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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 yet another edition of Mail bag Monday, episode 116. Ladies and gentlemen, I am talking to you all at a bitcoin price of 80,340. Welcome back. 80,000 thousand. Hopefully you stay for a while. Okay, not a professional podcaster didn't mute the episode. And we're back talking to you all to Bitcoin price of 80340 US dollars. That puts Bitcoin's market cap back above 1.6 trillion. At 1.61 trillion US dollars for the asset class, our all time high is still $126,160, which we made on October 6th of 2025210 days ago. At this point, we are now only 36.3% down from that all time high. Don't look now, here comes the orange coin. The last bitcoin block height since I hit stream was Bitcoin block height. 947. 928. Ladies and gentlemen, it is good to be back in the empty closet. I am back from Las Vegas. Again, not the biggest fan, but I was happy to be there. We're fighting the good fight. We're fixing the money. We're fixing the world. And today's episode is titled hold on to your butts, grab both cheeks and your bitcoin. Oil surging again. Bond market falling apart. Gas prices in the US through the roof. And consumer sentiment has arguably never been worse, at least in recent recorded hit history. The reason I picked this title is I believe that volatility is mispriced. The market is not valuing volatility. It's not implying volatility anytime soon. I think that is can't be the case. Bitcoin is starting to kick and scream a little bit. And we know that bitcoin usually leads. It usually tells us inklings of what's going to happen in the future because it is such a free market. So my recommendation is to hold on to your butts and your bitcoin. So without further ado, let's get started. Okay, I had mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm over the political. Like, I'm done. I'm done chasing the headlines. All these politicians do. Doesn't matter if they're on the left or the right, the up or the down, the red or the blue or this or that. On this podcast, we bleed orange. We are bitcoiners. I think government's gotten too big and I think all they do is lie, lie, lie, lie, and I'm done wasting my time on it. So I told you guys very simply, the only reason I was going to reintroduce, trying to understand what's going on, what central planners were thinking is if I could answer these four questions or if these four questions rather would, their answers would change. One, is the straight or Hormuz still closed? Two, is the conflict still going on in Iran? Three, are global supply chains still being disrupted? And four, can global debt survive this disruption? My point is, the answers to these have yet to be changed. Week after week, announcement after announcement, truth, social post after true social post. No matter what these politicians say, they're trying both on both sides. Us, Iran, this way, that way, China, Russia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Politicians, they're giant chief marketing officers. They talk, they talk, they talk, they lie, they lie, they lie, okay? And it's not worth our time this, this little beloved corner of the Internet that we all share here. We're trying to lock arms and understand the future and hard money and how to bring prosperous times to ourselves and our family and our children. They're not going to steal our time and energy on this podcast. No, no, no. Because is the straight of Hormuz still closed? Yes. Is the conflict still ongoing? Yes. Our global supply chain still being disrupted? Yes. Can global debt survive this disruption? No. We move on. Because here's the deal. Sunday night, Trump tweeted this like, vague thing that he called Project Freedom, which was supposedly going to impact the Strait of Hormuz and how ships got through and all this stuff. And markets started to rally bit on Sunday night as if this was meaningful news, as if this was going to be something that actually mattered, that was real. And of course, on Monday morning, what do we do? Apparently, Trump did not announce that the Navy will start escorting ships through the straight of Hermuz, even though that is what he posted two hours ago. This might explain why markets are hardly moving on this news. He effectively announced nothing. And I mean, hate to be the I told you so guy, but I told you so. The markets are getting fatigued of the media, media, media, headline, headline, headline. They're trying to control markets so that they can buy themselves more time. We've talked about it. The United States, their biggest vulnerability, our biggest vulnerability as a country is the bond market, is the ability to finance ourselves, is our fiscal situation. And I think the market is fatigued of all these headlines. I think people like me, well, I don't think. I know, are fatigued of all this political rhetoric. And again, it's not. Not picking sides. I'm over that. I'm over that. Until the. The answer to these four questions change. Is the strait so closed? Is the conflict ongoing? Are global supply chains being disrupted? And can global debt survive the disruption? If these remain unchanged week over week, we move on and we have to figure out what, well, what is this doing to implied inflation? How is Bitcoin reacting to this? What tools do we need to build as a community? What education do we need to invest in as a community? And so that is where we are going to go for chapter one. The oil shock is here. And so, given that the strait is still closed, given that the conflict in Iran is still ongoing, given that global supply chains continue to be disrupted. Cause, guys, remember, the Strait of Hormuz is 20% of the global oil supply chain. And you guys also have to keep in mind one thing. Everything in your life is a derivative of energy, okay? The. The human story is very simply can. Well, I wouldn't be that dramatic, but the human story can very simply be understood as. How about that? The human story can very simply be understood as commercializing energy from the sun. There's this big giant orange, yellow thing in the sky, and it beams energy down onto planet Earth. And the human story can best be understood as commercializing that energy that is beaming from the bright thing in the sky and making use of it for a prosperous life for our species. That is the human story, okay? And everything that we consume and that we use is some derivative of that energy, right? The food you're eating, those are calories. That's a derivative of energy. How you transport yourself, whether it's the car, via plane, or even walking, you cannot walk, you cannot run without sufficient energy in your body. Whether you're burning calories, whether you're burning fat, it's all a derivative of energy. The house you're living in, that is a derivative of energy. And the electricity bill, how we communicate with each other is a derivative of energy. The cell phone in your pocket. So you have to understand oil is one of the most important markets in the world. And when there is an oil shock or disruption to the oil supply chain, you have to understand the ripple effects that that has on everything around you. Because oil, in the energy market, everything else is a derivative of that. And so when they say, oh, there's inflation in oil, that means inflation and everything else must be coming. The reason people say that is because everything else is a mere derivative of energy. And that's also when you hear people say, well, bitcoin is energy money and it's really important that bitcoin uses stuff like proof of work, which demand and require external energy. This is why that property is so important, is because ultimately what you should care about in your money is how well it does in keeping energy purchasing power. Your money should do a good job at protecting your right to consume energy. Right? That's what everyone wants. Everyone wants a two car garage, guzzling oil, unlimited flights whenever they want to travel somewhere, an ability to get as much housing as they want, keep the lights on through the night if their kid wants to play video games or order the nicest food, the nicest form of calories, the most organic grass fed steaks as opposed to the pleb slop jail lunch, it's all a derivative of energy. And so money is your time and energy in abstracted form, consumption as humans is derivative of energy. And the oil market is really, really, really important to things like inflation, to things like macroeconomics, geopolitics, so on and so forth. And so with the thing about this war is we were told, oh it's going to, I mean guys, like the amount of gaslighting is crazy. We were told, oh, it's going to end really soon. It's just a little blip. We just need to go in, do this thing, boom, boom, boom, and it's over. Oh wait, one more week. Oh wait, one more thing. Oh wait, this, oh wait, that. And here we are and it's May 4th and I believe the conflict started in the last few days of February. So it's been all of March, all of April, So it's been at least two months and the straight of Hormuz is still experiencing blockage. And so then let's take a look at how this really critical commodity market, this oil market, energy markets, which are the tip of the iceberg because everything else is a derivative of energy of this thing that's beaming energy out of the sky, which we call the sun. So you can see from this tweet from Jim Bianco, what does the oil market think? Both the July orange and the December blue Brent crude oil futures contracts are at new highs, at new highs. And this is dating back to the beginning of this year. The December contract is now signaling that the market expects crude oil to be above $90 for the next seven months. So the reason looking at futures contracts are important is because they're trying to price, hence the name, the future of the physical commodity. They are derivative for forward pricing is what it's called risk transfer of forward pricing. And so the reason that this is valuable is we're like, whoa. Markets expect that crude oil is going to be worth over $90 all the way in December. The blue line is when the contract settles in December. And so you can hear all of the talking heads on tv, all of the politicians, all of the paid podcasters. Hey, no sponsors. I'm not paid. Man of the people. Man of the people. But all the rhetoric, trying to convince you to believe their bias or believe what they're being paid to say. What I care more about is I love markets because markets force people to put real time and energy on the line, real capital on the line. Words are cheap, words are easy. Words are free. Money's not. And the fact that futures are saying that oil is still going to be at or near $100 per barrel even by December, what does that tell you guys about the level of disruption in these markets? What does that tell you guys about the conflict? So earlier today, Iran had an attack on the UAE. The UAE announced it, and Brent crude went from 110 to 120. And it's back on the run, it's back on the rise, just screeching higher. And again, considering everything is a derivative of energy, this is going to have grave impacts on the world we're living in. And obviously, as bitcoiners. You know, I had someone ask me on a podcast recently, I recorded a podcast on Friday. I think it'll be out on Wednesday maybe. And he said, well, like what? What's your answer when people say, why do you care about this trader her moves? Why are you always talking about this macro stuff? And it's because bitcoin is a solution to a problem, and the problem is fiat. The problem is the legacy finance system. And I benefit from and enjoy trying to understand the state of the problem and how bad it really is and how I can best position the solution, which is bitcoin, for the world that we're in right now. You know, people are caring about different things. There's different stuff ongoing in the world. And so the fact that, you know, Brent crude oil is above $120 a barrel, like that's really meaningful. Gas prices are starting to really, really, really move. So you can see in the green line here, gas prices are up 33% this year, and it looks like they're just getting started. We're already almost at the 2022 gas price high, and we're already higher than the gas price highs of the 2008, 2009, Great Financial Crisis. So gas prices are really starting to move. And I wanted to highlight some stuff because you're going to start seeing economic data. I've seen whether it's central banks or whether it's commercial banks or whether it's governments around the world, they're starting to cite strong economic growth. They're saying, oh man, the US economy or the European economy or whoever is booming. There's so much spending, there's so much economic activity. You're going to start to see that and hear that. And you know there's a Fed chair change, obviously Warsh is expected to be coming in and Jerome Powell is now done. And I wanted to highlight a really important point and that yes, nominally, so in US dollar terms, things are quote unquote booming, right? Like the amount of dollars moving around and being spent by consumers looks high. But the question is, what are those dollars being spent on number one? And number two, what about the real economic terms? So instead of measuring things in dollars, which we know get debased and are worth less over time, what about measuring things in real terms? So first on the left you can see this is increased spending on gasoline is likely to weigh most on the real consumer spending. And so you can see this average effect baseline of an oil shock, energy goods on the far left and then all the way on the far right is housing and utilities, health care. And when you have an oil shock, the amount of capital being spent just on energy goods, just on oil is unbelievably high. So I wouldn't say the economy's booming if people are just forced to spend and dip into their savings to just to fill their gas tank just to pay the electricity bill, just to get by. On the right you can see US retail sales by kind of business. And look at gasoline stations, gasoline stations sitting at 15.5%. And then furniture and home furnishing is second in 2.2%. And so again, I encourage you guys, always pull on the thread, think critically, think for yourselves. Yes, nominally there are more dollars sloshing around the US economy, but it's all on energy goods derivatives of energy, gas stations, that's not necessarily a good thing. And I pull on the thread a little bit more in this slide and you can see that adjusted for inflation, consumer spending is pulling back tremendously. So you can see this yellow line is the pre pandemic trend. And we know post pandemic, post Covid money, bazooka, money printing, this is an entirely different world. And you, you know, history Might look back at Covid and the timeline we're living through today is the beginning of the end for fiat, or it depends on what you want to call it, the post $1971. Right, because you know there's almost two chapters of fiat. One chapter where it was supposedly linked to a physical commodity that you couldn't print, like gold, and supposedly it was redeemable for gold. Now the practicality of that I'd highly question. I would guess that the big governments and central banks of the world were actually largely insolvent before 1971. But let's just say this post $71 to keep it clean, which is it's not redeemable for any hard money. It's not redeemable for any commodity. It's not governed by the natural laws of the universe, by mother Nature, by things that you can't just print out of thin air. It is man made, man governed, centrally planned slope. This post $71, this is likely the beginning of the end. And you can see that visually in this chart where once we adjust for inflation, once we adjust for real purchasing power terms. Let me try and dumb it down. If $1 gets you an egg and then we experience inflation where now you need $2 for an egg, measuring things in dollars is not that interesting because you can say, oh, there's a dollar. Like the US economy went from spending $1 to a $50. Wow, that's 50% growth. That's crazy amounts of growth. But if it doesn't even get you one egg anymore, then the real purchasing power terms is declining. Yes, nominally people are spending more dollars, but practically speaking, in the exchange of goods and services, which is ultimately what money's for, people are consuming and getting less. And so you can see the retail sales in the blue is starting to fall apart in this post Covid world when you adjust for inflation. And so don't be fooled when you see, oh, the US economy is booming. Look at all of these metrics. Well, nominal terms and real terms are different. And when you pull on the thread, you realize that during an oil shock, people are dipping into their savings just to get by. Like things like energy consumption and oil and gas. These are like base level needs. That's, that's not like discretionary consumer spending. It's like, oh, I won't get the Louis Vuitton bag this, this Christmas. Because money's tight. It doesn't matter how tight money is. Like, you need to commute to work, you need to get your kid to school, you need the lights to be, you need the AC or the heat to be on in your home. It just doesn't really matter. So again, just keep that in mind. Meanwhile, the US crude reserves are declining to scary amounts of lows. They are continuing to dwindle. So you know, the United States is using their SPR and this is something to keep an eye on as well. I mean listen in oil shock and high gas prices is a surefire way to lose an election. So I would keep my eye on oil policies. I honestly wouldn't put it past the administration to even look into, you know, export restrictions. So the combination of what we're walking through of consumers are getting crushed, inflation seems to be roaring back, which we'll get to in a second. Gas prices are likely going to make all time highs at least in the last 20 years. And our SPR Strategic Petroleum reserves are declining mean that is screaming some form of policy from government or central planners. So I would keep an eye on an eye out on it. I just wanted to highlight it because it is an important thing to note for chapter two, the bond market. So on one side you've got oil is screaming higher and what that's doing to the bond market is it's crushing it. And so let's take a step back. I try and make the show for the common man by the common man. We're not here to get into, you know, this is not an economics class at Harvard. That's not what this show is about. Try and dumb all this stuff down and make sure it's digestible and easy to understand. So what is the bond market? Just a quick reminder, it's how the US government gets money lent to it. Again, the US government runs what's called a deficit. They on net, if they were a business they'd be extremely unprofitable. They run about a 2 trillion dollar deficit a year. You can think of it like losing $2 trillion a year. So the US government spends a lot more than it quote unquote makes. So how does it afford it? Well the bond market and a bond is just lending money to the government is a bond. When you buy a bond you're lending money to the government and you're getting interest, you're getting yield. So the US government owes interest on, on that loan and that is the bond yield. And so when bonds go down, yields go up. Because for very simple, it's, it's very simple math. If the US government wants money lent to it and the Yield is at 3% and the market is like, ugh, I don't want to touch that. I'm not lending money to the U.S. government for 3%. Well, then the yields will go higher and it was, okay, what about 3.1%, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4? Until demand meets supply, until, okay, fine, if the US government's willing to pay me 20% yield, I'll lend the US government money. And so as bonds lose demand, the yield goes up and vice versa. As everyone's piling into bonds, yields come down. If everyone's like, fine, like, I really want to lend to the US Government, they can probably get away with financing it for cheaper interest. Makes sense. So let's take a look at how bond markets are doing. Oil is driving bond volatility. Oil's impact on the bond market. I would argue that oil in the blue is driving bond volatility in the orange, not the other way around. That means wider daily ranges and given the current environment, higher yields. So bond volatility has been one of the most important metrics to understand when the money printer is coming out. The US government's got $40 trillion worth of debt. A really simple way to think about the US Government and the current filthy fiat financial system is a highly indebted system, a highly levered system. Tons of leverage. We're all familiar with leverage on this podcast because we're in crypto. We know that, like, if you're super levered and the price moves a little bit, you get liquidated. And you can think of the US Government in the same way. Extremely, extremely levered. So what does a highly levered, highly indebted system not like volatility. Volatility is scary. And the, the very specific reason why the US Highly leveraged system doesn't like volatility is a lot of the people that are lending to the US Government are doing it via what's called a carry trade. These are hedge funds that are levering up their balance sheet to lend to the U.S. government. And when the collateral that you're posting is experiencing volatility, then you have to de risk and then you have to pull that trade back. And when there's a lot of bond volatility, the market gets weaker. The buyers kind of step back because all of these fast money traders, they can't lever up their balance sheets when there's volatility. And so the fact that one of the most important, if not the most important, commodity is experiencing a shock is experiencing supply chain shortages around the world. And again, you know, Japan imports, I think it's 90% of their oil and over 50% of their food. And these are all of these global supply chains are in serious trouble because everything's a derivative of energy of things like oil. And so the fact that oil markets are all messed up is going to mess up everything else. And you're starting to see what volatility in the bond market start to peel back up. And this is, by the way, the move index, which is the bond volatility index. This is the same index that shot up during Liberation Week, that forced Trump to taco and forced the money printers to come out in storm, and that sent bitcoin from whatever it was at at the time of April of last year of 25 to 125,000 by October. That run was money printing, it was stimulus, and it was in a reaction to things like bond volatility. And you're starting to see bond volatility creep back up because I'm telling you guys, you cannot take 20% of the world's oil offline, one of the most important supply chain vectors in the Strait of Hormuz, offline, and expect the world to function as normal. These things like gas prices are going to go up, inflation is going to come back. US Consumer sentiment is going to be as bad as it's ever been. Combine that with AI. Combine that with the fact that people are comparing this to, oh, what, what about when we were in 2001? What about in the 90s? Yeah, but in 2001, in the 90s, we weren't $40 trillion of debt that you cannot keep borrowing from your future, not paying it back. And comparing us to times when, you know, it's like the equivalent of like comparing a runner who's running a mile, who's in pristine Olympic shape, versus comparing a runner who's running a mile in the Olympics, that's obese. It's like, these are not comparable things. Like the US Has a ton of excess weight, it is obese and drowning in debt. I mean, it's just not going to work. So the bond markets are falling apart. So again, bond math confuses people. But when you guys see rates go up, that means bonds are crashing, right? Because if people are getting rid of bonds, they're like, oh, my goodness, I do not want to lend to the United States right now. And why would they be saying that? Well, one, because the fiscal situation is just such a mess, generally speaking. But if you expect there to be inflation, you need higher yields to compensate you for that inflation. Let's say the things around you that you want to buy, you think are going to be getting more expensive, at least 5% more expensive a year. Well, you certainly wouldn't lend money out for 3% then because sure, you're making 3% a year, quote unquote risk free, but everything that you want to buy is getting 5% more expensive. So that is real rates negative is what they call it. That means you're losing purchasing power over time. And so if the collective consensus is yikes, straight or Hermuz is closed, there's conflict in the Middle East, AI is coming and taking everyone's job. I don't know if I want to lend to the United States right now. I'd rather buy bitcoin. Then bonds will fall and yields will go up. And that's what we're seeing here. So if you look at this diagram, the yellow lines is when Trump introduced tariffs and you can see in 2018 tariffs were introduced, yields collapsed until Covid and the inflation bonanza after that. You could see the post Covid recovery and the 2022 inflation shock. And then you can see Trump back in office release or announced tariffs again in 2025. And you can see that the 10 year and the 30 year rates tried to start to come down again, but they're on the rise and they're back up and they're almost at these all time highs, at least like all time highs within this time window, which is a little over a decade. But across the two year, the 10 year, the 30 year bond rates are soaring which is again collectively that means that people aren't as interested in lending to the US Government anymore. And there's absolutely a relationship, oil going up and bond rates going up. That means there are inflation concerns. That means that the fiscal situation people aren't as confident in anymore. It's one thing to hear a podcaster say it, it's another thing to see the bond market say it. This is the biggest, most unruly in the world. Okay? This is what bitcoin is trying to replace. This is the world's store of value today. Government debt, bonds, government paper. So you see this is just the 30 year US Treasury. The 30 year US treasury is flirting with 5%. And James Lavish, friend, friend of the show, friend of the show, he tweets, how about those mortgage rates? So again, you want to lose an election? You want to create societal unrest? Well, have gas prices be at all time highs in the last 20 years and have long, long, long duration rates soaring which is going to screw up everyone's ability to actually get a mortgage and own a home. So again, we, you know, we cannot talk like the straight of her moves. And also, we could not talk about it on the show. But the reality is the world we live in is a derivative of energy. Guys, the story of mankind is commercializing energy. That's the story of human prosperity. I joke all the time. People say, oh, bitcoin miners take up too much energy. I'm not that kind of guy. I wouldn't use that much energy. Okay, you don't like using energy. Okay, cool. I'll tell you what. Next time you go to Europe, you take a kayak and I'll fly united because, oh, no, no, you don't like using energy. You're not the kind of guy that would use energy. Right? Next time your favorite sports team plays, you listen to the radio broadcast. I'll watch it on television. Right? Next time you need to send a message to a friend, you use a pigeon and I'll use an iPhone. You understand that commercializing energy and harnessing energy for all is the road to prosperity. Whoever's convincing you that consuming energy is a bad thing is short energy. For some reason. My dad once told me, a politician's opinion is a politician's position. Politicians saying energy consumption is bad isn't based, in fact, isn't based in your best interest. It's based in that the country isn't have an abundance of energy. And energy inflation is the root of all societal distress. But make no mistake, the lives that you dream about consume the most energy. Private travel, two car garages, big houses like that. I mean, the, the nicest food quality. That's all energy. All energy. Make no mistake about it. And so anyways, now I'm going to transition this subtly into what does it mean for bitcoin? What does it mean for financial markets? Well, interestingly, bitcoin is rising in this environment right now, which is kind of crazy. And I think broadly, markets are going to have to make a decision, are they gonna crash? Because, you know, the oil shock is really going to tighten liquidity. There's going to be some form of a financial crisis which will result in money printing or are they going to rip? Because there's going to be continued stimulus into the financial markets and into the economy. So I just wanted to highlight that the US Government is what they call running it hot. They are providing lots of liquidity. There are three primary stealth liquidity channels that are propping up markets today. Why Bitcoin is going out, it's smelling the liquidity that the US government is providing. It's really interesting because usually central planners provide liquidity only after there's a crisis because it's more politically palatable to do it that way. Right. You say instead of juicing markets and inciting inflation before there's a crisis, they usually do it after because it's like, oh, I'm here to save the day. Oh, your bank failed. Well, I'm here with ABCDEFG funding program that's saving everyone's deposits, making sure that everyone knows that I saved you, I saved your deposits, I saved your bank. That sounds wet, like way more of a heroic hero's journey. Then I just printed a bunch of money sent assets higher. And the reason your eggs are twice as expensive is probably my fault. So it's interesting. This is kind of out of character for policymakers, but nonetheless, number one is this Reserve Management Purchase Program. Remember back in Q4 of last year, the Fed said that they would start to enable this repurchase program in growing the size of their balance sheet. We had been in QT for a while, for years, and the, the Fed's balance sheet was getting smaller. And the Fed said, they're finally pausing QT now. They didn't say, we're starting QE because QE is a bad word. People know what QE is. They associate it with inflation, they associate it with the wealth gap. And so in my opinion, this is de facto qe. But they didn't call it qe. It's not QE technically, but still, the Fed's balance sheet has now started to grow. That is stimulus number one. Stimulus stimulus number two is suppressing the dollar. And so we've seen the US government go out of its way to try and weaken the dollar at every chance it can. It's called for rate checks. It's tried to negotiate swap lines with the uae. We've talked about recently anything it can do to make sure the dollar doesn't strengthen. Why is that? Am I saying that that's a bad thing they're doing? It's not good or bad. It's important to understand the reason they're doing it is because you cannot reshore manufacturing reshore production in your country with a strong currency, or else there's never going to be an opportunity to make the iPhone in America or to produce your own military equipment in America because labor will always be cheaper elsewhere. The US dollar is artificially priced high. US assets are artificially priced high. Now, ultimately, the reason for that is because of the world reserve Currency status. There is a persistent level of demand for the US dollar that no other currency has. And so there is a persistent artificially high price for the US dollar that no other currency has. I've said time and time again, if the US wants to solve their problem really quickly, they could just say we don't want to be the world reserve currency anymore and that'll be that. Now it's not that simple obviously, but that's the reason. And so the goal of a weaker dollar, therein lies the goal of the US government. It doesn't really matter. Democrat, Republican, left, right, red, blue. It's a consistent theme that the US feels globalism is no longer advancing what America wants and what they want for their people. They're trying to reshore, they're trying to bring back blue collar, they're trying to bring back manual labor, they're trying to bring back industrial production. And that requires a weaker currency. Now a weaker dollar implies inflation, naturally. A weaker dollar gets you less food. A weaker dollar gets you less housing. A weaker dollar gets you less Bitcoin. So it implies higher asset prices. So one, RMPs, reserve management repurchases from or reserve management purchases from the Fed. Two is the US government is clearly going out of its way. And when I say government, primarily the treasury is going out of its way to ensure that the dollar not only doesn't get strong but finds a way to get weaker. And three is issuance manipulation. The US government is issuing treasuries on what they call the short end. So you could issue T bills which are more like cash instruments, or you could issue 10 years which are, you know, 10 year U.S. treasury. Now the government is staying away from the long end. And it's obvious because it's the long end is weak. There's not a lot of demand at the long end. Virtually nobody wants to lend the US government money over 10 years. You'd have to be nuts. How do you price in inflation over 10 years? How do you price in what our monetary system is even going to look like? Or are we going to be living in this multipolar world? I mean, you'd have to be crazy. I mean Covid wasn't even 10 years ago. You want to lend a sovereign money for 10 years. I mean the level of uncertainty, the lack of trust, I mean the world, this is fourth turning stuff, right? The world is changing in front of our eyes. And so the US government is solving this problem by issuing it on the front end, which is fine, but it's much More stimulative. Much more stimulative. And so we're seeing. And I'll get to this in a second. Bitcoin markets want to move. Volatility is coming. That's why I titled this hold on to your butt. Clinch those cheeks. Hey, not a professional podcaster. You're gonna want to clinch those cheeks in those private keys because change is cometh. You cannot disrupt the oil markets and everything else, be a derivative of energy as we know it and expect no volatility. It is coming. The question is are we going to get a big whoosh down crash or our market's going to rip higher because they're going to provide enough liquidity to protect the crash. Now the answer is which I'll get into in a second. I don't know. That's why I stay humble and stack sats. That's why I turn on my dcas. I don't. It's not worth our time in my opinion to try and trade and spot the lows and sell the highs that you know, like be productive, do something worthwhile in society and for those around you, provide value on net and then stack sats and stay humble. That's the way to that. That, that's the, that's the. The road to the high land. But anyway, this tweet caught my eye because I don't think that we've seen the oil shocks impact on the normal American consumer yet. So with US gasoline prices at 4.457 per gallon, $4.50 imminently and likely $5 per gallon in the near term, a look at how it's impacting the public is in demand. On Wednesday, the New York Fed is going to publish research on the K shaped pattern in gasoline spending. Get your popcorn out. Because that is going to spook the public and the political sector over who is bearing the burden of adjustment to the supply shock. So again, I don't think the. I think that Iran has been ongoing this oil shock is happening and I'll tell you who's feeling it before us. Japan, Europe. Japan and Europe look not good. The US actually is a very resource rich nation. Push comes to shove. The US actually has lots of food, lots of oil. Now it doesn't have oil in a way that we can consume it. The US has been very long globalism, short proof of work and everyone's starting to realize that doesn't make any sense. Really bad strategy. Start buying bitcoin, start buying hard assets, start investing in proof of work, whether it's yourself, your family, Your business, your nation and the world is starting to reprice what it means to be real, what it means to be hardworking, what it means to be productive. Those things are going to be in a perpetual, as far as the eye can see bull market. Okay? But theoretically when it comes to just like pure resources, the US is generally rich. Like the soil that I'm on right now, it does technically have energy resources and food. We just need to start doing the proof of work in making the country self sustainable. Other countries are not as lucky and are in a way worse position like Japan, a lot of Europe. So this oil shock, it will hit the US last. I guess the US will start feeling the pain later but it doesn't mean that it's not going to start feeling the pain. And that's the question that I really have or not a question because I'm going to stay humble and stack sats either way. But what I'm watching is is the pain going to result in a financial crisis? Is it going to result in the stock market puking 20% down, Bitcoin likely to fall with it? Or are they giving so much stimulus behind the scenes through issuing T bills, through the repurchase management agreement, Fed expanding balance sheet thingy to where assets are going to start to rip. And I'm really watching bitcoin to give me hints as to which way the market is going to lean. Because right now volatility is priced at effectively worthless. The VIX is just not. The VIX is not moving bond volatility is low. It's ho hum. It's ho hum. While 20% of the world's oil is offline, it's not going to vibe. So last chapter is the second wave is baked in. This is a chart of US CPI Consumer price index and this is dating all the way back. Sorry, I know sometimes you guys can't see so let me see if I can zoom in. So this is going all the way to 1950 as you can see here. And it's all the way till today 2026. And the what I wanted to highlight is as you guys can see over here on the far left up until almost the middle. This is the 1970s and the 1970s experienced very historic inflation. Look at these giant inflation waves. You had 1 and then 2 and then this blow off third inflation. And it's no accident that this was coincided with when we severed the backing of the US dollar with gold. Like ruin that relationship. Your dollar was no longer redeemable for gold. Of course that's Highly, highly inflationary because it implies a lot of money creation, a lot of credit, a lot of money printing, which if there's more growth in the currency unit than there is in the goods and services that people want to consume, then there is inflation. Another way of saying that that bitcoiners will understand. If the supply of dollars is growing faster than the supply of bitcoins, then the price of bitcoins will inevitably go up. Same thing with eggs, same thing with housing. That's why everything in bitcoin terms will crash. Bitcoin will go up against everything because nothing is scarcer than bitcoin. And that's why it's the reverse for dollars. Everything will get more expensive in fiat because nothing is growing in supply quite like fiat currency. Now the question that I have is, are we set for the same type of pattern in the 2020s? You can see this little Covid blip right here. But guys, we printed money into oil at negative $40 a barrel. During COVID During COVID markets were so screwed that you got paid if you could accept a physical barrel of oil, like someone would pay you to receive oil. Now oil is $120 a barrel. As I'm talking to you today, we're going to print money into that. You think you saw inflation in Covid? You haven't seen anything yet. Mind you, I spent years saying we're never going to get close to the Fed's 2% inflation target. They're going to have to readjust and say, ah, 2%'s not the goal anymore, which they've done. But keep in mind, we haven't even quote, unquote, solved the inflation from COVID That was in 2020. This is 2026. So not only is it look like there's tons of inflation and money printing on the horizon, but they're doing it into a market where oil and energy markets are already almost at all time highs in the last 20 years this century. And so look at the 1970s. And we're going to keep updating this chart over the years on this show. It would not surprise me if you saw the same pattern of blip, higher blip, highest blip. We've been through one. I think the second is coming. I think inflation is baked in the cake. It's too late. It's too late. I believe that the US economy is going to, quote, unquote, run it hot. There's going to be lots of growth, but the price that is going to be paid is inflation. And the only way that the Math will work is if there's some extreme productivity gain like AI. That's obviously the government's hope and why the government has labeled AI a national security threat or national security importance strategy. Whatever. Is not. Not only because it probably is. You know, the US wants to be a leader there, but also it needs that level of productivity. Like the US is going to invest everything it can to try and bring like deflationary technology and meet highly inflationary money printing 100%. So anyways, let's check in on consumer sentiment. How are the people feeling? Like is Bitcoin interesting? Is it actually solving a problem people have? Are we just sitting in our own little bubble and nobody cares about what we have to say or what we're working on? Because hard money is just like meh. People would rather not. No. So share of Americans who say their financial situation is getting worse is now all time high. 55%. Yes. Higher than Covid. Yes. Higher than the 08 financial crisis, the great financial crisis. Higher than by a lot. This is one of the worst times in recent recorded history financially as an American. If you look on the right, this is the University of Michigan's economic conditions index that they keep track of. Again lower than Covid, lower than the great financial crisis, lower than 9 11, lower than black Monday. The average person, the everyday man, is in pain. That's why I get up and record this podcast. That's why I founded Strike in 21. That's why we as a community won't stop until we fix some money. They this is not only a real problem, it's arguably the largest problem that we all face as a society today, hands down. Because this is only getting worse. Inflation's only going to get worse. People are only going to work even harder but get less. That's the problem facing society. It doesn't matter how hard you work, just think about how unfair this is. It doesn't matter how hard you work. You're going to get less food, less housing, less vacation, less family, less life expectancy, less everything. How much is the solution to that worth? Money that works. Money that serves all, money that serves the people. How much? How valuable is that project? If you and people could call us bitcoiners crazy, but at the end of the day, that's what we're working on. It's not gonna be a perfect journey. It's gonna be a bumpy one, it's gonna be a volatile one. It's gonna be worth it though. Cause I'm sitting here and I'm telling You, every single consumer survey I read, University of Michigan, Gallup, the Fed surveys, everything I read. There's never been a worse time to be a working person than today. And that has nothing to do with politics or wars or this or that. Has everything to do with the money. That's it. No man should work for what another man can print straight up. It's that simple. And people are out there working time, energy, effort, labor for what others are printing out of thin air. And there is human time and energy being robbed in broad daylight. That's just the situation. So the societal impact, I mean listen, the upper echelon of what I wrote here, capital is controlling everything. So hyper financialization has pushed that's created such a wealth gap where money is stored traditionally at the top. And hyper financialization has trained people to be so good at seeking out the most productive and the most efficient thing that it's actually killing human labor. So we're again I brought this up before, like some of my smartest friends are working on like high frequency trading algorithms and it's crazy when you think like from the most base level of logic, like should the brightest, most capable people in society be working on how to arbitrage other people's Robin Hood accounts? Like probably not. Like what about mining rare earths? What about building factories? Again, what about curing medical diseases? Like what about understanding and doing research on why cancer rates are rising? Like some of our smartest computer scientists are building like levered arbitrage strategies on normal people trading stocks. But that's the situation is like when you print so much money and you hyper financialize and it's all about globalization. That's the world you get. That's the world you get. So going back to markets and what I'm seeing, I found this interesting. Funds are selling while retail is buying. The second largest hedge fund selling in tech in a decade meets the third largest retail fund flow into the qqq. And so I think markets are at a crossroads. And the level of 80,000 for Bitcoin is critically important because it's about break even for a large amount of bitcoin capital according to these on chain metrics and stuff, I don't know. But the way I'm seeing it, either bitcoin's going to be able to defeat this 80,000 level and blast through it and then things are going to get really bullish really quickly. And I think not only for bitcoin, but the business cycle is fully back, stocks are fully back or bitcoin will have a Tough time reclaiming this 80,000 level. And it's unclear if stocks and bitcoin don't have one last large puke that are going to require central planning, intervention and lots and lots of money printing. Because make no mistake, as we've talked about it before, the US can't afford a recession. I mean, it relies too much on consumer spending, on asset prices, on capital gains tax receipts like that. Going through a prolonged recession is not an option no matter how you slice it. Money printing is cometh. In fact, we kind of talked about it, it's already here. It's just an order of operations question. And it's interesting. You're seeing obviously funds think there's a puke, retail thinks there's not. You know, are stocks sensitive to oil shocks and commodity disruption? This chart says yes. And so although bitcoin and stocks are experiencing a bit of a rebound and a bit of a, like a mini bowl like last few weeks have been, you know, some, some good price gains. Are they fully, fully, fully back? Is the oil shock going to get in the way of persistent bull run without further money printing, without things like yield curve control, without new policy that basically demands inflation and higher asset prices? So this is kind of the thing that I am watching and you know, one of the things, because at the end of the day, I don't really care. Like I stay humble and stack stats no matter what. I'll be buying the top forever, I'll be buying the bottom forever. Because I'll be buying bitcoin forever. And I'll be buying bitcoin forever because I'll just be, hopefully as long as I'm healthy and capable, I'll be providing value to society. And I don't store my work and my time, my energy and my effort in something that someone else can print out of thin air. I store it in bitcoin just like that's it, plain and simple. Some people can't seem to conceptually understand that, but that's just how I live my life, straight up. And so I'll be buying bitcoin forever, no matter the price. So to be totally candid with you guys, it doesn't really matter to me. But as I look at markets and look at what's going on in the Middle east and look at what's going on with AI, it's the bull case is this is like 1998 all over the, all over again and we're going to experience this massive blow off of everything piling into the US because Europe is down worse Japan is down worse and there's going to be this late cycle blow off in AI and bitcoin's going to be the best performer in that environment. And you better pile into bitcoin now because you're never going to get it lower if that happens. Hell yeah. Because like I said, I'm, I don't have a Fiat and I stack with my, with my effort, with my paychecks, with my labor. Anyways. Now the bear case is that oil shock is too much to overcome. You cannot take 20% of the world's oil offline and just expect the world to be able to overcome that. And so there's going to be credit constraints. We are, we've already seen, you know, these private credit funds halt withdrawals like the equivalent of such and that stocks roll over and bitcoin rolls over again. Either way, stay humble and stack sats. This is why you don't trade. Because imagine needing to predict the future in that way. Like, what are we, Houdini? Give me a break. Total waste of your time. Just work hard, just be productive, Just earn more than you spend in decades. When your kids look up at you and say, wow, how'd you do it? You say, you know what? I didn't do much. That's the answer. Simplicity is the answer. I worked hard, I didn't spend more than we were making and I saved in something that protected us. That's it. That's all. Listen, any, any show that's going to try and convince you that the solution to your problems is to turn into Superman and defy gravity and defy physics and predict the future, get the fuck out of here. That bitcoin empowers all. Everybody has the ability to work hard. Everybody has the ability to earn more than they spend. Everybody has the ability to save. It doesn't take. You don't got to be a rocket scientist. You don't got to be a freak athlete. You don't got to be a Houdini predictor of the future. Focus your time and energy on other parts of life. Fall in love, have kids, build relationships, start a business, make those things where you expense a lot of your time. Don't spend your time trying to study central bank monetary policy. This stuff. Get out of here. Work hard, stack sats, stay humble, stack sats, no fee. DCA on strike. Convert any of your paycheck that converts into bitcoin. No fee, on strike. That's why we do it. So, last thing I just wanted to point out. Bitcoin and software are still Marching to the same tune. So again, bitcoin now granted credit where credit's due. Bitcoin has outperformed since the crisis started. It has outperformed software, it's outperformed gold, it's outperformed silver, it's outperformed at all, everything except oil. So as a bitcoiner, I'm not thrilled. I'm not like, beating my chest because I want bitcoin to protect my ability to consume energy. And energy right now is going up more than my bitcoins. Right? And so at the end of the day, I still think bitcoin has work to do and it'll do that work. But it's important to point out that it's not like bitcoin is separating from risk, separating from tech stocks and is beating to the tune of its own drum and is on its way to solving the world's problems. Yet software is experiencing the same rebound bitcoin is. And so, like I said, I'm all eyes on bitcoin. If bitcoin breaks through 8081, 82 and starts to rip towards 90, then we've answered our question. The bull case is back. If not, and bitcoin starts to puke, then the oil shock has gotten the best of things. And look out for central planning intervention. Another interesting thing that I thought is worth pointing out is since the conflict started, bitcoin's been kicking Gold's butt. I don't think this is an accident. If you're in crisis, would you rather be lugging around a bunch of bars or would you rather have 12 words in your brain? I mean, it's not even close. People could say all they want about bitcoin. The Peter Schiffs of the world can talk all the smack they want. At the end of the day, which one's more divisible? Which one's easier to verify? Which one's easier to transport? Which one's cheaper to send? Which one is scarcer? These are. The fact that in the history books my kids are gonna have to read, that these topics were debated is silly. It's embarrassing. I mean, one is digital software and the other is literally a rock we find in the ground. Are you nuts? So it is worth noting that this trend has reversed. Bitcoin has been kicking Gold's butt in crisis again. Again, again. The marginal buyer pushes, pushes price higher. Someone that says, I don't really care what the price of bitcoin is. I need it. I need it. That's what pushes price higher. People like me push price Higher because my paychecks just go into bitcoin. No matter what, I don't really care the price. It's always a good price to get some SATs. And when there's conflict in the Middle east, people aren't saying oh, I gotta flee to safety. I gotta take my wealth out of banks and out of centralized companies because I might have to flee my family out of war, but I don't know. I was really hoping to get Bitcoin at 60k. That's not. No, no, no. At the end of the day, the best money wins. And that's what I got for today until grind my gear. So here's the deal. All lot, hold on to your butts, hold on to your private keys. Volatility is cometh and we will see. Are we going to experience a puke? Is bitcoin going to go on a bull? Don't place that bet. Stay humble and stack sats. Work hard, earn more than you're consuming. Okay. And I don't know, I mean this fiat system is continues to look untenable. Oil up bond yields, up bonds getting slaughtered and societal unrest is on the rise. Like, I mean I lived through Covid. I mean I know I was really young, but I know the great financial crisis was devastating. The fact that it's an even worse time now to be an American financially, that's crazy. I mean I try not to be too depressing on the show, but when you see near all time high assassination attempts, political violence, this like socialism versus capitalism war, that doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon. I mean fiat is rapidly and coming to an end. It's not like the dollar will cease to exist, but it's purchasing power and energy terms. The market's repricing things like gold, things like bitcoin, things like manual labor, the death of things like globalism, that seems to be around the corner. These, this is all real fourth turning shit. Make no mistake about it. Okay, grind my gears. Let's get into it. What grinds my gears this week? Prediction markets. I tweeted about it this morning. I couldn't help myself. I got to go on a rant. This from the Wall Street Journal this morning. Why almost everyone loses except a few sharks on prediction market. Let me pull up this data really quick because I don't want to get the number wrong. A Wall street journal analysis found that 67. 67%. 67% of poly market profits goes to just 0.1% of the accounts. While most traders are in the red most kalshi users also lose money. It's also exhausting because here's the problem. Here's the problem I have because the title of this slide is Las Vegas and New Clothes. This is not financial freedom. This is not financial innovation. This is not anything new. What are prediction markets? Prediction markets are Las Vegas in a new outfit. It's gambling dressed up lipstick on a pig. And it's all so tiresome because Satoshi Nakamoto gifted us the greatest, most humble gift humanities maybe ever seen. This person didn't pre mine for themselves. They didn't miss market it. They didn't mislead open source for the public proof of work. They didn't ask for anything. And we as a community have taken this gift and pushed it forward and propelled it to such heights that it could change the world for the better. Fix the money, fix the world. And you have these grifters that just won't stop. They're relentless with their grift. They never stop. I've been in this industry for almost 14 years and the amount of pre mined garbage coins, prediction markets, ICOs, NFTs, meme coins, I mean, you'd think I'm making this up. The amount of scam, fraud, grift, and it's one thing to do for Las Vegas to sell sugary cocktails and disgusting seed oils and try and force you and trick you into sitting all day in front of an LED screen and losing your money. At least Las Vegas doesn't pretend that it's bitcoin. And Las Vegas doesn't pretend that it's financial freedom. And Las Vegas doesn't pretend that it's fighting for prosperity. At least Las Vegas is honest. And Las Vegas is about sex addiction and drug addiction and gambling addiction. And when you get off that plane in Las Vegas, at least they're honest about what you're doing. It's so unethical and immoral, these things. How is this financial freedom? Because check this slide out. All of the volume on these things are sports gambling. So for those of you listening, I mean I'm looking at this visual and I'm taking a wild guess. Over 90% of the volume on this is sports gambling. Not elections, not politics, not economics. Prediction markets are sports gambling. What are they? They're an arbitrage, legal arbitrage. They're sports gambling regulated by the cftc. That's what they are. So they've routed around gambling laws in dressed up Las Vegas and casinos in a new grift. And it's ridiculous. And here's. Here's the reason. It's ridiculous. And people can say, oh, what's it to you to get in the way of someone else's business? I don't give a fuck about someone else's business. I have no problem with other people being successful and providing value. It's never been my issue. Here's my issue. Fiat currency turns everyone into a speculator whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not. Guess what? If you're alive today, if you're working today, and you are forced to use fiat currency, which, by the way, if you're American, you are. Because guess what? If you don't want to use the dollar, someone will show up to your home with a weapon on their waist and say, you pay the IRS or you live your life in a box. Do you understand that? So you are forced to use the dollar. I have to pay my taxes in dollars or I get arrested and I spend my life in a box. So if you are forced to use fiat and you are working and you are getting paychecks, you're a speculator whether you like it or not, because your currency is being debased. And whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you know it or not, you have to turn your fiat into something else just to survive, just to live a normal life. And so the mere fact that things like prediction markets have taken the problem that Fiat has created and marketed themselves as a solution, as part of the new trend, as part of the new system, when it's really just sports gambling dressed up in some distributed, decentralized technology fad, is bullshit. It's garbage. The problem I have, and what I've always had with all these companies is that they're monetizing the need to speculate. Financial freedom is not betting on meme coins, betting on ICOs, betting on shit coins, betting on penny stocks, betting on sports, that is. Do you guys. No honest, sane person can look me in the eye and say, we solve fiat debasement by sports betting. That's bullshit. But they have no problem marketing it as such to the broad public. I mean, I was going back and forth with someone on Twitter that works at one of these companies. They say, hey, you know, prediction markets aren't necessarily all bad. I say, I ask the guy, how would you market it ethically? Not to get users, not to trick people into volume, not to optimize for revenue. Would you look like, here's the problem for some of these businesses, I'd rather my Family be investors in these businesses than users. Users on these services lose money. I'd rather people own equity than use the service. How messed up is that? What type of world are we living in when the people I love in my family, I would rather not actually use the product, just own shares in the business. I'm sorry, it just, at a certain point, I mean, I've been working my whole adult life on Bitcoin. And when people grift and when people pretend and it's the same thing with Ethereum, it's the same thing with all these shitcoins. They market themselves as the better Bitcoin. The faster Bitcoin, the more smart contract Bitcoin, the more decentralized Bitcoin, the this Bitcoin, the that Bitcoin. Get out of our way. Just say you're a more convenient digital Las Vegas. I don't care if you make money. I don't care if people want to use your service. Do not trick them. Because as we just went over on this show, consumer sentiment has never been worse. Raising billions of dollars to dress up sports gambling in a new outfit. It's pathetic. Some of us are trying to actually fix the money. And I see people, people get so upset that I could possibly disagree with some things that Bitcoin treasury companies are doing. I mean, oh, God forbid. And so they're tweeting out, what is STRIKE good for? Why doesn't everyone just use Coinbase? What is Strike good for? I'll tell you what Strike is good for. We don't allow people to speculate on junk. If you're a Strike user, you're not losing money over the course of time. Your wealth is growing. We are building you financial services to survive this era of currency debasement. Our services could not be different. More different than these lipstick on a pig speculative casinos. I, I mean, if I'm going to be losing money, I might as well take my ass back to fucking Las Vegas and at least lay in the sun by the pool. Grinds my gears to no end. What's the difference between Strike and these casinos? Are you, is that a joke? And it's just not. The other thing is it's not even a long term strategy. Sometimes some investors used to ask me, hey, are you going to list all these things? No. Why, why would I think that that's a good long term strategy to like encourage my customers to participate in things that are eventually going to make them poor. So 67% of the winnings is going to 0.1% of the users. So everyone that downloads polymarket, if they actually use the product or service, they're very likely to get poorer, right? I mean, I'm not trying to talk, I'm just like, that's math, right? Am I misunderstanding? So, like, if my family members text me like, hey, I just downloaded polymarket, my reaction is going to be like, oh, no, no, get off. Get off that. Like, that's what we're working on. Just take the grift elsewhere. Take the grift out. Leave Bitcoiners out of it. That goes for shitcoins, that goes for penny stocks and future GME. People are asking, what do you think about GameStop trying to buy ebay? I don't give a. Leave Bitcoiners out of it. We are here to fix the money. We could not be more different than this stuff. All right, I'll cat myself there. You guys got, you guys got a good one out of me today. Blood pressure was certainly, certainly higher than usual. And with that, let's go to company updates. Big week for me. Obviously, if you guys did not catch my keynote at the Las Vegas Bitcoin 2026, highly encourage you. Check that out. I had a lot to say. I'm not going to be able to recap it perfectly on here, but I'll give it a try. Firstly, it was an opportunity for me to remind everyone what strike is. So during the presentation, I called Strike the global bitcoin bank. We're not actually a bank because that requires a certain license and I'd get in a lot of trouble if I told you guys we were a bank without the disclaimer that, like, I don't mean literally, but I mean, you can think of us like one. Why do I say that? Well, you can get your paycheck into Strike. You can pay your bills with Strike. You can buy and sell Bitcoin. With Strike, you can get out fixed term loan. So a bitcoin backed loan with Strike. We now have this bitcoin line of credit product which is one of the most popular products we have. It's like a Heloc, but for your Bitcoin. So you can open a line of credit. You don't actually get charged anything until you use the line of credit. And the way I use the product is I get my paychecks into Strike, I pay my bills with Strike, and I pay my bills with my bitcoin line of credit. So every time I, I have a bill that's pulling from my Strike account. So let's say like my Hoa on my house or my credit card bill or my comed electricity bill. Every time a bill pulls from my strike account, which is my primary financial account, Strike uses my line of credit so it extends like, oh, your credit card bill was a couple grand. And it adds to my line of credit and pays it off. And that way I'm never selling bitcoin. My paychecks come in, I'm stacking bitcoin and as the bitcoin price goes up, I'm able to refinance these loans or sometimes I'll take some of my paycheck or I get a bonus or something and I'll pay down the line of credit. And it's just like the dream product because I'm constantly stacking, I'm never forced to sell, but I'm also not having to take out these massive 12 month loans all at once. And it's like, it's like a open revolving, working capital credit line to live my life on top of my bitcoins, it's like the best. And on top of that we have all sorts of awesome features like no fee, DCA free on chain withdrawals. So and you can, I mean if you conceptually think of us like a global bitcoin bank, you can imagine what our future probably looks like. So as I've talked about publicly, we're super interested in working on giving our customers yield on their cash, yield on their deposits on the platform. Customers have actually asked us if we can come up with different options if they want to opt into yield on their bitcoin even, which I've taken a closer look at. We were able to generate pretty good returns on our lightning network infrastructure. Maybe there's opportunities for us to share that with customers. And you know, looking at potentially offering a strike card, there's all sorts of things and you can kind of tell, you know, we are building a primary financial account for, for businesses, for individuals, we even have API services for developers and for future AI agents. But built on top of new monetary infrastructure with bitcoin at the core and center of it. So that's who we are. You know, I don't run any ads on this podcast, so if you ever want to support me, you just be a customer of my services. And what we announced last week was all around strike lending. So strike also uniquely, I think is there's a lot of bitcoin backed lending companies, there's a lot of bitcoin brokerage companies that let you buy and sell bitcoin. There's, I don't know if there's many companies that do all of it. And so Strike is probably one of the more multifaceted bitcoin accounts you can have today. And so we have, like I said, brokerage, we have some banking services like direct deposit and bill pay. We also have lending services, which is now fixed term loans and bitcoin line of credit. I think we're the only bitcoin company that offers both of those, which is really cool. And we made a ton of announcements around that part of our business, around the lending part, the lending. Strike Lending is the fastest growing product I've ever launched in bitcoin. And I've been working on bitcoin for a long time. I mean, it's obvious in hindsight it always is. But I mean, the biggest product market fit I've ever built is allowing people to live on their bitcoin without having to sell it. Like, bitcoin's number goes up if you hold it long enough. And people are building real wealth. Like for many of our customers, their bitcoin is like 50, 60, 70, 80, 90% of their net worth. And they want to get a house, they want to put their kid through school, they want, you know, emergency cash because there was a medical issue, but they don't want to sell the bitcoin. And so coming up with all sorts of different products that allow their newfound wealth to benefit their everyday life without having to necessarily part with the sats and incur a taxable gains event and stuff like that has been the fastest growing product I've ever built and launched by far. So anyways, what did we announce? One, we announced this idea of what we call volatility proof loans. These are loans where we don't liquidate you, so you pay an upfront fee because obviously it's not going to be a free product. You pay an upfront fee and then we remove the ability to liquidate you. So we take the money that you give us up front and we actually have built out trading strategies to hedge ourselves. We take on that risk for you because the biggest thing people say is, Jack, what just keeps me up at night is what if, you know, Trump tweets out something controversial and bitcoin wicks down and then you liquidate me and I lose all my bitcoin collateral. And I get it. I mean, I like, I want you guys to be able to live the best life possible on the best money possible. That's what I consider my job. I work for you guys at the end of the day. And this Is the top request is, can we have a product where we don't liquidate? And so we built it right now we're doing it on an OTC basis, so we're not necessarily putting it in the app just yet. You guys will see. This is how I like to build products, because I like to minimize the amount of guessing that I do. Because at the end of the day, my job isn't to try and guess the future. My job is to listen to you all and build what you want. And so we have it on an OTC basis. You can reach out to PrivateStrike me if you're interested in one of these loans. It's a ton of demand. So far, it's the most popular thing that we announce is the idea that people can open a loan with us and not get liquidated. And so. And we're doing it in partnership with Tether, and so you can reach out to privaterike me. I would say over the next few weeks or month or so, once we kind of really understand where we want to price it and we get a bit more comfortable, we'll put it in the app. But really, really excited about that. We also have an option to segregate your collateral in a separate address. So people have said, hey, if you're truly not rehypothecating, if the bitcoin's truly sitting there, do you mind putting my collateral in a bitcoin address where it's sitting there on its own that I can just stare at all day whenever I want, just to be sure? And we're like, yeah, of course. There's no rehypothecation. There's no funny business. The bitcoin is just sitting here as collateral. And. Absolutely. So if customers are interested in that also, you can reach out to us. We're going to start at. I believe it's. It's. I forget the threshold that we're going to do immediately, but it's for larger size. Because here's the thing. I don't want to have $10 worth of Bitcoin all sitting in separate addresses. That's tons of UTXOs to manage for us. So what we're curious is how much inbound we get, like how many people want their collateral sitting in a separate address and seeing if we can set a reasonable threshold of whether you qualify for that or not. Because, like I said, it's untenable to do $10 segregated collateral. Another announcement. Lending. So we have some form of a lending product in pretty much every state in the United States. So that is bitcoin backed loans for businesses, Bitcoin backed loans for individuals and line of credit. And line of credit is for both individuals and businesses. And so we added 15 new states for our line of credit rollout. We're now in over 40 states with our line of credit across the United States of America, including New York. We have our bit license. So we went from, in less than a year announcing this product in a beta to being one of the largest retail and business bitcoin backed loan providers in the market. And now with multiple different products, we have volatility proof loans, we have Bitcoin line of credit, we have fixed term loans and we're just getting started. So that's cool. We launched our first iteration of proof of reserves. So external audit will do quarterly that ensures our lending proof of reserves are there and we are who we say we are. I just want to touch on this real quick. You know I've always said the best form of proof of reserves is just withdrawing your Bitcoin. And when people buy bitcoin on strike, they can always withdraw and they can withdraw for free. I think we're one of the rare services that lets you withdraw for free, unlimited, anytime, any place, anywhere, doesn't matter. But when you post collateral for a loan, I can't let you withdraw that. And so I did think it was warranted of like when people say, hey, can we get, you know, some proof of reserves product for our collateral? Because I can't withdraw that. So yeah, absolutely. That makes a ton of sense. So this is the first iteration. It'll only get better from here. But that lives now on our website. You can go find that, it's public. And then the last is we lowered our rates. So we want to be one of, if not the cheapest in the industry. Not for any other reason than we want to be the most accessible way to get credit against your Bitcoin. That's also trustworthy. That also is just an amazing product. Like I said, it's not only bitcoin backed lending, but it's also bitcoin banking. It's also Bitcoin brokerage. We're going to continue to try and build the dream financial account for a business, for an individual, for anyone really in the world. I mean we're already operative in 100 markets now. I know a lot of this is US related, but I said Europe Q2 for us. Europe's going to be big UK we're hoping to get lending there very shortly. Australia has been a big market for us. So yeah, really big week for strike. Oh, and how could I forget the last one. We have a new $2.1 billion credit facility and obviously the 2.1 is for the memes, it's for more jokes. But basically Tether, the, the hardest thing for bitcoin lending is who's financing the capital, right? I don't think there's any shortage of bitcoiners. Bitcoin is now a $1.6 trillion asset, right? So there's a lot of money that wants to borrow Fiat against this newfound wealth, against this new pristine collateral, you know, the age old sailor never sell. Right? But the question is who's giving bitcoiners the fiat? And that's not that easy because you know there's lots of things people can do with Fiat. They could buy U.S. treasury bonds and get now yields are up and get 5% back. They could put their money in a money market fund. They could do all. They could buy Nvidia stock, they could buy bitcoin themselves. Why would they give you Fiat instead of buying bitcoin themselves if Bitcoin's a 30 CAGR asset? And so I went to Tether and said hey, there's a shortage of dollars out here. Like until the US government is implicitly backing bitcoin backed loans like they are mortgage rates, it's going to be hard for me to find billions and billions and billions of dollars as our products continue to grow. And that's where you get into expensive terms is when the, the Fiat gets scarce and it's hard to find and the only capital we can find is expensive. And so I went to Tether and said, I mean I know you guys are bitcoiners, like what do you think about helping out the industry? And they said easy done. Like how much do you need? Like just try us. Let's like we got bitcoins back. And so we came up with the $2.1 billion number just because it's a meme, but as soon as we blow through that we'll go back and we'll get more. But the point of that is people should know how large our scale is. Like there's no loan I can't fill, there's no customer I can't serve. This is not, we don't do ten dollar loans. We, we can do any size, any scale. We have massive businesses on our platform and we have everyday mom and pops on our platform and so shout out to Tether for that. I mean that, that was real bitcoiner shit. Right there. Because like I said, it's not easy to find fiat to finance this stuff for you guys. In the fact that I was able to just give them a call and they were like, easy done, name your number. Like that, that was really meaningful to me and huge support. So that's also really cool. I don't know how many companies can say they have billions of dollars sitting just, you know, waiting for you guys to want to borrow it. And then on the 21 side. So I finally was able to talk to you guys more about my vision. Very exciting about that. I know a long time coming but you know, a lot of this was the MNPI as they call it. I can't be, you know, talking too much if the market doesn't know. So Tether published a blog post that they propose a merger between Strike, my other business and 21, amongst other things, like a merger with their mining business. I gave my thoughts as the CEO of the company. In my opinion, I think it's largely a good idea. I mean there's lots of details and I can't sit here and say I agree with every single fine print detail, but directionally I think it's a great idea. And I think it's a great idea because I think the ideal bitcoin company, the dream bitcoin company I outlined and outlined in my presentation looks like this. So I made this kind of quad graph here. We're on one side of the spectrum you have extremely low conviction in bitcoin. And on the right side of the spectrum you have extremely high conviction in bitcoin. On the bottom side of the spectrum you have extremely low operating income as a business. And on the top side of the spectrum you have extremely high operating income as a business. And I think to understand where I'm coming from when I view the industry and how I want 21 to develop and where I want it to grow as a company. I think on one side of the spectrum you have crypto exchanges and these exchanges make tons of money. They are economically such good companies like you're talking about billions of dollars of net profit. They're growing 10, 20, 30% year over year. So I put them in the top left quadrant because they are high operating income. However, the reason I don't want to build a business like that. I wouldn't want to work for a business like that. I personally wouldn't want to be a customer of a business like that is they display extremely low or no conviction in bitcoin at all. I'm getting slack messages I just want to make sure it's not. Dylan? Yep, all good. These businesses don't seem to really care about bitcoin. Like I cited in my talk, Coinbase is holding almost $11 billion in cash in fiat right now, versus a billion dollars in bitcoin. I'm like, wait, what the hell? Do you guys even believe in what we're working on? That's a lot of Fiat compared to bitcoin. I thought, we all thought bitcoin was better money. And as I talked about before, these prediction markets, it doesn't seem like they care much about bitcoin and hard money and encouraging proper savings. It's more like speculative casino behavior. And so I put them in the top left quadrant, which is really, really, really good businesses economically. But so are Las Vegas casinos. Las Vegas casinos are good businesses, but. But they're not bitcoin businesses. And so very low conviction in bitcoin. Now, in the bottom right quadrant, I would position oppositely treasury companies, which, again, also good businesses. Some of the greatest success stories in bitcoin are treasury companies, like strategy, like Meta Planet. I mean, these are some of the rare success stories in trying to build a business in this space. However, there's no operating income. They're not producing cash flow. And there's a difference between, you know, GAAP accounting, unrealized gains on your balance sheet versus cash flow. And that's, you know, operating income is building products and having revenue and having cash flow and income. And you can use that cash to then finance things like leverage finance things like preferred finance, things like all sorts of stuff. And so anyways, my dream as a founder and a CEO is to be in the top right quadrant. And that's where I don't think any company is, which is both an incredibly high operating income business, has customers, has cash flow, has products, and it also displays extremely high conviction in bitcoin. And I think that there are opportunities there to do that. And that's where I'd like to see 21 Focus and where I agree with Tether's proposal, our larger shareholder. And so I kind of laid out these four divisions. You can almost think of 21 almost like a bitcoin Berkshire Hathaway in a way. It's not a perfect analogy, but the idea is 21 has a financial services division, and this is our ability to build and distribute bitcoin financial services for the bitcoin economy. And this is where the theoretical merger with Strike would make a lot of sense because Strike could be that arm where you have brokerage you have banking, you have custody, you have payments, you have lending and credit. You have all sorts of financial services that can produce cash flow and scale and experience growth. Where ultimately, if I think bitcoin is going to be a asset worth tens of trillions of dollars, there's a lot of opportunity to build services and build products. And I don't want to just stack bitcoin on the balance sheet. I want to build tools and I, I want to have customers and I want to be able to obtain leverage in the capital markets and finance it with cash flow as a, as opposed to dilution. And so financial services would be one arm, theoretically another bitcoin infrastructure. And for me, this is the physical economy of bitcoin. So this is power contracts, these are miners, these are sites, these are physical infrastructure that both protects and mines and propagates the bitcoin network. And this is also historically one of the rare places in the bitcoin economy that's proven to be cash flow positive and a good business if you have the capital and the economies of scale to pull it off, which tether does. They've invested a ton of money and a ton of resources into their own bitcoin physical bitcoin infrastructure business and they think it'd be a good idea to merge it into 21. So that to me, I think also for the dream bitcoin company that is pillar number two, pillar number three is capital markets. And this is a lot of the bitcoin treasury company strategy that exists and some more. So yes, let's take a look at an ability to raise cheap capital, acquire very reasonable leverage with bitcoin on our balance sheet. I mean, 21 already has 43,514 Bitcoin. We can absolutely use the capital markets to our advantage to display further bitcoin conviction. But because we would have other, in theory, other products and services like lending, like mining, we can securitize lending in the capital markets, we can securitize mining in the capital markets. We can do things that other companies can't. Because if we can pull off the ability to live in this upper white quadrant, it makes us incredibly unique. And so the third pillar is a capital markets business which is, you know, very separate than financial services and bitcoin infrastructure. And this business is focused on accretive strategies in the capital markets and further entrenching bitcoin into the capital markets again, not only with things like preferreds, things like convertible bonds, but also things like securitizing some of the things to the Left. And then the last one is mergers and acquisitions, where I've been an entrepreneur in this space for a long time. I know tons of other really good businesses. I know tons of other really good assets in the space. And I think that there's a lot of opportunity to consolidate some of the bitcoin efforts. Like, I don't believe that there's going to be 44 bitcoin companies that all offer the same products. I think inevitably, you know, we're going to end up consolidating and whether that's through M and A or other forms. And I've seen lots of opportunity to that I think would benefit 21. And 21 would be unique in this capacity because again, there are. If I go back to this slide, you know, there are companies in the bottom right that aren't necessarily focusing on their operating business or building products or focusing on cash flow. And then the ones in the left don't really care to display conviction in bitcoin. They'd rather it's more like speculative. They'll list anything. They'll list stocks, they'll list prediction markets, they'll list gambling. They'll listen to whatever as long as people are on the platform and betting on stuff. And So I think 21 has a unique opportunity because Tether and I are proven operators in the space. And I think we can make use of some accretive M and A and really build like a bitcoin powerhouse is really the goal, a unique one at that. So check out my keynote. I spend a little bit more time there. And just to be clear, I said in a podcast that I think comes out on Wednesday, this is a proposed transaction. No one should interpret my words as if this is already done or anything has been signed. Our largest shareholder proposed it. Ultimately, that has to go to the board, and there are theoretically lots of negotiations and all sorts of stuff that would follow. But the. The big news is that our largest shareholder and the CEO, which is me, have a strategic direction that they're aligned on and really excited about. And so we will see from there. But you guys know the type of man I am. I'm all about transparency and making sure I'm accessible and just trying to be man of the people at the end of the day. And so wanted to spend a little time walking you guys through that and giving you enough information to hopefully ask questions for Q and A, which can start right now. So let me turn on some lights really quick. I just realized it got real dark in here. And we'll do Some Q and A. I'll pull up Dylan's doc. Let me blow myself up. There we go. And let me turn on some lights. I'll be right back. It. All right, let's do this. Pull up Dylan's doc. Shout out Dylan for hanging out in the chat and jotting down questions for us. Okay. Hey Jack, what's your view on fixing the mortgage rate and for how long? H. Not sure I understand that question entirely. I mean, the view on fixing the mortgage rate, things like the 10 year and 30 year yields are really important in the ability for banks to offer cheap mortgage. At the end of the day, a mortgage is just a loan. And so it all goes into what's the cost of money? You know, are interest rates going to lower, our bond yields going to lower? So if, if the United States wants to get mortgage rates lower, they're going to have to get bond yields lower. And keep in mind again, bond yields go up when demand for bonds goes down. So demand has been going down, yields have been going up. And if there's no one that's going to provide demand for bonds, who's the lender of last resort? The Federal Reserve. And so my best guess is you're going to get some form of yield curve control, which is the Federal Reserve basically lending to the US government, which is printing money out of thin air and handing it to the government if that's how they want to get yields down. Because otherwise they're going to have to entice people to want to lend to the US But I mean the market's pretty clear. I'd rather own gold, I'd rather own bitcoin, I'd rather own stocks. There's a plethora of things I'd rather do than lend to the US right now. And so we'll see. But that, that's the path to getting mortgage rates lower is getting these, these yields lower. Dylan, question for Jack. Jack, what do you think about Powell's recent comments that he is going to stay on the Fed board for a while? It's all political. I don't know, I try and I'm like caring far less about that stuff. It just doesn't make for the most fun show. I found like a lot of the comments and a lot of like my back and forth with you guys all, it's always fun but it just was like negative and no one, I don't know, no one wants like a political podcast. And, and the funny thing is is I'm not a political guy. Like I genuinely, I'M not like putting on a farce here. Like I'm genuinely never voted, don't know much about politics, just trying to follow the X's and O's to get a good sense of where the world is going and how I can help. So I don't know whether Powell stays on the board or not. I don't think it matters. I mean, Warsh was nominated, in my opinion because he's willing to do Trump's doing and he's comes from the same like community as Scott Besant. That's, these are all Druckenmiller Soros guys and they all have the same vision that the Fed's independence should be revaluated, that AI needs a lot of money printing, that they can look past the near term inflation of this Iran conflict. So I, at the end of the day, I don't think it matters. The math is the math and a lot of this political. We know that Biden was highly political. He was willing to cut rates randomly during the end of Biden's term, but then like gotten fights with Trump and I don't know, whatever. So my, my answer is it doesn't matter. The math is the math. They have to print money. I don't, I don't think it's worth spending time trying to dissect what these politicians are rambling on about. They're, they're, they're no good no matter what. At least for monetary policy. Maybe they're good people. I wouldn't know. When you bring up trading, you say they are not productive. If traders are not productive, how do you explain price discovery and liquidity existing at all in a functioning market without them? I wouldn't say that they're not productive. I would say that it's not productive for everyone to be a trader. Like, the problem is trading is a profession. Just like being a doctor, just like being an athlete, just like being a teacher, just like being a firefighter. If you are not a trader and that's not what you do for a living, then you shouldn't trade. So I'm not saying that like the profession of providing liquidity and price discovery in a market is a bad thing. But what I am saying is fiat forces everyone to be a speculator, everyone to be a trader. And one of the worst things that comes of that, unfortunately, is now you have a society where only half of our time as a collective society is spent on doing our profession. So people, let's say you take a doctor, a doctor dad who has a family of four, him his wife and two kids. Let's say that for example, sake, this doctor in this modern day era is spending less time being a doctor and being a dad and more time managing a portfolio, understanding what tech stocks to pick, reading books about Bitcoin. And that's a, that's the true crime of society is that you have to be a speculator and you have to be a trader just to beat inflation. And that's making us worse at our jobs, that's making us worse husbands, worse fathers. But we don't have a choice because our lives are being debased and it's a job within itself to try and beat inflation. And so my message is, is less that a certain profession isn't productive. I mean, depends on the context. Is this person a good trader? Are they a professional trader? Right. That's not my place. I'm not talking literally talking more philosophically that I encourage people to spend more time on relationship, on family and on their passion and on their craft and on their labor and providing value for the world than speculating and trading. Like, unless it's your profession, I wouldn't sit around all day and try and pick bottoms and tops for bitcoin. As we know, most people just lose money. And again, you're better off just staying humble and stacking sats. Just turn your DCAs on. If Bitcoin rips to 100 from here, you win. If Bitcoin drops to 60 from here, you win. You buy the dip. But as long as you're being a net producer in society, you're producing more value than you're consuming. And bitcoin also, again, money's time and energy in abstracted form. Bitcoin is saving us all time, right? Like you don't have to solve for inflation in your spare time. You know, many people get off work and spend all day on Robinhood and listening to podcasts about what stocks to pick and trying to figure out what GME is doing with ebay. You don't have to do that. Like go to your kid's soccer game, right? Like go fall in love, go pick up a hobby or go get better at your job, start a business on the side. Like, like bitcoin saves so much time and effort and energy for the things that matter. For me at least, I can at least speak from my own lived experience. Okay, Bitcoin and markets, what are you see? Question for Jack. First, congrats on the huge accomplishment with XXI. As 21 grows, I'm assuming you'll hire more people. What's the best way to be considered for a role in the future. Just stay up to date for our jobs page. I'd say right now we aren't actively hiring for any roles. I mean obviously our largest shareholder proposed a strategic direction and that's a really big deal. So as a company we need to figure that one out and then, you know, it will become more clear how I want to staff the business but just be on the lookout and on the strike side of things. Separate company. But on our jobs page we always keep an open application because I'm in the business of hiring talent and passion, you know. So if you are someone that wants to work at strike, you can always write us a letter on what you want to do and why you're the person for the role. And we hire people all the time based on that. So don't never hesitate to reach out. Hi Jack and Dylan. I love a Tuesday morning here in the UK and seeing the show ready to download and listening on the journey to work. Oh, thank you, that's very charming. Any news on strike loans coming to the uk? Yes, we're working on it. We will get there. Hopefully this quarter is a big quarter for us when it comes to the EU and the uk. Any news on bitcoin line of credit for individuals coming to Washington? Yes, working on it as well. Unfortunately in the US a lot of this is regulated on a state by state basis and so Washington, it's just been a bit slow with us. But we're working on it. I know that we're working on it and we expect to get it hopefully soon. Hey Jack, exciting announcements last week. Do HELOC loans start charging interest right when they are taken out? So they're not heloc, they're bloc, not H E L O C. But I know, I know that that's a good comparison. So block, block Bitcoin line of credit. I don't know how we would pronounce that. You guys tell me. But we start charging interest once you use, once you pull on that line of credit. So let's say you open a five thousand dollar line of credit, you don't get charged anything until you start to use it. But if you that line of credit pays a hundred dollar electricity bill for you, then we start charging interest on that hundred dollars that you spent and then as soon as you pay it off, no interest charged. So obviously it costs us money to operate the product so we need to at least charge you guys to recoup our costs. But check out the product, it's like very cheap. I mean at the end of the day if I can borrow money against my bitcoin at a rate that's cheaper than what I think my bitcoin will grow over time. It's a no brainer. And especially when you factor in as an American the tax consequences involved in selling the bitcoin or spending the bitcoin. I mean these products have changed my life. So check it out. And we do not charge anything until you actually use the line of credit. So if you open one and you don't draw on it, don't worry about it. It's if you actually start paying bills with it or you can buy bitcoin with it or you can pay your friends with it. It's, it's like a payment method. That's when we, we start charging interest. But once you pay it down and pay it off, then again as long as you don't have an outstanding balance, it's no problem. Okay, can Strike build a tap to pay debit card that lives in Apple pay? It's definitely something that we've looked into, we've talked about it on the show, a decent amount. I mean my hesitancy is that I think Amex or Chase are always going to have better rewards cards than we will. So the way I live on strike is I use my credit cards and then I use Strike to pay off my credit cards and I use my line of credit to pay those off and it's the best because I'm getting cash back and free flights. Like you can use all these cards to get all this free stuff and then I just use Strike to buy bitcoin line of credit against my bitcoin, pay my bills, get my direct deposit and I just don't know if we'll be better at credit card rewards than these massive companies that are all snug next to the money printers. So that's the reason I'm not like jumping at building a card because we're better than Chase at bitcoin stuff but we're not necessarily better than Chase at Fiat stuff. So we'll see. But as you, I mean let me tell you guys some I've been wrong time and time again. Like I'll think you guys want one thing or think you guys want one direction and then it turns out I couldn't have been more wrong. And based on your guys feedback we build something entirely different and this could be one of those things. So keep reaching out to us in the product team and keep leaving comments and I know we're all as a team trying to figure out the best way for you guys to be able to spend from Strike. And if that's a card, that's a card and we'll build it. Let's see. Dylan, question for Jack. Are there any features in Strike that you'd consider putting behind a subscription, something premium for the user that isn't sustainable to give away for free? Yes, actually 100%. So there are all sorts of features that people like, people want to enter. Like right now our cheapest lending tier is if you borrow $5 million or more, which are obviously typically for businesses or family offices or high net worth individuals. But sometimes people will say, hey, just put me in the lower tier for buying bitcoin fees or the lower tier for lending, or don't charge me interest on my line of credit for the first 30 days. Like a credit card. Like if I pay it off within the first 30 days, no fees. And you know, we've thought of maybe like a Strike Black account where you pay a monthly subscription or an annual subscription to get access to like the best of strike. And the only reason it would be economical for us is if you guys pay us like a subscription fee, like a membership fee. And like we might lose money if you like use the hell out of Strike. But as long as we make enough to like meet payroll and have some profit to finance new stuff, like new licenses and new products and stuff, then maybe that's something that would work out. So we've thought about that internally. If you guys are listening and interested in that, I would be curious to hear what features you would like to see in like a Strike Black premium account to give you like the best of strike. Let me know. I'd be open to it for sure. It's something that we have softly on our roadmap, but I just don't think we have a super concrete idea of what features would go in there. Question for Jack. How do you feel about the Bears draft picks? As an Oregon fan, I think y' all got a great player in Dylan. Yeah, I, I think so too. I mean, obviously offensively we were great at the wide receiver position. Losing D.J. moore, I still think we're fine. I thought Luther Burden was great. So offensively I think we're good. We had to sure up the center position and the offensive line a little bit, but primarily the focus was defensively in our secondary and I think we did that. So I'm excited. I mean, the thing that makes me the most nervous about the Bears is we're playing a first place schedule. So we won our division. We're playing a first place schedule. That's not going to be easy. And so I worry about the youth in that locker room and if we experience a little bit of adversity, how is Ben and the locker room going to be able to handle that? So we'll see. But I, I like our off season so far. I love DJ Moore. Unfortunately, I agree that he had to go. I like what we did in the draft. I like our focus on the defensive side of the ball. In a weird way, I like the fact that we didn't end up getting Max Crosby. Something smells off over there. If it's too good to be true, it's probably like, you should probably leave it at that. And so all in all, I think we're going to be competitive in our division again. I mean, the packers and the Lions are going to be good, and Minnesota's got one of the best head coaches in the league, but I think we're going to be competitive. And as a Chicago Bear fan, that's all you can ask for, to be honest. Okay, last one. Just leaving a nice comment for you to read because I think we haven't missed a week in over a year at this point, and that deserves a nice closing comment. Here's the comment. I've never caught this show live. I can't really hang around. But Jack, thank you for doing this every Monday. You make my Tuesday mornings more bearable. Keep up the great work. I really appreciate that. I really do. Yeah, thanks. I'll just leave it at that. I was talking on. I. I guess I won't leave it at that. I was talking on a podcast I was on and the host was asking me, like, because it seems like anything I do now, I get a lot of hate pretty much no matter what. And they were asking me, you know, what, what's that? Like, when did that start? And I don't know. You guys go listen to the show if you want. I give a longer answer. But what I will say is, you know, because the host was like, you know, it's people like Brian Armstrong or Michael Saylor or Jack Dorsey aren't necessarily hanging out. Not that I'm near those guys, by the way. Like, just. But they asked. They're like, those guys aren't necessarily hanging out in Twitter replies and in the YouTube comments and live streaming every single Monday. And I was like, yeah, you know, it just kind of comes with who I want to be, honestly, as a founder and just like as A builder, as a bitcoiner. I want to be with the people. I don't want to hide behind lawyers that. You know, many times my lawyers tell me, like, you shouldn't be doing that show. You shouldn't be tweeting how you do. Like, I have every excuse to not really be hated as much because I just wouldn't talk as much and live behind the bureaucracy of corporate legal risk in public company stuff. And it's just not who I want to be. It's not what I think the world needs, honestly. I don't think the world needs, like another big deal, corporate, like, politician that again, not to say any of those guys in particular are or are not. But I think what's being repriced in the world is just being real. Whether it's real money, whether it's real infrastructure, whether it's like real health. I think being real, being authentic, is being like, repriced, revalued in society. And so anyway, I give all that context to say I really appreciate those comments. Cause it is one of the harder parts of my job is just every day the Internet has like an open shot to punch me in the face. And sometimes it hurts. But those comments mean a lot and I really appreciate it. So thank you for that. And the show goes on, baby. The show goes on. With that, I'm going to end. But check this out. So it got dark in the closet because it was thunderstorming, actually, and it just stopped thunderstorming. And there's a crazy rainbow right outside my window. So I'm going to see if I can turn my camera around and show you guys. It's a double rainbow. So I don't know if you'll be able to see it. And then I'll end the show. Let's see if I can do this. Whoa. You guys see that? Look at that rainbow. Pretty cool, right? Look at the city of Chicago. Rainstorm. Double rainbow. Double rainbow. Whoo. There we go. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe it's a sign off to greener pastures. Double rainbow. Hey, I heard there's gold at the bottom of that rainbow. Not in Chicago. Not in the empty closet. There'll be bitcoin at the bottom of that rainbow. Love you guys. As always. Comments, questions, criticisms. Leave it all. Man of the people will never stop. Fix the money, fix the world. Peace out. Until next time.
Host: Jack Mallers
Date: May 5, 2026
Episode: 116
In this Mail Bag Monday episode, Jack Mallers dives deep into the current state of global financial turmoil, focusing on surging oil prices, a collapsing bond market, worsening consumer sentiment, and the increasingly pivotal role of Bitcoin as the world’s financial system faces mounting stress. With current events like the Strait of Hormuz crisis, ongoing geopolitical conflict, and the ever-present shadow of inflation, Jack breaks down why now, more than ever, is the time to "hold onto your butts and your Bitcoin." He blends macroeconomic insights with Bitcoin advocacy and direct company updates, all while keeping the tone intense, unscripted, and urgent.
Current Bitcoin Landscape (00:02–02:00)
Theme Declaration (02:40)
[03:50–11:10]
Quote:
[11:15–28:30]
Energy as the Basis of Consumption
Market Reality vs. Political Rhetoric
Quote:
[28:30–38:40]
Quote:
[38:50–58:20]
Quote:
"A highly levered, highly indebted system does not like volatility. Volatility is scary." — Jack (43:00)
Implications
[58:30–01:14:00]
Stealth Liquidity Flooding Markets
Bitcoin as Solution/Indicator
Quote:
[01:14:10–01:21:30]
Quote:
[01:21:40–01:28:50]
[01:28:55–01:39:30]
[01:39:40–01:53:50]
Quote:
[01:54:00–02:12:30]
Strike as a “Global Bitcoin Bank”
Volatility-Proof Loans
Partnerships & Growth
21 & Merger Proposal
Philosophy
[02:12:35–End]
"On this podcast, we bleed orange. We are bitcoiners... They’re not going to steal our time and energy on this podcast. No, no, no."
– Jack (08:55)
"Everything in your life is a derivative of energy... The story of mankind is commercializing energy."
– Jack (13:40)
"Fiat currency turns everyone into a speculator whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not."
– Jack (01:48:50)
"No man should work for what another man can print straight up. It’s that simple."
– Jack (01:24:12)
"Stay humble and stack sats. Work hard, earn more than you’re consuming."
– Jack (01:39:00 and throughout)
"At the end of the day, the best money wins. It’s always a good time to get some SATs."
– Jack (01:37:10)
| Segment | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------|-------------| | Opening & BTC Macro Update | 00:02–02:00 | | Political Fatigue & Four Macro Questions | 03:50–11:10 | | Oil Shock Analysis | 11:15–28:30 | | Inflation, Consumer Spending | 28:30–38:40 | | Bond Market Crash & Volatility | 38:50–58:20 | | Liquidity, Policy Actions, Bitcoin | 58:30–01:14:00 | | Second Wave of Inflation | 01:14:10–01:21:30 | | Consumer Pain and Sentiment | 01:21:40–01:28:50 | | Market Crossroads & "Stack Sats" Wisdom | 01:28:55–01:39:30 | | Grinds My Gears: Prediction Markets Rant | 01:39:40–01:53:50 | | Company Updates (Strike, Lending, 21) | 01:54:00–02:12:30 | | Audience Q&A | 02:12:35–End |
Jack’s energy is unmistakable throughout—pissed-off but earnest, direct yet reflective, swinging from global macro diagnosis to the personal: why Bitcoin matters for society now more than ever. He rails against the distractions of political news, focuses the audience on fundamentals (energy, debt, inflation), and calls for humility and discipline—rejecting gambling and speculation in favor of steady DCA (dollar cost averaging) into Bitcoin.
He positions Strike and 21 as core pillars of a future "Bitcoin economy," doubled-down on transparency and user empowerment, while warning against the traps and gimmicks of speculative fintech.
The show ends with a moment of hope and symbolism—a Chicago double rainbow after the storm, as Jack reminds listeners: "There’ll be bitcoin at the bottom of that rainbow... Fix the money, fix the world. Peace out."
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