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Chat_169 - Bitcoin Proving its Case with Walker America
01:06:23
"Bitcoin is being embraced by the U.S. and the U.S. financial system and it is it being embraced by Iran and the Iranian regime at the exact same time and both of them know that they can use it without the other one threatening it. And that puts it in an insanely unique place in a world where there are no monies that work like that anymore." ~ Guy Swann We live in a world where global money printers are silently bleeding your savings out the back door. But the real threat isn't only the U.S. dollar. China's money supply is huge right now, and nobody asked your permission before letting international policy dilute the value of your hard work. We are watching an incredible shift happen in real-time. Powerhouse nations and heavily sanctioned regimes are suddenly eyeing the exact same monetary network, proving that true, neutral money works whether you are allies or sworn enemies. I recently sat down with Walker America to pull the curtain back on this whole financial illusion. We talk...
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- [00:00]
A
Bitcoin is being embraced by the US and the US financial system and it is being embraced by Iran and the Iranian regime at the exact same time. And both of them know that they can use it without the other one threatening it. And that puts it in an insanely unique place in a world where there are no monies that work like that anymore. What is up guys? Welcome back to Bitcoin Audible. I am Guy Swan, the guy who's read more about bitcoin than anybody else. You know, I got to go on Roxam TV and Walker's show and hang out with them for a good little while and we talked about really a little bit of everything about the perspective of the big picture where bitcoin sits, especially in the context of a bear market. But what I think is a really interesting place politically as it's segmented or it's wedged itself in as this radically neutral element of some of the major conflicts around the world. Like it's playing a role, which is a really exciting and crazy place for it to be, especially when it is quote unquote in a short term bear market. So we really kind of get in that, we get into some of the macro and we really kind of step back and take a really big picture look of what the promise of bitcoin was and kind of how surreal it is to see it today in comparison to, you know, when I started way back in 2011. And then Walker, you know, he's been around for a long time now too and kind of what, what does it look like to look back and what was it like to look forward then what we hoped or thought bitcoin might be. This was an awesome conversation and I feel like we got into some really, really cool stuff and looking at the long term picture of where this is headed and what I personally believe is the signal to pick out of the events and ongoing conflicts today that will tell us, that can tell us something about the future. So really quick, I want you guys to remember that not only is bitbox supporting my work, but I love their products. Some. I also love some of my, some of the videos I've done. Some of my favorite ones are the bitbox videos, but they have a fantastic wallet. Actually, I have my. I haven't even got out my Nova yet. I just finally got it in. So this is the new, this is the new Bitbox 02 Nova. So this is the one I can plug into. I've been using the one that you can plug straight into your. Well, I mean this one does too. But the normal Bitbox 02 that I've used just directly into my MacBook for a long time, but this one is now compatible so that I can use it directly with my iPhone. And I've been bugging Hugo to get it integrated into Nunchuk. So this is my second. I'm putting this out there again. Hugo, come on, Nunchuck, do your thing. Give me my Nova support. I love you guys, but do it. But if you're looking for a simple and really just kind of beautiful hardware wallet that is totally open source and just they've just always been a great, a great source, you know, they for a solid hardware wallet that does its job. The Bitbox O2 Nova, I have a discount code and an affiliate link right down in the show notes. Check it out. Hold your own keys, don't be a wuss and be a real bitcoiner. And with that, let's get into today's episode. This is chat. I don't, I don't know what chat it is. Who cares? Sitting down with Walker America with the Bitcoin podcast and Wrexham tv. This is Bitcoin proves its case.
- [04:07]
B
Welcome back to Rocks and tv. My name is Walker America. I'm here with you every Tuesday from 1pm to 4pm Eastern Standard Time. The price of Bitcoin is 76,891 infinitely printable federal Reserve notes per bitcoin. And we've got a great show ahead of us today. For the first part of the show we are joined by the man, the myth, the legend, the voice of bitcoin himself, the one and only Guy Swan. The guy who has read more about bitcoin and read out loud more about bitcoin than anyone you know. Guy, welcome to the show. Good to have you, man. Good to see you. Yes, I, I, I always love picking your brain, Guy, because you truly have read and you know thereby. People have listened to you read more about bitcoin than anyone I know. It is truly mind boggling at this point. How many, how many reads? How many reads are you on now? What's the tally?
- [05:01]
A
I'm about to hit? I'm near 1400 episodes and we're getting close to the thousand on the number of reads and something in the 20 to 30 on books. Narrated.
- [05:15]
B
That is honestly just mind blowing and incredible. Having just done a couple of audiobooks, I know the, that is a job like, it's fun, it's cool. But man, it's a lot. It is a lot. So more power to you. I've Got a bunch of stuff that I want to cover with you here today. One of the main things is just sort of a general reflection on the state of, let's say the state of fiat, so to speak. And there's this one, I don't know if you saw this tweet, Croesus, Jesse Myers put out. I'll just read the text of it real quick just because it's kind of mind blowing. It's pretty quick here. In the last year the world has printed 9.3% more money. Global M2 money supply reached 141 trillion in 2026. When inflation starts to run hotter again, they will blame it on Iran and other approximate factors. But the root driver is the money printer. That money printer has been running hot for the last year. Where China increased their money supply by 13.6% in the last 12 months, their M2 is now 50 trillion, making it the largest global driver of fiat inflation. US growth in M2 is just 4.6% over the last 12 months, making the US comparatively responsible. But make no mistake, this means your dollars have been debased by almost 1/20 their value in just a year. Since we live in a global economy, we're subject to aggregate impact of global money printing. The US has been accustomed to being the largest monetary base and therefore largely controlling global debasement. But China's money supply is now two times as large as the USA's. Your savings are being debased by Chinese monetary policy decisions and you have no control. Nobody asked your permission, nobody told you it was happening, but your savings just got diluted by 9.3% in one year. I mean this is, I always love. And he said he's also updating his 2025 global asset landscape as well. The very kind of famous chart now that you know the likes of Michael Saylor and a bunch of folks have used. But, but I mean this, I think this is such a good framing of this because sometimes in the US we do tend to think of our like we just think about the dollar sometimes. Right? But there's a whole lot like there's a lot of dollars sloshing around. There's a lot of other fiat sloshing around too and nobody, nobody is turning off the printer. I mean, how long does it take? Yeah, Jesse can post these great stuff and these great analysis. You can read a thousand different, you know, bitcoin and inflation related, you know, pieces out loud to people. We can go on podcasts ad nauseam. But what does it actually take to, for people to wake up and realize that they're being robbed every single year. What, like what does it take? How do we get to there?
- [07:53]
A
Time, Just time. You know, if you look at monetary history, which is something I. I mean anybody who's listening to the show knows I nerd out on quite a bit historically, like, like hard money standards. When you have, I guess, I guess you look previously to 200 years ago, 300 years ago, major monetary transitions usually took the better part of a century to really kind of cement themselves. Because you have multiple generations that start to react to or relate to their money differently and relate to an outside money differently. Like the, the entire period of the African slave trade or transatlantic slave trade and everything most people don't realize, but the real story of why that happened and why there was so much basically purchasing of slaves from the various kingdoms and countries and you know, tiny little conflicting civilizations inside of Africa or along the African coast was largely because the British had better technology. The British, the Americas, the Spanish, like all of the, the, the dominant powers at the time were more technologically advanced and they could actually create the money. The monies along the African coast which were largely the most prominent of which were the glass beads and they could be created. They essentially mass produced a completely non scarce money to the British and to the. The powers that be at the time for something that was incredibly scarce along the African coast. So essentially, you know, one society thought they had gold and they were, they were trading under the apparent scarcity of what of gold. And the other side, you know, had a, had a. What's a Midas touch, right? They could just touch and turn anything into gold and it costs them nothing. And this led to basically a gutting of their civilization. And it took. It literally takes centuries to recover from that. When you, when you have that happen systematically. And it's the craziest thing is it's done without anybody's knowledge. You know, it's not like. It's not like everybody, like there's this big master plan by one set of countries to. To take over this other set of countries. It just naturally occurs when you aren't aware of the monetary dynamics. One's going to be taken advantage of and the other is going to be. Is going to take advantage of. And it's, it's extremely simple economic incentives and everybody can complete be completely ignorant of how it actually happens or the principles of why still happens exactly the same way. In fact you can. Another interesting aspect about like where China and the US and like the powers that be Are is that largely during the 1800s? I think China, Chinese culture, it's actually referred to as the, it's like the, the age of embarrassment or something. I can't remember exactly what they refer to it as, but the Chinese civilization bet on silver being the dominant monetary standard, while the Western civilization betted on gold. That's why we live in a Western civilization today is because they diverged and, and China basically essentially got devalued at, you know, orders of magnitude. You know, the, the ratio used to be extremely close and then it diverged just massively towards the mid to late 1800s and China declined like huge in power and economic relevance. And they've basically been digging their way out intentionally. They've been thinking about it like they, they kind of know the position that they found themselves in while we've been digging ourselves into a hole. But in some sense, everyone's taken on the. We've become the fiat everything world largely because of our technology and because of how trade has moved into a sphere that has never had scarcity, where sound money could not be extended into without trust, which immediately reintroduces fiat, you know. You know, fiat is, oh, just trust me, bro. And gold inside of a digital environment is just, I have the gold, trust me, bro. You know, it's just one extra step, you know. And so looking at the timelines, I think the British pound went from, I want to say the shift to like 60 to 70% of the world use the British pound to 60 to 70% of the world is using the US dollar or treasuries. US treasuries was, I think about 30 to 40 years. It was really kind of like started. You started to see them trend toward each other after World War I. And then it wasn't really until the late 50s, early 60s that it really was just, you know, it's the dollar and the British pound is yesterday's money. So. And I think you, we should expect it to be quicker today purely because the Internet exists. You know, like just thinking about what you're talking about, the, the shifting of a massive base network of the world. But we have so many new networks, like, you know, network effects stack on top of network effects. So. But it is also insanely novel. And the thing that money sells, so to speak, or has to build up is trust. Trust in the money, aside from the, the institution or the entity that you are trying to do business with or that is on the other side of the, the exchange. And what's funny is one thing that's happened Very recently. That I think is, you know, I think probably some people think that like this is really bad for Bitcoin's position or like it's cultural. There's, you know, bitcoin needs to be politically nice or whatever, you know, like this is bad branding. But that I actually think is a profound testament to Bitcoin's security and independence. And what, you know, what bitcoiners would probably refer to as extreme neutrality, radical neutrality, is the fact that Iran is accepting it for payment at the straight of hormones and now is selling like an insurance thing which, you know, God knows whether it's a scam or whatever, doesn't, doesn't really matter. But the, the element is that bitcoin, the thing to take away is that bitcoin is being embraced by the US and the US financial system and it is being embraced by Iran and the Iranian regime at the exact same time. And both of them know that they can use it without the other one threatening it. And that puts it in an insanely unique place in a world where there are no monies that work like that anymore, anywhere. And that is, that is the base case. That's the reason money existed, is what can I use without having to trust the person that I'm trading with to hold value? And so looking at that, I personally put bitcoin realistically on more of a 30 year timeline. least one entire generation needs to grow up and become the dominant capital allocators and producers in the world. Knowing that Bitcoin has always existed and seeing that on any long timeline, everything just got more expensive over here and everything just got cheaper over here. Whether it was fast at some point or it reversed for a year or two or you know, whatever, doesn't really matter. They'll just know that, you know, their granddad, their, their great granddad used to talk about how, oh, I used to be able to buy stuff for a nickel that now costs $10. And then their dad's telling them about how, oh, I used to buy stuff for a hundred thousand sats and now it's only a thousand sats. And those stories will be cemented into the psychology of the society. And then bitcoin will just be obvious. It won't even be, it won't even get credit for fixing the world. It will just become so clear that like, I think, I think history will probably just point to all the events, right? It's like this president and this, this country did this and then these people bombed this and then these people made peace and it Won't. It won't recognize that it was because, you know, they had to make peace because this person couldn't. This country couldn't inflate this country anymore, that they were at an impasse and nobody could afford more bombs. You know, that it won't. Bitcoin won't get credit for it. It will just become in the background, this thing that became. And the rest of the story of the world. My reasoning for believing this is that all of monetary history actually explains all the wars. It explains all the conflicts. It explains why one country won and beat another country. But what do you hear about the kings, the great battles, the, you know, the, you know, which princess, you know, stole away in the night to a different kingdom. You know, it's. It's. You tell the drama, right? You tell this dramatic thing. It's like. But, you know, the real movers were gold. The real movers were this currency couldn't sustain its level of inflation or its. Its level of fraud from its kingdom as well as the competing kingdom could. And the real stories are gunpowder. The real stories are technological as to what shaped the world, while the political and dramatic stories that we tell about the people and the events, they're. They're brilliant. They're. They're. They're fun, you know, because they're human stories. But largely, they are the consequential outcomes of built pressures from technological and monetary shifts. And they're just a fun way to relive what happened, because it's hard to say, oh, well, money changed, and so all of the world shifted. The. The game of society shifted, you know.
- [18:25]
B
Well, I think that's. It's such a great point, and perhaps one of the most fascinating things about Bitcoin and why it is such a. You know, it was made for this moment is because it is both a monetary and a technological shift within one thing. Right? It has this, you know, this duality where it's not just, you know, hey, we got gunpowder over here, we got gold over here. You know, we've got the printing press over here, and we got, you know, gold again over here. It's like, no, no, we have. We have it all in one entity. And that's. I think, this. The. The Hormuz story, whether or not. Again, because I'm a little bit skeptical on this too. Like, let. Let's. Let's see, you know, like, show, you know, show me the transaction id, right? You know, it's.
- [19:06]
A
Verify something.
- [19:07]
B
Yeah, I want to see something.
- [19:09]
A
Give me that timestamp. I want to see it.
- [19:11]
B
Yeah. But either way, like the narrative is, is out there. And I think you brought up a really great point, which is the juxtaposition of Iran doing this. At the same time, the US over here is, you know, you've got admirals that are saying, look, we're running a node. We're looking at the strategic importance of this. You know, da, da, da. You've got the Secretary of War speaking favorably about it. You've got like the administration overall speaking very favorably about Bitcoin from multiple angles. And, you know, really a lot of Jason Lowry's software thesis sort of like popping up in different places. And you're like, huh, that's, that's interesting. Wow, that's permeated quite a bit. Apparently a few people got their hands on that. And so. But again, this is just such a great example of bitcoin being money for enemies.
- [19:56]
A
Right.
- [19:57]
B
The whole power of bitcoin being that it cannot discriminate, it cannot discern who you are. It doesn't care. It has no, no means or need by which to care. Bitcoin just is. And through that, it's able to provide the same value to, you know, friends as to enemies. Like, it doesn't matter if you don't like this person, they can still use bitcoin. Like it doesn't matter if you're North Korea or Iran or China or the US or anyone. You can, or you or me or a corporation. You can use Bitcoin just the same. And there's that monetary side of it, which is the protection from the uncertainty of fiat mismanagement, or should I say the certainty of fiat mismanagement. Because we know they can. We know they got to keep debasing, right? We know they got to keep printing. We know they got to keep lying about how much, how bad it really is. But then there's also the technological side of you cannot stop this thing, you cannot stop somebody from sending a bitcoin transaction. Those, that, that duality there, that is so powerful. And it really is just kind of like it's wild to watch this play out. It's wild guy to watch. And you've been in bitcoin longer than I have, so you've got even a better kind of long term view on this. But I mean, is it a little bit surreal to you having been in bitcoin, been actively in bitcoin? I mean, you've been educating in bitcoin for so long, you now see these sorts of things happening in the real world that bitcoiners were just sort of hypothesizing about, like, well, yeah, they could just, you know, if they're sanctioned, they can just use bitcoin and, you know, hey, boy, the US Government will probably start looking at this for X, Y and Z. Is that surreal to you or it kind of just like, yeah, about time.
- [21:26]
A
Most of the time. No, because you don't. I don't really think about it until I have to stop and think about it. And then kind of like looking back on the perspective that I had, like, I remember. I remember, like, this really epic moment on what the show, the Good Wife about the lawyer. And not. Was it Jake Gyllenhaal?
- [21:55]
B
Oh, no, it's the guy from American Pie. I'm forgetting his last name.
- [22:00]
A
His name. Freaking.
- [22:03]
B
But yeah, the guy.
- [22:04]
A
Somebody's perplexing it right now. So. But he was. He was on the show. And I remember, like, it was a such a huge moment because bitcoin felt like this. This little place on the Internet that didn't exist in the real world, you know, in. In the kind of establishment spaces. And this was the first traditional thing. This is the first like, oh, on TV moment. And I remember being like, all the conversations, because I read. I guess that was like 2013 or something. And I'd been in for two years at that point. And so, so many conversations about, like, this is going to be real one day. You know, this, like, people are going to be aware of this and it's going to, like, enter the psyche. And this will. This will be pivotal in a presidential election at some point, which we were there. We. We did that one. And this will be. This will be a hot button issue. This will be contentious. There will be fights against it. You know, what was the choke point? 2.0. You know, there's so many different things that were just discussed about, like, what happens as this gets bigger. And then one of the things that I remember having an explicit conversation about was there will be two major powers that likely will be on two ends of bitcoin adoption. And one of them will utilize it to get around the influence or the. The power, the controls of the. The larger country. And as maybe as small or as like, tiny of an edge case as it is. This is exactly what Iran is doing. And it's only like kind of in stopping to reflect that, like, holy God, all this stuff happened, you know, and it's only going to continue to happen bigger to the point that it's not news anymore, that it's happening. It's just the way it will continue to unfold, especially as one entity or one group is able to do it successfully. And I think a perfect example is. Oh, kind of mentioning Back to the Good Life. I just remember this, like, moment of, like, surreal is probably the most surreal that ever felt was to just sit there and, like, watch that and be, like, an actor that I know and a show that, like, my parents saw. Oh, it was just on, like, mainstream tv. And then to. And it wasn't even just that, like, that was surreal to hear about it on normal tv. It was just this moment of, like, this is going to be real one day. You know, like all this stuff that. It felt like bs. Like a little piece of it felt like, yeah, bitcoin is going to be this huge thing that's so important, you know, like, there's. There's part of you that, like, it has to be like. And you play your Austrian economic theories back in your head and you're like, no, this has got to work. But then there's another part that's like, I'm. I'm this. I'm this weird nerd on this corner of the Internet talking to a bunch of lunatics who think that, you know, we're. We're going to make a money that. No. That the United States government can't do anything about. And there's quite a bit of pie in the sky. Like, you guys are just going on and there's this little voice in the back of your head. It's like, you have no. You, you know, you have no idea what you're talking about. You know, that's never really going to happen. But I think that episode just made me realize that what we were talking about wasn't just theory. You know, like, there was a very serious chance that it was going to happen one day. And then. Then there are those moments. And. But most of the time, 90% of the time, 99% of the time, it's just like, okay, well, yeah, this is the next thing that happened. This is the next thing, you know, creeps up on you, right? You're boiling frog. But then you stop to think. It's like, man, this water used to be cold. You know, like, there used to be nothing in this water. And. And it is. It is a bit. It's a bit crazy to think about that. It feels inevitable. In hindsight, it's like, well, yeah, duh. Especially when you think about, I got. My brother's wife is Iranian, and we've had so many problems, like, we can't Even get. They shut down the phones. We can't even talk to her family. And I've talked to and worked with people in Iran or whatever. Just because we get. Hanging out with people in their family or whatever, trying to stay in touch through friends of friends who know how to get VPNs and that sort of stuff. But I'll tell you just in. I've chatted with them about how they see bitcoin and how they think about things and try to get, try to get a package into Iran can do it. Try to get dollars into Iran. Not a, not a chance in hell get bitcoin into Iran. You don't do anything different. You don't do. You don't do any. It's not even a thing that you have to do. Like, it just works and there's nothing a rain can do about it. Which is probably why they're being very serious about it. From the straight hormoose position is, well, if we can't do anything about it, U. S government can do anything about it, you know, what do you do? What do you do? Like, for crying out loud though, one of the guys that I know that I talked about uses freaking cake wallet. Same what I, I use cake wallet. He's just like, yeah. And he's like, if we have the Internet, I just go look at my address, you know, I just go look at my balance. And. And he told, I asked. I was like, you know, what's the, what's the general thinking over there? And like, he's in a Persian community or whatever. And he's like, well, in regards to bitcoin specifically, he says, well, you know, it's not even that. It's not like bitcoin holds some like super special place or anything, or they're super like, oh yeah, bitcoin and crypto is so important or anything. It's more just that like our currency is so horrible. It's like such garbage. They lost like 90% over a period of 12 months or something. I mean, just, just terrible that they will do anything they can to operate in a different currency. And there are basically just a few standards that have developed where they can get dollars. They work in dollars. Dollars are still the king. But says and nobody. There are very few, like, oh, bitcoin is the one and the only one. But it is widely recognized as a reliable option. As a reliable option, is that like, oh, no, yeah, we can use bitcoin just as easily as we can do this other thing. If you're a little bit Tech savvy. If you ask someone who hasn't even accepted bitcoin before, they're probably going to be like, oh, yeah, sure. They just. The idea of something that they kind of know they can actually use, it becomes a real option for them and it's just kind of seen as. Well, at least it's just going to work. And I really think that's the path to a bitcoin standard. It's not. We've got super devotees and we've explained Austrian economics to people and someone has to be convinced that sound money is better than fiat money now. It's just going to be the thing that kept working when everything else stopped.
- [29:48]
B
I think that that's, I agree with that position because again, you look at the state of, let's say, adoption in the Western world right now and the, the vast, vast, overwhelming majority of it is from a store of value perspective, which is, which is fine and great and like, that's part of that journey, right? For bitcoin, you look at other parts of the world and yeah, maybe a store of value as well. They may actually look to the, you know, they may actually look to dollars or tether or something as a store of value also because again, compared to their currency, it's, you know, it's the gold standard, you know, no pun intended. But they also actively use it as a medium of exchange because they need to use it because they, they don't have bank accounts or they have, you know, very, very tight capital controls. They can't move money in and out, as you mentioned. Like, you know, Iran as a great example of that, like, can't move, can't move dollars in or out. Like, can't move a package in or out. Can move bitcoin just the same as you do it anywhere else, right? Just send it to an address. And I think that, that, you know, necessity driving adoption is really just, I mean, that's, that's like the most powerful thing bitcoin has going for, right? And it's. Necessity is driving adoption different ways. One could argue the necessity of trying to escape the debasement of your currency in, even in Western nations drives bitcoin adoption from the store value perspective. The necessity of being able to send money and actually use money without insane capital controls and use money that's not being devalued overnight or over the space of a year by 99%. That's also necessity. It's a spectrum of necessity. But ultimately it's like that's kind of where you get bitcoin at the price you deserve, because you tend to only get bitcoin once you really have a need for it. Some people were far out ahead of this. People like yourself, far out ahead of it. But that. That group of people that were way out ahead of this thing is vanishingly small compared to the total number of people who have adopted bitcoin since then. And who will adopt bitcoin. Like, you know, those were the. The true, you know, pioneers.
- [31:45]
A
Right.
- [31:46]
B
Using it before anybody else even heard of it. Now, most people. I mean, maybe not most people. A lot of people have heard of it.
- [31:52]
A
Right.
- [31:52]
B
It's. The Overton window has shifted drastically to where it's no longer.
- [31:57]
A
I actually think there was a study that it is. Absolutely. Most people like it is. Yeah. Bitcoin is a household name whether or not anybody has touched it or knows anything about it. But it firmly exists in the mind space, in the mind virus of the world. Right. Bitcoin is there. And we're firmly in the era of people are going to touch it again or hear about it again in two to three years, and they're going to go, that thing's still here, you know, and it's just going to keep. It's going to keep doing that until. Until just like the Internet, like, you just get to a point where a whole generation grows up or like, nobody thinks the Internet's not going to be here in 10 years. Who. Who could possibly say that, you know? Right. Like, no, of course. The Internet is how all communication, everything. The Internet's going to be bigger in 10 years. Way bigger and way more integrated into everything that we do. But anyway, yeah, by the way, our
- [32:58]
B
producer did let me know it was Jason Biggs. Jason Biggs. And the episode actually came out in 2012 called. And it was called Bitcoin for Dummies. Isn't that really. I mean, the fact that they were.
- [33:13]
A
I would have told you it was the end of 2013. Wow.
- [33:16]
B
Okay.
- [33:17]
A
I was off on the timeline.
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B
I mean, it's shocking.
- [33:20]
A
Expected that.
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B
It's shocking, though, that that was that early. And I remember, you know, we've all seen that clip where Jason Biggs is like, you know, it's the future. And it's like, what an incredibly prophetic, you know, for. For kind of mainstream television. Like, they were really.
- [33:35]
A
I loved the line. I loved the line. It was really. It was really good when. When she was like, you know, I. I bought my bitcoin. I bought my first bitcoin for the first time, and I went into my wallet or whatever. And it didn't feel real. And he said, huh, real's gonna change. Like, that was, that was the line or whatever. And I was like, oh, oh, that's a good line.
- [33:57]
B
Yeah.
- [33:58]
A
Wait. Good delivery, Bigs. You got it, you got it. Get on that elevator and get out of there. Let's let that moment, let that moment ride. And that was, that was, that's an epic, epic line when bitcoins never existed in that whole sphere before. You know, like, think about that in 2012. Think about that in 2012. What that felt like. That was, that was a moment. That was a real moment.
- [34:23]
B
It is pretty nuts. And just speaking of things that are real or aren't real, one of the other things I wanted to talk to you about was sort of the lack of reality in the fiat system. I don't know if you saw this, but incoming Fed chair Kevin Warsh, he's basically said he wants to change the primary inflation gauge to move from core PCE, which is currently sitting at 3.2%, which excludes food and energy. You know, LOL, that's okay, just get rid of the food and energy. But he wants to change it to trimmed mean PCE, which is sitting at 2.36, a lot closer to the arbitrary 2% inflation target. And that measure excludes any extreme monthly price swings. So, you know, just. But hey, it gets you closer to the, that 2%. And I think it's worth talking about this a little bit because we exist in this system where again, fiat is like, fiat is our water, right? And we're the fish. Like we, it is just, you know, we don't, we don't know what the water is, but we're just, it's just, it's always there. But, but all of the framing from. And this is not specific to Wash, right? This is. And I think that Wash is really just trying to set himself up to be able to cut rates and do some balance sheet expansion, like by saying, hey, look, see? And under our new guise of our new gauge, inflation's right where it should be. So we're good, don't worry about it. But when they speak in these passive tones and people always the cost of living, it's so passive to talk about that way, as though it happens by magic. They set this 2% inflation target, but then they change the gauge by which they measure price inflation or they change the basket of goods that is considered for it. Well, we're not counting steak anymore because people aren't buying steak. So we'll use Ground beef. Well, why aren't they buying steak? Is it because it got too expensive? And then this idea that the 2% inflation has absolutely no basis in any sort of economic reality. It was for those that don't know. It was basically said in an offhand comment by the Minister of finance in New Zealand back in the 90s when they were undergoing 10% inflation. And somebody asked him, well, what should the target be? He's like, I don't know, 1 or 2%. 2%. 2% sounds good. And then basically the gospel of 2% was. And then every other central bank ran with it. It wasn't actually until I looked this up today, just to confirm. It wasn't until 2012 that the US officially adopted 2% inflation as their long term inflation target. That was under Bernanke. But Guy, it's this idea that we know they're lying. They know they're lying, we know that they're lying. We all know that everybody's lying, that this is all made up. But apparently not. Apparently not enough people do know this. And apparently enough people still fall for the. Well, it's the greedy corporations or, you know, or inflation's Trump's fault or inflation's Biden's fault or inflate, you know, just name, you know, whatever opposing party is, throw it in there. And it's just again, it's one of those things that this gets back to what we were talking about originally where it's like, what does it take for people to wake up? Well, probably just time, but my God, it's just really seems like they're trying to set up right now like changing the inflation numbers, trying to. Or changing the gauge, trying to get closer to 2%. Like look, we're good. I mean. Or I guess a better question is do you subscribe more to the Larry Lepard big print thesis or more of the Lyn Alden gradual print thesis? Where are you at with this? And I mean, do you think that this is really wash Just trying to, you know, basically do what Trump put him in there for, which is, hey, let's, let's juice the wheel, you know, grease the wheels a little bit. Let's juice the system. Let's get things pumping before midterms. Because it's all about the midterms. Like what's your read on all this?
- [37:55]
A
I would say it's the incentives and the economic reality are aligned such that there is no way for it to not keep going. Like that is keep. How do we fudge the numbers better? Like you know, I talked about, I talked about this on the show quite a bit and I had a video about the, the debt. There is one extremely reliable metric. It doesn't matter who's in office, it doesn't matter what time period you're looking at. It doesn't matter what war we went to or didn't or got out of. Every 10 years the US debt doubles. It just doubles. So and because of that, you know, eight or so years ago I was like, well in 2025 they'll probably about $35 trillion, $36 trillion. And that was when, you know, in 2015 it was 17, it was 16, 17 trillion. And then in 2005 it was like eight and in 1995 it was like three and a half like this. It's like clockwork all the way back to the 60s. The only exception to it was between 70s and 80s and during that period it tripled. So it never broke trend to the downside, it only broke it to the upside. And that means that in 2035, whether Trump was elected again, it doesn't matter. It's just pure. What can the system actually sustain without collapsing? Because that's the thing is that if you stop it, it does collapse. That we have, we have multiple industries that cannot survive the way they are built. Like I'm talking about retooling, re behavioring, restandardizing everything like the momentum, the inertia, the sheer vast inertia of the way we have built things over a period of 50 years tied into how our monetary system works means that you think AI is disruptive, you think AI is going to lose jobs. Sound money is going to be way worse. Sound money is going to be way worse because we, we live and die by the fact that we have, we have defrauded the system through easy money. And all of our industries live, their percents, their, their, their literal profitability is based on the lie about the money and where they are in this, in the, in the hierarchy of receiving it. And if they, and if their place is lost, if there is no, no more hierarchy, a gap for those who get money quickly and those who get it slowly. If that price difference, it's all arbitrage. Our financial system arbitrages our, our medical industry arbitrages our, the, the banking architecture arbitrages. All large corporations, the stock market, the S and P, all of our indexes, they arbitrage everything. Arbitrages. There's a reason why every major company that produces a thing, Apple, Google, Nvidia, Give it, give it some time. What, what do they all end up doing? They have a credit card, you have an Apple credit card, you have a Costco credit card, you have. Everybody is in the market for debt. Because what's the easiest thing to do when you get debt at impossibly low rates? Rent it back out at a higher rate. And this is, this is a, actually I recently talked about this on a guy's take episode of the show called Free Rent for the Rich. Like, what does it actually mean? Because I think a lot of people are so focused on like, oh, well, you print money, you get 2% inflation or whatever, you get malinvestment, right? Something that would otherwise lose 2% suddenly looks like a positive investment. It's like, true, true, you get mal investment, you get reckless behavior. But I think the, there's still even something missing from that framing and understanding exactly what's happening. And if you break it down to just like two people in an economy, like let's say you have somebody who has a house. Like let's say Nancy has a house and Bob has X amount of money and he wants to buy the house. But Nancy doesn't, doesn't want to write. She wants to get a stable return because otherwise she wants to live in that house. It's her house. She's, she's built in like she's earned the value of that house. She's not gonna give it up for nothing. And so, and this is, this is the whole economy, right? This, only the house, it's only Nancy, and it's only Bob. And so she needs Bob to be able to provide her with enough value to give up her house. And Bob offers 5%. I'll pay you 5% a year in the house's value in rent, thousand dollars a month, whatever it is. And she's like, no, no, that's not enough for me to take the time to build or get another house built or whatever it is. I want 12%. Well, that would in the exact same vein, be the price of debt, the interest rate on debt, because that's the only capital we have, is that if you want to loan, if you want to borrow out that much capital, we're talking about using up those resources, which means that without a 12% interest rate, you're not going to be able to buy anything in that economy. Actually, you're not going to loan it out at 12. Like that's her rent. She's going to loan it out at anything less than 12%. So that's the Interest rate. The person who owns the capital sets the interest rate. Now introduce a third party, a bank. What does the bank get to do? The bank is to print money out of thin air and they get to set the interest rates. Why? Because they don't have to. They don't have to borrow it from Nancy. They don't have to borrow the actual capital. Now if it was her savings, they would, they would have to owe the savings back and thus they would have to pay a fair interest rate in order to offer a slightly higher interest rate to Bob. And Bob would have to be good for it. But if they can print money out of thin air, Bob can just get whatever loan he needs at 1%. I mean, we zerp. We've been in the zero interest rate like psychosis or phenomenon, whatever you want to call the psychological and psychosis feels like the right word era for what, 10 years. And what do they do? They, they literally rented money to people for 0%. For two giant corporations for 0%, 1%, 2%. Like to the trillions, trillions of dollars, what does that amount to? What are they going to do? Are they gonna, are they gonna work really, really hard and do really, really difficult and really, really risky business practices to see if they can get 20% back? Hell no. They're gonna be like, what do we do to make 3%? Because that's 2% profit and 3%'s easy. Hell, inflation's 4%. 3% will get by default. We don't even have to do any work. What we can actually do is we can buy up all the real estate in society and just rent it back to the people we bought it from for a profit. We don't have to do. We have the easiest scam in history. Own everything at, at basically free rental. Because go back to the, the Nancy and Bob or the Alice and Bob, whatever the hell I use. Don't even either way. The example is that she wants 12%, right? Well, what if Bob now takes out the loan and he just jacks up the price? 12%. He just offers 12% more. Boom. She thinks she got a deal. She thinks she got the quote that she wanted and so she sells the house for 12% over the, over the original price. But now what's, what does she have to buy? What does she have to get? Nothing. Bob just owns the house and is he going to take less than 12%? Did she actually get 12% more of a house by doing that? No, because Bob never built a house. You'd only ever actually genuinely be able to offer that price if you had made capital into existence. But he borrowed it, which means that he borrowed her capital, the capital that she created in the world, in order to buy her capital from her at a rate that she explicitly refused to offer it because he simply got a loan out of thin air at 1%, 2%. And now what's going to happen? She's going to rent back from Bob. She's going to have to rent a home. She's going to have to rent a room out of her own damn house for now, what, 9, 9%, 8%. And the government of this little world is going to be like, look her. Her cost of living dropped. You know, it used to require 12% to rent. Now it's only 9%. She's renting the capital that she already created, and she's paying it explicitly to Bob. Bob is now earning the income that she was owed on what she made in the world. This is exactly how all of the giant corporations own every damn thing. And then the cost of living gets it. We used to calculate the cost of living with how much it costs to own a home. Now we calculate the cost of living with how much it costs to mortgage a home, which is just rent. It's just rent from the bank. Nobody would lend any real capital to anyone. At 0%, 1%, 2%. That doesn't exist anywhere in the world. Give somebody your $3,000 lawnmower for $5 a month, and to the point that you can't mow your lawn, that lawnmower loses fifteen hundred dollars worth of value by the end of the first six months, and you got, what, thirty bucks for it. That's not. That's not feasible. But if you can rent, if you can get a loan at 1% and go buy a lawnmower, you've done the exact same thing. You've stolen a lawnmower from somebody and offering them $5 a month. And then what do you do? You rent it back to a landscaping company that now doesn't want to have to pay the. It used to be $2,500 for a lawnmower. Now it's $3,000 for a lawnmower. So you have to rent the Damn thing from BlackRock because BlackRock just bought up all the fucking lawnmowers and rented it back to us for nothing. We rented it to them for free and they sold it back to us. Like, the whole thing is such a blatant. The reason BlackRock owns every piece of real estate in this country is just because of the financing scam and we all rent it from them. The houses that we built, we rent from a company that just gets free capital from a money printing machine. They own everything, we will own nothing and we will be happy. I'm not happy about it. I'm not happy. But they were wrong about that part. We do own nothing. But I'm pretty pissed about it. I really feel like. I really feel like they like the whole thing just needs to die, but it's not going to. They're just going to keep printing because they don't have a choice. The understand the entire business model like BlackRock has built an empire on a thing that is actually a net loss to the economy. It only looks like a gain on paper because they judge by the interest rate and the rent. If they actually had to pay the 12% to the original homeowner, none of it would ever have existed. And the second it goes up to a real price, to 12%, their whole business model is like, well, crap. What do we do now? We can't do anything. And even worse is that when it goes up to 12%, not only can they not rent, not only can they not continue to own everything and then rent it at an. At a price that they can actually make a profit at, because they could only make a profit because of fake interest rate. Not only does that go out the window, but the. But since nobody else can, the price of houses come down to an actually legitimate price and all of the capital they already have plummets in value like it's literally life or death. They either print or BlackRock, JP Morgan, all of the major financial institutions, all of the banks, all of our healthcare institutions, all of it goes out of business or they have to restructure in such a profoundly massive way that it will make the disruption from AI look like a cakewalk, because at least the disruption of AI is productive. This would be a total restructuring of an unprofitable system of economic behavior that has been so ingrained that people have lived their entire lives thinking it couldn't possibly be destructive. There's no way I was born and this was the way things worked. But it is destructive. Our one caveat, our one benefit was that we got to export the theft to everybody on planet Earth. So we only felt about 5% of the damage that we were doing. China took 5%, the Middle east took another 20%. Europe took 7%. Like we were exporting the cost of our living. But people stop buying our treasuries. People stop. People are slowly. They're they're closing in. They're putting up their walls. They're. They're being defensive because everybody's realizing that we're all paying for a giant debt, a giant bill that nobody can actually afford. And in 2035, it's going to be 70 to 80 trillion dollars. And in 2045, it's going to be 160 to 200 trillion dollars. And the price of a coffee is going to be 42. And then you're going to add $5 for oat milk. And it's don't drink, though. Don't get over. And the world is slowly waking up to that. And, and because of that, they're closing in. We're going to have way more conflicts because sustainable and fair trade is what avoids conflicts. And we're losing that because we don't have a sound money, we don't have a fair money to actually trade in. And so everybody becomes isolationist. Everybody becomes like, you know, how do we, how do we control those resources? Who's going to be the ones with the guns standing outside of tsmc? Where is Taiwan? You know, independent and friendly to the US Are they owned by China? Like, everybody's like, okay, who. They're taking tally. They're taking tally of, of what they can put guns around before the bill comes due. And they're going to print as long as they can to, to see how little they can pay of it and how much they can force somebody else to foot the bill. But, yeah, it's. It'll. It'll be a big, slow, painful, mushy mess.
- [53:18]
B
The interesting thing, too, and I want to be conscious of your time here, guy, maybe just one other thing is, you know, a lot of time. And I've been guilty of this too, right? You know, trashing the US Dollar, you know, like, oh, you know, the hyperinflation is coming, but of a pile of garbage. Well, yeah, it's the. I think what Greg, Greg Foss once said to me, it's the prettiest horse at the glue factory. I've taken that. It's the skinniest kid at fat camp.
- [53:41]
A
Right?
- [53:42]
B
Yeah. Take whatever analogy you want for this, but, yeah, the dollar is the worst.
- [53:48]
A
Except for all king shit.
- [53:50]
B
Yeah, exactly. And so sometimes when I hear people talk about, well, hyperinflation's coming for the dollar, it's like, okay, not disagreeing, but. Yeah. And.
- [54:00]
A
But where's the pressure coming from? Yeah.
- [54:02]
B
And if that's the case, that means probably almost every other fiat currency is already hyperinflated. Is that a fair statement? And maybe has already hyperinflated, failed, been replaced by something else failed again, like that's the thing. It's difficult to figure out the timescales. Right?
- [54:19]
A
I had that position as well. The dollar has to hyperinflate. But the more I learned and kind of thought about liquidity and networks and how hyperinflation is an emotional event. It's a, it's a psychological event. It's a total and complete loss of trust and backed up by such thin liquidity or such a. Such a divergence between the liquidity and the amount of the currency that when it breaks it just runs. It runs and there's no stopping it. And the idea is to. How can we drop this as fast as humanly possible so that I have toilet paper that is still worth something tomorrow morning. And so I, and, and the more I really thought about, the more I realized that the dollar can't hyperinflate until there is something bigger or until there is something with a large enough. It's like pressure in pipes, right? Or, or water in a series of buckets. You have to be able to transfer the water to somewhere else. You have to be able to release the pressure into another entity. Like this is exactly why you can, like you can't escape the banking system. This is why the banking system itself, almost like it's so easy to actually prevent it by printing a lot of money, prevent it from collapsing because there's no such. You can't bank run from the banking system. There's no way to pull like in 24 hours. How do you pull $3 trillion out of U S banks? Not possible. Literally there is not a door big enough to actually do that and soak up that amount of value. You move it within. You can collapse a big bank, but you only do it by transferring your balance to a different big bank. And so you're stuck in the system. And because of that, the dollar will have to specifically be outmanned by a different currency. It will have to devalue faster than the yuan for a period to the point that people are scared of the dollar's future. And then it can hyperinflate and very possibly faster than many currencies could because it's got such a big bill. And it's when it's when it's realized that it's no longer king shitcoin yet. You know, like the exit might be legendary, but that's not going to happen with the Chinese yuan because the Chinese yuan isn't nearly big enough. And they're doing the same thing, but worse than we are. Which makes me think that hyperinflation of any fiat literally only happens when or of the fiat system can only happen when Bitcoin's big enough to actually soak it up. When there is enough liquidity in the Bitcoin world to. To genuinely exit, to sell out of the currency, to sell out of the system entirely and hold a different standard, hold a different unit, a competing unit, one that will fluctuate based on the value of the dollar. And because of that, like, this is why the store value phase of Bitcoin will likely last a lot longer than people think, is because you need. You need $4 trillion worth of liquidity into and out of Bitcoin in a day to actually have something where the pressure can release fast enough that the bottom can actually open, that there's actually a potential there. But because of that, the entire structure of the system will. Will have to be tethered to Bitcoin. There will have to be something it will never actually let go until there are enough interested parties with enough lar. A large enough stake in Bitcoin that. That there are going to be people who are going to make incredible amounts of money off of that shift for them to let the doors open wide enough for that amount of pressure to. To be released in. In other words, there need to be enough stakeholders that. That a civil war doesn't happen. Like. Like right now. If somehow. If somehow we were in a position where like this could happen at this very moment, they would just kill all the bitcoiners. Like, they would just put us in prison, take everything that we have, and they'll be like, you caused all of this. And because there's too many people. There was too many people who would just be decimated, like, decimated. Everyone would lose their jobs, everyone. The. The banking system. Like, it would be a disaster. It would be the end of the American empire. We would go from the most important country in the world to just a. A pile of manure. Like, like. Like the poor and the middle class would just all become the super poor. Like, it would just be. It would just be utter chaos. And they would be desperate to. To cut somebody's throats and desperate figure out who did this. And it would be Bitcoiners. But the thing is, it can't happen because bitcoin's not big enough. So thank God. But I think, you know, as it grows, people will be saved by the slow trickle into. I should have A little bit of a hedge in bitcoin. I should have a little bit of exposure. The network, the tools. As long as. As long as the US Remains most free to be able to just create something and let people use it, we will innovate our ways into new tools and new experiences and hedges in retirements and all of that stuff. That there's exposure to bitcoin such that, you know, when the stock market index collapses enough, people's retirement actually just stays about even or ticks up a little bit because while one side plummeted, the other side went up. You know, their bitcoin exposure went up while their stock market exposure went down. And they'd be like, man, glad my hedge fund company switched to half stock market, half bitcoin. Because, like, whoa, look at the news over there. Those corporations are effed in the a. So. And I think that's when you actually have the capacity to do it. And the last people on the boat will be the ones, you know, sitting in the water begging for a life raft. And everybody will be like, man, we. We've been telling you about this boat for 20 years, man. You guys. You guys took your damn time. But, you know, here's a rope.
- [60:54]
B
Yeah, we all get it at the price we deserve, right? And luckily, there's plenty of room for everyone. It's just that, you know, the room happens to be completely finite and, you know, you're going to get a shrinking, shrinking piece of it the longer you wait. But, hey, there's. There's still room for you, right? There's. There's. There room for all types. But, Guy, I. I appreciate you coming on here today. This was great catching up with you, picking your brain, as always, for folks who somehow have not heard the voice of bitcoin before. Where can people find you? Where can they listen to the pod? Send them anywhere you want.
- [61:25]
A
Okay. Okay. Yeah. So check out Bitcoin audible. Check out. You can just find me Guy Swan SW A n N on pretty much any platform these days. I've got some fun stuff I'm gonna be doing with YouTube. I've never paid any attention. Attention to YouTube really, but I'm trying to be a little bit more like, okay, I need to really, like, think about my content and how I'm doing it, because I. I've been slowly working back towards video and film stuff. I went to film school, so check out all that stuff. And then also we have been working on a development project and another business for about two and a half, almost three years. And I Finally have the first pieces of this that I am. I'm sharing out and is public. You can check out Pair Drop. That's Pair like the, the, the, the fruit. Pear Drop. Pear Drop desktop specifically. We're still waiting on App Store stuff, but I am, we're. We're taking a heck of a bet and I think a very unique take on how to make peer to peer not suck and to, to how to deplatform in a way that actually provides a better and more fun experience rather than dealing with something that feels like you're having to give up. You know, something that used to be easy to make it complicated or have weird keys or whatever. And Pair Drop is kind of our first base case. It's like, look, you're going to be able to just share files with anybody very easily, very simply scan a QR and that's it. And so we're just kind of proving that case as we build out another. The rest of our, our software stack. But there's a lot coming there and that is@Pear Drive.com because that's, that's the direction that we're headed right now. So pear drive.com if you want to check that out and you can kind of see the tools that we're playing around with. But yeah, that's, that's all my stuff that I'm, I'm wrapped up in right now. Follow me on socials and I'll keep you updated. Got some fun stuff in the next. Probably within two weeks.
- [63:25]
B
Two weeks?
- [63:25]
A
Tm.
- [63:27]
B
Yeah, two weeks to slow the spread. No, I love it. I know you've been working on the, this kind of COVID stuff for, for a while. So really excited to dig into that. I was not aware that you guys had, had gone, gone live with that. So I was super excited to check it out.
- [63:41]
A
Drop. It's still, you could still call it Alpha Beta, you know, whatever. It's like super early, but at least the, like I've been using the desktop and the Android APK for long enough that it's just like, well, it just works like I want to change the interface, I want to clean some stuff up, but it works, it does the job. And so at the time Chain Summit a couple days ago in Colorado, I was like, you know what, let's just make it public, let's just share it out there because we've really hit a baseline where the tooling that we have I think is going to move way, way faster because we've kind of solved most of the primitives and now we're building on top of the tool. So we've been spending a long time building essentially a stack to make all of the things we want possible. And now all of the major pieces are there and now we're building on top of it and it just feels like it's moving a lot faster now. So it's like, okay, let's, let's share it out. Let's share our first app, then we'll share the engine here in the next week or two and then we're getting hard on like the real app, the base app experience that I think is going to be unique and that you've never really been able to do with files before. And then I get to show people what you can build with it and on top of it. So that's, that's where we are. It feels, it feels like time to start telling people about it. I love it.
- [64:53]
B
Pair drive.com go check it out. Go give Guy a follow. Subscribe to his podcast as well. He hitting over a thousand reads. Just wild. Guy, thank you for coming on here. Thank you for sharing your scarce time here on Roxam tv.
- [65:09]
A
That wraps us up. Do not forget to get your Bitbox 02 Nova. And don't forget your discount and my affiliate code. It helps me out. It's a free way to help me out. Which is, which is good for you too. Hold your keys, Support Bitcoin Audible Save sats Sleep like a baby. It's a win, win, win, win. It's like a unicorn. Anyway. Do it. And don't forget to use my link and I will catch you guys on the next episode of Bitcoin Audible. I am Guy freakin Swan. That's my middle name. You didn't know it and I'll catch you on the next one. Till then, everybody, that is my two sats. Sam.