is moral code. It's
[72:26] not only monetary code. It's moral code.
[72:30] And it creates this environment where
[72:32] certain virtues matter like patience
[72:35] matters, humility matters, low leverage
[72:38] matters, truth matters, proof of work
[72:40] matters, long time preference, so
[72:43] lowering your time preference matters,
[72:45] resilience matters. The ability to
[72:47] endure uncertainty matters. The ability
[72:50] to keep building without applause
[72:51] matters. The ability to be wrong, learn,
[72:55] admit it, and then keep building
[72:57] matters. So it doesn't require you to be
[73:01] virtuous like there's nothing in the
[73:03] protocol that judges your character but
[73:05] over time somehow it punishes the
[73:08] absence of virtue. You know
[73:11] ego gets punished, leverage gets
[73:13] punished, fraud gets punished,
[73:16] entitlement gets humbled, impatience
[73:18] gets taxed, tourism gets flushed, fake
[73:21] conviction gets revealed. All right, I
[73:24] won't keep giving away my essay. I think
[73:25] it's going to be a banger. Um, and I
[73:29] also just I got to hurry up and end
[73:31] this, but I also don't think people want
[73:32] to be treated like a child. So I write
[73:34] here, people do not want comfort as much
[73:36] as they want dignity. Um, but dignity
[73:38] requires consequence. So people say,
[73:41] "Oh, I want to be a grown man. I want to
[73:43] face the reality of the universe." But
[73:44] then you get hit with these bare markets
[73:46] and it's hard.
[73:49] So I don't think people want a carefully
[73:53] crafted version of reality, nor do I
[73:56] think it's good for them.
[73:58] But dignity requires consequence. I It's
[74:02] the quote I say all the time. You know,
[74:04] I think
[74:07] society harmony in society will be
[74:09] restored when personal responsibility is
[74:12] valued again.
[74:14] Hold your own private keys. Put your
[74:15] coins in cold storage. Take care of your
[74:17] own health. Take care of your own
[74:19] family. Um so anyway, do not ask Bitcoin
[74:23] to be gentle. Ask it to be honest. and
[74:25] then become the kind of person who can
[74:27] handle the truth.
[74:29] And I know it's a little like emotional
[74:31] and over the top and philosophical, but
[74:34] you know, I think this essay will be
[74:36] fun. Hopefully, this is valuable for you
[74:38] guys. Listen, the DXY is over 100.
[74:41] That's why Bitcoin selling off. It told
[74:43] us this months ago. It's the last
[74:45] functioning smoke alarm. It's a truth
[74:47] machine, but there's really something
[74:49] here that it gives you a relationship
[74:53] with the world that isn't crafted,
[74:56] controlled, mediated, padded. Um, and in
[75:01] my experience as a Bitcoiner, it's
[75:02] really made me a much better man. Um I
[75:06] you know yes times were hard but in
[75:09] hindsight to have the business I have
[75:12] you know the customers I have you guys
[75:15] and think about the cost I paid to
[75:18] acquire the knowledge and the experience
[75:21] and the lessons that I have with me
[75:22] today. I paid dirt cheap for that. I
[75:25] still have my business. I still have my
[75:27] health. I still have my fiance and my
[75:29] family. I still have you guys. So you
[75:32] got to just hang in there. Um, and like
[75:34] don't be afraid to look in that mirror.
[75:37] You know, it's, you know, if if other
[75:39] people do wrong, call them out. You
[75:40] know, we're the Cyber Hornets. I never
[75:42] get mad for you guys calling me on my
[75:45] [ __ ] In fact, I'm I'm owning up to it
[75:47] right now, right? It's part of being a
[75:48] Bitcoiner, but also, you know, don't
[75:50] deflect. Um, part of Bitcoin
[75:54] is is in a weird way spiritual. Um, and
[75:58] I think it's a really unique experience
[75:59] which makes it a lot more emotional, you
[76:01] know, a lot more euphoric when times are
[76:04] good and a lot more painful when times
[76:06] are bad. Um, but I think it's what being
[76:10] free is truly about. You know what I
[76:12] mean? So anyway, I'll end it with uh
[76:16] some strike updates.
[76:19] Let's see here.
[76:22] Uh oh, wow.
[76:26] John Morant to uh
[76:29] the Portland Trailblazers. Would you
[76:31] look at that? Um okay, strike uh real
[76:35] quick. Um this is the what we shipped.
[76:38] Let me retweet this. This is what we
[76:39] shipped. Um so last week we lowered our
[76:41] trading tiers, which is huge. So the
[76:44] lowest fee we'll ever charge for you to
[76:45] buy Bitcoin is now 089%.
[76:48] I mean, if you're not sacking on strike
[76:50] at this point, I don't know why. Um,
[76:53] also our consumer loans in both
[76:55] Washington and South Carolina. Uh, so we
[76:58] launched in Washington. South Carolina
[77:00] minimums came down, New Jersey minimums
[77:02] came down. We continue to just It's just
[77:04] proof of work, guys. It's not the
[77:06] sexiest. It's not the flashiest, but
[77:08] license by license, feature by feature.
[77:11] We I mean, I just don't know a team of
[77:13] Bitcoiners that's making their services
[77:15] better every single week. No excuses,
[77:19] proof of work, block after block, just
[77:21] pounding pavement. So, I'm really proud
[77:23] of the team. And then, uh, some look
[77:27] aheads for this week. So, we got our MA
[77:29] license, which is very exciting. So, a
[77:32] lot of the Europe stuff I've been
[77:33] hinting at was pending our Mika license.
[77:36] So, we got MA. We should be turning on
[77:38] Italy, turning on Spain any second now.
[77:42] Uh, I think that formal announcement
[77:44] will go out tomorrow. So, that would be
[77:46] Tuesday. And then, uh, we have
[77:50] volatility proof loans. I think we'll
[77:52] let that go out on Thursday. So that is
[77:54] we call them a volatility proof. That's
[77:57] no liquidation. So you pay a little bit
[77:59] extra in how much the loan cost, but we
[78:03] use the extra uh fee. So I think it's
[78:05] like a couple percentage points and we
[78:07] use that to create the hedges necessary
[78:09] so that you cannot get margin called and
[78:11] liquidated. So obviously one of the
[78:13] biggest feedbacks we got is, hey, I love
[78:15] the idea of borrowing against my
[78:16] savings. I never want to sell my
[78:17] Bitcoin, but what if markets get
[78:19] volatile? What if there's a wick down?
[78:22] You know, I don't want to get
[78:23] liquidated. Strike's an awful company
[78:25] because they would in theory liquidate
[78:26] people's bitcoins. And so, we created a
[78:28] product to solve for that. And I think
[78:30] it's the best experience in the easy. I
[78:32] mean, this is crazy to me as a Bitcoiner
[78:34] that's been around for a while. I mean,
[78:36] Strike is unbelievable user experience,
[78:38] mobile app. You can download it and now
[78:40] just basically click a box and say,
[78:42] "Hey, I'll take one of these Bitcoin
[78:44] backed loans without the ability to
[78:46] liquidate." I mean, I'm super proud of
[78:48] the team and we've got some big heavy
[78:50] hitters after this. Uh, another really
[78:52] big one is the interest on cash. Um, we
[78:55] think we'll have the best rates in the,
[78:58] you know, Bitcoin banking market. Um,
[79:01] and they'll only go up from there. So,
[79:03] very exciting time to be a Strike
[79:05] customer. Very exciting time to work at
[79:06] Strike. I mean, just we're still having
[79:08] a ball in the bare market. So, as these
[79:11] things roll out, keep us honest, give us
[79:13] feedback, never be afraid to hit up
[79:14] customer support. We invest a lot in our
[79:17] ability to care for you guys. So you can
[79:20] DM me on Twitter, DM Strike on Twitter,
[79:22] reach out to support strike.mme, but
[79:24] we've got tons of announcements and some
[79:25] really big heavy-hitting features
[79:27] landing. We're super happy to be
[79:29] officially officially officially in
[79:30] Europe via Mika, which will give us a
[79:33] lot of ability to deliver more features
[79:36] to that region of the world. And with
[79:39] that, I'm out. So no Q&A this week,
[79:41] which means ask your questions in the
[79:42] comments. Uh Dylan will maybe uh preede
[79:45] the dock I usually get um because I know
[79:47] we missed a week. Um and yeah, maybe
[79:50] I'll upload some pictures of some of
[79:52] these venues I'm checking out to uh
[79:54] Noster. But much love. I appreciate you
[79:57] guys. Um look out for that essay
[80:00] hopefully later this week. Um which I
[80:02] hope will be valuable as everyone tries
[80:04] to navigate another bare market. Hang in
[80:07] there. Uh you'll be okay. You'll be
[80:10] okay. Uh, no dignity without
[80:13] consequence. But, um, we're all tough
[80:15] here. We're all tough. And, uh, oh, and
[80:18] my Bitcoin Prague keynote is now on
[80:20] YouTube. You can probably just search
[80:21] Bitcoin Prague and find their channel
[80:23] and find it. But, um, it is my thesis on
[80:26] how AI and Bitcoin will usher in a new
[80:28] human renaissance. I talked about that a
[80:30] lot on the show and I know that's not on
[80:32] YouTube, just in case anyone's
[80:33] interested. Um, and I think that's it. I
[80:37] got a bunch of questions on strategy. I
[80:39] know they announced some new stuff
[80:41] today. I'm going to spare your guys'
[80:43] ears. I'll give it one more week if you
[80:44] really want me to go again. I'm never
[80:46] afraid. I'm happy to give my thoughts,
[80:48] but we'll let the market digest things.
[80:51] Um I'm not going to go on a strategy
[80:54] sailor rant this week. Um I already told
[80:57] you guys I got my answers. I'm not
[80:58] really interested. Um unless you guys
[81:02] are obviously man of the people, but um
[81:04] I'm not answering my own questions at
[81:06] this point. I have I have my definitive
[81:09] thoughts. Cool. Okay. Love you all. Done
[81:13] rambling. Talk to you later. Peace and
[81:15] love.