Clarity is Here & the Real Asset Supercycle Can Begin

Summary

Onramp Bitcoin Media — The Last Trade

Episode Title: Clarity is Here & the Real Asset Supercycle Can Begin
Date: July 23, 2026
Hosts: Jackson, Michael, Brian

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the intersecting worlds of Bitcoin, macroeconomics, and geopolitics during a critical inflection point in U.S. crypto policy. The primary focus is the imminent Senate vote on the Clarity Act—a sweeping piece of crypto market structure legislation and its ramifications for markets, the digital asset ecosystem, and the broader global race for financial and tech supremacy. The hosts also discuss market sentiment, structural shifts from financial to real assets, the impact of geopolitics on markets, the growing AI arms race, and the emerging "real asset supercycle."

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

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1. The Clarity Act — Make-or-Break for U.S. Crypto Regulation

Timestamps: [00:07], [02:11]-[10:41]

• Legislative Urgency:
  • The Clarity Act could define—or derail—the U.S. digital asset market for years if not passed smoothly in the coming weeks.
• Political Dynamics:
  • Sharp divides between Republicans and Democrats, with ethics provisions (such as banning officials from launching tokens in office) emerging as critical sticking points.
• Implications for Bitcoin:
  • Michael starkly warns:

    "Clarity act could potentially leave us. If it doesn't pass in this weird 12 months of choppiness, bitcoin might be dead." [00:18]

• Global Ramifications:
  • Other global powers (EU, UK, Japan, Russia) are forging ahead with digital asset regulation while the U.S. risks being left behind if it stalls due to political infighting.

Memorable Quote:

"It would be a huge own goal, not just for the Trump administration, but just for the country, if [political vendettas] get in the way of ... some standard rules of the road..."
— Brian [09:07]

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2. Sentiment, Community, and the State of Bitcoin

Timestamps: [10:41]-[13:00]

• Choppy Market Ahead:
  • Community sentiment is low, with price and regulatory uncertainty creating an environment of confusion and fragmentation.
• Identity Crisis:
  • The Bitcoin world is splintered between narratives—“freedom money,” “institutional asset,” etc.—with little common direction.
• Catalyst Unclear:
  • Without legislative progress, the hosts express concern about lacking any near-term bullish catalyst for the asset.

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3. The Macro Backdrop: Rates, Yields, and Geopolitics

Timestamps: [13:00]-[24:31]

• Middle East Developments:
  • Ongoing tensions and closures in key seaways (e.g., Strait of Hormuz) could constrain global oil supply, with implications for inflation and continued rate volatility.
• U.S. Bond Yields:
  • 30-year U.S. Treasury yields are persistently high, with the bond market flashing warning signs not seen since 2007.
• Real vs. Financial Assets:
  • The U.S. financial system’s dependence on growth in financial assets is reaching unprecedented concentration and risk levels.
  • Jackson observes:

    “…the US makes up just 4% of the world's population, 25% of global GDP, but 65% of the world's stock market capitalization.” [26:20]

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4. The Real Asset Supercycle

Timestamps: [26:14]-[35:34]

• Historical Perspective:
  • Citing the In Gold We Trust report, hosts note historical cycles where real assets outperform financial assets over multi-year decades.
• Bitcoin’s Place:
  • If history repeats, Bitcoin stands to benefit spectacularly, given its size relative to gold and equities.
  • Brian challenges complacency:

    “It’s easy to get caught up in a stock market that seemingly always goes up…but there are these cyclical periods where real assets boom in comparison…” [28:58]

• Gold, Bitcoin, and “Event Horizon”:
  • Michael:

    “2020 [was] the event horizon. We can never go back in the box…When you just think about re-inflating the market with more liquidity…it creates more debt and you have to be able to sustain it. That’s where we see this inflation.” [29:59]

• Patience Required:
  • The upward repricing of real assets may be slow and hard to time, and the pain of higher rates is real even if not always visible in financial markets.

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5. The AI Arms Race and Its Economic Implications

Timestamps: [40:02]-[49:57]

• U.S. vs China:
  • Major U.S. AI labs face pressure as Chinese open-source AI models improve rapidly and undercut American proprietary models.
  • Brian summarizes:

    “If basically they’re too fast and loose with the releases and it gets distilled [by Chinese firms], then we see what Microsoft did…the economical decision to insert Kimi, the Chinese model, into their copilot...” [45:17]

• Broader Relevance:
  • AI’s rise mirrors the early days of Bitcoin in terms of being a frontier technology prone to being misunderstood and underappreciated.
  • Massive implications for SaaS and AI company valuations as this competitive tension plays out.

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6. Modern Wealth Inequality, Market Structure, and Consumer Pressures

Timestamps: [35:34]-[55:49]

• K-shaped Recovery:
  • The “top 10%” thrive as financial markets soar, while Main Street and small businesses face relentless struggle.
• No “Mainstream” Breaking Yet:
  • Despite evident economic pain for most, headline numbers from equities and bonds haven't yet shown turmoil many anticipated from sustained high rates.
• Consumer “Ownership” Erodes:
  • On product trends: Apple and Klarna’s new leasing program means future consumers may rent, not own, high-end devices—a striking symbol of the “permanent underclass” trend.
  • Jackson:

    “…the technology was always the one thing that did keep getting better and go down in price; now even that’s going the other way.” [54:27]

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7. Bitcoin, Company Failures, and Lessons from the Bear Market

Timestamps: [51:52]-[55:46]

• Wrench Attacks & Security:
  • Dramatic spike in wrench attacks, with much higher dollar amounts targeted.
• Corporate Bitcoin Treasury Blunders:
  • Example of Satsuma UK: bought large amounts of bitcoin at the top, sold at the bottom, returning pennies to investors—a microcosm of the broader “clown world” misallocation in digital asset markets.
  • Michael critiques:

    “It's kind of shocking ... that these individuals aren't tarred and feathered ... If the person’s never managed the capital that's managing the corporate treasury … this will not end well.” [52:23]

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Notable Quotes

• Michael:

  "Clarity act could potentially leave us. If it doesn't pass in this weird 12 months of choppiness, bitcoin might be dead." [00:18]

• Brian:

  "It would be a huge own goal ... if [political vendettas] get in the way of just putting some standard sort of rules of the road and regulations around this stuff..." [09:07]

• Jackson:

  "...US makes up just 4% of the world's population, 25% of global GDP, but 65% of the world's stock market capitalization." [26:20]

• Brian:

  "That's why I always took issue with the debasement trade narrative ... because it plays out over such a long period of time ..." [28:58]

• Michael:

  "2020 was the event horizon. We can never go back in the box … re-inflating the market with more liquidity … creates more debt and you have to be able to sustain it." [29:59]

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Important Timestamps for Reference

• Clarity Act and Political Gridlock: [00:07]–[10:41]
• Global Policy Competition & Bitcoin’s Prospects: [09:07]–[13:00]
• Macro & Rates Discussion: [13:00]–[24:31]
• Real Asset Supercycle Analysis: [26:14]–[35:34]
• AI and Tech Market Implications: [40:02]–[49:57]
• Societal Impacts & Consumer Trends: [35:34]–[54:29]
• Bear Market Company Failures: [51:52]–[55:46]

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Tone and Style

The conversation is candid, technical, and at times darkly humorous (“clown world” references, sarcasm about policy and company failures). Hosts lean on analogies (frog boiling in water, AI as early Bitcoin), real-world anecdotes, and historical market context to make complex points relatable and actionable for sophisticated financial and Bitcoin audiences.

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Summary Takeaways

• The upcoming Clarity Act vote is a pivotal, possibly existential event for U.S. digital asset markets.
• Political infighting could cede leadership to other countries, putting American innovation and market dominance at risk.
• Financial markets are flashing deep structural risks—high yields, real asset cycles turning, and a “Supercycle” of revaluation for non-paper assets such as Bitcoin and gold.
• AI’s competitive landscape is shifting rapidly, with macroeconomic and equity implications.
• Consumer and corporate behaviors reflect the growing instability and inequality in financialized economies.
• Patience and asset allocation to real, scarce assets (Bitcoin, gold) is urged as a long-term generational opportunity—“the real asset supercycle.”

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For those tracking the intersection of Bitcoin, macro, and technology, this episode is essential listening for the crossroads the U.S. and global finance now face.

Transcript

[Michael]

Here's the funny part. Independent. If it's closed or open, the same thing happens. They print gold Bitcoin Moon and they close.

[Jackson]

They open.

[Michael]

It's the same. It's the net. Net. Now, what isn't is Clarity Act. Clarity act could potentially leave us. If it doesn't pass in this weird 12 months of choppiness, bitcoin might be dead.

[Jackson]

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going

[Michael]

to be left holding the biggest bag

[Jackson]

of Odorous Extreme ever assembled in the

[Brian]

history of that business.

[Jackson]

1974-1987-9297-2000, whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves.

[Brian]

I say when we sell. Hey, I say when we sell.

[Jackson]

It is the last trade. It is. Michael and Brian, gentlemen, what's going on? Thanks for showing up this week. How's the week been going for you guys?

[Michael]

It's going good, but we got to settle. You know, the guys really wanted to talk about Iran and her moves. So in the comments, if you rather us go super deep there and start the show, we will. We're not going to do it today, but if you guys want us to be geopolitical pundits and that gets the clicks, we'll do more research to take time out of building the business to learn about Iran petroleum reserves and opec. And what does it mean for the New World Order to switch how oil production moves across the globe.

[Jackson]

Sounds like kind of a small task. We could pull that off maybe even a half a day.

[Michael]

My point exactly.

[Jackson]

First.

[Brian]

That's first order thinking, Michael. There's. There's downstream impacts to the macro world to bitcoin. Two digital assets.

[Michael]

That's. Here's a kicker. Here's the funny part. Independent. If it's closed or open, the same thing happens. They print gold, Bitcoin Moon and they close.

[Jackson]

They open.

[Michael]

It's the same. It's the net. Net. So what? What? Yeah. Now what isn't is Clarity Act. Clarity act could potentially leave us if it doesn't pass in this weird 12 months of choppiness.

[Brian]

If it doesn't pass, is bitcoin dead? Is that what you're saying?

[Michael]

Bitcoin might be dead.

[Jackson]

All right, so here's the latest news. Michael is really excited. He's a policy expert. We're going to talk about what's going on. Senate ways vote on high stakes crypto legislation next week. So I can do the read in here from Bloomberg. AI get us all up to speed, and then we can react to some of the latest news and give our thoughts as to where we think it's going. So Senate Majority Leader John Thune is planning a vote on President Donald Trump's crypto market structure legislation as soon as next week. The latest Republican draft of the legislation is expected to be released later Wednesday, with Senate Republicans needing at least seven Democrats to overcome procedural hurdles to pass the measurements. An ethics provision has been one of the biggest sticking points in the talks on the Clarity act. With crypto friendly Democrats unwilling to back legislation that puts Trump's Department of Justice in charge of policing crypto ethics. All right, gentlemen, what's the most important thing to cover here? What are your thoughts? Is this going to be moving forward next week, do you think? We're going to hit some roadblocks? Michael, what are you pulling up here? Make it a little bit bigger.

[Michael]

So don't necessarily know who this is, but she's been covering a lot of the progress being made. I think the big thing that everyone was waiting for was the ethics package. And the main points are bans of president, members of Congress, vice president judges and covered officials and their spouses from issuing sponsored digital assets for compensation while in office. Requires covered officials from to either sell crypto holdings or put them in a blind trust. Gives the Department of Justice civil enforcement authority over ethics and requires disclosures of crypto sells over 1k. I think the big one to call out because it sounds like it's a point of contention is Department of Justice. It sounds like because Trump oversees that, they don't necessarily want that in place to govern this policy. It doesn't sound like they have buy in yet. It's going across to them. I'll pause there. Brian has any other thoughts or updates? Because this is all like just happening. This came across, I think this updated bill, bill an hour ago. And then we could talk about kind of, you know, probabilities and then ramifications.

[Brian]

Yeah, it's funny, I mean, these, the past probably week or so, this element around the ethics stuff has moved pretty quickly from what was sort of the, the Democrats who are against this thing. One of their last, like, talking points against the bill, you know, there was all the stablecoin stuff probably, you know, three to six months ago, sort of came to agreement around that. And then it became this, you know, Trump focused ethics thing. And it's just funny to me that the outcome here seems to be this like mostly optics sort of slap on the wrist for what Trump already did. So it's like, okay, presidents can't launch tokens, but it's like, okay, he already did that. He made 600 million from Trump coin, so he can't do it again. Like, I guess so in that sense, like, I think it's a massive whim for the Trump administration. People in the Senate and the House who are supportive of this bill, if they've gotten sort of the people who were against the bill to agree to something like this, because it doesn't seem that drastic. It seems like a pretty reasonable thing. This can't happen going forward. You know, when AOC is president in two years, she can't launch her own Meme Coin. Seems reasonable. But it's just funny to me that, like, this is the thing that was hanging it up and it, it doesn't seem like, you know, it doesn't seem like there's any material concession here outside of like, yeah, I won't do that thing I did already again.

[Jackson]

Yeah, I mean, I, I think, I'm not optimistic on it, guys. I feel like it is kind of a vendetta thing. We obviously know that Trump is an incredibly divisive figure politician. And so in the Bloomberg article I pulled up to start, there's even some reference about some of the more crypto friendly Democrats who may have previously supported the Clarity act are kind of leaning toward not being in favor of it anymore. Even though, Brian, what you mentioned with the Meme Coin and all the money that the Trump family has made has happened so long ago at this point, in the context of how quickly things move, at least more reports of just how much money was made and kind of the scale of the grift have been coming to light more recently, it seems, in the past couple of weeks and months. And so to your point, it does seem it's a lot more topical. And, man, I mean, it's really hard to get. Get people to come over the aisle, whether it's Democrats supporting something that is being favored by Republicans or vice versa. And I feel like rug pulling and making a billion dollars plus on, you know, these, these graphs were probably not the best look, if Trump was actually, and his cabinet were actually serious about pushing forward legislation that was going to be favorable to this industry. So I don't know if they actually had the best intentions to start. You know, all this stuff we heard on the campaign trail back in 2024, all the political donations that they received in favor of bitcoin, digital assets, crypto, I mean, I don't really think it was authentic. And that that's kind of been proven out over the past two years. So I'm not necessarily optimistic. But Michael, you may have some differing thoughts.

[Michael]

Yeah, I mean I know I may get killed here on this pod for this, but it feels like it's pretty rational and obvious. We don't have to say he's insanely competent, but his camp that if he was going to go forward with whatever he did post election in the the grift that they would understand that like there were second or third order effects to that that would hinder any of the plans that they had. And if that's the case, I think it goes back to where I've been saying for the past year that this will get done because there's a bunch of ramifications, geopolitical requirements, demand for treasury proliferation of CBDCs that are labeled as private public market partnerships, that this will get done either way. And he they understands that. And that's how a lot of politics work. And either there's half the eight or half politicking on like what are you if sign off on this, what are you going to get? Post that. So that's how I look at it now that obviously could be wrong and we'll see in the coming weeks. It's going to be interesting if it doesn't come through because there's a lot happening behind the scenes. We keep reporting on when it comes to large multinational firms adopting this stuff. We see different, you know, products coming online. We have natural version of Trump being out there touting that he's needs the US to win in this area of the market. And those all go against what we're seeing behind the scenes globally and then from adoption. So that's kind of where I, where I look at it from the bull case that just gets taken care of, independent of.

[Brian]

Yeah, I think that's, that's valid in the sense that if you zoom out from sort of the ethics stuff, the Trump specific sort of vendetta angles and you look globally like we are in the midst, like America is in the midst of kind of falling behind at least on the regulatory side of the industry. Right. Like mica exists in Europe, the UK has something. Japan is putting forward legislation approving things. Russia's also in the mix doing, doing similar things. So you have all these other countries moving in this direction towards not only just bitcoin but just digital asset rails and pun intended putting clarity around these things so that they can proliferate, so that the incumbent institutions can launch products and infrastructure. And so in that sense, it makes me think that it's more likely than not because it would be a huge own goal, not just for the Trump administration, but just for the country. If we're sort of lackadaisical around getting something in place and a, you know, basically a political vendetta gets in the way of just putting some, some standard sort of rules of the road and regulations around this stuff so that people can go forward with all these plans that have been announced over the past 12 months. So that kind of makes me think it, it, it's more likely than not. But to be honest, I've flip flopped on this like a thousand times over the past three months. So like take that for what it's worth leaning towards. Yes, right now.

[Michael]

Yeah, I mean and I also like, I'm always bullish so whether it's the price action or adoption or this, I'm always going to lean favorably. So that could be some of the bias. But I don't know, it just feels like the market structure and everything that's set up, I have a hard like I can forecast it passing and where we go from here, I have a hard time forecasting what happens if it doesn't passes from a market sentiment. And where we go in the digital asset quasi call it bitcoin world to remain the year, it's probably pretty choppy to down and that and that sentiment, like sentiment truly can get worse. And part of that is because like. And I think, well I mean I guess it could but I don't think it's been ever been worse at least since I've been around. Simply because you had the community side faction which I think a lot of people are feeling because that was one of the big components. We talked about this almost like a year ago with Matt in that when the price dumped you were all in it together and you joked and, and everyone understood what was being built and the opportunity set and there was like eyes on the other side of the bridge of like this world we're in. But we got all of that and, but we have this like split on like what is bitcoin? How does it actually is going to like infuse or permeate through the society. I think we talked about this and I was talking to somebody that's well known in the space over the last week about it was a kind of on us with the whole DAC craze that we never gave. And it makes sense because there's not a full, there's no marketing budget for bitcoin adoption that there's never been a coherent explanation of how do we get to million dollar Bitcoin and what does adoption look like? And that's really where I think dat's found product market fit. Because it is a very nice part of the brain to park that people won't hold bitcoin, it's too volatile. So I'm going to go soak up liquidity from institutional space. And so like you have that sector, you have other people that are looking at freedom money, you have all these different things and there's no like, you know, place to park your, your mind, share that you're all in it. And I think that coupled with price action and then if this thing doesn't get through, I don't necessarily know what's a catalyst for the next couple months or to end the year.

[Jackson]

Yeah, well, I mean, bitcoin is a macro asset. So I think we should talk about what's happening at a macro scale. Even though Michael is vehemently against us talking about what's happening in the Middle East, I think it's worth touching on briefly just because there has been some more recent developments. And then we could talk about, I think, what's more important on the US treasury side, so where 30 year bond yields in particular are sitting at levels not seen since 2007. And we could also take a look at some things relative to where financial asset ownership versus hard asset ownership is. So, Brian, I pulled up a few different links here if you want to kind of run through them or I can kind of set the stage, whatever you prefer, but I know you've been a little bit closer than I have, and however you want, however you think is best to just kind of get through a couple of these topics as it relates to Hormuz.

[Brian]

Yeah, sure. So I will caveat all of this by saying I'm not a geopolitical expert, but I do think that the downstream impacts of what's been going on over the past six months or so are critical. And the most important factor when you think about sort of the macro backdrop, what's happening with interest rates, what's happening with CPI inflation, reported inflation, et cetera. And that has even further downstream impacts on hard assets, the debasement trade. And so while I think a lot of the sort of war gaming back and forth, the stop start nature of this conflict over the past six months is a lot of theater and there's not a lot of signal to be gleaned from it. I think the signal is that, you know, if the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, which it seems like it is. And now there's this other strait that might also be closed. And oil around the world is being constrained right as we need a lot of energy to do all of this AI infrastructure build out that will naturally lead to higher prices across the globe, which will naturally lead to the higher likelihood of interest rate hikes in this country. And so you've seen that bear out in the data. The other piece of data that is borne out is what you referenced, Jackson, in terms of bond yields continuing to creep up. And so I would say I'm not a prognosticator on what is going to happen with this conflict, but I do think it's important to talk about and be aware of in the sense of it is what is driving financial markets like outside of the AI stuff like what is driving where interest rates are going, what is driving reported CPI and what is driving sort of general, whether it's oil prices or the stock market, what is driving financial markets in general is the nature of this conflict and the fact that it is ongoing and the sort of knock on impacts of these constraints that are emanating from the conflict and the closure of these areas. And also now, just even in the past week, the actual destruction of refinery sites, which was sort of rumored as

[Jackson]

like a potential thing that would happen earlier in the conflict and it's happened

[Brian]

now over the past seven days or so. So that's another component and it's, it touches more than just oil, whether it's fertilizer, other resources, commodities, et cetera.

[Jackson]

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[Michael]

So I think a few reasons where it definitely makes sense for us to cover at least what the latest is I think where I've taken less interest in and also I don't want to call it priority but like thinking about the ramifications is we kind of did this six months ago when it started. I think credit to Jackson was like let me just see what's going on here. Because there was a lot of the discussions of downstream effects of oil, other commodities, fertilizer and none of that's transpired. And I think that there's a lot of noise around stop start and that there's just things we don't know, don't understand that this could persist for a while before we see any of those knock on effects. The other aspect of it, and this requires a lot of research but like there's just something else happening as it relates to redrawing of the chessboard from capital markets, specifically gold oil. It was recent, you know, a couple months ago UAE withdrew from OPEC and then I think Iraq is threatening which has a downstream effect of oil prices. There's like what's happening in China with demand. Like they're kind of lowering the amount of oil they required. So you've seen this price where it hasn't necessarily stayed above the 150 and then just demand instruction like we don't necessarily know if the price will go. It's, it's the rational thing to do is price goes up and it probably will. But I do think it, it kind of reminds me of COVID where Covid happened and then you had all this reasons where inflation came and they, they put it on Covid when in reality there was always inflation coming and maybe that was an excuse to print the money. And so this feels like very similar that inflation was always going to come, these things were always going to happen independent of it. One thing just to, to add here, if it's a value we don't have to go through it fully. But I thought like well let's look at you know, what is the full kind of breakdown of if there's anything here you want me to tie in like from the 28th when this started to today. Well then kind of like pulling down oil and where kind of round trip from where we initially started. It's a little bit above now. I thought this was the most interesting when you look at where we are post war with crude being up 27% S&P up 17% bitcoin down 30% and then gold down about 25% just from like a status of like where things are at. But yeah, I think it's important to follow. I just think that like most people on the planet Earth have no idea what, what this means long term or like short to middle term. Long term, I think it doesn't matter if it's closed or not. Like assets are going to go up. But Jackson, what do you got?

[Jackson]

Yeah, I mean I, I just think that not much has changed since when the war started back at the end of February. And then if you were to look at how markets reacted in that first month, oil obviously marched much higher. And then in addition to that, you had a pretty big retracement in broader equity markets as well as tech companies. But then now you have essentially the same risks that were present a quarter ago, but you really haven't seen any reaction in the market. So I think at this point like markets just don't believe that there's, I think markets have discounted the risk that actually exists today just because there's uncertainty and there's no clarity at all as to where this war is going to escalate. De, escalate is it going to turn into actually US troops on the ground? There's some talks of that escalation getting closer and closer. But I think to tie into two of the points you both made, at the end of the day, the thing worth paying attention to, I think the most is, is going back to the bond market. And so I'll just show this real quick. We touched on it briefly, but 30 year yield raises alarm on the longest run above 5% since 2007. So this is on Bloomberg and there's some good reporting here. So for example, the 30 year U.S. treasury bond has traded above or traded beyond 5% for 27 days or about 19% of all sessions, the most since 2007 according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It traded above that level for 50 days that year. So we're about halfway through the year, 27 days almost trading. You know, if we were to play that trend out, we'd be trading above that 5% handle for the same amount of 2007. And if we were to actually think about, well, okay, what's the most important aspect of all this at the end of the day? The U.S. treasury market has ballooned significantly since 2007. I forget what the, the debt was maybe about four and a half trillion compared to where it is today. Call it 39, 40 trillion dollars. And so there's a much greater fiscal reality of like, all right, well, there's less interest in the long end of the curve because we just simply don't know what the credit risk of the US Government is. We don't, we know that we're going to get paid back on a nominal basis, but what does actually that mean for our real payments back in 30 years? And so a lot of the issuance has been scheduled to go shorter term, but still these are just things that need to be worked through. And then there's also in this article somewhere, context, about just the competitiveness of credit from the hyperscalers. And just let's say AI tech companies at this point, they trade similarly as the US Government. And so typically you have pensions, you have these institutional investors that would just buy kind of automatically as part of that mandate. They'd be allocating a certain amount to credit from the U.S. government. And now there's a little bit more of a competitiveness in this credit market because who are you going to trust, actually pay, you know, who, who do you expect to provide a better return on that capital? Is it the US Government now or is it like the fastest growing tech companies that actually grow their earnings year after year? And so this is something worth watching just because at the end of the day, everything is about the financial system. And when you start to see yields like this blow out, it typically means that something is on the horizon. Michael, as you alluded to, there was the air cover of COVID in 2020 and 2021 to inject liquidity to lower rates, et cetera. But it wasn't necessarily because of COVID that all that happened, like it was already brewing. And so there may be some, some air cover to just this conflict, this war, like letting things kind of get a little bit unruly in the bond market before taking some more serious measures.

[Michael]

Yeah, the, the one thing from the previous conversation, and this is just one layer, that's why it's so deep, is like if OPEC gets disbanded and there's this notion of OPEC existing to manage the equilibrium of oil prices and what the production of a sovereign state can do, well, then what does that production look like if somebody just goes all in or wherever they decide? And then similarly with Iran, I think most pundits on this geopolitical conflict see the other side of Iran coming out with some of like sanctions being lifted. And so if they're able to export their oil, what does that look like for oil prices? To your point on the inflation, something I want to like posit to you guys and like this goes into interest rates and bonds is. It feels like for one of the first times that inflation globally from like who people who's reporting it is mixed all over the place. Like in the U.S. you know, it was reported as coming down some places I think in the east as well is inflation coming down. But I think Euro's print was like it was higher than expected. And I thought that was fascinating because you can kind of start to map or pattern recognize. Okay, well they're starting to set up for maybe cuts. But then you see like now different parties presenting the data differently, which I don't know if that relates, but it feels like that ties into what's going to happen with interest rates.

[Brian]

Yeah, I mean I would say it's mostly like it's kind of a psyop and it's kind of like Fed speak stuff because it's like, okay, yeah, we had a softer print but like the rate of inflation slowed down. Like the prices are still going up. And so the way a headline can be written or the way that Trump can talk about it is like, oh yeah, this is a great thing, inflation coming down, when in reality like, you know, for a given trailing 12 month period, the rate at which prices are going up slowed, you know, a little bit. But you're right in that, you know, both of you are right to point out that the real signal to be aware of is the bond market basically calling the bluff and saying, you know, we see all of this uncertainty in the geopolitical sphere, we see all these potential constraints around commodities and all of these input prices. So at some point you guys are going to have to print a boatload of money. And I think Michael, you're right that you could look at it sort of in more of a hindsight perspective of like, is it just the excuse to do what they needed to do anyway over the long term, which is print more money and to base the currency? I think that's a totally fair way to look at it. And I think the estimates of what we've already spent on this war are sort of fragmented and it's hard to pin down a concrete number that you can trust. But I've seen anywhere from 100 to 500 billion already. And then there's that spending package that they're trying to get across for another 1.5 trillion for this war. So I think it's the uncertainty of the stop start nature is like, well, how long does this thing persist? And then basically how big is the Eventual bill that you'll need to print money for. And I think that's part of what the bond market is calling out.

[Jackson]

Yeah, well said, Brian. I don't have much to add there, but if I could pull up another chart here that can tie into this conversation from the Incrementum team. So this is from the In Gold We Trust report. Make it a little bit bigger for everyone. So I'll just read this out real quick and then we can talk about what we're seeing here on the chart. So, 1938, 1971, 1995 and 2020. Each of those years marked a low in the ratio of real assets to financial assets. Each of these first three was followed by a decade in which real things be paper claims, the war economy and reflation, the end of Bretton woods and the inflationary 1970s, and the China Super Cycle. In 2020, the ratio reached its lowest point in a century. This relationship unfolds over decades, not quarters, which is why almost nobody is positioned for it. Look, I mean, this is incredibly true, and I think more people would understand this. I think it also ties back to something we talked about on a different show Yesterday on Signal vs Noise, where you have people like Jamie Dimon who are in these very powerful positions, influential positions, and they're now talking more publicly about. I don't feel comfortable with where equity valuations are nor where bond valuations are. And so I think that is a logical conclusion that you could get to if you were actually able to look at the data for what it was over the period of an entire century and think about the context of what is a financial asset and what is a real asset. And so I also found this to be interesting as well from a wealth of common sense. It's called the cult of equities. And the main data point, I just want to call out here to give more context as to what we can discuss in the context of real assets is where is it exactly? About like 60% of. Let's see here. Okay, the United States makes up just 4% of the world's population, 25% of global GDP, but 65% of the world's stock market capitalization. So it's like there's already a ton of concentration. There's equity markets are just about as concentrated as they can get. And then on the margins, you're starting to have people start to question the credibility and the fiscal realities of the United States government. Naturally. Where does that point people to? It points people back to real assets, gold. It points them to Bitcoin, it points them to real estate, farmland, et cetera. Like things that are not an ia things that are not a paper claim. And when I think in the context of the concentration in equity markets, like people are pretty much all in, as about as all in as you can get at this point. And so I don't know what you guys make of it, but this is something worth paying attention to. And I think exactly right. What the incrementum guys say, since this plays out over such long periods of time, a lot of people just ignore it or they'll catch on like far into, you know, far into the development of this in the fifth, sixth, seventh inning versus being early to it. What do you guys think?

[Brian]

Yeah, that's the signal of it to me. That last part that you mentioned around basically the slow nature of these cycles, the long dated nature of these cycles. And that is the reason that it catches most people off guard. It's easy to get caught up in a stock market that seemingly always goes up. I mean over the very long term it does. But there are these cyclical periods where real assets boom in comparison to financial assets. And so I think this is a great chart from those guys because it's why like, that's why I always took issue with like the debasement trade narrative, like calling it a trade because it plays out over such a long period of time, like multi year, that anybody talking about it on like CNBC as a trade, like most people are thinking like weeks, maybe quarters at the longest. And so it's easy to miss it and think it's oh, it's over because gold, gold retraces a little bit. It's like, no, this is, this is still in the process of playing out and probably will for the next several years.

[Michael]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's all right. And where this just gets precarious. If you look at that 2020 low and you just think about bitcoin, it's effectively like 20x from here. Even at a 50% drawdown, if you go from, you know, 3,000 to 66 or whatever we're at. And so there's just the notion of like I keep going back to 2020 as the we cross the event horizon, we can never go back in the box. We probably couldn't have gone back and fixed the debt situation. But when you just think about re inflating the market with more liquidity and more units and then that naturally creates more debt and you have to be able to sustain it. That's where we see this inflation. And that's where we see this like precarious situation that we pull up here and we refer to Jamie Dimon talking about the multiples on equities. And like gold and bitcoin are really only rational play here long term. But you have to be able to manage that because why there's no perfect way to, you know, put a square circle with a round hole or whatever or square peg in a round hole. Is that this situation? So we've never been here, we've never been here with amount of liquidity, amount of debt, like the stock markets, how do you manage your 401k duration, all these things. And so you look crazy for a while when it goes back into going into gold or bitcoin. But then you naturally see this repricing when the time is right, whether gold doing its, you know, 100% move the past 24 months or BTC from those lows and then, you know, would naturally come back. But I think everyone's expecting when the liquidity or whatever that cycle does the uptrend, we're going to reach higher highs. That that's just effectively what's happening in the background. And at the same time there's a lot of centralization of power control economics taking place. Banks have been consolidating for the past 30 to 50 years. It's increasing post Covid. Think about SMBs, Amazon, how many like local shops are closing. Like this is just what's happening as the money's breaking down. And also where I. It's a, it's a hard thing to manage because to your point Brian, like it happens over slow periods or feel slow because especially in the world we live in today, we're looking at these cycles and we're looking at Micron or whatever and what they're doing. But in reality, in real terms, once you pick the right time cycle, you're just losing money unless you can pick the top 1%. But most people can't do that. And a lot of this I think is understood by very sophisticated individuals and sovereigns. I think that there is a lot of value in keeping the charade going because there's a debt and equity market to your point Jackson, that props up the whole economy. And so you naturally can't have this permeating through it, that this whole system is cooked and you need to hold physical hardened assets.

[Brian]

Yeah, maybe just one other thing, just on this chart while we have it up, like if you look sort of at the tail end there around 2025, the muted sort of downtrend of that. The end of that chart is reflective of a couple things. It's one, financial assets booming and at all time high. So obviously this is the inverse of that. So that it's sort of bottoming there potentially. And then what it also suggests is that like the 100% gold move and bitcoin's moved from its previous lows are basically just the precursor to the actual, the actual pump which is like the resumption of this longer term trend where you have a true real asset cycle. And so those things converge. And so I think you can look at this chart and get pretty constructive on real assets because it basically hasn't even started yet.

[Jackson]

Effectively.

[Michael]

It's a great point because that inverse is what you're talking about financial assets, the equity markets booming and then even with gold taking its it's uptrend still relative and then bitcoin specifically. But then to further that point, if you look at 71 and then 1995, it's probably like 400 to 800 an ounce of gold in 95. I'm just thinking out loud or like off the cuff, it's around there, but right around that 2005 point is when it started to go up to near a thousand and above. And I think it peaked around like I think it was after 08 that it peaked around 1200 and then it kind of like hung around for that decade until post 2020. But the point I mean is like that's the, the coat bullish indicator is how long that lower trend goes is tbd. But on the other side of that is real assets repricing once the market recognizes.

[Jackson]

And two things as well. The other, the other aspect to just be mindful of is that a lot of people in this space have been saying for years now that the system wasn't going to sustain higher interest rates.

[Brian]

Right?

[Jackson]

And so we started to hear that in back in 2022 when the federal Reserve had the fastest rate hike ever. And then now it's four years later and rates are still sustained higher than what most of these commentators and myself included, I thought that rates would have come down by now, but most people thought they were going lower much quicker. But I think that is kind of the broader point of all this is you just need to be patient, you need to stick with your convictions. And really this chart just shows that if we're right about bitcoin, I mean it's going to be incredibly explosive because at the end of the day it's such an incredibly small asset. It's call it a trillion, maybe 1.3 trillion. Today gold's about 30 trillion. U.S. equity markets, I think are about 75 trillion. And they are the majority of the world's equities at this point. And so it's not hard to imagine that Bitcoin could move several multiples higher from here as part of this more secular bull market into the real asset space.

[Michael]

And that's what makes all of this hard to define and talk about because you said two things or a thing that's true and false is like nobody expected we could sustain the interest rates this high, but I think it's relative to the market's history. And maybe things blew up or they had to insert money or lower interest rates. But on the other side of that, by every metric, if you look at consumers, they haven't sustained it. Like, whether you just anecdotally, you look at like there was a small spot in Nashville that was like a mom and pop farm to marketplace that like initially was having some troubles. And then I think it went like chapter 11 and they were trying to reconstruct and then it just went out of business. And like that's just a small anecdote. But think about how many businesses you've seen that you go that have closed up, specifically like restaurants. And that's a byproduct of lower amount of disposable income, people being laid off. Think about how many jobs, how hard the job market is right now, or just the ability of mobility when it comes to interest rates with buying a home. How many people can buy a home right now at 6% interest rate. So I think it broke a lot of things. We just, it's not, not like the full breaking that we would have expected. And you think about private credit funds as another example. We probably do a whole list of how like things have broken with these higher interest rates. It's just not part of the mainstream narrative. And so we do the Fed speak of like it didn't break, but it's actually breaking everything, just not in the way that it was positive or thought of before.

[Jackson]

Yeah, If I could just add two things because you're right on the fact that the broader economy has broken and call it the bottom 50% or maybe even more than that. Like the bottom three quarters of Americans are struggling more than they were in the past 10 years. And there's no denying that. But in my context, I was just trying to explain that when we look at the financial markets, things haven't broke quite yet. We haven't seen the treasury market dislocation, we haven't seen a significant drawdown in equity markets and that's what a lot of people were expecting. But I think you're right, Michael, that what you're speaking to really just shows, I think supports a lot of the things that I've said on the show recently that the equity market and call it the top 10% of this country are effectively the economy. Now, I don't know if it's policy at this point, but policy favors those who have all the wealth in the country. And we know that that's a fiat problem. It's not a problem of Democrats as a, not a problem of Republicans. It's a problem of just broken money. And the reason why things look great on services, if you look at the numbers, if you, you know, if you have a big brokerage account, you'd lock into your account every month and the number keeps going up and you feel incredibly wealthy. And anytime I go out to eat a restaurant, you know, that's filled with people, it's largely older people that I think have a lot of disposable income. But your, your point is. Well heard that a lot of, I know a lot of small businesses in the past five years, especially after Covid and especially during COVID because of the government's mandates, closed and they're just never going to reopen. So it's not to downplay that there hasn't been pain. There's been a lot of pain, but I don't think there was the pain that people expected on those headline numbers in financial markets.

[Michael]

Yeah. And it's only accelerating because if you think about it, it's all relative. If you're a retiree, you have X millions of dollars and you're used to going to X hotel, Y vacation. You go to a hotel room that was four or five stars before, you know, now sits at $1,000 to $2,000 a night. Like that all catches up, whether it's the yacht, the building, like all of that stuff is moving with the liquidity profile. And then to your point, it's naturally K shaped and it's increasing, it's, it's increasing like the whole thing.

[Jackson]

So a lot of you don't even know that you can buy bitcoin on our platform. Onramp indeed offers Bitcoin brokerage. And actually we just launched DCA last week, cost average. So you can set up recurring purchases on the platform. So you can buy bitcoin, set it and forget it. I think this is the Best way to do it Take advantage of this deep bear market. Set up a DCA and you can also if you use code TLT BASICS, get 50% off of all bitcoin purchases through the end of the summer. This is also for all existing clients as well. It's already set up on your account. So Smash Buy, if you're looking to allocate more to bitcoin, now's the time to be doing it in a bare market. You may be kicking yourself a year or two from now and we want you to own more bitcoin. So that is why we halved our fees. So reach out to me if you have any questions. My email is jackson onramp bitcoin.com but 50% off buys 0 fee recurring purchases and we also have a few other offers as well. So use code TLT Basics should we talk about what's happening in the AI space? Got a couple of topics here. I know we have about three weeks underclass.

[Brian]

Never heard of a week.

[Michael]

Never, never heard of it.

[Jackson]

Never heard of the AI. Hey that was my joke yesterday man. You can't steal my jokes on a new show.

[Michael]

I don't even remember that.

[Jackson]

Expose you. This is an interesting one. We don't need to watch the clip, but I don't know, we didn't have enough time to talk about it earlier this week. So I actually want to get your guys thoughts in the context of everything we just talked about, especially with equity markets. The mental model I have right now about what's going on in the Chinese versus the US agentic battle is you essentially have a lot of this IP theft coming out of China and you're able to produce models at scale that are as good or better than the leading frontier models in the us and what we're seeing now is a lot of companies are starting to increase their token consumption with Chinese providers in, you know, rather than US providers. I think it went from about a third of token to about 2/3 in a matter of months. So considerable uptrend in terms of US companies using these platforms. And the analogy I keep coming back to and I want to see if it has any merit with you guys is is this essentially what is playing out with AI and vibe coding as it relates to the SaaS valuations that we've seen. Like a lot of these software companies are down like 30, 40, 50%, maybe even more since the start of the year when these narratives started to really take hold. And do you guys anticipate this is going to have a similar impact on US AI companies and their valuations as they look into public markets in 2027.

[Michael]

So two, two hits. There's a no shortage of ways the AI stuff and we won't cover them all here. One is it dawned on me like we're fortunate to have the bitcoin audience or how this started because I think naturally bitcoin crypto was at the frontier of technology and the edges and it got a lot of the interested smart people and then they moved in to AI. Whether they changed their positions or they leverage these technologies, the notion of it diffusing and going out to majority of people is so far it's like bitcoin. It truly is just like bitcoin and holding your store value in it. Nobody's doing it, people think you're crazy. And so that part of why I'm bringing up is I think when we talk about savings and where the economy is going, people are getting sideswiped increasingly. But it's like the frog boiling water. Same thing with AI like this stuff is there's so much craziness happening and there's nowhere around to witness it. The other side of that, to your point around China, the best explanation I have, and I've shared this a few times and it's not really consensus, but it is what it is, is like that AGI, there's a race for AGI and the sovereigns and the labs specifically

[Jackson]

like X,

[Michael]

anthropic, OpenAI, Groq, whatever, are racing for it and China is probably the only formidable competitor and they're also chasing for it and they need to slow it down. And the way you slow it down is if you can open up these models for other large in enterprise institutions that are paying for those tokens in the west to get access because then it gets harder to raise the capital. That's as far as I've come. It's a thesis but like that's what I think is happening with it. And then you obviously get some of the downstream effects. If western users and just people globally are helping to train those models via your hosting them, or you can still get some of the data via inference to some of these other hosting providers globally. That's the best way I've been able to square the round peg around the notion of what's happening with these models and what's the incentive for China to be open, sourcing and then eventually opening up all the weights.

[Brian]

So yeah, if I can distill or parse what you just said a bit, you're basically saying the reason The US Frontier Labs would want to slow the roll on the latest releases of the best models is because they know the Chinese firms are distilling them open, sourcing them and they basically can't allow that to happen in a short window because then it makes it harder for them to raise to build the next model. If like people are going to open source models and not paying the subscriptions for the Frontier Labs.

[Michael]

Yeah, kills and kills a narrative. And like one last thing to add is the one. I mean there's probably a few edges but one of the biggest edges we have in the west is in the research talent in the concentration in Silicon Valley. The and then my understanding, it's Cursory is the GPUs from the export controls that were inserted with Nvidia to be able to send those to China. Now they have some, but that's what keeps them behind from the training of larger and larger parameters and larger models. And so that's ultimately our lead. But you can't release them for two reasons. One is because if you're able to distill them from China or anybody else, then you can get access to the latest. But then also to your point, this tech is there's actually like business reasons why you also don't want to release them because people don't know how to use them. So they're just like using the token span and they don't understand you have to parse that out. We've never done it but you have the natural and that's why you see all these crazy things with Fable and they're like keeping it in and then the release of these different models.

[Brian]

Yeah, that tracks to me I think from a game theory perspective and what we talked about around sort of the equity markets at least in the US being propped up by the promise of these companies going public, getting profitable, basically being able to warrant or justify all the capex. The obvious end goal is AGI, asi, whatever it is. But to get to the other side of that, they do need to raise more because they do need more compute, they do need more infrastructure, they do need to raise more debt. And if basically they're too fast and loose with the releases and it gets distilled, then we see what Microsoft did the other day where like they just make the economical decision to insert Kimi, the Chinese model into their into copilot instead of, you know, paying their anthropic subscription or their OpenAI subscription. So that makes total sense to me. I'm not really sure how it plays out because how do you. I mean it seems like the Chinese open models are gaining like in terms of that gap. Like what. Whatever that gap is in terms of latest frontier US model that gets released and then it gets distilled and the open version is available. It seems to me that that gap is.

[Michael]

I think that's fair to the layman and I would consider myself that in this sense in the best mental model and I think I've shared it on one of these pods is like the notion of dial up versus broadband. Like when you got the Internet you didn't think it was slow, you just understood it as such. And so when you see the model, and I know we're doing a lot with it, but I don't necessarily know if we're at the very edges of like what they can be done and then ultimately what else they have up their sleeve or set to be released. In an example that I don't know if it's on the list, but it was. That notion of it was Training with Sol OpenAI is recent. And then I think one of their latest models that hasn't been released in like Escape containment of the sandbox and was able to like find a zero day plug into the Internet and go hack hugging face. It's like that, that's like an example of, you know, and this is just like the latest model they were thinking about releasing. It's not like the, the, the most frontier model that we probably, you know, is in some black box somewhere. Yeah. And yeah, there's a lot. I mean I think I talked about it on the pod yesterday. The. What was the podcast name? Jackson you referenced? Like CEO.

[Jackson]

The one that you referenced?

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jackson]

The CEO theory of a CEO.

[Michael]

Yeah. Diary of a CEO. I would encourage anybody that's following or interested to go listen to that because it really explains. And he's not the first person, but explains the order of operations. Why anthropic was super sharp to invest heavily in code A because of the natural use enterprise from a revenue perspective. But then if you're thinking about the order of operations to get to ASI or AGI, you want to build the self replicating version. So if you have the code being able to be done, then you can have additional agents building and you can like work through how you get the research eventually because that's the next bottleneck is research and how you can like try to figure fit more parameters into a smaller model and all the other downstream things you need to do there. And that's why this also in this Guy's explanation why this will also diffuse so much slower until it's like asymmetric and insanely fast. Because the rationale is to get to these levels internally so you have it and then you can do whatever you want with it in the future. This is like the Iran or the, the Hermuz version on my side where like I think it's much bigger than people are letting on. And the, the biggest reason or tell is because a lot of these people that pontificated or prognosticated about this, they put it out years ago what would happen and it's pretty much stayed on the like timelines of expected. And the last thing is generally in any industry you've seen this with like Fairfield semiconductor in the 50s and 60s the people that led in venture capital were the people that were working in the technology industry and they saw the exponentiality in the Moore's Law and then they went into those space and you see this with people that were at Uber, Google and then they go and build. So these people that are talking about it aren't like jack offs that you just pulled off the street. They're literally people that were working on research and they saw this stuff at OpenAI and then they left to go either build businesses or talk about it, which is a huge kind of just like canary in the coal mine of like what's to come in my view.

[Jackson]

Yeah, I mean I don't really have much to add there so any parting thoughts? Michael, I know you have a hard stop so anything else we need to discuss in our remaining two minutes?

[Michael]

Did you have anything big? I mean I can go over if you have something worthwhile. You just don't necessarily bring too much. I didn't know.

[Jackson]

Yeah, go for it.

[Michael]

No, I'm asking if Failure of the week.

[Brian]

I saw a wrench attack report. Yeah. From the block. The, the big data point was I think there's 52 notable cases of wrench attacks this year already year to date. And the, the acceleration was in the size of the attack. So I think the average in 2025 was like 12 or 20 million and now the average of the attack is like over 100 million. So like a 10x in the, the targeted sort of like what, you know who and what is being targeted in terms of the asset value and that's with, with prices going down over the air. So kind of crazy.

[Michael]

Yeah, I think real quick rapid fire. You guys pick which one. There was this report about just what they were going to do in bundling up a lot of this private credit that's out there. The other one that I thought, and this kind of ties into Jackson's deal on the permanent underclass was Klarna and Apple partnering around a leasing program that will let customers lease iPhone so you no longer will own it. You can just borrow it for a little bit. And then something that we've been talking about that would be the bottom of this bear market. And what we naturally have shared is recently it sounded like the board wanted to keep this data line, but the shareholders were like, just give me back my money, please. Satsuma sold the bottom, the remaining bitcoin in the uk.

[Jackson]

I mean this is just an obliteration of capital.

[Brian]

Nature. Nature is healing though.

[Jackson]

It's crazy, right? I mean these companies raised capital to buy bitcoin at the peak of the market. People bought these companies at multiples of what the equity is worth and then they have since gone down 99%, sold the bottom in bitcoin and returned pennies on the dollar back to shareholders. And there's like, this is one of them. There's. There's dozens of these companies.

[Michael]

Yeah. I mean I've said this privately. It's kind of shocking the status of the clown world of that these individuals aren't tarred and feather because any other society, any other time, if you were just destroy this amount of capital, you would be called out without going far here unless we want to. I do think that this is an important part of the show is the reason why we did this show is a for Brown brand awareness. But also because we thought we had unique insights for building the business that we could share and give. You know, as we talk about it. One of these was this exact situation because the team here, as we've worked with different firms across the world, we've Talked with the DAT Co specifically at the peak in 25 and we talked to a lot of their internal execs managing the governance, the movement of that capital and they never sent a bitcoin transaction. And so you can just start to glean like you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that this will not end well if the person's never managed the capital that's managing the corporate treasury and the movement of it. So anyway, that's just giving a little more insights into why we talk about these things is more of just shift sharing with the market. And while we've had a lot of folks that haven't really liked it, we've also had a lot of clients that have said they Stayed away or sold, etc. But anyway, we don't have to go deeper here. Anything on the, the private credit stuff or the Apple leasing program,

[Jackson]

private credit bailouts, nothing happens. I think that tweets said something about riots in the street. Like no one's rioting, they're just going to get bailed out and you're going to pay for it. And then the other piece was, yeah, you can't, you're not going to be able to own anything. I think we talked about it a few weeks ago. But on the consumer side, the technology was always the one thing that tended to go to get better over the years and go down in price or at least not increase at nearly the same rate as everything else in the economy. And so kind of a black pill to see these, you know, the consumer products now going in the opposite direction and rolling out not directly, but through partnerships with these buy now, pay later programs to just finance instead of finance

[Brian]

your burrito, borrow your iPhone.

[Michael]

And this ties into Jackson, like we're able to pull it up, but he had a post around young adults report despite every metric which suggests otherwise. And the gaslighting will continue for a very long time because to your point, Jackson like, yes, there won't be riot, but. But yes, they'll also will buy this stuff because their financial advisors and others will park it there and they just assume it's risk free in the same way people will buy Apple stock even though by every metric inflation is increasing, real returns won't be there. The consumer is getting priced out of buying these things. So while in nominal terms their revenue may increase in real terms, it's not. And that's what we've been talking about with all of these stocks that if you go back and look at their like GDP and their revenue might be increasing, but it's increasing not in real terms for like what they would have actually looked like. If you go back and benchmark it against gold in like 2020 or 2010, I think that's the thing that gets really lost. While people see growth in this stuff, they're not seeing it in the actual version that you should measure it against. And that's why you just go back to like, what are the things you can own and what are the things that have scarcity and then ends up with gold and Bitcoin. You can get back to the basics and buy with onramp using TLT basics. Is that right?

[Jackson]

TlT basics, yeah.

[Brian]

Jackson Real acid super cycle.

[Michael]

Real acid super cycle. Yeah.

[Jackson]

I was gonna confuse. I thought you had to leave, so I was trying to.

[Brian]

I do have to leave.

[Michael]

I do have to leave.

[Jackson]

Okay. You do. I thought we were going for another 50 minutes.

[Michael]

No. Good.

[Jackson]

All right.

[Brian]

Thanks, boys.

[Michael]

Good stuff, guys.

[Brian]

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show Notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that On Ramp Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin. Com Contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private client advisors.