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- [00:07]
A
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts. All, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean that's part of the bull case for bitcoin.
- [00:32]
B
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
- [00:34]
A
Probably should be. Probably should be.
- [00:36]
B
Matthew Mozinctious, years 2026, year seven of us doing a quarterly monetary base update. Welcome to year seven, sir.
- [00:47]
A
Thank you. Thank you, Marty. It's year eight for me on, on podcasting. No, actually year nine actually.
- [01:00]
B
Yeah, we both started.
- [01:02]
A
Yeah, close to you. So that's year nine, right. Very exciting. Congrats to you. Congrats to you as well. Happy New Year. Hope all is well. It's a crazy world these days, lots to talk about. But I figured we can start out with some nice charts on what's happening in the gold market. Silver market is grabbing people's attention these days. You know the, the gold bugs were, were very angry for seven, eight years as bitcoin was tearing, they were screaming suppression. The crypto bros were taking all of their gains, they said. But now, I don't know, are your bitcoin friends in the States crying or are people managing?
- [01:54]
B
My bitcoin friends are managing because we know how to reinforce each other. Say hey, it's a long term game.
- [02:03]
A
Absolutely.
- [02:06]
B
A little consolidation of price is nothing we haven't seen before. But there are people freaking out. There are people, there's depression in the bitcoin price. Now gold and silver have taken the wind out of the sails. There's no bullish catalysts on the horizon. We are doomed. That's what many people think.
- [02:23]
A
The market manipulators are now coming out of the gold mines and the silver mines. Here's an interesting little bird's eye view. Like to keep it big picture, let people relax. So this is the trailing twelve month mining revenue of the bitcoin network. And a couple things I'll say actually just right off the bat here is this is fairly bullish if you think that the cycle is possibly not over or the details of the four year cycle we can get into. But basically whatever the length of the cycle is, bitcoin generally has multiples higher revenue. Okay, so here's the 2013 top. Nearly had $1 billion in minor revenue okay, this is just taking the trailing 365 days of the issuance and then fees, which are very, very small proportion of that still to this day. Then you go 6, 7, 8x higher here in 2018 on a trailing 12 month basis. Right. Which includes all of 2017 gains, tops out at about $7 billion. There's a slow moving chart. Right. It's a yearly trailing 12. Then we go to 2021. We're at about $17 billion for the Bitcoin mining revenue as total revenue for bitcoin miners. And then we've had this long build now for three years with the ETFS and everything else from, well, let's say two full years, 2024, 2025. And even though, you know, as most people know, November, December was supposed to be the, the four year cycle again, we're still at $17 billion because of the havings. Right? The havings play a big part here. But I would say this is actually fairly bullish because I mean, it's possible that however long the cycle lasts or whatever, that this is sort of topping and we go down. But if you think about the cyclicality of bitcoin in the past, it's possible that this will keep going and we change. Maybe we're closer to the power law, which we can talk about. We didn't have a big boom, so maybe we won't have that big of a bust, to use that word. But anyway, I think that this is actually fairly bullish considering that after some.
- [05:05]
B
Technical difficulties, Matthew's back.
- [05:09]
A
Okay. To the extent that we say that there are cycles and booms and busts with bitcoin, I find it very interesting that this boom which has lasted now, I mean over three years, right? Or over two full years for sure, is, you know, our annual mining revenue, even including the last having or including the last having, is about the same as it was after the 2021 peak. So I would actually say this is fairly bullish for bitcoin. But time will tell, you know, how this cycle plays out. We could talk about that whether, you know, since we didn't have a huge boom, we won't have a big bust. We could talk about that in a second. But anyway, this is bitcoin mining revenue. All right, so it's $17 billion at the moment, trailing 12 months now. Our silver friends are really loving life. I'll show you the price in a second. But let's just look at the silver that comes out of the ground, which is 800 to 900 million ounces a Year, let's put that in dollar terms trailing twelve months. It's always actually competed with bitcoin. Remember a lot of silver, we sort of discount because it's used in industry and bitcoin, if you discount that silver. Bitcoin used to be more valuable than silver quite a long time ago, actually like four years ago. But now it's smaller again. So the silver bugs are loving life because the mining industry as a whole is about double bitcoins, $34 billion at the moment. They got 27 billion back in 2011 when price went to its prior all time high of 56 bucks or whatever it was. All right, now let's look at gold dwarfing bitcoin and silver. All right, I mean this is, this is all time high. It was quite a Christmas for the gold bugs. $400 billion over the course of a year for the gold bugs. I was reading, I just saw, I actually didn't read it and can't be bothered with this stuff. But at high prices, gold mines that were completely unprofitable, at lower prices all of a sudden become profitable or even theoretically profitable. I was seeing a headline that one of the main gold bugs in Canada, Eric Sprott, had some share in some mine that went up by billions in the last couple months and they haven't even started mining. Right. So this is some of what markets do. Of course we have this, you know, some of these irrational expectations in the bitcoin market too. But gold bugs, a loving life for sure. So $400 billion, that's record. And just for people that are maybe listening or not watching the charts last, in the last two years, that's doubled. And even then two, three years ago, for example, February 2022, which is actually four years ago, was $200 billion. And that was an all time high. So massive, massive boon, these prices for the gold and silver markets, all time highs. But then just to see kind of where the oil markets come into this, which are obviously quite an important commodity, just throw this in here. Roughly you're looking at trillions of dollars. Okay, sorry again, little connection issues here. A lot of snow. Just looking at oil for comparison, just to, you know, obviously a main commodity that the whole world needs. No matter what the tree huggers say, you know, $2 trillion, $2 trillion revenue. And this of course can swing wildly on a trailing twelve month basis. Looks like 30 trillion or so has been the record ever per year during the madness that was Covid it went, you know, when we had negative contango and futures in Oil went down trailing this whole month to about a trillion dollars. But anyway we're at about $2 trillion now on some fairly light oil prices, which is not good for Mr. Putin in Russia anyway. So that's sort of a bird's eye view if you look at it right there. You look at the tooltip.2 trillion for oil, 400 billion for gold, which is a massive record. Like nothing normal but a massive record. 34 billion for silver, which again is a massive record. And then 17 billion for Bitcoin. Still a less than 20 year asset class and certainly way less than that as far as being a mainstay, which it is as we know it's not going to come overnight. This is going to, it's going to follow the power curve, network adoption and it's just not going to be easy. But it should be a fun ride to enjoy. And this is sort of how I'm looking at where we are in the big picture of the markets.
- [10:45]
B
That's why I love you. You always bring the data in incredible context. And to build on what you just said, the fact that bitcoin is only 17 years old and already has trailing 12 month mining revenues of 17 billion, half of silver's market cap, which is.
- [10:59]
A
A revenue multi billion. Silver's revenue.
- [11:03]
B
Yeah, silver's revenue, yeah. Been around for thousands of years. I mean it's pretty impressive, you know.
- [11:10]
A
Yeah. Let's take a look at silver price long term. This is where the silver bugs. I'm just curious. I know they're very excited, they're very excited. But you can run these little percentiles as I like to do. It's an exponential asset. I'll just take off everything. But the trend is it has evolved and where we are now. So what you're looking at is the dotted red line is a multiple over the exponential trend plotted as a percentile. So it has never been ever in the modern era, which I'm counting as from 1971, which is obviously when gold started to float. It's never been more than 5x the trend price and it actually hit that in 2011. So in 2011 was 48 bucks. This is a monthly close number. April 2011. The trend itself was $10. So that's 4.8x 5x rounded. That is a record. And we can see as long as we stay at this price or a little bit more this the current price, 112 bucks approximately. It's a possibility we can take that out this month but actually not have four more days and the comparable level is $118. So it's got a close above that. But then I just have to ask you, obviously, markets can go up, they can go down. How many silver mines, gold mines look very attractive right now at these prices, but might not be a few months from now or years from now. And you can just see how there's really only three spikes in the last 55 years, right? When the Hunt brothers tried to corner the market in the early 80s, the 2011 boom, and then now. So, look, I'm happy for them. I'm happy for you. I wish I had more silver to rotate into bitcoin. I'm happy for the silver bugs. But I would advise caution right here if you're sitting on some silver gains.
- [13:24]
B
But, Matthew, the industrial demand is going up exponentially with the AI and energy boom.
- [13:31]
A
Yes, it is. It is. It's a great conductor. Silver's just a fantastic asset. You know, maybe central banks will start buying silver. None of them have any silver at the moment. Maybe they'll start buying. Many possibilities, Marty. Many possibilities.
- [13:50]
B
In all seriousness, though, the demand elasticity or the supply elasticity being driven by demand in silver, how does it compare to gold in bitcoin?
- [14:06]
A
Well, I don't have a good chart to actually completely play that out, but I will say if we just look at price, which again, can certainly get ahead of itself, but we can establish a trend. There's a, you know, there is an exponential trend that's going to fit everything. So here against dollars. All right. This trend is actually. Take a guess, Marty. What do you think? I love when I ask you these questions, right? And I know you do, too. What do you think the slope of this black line is, which is how you should measure your silver gains even in a volatile market. What do you think it is? 50 years. Got this. It's not a great R squared 54%, but you can see that it certainly fits the data. Do you think the slope of that curve is.
- [15:02]
B
Like, what's the annual CAGR?
- [15:04]
A
Yeah.
- [15:08]
B
3.5%.
- [15:10]
A
Excellent. Nicely done. Slightly under that. Just a little over 3% per year. So again, you can make tons of money catching the trend. Trend is always your friend. I'm happy for the silver bugs, but I would again advise caution. And then to get back to your question about. So actually, let's look at dollar first. So let's go back to the power curve. Let's just look at bitcoin in terms of dollars, and then we're going to look at bitcoins in terms of silver ounces and see the wild time. Okay, so as you know, been showing your listeners this for and viewers for many years. I've been tracking this myself since like 2018. Bitcoin generally follows a power curve, which is unique. Most financial assets follow an exponential curve. Straight line on log scale. This is not straight, simply means it's proportional. More general growth that is proportional to itself, not constant growth. Like exponential growth, which is as long as it holds, is probably a good thing. It's about 42% per year at the moment, but that's falling. And so the power curve itself is a little over 125k. It's 127k dollars dollars. All right, for one Bitcoin, obviously, as we know, we're a little bit light on that. That last. Pulling into the model here, I got 88K. No, 80. Zoom in. I got 87.6K. And that is like the 45th percentile. All right, so the median would be the 50th percentile. I mean, you could say it's right on track. Right. Of course, the big question is, what's going to happen at the end of this year? We can talk about that later. If we didn't have a huge boom, maybe we won't have a huge bust. As I said earlier, we'll see. But at least as of right now, with massive institutional adoption, bitcoin only gaining traction. Much better utility than gold or silver, in our opinion. I'm sure it's still. It's still looking right on track. Okay, that's in dollar terms. Now let's do this power curve in silver ounces. And this is just pretty wild. So this is. Let's just go back. Let's pick a date. Like somewhere end of 2015. End of 2015. Okay. So Bitcoin had never hit it. Only hit 1000 bucks once in 2013. Wouldn't hit it again until the start of 2017. Actually can't remember 2015 price. So probably like 400 bucks here. 500, 350. Whatever it is, we can see it in a second. The bitcoin price in silver ounces is 30. 31. 31 silver ounces to buy one bitcoin back in 20, 2015, not even 10 years ago. Now let's go to the worst days of bitcoin in the last cycle, which were after the SPF debacle. All right, he said he had a bunch of bitcoin, didn't have one. End of 2022, 708 ounces of silver to buy one bitcoin. Any comments just from that statement?
- [18:37]
B
Pretty impressive.
- [18:39]
A
Pretty impressive.
- [18:40]
B
All right.
- [18:40]
A
Pretty impressive. Now, silver's been on a tear as gold, but silver's been on a. On a wild tear. So 700, roughly low 700s, even high 600s, because Bitcoin was doing very bad relative to silver. All right, now, bitcoin's still been doing fine in the last couple years, but silver's been doing better. So what you see is this chart. Bitcoin goes up, but then bitcoin goes back down. We're right about where we were, interestingly, a little bit higher. 785 ounces. But ask yourself, what's happened to the silver market in the last three years versus what's happened to the bitcoin market? I understand silver is a good conductor, be part of data centers. Now we're taking it. We used to say that gold was better because it had no real industrial use. It was more store value. Now I guess it's good that silver has industrial use. But Putting that aside, 785 ounces of silver per bitcoin, and if you look at this on a percentile basis, which is a multiple over under the trend, and the trend is 5,800 ounces, the power trend, which is 96% R squared. We go with the bands. The bands. We're setting new lows for bitcoin in terms of silver. So relative to the trend, so the silver bugs, literally at 807, at 785 ounces for one bitcoin, relative to the trend, this is actually the cheapest it's ever been. So this is the question I would put to you is, you know, for how much longer are silverbugs going to get this deal on bitcoin or are we just going to keep, you know, blowing this chart up?
- [20:32]
B
It's a great question.
- [20:34]
A
It's a rhetoric.
- [20:36]
B
Did you see our friend James Scheck's tweet yesterday?
- [20:40]
A
I didn't, but he's great, obviously. What do you say he sold?
- [20:45]
B
He's. He's been on this show talking about, hey, I diversify into precious metals, Gold, silver, platinum. But he sent a tweet out yesterday. They went to the silver dealer to sell some bullion and he was getting toppy signals. Long line of people waiting to buy, talking about how much they were up from their buys a few weeks ago. So there are some social signals out there that we may be.
- [21:09]
A
I mean, if you got lines at silver shops, yes, I would say that's a very, very much of a toppy signal. I mean you could just look at the old. God I have too many charts. Where did I just put it? Lost it. You can look at the old dollar price and see that we're literally at the top. Of course look, I mean it can double from here. You know you can go from 5x the trend to 10x but it's just always a question of how sustainable that is going to be for the market down the road. But anyway, to sort of finish the thought, yeah I would say. And this chart looks wild for gold as well by the way, but not as insane as silver. So silver literally every day that sort of it stays at its level and bitcoin says its level or even goes a little bit lower. This is the best trend wise that the price has ever been. Not the best in raw ounces size as we clearly showed. You could go back only less than 10 years ago and it's only 30 ounces of silver per bitcoin. So yeah, I don't see this lasting much longer. But I'm happy for our silverbug friends because I'm sure there's even some overlap with our bitcoin friends for their gains.
- [22:25]
B
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- [24:25]
A
Yeah.
- [24:25]
B
I just had Josh Faron, who runs the Scottsdale Mint in the Wyoming Gold reserve. And so he's in the middle of the physical markets and he had some interesting anecdotes of what he's seen behind the scenes in the physical bullion space for, for gold and silver. It seems like this push towards a multipolar world is forcing the hands of sovereigns like China for gold specifically to buy physical indiscriminately.
- [24:55]
A
Yeah, but I'm not seeing much of a change. I mean, he might. I mean, obviously I'm not in the industry. I just chart the general public data. But, but, you know, if you look at. I'll show you a chart right here. But if you look at the amount of ounces that central banks buy relative to the trend which turned around literally after the gfc, it's like half a percent a year and it's not going up. Yes. China's buying more. Yes. You know, even Poland is buying more. But the old world countries, they're not selling. Of course, you know, Brit, Britain sold, Canada sold the geniuses like 20 years ago. But it's not really changing. So I'll show you what I mean here in a second. So I find that argument also kind of interesting. So here's the big picture, all right? If. If the largest gold holders in the world, which are central banks are going to move the market. You'd think you'd see it in the data. And this goes until September, Right? And this is actually. I need to actually take off euro area because I cut us. I'm taking hold on. It's like this roughly. So it's something like 1.2 billion ounces. Central banks have, and that's steadily increased since 2008. But the rate of growth there is less than a percent a year compounded. So if you ask yourself, less than a percent of the year compounded for central banks buying gold, 42% compounded per year price, which has been the case for the last two plus years, almost three years for the gold and silver markets. Is that justified? We'll see if it's the big one. Meaning fiat issuers, central banks start to see that there might not be a way out and that they need to revalue their currencies in gold. Regardless, it's good if you hold bitcoin, gold or silver because it is true. I remember we interviewed Tyler Jenks, rest in peace, many years ago and he said, you know, it's always possible if the main sovereigns want to revalue like in that sort of once in 100 year event, then if you're holding the physical, it's much better than holding like an ETF where they could rip you off. But if you're holding the actual physical, whatever the revaluation is, you will, you will accrete that full value. So from that side, yeah, it's good to have some gold, good to have some silver. Let me show you a competing chart which would show that there's actually plenty of room left, at least in the case of the United States. And that chart is going to be right here. I show this chart a lot. I know you've seen it before, but this is the old long term view of what the Fed holds versus how much debt the United States has issued. So the peak was nearly 30% back with the major inflation of COVID times. Right. The Fed stopped printing, the US kept borrowing. Now we can talk all the time about this is unsustainable, it's not going to work. And I know that that's a big theme in the newsletter industry, but the fact is the central bank now only holds 16% of the US's debt and that leaves room for the bazooka when the new Fed chair comes in, which Trump. We know what Trump wants to do, right. Especially with the midterms coming, wants to keep interest rates low. Keep people happy, the affordability word. So again, I'm not defending any of this. I'm just saying these are charts to me that show like yes, we know that the past 20 years have been historically sort of insane for central banks. You can see that here, just the goofy asset purchases and the way this line just looks really weird but it's lower relative to where it's been at any time basically in the last 18 years, 17, 18 years. There's room. They have room.
- [29:32]
B
It's pretty impressive they've been able to do that because in 2019 last time we were at these levels, that's when you have the repo spasm.
- [29:40]
A
Yep, exactly. And it had to turn around and probably, you know, we actually saw it did look at how it did turn around. So kind of the nice hidden signal here as you see that the repo spasm happened and then they started to buy more. And that was before all the madness which happened in February, March 2020. So and you can see even here from the last point of data I have, it's like a little bit turning around in December which we knew was going to happen, but still plenty room. And so that's how I see it. I don't necessarily see it as that the big one, the five alarm fire yet, but I think we're going to, I mean in the next 10 years for sure with what bitcoin can do. And I'll show you some more charts with that. Like we're going to see, we're going to see wild levels for bitcoin for central bank balance sheets. It's going to be pretty wild. But I don't see it honestly with gold. You correct me from. I know you've been talking to gold experts and I'm not one but there are no, except for China and even Russia with their horrible genocidal war in Ukraine. They haven't been buying in the last few years. They're completely bankrupt. They have no money. They haven't bought in five years. Poland is buying, I would advise.
- [31:06]
B
What did Poland announced they want to become like a top five holder or something like that.
- [31:12]
A
I don't know if that's what they said but that seems far off at 15 million ounces. But they definitely said they were going to keep buying and there might maybe a top five buyer.
- [31:23]
B
Maybe that was it.
- [31:24]
A
Yeah, right. But I mean like all the other big central banks, they're not doing anything. They have it. Of course we, we don't know if the US actually has it hasn't been audited. Since the Eisenhower administration. But it is there. Theoretically. It's really only. Right. It's really only. Yeah, it's China and, and Poland are the big, the biggest countries that are buying, which is kind of funny. Not even Russia. So yes, that adds to the speculation. But does it, you know, does this much buying of gold from one country mean that gold should be going up 42% per year in less three years? Something tells me this, this might end badly for some people that might be over levering this the situation. It could be the big one. But there's a lot of other data here that shows in the FIAT world they have left themselves some space.
- [32:21]
B
I mean like you were saying earlier, I'm very happy for our silver and gold bugs and I do get some joy when I see the tweets. We're going to 150, we're going to 200 for silver. Gold's going to 10,000 immediately. But then I just have PTSD flashbacks to December 2017 when we thought we were going to 100k.
- [32:39]
A
Bitcoin.
- [32:44]
B
Quickly got humbled.
- [32:46]
A
Yeah, and I've talked about this many times with the old stock to flow nonsense. But you know how people say one of the common tropes is that gold, the gold silver ratio at the moment, whatever it is, I don't know, 100x it's less than 100x now because of silver. What's gold silver ratio at the moment? Say it exactly. Is it even 50 which is gold's.
- [33:12]
B
A 5000, silver's at 100.
- [33:14]
A
Right. So. If that number used to be like 100. Right. Used to be 100. So it's already compressed. Right. And people say, oh, it needs to compress more to go to say 15x which is the old gold silver ratio. That's way not the right way to look at it because the actual ounces in the ground right now, the mining ratio both in the ground and that come out of the ground is already something like 8x. So actually there's too much silver coming. If, if, if 15 to 1. Here's the point. If 15 to 1 is your benchmark of the gold to silver ratio. And so like gold bucks or sorry, like Silverbuck's saying this is, this is going to compress that old ratio for the past 20 years of being, you know, gold being 100 times more valuable as far as price goes now it's only 50, that's going to compress all the way to 15. First of all, it's not going to last. Secondly, the mining ratio right now Is already too aggressive. Beyond that, it's like eight. So there's 56, 57 billion ounces of silver, 7 billion ounces of gold. You do the math. I mean, it's about, you know, 8, 9. Is that so we've already actually gone relative to the old ratio of 15 to 1, if that's your benchmark. The mining ratio is shows it points to too much silver mining. So the point is that all these little ratios people come up with or these ideas that it's going to go, you know, like you're saying 200 bucks, 500 bucks, so the ratio is going to go back to 15 to 1. It doesn't hold up. Number one, over the long term when you look at the statistical multiples that we're talking about here, Nor in the sort of mining world, because the mining world would tell us that actually silver has been overproduced relative to gold for a long time. And you're going to say it's going to be even more produced now because of data centers, whatever, and the price is going to go up. I mean, maybe people are making a lot of wild claims about data centers as it is. We're going to have to see how all this plays out. But I. I have a very hard time seeing gold's going to go back or, sorry, silver is going to go back, Take all of those gains from gold, get back to 15 to 1 and then stay there. That's the point. And then stay there. It's just as you see here. It doesn't work like that.
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B
Then if you think of the incremental market cap increases that we need to get there, where are those trillions going to flow from? Is one of the first questions I would have.
- [36:00]
A
Precisely. You go back to this chart. Yeah, there's probably some gold, silver bugs. Like I said, the sprott article that I saw, I mean, just loving life, making paper billions right now from unprofitable prior unprofitable speculative mining investments. But now at these prices, those ounces theoretically are profitable even though they haven't been mined. There's a lot to play out here. A lot to play out. And the beautiful thing about bitcoin is bitcoin does not have these problems. Right? Because as they say, the cure for high prices is high prices. If you want to buy more. Right. Because price just stays up too long. People come in over speculate, overproduce minds which people think are really, really great all of a sudden aren't when you realize that people don't want to pay these Prices, you know, a few months down the line, price falls after, with all the competition, equilibrium is restored. Bitcoin doesn't have that problem because of the difficulty adjustment. It's actually the less bitcoins as we know that comes out every 10 minutes, every four years. Totally different asset class in my opinion, as we know, everybody knows our opinions as far as the general directionality of bullishness, there's much more upside that you can see from bitcoin than even the wild and silver markets. But I have to admit they're pretty wild right now. Pretty amazing. I know they all had a great Christmas. I'm happy for them. But be careful.
- [37:31]
B
It is fun to watch at the very least. It's incredibly fun to watch.
- [37:35]
A
It is.
- [37:38]
B
And again, really digging into the relative sort of undervaluation of bitcoin right now. We saw it earlier on the bitcoin to silver power trend chart. But just to articulate to people who are fearful out there that they're missing out on all the gold and silver gains. Bitcoin's doing nothing. We're poking it with a stick saying do something and it's not responding. Why should they not be worried?
- [38:11]
A
Because the trend is your friend and you know, just because we're at sort of record levels here of record levels of cheap. If you're a gold holder, if you're a silver holder and you're looking at bitcoin, by the way, I haven't showed gold, here's gold. So gold, interestingly is not as cheap. Remember how with silver we're literally at the bottom, like the cheapest it's ever been. 0.1x gold is not there yet, but it is under the 10th percentile. And I just asked the same question. I mean, how cheap are we going to give gold bugs who've been so angry for the last 15 years, how cheap are we going to give them bitcoin when bitcoin is such a liquid asset, more and more people know about it every day. It's growing from a network effect way faster than the gold or silver markets, which are, even though they're exponential growth, they only grow 1 or 2% a year. Way different, way different with bitcoin in all levels. Bitcoin, whether you're looking at hash rate or price or addresses, it's growing way, way faster from a network effect. You just got to ask yourself, at what point are we going to give gold bugs 17 ounce bitcoin prices when statistically that is 8 percentile event, meaning 92% of the prices relative to the trend in history have been more expensive than that. It's a very. What I really think is very interesting is it is a. You know, the gold and silver markets are kind of a good governor on the bitcoin price and they're, you know, they're showing how stretched we can do this. Right. Because the dollar chart in, in power curve terms looks pretty normal. Okay, we're a little bit below that 125,127k power trend. Right. But how cheap are we going to give gold and silver bucks these bitcoin prices for how much longer? That's why I stream every day, almost every day now. And this is the chart that I just keep revisiting every day. Another interesting thing with gold. So it's a 17 ounce, 17 and a half ounce price. Right now the trend is 65, 65 ounces of gold. So we're trading well below trend. All right. Below the 10th percentile which is below 0.3x the trend. If you only went back to that, you know, sad days, SPF days scam, bankman fraud and all the other tradfi or non traffic. What was it called? Defi nonsense of that year. What was the gold price? Sorry, what was the bitcoin price in terms of gold? It was actually still cheaper than now. So this is where silver even looks more wild because it's about the same price. But do I see bitcoin gold going to 10 ounces again? Just have to look at the statistics like anything is possible. Anything is possible. But I see it very, very unlikely that we go back and test these levels again. Even if you look at this, you know, the 0 if percentile that would be 0.1x the trend. That's 8 ounces of gold right now. Could we hit 8 ounces of gold? Well, every day that passes, you know, the power curve looks. Goes up still. It's not like it's broken or anything. It's just, just gets stretched at these levels. I have a hard time. Statistically it would be a very, very rare event for gold bugs to get less than 10 ounces per 1 BTC. That's the question.
- [42:02]
B
I've got a bet out there with the other Matthew in my life, Matthew o'. Dell. He's very bullish on bitcoin this year. I am as well. But looking at these charts to gold and silver to bitcoin, bitcoin to gold, bitcoin to silver ratio. We have a bet out there. He thinks that bitcoin will hit an all time high in gold and silver terms. At one point this year at least I said, listen, I'm bullish on bitcoin. I think the bitcoin price is going to go up. The question is do gold and silver either not rise fast enough or fall to a point where they sort of intersect with the bitcoin price and we hit new bitcoin all time highs priced in these precious metals. Am I crazy for saying I don't think they're going to hit an all time high this year?
- [42:49]
A
No. I mean I would probably be on your side there. So what was his catalyst to make the gold and silver price sort of crash and bitcoin?
- [42:57]
B
I don't think he has, has anything in his mind. He's just super bullish on bitcoin. You know, he's a, he's a, a staunch believer in what we're doing here.
- [43:04]
A
Here's the thing, here's the thing. Even if it goes back to the trend in gold that's already back to the 90th percentile in terms. Okay. You follow me? So if I too many charts here. But look, we're only at, you know, a 20% discount. Well let's say 30%. We're at a 30% discount of the trend right now. Right. In dollar terms. But in, let's just stick with gold. Right? We're getting, we're at a 90% discount. So if we go back to even the Trend which is 6000. Sorry, this is silver, isn't it? If we go back to 65 ounces of gold per 1 bitcoin, that's 3x which would mean, I mean from there just, just multiply it. That's you're in the, you know, $270,000 price range which would put us back in the 90th percentile. That's just how the simple math works. Do I think that's going to happen? I have no idea. But I would say even getting to the gold and silver highs, that would, that's a pretty, that's a pretty wild bet. I mean what is, what did you guys bet?
- [44:31]
B
I gave him 2 to 1 odds. 100,000 sats.
- [44:34]
A
Yeah, I gotta, I gotta be with you on that one. But regardless, even if it goes back to the trend and we don't make new all time highs in gold and silver, it still looks great for bitcoin in dollar terms. You'd be back at this level. Be back at the nine. Yeah. So we'll see. That's another, you know, we didn't really talk about. I sort of danced around the issue. I'm still leaving. I was, I was always kind of a cycle guy. You know, I was really thinking that on my podcast I'd be just enjoying like counting how many days would be above this 9 this last fall. You know, just like I thought we would. It would happen, we would make it there and obviously we didn't. There's all sorts of people theorizing why is it institutional adoption not using the chain as much. All sorts of reasons. Quantum, yes. Quantum risk, of course. Got to remember that one. Nothing to take too light of. Of course there are people working on that. But this is something that I've heard as long as I've been in Bitcoin with the quantum risk. I still think the cyclicality of bitcoin is in play here, but we're gonna have to see. So I, I'm thinking it's, I would, I would still brace yourself for a soft year. Might not be as soft or as bad as, you know, prior cycles every four years, but I would, I would, I would hold on a little bit before calling the cycles completely dead. But that's just me.
- [46:10]
B
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- [49:19]
A
So here is, here is a little sneak peek on. I'm going to get. Some people have been asking all the time when can they get my charts and stuff. And I'm going to have a good app coming out in the next couple of months, a little sneak peek of where I'm getting to. It's a little bit different setup than my current charts. You know, I've been following this monetary based stuff for, you know, eight years. And if I would admit it, if I thought that there was a direct correlation between the money supply and the bitcoin price, I just don't see it. I think the better way to look at the bitcoin price precisely is taking these percentiles around the power curve, which is clearly a great R squared network adoption. It doesn't tell you when they will hit. It just tells you when you reach an extreme. That's an extreme level of risk relative to the trend. So you might want to pay attention if you believe in the trend. So we're hitting that extreme level of risk right now for silver bugs. You might not get an opportunity to buy bitcoin this cheap. Again, relative to the trend. 786 ounces of silver for Bitcoin. 10 years ago it was 30 ounces. Do you really want to keep playing that game? Okay, so back to the point. This is the world's base money. I have it like going way back, even before the Federal Reserve. But let's not focus on that. So let's go from here. And here we have bitcoins. So I have two different things here. I'm showing the, the US right in the light green and the rest of the world in the darker green. This is US dollar equivalent. Although of course you can't really see when some people are pumping or not because there's dollar exchange rates as well. So I mean, when they're printing a lot, but this, you'll generally get the idea. Okay, so it's safe to say in 2013, Bitcoin wasn't on the radar of anybody's, you know, on anybody's radar. But both central, both the United States and the world was printing money. Okay, this is now, this is the world's printing press. What you see here in green. So you see the bitcoin price in 2013 did go up. Okay. But then of course it went down. While it went down, the world kept printing. Notice the Federal Reserve actually stopped about a year later, mid-2014, and then did not print. So now I'm looking at the Federal Reserve, that line, they're not printing at all. And then 2017, the price pops. December, Federal Reserve still hasn't printed money, but worldwide they were printing money. So it actually lined up quite nicely worldwide. And even we're just a few months off the world tapered off a lot in 2018, all the way down. Started following the Fed's lead to taper down the money supply because the Fed was tapering even before this until we had that repo spike which you talked about in September. And then of course we had the big spike which masked all of the problems with massive money printing in 2021. Okay, so here indeed again, Bitcoin's price pumped with a massive amount of money supply. And then the price went down and the money supply also went down. But then here's where the rub is. Bitcoin price has been going back up for the last three years. But what has the global money supply been doing? What is the US money supply been doing? Hasn't been doing anything. So this is again where I just, I caution people to sort of time the markets with this money supply stuff. I think it's very interesting. I think, yes, directionally we're always going to have more money printed from central banks. That's all they know how to do. And bitcoin correspondingly will rise, but timing, that is very difficult. Okay, so this data I have as of September only, this is actually the third quarter update. Marty, I'm going to explain that as well in a second here. It's actually. It's going to become even that. No, no, we didn't. It was second. It's going to become even less. So this is. I'll explain in a second. The reason why this is. It's because of the Federal Reserve itself. So as you see here from the third quarter, from what we have globally and nothing really changed in the Fed for sure and other central banks, Bitcoin price went down as well during here. So I would really caution people to like think that they could time the bitcoin price based on the money supply. A lot of people do us M2, a lot. That has nothing to do with anything. USM2 is just retail deposits that are not, that are not checking accounts, you know, balance demand deposits. But you have M3 money, you have institutional money. There's a lot of different money here. This is just base money, which is analogous to bitcoin, the printing press. And of course there is like a correlation, but it's not just lockstep. I mean, bitcoin screamed in 2017, the Federal Reserve wasn't doing anything and no one was paying attention to the world money supply here except for me. You know, I just started to build it at this time. But you can't just say that. There's a great correlation Especially when you go to this time after the 2021 print. 2020, 2021 print, when they started to lighten off, that bitcoin still went up. So the bottom line is the power curve is going to give you a better guide to where bitcoin should be. But I would just caution about trying to time the markets based on where M2 goes and where bitcoin's price is going to go. Because the money supply could go up. Bitcoin could also go up. Money supply could go down. Bitcoin could also go up. That's what I would say.
- [55:06]
B
Uncorrelated asset.
- [55:08]
A
Depending on, over the long term, they're both going to go up. They're both going to go up. And bitcoin eventually will take over, which as we talked about, when we get to the big one, when we start to revalue into bitcoin, that's going to be great. But that time is not now. And I don't even think it's now for gold. As I showed, with the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet compared to the total US national debt, they don't own as much as they own about half of what they did four years ago. So anyway, that's that point. Now, onto so many things to show you here. Why did it take me so long now to release the Q3 numbers is because I want to start to incorporate broad money into this as well. So broad money has these things like M2, M3, but the federal Reserve, they don't publish broad money anymore. So you have to back into it. You have to look at different exhibits that they publish. And they're so slow now. They've gotten even worse. I don't know if it's like a Trump thing or whatever. Like it's, it's way slow. And to get all the data that I needed for Q3, I had to wait until just like two weeks ago, January. So I actually, you know, people like following my stuff for the money supply. I want to get it even sort of more locked down. I think it'll be even more insightful, actually, if you, if you look further back with sort of a clear, a clear view of what was the total money supply and then maybe see what bitcoin did or what gold did after that. So anyway, that's, that's kind of the main reason why I held off. But over 37 trillion. Yeah, I was going to say, how.
- [56:55]
B
Are you backing into these M2, M3 metrics?
- [56:59]
A
Right. So there are various accounts of the United States, the Federal Reserve still publishes. Those include things that were typically in M3, like the value of repurchase agreements, the value of institutional money market funds and institutional time deposits. But they're all in different ways. Some are monthly, some are quarterly. You have to sort of just sort through it all. And then there, of course there is a caveat here that there is another traditional component of M3, which is the euro dollar, which is offshore dollars, which could be huge on top of that. And I don't have that at all. So the Federal Reserve stopped publishing M3 here in February 2006. And even the number that they published in February 2006 did not match my number. Mine is higher. Theirs is something like 10 billion. This is higher than 10 billion. I should have actually the full title. It's full title here, but it's whatever call it 11 and a half or 12 billion at the time. Now we're over 37. Sorry, 11.5 trillion at the time in 2006, not billion. Now we're at over 37 trillion. And all I'll say about this chart is first of all, again, understand there is an M3 money supply. Even though the Federal Reserve doesn't publish it. Even though all you see are these wild M2 charts which a lot of people don't know they revalued for legal reasons. They're not even comparable with the old ones. You'll see this M1 and M2 chart in 2020 shoot way up. It's not more money printing, it's them just. They're so stupid. I don't know why they don't like make this more clear, but they're just reclassifying certain things that were in M1 before now in M2. It's just. It's a complete mess. So to make everything like backwards compatible, you have to work through it. So I have this for you. This will be available as well when I get my new data engine running. For folks, can you explain to us.
- [59:05]
B
Why bank reserves and ball cash are negative 3 trillion right now?
- [59:10]
A
Yeah, I should just take that off. The reason it's negative is just to show it's part of the money supply. But that's stuff that we can't hold. It's banks, Banks holding. I'll get to it. I should just take that off and look here. Yep, thanks. That's a good point. So the one thing I just want to say about the supply is, yes, it's growing. This is how it looks. There's Euro dollars on top of it. So we have to Think about that. Money market funds, they're kind of like a stable coin. So that's not a huge balance in the, in the crypto world today. Only like, it'll share the yield with you, though.
- [59:47]
B
It'll share the yield with you, though.
- [59:48]
A
They will share the yield. They will share the yield. Caution. Caution. That's all I can say. Why?
- [59:58]
B
Do you. Well, no, I mean, diving in. I mean, it is pretty topical right now. There's a big battle here in the United States about being able to share stablecoin yield between the banks and coinbase and others.
- [60:10]
A
Yeah, I heard Novogratz talking to Scaramucci about that. I mean, obviously Novogratz is a big shitcoiner, but he's also lobbying and pretty in depth in the process. And as he was saying, he said generally it's bipartisan issue and people are going to be on board with it, but at the end of the day, look, it's just another revenue or. Sorry, it's another, it's another product that banks could use. They're worried about like capital flight or whatever from their demand deposits. But if it's a stable coin and they can offer that product, there are plenty of ways to generate loans or capital on top of that. So I don't see it as being a very different thing. If the CBDC was really taking off, that would, that would cause concern, which is why it's not being launched, because then that could be direct capital flight competition with your checking deposit, which banks wouldn't have an opportunity to partake in because it was cbdc, which is why all the socialists wanted to do a cbdc. And this is also why the United States is not doing it. So it's going to grow. It's going to grow for sure. You see all the debt that the United States has, it's stable coins could take part in that. But it's going to be unsustainable at some point. I do think it's going to be an unsustainable system and as Bitcoin. But I think we're going to start, really start to see the effects of that like 10 years from now, 10, 15 years from now. Because bitcoin's going to grow way faster than those asset classes are. Like, even as insane as this chart looks right here, you know, grows less than 10% a year, you know, closer to 7, 8% a year.
- [61:58]
B
Why do you think it's going to be unsustainable?
- [62:00]
A
Stablecoin markets, because they're exponential stablecoins. Take yield. Yield is exponent is a compounding asset. Compounding assets are exponential. Exponential assets are typically unsustainable. It goes back to the power curve, even. Just take the silver price as you saw here, right? As you correctly pointed out, not a great overall trend line. 3% per year, a little bit more 3% per year. When you have an exponential, exponentially growing asset and all financial assets are exponentially growing, all financial assets are exponentially growing, you get a straight line on log scale. I mean, if I don't know what an unsustainable market looks like, other than this chart, it goes to silver. Being $1 in 1971, goes to 42 bucks in 1980. Hunt Brothers trying to corner the market completely fails going to a 20 year bear. Not exactly correlating with gold, but pretty close. Goes down to $5, even $4 in 2001, then goes up to 50 again in April 2011, down again. And then here we are, over a hundred dollars people calling for $200, $500 silver. There's a lot of speculation, there's a lot of talk about revaluing other underlying assets that use this, right? Like silver mines or silver companies. And it's just the nature of compound interest and debt is that you get these booms and busts. But here's the really interesting thing, is that bitcoin does not follow that whether you price it in silver, whether you price it in gold, or you price it in dollars. So bitcoin, this is actually a really good thing. People always wonder about the power curve or they don't sort of exactly understand what it means. It just means that bitcoin will still continue to do things like double according to a formula, but it will just take longer to double, which actually is a good thing. That's how networks scale. So like the 2080 rule is kind of is a part of this. And I've used the example I'm sure on your podcast before is a network. If you just look at networks like nodes and traffic, you would have a power law is something where you have a few large nodes with many connections and then you have many, many small nodes with few connections. That's a power law. That's power law relationship. And that's how bitcoin scales as well. But the wild thing is it does that even in time. It does that with its price. And so I would say bitcoin is a way better bet over the long run because it exhibits this sustainable growth technically. Yeah, exponential curves are faster, they grow faster, but they're also very unsustainable and they tend to be below 10% per year in their booms. Of course, if actual price inflation gets more than 10% a year, gets galloping, then that's a bad thing. And you also see busts happen even quicker there. But it's actually just the nature of the thing. So stocks, gold, bonds, everything, everything that has a compound return stablecoin yield, which is just tying itself to a sovereign yield. It's unsustainable. I mean it's, it can go on for a long time. But, and, and you can get, even after the bust, you can continue the trend. But the, I guess the better word is to say not necessarily always unsustainable, but just extremely volatile. Right, which is ironic, right, because people say bitcoin is volatile. But looking at this 96% r squared power trend line, which I've been tracking since the end of 2018, all right, it is incredible. I mean, you could look at, I can show you a chart where you plot the same power trend with only up to 2016's data and you're only like a couple thousand dollars off what this trend line would show after 10 more years of data. It's madness. It's really wild. And the number, by the way, just to show you, you have to run calculate these things, but basically it's. Every 12 to 13% increase in the life of Bitcoin will double the price. That's what bitcoin currently runs at. So it's about over 6,000 days of Bitcoin right now. So 700 days more, roughly two years price doubles. And as bitcoin gets older, the doubling time will take longer. But that should sound like a more sustainable base for growing things than the other curves that we've been talking about. Does that make sense?
- [67:04]
B
Yes, it does. And I think as you're describing this, obviously we talked about power curve network adoption, comparing it to things like the Internet, but I don't think we've ever actually keyed in on this insight, which is like, it's so incredibly cool that with this network adoption that we're observing within bitcoin and has a price attached to it to express the state of that network adoption. Which is unique in a sense, correct?
- [67:30]
A
I think so. I mean, the Internet, right, people were attaching a lot of valuations to it, usually in an unsustainable way. We saw that with the dot com boom and bust. And yeah, I mean, I think people have probably made that observation, but you know that, that this is the first time in history you can actually own a piece of you know, a network like globally decentralized, where no one had to gatekeep you. And I think it's, it's, it's, it's incredible. I'm, I'm, I mean, like you, man. I mean, I'm more and more bullish every day. Keep, you know, not financial advice. Keep some powder dry. You never know what can happen in the next year. But this trend is an amazing trend, and it's going to work. It works across all currencies. So here's one I wanted to show you. Let's look at Turkey. No, let's start with Iran. I have Iran. Let's look at Bitcoin priced in Iranian real. It's pretty, pretty poignant topic these days. Okay, so the Iranian central bank balance sheet is about 12, quadrillion reals. 12, quadrillion. That is the Iranian. And by the way, that's like from seven months ago. They, you know, not only the fact that they cut off the Internet, but I can never get on the central bank of Iran's website. It's like they probably, you know, they probably mark everyone as a terrorist or whatever. But, you know, I got to use VPNs. But the, you actually can't get on the website at the moment, obviously. But this is a rough number. And so this is Bitcoin's value. And then if we take that off, right, that's the value of their balance sheet. And Bitcoin is just towering over it. And you can do a percentage, run a regression on that percentage, and lo and behold, it's a power curve as well. So Bitcoin will dominate whatever it. This is your quote right here. Bitcoin will dominate whatever you compare it to, and the power curve will dominate. So if it's, you know, the Iranian central bank grows at a very fast exponential rate at very quickly depreciating exponential rate. But if you put the Bitcoin market cap against it, it will turn it into a power curve. So Bitcoin actually dominates the comparison. And look, it's an even better. It's a better, It's a better R squared than the.
- [69:51]
B
I was going to say it's tight.
- [69:52]
A
USD price, way tighter. Yep, yep. You can look at Turkey. All right. This one's kind of fun because Erdogan put in a new central. This is very Trump. Like he put in a new central bank manager governor right here in 2021 who had the good idea of fighting inflation by dropping interest rates. This is the balance sheet of the central bank of Turkey, or really the monetary Base. So they went from 383 billion lira back in 2021. Now they have 4.5 trillion. Bitcoin is worth that much in Turkish lira. And you look at that, It's a nice 96% R square powered curve. Interesting. Like I haven't quite looked at this detailed. It's a little bit behind schedule. Interestingly, somehow the Turkish shell leader is holding a little bit of value here. But I'm not worried about it, it'll pop back up. Sterling Bitcoin. Actually, you can actually see when Bitcoin passes the value of sterling right there. Last year, no, two years ago at this time, roughly, we passed the value of the good old bank of England, the oldest fiat currency still in existence. That is the cross. Put it on log scale, nice power curve. So all of these other things, if you put them on log scale, they look like straight lines. So let's take off. I should put this the. You could draw a curve through that which would be exponential, it'd be a straight line. Bitcoin does not look like that. And it looks like that nice sort of gentle sloping power curve. And it's actually, I would argue, more sustainable in the long run if it takes a little bit longer to get there. So just as an example, we are at 2.5. Well, let me do this with Europe. I have Europe, I think, right here. So here's one where we have yet to cross. So ECB's balance sheet. Notice how this is another thing where you have to always adjust the September levels with current levels. So you see the ecb, just like the Fed is starting to pump just a little bit, just a little bit right from a low back in August, way lower than it was in 2022. Just like the Fed, 6 trillion euros is a monetary base of Europe. Bitcoin of the Eurozone, I should say. Bitcoin in Europe in euro terms is 1.5 trillion. Bitcoin dominates. It turns into a power law. Like most things, a little bit behind schedule. Not like all, all currencies, but like a lot of them, it's a little bit behind schedule at the moment. And here's something to keep in mind. So look at how the curve is 0.38x, right? So we are at 0.2x. I should take that to 2db. But we're roughly 20% of the balance sheet at the moment. The curve is 40%. So we actually should be higher, a little bit behind schedule. But look at how it just sort of nice gradual growth and we get to 100% by the end of the decade. Sounds reasonable, could be faster, who knows. But it just has this nice growth. But notice how the power curve will be way quicker if it's just a much shittier balance sheet. So like with, with Iran, for example, where it's already at, you actually have better to look at this on linear scale. See it, we're at 192 times the central bank of Iran's balance sheet. We're actually ahead of schedule. 165x would be the trend. And you know, by the end of the decade, the trend's going to be 700 times the central bank of Iran's balance sheet. What I'm trying to show you is that you got to look at this thing through different lenses. We always look at it as far as the dollar goes. Like you said, you hit it with a stick, do more. It is doing a lot. You're just not looking at the right lens. In a weak currency. Bitcoin is just destroying it, absolutely dominating. And yeah, with the larger currencies, the growth will be slower, it be slower, but it's still, you know, close to double the sterling balance sheet. And by the end of the decade, it's going to be 10 times the size of sterling. That's how it works.
- [74:36]
B
Yeah, that's what I was going to say is going through this exercise and pulling up all these different power curves in different currencies, different metals really highlights.
- [74:46]
A
The.
- [74:49]
B
Sort of comparative advantages and disadvantages that the different fiat currencies have. The fact that the bitcoin power curve and sterling and Iranian real and Turkish lira is as tight as it is. If you were to just look at the US dollar power curve, you'd be like, oh, what's going on? And funnily enough, it does sort of give a hat tip to Brent Johnson and his dollar milkshake theory a bit sort of being expressed in these bitcoin power curve charts.
- [75:23]
A
Wasn't that Snyder originally?
- [75:26]
B
Campbell Snyder, Jeff Snyder. I always interchange the two.
- [75:29]
A
Okay, gotcha. Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's going to take time, but there's a lot happening behind the scenes. And the fact that it keeps growing like this wonderful sort of network theory, I'd say is a really, really good thing. And like you said, first time we can own, really truly own a network. Here's the interesting one, in my opinion, I wanted to show you sort of, I would take this as an optimistic thing. I know people in the United States, it's pretty polarized right now to say the least from what I see on Twitter, everything's great over here. Yeah, sure, sure. Assuming the United States stays free, and I really hope it does, and I think that it will. We're, you know, it would have been bad. We were really worried over here about Greenland. If you'd taken Greenland, that would have been a problem for, for, for international peace accords. But, you know, it's tenuous time. Don't think for a minute, you know, the trolls in the Russian disinformation farms, the Chinese disinformation farms, don't want to stir dissent in the free world. But here is. This is not the total monetary base a little bit less. Right? Because we got up to actually 30 trillion here. You see, we're at like 27 and a half again, I need a total column, but you can just see it in the axis. To me, this is actually optimistic, right? So Syria, Venezuela, we're going to see. But, you know, it's like dictator bingo going to Moscow or being extradited in one way or another these days. It's very, very good. And Iran is a. Is a wild card. We'll see. I mean, there might still be something happening there with the aircraft carriers moving towards the region, I guess, as we speak, but we'll see. Even. Even with, you know, the old shit, shitty fiat money barometer, the free world has a large share, okay? So as you see here, we got the United States down here, we got all NATO members that are not the United States here got Japan, and then you got a bunch of, as I would say, important countries in Asia, you know, Oceania. We got Australia, Korea, Taiwan, and then, of course, Ukraine, I got to put on there. And then you have, on the other side, you have China, Russia, Iran. So another one I wanted to show you is. Let's look at. That's the same chart, but now this is a percentage. All right? So let's even zoom in, because I don't have the Soviet Union data. So it's. Oops. It's going to be a little bit better to just zoom in. Really. The best that they were looking was just before the GFC for the global financial crisis. And something to keep in mind, even here, Russia was exporting a lot and doing a lot of deals, weaponizing energy, which they've been doing all the time, even in the Soviet Union as a share of their central bank money, it went from 4% even actually 4.8% in 2007. By 2009, they had shrunk to under 2%. And, okay, that might not seem Like a lot, whatever. China's growing during this period. Other people are suffering too. But I think this is kind of an interesting way to look at it, you know, as sort of we go through the wild Twitter headlines or tweets that come up every day and sort of divide us. Like, I am all for a free and democratic world. I think that bitcoin is going to be a part of that. But even here, just look at how small like Iran and Russia are, literally. I mean, I showed you the chart against bitcoin, but monetarily. And by the way, this Iran thing is even way inflated because I'm using official numbers. The other chart I was showing you before was black market, so I got to update that. This Iran is even less. It's under, well under a percent here. Probably like half a percent of this, this total. It's really just China. I'm keeping India off here because they're kind of gray. They could go either way, let's say. But if you just sort of look at the total free world, even after all the madness that happened with COVID and a little bit on a decline now, you know, it's less than. It's less than a third of this makeup. And I hope the US can stay free. Looks pretty wild at the moment. I don't know. You tell me if you think elections are going to happen in the fall or not. But. I generally think the world wants more freedom. We should always support it. There's a lot of people that want to make Americans mad with platforms, by the way, that are completely banned in China and Russia. I mean, if that doesn't make you laugh, that Twitter is banned in Russia and there are like propagandists on, you know, from Russia tweeting like, you know, state run media people. I don't know what will make you laugh, but there's, there's something to be said here. This, even if you're measuring, you know, a sort of deprecated fiat currency unit in this chart, the free world is holding on here amidst all the madness.
- [81:08]
B
Obviously, the United States is the biggest player here. And obviously we both believe and hope that it stays free. I truly believe it will and I know that it should. My bigger wary is the European Union. Like, it doesn't seem like the European Parliament is really on board with freedom in the 21st century. So I'm more worried about the European Parliament. Things up for your continent.
- [81:40]
A
You're reading Russian tweets, my friend.
- [81:43]
B
Oh my gosh. I mean, look what's happening. Like free speech laws and.
- [81:50]
A
If they're like, I think. I think the UK has the worst of that.
- [81:55]
B
Jerry's beginning to pick up there.
- [82:00]
A
Nothing like the UK and even. I mean, whatever. Anybody can chat. GPT it say it's a thousand people were illegally detained. I have heard of anybody. That's actually. I mean, it is insane. The UK law about tweeting, like, hate speech and stuff, that's insane. But say it's, I don't know, a thousand people. The entire nation of Russia is firebombing Ukraine, and Twitter is blocked. What about China? It's blocked. Like, it's not even. It's not even. You can't even access it. So again, I'm not. I don't want to get into a deep rabbit hole of comparing there, but people need to understand that you're. You're being gaslit by three countries. Russia, Iran, and China. Like, why does Khameni even have a. A Twitter account? Is that free speech? I mean, like, they're murdering thousands and thousands of people right now, and he has a Twitter account. Is that free speech? This. It's. It's actually. Information is most weaponized, I would say, in the United States and small European countries, particularly Eastern European countries, who, by the way, have dealt with deportations, the Gulag. We've actually dealt with this shit. We've had it in our history there. We recognize that Russia, China, and Iran are weaponizing social media. I'm not saying. I know the answer. I'm not saying censorship. I'm not saying any of that. I don't even follow the topic, really. It seems like you're following it more. But I can guarantee you that as bad as you might think, you see on some tweet that it is in Europe or something. Look at Russia, look at Iran, look at China. You can't even get on the platform. Yeah.
- [83:44]
B
And I don't think. I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. I would completely agree with you. You'd be naive to think that external forces, Russia and China specifically, are trying to meddle in U.S. politics. And the sort of conversation and the rhetoric that exists, actually recorded with a journalist from Maine yesterday who did a lot of research on the Medicaid fraud abuse in Maine specifically, and before that was really focused on the Chinese national marijuana grow ops that popped up in Maine. And he made a very compelling case that what we're seeing now in the US Particularly as it pertains to the conversations around Somali immigrants and Medicaid fraud, like China had a hand in that. There's some sort of loose connections between the CCP and what's happening in Somalia, I think via the Belt and Road initiative. And there are some, some actors that are associated with each other on the China and Somalia side in Somalia that are actually doing things in the United States too around this Medicaid fraud. So I completely agree.
- [85:05]
A
I think, I mean, the tenant media. You know about the tenant media scandal, right?
- [85:11]
B
T E N E T. Yeah, what was that again?
- [85:13]
A
Yeah, so that was the Russian, the.
- [85:15]
B
Russian government, they're paying influencers, right, Tim? Canadian influencers, right?
- [85:21]
A
Yeah, no, American. Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson. Sure. You know those names, those. They were getting paid like $150,000 an episode by the Russian government. I'll take, I'll.
- [85:37]
B
I'll start pumping the propaganda out to it.
- [85:40]
A
Check your, check your DMS man. Make sure you know where your sponsorship money is coming from. Okay. The tenant media scandal again, should have, it should have a lot more views. So. Yeah, no, I mean, all I'm saying is it's a battle. This is the new frontier.
- [85:59]
B
I'm a big, I'm a big, I'm a big.
- [86:03]
A
Yuri.
- [86:05]
B
Yuri Besmanov. Yeah, I think he wore.
- [86:09]
A
Why don't you explain. Why don't you explain to the listeners exactly who that was, exactly where he came from.
- [86:15]
B
He was an ex Soviet that defected, came to the United States and basically warned us in the 80s through a series of interviews that we have a long term cultural revolution being waged against us, the United States. I'm sure many of you have seen it, but he basically called it out. You have this process of infiltration, normalization, demoralization and takeover. And during the COVID era, many people were convinced that we were in the demoralization phase. But essentially like you have, he was saying the Russians are doing this, but I would, I would add the Chinese into it as well. I think they want to destabilize the United States. And, and that's the weird thing is that you have.
- [87:01]
A
I mean, well, the fact that it even came from there and we couldn't even say anything about it and couldn't say anything about a lab leak or anything. I mean, yeah, it's a disaster. Look, and there's nothing to think that that might be not the worst of it, right? Like, knock on wood. But it is full on information warfare there. But here's the thing. They quickly topple. Like how quick did Assad's buddy topple? Now look, I'm not saying, you know, a lot of people are saying this is like A Berlin Wall movement or whatever. I mean, the guy was, you know, the current president used to be in ISIS or Al Qaeda. So let's not. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. But. But the fact that that government toppled so quickly is fantastic. And there's only a few more left, at least with Major. Major, let's say, clout still on the international arena. And I think the spotlight should still shine, you know, the light should be shown there. Of course, Trump invited them all onto his peace board, so I don't know what you think about that, but the moral clarity might not be the clearest coming from the current admin. So what, we don't. We don't have to go too deep down that rabbit hole.
- [88:10]
B
Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I'm not being paying as close attention to the peace thing.
- [88:19]
A
It.
- [88:19]
B
It seemed like some sort of.
- [88:20]
A
But. But better not. Better not. Yeah. If you don't have a billion dollars, you could be on there for three years. If you do have a billion dollars, no one really knows where it's going. But yeah. Yeah.
- [88:34]
B
And then you have, like, the whole City of London theory as well, so holding a bunch of these different theories.
- [88:39]
A
What's the City of London theory?
- [88:41]
B
Is that we haven't. We never truly broke free from.
- [88:45]
A
Oh, God.
- [88:46]
B
British royal influence on the United States. And there's. There's a theory. It's like all the old families, and they've essentially been controlling the US And Europe by proxy or by extension via financial markets.
- [89:06]
A
Well, their currency has been already.
- [89:10]
B
Again, when I say destroyed by Bitcoin, not the City of London, it's like.
- [89:16]
A
It's a couple.
- [89:17]
B
The way the theory is described, that is like, really the puppet master behind Davos and all that.
- [89:24]
A
Yeah, Well, I mean, look, we should all agree that we want freedom.
- [89:33]
B
Yeah.
- [89:33]
A
I. I live in Europe, I can tell you, living at a place where, you know, you had the deportations, you had the gulags, you had the executions. It's not something you want to flirt with, even repeat. I saw a very good interview with Stephen Kotkin, by the way. It's recent. I could pull it up, whatever. It's like last weekend. And it's very optimistic, very good. I mean, this is the guy who. He's on his third volume of Stalin's Life, Right. So he's a preeminent. One of the preeminent historians today is from the Hoover Institute. Stephen Kotkin. If you don't know him, I highly recommend, you know, people read him, or you can listen to him on YouTube. And his takeaway was actually very, very positive. Like I'm, I'm trying to say here, right? I mean, like, it is bad and there have been in, like, there have been governments that are never going to, let's say, play by the rules. And like, no one should be naive to think that there's some true international law, right? But everybody should want to be free. Like the Baltics, where I live right now, was part of the former Soviet Union. We hate the fact that we even have to say that, like, we were never Soviet. We had free, free societies, free countries before 1940, when we were occupied three times, twice by the Soviets, once by the Nazis. And that is just not going to change. I mean, we, we, we absolutely appreciate freedom. And a free sort of united Europe is way better than anything that anybody from, you know, Putin is Russia, Communist China could ever throw at us. And we're never, you know, we're never growing back, going back. So that, just use that as an example is like a lot of people have different definitions of what, you know, freedom might mean or something, but every country should be able to choose their alliances. Every country should be able to, to be free. And I think, you know, the US as big as it is, you get very polarized, maybe views of, of the world there. You know, we've talked about a lot of this stuff, but I know that we all agree on freedom. I would just say be very careful. The, the, the disinformation is massive now. I mean, like, it's, it's. And it's only growing and it's really, you know, okay, maybe it comes from like Indian click farms or Indonesian or Pakistan or something as well. But the big funders, the big funders are China and then Russia, which thank God has no money anymore and is being exhausted. I mean, Russia, three in five Russians only have a toilet. Two in five Russians don't even have a toilet. That is how bad that system still is from being so behind, from 100 years of communism, like any way we want to describe it. Like, that is where. That is where they are. And they're, they're never going to play by our rules. Whatever. That's. They've shown that as a fact, right? By, they've, they've murdered people with polonium in Britain, in London, city of London, back to, back to the London theory. So there are places on this world will never play by our rules. Whatever. That's fine. We all agree invading Iraq was terrible, you know, but not everything that the United States does is. I would say bad. So I would just keep that in mind when you look at, like, this chart where you say, okay, it's rough. Bitcoin's great. It's a great escape hatch. It's going to be a great escape hatch, but losing. Anyway, back to the Stephen Kotkin interview. His was also very optimistic. And he's like, even with what you might see as a lot of the provocation, a lot of bad stuff. I know the left is. Their hair is on fire. And it's been some tragedies with these protests, but you still don't see in the United States, you don't see a Gulag system. You don't even see a concentration camp system like we had with the Japanese. Of course, we do have growing internment, you know, sort of facilities. However, you wanted to say that with what ICE is doing. But, you know, people generally want, just want controlled immigration. So I understand all that, but it's not, it's not as. It's definitely not like, you know, 1930s Europe. But if it would, you know, there was an event in Nazi Germany in the early 1930s. It's called Night of the Long Knives, where they basically, the new people in power, they just went completely rogue. They killed a bunch of former politicians. This was early. Like, this is 1932 or 1933. I mentioned a lot on my show because, you know, I don't think the US Is going to lose democracy, lose freedom. You know, you, you can't, you can't go unchecked. You can't just like, you can't have, like, people murdered on the street and then say, you know, these people are domestic terrorists or whatever, and then keep going and keep going and keep going, and then all of a sudden you're having extra, extra judicial killings sort of en masse. But like I said, we're nowhere near that actually. And I think all of that is, is reasons to have some hope.
- [94:27]
B
That's where I feel like the influence, whether it's China, Russia, combination of the two, is really shining in. Because, I mean, for the immigration stuff specifically, like Tom Homan, who's the head of border patrol. In 2012, Obama gave him a medal for deporting twice as many people as he did in 2025 for some reason or another, even though an insane amount of fraud has been unearthed.
- [94:56]
A
And, well, he also took $50,000 in a paper bag to, to hire supposed border agents and the Trump administration.
- [95:05]
B
But separate from that, like, it's very.
- [95:09]
A
Clear, I agree with you. And Obama deported even more.
- [95:14]
B
The system is being exploited by, quote, unquote, asylum seekers to the tune of half a trillion dollars a year.
- [95:23]
A
Yeah.
- [95:24]
B
And, like, I've said this multiple times. Like, I wish we weren't in. In this situation. Like, we wouldn't be in this situation if Biden hadn't completely opened up the border and literally, literally held up barbed wire fences so that people could flood into the country. And then, like, the. Like, these people are. ICE is going to deport illegal criminal immigrants. Like, they're still, like, they're still in, like, the criminal level of this deportation phase. And you have these. You have these groups that I think stem from the Weather Underground and that Marxist influence that existed in the 60s that Yuri Besmanov warn us about, really creating chaos, like going there blowing whistles and trying to physically stop federal agents from deporting criminal illegal aliens, and you basically incite a confrontation, then, yes, it's terrible. I've said this multiple times. I wish nobody died. But, like, again, if you're just, like, observing the. The layout of the situation, like, they're inciting every action and they're creating chaos and they're blowing whistles and all that. And a lot of these people aren't even from Minneapolis. They're sort of. And I think there's a lot. A lot of evidence coming to the surface that these people are coordinated by, like, sort of Marxist groups that want to sow this chaos and paint a media narrative that Trump is a fascist, the ISIS Gestapo. And to me, just literally looking at the facts and look at what's happening, it's like this. When I think about Yuri Besmanov having an influence on how I view America in the 21st century. Like, I look at that and like, oh, so what Yuri warned us about.
- [97:25]
A
Yeah, I think that there's both. You know, it's going to come from the left, it's going to come from the right. People just need to, you know, be cautious. And obviously, the situations where these people did die, I mean, it's tragic, but obviously, if you, you know, get caught up in there, there could be situations where they become out of control. And they did. But, you know, again, I don't want to sort of go down that rabbit hole too much. But the point is, there's a lot. There's just a lot. So much that's getting spewed from. From China and Russia. And look, Russia is weak, man. I mean, two and five. Two in five Russians don't have a toilet. They're freezing through the winter. They think that if they can Just make Ukrainians lives miserable by bombing all of their energy infrastructure, which they're doing. And it's getting very, very bad right now in Ukraine. Like you probably haven't seen it because it's not on your feed, but it's getting very, very bad. Do they think that Ukrainians are going to say, oh well, Russians lives are such shit under their autocratic 25 year dictator that yes, we're actually going to go back to this old sort of shitty oligarchy run by Putin. That's going to be a good thing. That's a strategy. That is the Russian strategy is make them as miserable as they possibly can to break them. And that is something that we in Eastern Europe for sure are just never going to stand for. Never. Doesn't matter. Whatever someone says about the UK Internet censorship laws or whatever, I only bring that up not directed as you, but that's just, these are misdirections on what is really, really happening right now. And you know, I mean Iran, what's going on in Iran should be absolutely top of mind for everybody, us politicians alike, absolutely everybody. It's going to be rough, it's going to be rough there. But this is what happens when a regime becomes totally entrenched. And yes, I don't think we're anywhere near that in the United States. So that's again room for optimism. I would say room for optimism, but it's dangerous. It's really, I'd say it's really dangerous. You know Russia, Russia does not in over 12. Well, it's almost going to be 12 years since they first invaded Ukraine. They still do not control a single oblast or these regions in that in the east of Ukraine they don't. Not one. Not one. They control this Crimea which is a, which is one that they invaded. And again, these are talking points for normal, sovereign, free thinking Republicans. Who was president when Putin went in and took a piece of Ukrainian territory. It was Obama who was president when Ukraine was invaded on the full scale. It was Biden. These guys are never going to play by our rules. But when they smell weakness, when they know that they can sow dissent, they go for it. That's what they're doing. They've been going for it. So I mean it's a lot more. Look, I have a lot of sympathy for Americans. I think there's a lot of division in America right now. But I can tell you as far as freedom goes and true autocratic regimes, Eastern Europe is actually more united than ever against that. And hopefully Western Europe will join usually The UK is actually on the right side there. I mean, we just saw what happened in China, right? You saw that the.
- [101:00]
B
They were talking second or third. What were they called? Yeah, they're comparing it to that, right?
- [101:09]
A
Yeah. I wouldn't necessarily do that because that was. I mean, it's not dead yet, but, yeah, they're definitely being smoked out. I mean, Xi is as paranoid as they come in. Autocracy. There's another thing, the Stephen Kotkin interview. I would definitely. When you study dictatorships, you can start to understand it's like there's nothing but paranoia for these guys, for Putin. Putin has, like, four doubles, by the way. If anyone doesn't know, the Putin that met Trump in Alaska was not the real Putin. Sorry to tell. Sorry to burst your bubble there, but, I mean, it's just embarrassing. It's absolutely embarrassing that these autocrats, these oligarchs, can take such collective air out of the west and then you start fighting amongst yourselves. So that's the bigger. For me, that's the bigger picture. And that's why I would again, highlight. This is like, yeah, China is sort of. The energy was a manufacturing powerhouse of the world and something we got to deal with. And we are trying to deal with it. Right? Trump's trying to deal with it, but all the other stuff is like, it's so not important compared to actually losing your freedom. And I mean, these guys, they have not. They got to. They got from Stalingrad to Berlin quicker than they can get through a few villages in Ukraine. Ukraine. Ukrainians are fucking heroes for what they've been doing. And mostly I just see, you know, like, people that. Getting paid by Russians, like this tenant media goons just trying to stir and saying, like, somehow they support Putin. Like Tucker. Tucker supports Putin. I know you've been on Tucker's show.
- [102:46]
B
But, you know, Fox News, 90 second bit telling people how to use Bitcoin.
- [102:52]
A
Wallets, you know, you know how I feel about this. I don't. I don't want to get too into it. That's. That's what I say it is. I would say more than ever, we need to fight for freedom. Besmanov is a great example, by the way. Across. Across the decades, across the cultures, across. You know, that anybody who hasn't seen his YouTube videos, explanations of how they sow dissent, absolutely huge, absolutely important. But that's the best. That's the best export that the Russians have is chaos. And they're gonna. It's there. It's. It's coming more and more. And More if you're not aware to it, like, I would strongly suggest you would tune your antennas. Yeah, yeah.
- [103:31]
B
Again, like I said earlier, you'd be naive to think stuff isn't happening. We're in an information war, an infowar, if you will, sir.
- [103:40]
A
Yeah, yeah, it is to that extent. Yeah. Anyway, I'm more optimistic. The fact that Ukrainians are such heroes holding these guys back in Iran. I really would love for them to be free, but that looks really rough and it looks scary. We're gonna see how the US Chooses to deal with it. But, you know, I don't know.
- [104:04]
B
I think, I mean, to your point, I think put aside Trump and Putin's relationship, which I think we would both acknowledge is a bit special and a bit weird to an extent. Like, I think this. The national security strategy that we laid out last year was really like, hey, China and Russia are coming in our backyard and they're trying to influence neighboring countries.
- [104:30]
A
They didn't say that about Russia. They didn't say that about Russia. They've mentioned Russia, like, just a few times and more. Talked about Europe, how, you know, this is a Russian line, by the way. It's like, Europe is like gay rep. They call it gay Europe or something. Like, it's all trannies. It's all trannies and, like, just madness and it's just true. Yeah, that's a terrible one. That's a Russian. That's what the Russians say. But look, you know how many times Greenland was mentioned in that. That national security memorandum?
- [104:59]
B
Quite a few.
- [105:00]
A
ZERO. Zero times. Zero times. They published it in, like, November, December. Zero times. And then Trump goes on this tirade that he's going to take over Greenland. That would have been disastrous. That would have been disastrous for the US by the way. I mean, forget coming to Italy for holidays. Like, there would have been. You would have had. You know, I know Americans who hate NATO thought like, oh, they got to go to twofer. Like, got out in NATO and got Greenland. But they don't even speak English in Greenland. You know that, right? Like, it's not. It's not. I mean, it is true. The United States does not have a official language. That's true. But that, that, that would have been such a disaster for the free world to have that wedge. And China and Russia would have been absolutely loving it. And I'm very glad that he taco there. I wasn't sure he would, but at least for now, he tacoed.
- [105:50]
B
Well, I mean, that's. This is Trump's art of the deal, right? He's gonna anchor to some extreme, like, we're gonna take Greenland. I'm just like, okay, everybody cool down.
- [106:01]
A
Yeah.
- [106:01]
B
At least for my operation. Well, it was Venezuela, I think, another, like, Venezuela. Like the fact that who knows what the deal with Maduro was to extract him from there.
- [106:11]
A
Yeah, No, I think. I think taco is definitely. Taco is the mo. Right. So it's like bomb Iran easy. Actually go in and make a round free. That might be a taco. I'm not sure that. I'm not saying that for sure. We might see still what's going to happen there, but same thing, like, take a Maduro easy. Okay. I know it's not purely easy, but actually make Venezuela free. Sounds like a taco, but I thought that Greenland was on the table. I mean, like, they. They are. They. What's the word? They mobilized. Was it 101st? Our only Arctic Brigade out in Alaska. They told him to go to Minnesota, but it wasn't until his little Davos Globalist speech where he said he was not going to use force, that it was at least clear. But it's sad. I mean, there's a lot of. There's like a kernel of everything that Trump goes for that I totally agree with. Right. It's like we've been saying in eastern Europe for 30 years, you need to take Russia seriously for 30 years. And when Trump got up in front of the Germans, remember, the Germans were laughing at him in the UN in like, 2017 or something, and he was saying, you got to stop buying Russian gas. Very true, very true. You know, no argument for me. But then he just goes a little bit crazy with the taco negotiations. So we're going to. We're going to see. And the Putin bromance is very strange, like you said. Yeah.
- [107:34]
B
Maybe that's like a taco tactic, though. It's like keep your friends close but your enemies closer type thing.
- [107:40]
A
Maybe, maybe. I mean, it's been about five times now where we said, you know, I'm going to give Putin a month. I got a list of all the times where he said, I would give Putin a month, and we're really going to go hard on him. The only. The only way to end that is. Is for the US to go hard. It's very easy to sanction, I mean, the shadow fleet, all this stuff. Anyway, I don't want to. I don't want to go on too long. We've had a lot. A big show here. But if people are interested in that stuff, you can check my. You know, I stream out and I talk more about that stuff and sort of macro issues like this because we have different views in, let's just say, in Eastern Europe compared to, say, whatever you might be seeing about freedom being lost in, I don't know, in the UK or something.
- [108:19]
B
And as you know, I'm highly appreciative of your perspective in Eastern Europe. In the Baltics. No, I love the Baltics, having been to Latvia four times now. Beautiful part of the world.
- [108:32]
A
Yeah, you are always welcome to Honey Badger. Everybody listening. And if you, you know, want to challenge my views on this, coming from what's likely an American side, again, I'm American and European, so I feel like I can, I can, you know, be a little bit jiu jitsu on this, but I'm happy to buy you a beer and we can talk more about it. So please come over.
- [108:54]
B
I can't wait to have a beer with you in person again. It's been, it's been too long, sir.
- [108:59]
A
Likewise, my friend.
- [109:02]
B
Bitcoin's cheap compared to gold and silver. You heard it here first.
- [109:05]
A
This is as cheap as it's ever going to get for silver. Keep that in mind.
- [109:10]
B
Peace, love, freaks. Okay, thank you for listening to this episode of tftc. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way. Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes a day early and ad free, make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app. You can go to Fountain FM to find that $5 a month get you every episode a day early ad free helps. The show gives you incredible value, so please consider subscribing via Fountain as well. Thank you for your time and until next time.