B (32:29)
Now, last time you asked me this question, I Think Bitcoin. People should always expect bitcoin will be highly volatile. So one is someone first is. No one should invest in money they can't afford to lose. Somebody else has to determine their own preferences for risk and own talents for risk. So if they feel compelled to look at the price every day and then when they see a 10%, 20% move, you know, if that's going to give them a heart attack, you know, then, then they, then they shouldn't own it. But as long as they feel that they have the stomach for some level of risk, can absorb some losses, and just can be patient and know that over time they will be more than fairly compensated for that risk. You know, everybody should own, you know, some bitcoin. You know, Bitcoin is the best hedge against the collapse of the fiat money regime. People should view the collapse of the fiat money regime as a likely outcome sometime in the future without me being able to predict exactly when, because the level of debt the world has produced and the ability to service that debt just doesn't exist. You know, the math doesn't intersect and something's going to happen and it's, you know, not going to be very good. And then the question is, so I don't view Bitcoin as an inflation hedge. So I think the argument that's an inflation head, I think is a, is a, is a, is a stupid argument. I think the argument is a hedge against, you know, global dysfunctional global financial environment, which is basically every government has signed on to basically the similar policies, you know, is borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow more and spend, borrow even more and spend and borrow even more, more, more in spend. So, I mean, even Trump, on the one hand, you notice there's no talk about cutting $2 trillion out of the budget this year. I mean, Musk mentioned it. You know, he and Vivek went around, we're going to cut $2 trillion. You know, Vivek doesn't exist anymore in dogi. And Musk is not talking about $2 trillion anymore. And Trump asked that during the duration of his presidency there be no debt ceiling. So, you know, desiring to eliminate the debt ceiling is not an indication that I'm going to cut government spending and I'm going to cut the deficit. It's in recognition that I'm likely to increase the debt and I don't want to have to have a leverage in me reducing spending by the fact that somebody could use the debt ceiling against me to cut spending and to Cut the deficit in a way, I don't want to cut it. So to me, that's signaling that the government is saying is we value the right to spend a lot more money very, very highly. So that's what the government does. That's what all the governments do. There's a limit to how much the US can tax people, tariff people, embrace surveillance and all the other tactics used to exercise dollar hegemony, you know, for the, you know, the British kingdom thought they would, you know, what was it? What they say? The sun never sets on the British kingdom. That's what they used to say, something like that, you know. And the British economy started collapsing around the time of World War I, but the pound sterling remained the standard until World War II. So we were in a pound sterling standard up until, you know, people think maybe the dollar standard was the global standard for a long period of time. No, this is a project. This is a product of Bretton Woods. You know, that's. That was post World War II. Prior to that, we won a sterling standard. And the UK economy was a basket case for 30, 35 years before the sterling collapsed as the global currency. And British never thought that. They always thought that forever they'd be on a. The pound sterling would be as good as gold. It was the reserve currency of the world. So people have a lot of hubris. And Americans think we'll always be the greatest and we'll always be the best. And, you know, the dollar will always be the standard. We can always apply, you know, dollar hegemony. And I'm sure the Ottomans thought the same thing and the Greeks thought the same thing and the Romans thought the same things. You know, all these great civilizations thought that they were going to be permanent, and none of them have been permanent. And, you know, it's the hubris that we get and the lack of appreciation for how we got there that ends up being the downfall of everyone. And ultimately it. It begins with the debasement of money. That's to be beginning of the end. So we're at the beginning of the end. I think the last token, the last money, the last coin standing, you know, will be Bitcoin, and it'll be worth significantly more and, and unwinding. This system will be more difficult now than it was in the past because it's so highly leveraged. It's so highly leveraged through intermediaries that are all guaranteed by the government. So, you know, if the system collapses, nobody's priced in the value of the government guarantees to the financial system. You know, so we have, we have the amount of debt that the government has been issued. We have the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, you know, and Medicare. But now you have to add to that. If we have a collapse of the fiat money system, what are the value, the guarantees that the government has to have regarding deposit insurance? So the question is, you know, one is what do I have to pay off if I only pay off insured depositors? And how many losses will there be in the system if I don't pay off uninsured depositors? So nobody's giving consideration to the fiscal financial course of the U.S. you know, of that outcome as well. So what will that drive people to do? You know, maybe, maybe people have limited access. Everything about the Depression, right? People have limited access to their money. So that could, that it happened once. People think this can't happen in this country when it has happened. The US has had times where banks had holidays where you couldn't get your demand deposit does not entitle you to demand whenever you want it. It entitles you to demand within a 30 day period of time. But the bank has a right to not give you the money when you demand. It's already in the contract of a demand deposit and the US has defaulted on that before. It was one of the issues that Roosevelt threatened the Supreme Court to stack. The court is when he wanted to renounce gold clauses and contracts. So when people had the option of taking, you know, dollars or gold, when the gold was at a premium to the dollar, you know, that's when, that's when, that's when Roosevelt said, well, we don't want to honor, we don't want to get rid of our gold and we don't want to pay at the dollar, at the gold value. So we just want to pay the dollar value. So that represents a haircut of about 20, 25%. So people took a 20, 25% haircut. I would consider that a debt default. I think most people who had two alternative payments, getting $100 in gold or $80 in cash would view that as a default. So we've defaulted on our debt, we've confiscated gold, we've done all these things in the financial crisis. And we tend to give the President extraordinary power. So don't do extraordinary things at this point in time and we should expect that we have crises, that that's what they'll do. So I think the only protection we have is what's ours and right now, and this could change. Owning Bitcoin has no Reporting obligations until you move it. Okay? So if I buy bitcoin, I don't have to report it, okay. If I hold it, I don't have to report it. You know, if I transfer from one wallet to another, all under my custody, I don't have to report it. The day I transfer to a third party and I get some other form of compensation, then I have to report the capital gain associated with it. But as long as I buy and hold, which is what most, you know, quote whales do with bitcoin, they buy and hold this. Currently, there is no reporting obligation. And if the government imposes a reporting obligation, you know, when China. Report what happened in China, when China's government decided to make it more difficult for miners, people left China. So I assume that the type of people that own a lot of bitcoin, you know, if, if the government becomes too restrictive, they'll move out of the United States, the mining will move out of the United States, and the owners will move out of the United States, and there'll be other countries that are hostile to the United States or neutral to the United States or don't even, not necessarily don't dislike the United States, but don't like dollar hegemony that'll sit back and say, we welcome you. So there'll be a place that'll welcome them, and as long as there's a place for welcome them. You know, the personality of a bitcoiner is, you know, true bitcoiners kind of nomadic in nature. So, you know, if you ask like the founders, like Ben Franklin or people like that, they would say the country they resided in was liberty. So for them, in my opinion, the US Was an idea, okay? And the country and where they wanted to reside was inside the context of that idea. And that's how I see myself as well. You know, I. I love ideas, so I want to reason my residents are my ideas. Okay? Wherever I'm geographically located is indifferent to me. You know, my, my loyalty to my. To my ideas. So I don't like to be disloyal, but my prime loyalty are to my ideas and my ideals, and I could be anywhere.
