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Yo. Welcome back to another episode of the Jack Mallers Show. I am your host, Jack, and you are listening to another edition of Mail Bag Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, you are no ads and hopefully all signal, but I am not a professional podcast. Are you ready to rumble? Welcome back to my empty closet that is still empty. Haters in disbelief. Without further ado, let's get this show on the road. I'm talking to you all At a bitcoin price of US$76,080. That puts bitcoin's market cap back above 1.5 trillion. At a measly but impressive US$1.52 trillion all time high, it's still 126. 160. However, bitcoin is now within 40%, down from that all time high at 39.7%. Don't look now. Things in your rear view may appear. What is it? Closer than they are. Or for me, not a professional podcaster, objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear. Don't look now. Here come the bulls revving up their feet. Get ready, here comes the bull run. Not actually, though. We'll talk about it. What was the last bitcoin block height since I hit stream? What was the last bitcoin block mined? It was Bitcoin block. 945, 907. 70. It is good to be back talking to you all. What a week it has been. As always, we live in the best timeline. Let's talk about it. April 20, 420. No comment. Today's episode is titled all roads lead to Bitcoin. What do I mean by that? No matter how you slice the next few years, bitcoin's got to go up along with other assets. And I continue to believe bitcoin is going to go up more than other assets because of the properties that it has as a monetary unit. Because it is scarcer, because it is easier to store, because it's easier to move. Because it's more private. For all of those reasons. Chapter one, the 72 hour ceasefire. I have no idea if we're still in a ceasefire or not. It's, it's, it's every hour. Ceasefire. No ceasefire. Iran's backing out. Iran's meeting with Trump on Wednesday. Honestly, like, I'm over it a little bit. A little bit. I go back and forth. Sometimes I'm into it, sometimes I'm not. It's a classic toxic relationship, me and this administration of shooting missiles at people. Okay? It's like a DDoS attack on my, like, dignity and my Intelligence, it really. It's there. It's a denial of service attack on my brain. It's like these guys are like, oh, Jack wants to try and weave in some macro stuff into his bitcoin show. Well, let's just put his brain in a fucking pretzel so that he has no chance to run two companies and also keep up with macro. You'd have to. You'd have to be on red bull cocktails 247 to be keeping up with whatever the hell is going on. I have no idea if this ceasefire is still on. The title of the episode is, you know, Bitcoin is going to win. What did I title it? All roads lead to bitcoin. Bitcoin's going to win. Anyway, as we're kind of figuring out. Someone said, you know, this Jack guy predicts that bitcoin is going to go up every single. Every single year. Like, even. What? Hold on. I keep messing up my. Even a clock is right. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. That's what the guy tweeted at me. He goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Yeah, but that's the luxury of being a bitcoiner. The luxury of being a bitcoiner is all I have to do is stay humble and stack stats, and I outperform the best hedge fund guys in the history of humanity. I don't have to be a genius, I don't have to be a macro expert. All I have to do is stay humble and stack sats, to be quite honest with you. So that's kind of where I'm at with all this macro stuff. I've made this show 10 times today because every single hour there's a new macro update that I need to redo all of my slides. And I'm frankly just a little sick of it. I'm sick of these drama queens. It's not. It's not funny to make light of war. I want you guys to know that I obviously don't want us to be at war and for human lives to be sacrificed for whatever is trying to be achieved here. But, I mean, you guys know me. I try and weave some comedic relief into all of this whole, like, our lives are constantly being debased thing. So let's review it. Iran said that they rejected taking part in the second round of the talks with the US and as we looked at how many ships are actually getting through the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, there weren't many. So going into the weekend, we learned that there was a ceasefire. Trump announced that the strait was open, open. Everything was back to normal. Markets rallied tremendously on Friday only for Iran to say, we don't want to negotiate with you guys anymore. And we heard that ships were being turned around. Trump then sent the U.S. navy and, and set up all sorts of like high weapon military. I'll just read it to you. Today an Iranian flag cargo ship named Tosca, nearly 900ft long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried to get past our naval blockade and it did not go well for them. The US Navy guided missile destroyer USS Spruance intercepted the Tosca in the Gulf of Oman and gave them a fair warning to stop. The Iranian crew refused to listen. So our navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in their engine room. Right now, U.S. marines have custody of the vessel. The Tosca is under U.S. treasury sanctions because of their poor prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship and are seeing what is on board. So Trump said, we're not going to let if we can't get through the Strait of Hormuz. Nobody is getting through the Strait of Hormuz. Why is this relevant? Why did he do this?
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Why?
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Well, it was reported by Bloomberg that Asia was receiving most of the oil shipped via the Strait of Hermuz. This is the breakdown of crude oil and transported through in 2025. And this was, everyone's assumption is that Trump had an issue. He's trying to get at China. And listen, I've said before, people have all sort of speculative theories about what's actually going on. Because remind you, everything that we've been told, we being the people, the common man, as to why we're in this conflict, nothing, none of that is being focused on, none of that is being carried out. It was a first, it was a regime change. As far as I'm concerned, there's been no real regime change. We just added a junior onto the guy's last name that runs the Iranian regime. We were told that we were there to control the straight of Hermouse and take their oil. Again, as far as I'm concerned, we neither control the straight of Hermouse and have taken anybody's oil. Then it was about uranium and that they would stop producing uranium and working towards a nuclear weapon. But the latest report I read is that we were willing to pay $20 billion in cash to buy some of their uranium. So nothing about how they could stop producing it. In fact sounds like they got some good uranium and we want Some. And we'd be a customer to the tune of $20 billion. So one of the theories that hasn't been reported is that this was about trying to put a stranglehold on China and potentially even trying to win the AI race at the margins. And if we can kind of interfere with global supply chains and get a little leg up on AI, because maybe AGI was around the corner or Anthropic's new models are military grade, where we can start cyber hacking everybody. And we tried to stick a fork in the straight of Hormuz to distract everybody. The truth is, I have no idea. Neither do I expect anyone on the Internet to have an idea. None of us are in the Situation Room. None of us truly, truly, truly know what's going on. The best tool that we have, the best vehicle we have to assess the situation. Our financial markets are free markets if we have access to any anymore. And the only one we really all have access to in a reliable way is Bitcoin. All that to say this chart matters. Why is Trump blowing up engine rooms with the US Navy? Well, Asia receives most of the oil shipped via the Strait. And when I say Asia, I predominantly mean China after China, India. And so it is a big deal, the Strait of Hormuz to them, and Trump saying, if I can't get through, then nobody's getting through. If you want to get through, you're going to get your engine room blown the fuck up. So what, what does that mean for everybody else? Well, global supply chains are going to fall apart. So this is no coincidence. This was reported from Reuters. China's export engine stutters as Iran war chills global demand. China's exports in March slowed sharply, missing its forecasts for the first time in a really long time. China also imported the most silver in March that it has in a very long time. So again, global supply chains are totally fucked up. People are bleeding into their reserves. I mean, countries like Australia are screwed. I mean, they relied solely on imports from China. And when China said, we're freezing all of our export market because we have no idea what's going to happen, Australia almost ran out of jet fuel, like immediately. I think they had to build, beg and plead. I don't remember the country. Maybe it was Singapore. They had to beg and plead somebody to sell them jet fuel and oil out of their reserves. And Lord knows how bad they got ripped off in that deal. So global supply chains are screwed, which we'll get back to in a second because I'm candidly confused by markets. The Fact that markets are not volatile, that everything is trading at all time highs. I have my own opinions, which we'll get into in a second. But the macro facts, the geopolitical facts are there are, there's a very, very, very, very high stakes poker game being played, there's no doubt about that. I've been trying to consistently report on it, but the narrative swings and the headline swings and the Ceasefire. No ceasefire. Ceasefire. No ceasefire. I mean it's a humiliation ritual for all of us at this point. I mean it is a DDoS attack on our dignity. And I'm not going to make this show just about flipping and flopping and flipping and flopping headlines at this point. I think the points that I want to make to you guys are as follows. One, the straight of Hormuz remains relatively, if not effectively closed, which has grave implications on the global supply chains. That's just a fact. You cannot print oil. It does not matter how much money you can print how strong your military is. I cannot put printed pieces of paper in my car. I cannot put printed, printed pieces of paper on an airplane. You can't print these things. And so the longer that this goes on and the more global supply chains are choked up, they're going to have real impact and real effects on markets. The other thing that is remains unequivocally true that I need to remind you guys on this conflict is still ongoing. This, this conflict was supposed to be a three hour middle of the night Venezuela trip where we show up, we take what we want to be ours and we leave. It's April 20th. This thing is still going and has no signs of slowing down. Another thing that you guys need to keep top of mind, people are bleeding into their reserves. People are bleeding into, call it their piggy bank. So their capital accounts as well. At the end of the day, the world is loaded up on dollars and dollar based assets. If they need to raise cash to support their people, to finance themselves, to buy oil from other folks, they're going to have to sell dollars and dollar based assets. That's just a fact. So keep that in mind as well. The stock market and the treasury market, they have very natural sellers right now. The longer this crisis goes on, which we'll get into in a second. So those three facts for me remain the same. They haven't changed. I'm not going to get humiliated in DDoS. My brain cannot is I get DDoS attacked by the flip flopping of the headlines because it's becoming quite the joke. So Iran's parliament Speaker, I mean this guy, his Twitter account, he's memeing the out of us constantly. He tweeted Vibe trading digital oil is like Vibe hedging in treasuries during her moves risk off both share one house of cards that works on paper difference oil at least has dated Brent treasuries vibes all the way down. So Iran again to remind you guys, their strategy in my opinion remains abundantly clear. They are not going to try and beat the US via military. What has been their military strategy? Using missiles and drones to just hang around and stay alive while they try and take down the US monetarily. The US is in far too much debt. It is way too levered as a financial system that just the little bit of volatility to its treasury market or a little bit of volatility to its stock market will blow the whole house of cards down. And what is this tweet implying? This tweet is implying your. I'm speaking, I'm paraphrasing this, this gentleman here that I have screenshotted, he's saying your paper games, your paper financial markets are not mapping to the real world. You are trying to paper over things that you can't print and your paper house of cards, which are treasuries will come tumbling down. Okay, that is so again, what's Iran's strategy? Where is the US weak as financial market participants, as bitcoiners who want to build a better system and are highly dubious of the fiat charades that we were born into? What should we be watching? We should be watching the treasuries market, we should be watching the stock market, we should be watching volatility index measures and we should be watching global supply chains and seeing if these things continue to seize up or if they unlock. So anyways, all that to say, so mind you guys, the first like four slides of my presentation today, I'm like, oh wow, Iran like that cease fire again was bullshit. Trump has been a master at manipulating financial markets into getting on risk on risk off, risk on, risk off. Every time he announces something that's favorable to markets, we realize it's not tr. The strait is closed. Iran is saying that he's a paper puppeteer. And then a few hours before I stream to you guys, this headline hits the terminal. US Iran talks are planned for Wednesday in Pakistan. I guess they're back on. This is where I'm like these guys, it's a DDoS attack on, on my brain. It's pointless. All roads, all roads lead to debasement all roads lead to bitcoin. And unless I start seeing tankers go through the straight, unless I start seeing global supply chains get lubricated again and China is not importing as much and their exports are back to normal, then I'm not, I'm done. I'm done with the nonsense. I'm not going to make this a four hour show going through each headline up and down, up and down, up and down. From now on, we're going to make a bulleted list. You and I, me and this lovely little corner of the Internet. Okay? It's going to be is this. Are tankers getting through the straight? Our global supply chain still seized up? Are international partners of the United States still still selling dollar based assets on net and seemingly acquiring things like gold? Yes or no? Oh, and is the conflict still ongoing? I mean, I remember when this thing, I mean, do you guys remember? It's again, it's like you can make the argument like, okay, I get it, they're politicians. What else do you expect them to do? Implied in this is our job. You'd have to be an idiot to expect them to tell you the truth at this point. But it is just like, is like you. How dumb do you guys think I am? Remember when they told us this conflict was going to end in a week? Okay, one more week. Okay, one more week. It's been months. On April 28th, it will have been two months. Like it's. I'm done. I'm done entertaining the humiliation ritual. This show will no longer spend more than we should give ourselves a time. Like no more than 15 minutes of checking all of our bullets. Is the conflict still ongoing? Is the straight still relatively closed? Are China's export markets still in pain, implying that the. The global supply chains are effectively seized up, which implies very serious grave physical consequences if this prolongs. If. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We move on. We're not going to get duped into the United States government tricking us like ponies, whipping us around their fingers with these stupid headlines. Enough. Let's talk about something interesting. Maybe, maybe I'll do a section on quantum. We'll talk about diet. We'll talk, we'll do. We'll do other things. Enough. Okay. Now with that being said, let's get into chapter two because this is some of the interesting nuance that isn't just. Ceasefire. No ceasefire. Ceasefire. No ceasefire. Ceasefire. No ceasefire. Shut the upper. Let's get into something interesting. What was interesting was the uae. So the uae, when I saw this headline hit the Bloomberg terminal. I was like, whoa. So, and I quote, the UAE is admitting that they may need external help on dollar access to maintain their peg. Remember guys? And I said that the liquidity around the world is going to get very interesting if this prolongs and it's not showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon. It's probably not something you ask if you think the situation is going to calm down shortly. Okay, exactly. That's exactly my line of thinking. So this is from the Wall Street Journal. Let me read the summary by Bloomberg. The United Arab of Emirates has opened talks with the United States about obtaining a financial backstop in case the Iran war plunges the oil rich Persian Gulf state into a deeper crisis. A US Official said the UAE Central Bank Governor Khalid Muhammad Balama raised the idea of a currency swap line with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and Treasury and Federal Reserve officials in meetings in Washington last week. Emirati officials haven't made a formal request for a swap line which would give the UAE Central bank inexpensive access to dollars to support its currency or shore up its foreign reserves in case of a liquidity crisis. Luke Gromen his interpretation. Shout out Luke. By the way, the goat the best. His interpretation of this is as follows. The UAE to Trump, you started this war. If we run short of dollars as a result of it, you either need to give us dollar swap lines or we will be forced to start transacting oil and gas in the CNY and other currencies, period. Full stop right now. And remind reminder for, for everyone at home. We've been covering China's alternative payment system for quite some time now. And I, I call China's payment system and their currency like diet gold backed because obviously China can debase at will and they shouldn't be trusted as if it's gold backed. But, but the only way to obtain Juan and size is by buying into gold and selling the gold for Chinese yuan. Okay. That's the only way to do it because China doesn't run a deficit as a country. I think they only run a deficit with two countries, Russia and Brazil. Everybody else, they're in a surplus and on net they run a massive trade surplus, trillion plus dollars. And so how do you get their currency? They're not net exporting their currency. Now for contrast, the US runs the biggest deficits in the world. Our largest export is effectively the dollar is inflation. Right now how do I obtain Chinese currency? Well, I can't get it by trading with them because on net I'm importing goods from them, not currency and so the only way to get it, China takes gold. They take gold. And so what's been interesting is this emerging gold backed payment system, effectively China's CIPS payment system. And if you look at the volume that it had and it printed in March, guys, that's not a coincidence. This is the payment system being used for the Iranian oil, Hormuz tolls, Bitcoin. And what is this like gold backed thing? 100%. And so what is the UAE saying? The UAE is saying, yo, Trump, guess what? Because, because, by the way, let me just remind you guys, part of Iran's strategy to disrupt financial markets in the US is just up any energy markets entirely. And because what is that going to do that's going to cause inflation? So what you, if you guys pay attention to the news, sometimes it'll be like Iran blew up some energy headquarters in the uae. You're like, okay, what does that have to do with us? Well, it's going to screw up global energy markets which will cause inflation in the United States, which is going to pose a massive risk to this highly levered, indebted system where it's, we've talked about it before. The, the US Central bank is forking a heart. It's a rock and a hard place. What do you do? You've got inflation that's seemingly only going to get worse. Okay, do you raise rates? You raise rates in this massive deflationary trend of AI and the job market is struggling tremendously. And we're on, we've been constantly on the brink of a recession for years now. You're going to raise rates into that. Okay, fine, I'll cut rates. You're going to cut rates into oil at $100 a barrel. So mind you, that's what Iran's plan has been. They're going to disrupt energy markets, they're going to disrupt global supply chains because all it takes is just a little blow of wind, a little gust into the highly levered fiat system pioneered by the United States of America. Like this, just a little gust and you go, timber. And the whole thing comes blowing down. Okay, now I thought that this tweet from Brad was, this was my read as well as my interpretation as well. He wrote, the UAE has a ton of options, it has a ton of bills, which is a natural source of liquidity. They have over $50 billion of bills. It can use the Fed's repo facility to borrow cash versus Treasuries. Abu Dhabi can borrow nearly infinite amounts of money. And he goes on to say, remember that Abu Dhabi raised several billion quite easily last week. The request was a signal that the UAE wants a few concessions from the United States more than a sign of any real need for cash. I agree with this. It is my read that the UAE is effectively saying you started this mess, you got a bunch of our energy sites bombed. If you want, I'll say it another way. If you want us to maintain the petrodollar, we need concessions from you. We're not going to go out of our way to, to perpetuate the PETRA dollar for you. If we don't have easy affordable access to your shitcoin, we have no problem just paying for our energy in Chinese currency, effectively backed by gold. That was my interpretation. This is about concessions, not cash, which again these are the new, these are the interesting headlines in my opinion. What's interesting to me is what new monetary order are we going to embark on? It's not clear to me the post $71 is going to survive here. And where is Bitcoin's place now given all that context? So what have we talked about so far? We've talked about global markets are going to seize up. Treasuries are natural liquidity for everybody. The United States is starting to act like an emerging market in how its currency and treasury market are behaving. I want you guys to listen to this clip from the former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson talking about the U.S. treasury market. Let's listen.
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This crisis is different, right? When you hit the wall and you're trying to issue Treasuries and the Fed is the only buyer and the prices of the Treasuries are going down, interest rates are up, that's a dangerous thing. And so I what the thing I am talking about now is we know people say when are you going to hit the wall? I obviously don't know. It's impossible to know. But the law of economic gravity, you're not going to know that. So and when we hit it, it will be vicious. So we have to prepare for that eventuality and I think we need an emergency break the glass plan which is targeted and short term, on the shelf. So it's ready to go when. When we hit the wall.
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Okay, did you guys just hear what I just heard? I found this clip unbelievable and the timing of it unbelievable. So former Treasury Secretary saying, you know, when bonds are going down and yields are going up, that's an incredibly dangerous situation. When the Fed is the only buyer of government debt, which all of this verbiage is such bullshit like these Are grown men just tricking what. When the central bank that prints money out of thin air is the only buyer of bonds used to finance the government. All of that is such a fancy way of saying when nobody is willing to lend the US Government any money because they're not productive, they just bleed and lose money constantly. So we have a private bank that prints their currency units out of thin air to give to them. That's what this grown adult just said. Because the problem is, like, people like, oh, well, I. You know. You know, sometimes people will say to me, you know, my brain just doesn't work like yours. Like you're a chess player and you're a CEO. And that's just not how my brain works. I don't understand bonds and treasuries and yields. And it's such a shame because that, you know, they've totally tricked the average person into understanding how simple this is. It's very simple concept. Nobody wants to lend money to the United States anymore because they don't think they'll get paid back. They'll get paid back in dollars, but they won't get paid back in purchasing power. So he's saying, wow, what a dangerous situation that would be. If our only option is to print money out of thin air to finance an entity in the US Government that increasingly has to spend more money because all the conflicts we've started all over the world and all of the social unrest we've engineered here at home, we need. And he called it direct quote emergency, break the glass plan. Fuck. Jesus. Yeah, guys. And listen, make no mistake about it, the US Government does not conduct this type of interview or allow this interview to air and allow these type of quotes to hit the press line accidentally. The they are. They are foreshadowing to the market what they're thinking about. Make no mistake about that. Make no mistake about that. And so the last chapter for me, to be honest, is why is bitcoin going up? And this was also what I found interesting. I'm not gonna lie this week. I did struggle for this episode, because I'm not. I'm not gonna look like an idiot chasing around all these headlines of whiplash. I thought the UAE thing was interesting. I thought a former treasury secretary saying, we're fucked. We need to break the glass plan because all of this debt we've pushed up, up, up, up, up into the sovereign level, and now that's going to burst, and there's nowhere else to push it. But then why is Bitcoin at 76,000? Because. And obviously not that I mind. I mean, I think bitcoin should be at 76 million, but I just think it's, it's, it's a, it's a very interesting what's happening to financial markets and trying to understand because it's not just bitcoin, it's not as if bitcoin has diverged from software stocks and from the S&P 500. The S&P 500 made an all time high. And so the question is, is the bull market back on? Does, is the market pricing in something that we don't know what's, what's really going on here? So bitcoin continues to outperform things like gold and things like tech since the start of the war. However, it has not kept track with the price of energy, which ultimately, as a bitcoiner is my goal. My goal is that I preserve purchasing power in energy terms. So, you know, I think one of the most healthy metrics for me as a bitcoiner is tracking bitcoin in oil. Because at the end of the day, we're all consumers of energy. And you know, whether it's I want vacations, whether it's I want housing, whether it's I want family, whether it's I want longevity and I want to live longer, I'm. These are all derivatives of energy. My house and operating my home is effectively a derivative of energy. My vacations are. And getting on flights, it's a derivative of energy. My longevity, I need calories to live and that is a derivative of energy. My food and my grocery bill, that's a derivative of energy. All of this, this being life, the story of humanity is commercializing energy from the sun. Okay? Energy is all that matters. And so although bitcoin has been the best performer since a very shitty time started, I don't think us bitcoiners are impressed and satisfied. Because what it's, it's, it's down the least. It's not, it's not doing it for me, right? Oil is up like over 100%. So it's not really doing it for me. You know what I mean? This, to me, this is the chart that encapsulates what I think is market sentiment right now. So the s and P500 is at an all time high, while consumer sentiment is at an all time low. We've never seen a gap this wide between Wall street and Main Street. This to me is telling the story and there's a lot of really fascinating takeaways here. For one, seeing the s and P500 and consumer sentiment totally detach from each other and actually trade inversely is. I mean, it's crazy. It's not good, first of all. But it's crazy because this is the result of policy, guys. This is the result of policy decisions made by politicians and central planners. When you purposefully debase the money and inflate assets, every single time you print a currency unit, you are making asset holders wealthier and you are making currency savers poorer. I'm going to say that again. Every dollar they print, people that own assets get wealthier and people that save in the currency get poorer. Why? Well, when you print currency units, you're making the currency unit itself worth less because there is more of them. You know, the classic Air Jordan analogy, if Michael Jordan comes out with a one of one Jordan, it's worth more than the one where there's 10 million of them and you can go to footlocker and they're always $80. Okay. Scarcity derives a lot of value. And so when you create the currency, it's in more abundance. And so the purchasing power, how many assets you can get with it, goes down and then the assets themselves go up. So the people get poorer and they get further away from ever being able to own assets. And the people that have assets get wealthier because those assets are scarcer relative to the currency unit itself. And so after a long enough time of consistently debasing the currency and consistently enriching asset holders, you get this chart which is a majority of the population, an overwhelming majority of the population that is incredibly poor in asset terms. You have people that are graduating university in honors and are smart and capable and driven, but they are poor as shit and always will be. In asset terms. They feel as if they're never going to own a home. They feel as if they're never going to get a nice car. They feel as if they're never going to be able to afford a big family. They feel as if they're constantly up against it with their credit card bill and the amount of money it takes to just afford food. And then you have an increasingly smaller portion of society that, that owns the assets that are now scarce relative to the amount of currency units. And these people are accumulating vast and vast and vast amount of wealth. Now when you get this, this is very dangerous because the S and P, because a rise in asset prices won't necessarily solve for social unrest. You can have a stock market at all time high and you can have the majority of your population disgruntled and violent. That is. That is. That is signs of the end of an empire. That is very. This is very, very bad. This is very, very scary. This is where you get political violence. This is where you get. I've showed you guys before, assassination attempts, the second highest in American history. Only second to the mid-1800s, which was the Civil War. When you've printed so much money and you've stolen so much time, energy, effort and labor from the general public to where their sentiment is directly inverse to the performance of the stock market, that's when people get hurt. That's when people start voting in politicians that want to violate property rights. Oh, Elon Musk has a lot of stuff. Well, it's not his anymore. We're going to take his stuff from him and we're going to split it up for everybody else. That's what that. This is all a result of policy. This is all a result of fiat. Make no mistake about it. This is 2 plus 2 equals 4. This is printing money. Destroys your middle class, destroys your industrial base and destroys society. Straight up. So anyways, sorry I go on these tangents bringing it all the way back. Why is Bitcoin up? We'll get into it in a second, but is bitcoin up a reflect? Is bitcoin and stocks up a reflection of society? Healing of the conflict, Ending of things improving? I'm afraid not. I'm afraid not. Now, why is Bitcoin a solution? Everything I just said. Well, bitcoin is the rare asset that we can all own. What does the guy or girl do with $50 in excess capital after their paycheck? What does the guy or girl do? That is barely any savings. How do they get in on the asset Game on the currency debates. How do they get in on the assets? They can't get the Manhattan penthouses. They can't get the Miami beachfront real estate. They can't get the professional sports teams. Hell, I can't get any of that shit. What can we all get? Bitcoin. What performs. What performs the best of all of these things. Bitcoin. That's why I invent something like strike. That's why we have no fee. Dca. Right. Everyone can get in on this. That's how bitcoin solves this. But my point is seeing, I guess, how do I articulate this? Seeing assets go up right now, it's just interesting to me. It. It's not a reflection of the state of the world. It doesn't mean they won't continue to go up. I Mean, my stance to you guys has been pretty firm over the last few weeks. Just turn on your DCAs. I mean, I'm not a genie. I have no idea what's going to happen. Don't, I mean, don't take my advice as financial hell. Turn on the dc. Just, just be, always be stacking. Always be stacking. Could bitcoin go to 100k from here? Yeah, 100. Could it go to 40k from here? I mean, yeah, global supply chains are falling apart like yes, I. And consumer sentiment is at all time lows 100%. Just stack. Just stack. So the other thing I. So last episode I talked about, well, maybe bitcoin is diverging from software. Let me see if I can zoom in on this asset because so bitcoin's in the orange here and you can see right here. I don't know if you guys can see my mouse when I do this, but right here the orange was popping up. So bitcoin was performing really well while software was crashing. And there was a split second where I was like, holy, is software really going to crash? And AI is going to eat its lunch while bitcoin rockets to the moon. Is this the divergence? It took a global supply chain seizure straight a Hormuz shut down war for bitcoin to really. And bitcoins now being used in commodity settlement and an energy trade. Are we entering the petro bitcoin era? No. Me. The software just ripped, ripped the face off of everything. And S&P 500 hit all time high. Software's back. And software and I mean bitcoin as it does was just a leader. It was just a leader. I saw people tweeting last week, oh, maybe software is leading bitcoin this time, you fool. Bitcoin comes second place and nothing. There is no second best, you fool. Software looked at. Bitcoin looked up and said, yo, hold my beer. And so anyways, there is no there, there is no, there is no narrative here that bitcoin is turning into digital gold in front of our eyes, that the stock market's about to get murdered. Everything is up. And so I tried to look into this and understand what the is going on. Why is everything up? And this is my best theory. And again, just a reminder, the end. The real answer is I don't know. But I host a podcast that has only myself on it and I sit in my closet and I just talk to myself for hours. So given I don't know isn't a sufficient answer for the show. I'm going to wax poetically about what I is, my best guess, my best guess is this. On the left you have the vix, which is volatility index. And on the right you have the MOVE index, which is the same thing, but for Treasuries. And so if you guys take a look at these charts, volatility index was about to break through 30. And if you see when the VIX hit well over 40, which was in April of last year, this was the liberation day or week or whatever the hell that was, and then came crashing down, it looked like we were going to have a repeat of that. It looked like the VIX was well on its way to above 40 and higher. And out of nowhere, it came tumbling right back down to under 20. Same thing with the move index. The move index was approaching 130. And we know that as soon as it gets around 150, 160, 170, it's immediate print money. Immediate, immediate, immediate. Mayday, mayday, mayday. Print the money. Print the money. Print the money. And the MOVE index shot back down. Either or. Excuse me, shot back down as well. And for me, this is why. Assets are up. Assets are up because volatility's down. Now, what you should be asking is why is volatility down? The outside world is chaos. It's mayhem. The world has never been more volatile. We're entering this multipolar world. The United States coming off of kidnapping another country's president literally, like we're trick or treating, like ring the doorbell, hi, take this president, fly him to Manhattan for a photo shoot in a Nike tech jumpsuit. We then go pick another fight in the Middle east or they pick a fight with us. I don't know. Whatever side you're on, I'm a bitcoiner. Fuck you. We get in another fight. Politicians lie, lie, lie, steal, steal, steal. War, war, war. We're still in it. The straits still close. Global supply chain seizing up. Even the great big bad factory of the world, China is starting. The world's never been more volatile. Our sitting president has an approval rating in the 20 or 30s. Last time that happened, he got impeached. Midterms are this fall. The world's never been more volatile. What do you mean? Volatility is down. And to me, this is the best example that we don't live in free markets anymore. We live in. I mean. So my next slide is just how market structure works, in my opinion, is that we're just witnessing this, this fiat. How do I articulate this to the common man on a Show when you print so much money in all of this fiat that's sloshing around in the filthy, filthy, filthy fiat financial system, you have all these hedge funds and all these quant traders and all this Wall street, gobbly gook, nonproductive nonsense. These guys have all the same trades on. So here's the little diagram I made. Trump puts out a headline that we have a ceasefire. That headline drops the Vix, which means volatility down. Volatility goes down. CTAs must buy. That's. That's how these programmatic funds work. Oh, all these hedge fund bros that are at happy hours telling you in Manhattan how their hedge fund's better than the other hedge funds that you've heard about. No, it's not. These guys aren't unique thinkers, okay? They all poach the same quants from all the other firms, and those quants get paid a big signing bonus to implement the same shit that they learned at Citadel. I'm just being honest. I'm telling you the truth. So Trump tweets out a ceasefire headline. He gets the VIX to sell off. So you got a bunch of people that's just selling volume, selling volume, selling volume. And then this whole hash, posh, slosh, mosh pit of liquidity says, oh, volatility's down, then we gotta buy. They buy, prices rise. If the prices rise, that drives the VIX lower. So you get this, like, really powerful feedback loop where Trump is able to use headlines to impact these volatility indexes. And these volatility indexes are what's used at these hedge funds in these large quant firms to lay risk on or off. And so you get Trump pushing a risk off, which allows people to sell volatility. VIX crashes. VIX crashes. People systemically buy assets. When people buy all the assets and pile into the assets, the assets go higher. The higher the assets go, the lower the VIX goes. And so when I go back, you see this, like, chop of the VIX where the VIX gets up to 30, gets slammed down, gets up to 30, gets slammed down. And so anyway, I took a look into this $37 billion of systemic community. These guys are systematic. Excuse me. These guys are still short US equities, so they have a lot of assets to cover. So this is what, I guess, I think market structure is what's driving prices higher. Personally, I think it's market structure. It's engineered lower volatility. And I don't. I guess I am nervous to see consumer sentiment and asset prices diverge so much. We are now starting to realize all of the fiat policy that's been imposed on the people for so long. The higher assets go, the more pissed off the common man is going to get because he still can't afford a home, he still can't afford groceries, he still can't afford rent. And what is that going to do to the social contracts, to the political agendas that we end up electing, like what's happening in New York to violence both politically and socially? I'm very happy that Bitcoin is up. Do I think we're back in a bull market and we're going to all time highs? I don't know. It's totally possible, but it's also totally possible that the markets start to price in what the physical reality of some of these supply chain things. But this is my best guess. People are like, why is Bitco going up? I don't understand. My best guess is, I mean Fiat and money printing has gotten so bad that right now you have a president who's just announcing headlines purely based on the stock market and trying to, trying to manipulate asset prices. And so he's got, I mean you got these quant firms that are hooked up to his Truth social account and if he announces a ceasefire they start selling volatility and piling into assets which like you get these short squeezes and then it goes the other way. So anyway, all that to say I wanted to also do a, do an AI check in. This was the CEO of Anthropic. I'm not going to play the whole clip because it's four and a half minutes, but take a listen to the CEO of Anthropic, which is the creator of Claude. I need you guys to hear this.
- [51:50]
C
So just to back up a bit, I've been working on AI for 10 years and probably the thing I've noticed most about it is how fast it's making progress. Two years ago it was at the level of a smart high school student. Now it's probably at the level of a smart college student and reaching beyond that. And on one hand I think there's a number of very positive things that are going to happen. I used to be a biologist. I think AI has exactly the kind of skills that are needed to cure important diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's, to provide cheaper energy, many positive things, but exactly those same kind of skills. Things like summarizing a document, brainstorming, putting together a financial report makes me worry a lot that entry level jobs in areas like finance consulting Tech, many, many other areas like that entry level white collar work. I worry that those things are going to be first augmented but before long replaced by AI systems and that we may indeed. It's hard to predict the future, but we may indeed have a, have a serious employment crisis on our hands as the pipeline for these early stage white collar work starts to, starts to contract and dry up.
- [53:04]
A
Yeah. So again, not good. You can make an argument that markets are destined to go up because they want to go up, because debasement is in the air, because the Fed's 2% inflation target is a relic of the past because of market structure, because we've printed so much money that you know, markets are going to every time Trump tweets, hey, everything's going to be fine. You've got sloshes of Fiat that are going to sell volume and drive assets up. That's totally possible. However, it's also totally possible that you have this deflationary crisis that is whacking itself into the most highly levered indebted empire in the history of our species. That, that is an extreme risk to employment. By the way, America is the largest economy with the most reliance on consumer spending. I think 77 0, not 17 70, like 100 minus 30. 70% of the of America economy is consumer spending. So delinquencies are going to crash this thing. If there's even a small dent of unemployment due to AI. On top of that you have global supply chain seizing up and you have commodity inflation. You've got, you've got energy markets that are a mess which is going to. So I guess I don't know which way to lean. Personally. I'm staying humble. I'm stacking sats. I got, my DCA is on. Just that's my read. You can make a very good argument either way. Until Bitcoin clears and defends a level like 80,000, I don't think we're back in a full bull market territory. I think that, that you've got this giant Fiat Wall Street Ponzi scheme that is just playing volatility for whatever reason. We have a conflict in the Middle east and we have global supply chain seizing up and the Vix is below 20. That doesn't make any sense. Don't make any sense. And you've got AI CEOs going on television saying all your jobs are yeah, AI is working and I'm really excited by all of our progress, but we might unemploy all you guys and, and the US is relying on, you know, 70% of what the US is relying on is consumer spending. And, and if you guys all get delinquent on the consumer credit that you've piled up over the years, then all of the entire banking system that we rely on to perpetuate the scam is going to collapse on itself. So I would be careful, I would just stay humble and stack sats. That's, that's my advice. That's not financial advice. This is a screenshot of what I was just saying. Consumer delinquencies in the United States is at its highest level since 2017. It's easily building a trend up this chart from this guy, he makes good charts. I don't think he loves bitcoin that much but he makes good charts. Online you can see clearly gold against the SPX against the stock market, you can see it outperforming it. Again this to me smells like a new cycle. Gold is being remonetized. The dollar is being debased. I thought this headline was really interesting. Bessant states China is an unreliable partner in war. China is hoarding oil, buying more and stopping exports of various products. This is a very easy thing to read. He's saying China has not been giving us the rare earths required to build more military equipment and beat the out of Iran. So again, just a reminder. So much of the United States reshoring, so much of the United States moving on from the post $1971 which they are self admitting is a problem. They're saying yes, domestic policy has destroyed the middle class, has destroyed the common man. Consumer sentiment being detached from The S&P 500 is a very dangerous social construct for us to be relying on. So much though of moving on from that is implied in the United States being self sufficient and headlines like this just tell me how far away we are from that. We need, we still need China. If the Treasury Secretary of the United States is saying China's not being a reliable partner. Yeah, no shit. No shit. Under what? Like on what planet did you think China was going to be a reliable partner? Have you been smoking crack? So who cares? Why is, why is this a headline? It's a headline because we need them to be a reliable partner. That's why it's a headline. And if we need them to be a reliable partner, it's all the, it's all the information you need to know how far we are from being able to stand on our own two feet. I don't think a lot of the reshoring has actually started. I don't think a Lot of the reshoring is underway. I think we have a long ways to go. It was just a very interesting headline and I think this is my last slide. Friend of the show. I I think Larry's awesome, wrote an awesome book, the big print and I really liked his tweet here and I quote, like I said in our letter, the fix is in. Warsh will cut April 14 from Reuters. U.S. treasury Secretary Scott Besant said he was quite confident that core inflation was would continue to go down in the United States despite the Iran war and repeated his call for the Federal Reserve to cut its interest rates. Asked if the Trump administration would accept current Fed chair Jerome Powell staying in the top spot after his term ends in May if War's nomination was not approved by the Senate by then, Besant said, we want Kevin Warsh in as soon as possible. So this is to me why bitcoin wins no matter what. You know, I had made this show 10 times over with all the headline changes, all the nonsense, it doesn't matter. The straight is still closed. Global supply chains are still a problem. We're getting inflation and things like energy which is the mother of all inflation. AI is not slowing down anytime soon. It doesn't really matter how these hash posh fiat fuckery Wall street people are playing the vix and playing volatility for Trump headlines and squeezing markets up or down. Is bitcoin destined to break all time highs now or in a little bit? Or in a little bit after a little bit? It doesn't fucking matter. Stay humble, stack sats. We shall not fall victim for any longer to the headline of this administration and whipping us around. I, I will not perform the humiliation ritual. We're just going to check these bullet points, see if there's anything interesting like the UAE one or the former US Treasury Secretary Secretary saying we need to break the glass plan in case our treasury market sees up and we have to print money just to survive. But in the end, bitcoin shall win. Cool. Sounds good. Okay, before we do Q and A, I usually do what grinds my gears. It's kind of a fun gig. I got it from Family Guy. You know, it's, it's half comedy but, but all education. I pick a topic that pisses me off, I rant about it, try and make you guys laugh, but it's an interesting way to try and get you to learn something new. But for this week I have a new segment only for this week and it is called what warms my Heart and what warms my heart Is that my girlfriend is now my fiance and I got engaged on Friday. So I tweeted these photos. So a lot of, you know, and I just wanted to spend my rant today just talking more about love, what it means to me, what I think it means to humanity, the relationship I have with you guys and being a bit more positive. I'm not gonna. I've already cursed enough on this show. I'm not going to curse more and talk about taxes this week. So I have a few thoughts. Top of mind one, listen. I think the story of humanity, I think all of us innately want two things when being human. I think we want to be a part of something that is bigger than ourselves. And I think we want to be a part of something that lasts longer than we will. And I think bitcoin, you know, bitcoin will always hold a special place in my heart because I think bitcoin is an expression of those two things. I think being a part of bitcoin for me and for all of us is being a part of the best of what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, what it means to contribute to this story. Right. Bitcoin is a monetary revolution that is bigger than any one person. It's bigger than any one country. It's bigger than any one currency, and it's also built and engineered by us to last longer than we will. You know, I've said before, I don't think the goal is to live forever. I think the goal is to create something that will, right now, for me, a very natural expression of being a part of something bigger than yourself and being a part of something that will last longer than you will is family. I think that's the OG Bitcoin, in a really weird way, if you'll allow me, family, obviously, just with simple math, by asking my girl to marry me, and God willing, we're hopeful to have kids someday soon, we will have created something bigger than our independent selves, and we will have created something in extending our bloodline that will hopefully last longer than either of us. So I think family is core to my philosophies that support me as a bitcoiner. My dream was always to be a father, to be a husband. And Friday was a really big deal for me. And I wanted to share that philosophy with you guys and how much I think family and bitcoin overlap philosophically. And what we as bitcoiners are trying to do for the world, I think we're trying to bring a lot of positivity a lot of hope, a lot of critical thinking, a lot of problem solving, but also a lot of love and. And again, a lot of community, a lot of family. A lot of, you know, people in this world aren't doing it alone. You know, I think that there's a lot of purpose felt in community and family and just not being alone. So that was one thought I wanted to share with you guys, another that I tweeted as well. I just want you guys to remember that money is a means to an end. And when I say that, it's with the context of, you know, not that, you know, how much money you have or how wealthy you think you are or claim to be. That's. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about money conceptually, because we on this show spend a lot of time discussing what is money and time and energy and what's fiat compared to bitcoin and how do they relate and how do you think about these things. It's really important that you remember that money's value is solely predicated on the expectation that you can actually exchange it for other things. Meaning this. Nobody, including myself, guys, actually wants pieces of paper or bitcoins or gold. Nobody wants these things because I can't live in my bitcoins. I can't marry my bitcoins. I can't produce children with my bitcoins. I can't eat my bitcoins. I can't drive my bitcoins. I can't fly my bitcoins. I value my bitcoins because the job they do at theoretically allowing me to exchange them for those things. So money is a means to an end. If you don't have an end, money is meaningless. You understand? And so I also believe for myself, and I'm not here to force you guys to live life how I want to live mine. Your life is yours to live. But for me, part of being a bitcoiner and what I think it means to be a bitcoiner and to want to fix the money and fix the world and want to improve the world and make it a better place is to find my end. Or else for me, a lot of this is meaningless. And I found my end. And it's like been, you know, she's the best thing that's ever happened to me. And it is a very. It's. It is just the. The most special grounding experience I've ever been a part of. You know, I've founded strike, I co founded 21, and I co founded what is now Becoming my own family with my girl. And so I just wanted to inspire others to find their end, if you haven't already, and celebrate with those that have. Just don't forget that. I think money's akin to water in creating a functional society. You know, without water, we will just scientifically die, will perish. Right. And I think without a hard money, society will cease to function properly. And so I don't want to undermine how valuable something like bitcoin is and changing the world. I think if we can fix the money, we can fix the world and we can solve, you know, almost all of the world's hardest problems. But just remember that it's a means to an end. And, you know, the most valuable thing bitcoin has given me is to be part of something bigger than myself and be part of something that will outlast me. But it's not the only thing that can do that for you. I think family is deeply important and deeply human. I think love is one of the more powerful emotions that has allowed us all to flourish as a species. And yeah, yeah, the last thing I will say on this one, two. Two out of three. One more is I think I'm sensitive of sharing her name. Some. Some. Some stuff of my life just has to be for me. So we'll just keep calling her my girl, although I'm sure you can go find her on the Internet. OPSEC's probably not that good, but whatever. We just want to say thank you to you guys. And I. I'm a little slow here because I really don't want to get emotional. People make fun of me for crying during the El Salvador thing. But what you little. Do you guys know I am a crier. I am an emotional guy. I wear my heart on my sleeve. During my speech with her, I cried before I got on my knee. So I'm going to try not to get emotional here. But I would say, I would wage that the relationship that I have with you guys and the bitcoin community is as unique as you'll find. This show is not about comedy. This show is not about sports. This show is not about fashion. It doesn't get more real than this. I mean, the DMs you guys send me of, you know, we're all on this journey together of improving each other's lives, trying to get through one of the tougher hands any generation has been handed. I mean, debt, debasement, war, violence. And we're in it together. We're in it together. And a lot of the innovation that Is me and my companies and me as a. Whatever, semi public figure, whatever I am. The core innovation is simple yet profound. I'm real. That's it. That's the difference between me and all these other guys. What you see is what you actually get. It's not an act. I'm not a character. I'm not an actor. I'm real. And because we focus together, all of us listening on such real shit, and we attack the real problems we have in our lives and we do it in the most authentic, raw way. I mean, I wouldn't trade the relationship I have with the bitcoin community for anything. It sucks because sometimes people are really mean to me and it's really hard emotionally to kind of compartmentalize of, you know, what to value deeply and what to ignore because the Internet's the Internet. I've worked on that skill over the years, but this was definitely a time to. To be vulnerable and feel so, you know, from my now becoming family to you guys, all the love and support you guys gave us over the weekend and that you guys have given us over the years, you know, we very much appreciate it and I just wouldn't. I wouldn't trade it for anything. And I've definitely got some war scars from kind of being this very vulnerable, public, raw, real honest person. It hasn't been the easiest journey, but it's been a worth it journey. And I just wouldn't. I could go back in time and I've made plenty of mistakes. I've up way more times than I've done right. Unfortunately, that's just how it goes. You know, Steph Curry doesn't shoot over 50% from three even. So it is what it is, but I don't know if I would do anything differently. So thank you guys for the love and support. Then we'll go now and try and make you laugh a little bit. When I tweeted these photos, a bunch of people on the Internet kept taking like zoomed in screenshots of like my shoes and then my legs, and then some of them got like a little too close to my crotch and I didn't understand, like, wow, this bitcoin community is so weird. Like, you guys are so weird. Myself included, by the way. And then I realized that what you were trying to point out is the number. There's a number almost like embedded inside of me and my now fiance, and it's the number 21. Obviously a total accident. Didn't do that on purpose whatsoever. It was like, it was like meant to be. It was cool. So anyways, thought I'd share that as well. Satoshi, if you're watching, thank you. And you know, somehow bitcoin is always present. That was weird. A little weird. A little weird. This will get clipped and this will be in, in court. This, this will be proof that we're running a cult. But it was a cool insight. Okay. Onto things that you guys probably care about more. No more emotional back to grind my gears. Next week, let's do Strike. So as you guys now know, we do these Monday tweets where we tweet out all that we launched last week. We keep the product velocity extremely high at Strike. Very proud of how much we're able to ship and continue to build for bitcoiners. This week we lowered our minimums for Maine for lending and bitcoin line of credit. And we also launched our bitcoin line of credit in both Texas and Colorado. So you guys can follow us on Twitter. I'll retweet this. Main consumers just saw the biggest minimum drops ever. They went from $74,000 minimum of line of credit to 5,000 and the term loans as low as 10,000. We launched line of credit for Texas and for Colorado, which is really exciting. And we're going to continue to keep shipping. We have at least a few of these a week and sometimes we have major, major, major product announcements. So if you want follow Strike on Twitter. I try and keep these updates a little bit more brief now because we end up doing a lot of this in QA. So I'll move to 21, which, yeah, both unfortunately and fortunately I have the same update. I. I don't know if you guys are going to want to ask about Michael Saylor's massive bitcoin purchase on behalf of strategy and we can talk about the public bitcoin company landscape. We continue to. We're not necessarily interested in the preferreds, not that they're bad, to be clear. Just doesn't seem to be a strategy. We're too interested and still pursuing this operating company strategy with the goal of hopefully achieving some positive cash flow and building a public bitcoin company that we think is unique and very unique to us and us being, you know, tether and myself. So as I'm allowed to share more, I will. But unfortunately I don't have anything more I can share today on. On that topic, I will be. I do have to fly for a very important 21 meeting tomorrow, but that's about all I can, I can share with you guys for now. Let's do some Q and A. Let me get Dylan's. Let me get Dylan's Q and A out and we'll do the damn thing, Okay? Question for Jack. What are your thoughts on UBI Universal Basic Income? Is it even possible? Do you think that's where we likely will be in two decades? To be totally honest with you, I haven't taken the deepest look into ubi. I know that it's just printing money for people to live on. What's the difference between this version of currency debasement versus that version of currency debasement versus that version of currency debasement? I firmly believe that there is necessary and needed currency debasement because of policy and the way fiat has been conducted and propagated and how things have been financed for the decades and decades and decades prior. And no matter how you slice it, we need debasement now. Is UBI the preferred version of debasement of all the debasement options? I don't know. Kind of asking the wrong guy, you know what I mean? I think my time personally is better spent on building an alternative system for people to have property rights, defend purchasing power. Really. You know, I think I view fiat as a violation of human rights or any sense of dignity that you have and that you can spend your time and your energy and your effort and your labor and your work on something and that can be effectively taken from you. You know, no man should work for what another man should print. So I'd rather try and build something new that will last, that solves the core of the problem than debate on what version of debasement is preferred. Ultimately, that's going to be some politician's job and I will not stoop to the level of those politicians personally. So I don't know if that's the answer you're looking for. Let's see. Do you think that's where we'll likely be in two decades? I don't know. I mean, hopefully in two decades we've been able to build a society on top of Bitcoin. That would be my dream. I don't know how likely that is. Usually these things take time. They usually take longer than we think. But two decades is such a long time. I mean, for context, two decades ago I was 12. So it's really difficult for me to think in decades. But I would say UBI wouldn't surprise me because currency debasement is implied. It's almost mathematical at this point. It just depends how they want to do that, who they are going to Punish, who they're going to print for. That's still totally up in the air. The cool thing about bitcoin, you know, the way you can conceptualize it is you can think, well, you know, there's a 40 trillion dollar hole, right? And that loss that's been created like that money's gone, that money's wasted. We spent that money and we got what it seems like nothing for it in return. And so you'd have to think, you know, who's going to realize that loss? That's the way I think about it. It's a game of musical chairs. Who's going, when the music stops, who's not gonna have a chair? There's $40 trillion missing. It's gone. And by the way, that number could be higher, could be lower. It depends on how you want to quantify it. But it doesn't matter. That money's gone. And so the point is someone has to lose. And the way I like to conceptualize bitcoin is by saving in bitcoin and by using Bitcoin, I don't know who's going to lose. I just know it's not going to be me. That's how I think about it. I don't know who's going to lose. I don't know if UBI is better than this. This yield, curve control, it's all the same thing. Printing money out of thin air, highly inflationary, totally destroys the value of the currency. Which, which version are they going to pick? Who's going to win, who's going to lose? I don't know. I just know it's not going to be me. I know I've opted out. I'm not in the game of musical chairs. I'm sitting on the side with popcorn, watching and laughing. So I don't know. I'm kind of the wrong guy to ask about UBI falls in the bucket of currency debasement. Sounds. Sounds like something they got to do soon. Could we get a future show to calmly explain the different properties of bitcoin and how it differs from shitcoins? Finite supply transactions, not reversible, etc. Sure, yeah, it's kind of difficult because there are like thousands of shitcoins and I'm sure they each have their own unique killer feature that according to the printers of said shitcoin, like, oh, no, no, don't buy bitcoin, buy this other thing that I printed for free. So I don't know if there's a list of shitcoins that I should go into in specific or just broadly, why bitcoin is better than shitcoins, including Fiat. Like, I would consider Fiat a shitcoin in many respects. To me, gold is a shitcoin. It's lesser of a shitcoin than the dollar. But it's still not bitcoin, so that's not a bad idea. You know, I did have the urge today to just talk about something like that because all the. Ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire this, that. It's just all so tiresome. The straight still closed, Fiat still sucks. What? I was like, what am I doing chasing all these headlines? I look like a fucking idiot. So, yeah, maybe. Maybe that's a. That's an idea for a future show. I'll. I'll talk to Dylan about that. Not a bad idea. Okay, next one question. I'm curious your thoughts on strc, purely as a yield play, not compared to holding bitcoin, but as a relatively safe way to generate income. How do you view the risk? Hmm. Oh, boy. How much time should I spend on. On this one? So I. I mean, so here, let me sit up for this one. Let me first say what Saylor has created is seemingly impressive and awesome, and I have every incentive for him and strategy to succeed. I think people sometimes think otherwise or, you know, create a narrative that, you know, I feel otherwise. So just to say that, like, I own bitcoin, I want bitcoin to work. So having someone else that also buys lots of bitcoin and wants bitcoin to work is great. So just. I want to say that with that being said, I admittedly, how do I say, I guess, don't understand what he's doing as much as other people. It seems like there's a lot of people that are seemingly totally sold on his strategy and what he's doing. And I can't say I'm one of those people. Is that fair? Hey, hands up. Hands where you can see them. I'm just saying it's not clear to me how this is all going to work and end and how. And how it's all going to be financed. You know, I. I guess the way, you know, here's how you know, the vision I have for 21, let me say, I would say that there are. There's like a spectrum of. Of companies in the space. Maybe on one side of the spectrum, you have a business like Coinbase. Coinbase is a business, right? It's got customers, it's got cash flow, it's got software, it's got an app in the App Store, right? And it's a business, okay? But I would argue that Coinbase has zero conviction. Coinbase holds over $10 billion worth of fiat on its balance sheet, compared to only a billion dollars of Bitcoin. So my question to Coinbase is, do you guys actually believe in what you're building? Like, how could you own more fiat than Bitcoin on your balance sheet? I mean, clearly you don't need $10 billion of working capital. So do you guys even believe in the alternative financial system you claim to be working on? And I think buried in there is an uncomfortable truth, which is Coinbase can't hold conviction in any particular thing because it would invalidate the customers that are there for everything else. Meaning they can't say Bitcoin is the one true money, because how would it make all the customers that are Ethereum or Solana or Dogecoin or this or that, they can't say Ethereum is the premier shitcoin for smart contracts because it would alienate all of the Solana smart contractors. Coinbase is the house, they're the casino. And part of their business is implied that they don't hold conviction in anything in particular. And so now I obviously have my views. It doesn't mean Coinbase is not a successful business. You can look at their financials and you can gather your own opinion on what type of quality business they are. But I would say on one side of the spectrum you have Coinbase, which is a business with no conviction. Now I would say strategy is on the other side of the spectrum, which is, I think what strategy sells as a product is conviction. That's what they sell. That they believe in Bitcoin so much. They are the most convicted. However, they're the opposite. They have no business. I saw somewhere that someone was reporting their STRC issuance as revenue. I, I, I think that's a stretch. Borrowing money or, or selling preferred equity, I don't think is revenue. I don't think it's the same thing. So I would say that strategy, again, it's not a good or bad thing. Depends on, as an investor, what you're interested in or as a company, what your goals are. But I think it's, I think Saylor has said in very plain English, it's actually beneficial to us that we don't run a profitable company anymore because it allows our preferred equity holders to get tax breaks. There are tax efficiencies to us not even really having a profitable business or focusing on, on our operating company nearly as much, which is fine. But the question then that I have that I don't. And I try and follow and I ask questions. And so if anyone has the answers, is at the end of the day, who's financing their conviction? Because I've talked about it before, I personally feel as if it's a moral imperative to have a profitable company because it is the financial expression of making the world a better place. It means that you are a net producer, you are producing more value for the world than you are consuming from the world, and then you can use your own net production. So Strike is a profitable company and I'm able to use its net productivity to buy more bitcoin for our balance sheet or to invest in more things like products or licenses for you guys. Right. And so the question is, if strategy is not a profitable comp, is they basically, if they aren't a, aren't a business, who's financing the conviction that they're selling? And that to me has always just been an interesting thing for me to try and figure out because obviously I think they tried to target a, you know, two to one ratio between STRC and MSTR and meaning they, they issue or they sell twice as much common. But again, these are the details that I'm loose on. But they try and sell twice as much common equity as they issue STRC to keep that ratio. And you know, if they're, if they're buying $2 billion of Bitcoin a week from STRC, that means they got to sell $4 billion of MSTR a week to keep up with that ratio. And I know that their US dollar reserve and how much it covers them for months dropped dramatically, but of course it did because they're not financing this with any productivity as a business. They're financing it. That's the question I have is basically who's financing the conviction that they're selling? And I don't know the answer. I guess, I guess I'm a little confused on the answer because sometimes I will ask and people say, you know, they're going to issue more preferreds to cover the preferred expenses. And I'll be like, really? Well, that surely that's not right. That that sounds a bit dangerous. And then I'll hear someone else say, and by the way, this is to no fault of strategies. You know, they're big enough now where everybody is, is talks about them constantly. So I'm getting my opinions of whatever podcasts and my information from Twitter. You know, some things I, I obviously Sailor will talk about it or, or Vong will talk about it and I'll listen to them as well. But I'm not specifically quoting anyone at the company, to be clear. But then I'll hear, oh, well, they can use the common ATM to cover their expenses. And by the way, the preferred money is never owed back. The principal's never. I've heard that a million times. The. The cool thing about their perpetual preferred is the preferred is never owed is the. The principal's never owed back. It's like, yeah, but let me. Let me do it this way. If someone. If someone bought a preferred security from me and the principal was never owed back, but the coupon was 100%, well, I am paying the entire thing back in one year. So I know the principal isn't technically due, but what I owe on it, I am effectively paying the full thing back. And okay, yeah, Jack, that's an egregious example, though, because Saylor's never going to set it to 100%. It's like, yeah, but it's already at 12, right? Or whatever. 11 and a half. 12. 12 and a half, something like that. So that means in about eight years, every eight years, they owe the principal. And so in less than 20 years, they're paying more than double the principal. So I know the principal's never due, but the dividends are so high. I mean, I remember when strategy was like borrowing money at 0%. And that's a. That's genius. It's like, yeah, if you're gonna give me money for free. But now they're borrowing money, the strategy seems to have inverted, where they're borrowing money, like, at extremely. This is extremely expensive money. I think, again, I don't know. I think these are some of the questions that I still haven't totally answered for myself. And so then. And then if you're going to use the MSTR common. Well, I just don't totally understand how that math works. So basically, let me say it this way. What then is implied is if the common equity is what is relied on to forever finance these obligations. Because, by the way, these instruments are perpetual, meaning they never convert, they never expire. There's no callable, like, strategy owes this amount of money forever. Forever. Like, Saylor could die, I could die forever. And so if the common equity is the financer of that, well, then my interpretation is they've added a decent amount of leverage then to their. To their M Nav. The expectation is that the market will support an m nav above 1. But. And m Nav is not. It's not like a scientific. It's not like, like if you're going to build a large, big, massive structure, like a big building complex, you'd want to build it on like really sound granite and use things like steel because there are physical components that make that reliable. But pricing in financial markets is not that. Like let me give you guys an example. What is the valuation of Tesla? Nobody knows. It's, it's, it's a subjective construct that we arrive at every single day. Is Tesla actually worth whatever a hundred times earnings? Technically yes, because that's where they closed today at market close. But are they going to be worth that tomorrow? They could or they could not. There is no science to what a company is worth, meaning there's also no science for what an M Nav should be. So to have such expectations for your M Nav to me is just potentially a little dangerous or I just, I guess I just have not figured out for myself and obviously, you know, I don't want to rent other people's opinions. I want to understand this all myself and I just haven't been. I, I don't totally understand because obviously if the M Nav then falls below one and you either then need to dilute in a, in an extremely non accretive way or sell the Bitcoin or suspend the dividends and I, you know, the M Nav could be above one forever. It could, but I guess it also could not. You know, and obviously if you were a company producing lots of cash flow, then it wouldn't really matter because you are using your own production as a business to finance your conviction. But if you're not using your own production to finance your conviction, that means your conviction, it's not necessarily rented, but your conviction is. Yeah, I mean like it, you. I, I don't, I just don't know. I just don't know. So anyways, I guess I give you all this context to say the way we hope to build 21 is maybe an option in the middle between a coinbase and a strategy. Where can we be a company that builds a productive business, meaning productive in cash flow, like you're producing more cash than you're spending cash. And to me that is a net productive operating company. And again, it doesn't mean not having one's a bad thing, it doesn't mean having one's a good thing. It's just our vision and we can use our productivity to finance our conviction. And in that way we would be different than a coinbase and different than a strategy because we would have conviction in a Very specific worldview which is bitcoin. And we would display that via our balance sheet like we already do, but we would try and finance it in a, in a different way. And yeah, so going all the way back to the question, what do I think about strc? Clearly interesting. Obviously would I buy it? I personally don't own any strc. I, I just use bitcoin, obviously. I don't. I don't totally understand who the end. Who the target customer for STRC is. If you're a bitcoiner, I imagine you can't own too much of it obviously, or else it kind of violates the whole point. So yeah, it's not something I would not. I would recommend because I don't use it myself. I don't like. I don't like recommending things that I myself don't use. But again, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. I already know I'm gonna get bombarded for this answer. But yeah, that's my take on the whole thing is, you know, Tesla can get repriced to 10 times earnings from 100 tomorrow and the market wouldn't be wrong. In fact, oftentimes the markets try and punish, you know, certain behavior. And so I relying on M. Nav is. And also, you know, Saylor is selling MSTR and buying bitcoin. And by me buying these things I would be forgiving the opportunity to buy bitcoin to acquire the thing he's selling. So it's kind of like a reverse like it's a reverse. Like he's not doing what. What I would be doing. So anyways, those are the. Very transparently some of the things I still haven't figured out. Doesn't mean. Who knows, maybe I'm the dumbest guy in the room. Totally possible. Wouldn't be the first for. Wouldn't be the first time. But that's my. I don't know if that was. Let's check the chat. If that. If that was the answer you guys were looking for. Jack is the biggest hater of sailor. I'm not. I'm not a sailor hater. I'm not. I don't know how else to. I don't know how else to ask questions because here's the thing, guys. Let me just. Let me just say this. I'm never ever, ever, ever, ever going to just recommend things and say shit to be popular ever. If I'm being an idiot and I'm not getting something, I'm willing to admit that I'm not shy to Admit that I. Unless I deeply understand it and I use it myself, I'm not going to get on. On the Internet and. And just say things to be popular. It doesn't mean that what someone else is doing is a bad or good thing. It just means I don't get it. And these are the questions and the commentary that I've had in my own life, both professional and personal, with friends, with colleagues, with investors, just trying to figure it out. And I can't sit here and tell you that I've totally figured it out. I don't. I don't know. But Michael's clearly an unbelievably smart guy, so could he have figured something out that I still don't understand? Yeah, and by the way, it wouldn't be the first time. He's figured out a lot of things before the rest of us. So I'm not a. I'm not a. I'm not a hater in any respect, like, at all. And like I said, I hope it works. I hope it works. Saylor is the mayor of Bitcoin. We should all have his back. Yeah, I mean, listen, no comment on that. Like I said, guys, it's not that I don't have anyone's back. If I don't understand something, I'm gonna say I don't understand it. And this is what I don't understand. If you guys, instead of. Here's my other problem is whenever I do. If. Whenever I say, like, hey, I don't totally get this. This is what I don't get. Instead of saying, oh, here's what you need to understand, people just attack me. Which, like. Which makes me feel even stronger about the things I don't understand because they're never. I'm never met with, like, oh, dude, you should read this article. Like, this explains it. This is how I got what you don't get. It's like, shut up. You're a hater. You don't support our mayor. Like, you're an asshole. You should, like. And it's like, okay, well, that makes me feel even stronger about because what I'm saying is somehow offensive or violating some, like, personal worldview of yours. And all I'm saying is, like, I don't. I just don't get it yet. Anyway. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, a company owes billions of dollars forever, and they don't make billions of dollars. So, like, how's that going to work? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe you guys can link me to an article. We'll Move on. Okay, Strike questions. Can you create an option to create more than one wallet, address on Strike or a custodial account? So every time that you receive Bitcoin and Strike, a new address is created. You can still reuse addresses. It's not like if you reuse an address, the Bitcoin is going to go into the ether. But we also, we do create new addresses. So I don't know exactly what you are asking. Not going to lie. But anyway, yeah, I guess, I guess the answer to your question is yes. Today's question. I can buy Bitcoin through BitKey on strike, but I can't sell Bitcoin through BitKey on strike. Can you add that capability also? Congrats. Y' all are the cutest together. I very much appreciate that. Sell through BitKey. What? What do you mean? You mean just in the, in the interface? I assume they're asking sell Bitcoin. So you can, obviously you can send the Bitcoin to Strike and sell it. We want possession of the Bitcoin in order to give you fiat. So I think our preference would be that you send the Bitcoin to Strike and then from there you can sell it. You know, it's difficult for me to execute on a sell order without knowing I'm going to get the thing you're selling. You can just claim to want to sell it and then I go and sell it and then you say ah, nevermind, nevermind. And now I'm just like stuck having sold Bitcoin that I don't have. But if there's something more specific you're looking for, maybe we can accommodate. So Jack, any plans for strike in Israel? Is there an eta? Thank you and much love from Tel Aviv. We'll take a look. I actually don't know off the top of my head if there what are licensing in Israel. I actually don't even know what they require. That's a good question. Let's see. Hey, Jack and Dylan, when will Strike have proof of reserves? We actually just completed our first ever proof of reserves for our lending product. So we will hopefully come out with that very shortly. I could have a huge announcement at the Bitcoin conference. I could have no announcement at the Bitcoin conference. That might be a part of my announcement at the Bitcoin conference. I'm going to get on an airplane and try and figure it all out. But either way, our proof of reserves should be shortly, at least for our lending product. For overall we could also do it. You know, I've always considered I think I've mentioned this before. For us, proof of reserves for our lending product, to me was the most important because when you're posting collateral, you don't. You can't withdraw it. It's collateralizing credit alone. And so I think allowing our customers to know that the collateral is there. Like, we also are hopeful, you know, maybe next week to come out with another feature just having your collateral sit in addresses that you can uniquely look at. So you could just look at your collateral. It's on the blockchain, it's sitting there. And then we would come out with something like quarterly proof of reserves as well for our lending product. And I think that's critical. Because you're posting collateral, you're not allowed to withdraw it. And because you can't withdraw it, I think we can build things to give you confidence that it's just sitting there to collateralize the loan for you. For overall, you know, I think the best proof of reserves is just withdrawing your bitcoin. So, you know, that's the other thing. For 21, we built proof of reserves because you can't withdraw our bitcoin. The bitcoin is ours. But if a lot of the interest you have in the company is the bitcoin we hold, you deserve, in my opinion, to see it and to know it's there. You know, there's been people that have started fake FUD on the Internet, like 21 selling their Bitcoin. And I'm like, you guys can just look at our proof of reserves, and you know it's there. But if it's bitcoin that you have on strike that you can withdraw, I think you just withdraw it. That, you know, there's no product or proof we can give you that is actually protect. Like, like, you know, proof of reserves in some context is great, but it's, it's. There's. It's not a silver bullet. Like, you're still holding your bitcoin and trusting it. It's not your keys, not your coins. It's at a custodian. Anything can happen. It's totally outside your control. I, if, if you can hold bitcoin yourself, I recommend you do that. So anyways, that's why we prioritize it for our lending product. We have some stuff related to our lending product, like collateral held in segregated addresses for our customers so that they can see their collateral on the blockchain and see that it's not moving proof of reserves. And then if people want more than that, we'll definitely explore it. But yeah, I mean, the best proof of reserves for just our normal products is to just withdraw your bitcoin. But obviously if that's not enough, let us know. I'm happy to look into it. Dylan, could you ask Jack. QSS to Jack. Firstly, congratulations on the engagement. Recently I got my heart broken by a girl. Any advice in finding the right partner? Oh, damn, I am sorry about that. Yeah, you know, I don't know, I'm hesitant here because I also didn't have the most success with women in my life before I found my person. So it feels a little bit strange to give advice on this topic when I, you know, I don't consider myself an expert ball knower. You know, I, I consider myself to have gotten unbelievably lucky. And so it feels weird giving advice on something where I'm like, wow, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I feel like the luckiest man in the world. Let me give you advice. It feels wrong. Like I feel more like I hit the lottery than I knew exactly what I was doing. And I can give you repeatable steps if that makes sense. So. But I mean, I will say what comes to mind for one, on the heartbroken part, I think that human emotion, human emotions are useful. I don't think they're necessarily good or bad. They are information. And this might be just my weird markets brain, but when you feel sad, when you feel down, that's useful information. It is your body's way of giving you information to remind you and teach you. Don't do that again or this feeling sucks or this feeling should be avoided. And when you feel happy and when you feel good, it's useful information for your body to know. Do this more often. We enjoy this, we like this. But my point is bad emotions and good emotions are both useful and they both will likely happen for as long as you're alive. There is no avoiding bad emotion or good emotion. Emotion is information to help optimize yourself, who you are, your sense of being, your purpose on where you belong and where you want to go. So I would say if you're heartbroken, do not block any of the emotions that you're feeling. The most difficult part in being a bitcoiner and owning bitcoin is often doing nothing right. The natural human state is, oh, I have to do something. I have to invest it into shitcoins to earn a bigger return. I have to figure something. I have to. No you don't. The hardest part sometimes is just do nothing. The hardest part about being a bitcoiner for me over the last 14 years is do nothing. Just sit there, stack sets. And so it's the same thing with emotions and with relationships is being hard, broken. Sometimes the hardest thing is to do nothing is to just feel the things that you need to feel. And so that would be my first advice is feel the things that you need to feel. Don't be afraid of them. Emotions are intimidating trauma. I'm sure, you know, everyone has traumatic experiences that get drummed up during things like this. And don't be afraid of them. It's just information. You're gonna be okay. Feel those things. And then on finding the right person, I do think, based on all the things that I just said, I do think the thing that at least I optimize for is not happiness. I optimize for peace. Because again, I don't want to always be happy. That means I'm not pushing the boundaries of my life enough. I want to find environments where I'm sad, where I'm upset, where I'm angry. So it means I'm learning new things about myself. Oh, I don't like this. Oh, I made a mistake. Oh, I understand the world differently now. That means I'm experiencing this whole life thing. And so I don't optimize to be happy necessarily. I don't want to always be happy. I optimize to be at peace. And so when I, for me and my partner has helped me find peace with myself and that, that is what was big for me. And I don't know if that's advice on how to find the right partner, but that would be my lived experience if it's useful to you at all. So feel the things you need to feel. Don't be scared. It's all information. Even being heartbroken, again, like being sad is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a thing. It's information. It's good. All of it's good. Allow life to come from you, not at you. And I hope that you find someone that gives you the peace that. I think that's the North Star. Okay, what are my last question, what are my top. What are my top five rap albums? College Dropout by Kanye West. Gotta be up there, Man. I mean, I got mixed feelings about Drake, but he's my most listened to artists. So Drake, my favorite Drake album is probably Take Care or Nothing was the same. But I'll go with Take Care has got to be up there. See, let's go into my phone real quick. I mean, honestly, I might Put a future album up there. Honestly, Maybe Wayne. Lil Peep is Lil Peep rap. Yeah. I mean, like, Maybe the Carter 3 is up there for me. Because here's the problem. I could, I could, I could. You know what I hate was people like, oh, Biggie, Nas, like, of course. But I don't listen to that, if I'm being honest. So I'm just these. I'm in my phone just looking at some of the albums that I can tell you guys, like, I actually listen to Thug Motivation 101 by Jeezy. That's up there for me. And I owe you one more, obviously, in no order. I don't know. Probably. Maybe monster or DS2 from future. Probably DS2. Let's just go with that for now. You said hip hop, right? Not all genres. Yeah, rap. All right. We got Wayne, Future, Drake, Kanye. I mean, Kanye to me, Kanye's probably my goat. Probably Musically. Musically. Come on, don't do that. I think he's an unbelievable artist. All right, that's all I got. Questions, comments, feedback, Just drop them in. As always, appreciate you guys. Hang in there. Stay humble, Stack sats. This market is a. You know what I say, or I got it from my dad. Markets either wear you out or scare you out. So scare you outs, obviously. Drop the bottom from under you, the thing goes down 20% in a day, you're like, oh, my gosh, is bitcoin going to zero? We were all wrong. But surviving that is actually probably easier than the wear you out. Wear you out is it's going to chop and Trump's going to say one thing, then another and another, and he's going to whip you around and probably stay between 60 and 80k for months and chop and chop and chop, and it's just wearing you down. And so hang in there. Nothing about bitcoin's change. Turn on your dcas. Stay humble, Stack sats, and I'll see you guys next week. Much love. Peace.