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- [00:01]
Natalie Brunel
We've become complacent with the sense that things just go up in price. But why is it that way? We're not taught any of this in school. We don't learn about what inflation really is, about what's really broken in the system, and the fact that we can fix it. And I think the best solution to fix it is Bitcoin.
- [00:19]
Brian Rose
How do you start the conversation talking about the structural problems with the modern monetary system?
- [00:25]
Natalie Brunel
Our money is political, and there's a monopoly over money. Someone can click a button and create trillions new units in the system, and that dilutes the purchasing power of every dollar that we work so hard to earn. And that's why I think bitcoin is such an incredible opportunity and shift because it allows us to rebuild a foundation on something that is apolitical, that is available to everyone around the entire world, that no one can inflate and debase, and that anyone can verify.
- [00:51]
Brian Rose
How do you advise people to start their journey with Bitcoin?
- [00:55]
Natalie Brunel
I just think you have to start small, start slow. It's not something that you can learn in a day. The book Bitcoin is for Everyone is a great start. It really. It's for the SC skeptics, the newcomers, and the people who feel like they're very intimidated or turned off by the subject and they want to learn a little bit more. You have to meet people where they are. And that's what I really tried to do, is say, hey, we recognize that there's a problem. And my argument is that we will not see a meaningful change until we actually fix the money.
- [01:21]
Brian Rose
Natalie, what's next for you? What does your next couple years look like?
- [01:24]
Natalie Brunel
My work is just going to continue to grow my content and try to educate as many people as possible. I'm trying to help get a billion people into bitcoin. That's the goal. A billion bitcoiners. Several billion along the way. And I. I do see this as the greatest opportunity for the average working person to empower themselves.
- [01:45]
Brian Rose
Hi, it's Brian Rose from London Real. You probably know that we've just recently been replatformed on YouTube after 25 months, completely in the dark. The truth is, I really need your help. What I really need you to do is click on that subscribe button right now, like this video, and maybe even leave a comment or share the link with friends. We're really fighting against an algorithm that's tried to keep us quiet for so long. And the more subscribers we have, the more people watch our content, the Better guests. We can bring you the better content and we can continue transforming lives. We've been doing this for 14 years now. I want to do this for another 14 years, but I really need your help. So click on that subscribe button. Like the video, leave a comment Share this and we're going to continue to bring you more and more great content. Thank you. This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Natalie Brunel, the bitcoin educator, award winning journalist, podcast host, and one of the most influential voices in the global bitcoin movement. You built a reputation for explaining bitcoin through the lens of truth, sovereignty and the American dream. And your interviews with Michael Saylor, Jack Mallers and the world's top macro thinkers have helped millions understand why bitcoin matters. You're also a strong advocate for financial literacy, personal responsibility, and the freedom that comes from self custody. Themes that sit at the core of what we've fought for here at London Real for over a decade. Free speech, self empowerment and financial sovereignty. You've just released your new book, Bitcoin Is For Everyone. Why Our Financial System Is Broken and Bitcoin Is the Solution, which explains how our monetary system is failing ordinary people and outlines a clear path towards financial freedom through sound digital money. Natalie, welcome to London Real.
- [03:39]
Natalie Brunel
Oh, thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to this.
- [03:41]
Brian Rose
Great to have you here. Congrats on the book. I know the audio's out and you got it pinned on X, which is great. Some people have said that writing a book is one of the loneliest things to do. And I'm just curious, how was the experience like for you? And why write this book now as opposed to a year ago or two years ago?
- [04:02]
Natalie Brunel
I had the opposite experience. It was not lonely at all for me. I had a fantastic team that I collaborated with because I don't think that great things come together by yourself. I think it's wonderful to collaborate with minds that think differently and that can push you and challenge you. So not only did I have a fantastic team that was working with me, going through every single chapter as it was written, helping me make sure that I was choosing the right words, the right analogies, but also early readers of the manuscript who offered feedback and pushback and really challenged me to make sure that everything was accurate, everything was airtight, that everything made sense, and that the book really was a powerful message of empowerment and also one that was very neutral because we live in a very divided world, not just here in America, but everywhere. I feel like we're getting very divided politically. And I wanted this to be a very positive, cheerful, constructive, hopeful message about what's really broken in the system and the fact that we can fix it. And I think the best solution to fix it is bitcoin.
- [05:08]
Brian Rose
If you had to give me that target audience member. Who are you going for? I'm guessing it's not for the people you interview on your podcast. I'm guessing it's for someone who is. Is new ish to bitcoin. Who or not, I'm kind of curious. Who is that Avatar?
- [05:23]
Natalie Brunel
Definitely. I wrote it basically thinking of my early journey and what I wish I had at the very, very beginning. Because if you don't have an engineering or computer science or finance background, like I didn't, Bitcoin can feel very intimidating. When you're learning about investing in general for the very first time, you need something that's very gentle and approachable and meets you where you are. So that's kind of who I wrote this for was really the general audience. People like my parents, people like my friends who work really, really hard but haven't thought about money in the way that they need to and where money comes from and how it's issued and how the banking system works and why inflation has really destroyed our purchasing power. So I wrote it for the everyday, ordinary person. And I wanted it to be something that if you love bitcoin and you are one of the OGs or the people that I interview, you also read it. And maybe it makes you appreciate bitcoin more. It makes you sort of return to the fundamentals and appreciate how special bitcoin really is. So I really did write it for everyone.
- [06:23]
Brian Rose
And you had people like Michael Saylor and Lynn Alden and Jeff Booth. Did they all kind of help you writing the forewords and pieces like that?
- [06:31]
Natalie Brunel
I don't have a foreword, but I did give them early manuscripts because I did want their feedback. I was hoping that they would share any constructive criticism that they had and that I could work on it for the final draft. And they were just so, so, so kind and helpful. And Lynn is someone who I've long admired for her analysis and her brilliant understanding of not just monetary history, but markets. Right. Currently how they function. And I wanted to make sure that everything was accurate. So I really wanted Lynn to read it for. To make sure that, like, I had all the facts straight. Even though, you know, when you're simplifying something, you want to make sure that you're not missing any nuance or missing anything that would cause you to lead the audience to thinking that something was true when it wasn't. With Jeff Booth, I mean, he's so thoughtful in the way that he expressed. Explains this paradigm shift we're moving toward and the toxic cocktail that is debt mixed with deflation and sort of just how to break down what inflation really is and why people shouldn't be scared of deflation. And then Michael Saylor, I mean, I've never met anyone who can describe bitcoin as well as he does. He's so articulate. His prowess in just leading a public company in the way that he has and being so innovative with the securities that he's created have just been so impressive to me. And he is so generous with his time and wants to educate the world on bitcoin. And he comes up with the most amazing metaphors and can, at the drop of a hat, come up with, like, historical references that I don't know anyone whose brain can think the way that his does. So I was so grateful that they were all willing to read early copies and share their feedback.
- [08:13]
Brian Rose
Yeah, that's a pretty good lineup of people to get feedback from. We. I think we had all three of them on the show in 21 when we were starting our journey. And just, for example, to watch Michael's evolution and to watch his thinking change from 21 up until now, almost 26, is honestly, it's wild to watch. I mean, I train martial arts, but it feels like we've watched Michael get his white belt, his blue belt, his purple belt, and now he's got his black belt in bitcoin. And at some point we're going to give him his red belt, which is something that you only give to, like, the masters after 50 years of studying in art. But, you know, it's crazy because Michael comes up with the concepts and verbiage and metaphors that, you know, just when I think it's. He's got it, he now comes up with a different angle and a different angle. And your latest conversation with him was incredible. And I'll probably ask you more questions about that. And the way he's getting into this digital credit concept, which, like I said, I didn't think he could come up with any other iterations. And he's now come up with, I guess, five new instruments this year and five new IPOs. So we'll talk about that. Lynn's amazing. You know, Lynn, I always quote her to some of the students in my academy. And I always say that Lynn Alden, one of the most recognized and accomplished aficionados of bitcoin once said to me, brian, I'll never fully understand bitcoin. And I always use that as something to my students. And I always say, you know what? I don't try to understand everything because it's impossible in this space. And if someone like Lynn is humble enough to say something like that, it goes to show you that you don't have to understand everything. Matter of fact, if you try to understand everything, you're probably going to understand nothing. And then, of course, Jeff is just incredible to listen to as well. So, yeah, you've picked your company. Well, I'm curious. I think you started your podcast in 21, and I'm curious why in that year did you kind of go all in with media in bitcoin?
- [10:12]
Natalie Brunel
So I was a journalist, and I was reporting on really all the problems and symptoms within the broken financial system. But it took me many years to connect the dots and realize what was actually causing the problems and why bitcoin was such a fantastic solution. So I went on my own journey. Because we're not taught any of this in school. We don't learn about what inflation really is, what fractional reserve banking is, why that destroys our purchasing power, why assets have inflated so much more drastically than our wages. And so these are the things that I really needed to catch up on and learn on my own. And once I did, and I realized that bitcoin offers the best properties that make for a really good money that stores value over time, that's when I wanted to just discuss it, report on it, shed light on it, educate people. And I really couldn't combine my previous career with bitcoin as much as I wanted to. I tried to do a couple stories, but I was very limited. So, you know, with decentralized media and podcasting, I decided why not just go off on my own and interview bitcoiners, continue to learn and study. And it was really kind of accidental that it turned into my business because I didn't realize that there was such a. Such a big audience hungry for this information. And I reached a Crossroads in 2021 where I had to choose between staying in my stable news job or becoming an entrepreneur, setting off on my own and seeing what I could build in terms of a bitcoin media and education platform. And I decided to bet on myself. And it's really paid off. I'm really grateful because I've been able to reach more people than I did, even in my news work, and in a more positive way, because when you're covering news. You're really meeting people on the worst days of their lives. I was covering tragedies and natural disasters and corruption. Bitcoin is really the opposite. It's about shedding light on corruption in order to heal our society and to bring about empowerment and bring about positivity and shape our future in a way that creates more abundance. So I'm so grateful because now I get to focus all of my media work on something extremely powerful, positive.
- [12:23]
Brian Rose
Yeah, I think it was James Altucher I had on the show one time, and he said working in a newsroom is like Halloween every day. You're trying just to scare the hell out of everybody, because I guess if it bleeds, it leads. And I guess that can really probably get tiresome after a while.
- [12:41]
Natalie Brunel
Absolutely. I mean, I. I think. I didn't even realize, because when you are a journalist, you tend to compartmentalize those things so that it doesn't seep into your own life and your outlook. But how can it not? I mean, when you're interviewing so many people who are struggling so much. And that's really what I was covering, is the broken monetary system's effects on society. People feeling like they have no more hope, a breakdown in mental health and the morality of society, an increase in crimes, people no longer affording the basic necessities, more people falling into poverty and homelessness, more corruption when it comes to public officials. Like all of these things, I realized, are actually symptoms of the deeper problem, which is the corruption of our money. Our money is political, and there's a monopoly over money, and someone can click a button and create trillions new units in the system, and that dilutes the purchasing power of every dollar that we work so hard to earn or pound or yen or whatever fiat currency you may use where. Where you live. And that is not a system that's sustainable, at least not for. For the average person. It constantly concentrates wealth in the hands of very few people, and that obviously has effects and consequences on the rest of the population, who has played by all the rules, has done everything right, and feels like they've been left far, far behind, and they don't feel like they can afford their future or secure a future for their families anymore. And so that's what I think bitcoin really addresses the most. It allows people to save for the future in a tool that no one can manipulate, debase, can control. And it allows people to start recapturing their time again, controlling their time again in their future.
- [14:25]
Brian Rose
So. So we went all into this space. I think about the same time you did in 21. We just decided we were going to start interviewing all the top 100 names. We were going to teach crypto and defi in an academy. I had actually just run to be mayor of London for like seven months. I was angry. The city was shut down and this is like my adopted city. And I was really angry at the mayor. And, you know, businesses were struggling and people's mental health was struggling. And so I got all angry and spent seven months running to be the next mayor of London. I lost. And we just needed a little bit of a new direction. And I had been watching out of the corner of my eye kind of defi and crypto. I actually had Max Kaiser on my show back in 2013 because Max used to live in London with Stacey and they became good friends. And I bought my first bitcoin in 13. And Max came to my Thanksgiving dinner. He traded at bitcoin at my Thanksgiving dinner table, you know, and I didn't get a commission, but we never really went into it. You know, I had Andreas Antonopoulos on my show in 15, 17 and 19. And so that was great, but we had never really gone all in. And it wasn't till 21 when we did. And the weird thing is, Natalie, is that, you know, when you have bitcoin as a reference, you can really start to see all the flaws in the fiat system. But without that, it's hard. And I have a background on Wall Street. I started on Wall street in 93. I took economics classes at MIT. I remember when I got to Wall Street, I was on the trading floor, fixed income trading floor. And they were like, okay, there's the Fed and they do short term rates and then you got the 30 year yield curve. And they would walk me through all this stuff and we were like, okay, okay, okay. But we just accepted it as gospel. Dubai real estate is exploding and the biggest money is being made where almost nobody is looking. In premium luxury transformation projects that have historically delivered 40 to 90% annual returns. That is incredible. For years, these opportunities were locked inside private networks. You never saw them, you never had access. Until now. I've spent 15 years on Wall street and five years studying Dubai up close. And today, for the first time ever, you can invest directly alongside my team. We have just received a brand new project with real potential for outsized returns and early allocations always fill fast. Click the link and apply now. Your opportunity starts today. No, we never really questioned it. And I proceeded to keep most of my assets in cash, because I didn't trust the banking system for the rest of my life. And it wasn't until we got into crypto, where I started looking at Bitcoin and then looking at what was really going on with Fiat. But the crazy thing is, is that I couldn't see it, even though I was in that business. And so, you know, if someone like me couldn't see it, how could an average person see it? And so I think it's great that you've gone all in and you've written this, this book. I was wondering, how do you start the conversation with someone when you start talking about the structural problems with the modern monetary system? You know, is it hard at first to explain to people, you know, what fiat currency is and the inflation and how that affects your savings and asset values are going up regardless? Or how have you started that conversation over the last four years?
- [17:57]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah, well, it kind of goes back to what you just mentioned about your own situation and the fact that it was sort of hard to question what you've become accustomed to.
- [18:07]
Brian Rose
Right.
- [18:07]
Natalie Brunel
And that's what I actually mentioned at the top of the book is like, we've become complacent with the sense that things just go up in price. And so a couple generations ago, things cost like 10 times less. It was 25 cents to go to the movies or to buy a carton of milk. And now it's just extraordinarily much more expensive. And that's just the way it is. But why is it that way? And what is actually causing these prices to go up? So the place that I like to start is really with the problem and what caused the problem. Because if you can identify and appreciate what the problem is, then you can start to recognize the solution. So the first half of the book is actually not about Bitcoin at all. It's a lot about how money works and the history of money and what inflation really is. Because we hear the numbers. We hear it reported wherever you live, there might be an inflation rate, and most central banks target 2%. So basically they're saying to you, we want your money to lose value at about 2% per year. But if you really dig into the numbers and you look at how much prices have increased, it's far more than 2%. I mean, really across the board. And I show examples of how much real estate has been going up, or housing costs, health care premiums, the cost of groceries, the cost of really all the essentials that make up the basket of the American dream or the UK dream. And I talk about why, what is the actual source and the undercurrent. The deeper cause is that they're constantly expanding the money supply and that really our system is built mostly on debt. And if that debt has to be repaid, they have to issue these new units because you don't want to see a breakdown and a collapse of the entire credit system. And so we, we've built the whole thing really on sticks rather than a solid foundation. And that's why I think bitcoin is such a paradigm incredible opportunity and shift because it allows us to rebuild a foundation on something that is apolitical, that is available to everyone around the entire world, that no one can inflate and debase, and that anyone can verify that. Anyone can audit and make sure that, hey, this actually is a record of truth as opposed to our current situation system, which is very opaque and basically the people at the top have all the advantages and all the control and everyone else is sort of left fighting for the crumbs.
- [20:22]
Brian Rose
Yeah, I'm having a flashback, I think, to the Jeff Booth conversation I had where he told me, I think he said, everything priced in bitcoin in the future, the price goes down, except everything priced in fiat, it goes up. And with all the modern technology, obviously the price of your photos and the price of your data, I mean, all that is going to zero. And yet, like you said, we're, we're accustomed to just assuming and being okay with the narrative is that everything goes up a few percent each year, when in fact some things go up 10% every year.
- [20:54]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah.
- [20:55]
Brian Rose
Do you go into the gold standard or do you kind of skip that?
- [21:00]
Natalie Brunel
No, I actually talk about that. I go into the properties of what makes a good store of value, like a good form of money that you can save in. And gold meets a lot of those properties. It doesn't meet all of them because it's not very easy to send across the world and instantly settle. And actually that is an important point in the book because I talk about how technology really is one of the reasons why we entered into this fiat world, because as the global economy grew and we were trading across larger distances, instances, it is not easy to take a bar of gold and send it to another place around the world very quickly. It's not easy to scale economies built on gold. So what do you do as a result? You paper over it, you realize the banks realize that not everyone is coming to claim their gold. So maybe we'll issue a few more receipts and then suddenly you have maybe one bar of gold for every 10 receipts that you're issued. And this is kind of a result of, yes, obviously human greed plays a role, but it's really also the defects of this technology, which was gold, that it was physical and therefore could not scale to meet the needs of a global economy. And so we issued paper on top of it. And that creates its own problems because you now have to trust the issuers, you have to trust the intermediaries, and they become gatekeepers that extract a little bit of value along. Along each of those transactions. And now we have a system that has been completely untethered and detached from gold. And we live in a paper, a fiat economy that's basically built on IOUs. And here in the United States, the issuer of these IOUs that make up the base layer of our entire monetary system is $38 trillion in debt and only growing. Right. No matter who we elect, red or blue, right or left, they have to keep printing. And so I kind of make the case that. But gold's defects led to the fiat system. So we don't want to move back, we don't want to go back on the gold standard, which we know technically failed. Why don't we move into a digital gold ecosystem on something that is built on math and physics and energy that no one can manipulate? And that would prevent some of the issues that happened with our monetary systems that were controlled by humans and people in the past.
- [23:23]
Brian Rose
What's Lynn's phrase that she uses? This train.
- [23:27]
Natalie Brunel
Nothing stops this train.
- [23:28]
Brian Rose
Nothing stops this train.
- [23:29]
Natalie Brunel
Yes.
- [23:30]
Brian Rose
It's such a great phrase to just hold into your head, because I caught it a couple months ago and I just kept thinking about it, and it's a great thing to remember because like you said, the left and the right, they'll debate and they'll this and they'll that, but we have it right? And we're conservative, and we're not. But at the end of the day, as humans, we're just gonna keep printing money, right? We're just gonna keep printing, and we can't stop because we ultimately don't really want to hold ourselves absolutely accountable. Right? We want to kind of say, well, we'll give ourselves a little wiggle room. And since we can, it always seems like we will.
- [24:11]
Natalie Brunel
Well, I mean, I just think we've. It's. It's. It's gotten so far ahead of us now that there's nothing we can do to stop it. I mean, just like if you're in a car that's barreling towards something, you either crash into a wall or you try to keep that car going as long as you possibly can, right? So I think that's where we're at. I mean, we. To your point, we have to keep printing, and no matter who's in office, they spend more than they take in. And so I think that naturally, right, we have cries out now for, or taxing the rich or redistributing the wealth, because people have seen that the wealth is concentrated in a few hands and they don't think that it's fair. And I've made this comparison before, and I sort of allude to it in the monopoly analogy that I offer in my book. But if we're all playing a game, if life is a game and it's a competition, you are only really happy for the winners if the rules are fair and the same for everyone, if everyone essentially has the same equal playing field, because the results and the outcomes aren't going to be equal. And that's just a natural phenomenon because we each have different abilities and skills and desires. But the rules should be fixed so that no one has a special advantage. If instead you have a game that's rigged, where a few people have rules that give them a special advantage in the game, then if they win, that's not a fun game. You don't even want to play it anymore. And I think that that's what's actually happened with society is they look at the folks at the top who are extremely successful, and they go, you didn't acquire that fairly, and I deserve some of what you have, so give it back to me. And that's why they're calling out for politicians who essentially are trying to promise that. And then they go into the office and what do they do? They don't really tax the rich. They end up just looting from the middle class, as Nick Szabo recently tweeted, which I thought was. Was brilliant. So I just want people to look deeper because we need a game that all of us can take part in that's fair and that's accessible to everyone with the same rules. So that's what bitcoin offers, a set of rules with no rulers.
- [26:18]
Brian Rose
You know, one of my good friends I've made over the years is Robert Kiyosaki. And yeah, I love Robert. He wrote the book Rich Dad, Poor dad, and in his early 80s, he's still going on strong. And he's a big fan of real assets, including bitcoin and real estate and gold. But also sometimes he's calling for the top of the market and I see people sometimes calling for the end of fiat. And yet deep down inside I feel like the dollar is going to be around for probably another 50 or 100 years easily. And I'm just curious how you feel about that. And do you sometimes have to stop people and say, okay, this isn't going to crash tomorrow but we still need a better idea. What do you usually tell people about that?
- [27:04]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah, if you are looking for a book that's like down with the Central bank and the Fed, the Dollar's going Away, this is not the book for you. My book actually it introduces the idea of a more peaceful transition. Kind of like how Jeff talks about that. This is a new asset class. It's very small, it's growing. It's a huge opportunity when it comes to the ability for the average person to save. I think it's the best asymmetric opportunity for the ordinary working person. But it is not a zero sum game. We live in a very large and complicated and complex global economy. And that economy will still have fiat currencies. Governments will want to tax their citizens. We will still have homes, homes and real estate and companies are going to be built. But I think slowly but surely bitcoin is going to be used as pristine capital. It is going to increasingly be seen as digital, as digital collateral and capital in in order to build our foundational system on top of it. So that you don't have a system that's built on these treasuries that are essentially inflating away the channel true value of them. And that's what we have after the 1971 post gold world. We have a system that's really built on treasuries and sovereign debt and IOUs as pristine collateral and capital. And my argument is well, that is changing. That is going to change. That's why we do see central banks purchasing gold. And we are going to return to a world where maybe we have a more neutral reserve asset and that one country's treasuries or bonds should not be the underlying the thing that pins the entire system. And so I think that gold will increasingly be held by central banks. But I think eventually bitcoin will be as well. I just think it's a very new technology. It's highly volatile in the short term but it has superior qualities to all the other asset classes out there. So I think it's going to go slowly from a $2 trillion asset class eventually to a 50 trillion and then eventually 100 trillion and I show in the book the size and scale of some of these asset classes. Real estate being worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, bonds being worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, equities being worth like 130 or $150 trillion, gold being only about 30 trillion, and then bitcoin sitting at the very, very end of it at $2 trillion. So I think it is again the best opportunity and I think we are seeing a global shift away from sovereign debt as the reserve asset in our current monetary system.
- [29:43]
Brian Rose
The American dream is kind of a theme that you constantly reference and this erosion of opportunity. How do you talk to people about the America of, I don't know, 50 years ago or 70 years ago. I guess the 50s is kind of the time we think of the American dream versus now. And can you explain maybe the disappearance of that dream via Bitcoin by explaining what's happened to the fiat currency and what's happened to inflation?
- [30:14]
Natalie Brunel
Well, it really does go back to the dollar and the exorbitant privilege that America had when it became the global reserve currency and could essentially export its inflation. And so we were able to take all the country's gold, which I go over in the book. Bitcoin is for everyone. We were the keepers of that gold and maintain those reserves. And then we issued dollars that the world needed. And it was a great arrangement. For some time it allowed for America to have what's known as a deficit without tears. We were able to print and buy anything we wanted from around the world. But over the long run, over the many decades that that followed, that turned into a system that completely hollowed out what made us once great. It hollowed out our economic strength, our industrial strength, our manufacturing.
- [31:03]
Brian Rose
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- [32:20]
Natalie Brunel
Because it was easier and cheaper for us to send out our dollars, purchase goods and have those flow into America. And that has really had an impact on the working class, the middle class, and we've really resulted in financializing our entire economy. So we deal more with financial instruments and seniorage and interest payments and all these things that aren't very productive at all. And other countries have really taken it upon themselves to become the builders and the creditors of the world, namely China being, I think, the biggest and really the factory of the world. And so things have really shifted and now we're seeing the end results of this money printing high that we've been on. Now we need more and more money printing in order to create the same high, just like a drug addict. And it's affected the average person because as we kind of alluded to earlier, a lot of the money has pooled in asset classes. And so we've seen tremendous amounts of asset inflation and the stock market going like this and real estate valuations going like this. But the average person's income and wages see stagnating. And so even though they, the workers have been more productive and actually creating more output, they haven't been paid and compensated. And I think that that breeds a ton of frustration and resentment at the working class level because this represents a huge portion of the population who's working harder than ever and not able to afford was what was once so easy for say, a single income household. And so their children also, they come into this world and they're like, this isn't fair and how am I ever going to achieve what my parents and grandparents achieved? Because everything has gotten so expensive. And I'm now starting a mile back from where my parents started. So this has really second and third order effects. But it all comes back to the monetary system, how we've devised it, the fact that we've pinned the entire system on one country's currency and that currency represents debt. It's not tethered to gold anymore. We broke that promise in 1971. And so in order to return us into a system that is tethered to something of value that no one can manipulate, that no one can inflate and debase away from us, I think the best solution and the best properties exist in, in the form of Bitcoin. And I kind of explain that and make the case for that in the book.
- [34:38]
Brian Rose
I think you said that kind of crypto and bitcoin resonates with, as you said, my generation, millennials, Gen Z. How much is home ownership or the lack of the ability to own a home a real wake up call for kind of your generation? And are you able to use that as a way to get your foot in the door to really illustrate what's going on and maybe introduce bitcoin?
- [35:03]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah, I love this question. I love this topic. Because a home to me really did represent the American dream ever since I was young. That's what I strive toward and I show in the book examples of how inflated home prices have become. So in 1971, you know, you had a medium median income and it took about two to three years time to afford a nice home. And then now fast forward and the home is like 10 times the price and you need 8 times the annual income in order to afford the same home. But think about it really, because like that Same Home from 1971, now it's 50 years old, probably needs a complete renovation and all these things replaced, and the maintenance costs are crazy. And that home is like 20 times more than it was in 1971 to purchase. And the average person isn't making that much more. And when you own a home, it gives you a stake. You are invested. You are invested not just in that property, but in the community. You care about the schools, you care about your neighbors, you care about the crime and the safety in that area. It gives you a stake and a sense of equity in, in, in something so much bigger. And so we've gone from a society of owners to a society of renters. And when you rent, you don't care as much and you're not as invested and you're literally just handing your money to the person that does own the property. So the only way to, I think, bring down the cost of housing is, is to actually allow prices to fall. And they won't allow that to happen in fiat, but it is happening in bitcoin. Kind of going back to Jeff Booth's point, if you use a different yardstick and you start pricing things in bitcoin, the price of homes is actually becoming more and more affordable. A home that once cost 2000 bitcoin suddenly turned into 200 and now it's about 10 bitcoin. So you are actually seeing deflation and prices coming down if you price things in bitcoin. And I want to see a world where young people feel like they can and want to own homes, but right now it just doesn't exist in fiat and they feel very frustrated by it. And so some of them have just said, you know what, like, I'm not going to own, it's not worth it and I'll never even get there. But bitcoin makes it possible again.
- [37:13]
Brian Rose
Do you sit down with people and ever have the conversation that goes, you know, yeah, your house has increased in value by 9% a year for the last 20 years. But in fact that's just the amount of money the government's printing and it has nothing to do with an asset value increase. Do you have that conversation and with people and does it register or is it a really hard thing for people to comprehend or even want to comprehend?
- [37:40]
Natalie Brunel
I definitely lay it out in the book. I haven't had a lot of, I guess, conversations about it in person because frankly, most of my peers, most of my friends and colleagues that I've had over the last decade or two, they don't own homes for the very reason that they've just been priced out of the market. So I make the case for the book because it's primarily, actually, at least in America, generation, I believe it's X and boomers who own the majority of real estate in America. Now, the median age of a first time home buyer, it's gone from like 28 to 40 years old. So there's been a massive shift. And the majority of the real estate is owned by those who have benefited from the system earlier on, before we had such tremendous debt and before asset prices inflated to the extent that they have. And so that's why younger people really do feel priced out. But you make a great point, right? If you zoom out and I present some of the numbers based on the Federal Reserve and the statistics that are available, the average home has actually gone up in price over the last two decades at about 4% per year. If you look at some really unique areas that have scarce, let's say beachfront property or something, they've gone up on an average of 7% per year. Meanwhile, they've been inflating the actual money supply by 7% per year. So you thinking that you're doing such a good job saving your money through your home, have actually been either treading water or are falling behind in terms of purchasing power. And when you go to sell that home, you know, you, I'm sure you know what it's like, right? I mean, you're buying another overinflated home, you have to think about all the costs that go into it every single year. You're paying property taxes, so you're essentially renting the home from the government. I mean, there are all these things that don't actually make a home the best possible investment of your money. And again, I make the case that bitcoin simplifies savings.
- [39:39]
Brian Rose
Is there a solution to that? Is it. Do we need to build more homes? Is there any way out of this?
- [39:44]
Natalie Brunel
Or do you think there's. There's so many. I mean, there's so many problems that contributed to it. So it's not just a single solution. I mean, I think that the single solution that helps the average person save would be bitcoin. But if you're talking about bringing the price of homes down, absolutely, we need more supply. But we have quite a bit of regulation and red tape here. I mean, getting permits takes forever in various parts the of. Of the country. So regulation is a barrier, I think, that we have through the fiat system. And I lay this out a little bit as well. When you have massive behemoth companies, whether they are construction companies or they're in another sector like healthcare or food or technology, when they have access to cheap credit at scale, they can do things that don't provide value or compensate work workers. What they do is they try to juice their profits as much as possible by doing things like taking on cheap debt, buying back stock, you know, merging and acquiring other companies. They do things that really help the bottom line as opposed to helping the product become better or providing, you know, better quality more homes or paying their workers more. It all just ends up being, again, this, like financialization and this and this incentive to just make as many profits as possible. And so I think we have a ton of problems. We also have too high of property taxes at this point. I think it's ridiculous that you could own your home for 20 years, have it paid off, and then you're still owing money to the government. And God forbid you improve your home or renovate it, you owe even more to the government. And that's priced a lot of people who are on fixed incomes out. And that just discourages them from even doing work on the home. So there are so many things that add to the problem, but if you really peel back all the layers, it all comes back to how corrupted our money, our monetary system is, and how many times the central bank has had to intervene. Do you know, do balance sheet interventions inject liquidity artificially, lower interest rates, and basically prop up what would have probably taken prices down?
- [41:46]
Brian Rose
How do you advise people to start their journey with bitcoin. What do you tell them?
- [41:53]
Natalie Brunel
Well, it's one of the reasons why I wrote the book, because it can be overwhelming. I mean, the book, bitcoin is for everyone is a great start. It really, it's for the skeptics, the newcomers, and the people who feel like they're very intimidated or, or turned off by the subject and they want to learn a little bit more. I just think you have to start small, start slow. It's not something that you can, can learn in a day, but I think you can get enough of an introduction, a solid one that makes you more curious and allows you to take the next steps or maybe the first step in owning bitcoin, holding bitcoin, transacting in bitcoin. So I think it just. You have to meet people where they are. And that's what I really tried to do is say, hey, you know, we, we recognize that there's a problem. It's. As technology progresses, we should be experiencing more, more abundance. We should be experiencing cheaper prices. This is Jeff Booth's whole premise that I allude to in the book. We should be experiencing the best time of all of our lives because technology is supposed to make our lives easier and make things cheaper. But why is it the opposite? Why are we feeling like we're treading water financially? Why do we feel like we're working harder and not making enough? Why do we see such great wealth concentration? Why are we lacking the hope that we once did, that our future will be better than the past and past generations? I explain all of that in a very approachable way so that once I present the solution, it's something that has some credibility to it because you can recognize the good properties that make for a money that you can save in over the long run.
- [43:27]
Brian Rose
You're a huge advocate of self custody. I was wondering if you could explain what that is and why is that something that, that, you know, you bang on about so severely?
- [43:36]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah, so I mean, I think that the closest analogy would be holding cash, right? If you hold cash, it is a bearer instrument. It is in your possession and it is fully yours. But once you turn cash digital and you have an electronic dollar, you always have an intermediary in your transaction. So you're basically trusting a bank or you, you're trusting a payment rail or company in order to hold or move that money. So you're essentially asking for permission to use your own money. And it hasn't happened in America to many people. It has happened, I think, to some Folks recently, before the last election actually in the Trump administration. But in other countries we've seen people actually getting cut off from the banking system where people, the government says you have done something we don't agree with or you've committed a crime, we're alleging and you no longer have access to your bank account. So is the money really yours if someone can just cut you off from it? That's a very, very scary world to live in. And bitcoin gives you control over your money in digital form so you can access the network freely without permission. Anyone in the whole entire world that has access to the Internet has access to the Bitcoin network. And you can actually take self custody of your bitcoin, meaning that you can create a, I like to do a multi signature, like a multi key setup where no one key can access the bitcoin. You decentralize your risk, but you're holding that bitcoin yourself. You're not trusting an entity, a bank, an exchange. And you always have access to it and always have full control over it. And it's not as technical or difficult as you might think it is. And I make the case for why it is something that everyone should embrace in the book.
- [45:19]
Brian Rose
Do you like to split those multi sigs between different people or like just different like locations and different places?
- [45:26]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah, it's a mixture and this is like a highly, you know, personal setup and everyone's might be different. You can have a two out of three key scenario, you can have a three out of five. You can make it as easy or as complicated as you want. But so many of us, we choose convenience sometimes, sometimes over true security and true sovereignty. And I think that with bitcoin it's your savings, it's your future. It's something that I believe I will want to will and pass on to my descendants. So I want to take that extra step and make sure that it is as secure as possible. So you do want to decentralize it. You don't want all your keys to be with one person or one location. You want to distribute it so that if God forbid something happened and your bitcoin is still safe. And I use the example of recently I had a couple people I know who lost their homes in the wildfires in, in California. That's where I used to live. And, and in that scenario, I mean they didn't just lose their home and everything in it. So their keys might have, you know, potentially burned. But some of the local banks burned down.
- [46:30]
Brian Rose
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- [47:46]
Natalie Brunel
Times people hold their keys in like a safe deposit box, right, right at the bank, you know, 20, 20ft down the road or a mile down the road. And you have to be a little bit more careful than, than that sometimes even, because God forbid the worst case scenario happens, you want to maintain your access. And these are the things you start to think about when you're thinking long term about your, your savings and your inheritance and your future.
- [48:10]
Brian Rose
Yeah, I think we need to go along a lot way further when it comes to security for crypto assets. I feel like we're still kind of in the caveman days because there aren't that many options. And it's like, okay, write your, you know, write your, your keywords down or engrave them or put them in a safety deposit box, but it, it still feels like we need some more tech development on that. Also, I know quite a few crypto Bros and the WhatsApp groups these days. Like people are getting kidnapped and people are getting stopped and it gets a little crazy. I know people that went to Web3Summit in Portugal and like, you know, hotel WiFi's were being compromised and it's getting a little scary out there. Do you have advice for people that are worried about that kidnapping? Obviously we saw the ledger guy at the finger cut off and things like that. Any thoughts on that?
- [49:06]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah, I've covered this in several episodes on my show because personal security is so, so, so important. And I think that when we live in a digital world, we where everything we put so much data online, we show people where we're traveling, where we're going. We have to be hypervigilant. And this isn't like a bitcoin centric problem. This is just in general finances that are inherently tied to your digital identity. You have to take extra steps to be very careful. You don't want to share your location with everyone. You don't want to trust public wifi. You don't want to, you know, start talking to someone that you don't know online and then start sending them money. And I think people slip into things that are kind of simple mistakes. And so the more aware you are, the more vigilant you are, the more you set up situations where you create privacy in terms of your identity online. You don't share personal information as much as possible. You set up two fa, you set up barriers so that people can't just easily access. Those are all very, very important. And sometimes to the extreme of learning how to protect yourself, learning self defense, or taking those extra measures to make sure that if, God forbid, I was in the worst situation, I would know what to do and I wouldn't panic. But I do think what's unique about bitcoin is, and Michael Saylor has actually talked about this, but in the worst case scenario previously, you could use force to just take something from someone. If it's physical, you could just literally threaten them. And if you harm them or you threaten them, you can physically take it away from them. If you have something memorized in your head, if you have the seed phrase in your head, you have to negotiate with someone in order to try to take what they have. You can't take it by force. You really can't. You don't even know how much the person has. Right. So unless you put that information out there and you create ways and vectors of, of, of risk, then then truly, I mean, I, I think that you actually are more secure with something like Bitcoin than many other forms of money that are out there.
- [51:14]
Brian Rose
Yeah, I think more secure. But also sometimes your attacker isn't as sophisticated as you might think. So like the ones that the people that grabbed the ledger exec, I think they assumed the ledger exec had control of all the ledger wallets.
- [51:27]
Natalie Brunel
Right?
- [51:28]
Brian Rose
So in fact, their ignorance made them bit, a little, little more dangerous. And look, I know what Michael's saying, as in you have that thing memorized, but you know, also it gives me a good reason to cut off your finger, you know, if you maybe will tell me the truth. So yeah, it's a good point you make, but obviously there's still, still an attack factor there.
- [51:45]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah, I mean, we're talking obviously about worst case scenarios. I don't want to scare people, but there are tools like decoy wallets. I mean there, there are things that you can do to protect yourself on different levels. Levels. And you do want to create a situation where your family members, for example, like let's say there's a password because some people are calling using AI voices, right. They're pretending to be a relative. Like have a safe word with your family. Have a decoy wallet that maybe has, you know, a little bit of bitcoin, but not your whole stash. Create a situation where you feel like you are doing your absolute best to, to keep your, your finances secure in the same way that you would do with precious jewelry that you own or gold bars that you own. You know, today you have to be ultra careful and also try to elect policymakers that believe in the rule of law and punishing criminals as opposed to, you know, protecting them.
- [52:39]
Brian Rose
Yeah, good point. And I think everybody needs to do some of those things like those safe words and things like that, because we're all going to be subject to it. And also everyone just needs to up their hygiene when it comes to security. I mean, I know crypto bros that had, you know, $20 million in crypto on their hot wallet, on their phone. It's just like, what are you doing? So, yeah, some of that just people have to just kind of wake up. You mentioned policy. You know, a year ago we had a very different administration. We had a very different SEC chairman. We had a different, very different stance toward crypto in America. Honestly, it's really hard to even imagine where we are now because It's a complete 180 degree turn from where we were. And I always try to explain people how dark it was even a couple years ago just to be in the crypto space. I mean, the joke was that when those people arrived at the White House, they were saying that it was more likely for them to be thrown in jail than be invited to the White House to be celebrated for crypto. What's your opinion on the administration's changes? Do they need to do more? Do they need to enact that Bitcoin reserve? Do they need to pass the Clarity act? Or are you really happy with the way that everything's going?
- [53:49]
Natalie Brunel
You know, everything just moves so slowly. Bureaucratic things tend to move far slower than we want them to. But we've made so much Progress. I really did not expect that in the year 2024 we would elect such a pro bitcoin president, who a couple months later established the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, said that we would not be selling bitcoin, and has done some very positive things when it comes to recognizing the importance of the industry, removing regulatory barriers, the fact that they have prioritized things like the Genius act. And now I think we're going to get clarity passed. But we still have a lot of work to be done. And I think that bitcoin is still, when it comes to the political, like Washington, D.C. deep level, it's not highly understood by a lot of people, especially the staffers of these congressional members that make these really important decisions. They don't prioritize it as much as each one probably has so many things that their constituents want them to focus on. And bitcoin is probably not super high on the list at this point. Maybe that'll change. But we have become a very powerful voting bloc. And I think one of the reasons that President Trump is in office is because the power of people who hold this technology and hold these assets and want a voice in Washington D.C. that represents them. And the previous administration was. I mean, I don't even understand why it was so hostile to it. Because bitcoin is truly a bipartisan, a neutral, apolitical technology that if you believe in the rights of the working class and in freedom and in empowerment and helping the average person, you should be the first in line to want to advocate for bitcoin. So I think that we still need a lot of education, especially with progressive members of our legislative bodies. And I think it's happening. I think we also need to change some of the rules. Because, for example, when I was in D.C. last and I was speaking on Capitol Hill, I learned that people who work for the treasury, for the US treasury, they cannot own Bitcoin. If they own Bitcoin, they cannot work for the Treasury. Now that creates a very difficult conflict of interest, right? Because I think that they were trying to prevent conflict of interest by saying, well, if you own bitcoin, it'll skew your ideas. But if you are a believer in bitcoin now, you can't work for the Treasury. So only anti Bitcoin people work for the Treasury. That creates its own set of problems and conflict of interest, right? So, like, I think we need to re reprogram some of these rules and, and we need it to be seen more as what it is, which is digital property and digital capital. I Mean, I've met news anchors who say, well, I can't own Bitcoin because then I. I won't feel neutral when I report on it. And I'm like, well, do you own a house? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, do you report on real estate or real estate prices or housing? Yeah. Well, what's the problem then? You know, it's like, that's silly then. So I just think that things will change, but things will move slowly. And we have. We need to recognize that we've made tremendous progress and we still have a ways to go.
- [56:45]
Brian Rose
I think getting the Market Clarity act would help a lot. And I know that Brian Armstrong and Stanwood crypto is really pushing that, and I think that lobbying group is powerful and very effective. And it's nice to see Brian kind of show up and watching every now and then saying, yeah, we really hope the Clarity act gets pushed soon. Which is his nice way of saying, or, we're going to put somebody in your place in the next election. And it's nice to see that. And it's nice to see the push. It's also nice to see what looks like bipartisan support there. But I would feel much better if that was through. I would also feel better if there were just a few more steps that had actually been taken place. Like you said, maybe people in treasury can own Bitcoin, maybe there's an active accumulation on the reserve. I would just feel better if that all happened before the midterms, just to keep the momentum going because there's still questions, you know, and again, social platforms still crypto videos get flagged, ads for crypto still get flagged. And so even though DC seems to be moving forward, there's still, the market is. It's still waiting and lagging. And here in the uk, where we're supposedly had a pro crypto government the last couple years, there's no action being taken. And I wouldn't say Europe's any better. So, yeah, I'd like to see that continuing to move forward, but having a pro crypto president and a cabinet that's on, you know, an AI and crypto czar and Sachs and a lot of his cabinet, like Besant and Bobby owning crypto, like, that's, again, that's like a dream come true. So that's a good sign. I would just like to see it moving forward a little bit faster.
- [58:28]
Natalie Brunel
Yes, yes, absolutely. And I do actually want to be candid and share that. I think that it's going to be a tumultuous road to the midterms. I think that a lot of this will be deprioritized because unfortunately a lot of people feel that the promises of the administration and in the votes that they cast have not been delivered on. Especially when it comes to government efficiency, when it comes to government transparency and when it comes to affordability, which is
- [58:55]
Brian Rose
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- [59:27]
Natalie Brunel
People's number one issue right now. And so I think we are going to see more cries for populist and socialist candidates because the average person again misunderstands what the problem actually is. And so they turn to politics and they turn to what they believe to be a force for the redistribution of wealth and for leveling the playing field that they feel is so unfair and so rigged. And I think it's going to be a little bit chaotic because for the average person, if they don't understand Bitcoin, they probably see it as something that's highly volatile and highly speculative and not something that will in the short term really meaningful, meaningfully make a dent in their lives and help bring the cost of things down for them. And so that's why I think right now we are actually in a very, we're in a very trying time and a time that's very important for education so that people better understand what's causing the problem. Instead of continuing to ping pong back and forth between leaders, we're like cycling through leaders who promise to fix it and only enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else.
- [60:31]
Brian Rose
Yeah, you're right. It's a little scary, a little dangerous times. Also, we know, and I'm not trying to be partisan here, but we know the previous administration had that kind of banking lobby in Warren and they were quite anti crypto, just as kind of a party policy. And if they want to come back and dominate as a party, you can see them just knee jerking back to that reaction and trying to erase everything the other party did as well, which is not really where we want to be. It's interesting the points that you make because over here in the uk, you know, we kind of have a flipped cycle of what's going on in the U.S. so you know, when we were, when you had the Democrats in power, we had the conservative Tories in power and then we switched and so now we got a labor government here that's raising taxes on the wealthy and they're watching all the wealthy leave. And so you've got this semi socialist experiment that in real time is failing everybody. And it's really, it's coming here. Yeah, it's coming there. And it's look, I mean Europe is, is more socialist than America will ever be. And honestly it's like watching a slow motion train wreck here. And I love this country, I've lived here for 20 plus years and but it's hard to watch because I don't see it turning around. And now it just to me seems to be slowly kind of decaying. And again what they've done is they want to raise tax revenue, they've went to tax the rich and the rich all leave and then there's no money coming in. And then what they think is, well, we have to raise taxes even more and you get into this kind of death cycle and spiral. So yeah, I hope you hope you can educate more people as fast as possible about Bitcoin.
- [62:14]
Natalie Brunel
I mean, yeah, it's really important. This is actually why I've been making the argument recently about why so many people feel disillusioned with capitalism and they associate it with greed and wealth concentration where we haven't really had true capitalism. Because when you can have a monopoly over money and you have one country whose sovereign debt underpins the entire system and you can bail out that system by just printing more units at any sign of weakness, that's not capitalism. That is actually a system that protects the very core, the people at the very top, those with the closest access, those that are the insiders essentially and socializes the losses on everyone else and taxes them in the form of inflation, that's not capitalist, that is not capitalism. So people are angry with a system that they don't even live in. And what we have provided is essentially socialism for those closest to the money printer where they're bailed out and constantly protected from any of the consequences of their risk. And we have created capitalism or capitalistic like feelings for the average person saying like, I'm working harder than ever, I'm facing non stop competition now, including from AI and I can't make it. So you need to help me out, you need to give me some of the benefits you've given the elites. And I think that's like the really great friction that we're in. And I think we need to absolutely kind of like zoom out and teach people how this system actually works. That's why books like mine I think are truly important at this inflection point that we're in. Because people need to understand what is happening so that no matter, you know, but who they elect, you know, how to protect your purchasing power, you need to acquire assets because the system is built on debt and they're going to need to keep printing. And no matter who you elect, the middle class and the working class is probably going to see the standard of living deteriorate.
- [64:08]
Brian Rose
Yeah, I hope you can get that lesson across. It's a really tricky one to teach people. Like you said, if you own assets, then when the government prints money, then you do okay. And so typically those wealthy people own the assets. And unfortunately, if you're down on the food chain where either your money is in fiat savings or you have no money, you think you're getting a check from the government and it feels like you're winning when in fact you're long term losing. Right, exactly, exactly. But it's complicated enough to explain, which is probably why it gets hijacked by the socialists so easy. And they say, look at those people, they're doing it, let's go get them. When in fact, you're right, it's, it's systematically rigged. I mean, the Fiat system is just a really good racket around a lot of media bias and people just not understanding what's going on. So.
- [64:59]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah, well, I mean, Henry Ford said it really well about a century ago. He said that if the average person understood how the banking system and how our monetary system worked, there'd be a revolution by morning. And it's true. A lot of us are blinded to it. We're complacent. We assume that we can't really change it, or we put our hope in some hero politician that promises to change things and is the knight in shining armor and then four years later we're disappointed and we ping pong to the other side. I mean, it's kind of crazy because that's the definition of insanity. We're sort of doing the same thing over and over and over and over, over and over again and expecting a different result. And my argument is that we will not see a meaningful change until we actually fix the money.
- [65:46]
Brian Rose
I think you're right. And I think Benjamin Franklin said something similar to Ford as well about the bankers back in the day. So this has been around for a couple Hundred years. Natalie, you've had incredible access to Michael Saylor. I have Michael on the show in 21 and then I think in 22. And it was an incredible masterclass at the time and what he was doing with MicroStrategy. But then his evolution and his thinking, as I was talking earlier, he just kept going and going. And this cult concept of digital energy and now this digital credit concept and this fact that Bitcoin is this long term capital, these are concepts that I still don't think most people understand. Although he does, he goes out of his way to try to explain them. You've had access sitting next to him. What are some of the big lessons you've learned from Michael and are you able to convey some of his thoughts onto the average person that you might talk to?
- [66:50]
Natalie Brunel
I mean, first of all, I think that Michael is among the most brilliant people in business, in engineering. He's a student of history. And anytime you speak with him or sit down to watch an interview, you will learn lessons and he will draw out metaphors that I've never heard before that are truly unique, that make you really think and philosophize. And he's truly just brilliant. And he's put so much work in and I admire the fact that he cares so much. He's really put in the time and energy to understand Bitcoin very deeply, at a very technical level, because he does come from an engineering background. And he then takes that knowledge and he combines it with his vision and his long term thinking to try to make the world a better place, to try to educate people and help them empower themselves through this type of information to create products that help them in their everyday lives. Like, who wouldn't want a bank account that pays 10, 11% yield, right? Compared to anything that we have offered by the banks or the bonds. That's what he thinks about. He's a visionary person that's always thinking about the future and what his decisions mean over the next 20, 30, 50, 100 years. So he is one of the old greatest minds of our time. And I love that he's found new purpose. You can see that this is a true. It's about the human spirit. At the end of the day, we all need a sense of purpose and a calling and something that makes us feel connected to the world and to the legacy that we're going to leave. And for Michael, it's Bitcoin. And so I think the best way to describe what he's doing is he's taken a concept which, which does represent sort of digital energy, because bitcoin is backed by energy. It represents energy, which is the thing that no one can create or destroy. It is the thing that, as I say in my book, I use a quote, the currency of the universe is energy. And then he took that to the next step, which was digital property. And that bitcoin secures our fundamental human property rights that we own and control, not just our property, but our time, that we expend our time and our energy, and we earn money for that time and energy, and now we can store it for the future in the form of digital property. And then that turned into capital in terms of like a base layer that we can build a new economy on top of. And think of capital in the same way that you think of any type, like land, for example. So he's described bitcoin as digital Manhattan, like the granite, the foundation underneath. And you need that land first. That's the first step. And then you can build on top of it and you can develop it. And you don't buy digital Manhattan to try to sell it four years later. This is what you keep for generations and generations and you develop it. And so that's. The development part is coming now. And that's in the form of digital credit. He is taking bitcoin as digital capital and pristine collateral, and he's building layers on top of it and products and securities that are backed by the best asset, the best engineered money in the world. And so it has been such a transformation and so enlightening and inspiring to watch him, because he has come to us from the future, the bitcoin standard of 100 years from now. And he's showing us what the world will look like on pristine digital granite, essentially, and what we can build and the amazing abundance that we can create from it. So it's really inspiring to watch him. I highly encourage anyone who has seen his interviews to, to sit down and, and listen.
- [70:30]
Brian Rose
Yeah. And I, I give him three months and he'll come up with some new concepts and then some new paradigms.
- [70:37]
Natalie Brunel
I do want to say. I mean, he's combined digital capital with digital intelligence, which has allowed him to get to that next step of creating digital credit. Because he, he's. He uses the technology around him to the fullest extent that he can. So he uses artificial intelligence again. So many people are afraid of artificial intelligence. People like Michael, these visionary thinkers. They see it as an incredible tool to make themselves better and to create even more abundance for the world. So, you know, I know that sometimes People get so scared by new technologies and bitcoin's one of them. Learn about it, embrace it and see what good you can create, not just for yourself, but for the world around you. And that. And he's an example of that.
- [71:17]
Brian Rose
Yeah. If you actually learn about his whole journey, it's fascinating. And then the kind of different product offerings they had over the years and then the convertible debt and then his latest thing is that digital credit. So for a lot of people, they look at bitcoin and say, okay, it's too volatile. I can't stomach the ups and downs. And so Michael said, okay, what if I strip all that out? And like you said, I'll give you a 10 and a half percent yield. That's even like deferred tax for a one year instrument. And like you said, that's 800 basis points higher than anything else. If you live in Switzerland, it's, you know, 11 percentage points higher. And like what he was saying, maybe he was talking to you or someone else recently and he said that's the greatest product ever created. If I can give you your money back to a high extent. And so he's using bitcoin, but he's stripping out all the risks and he's packaging a product for you that's just a no brainer. And he calls it now digital credit. And he's come up with that, I think in the last year or 18 months.
- [72:14]
Natalie Brunel
Yes.
- [72:15]
Brian Rose
And that's mind boggling. I mean I was talking to some buddies in New York that know who he is and know what bitcoin is. And I was explaining these stress, these instruments, like I don't know, their streak and strife. And they were like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, dude, watch the latest interview with Michael. He's going to tell you what he's doing. Yeah, and it's just mind boggling that he comes up with this. And like you said, he used AI to come up with it because if he asked a tax attorney or a banker, they'd be like, no, no, you can't do that. But he goes back and forth with the AI and is arguing back and forth. But what if we did this? What if we took the preferred stock payout and we put that towards the coupon, then it's not taxable. And he's like, with AI he iterates faster than ever before possible and he comes up with these instruments that have never been created before. I mean, it's wild.
- [73:02]
Natalie Brunel
No, truly. And he recognizes that there are not just levels of Risk, he's created a whole yield curve and he compares it a lot to, for example, refining oil. Like you have the gasoline that you go to the pump that you or I might fill, but then you also have the jet fuel that powers a rocket ship. And so like he's, he's given you an entire yield curve that has different levels of risk and yield. But then on the flip side also he recognizes that the world is really built on credit and most companies, most institutions.
- [73:34]
Brian Rose
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- [74:24]
Natalie Brunel
And most agencies, most endowments out there, they can't invest in spot bitcoin, but they can invest in credit instruments and they can invest in securities or equities. And so he's really filling that void because it doesn't exist. And it doesn't exist kind of tethered to bitcoin, which is the best performing asset that goes up about, if you're conservative, 20 to 30% a year. But realistically it's actually going up about 50 to 60% a year despite the volatility. So he's tied it to the best form of capital that you can. And he's over collateralized all these products, they're like 5 to 8x collateralized. So it's just very innovative. I mean he's a, he's just quite a thinker.
- [75:07]
Brian Rose
Yeah. There'll be two statues built, one for Satoshi, one for Michael in my, you know, that's what's going to happen. Natalie, do you ever watch the show Yellowstone with Kevin Costner? Are you aware of it?
- [75:18]
Natalie Brunel
I haven't seen it. I've heard of it. I'm watching Landman right now, which I think is great, but I haven't seen Yellowstone.
- [75:23]
Brian Rose
Also written by Taylor Sheridan. Landman is, I mean, I love it, love it. But you know, Yellowstone, it's basically the story of a family who's owned a ranch in Wyoming for five or six generations. And if you watch their story over five seasons, they can barely hold on to this thing right it doesn't really make very much money. The cows are like, you know, dying. The local Native American reservation wants the land back. The billionaires from Silicon Valley are coming out and they want to subdivide it. The state wants to tax it. And like, literally they're holding on for dear life just to hold this asset. And whenever I watch that show, I know this is weird, Natalie, I think of Michael Saylor because he talks about bitcoin as digital capital. And he said, you know, I'd say, Natalie, maybe 20 years ago, most people would say one of the best stores of value is probably property, right? You hold it, it supposedly goes up and you look at this family and they're literally dying trying to hold on to this piece of property because, you know, everything is coming at him from every single angle. And Michael talks about that property taxes could go up. Your local officials, you know, want to subdivide it. Your property's decaying. There's all these things that are slowly decaying your property. And even as Michael says, with gold, you got 2% inflation every year. That's enough to strip down the half life of your asset down to like 36 years. And that's all it's good for, whereas bitcoin could be good for a thousand years. And so I look at these people that are holding on for dear life to this ranch and by the way, after six generations, they basically give it back to the Native Americans that gave it to them. So they can't even hold on to it past. And it's this huge billion dollar property. And for me, it's a perfect marketing video for bitcoin because I think it shows everything that Michael's trying to say to people. And people say, oh, is it digital gold? Is it this? Is that. It's like, no, it's long term capital. And that's one of the many concepts that Michael has taught me.
- [77:26]
Natalie Brunel
Gosh, that's so true. I mean, I didn't think about all of the defects of different asset classes, especially real estate, before I learned about bitcoin and before I heard speakers like Michael, because it is true when you think about it. I mean, do you really own your own property? Because when you pay all those property taxes every single year and, and you know, the maintenance costs and, and you could have someone that comes in and changes the rules and changes the regulations and could build something right next to you, you see that it's not the perfect thing that you could own. It's not the perfect place to park your money and eventually you do lose it when you're paying property taxes. You lose the full value over the course of, you know, let's say it's 100 years, but still you've paid the full value just. Just in taxes to, like, rent the house. That's so crazy. And so bitcoin does strip away all of these defects and all these issues. And Michael sometimes puts up this great chart which shows you whether you're investing in assets like real estate or equities or something else. Like all these different things. Competition, liability, regulations, laws, maintenance, taxes. Like, there's so many barriers that bitcoin really doesn't have to deal with because it's in. It's a bank in cyberspace and it's backed by energy. And there aren't. It doesn't. It's not subject to all of these other things and you can take it anywhere in the world with you. So, yeah, it's been really great to learn about that too, because it does make you think of real estate and other assets very differently.
- [79:00]
Brian Rose
Yeah, really well said. And even something like gold, which you think is very simple and pure, you know, it has that 2% inflation. They're discovering more every year. And then the crazy thing with gold is if the price goes up, they're going to find more of it than that. And not to mention all the other problems that are with gold. So, yeah, it's just these powerful narratives. I always learn something from Michael and I find every three months when I listen to him again, he's got some other crazy idea. So, yeah, it's amazing. Natalie, what's next for you? Are you writing the next book right now? Is it going to be more media? What does your next couple years look like?
- [79:38]
Natalie Brunel
I'm not writing another book. This is my passion project. So I hope everyone checks out. Bitcoin is for everyone. My work is just going to continue to grow my content and try to educate as many people as possible. I'll be putting some one on one Bitcoin 101 video content out just to complement the book and the lessons that I've really been able to kind of crystallize through my writing. And that's about it. Just trying to. I'm trying to help get a billion people into bitcoin. That's the goal. A billion bitcoiners. Several billion along the way. And I do see this as the greatest opportunity for the average working person to empower themselves.
- [80:15]
Brian Rose
Amazing. What is the best way for people to buy the book? Audiobook. And then how can they also get in touch with your podcast and everything else.
- [80:24]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah, so the book is available anywhere books are sold. So Amazon retailers, independent bookstores, bookshop.org if you want to buy bulk orders, you can go to bulkbooks.com if you want to order, say 25 or more for organizations or events. Barnes and Noble, so pretty much anywhere. And then you can check out my show on all streaming platforms, whether that's audio or video, like YouTube, X Rumble and then every podcasting platform.
- [80:52]
Brian Rose
And how can people follow you on Xat Brunel? Okay, fantastic.
- [80:59]
Natalie Brunel
Yeah. And please be careful. There are so many impersonators out there. I know. Michael deals with this. Safedine deals with this. Do not send your money to strangers. Do not send your money thinking that you're talking to someone. Make sure to verify because we do have check marks, you know, making sure that these are our verified pages. Do not Trust someone on WhatsApp or Signal or Telegram. Like, don't, don't fall for those scams because so many people have reached out to me saying they have and it breaks my heart. Just, I will never ask you for money and please be careful.
- [81:29]
Brian Rose
Yeah, great point. It's just, it's a terrible feeling inside when you find out that one of your loyal fans has been taking advantage of and you can't control it. But there's tons of fakes out there and sometimes they're really good at it as well. So, yeah, great advice. Double check, triple check, and just don't send them any money is the best thing.
- [81:50]
Natalie Brunel
I will never ask you to send me money, so don't do it.
- [81:53]
Brian Rose
Yeah, really good call. The book is Bitcoin for everyone. Why our financial system is broken. And, and Bitcoin is the solution. A great Christmas present, I would say for sure. My stepmother the other day, she's like, what about this bitcoin? And I was like, why don't you just get some. And so I'm trying to challenge everybody in my house to do that, from my 8 year old to my 80 year old, you know, parents and things like that. So I love that. Thank you for writing this. If anybody is out there who is just a little curious, I'd say the time is now. So get a copy of this book and start your journey and you're going to start to see the world in a different way. Natalie, thanks for everything you do. Thanks for the incredible interviews with these incredible people and yeah, really appreciate the time. Let's do it in London next time.
- [82:38]
Natalie Brunel
Oh, yeah, that would be great. Thank you so, so much. And yes, I think that the time that you can get Bitcoin under $100,000 is going to run away from us very quickly. So take advantage of it, get my book and start your bitcoin journey.
- [82:52]
Brian Rose
Well said. All right, Fantastic stuff. Thank you, Natalie. Appreciate. Thank you everybody. We'll see you next time on London Real. Thank you. Bye. Dubai real estate is exploding and the biggest money is being made where almost nobody is looking in premium luxury transformation projects that have historically delivered 40 to 90% annual returns. That is incredible. For you years these opportunities were locked inside private networks. You never saw them, you never had access until now. I've spent 15 years on Wall street and five years studying Dubai up close. And today for the first time ever, you can invest directly alongside my team. We have just received a brand new project with real potential for outsized returns and early allocations. Always fill fast. Click the link and apply now. Your opportunity starts today.