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Yo. Welcome back to another episode of the Jack Maller Show. I am your host, Jack, and you are listening to yet another edition of what I like to call Mail Bag Monday. I aim for as much signal as possible and as little noise as I can produce. Okay, episode 115. And today's episode is titled Mailbag Monday live from the Bitcoin Conference. For those of you that don't know, the bitcoin conference is this week in Las Vegas. So unfortunately, I am in the city of Las Vegas. For frequent listeners of the show, you guys know how I feel about the city of Las Vegas. Is it gross? Yes. However, is the reason I am in Las Vegas gross? No. I'm here to fix the money, fix the world. Okay, so I saw a bunch of you guys. He's gonna go on a rant about Las Vegas. Las Vegas isn't worth any more of our time. We've already talked about the cinnamon churro, clogged arteries, sugary cocktail, wheeling yourself from casino to casino because the size of your ankles can't support the rest of the body. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. That's not the type of man I am. We're going to focus on the positives because in all seriousness, I'm here for bitcoin. I'm here to fix the money, fix the world. I would host this conference in El Salvador probably if it were up to me, but it's not. And we have to keep building because society is fundamentally broken and it needs our help. It needs better money. Also, really quick, before we get started, this episode's gonna be a bit shorter because I'm in Las Vegas. There's gonna be a few changes to this episode. For one, I just don't have too much time today. This is gonna be a huge week for me on many fronts and for many reasons. If there's one thing about this week that I can say, it will not be boring that, that I'm fairly confident in. So, unfortunately, I don't have a few hours to chit chat and, you know, talk shit with you guys. So this episode will be shorter and I'm gonna prioritize Q and A. So it'll be a shorter episode on the front. I'm going to skip company updates because I have a good feeling that I'll be talking about my companies more than zero times throughout this week. And then I'm going to prioritize Q and A, just engage with you guys, hang out. Honestly, I was really looking forward to this episode because these conferences can get intense. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of shaking hands and kissing ass. I'm not, I'm not an ass kisser, but, you know, you guys know what I mean. Conferences are conferences. And so I was looking forward to just kind of ducking off in my hotel room, opening up the live chat and kind of hanging out with you guys. And so that'll be the bulk of this episode after I get through. I don't know, I think I got like 10 slides, no more of just updates how I'm viewing the world, the markets, bitcoin, and we move on. So short episode this week won't, won't be a new normal. So I apologize for that, for those of you that enjoy the two hour rants, but this is a unique week and we will see what this week produces will not be boring, I'll tell you that much. All right, the chapter one, the only chapter I got today, I titled Cut through the Noise for frequent listeners. I said last week, I said, listen, my days of opining on politics in very much detail, I've about had it. You know, following the ups and downs of government and their marketing and their strategy and their communications is effectively pointless at the end of the day. Governments I'm not a fan of. I think they're largely too big. I'm not a, I'm not on the left, I'm not on the right, I'm not up, I'm not down, I'm not this, I'm not that. I'm a bitcoiner. And more specifically, I believe in free markets. I believe in the Austrian form of economics. And I talked to you guys last week. I said, listen, enough is enough. Because really, in my opinion, when it comes to the global conflicts and what's going on, it's really about these four questions, right? It's one, is the straight or horror moves still closed, yes or no? Listen, I'm not in the Situation Room. I don't know why people are making the decisions that they're making. That's not, we're not going to make this podcast about trying to, you know, catch the tail on the donkey of politicians. Not going to do that. One, why is the straight or Hormuz or excuse me, is the Strait of Hormuz closed or not? Two, is the conflict still ongoing, yes or no? Three, are global supply chains still disrupted, yes or no? Four, can the global debt around the world, the sovereign debt that has been accruing all these countries that have borrowed so much money from their future and from their populace. Can that debt based system survive this level of disruption? Yes or no. And ultimately that's how we're going to do updates on, on this topic, on this podcast going forward because it's just not worth my time and our time as bitcoiners. Because the truth is the strait of the Hormuz is still relatively closed. The conflict is still going on, global supply chains continue to be further disrupted and no, an extremely indebted system is going to need some form of money printing in order to survive what is planned playing out. And so I'm not going to go into well he should, he said, she said. Well, Republicans think this Democrats saying I don't care, I don't care, I care about Bitcoin. Okay? And I saw some comments of Jack, seems like he cares more about the straight of Hormuz than Bitcoin. And I just want to say the only reason any of this is relevant if you're a bitcoiner, if you believe in hard money, is because it's becoming more and more evident that hard money and new monetary systems need to be developed, need to be monetized and need to be used to support a functioning society. The conflict in Iran is very clear because there are threats to things like the petrodollar, there are threats to things like sovereign debt, there are threats to things like the Fed's monetary policy. I mean it's every central banker's worst nightmare to have stagflation where you have the price of oil going up a lot and you have implied inflation coming aggressively. But the stag part is that there's not a lot of new jobs being created and there's a looming fear that AI is going to leave a lot of people unemployed. So as a central banker, what do you do? Do you cut rates or do you raise rates for the United States being $40 trillion of debt and you're in a conflict that's fracturing global supply chains, what do you do? If you are the United States and have heavily relied on the petrodollar and countries are starting to want to price crucial and critical commodities like oil in things like the CNY or in gold or using bitcoin, what do you do? And so to be clear, my interest in these topics are centered around the world realizing that the money is fundamentally broken. And this is a catalyst in greatly expediting a lot of the education. It's like a Trojan horse of the world realizing, whoa, you know, no wonder gold is being remonetized. No wonder Iran is interested in using Bitcoin to settle transactions between enemies at war. Right. No wonder the United States all of a sudden is starting to talk a lot about the strategic Bitcoin reserve. I saw a representative of the White House today at the Bitcoin conference say that they plan on announcing stuff in the coming weeks. So anyways, let's answer these questions. Is the straight OR of Hormuz relatively open again? No, not at all. Total tanker transit calls are near zero. You're seeing these little blips of life. These are predominantly ships that Iran is allowing through the strait. So we are seeing ships being sent in from countries like China and they are getting through. And Iran has control over the strait. Now the US is blocking. I'm not even going to get into that. We're going to leave it as is the Strait of Hormuz open and back to functionally, normally or not, it is not. Next, this from the Washington Post. Clearing the Strait of Hormuz mines could take six months. The Pentagon tells Congress. And so again I think that as bitcoiners we should not get so distracted by oh well, you know what if this ceasefire and this, that and the third, at the end of the day, bitcoiners were well aware that there are physical realities to the world, right? That's, that's the whole point of Bitcoin. You can't just print it out of thin air. The point of proof of work is it allows us humans to be governed by Mother Nature, by the physical realities of the universe. By the way, that's where I believe we're meant to be. We are a product of a child of the universe, of Mother Nature. We are best governed by it. The best monies that we've come up with in the history of our species have been things like gold, which are a product of Mother Nature that are governed by the physical realities of the universe. And so we're well familiar with the value of physical things. Bitcoiners don't fall in love with abstract artificial Narnia type elements of hyper financialized derivative contracts. We don't care about hyper financialized money printing and monetary policy. That's man made central planning garbage. And so the point of this headline is really simple. Unwinding all of this in getting global supply chains back to peak function will take time. At a minimum, the Pentagon's telling Congress it's going to take at least six months. Even if everyone makes up, hugs, kisses, says they love each other, it's going to take time. And so the Implications here is that there's going to be stress on markets. The price of oil is not going to normalize seemingly anytime soon. There is no stop to what seems to be incoming inflation, not only in commodities like oil, but oil's the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg gets much bigger. It's going to be rent, it's going to be energy, it's going to be food, it's going to be travel. I mean, countries like developed countries are already running out of jet fuel. Okay, so we go on. We talked about the swap line last week, okay? This was the UAE reached out to the United States and said, hey, if you want us to continue to use the dollar in trading for things like oil, we're going to need a swap line, because the only way we can raise dollars to finance a lot of this mess that you started. This is the UAE's words, not mine. We would appreciate a swap line, because if not, we're going to have to raise money by selling dollar assets. What are dollar assets? U.S. treasuries, U.S. stocks. And so it was like a fair warning from the UAE in basically saying, listen, guys, this is a conflict. This conflict isn't ending anytime soon. There's going to be inflation. We're going to need to raise capital. We, for our people, for our government, for our strategies. Do you want U.S. to sell U.S. stocks and sell U.S. treasuries in order to raise capital? Cause remember the way the fiat system works, The US Runs deficits. Other countries run a surplus. They run a surplus of dollars. So they're constantly getting an excess pile of dollars. What do they do with those dollars? You can think of those dollars like US Store credits. You don't spend the dollars locally in your local economy and strengthen your local currency. That screws with your ability to produce labor and things that end up exporting into the United States. So what you do is you take your U.S. dollar store credits and you go shopping in the U.S. you buy luxury real estate, you buy big tech stocks, you buy U.S. treasuries. And so you have all these countries all over the world that have a ton of US Assets. And the UAE is saying, listen, guys, we're going to be forced to raise capital. And if we're forced to raise capital, we're gonna have to sell a ton of Nvidia. Now, they didn't say this literally, but I'm in a hypothetical, we're gonna have to sell a ton of Nvidia, a ton of Meta, a ton of Google, a ton of Amazon. We're also gonna have to sell a ton of Treasuries. We don't wanna crash the treasury market unless that's what you want. We don't want to crash the stock market. We don't wanna send the 10 year yield above 5%. So are you willing to give us a swap line or not? And what was the answer from the United States? Of course, it's an unequiv. This from the New York Times. Besant backs the UAE swap line financial support for the oil rich uae. And you know this from Luke. It's, it's not, it's not rocket science to understand what's happening. So Luke writes. Secretary Besant, response to UAE after the UAE threatened to price oil and gas in CNY if the US would not supply USD swap lines a few days ago. Yes, we will give you whatever swap lines you want to prevent the disorderly sale of U.S. assets. So I will read the snippet that Luke has screenshotted here. Treasury Treasurer Jesus. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said on Wednesday that he backed the idea of providing economic support in the form of a currency swap to the uae, an oil rich ally that has been contending with economic fallout from the war in Iran. Speaking to a Senate hearing, Mr. Besson said that the Emiratis along with several other countries in the Persian Gulf and Asia had inquired about the possibility of a swap. He said such a maneuver would prevent the disorderly sale of US assets as nations look to secure access to dollars. The war in Iran has damaged oil and gas infrastructure throughout the Middle east, dealing a blow to economies such as Emirates that rely on the Strait of Hormuz to transport crude oil around the world. The Treasury Secretary said that providing a currency swap to the Emirates could benefit the United States by stabilizing foreign exchange markets in protecting American assets around the world. He said that it could be provided by the Federal Reserve or by the Treasury Department which can deploy its exchange stabilization fund to buy another nation's currency. So let's take a step back and this is a show that is by the common man for the common man. At the end of the day, we're bitcoiners. We care about having a better future for ourselves and our kids. What's a way to interpret this? A way to interpret this is really simple. When posed with the decision of do asset prices fall or do you weaken the currency? He chose to weaken the currency. And that's all that matters. And that's always been our thesis as Bitcoiners is when they're forced to choose Are asset holders going to suffer? Are governments? Because the problem with assets falling, assets falling, there's a recession, there's a recession, then there's a sovereign debt crisis and the whole thing blows up. The United States as we know it as this, like highly indebted, running these massive deficits. It just doesn't work mathematically. And so basically, let me put it to you guys this way. Hey, Scott Bessant, United States Government do you want U.S. to sell U.S. assets? Do you want the U.S. stock market and U.S. assets to be more properly priced? Do you know, what if there is a collapse? What if there is a recession? But at the end of the day, if you're a free market proponent, you want the truth, you want honesty, you want free markets, you don't want centrally planned, propped up anything. You don't want any central group of governments to pick winners. We want hard money, we want neutral money, we want fair money. And what's the answer from these central planners every time? It's not specific to the US it's not even specific to governments. Now we're talking about central banks, which are technically private entities. These central planners are going to debase the currency, which is therefore debasing the people before assets. That is why assets continue to go up because they're going to make the currency weaker. And let me remind you guys by debasing the currency there by proxy, debasing you, because money is intended to represent your work, your effort, your contributions to this world. It is supposed to be your time and your energy abstracted into a market good that you can trade. What do you deserve? Do you deserve the nice steak or do you deserve jail slop dinner? Do you deserve a nice house or do you deserve to be homeless? How does society answer these questions? Well, ultimately, if you produce enough value, you can abstract it into a tradable good that allows you to either save the value you've created or exchange it for goods and services that you need. And it is society's way of measuring the value we're all creating and what goods and services are worth, what effort we're contributing, period. And so if you get up and you work and you spend your time and your energy contributing value, and some people contribute less value than others, that's not the ultimate, you know, means to an end when it comes to happiness. This isn't about what makes someone happy or not. It's what is the market value, your contributions, if you're saving that in dollars and these guys are making the dollar worth less, purposefully read Read these articles, read the slides. I have. They're doing it purposefully. That's no secret. Dollar debasement, currency debasement, fiat debasement is implied in how the system works. That's why Satoshi invented Bitcoin. It's as clear as day. He wrote very plainly, we can't trust them to not debase the currency. And so when they debase the currency, they're debasing you. They're debasing your time, your energy, your effort, your work, your labor. They're debasing your ability to have more family, your ability to have more housing, your ability to have more vacations, your ultimate, ultimately, your access to energy. And so the swap lines, I brought it up last week. It's interesting. Why is it interesting? Because I'm telling you guys, the United States and all Western, I mean, all fiat maximalists is what this is. They have to make a decision. Are you going to sacrifice the time, energy, effort and labor of the people? Are you going to sacrifice the currency? Or are you going to let all this debt collapse on itself? But there are no other options. There is no third option. And I'll tell you guys this. The way that I conceptualize it is pretty simple. There is a $40 trillion hole, and it depends how you want to think about it, that number could be way higher. But let's just go with 40 trillion. There's a $40 trillion hole. And that loss has to be realized. Again, money is time and energy in an abstracted form. It's not something you can't just forgive debt. We have borrowed time and energy from, from our future. They have borrowed time and energy from you and I, from our kids. That loss has to be realized. Somebody has to lose. And the way I think about Bitcoin is, Listen, I don't know who's going to have to realize that loss, but it's not going to be me, because my time and energy is in Bitcoin. And they can't print that, they can't debase that, they can't confiscate that. That's mine. And the distributed network and the monetary policy that was set in stone in the first block cannot be changed. So bitcoin's my way of literally opting out. Listen, there's going to be a giant game, a tug of war of who has to realize this massive pile of debt, this massive pile of borrowed and spoiled human time, energy, effort and labor. I don't know who's going to be the odd one out. Is it going to be the big banks. Is it going to be the government? Is it going to be the collective people? If the government implies it's the collective people, are they going to get violent? Are they going to try and start assassinating politicians? Listen, I don't know, but I'm out. My time, my energy, my effort, my labor is going to go into an asset that respects me and that is bitcoin. And that's what I'm working on. Right, so these, these Iran Twitter accounts are like, I mean, they are out memeing, they, they are mastery of memes. I will say that. So this tweet, swaps given to prevent disorderly sale of US assets. Translation. Some holders can't sell hidden single digit percentage sale cap limits. Some institutional holders door closes if things escalate, get out while it's still open. Again, why are central banks around the world buying gold? Why is gold being remonetized? Why is bitcoin becoming a strategic asset for the United States? I mean, this tweet has some truth in it, of course. If you're holding an asset and you need liquidity and you're told not to sell the asset, please don't sell the asset. The United States doesn't want you to sell the asset. How good is the asset? Why am I holding the asset? Money is only as valuable as the things you can exchange it for. If these countries if, if they need to raise money for war, for oil, for jet fuel, for food, for whatever they want, because theoretically it's their property and they're being told they can't, well, luckily this time around, they're going to get a swap line. But what happened in 2022 with Russia, that was like a defining moment in monetary history. When the United States says your money and your property is worthless. That's why people are remonetizing gold. That's why all these countries and nation states and central banks are now getting into Bitcoin, is because how valuable is your money if a country can say you can't sell it? What do you mean? Can you imagine walking into the grocery store and saying, I'm hungry. And someone being able to say, no, you're not, you're going to bed starving tonight. What? I don't want that money. What good is that money? Why would I store my effort, my, my labor and the value I'm producing society in that. That's a question that like people ask, why is the gold price going up? Why are central banks remonetizing gold? It's pretty obvious to me. And then Also, I think a thing worth noting, obviously I want to keep a pulse on AI because we talk about catalysts for the world entering, you know, this type of fourth turning, totally new monetary era that I think ultimately Bitcoin will win. And likely in the beginning, Bitcoin will share with gold. Is AI AI is this deflationary? You cannot have a highly indebted system meet a deflationary force. It's going to blow it up. And so, you know, this headline from Besson couldn't have been ignored. Bessant says game over if the US doesn't win the AI war, AI over China. So take that on its face at face value, the United States is going to do whatever they need to do to win the AI race again. That is money printing. And then I want to play this video from Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chair. He's not sworn in yet, but looks like that'll be soon because, I mean, having this said by the future chair of the central bank, the Federal Reserve, it I find I found astonishing. Hold on. It's not as easy to do this show when I'm not on my monitor. How do I. Okay, I'm gonna mute myself and play the video. Be right back.
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What we call AI in a couple years, we'll just call business. And AI is gonna make almost everything cost less. And the US can be a big winner. And it's a hugely exciting moment. If I were to step back for a minute, if I were the president, what I'd be worried about is a central bank that doesn't see any of that, a central bank that is stuck with models from 1978, governance from a prior period and don't recognize we could be at the front end of a productivity boom. And if I were the president, I'd be worried that they might not see it and they might think economic growth is somehow going to be inflationary. I think we were probably in the early innings of a structural decline in prices. Ken sees it on the front lines of real businesses. And I think if you look over the period of the next year or two, it's a pretty special moment.
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So there you go. The Federal Reserve and the treasury of the United States says we must win AI and AI is going to bring the price down of everything. So we're cool printing into it. And we've already heard Jerome Powell say things like, yeah, the price of oil is going up. Yeah, that might imply severe inflation on the horizon, but we're going to look past that. So again, all signs point towards currency debasement all signs point towards weakening the money that the everyday person is storing their effort in. All signs point towards money printing, which ultimately is good for the price of bitcoin, but is extraordinarily detrimental to society, how it functions and has serious knock on effects. You have to let human beings operate in a truly free market and price each other's contributions. And, you know, money at the end of the day in its most pure form is just information. Who owes what to whom. And if you get in the way of that and you distort that and you manipulate that, you break society at its most basic core. It's just not. There's, there's no if, ands or buts about that. And so before I get into Q and A, I mean, the last like little section I have here is again, you know, I saw a lot of comments like, oh, Vegas is so gross. Jack's gonna, you know, take pictures of people sitting at the slot machines. It is gross. I did think about taking pictures of people sitting at the slot machines and posting it. I didn't do that. And ultimately, on a more serious note, I mean, seeing tweets like this, like US government cancer data just dropped and overall cancers are up 6.4%, brain tumors are up 20%. It worries me. It worries me. It worries me, you know, for my family, for my loved ones, but just for society as a whole. Because here's the thing, guys, like, nobody goes out and wants to get sick. Nobody goes out, wants to die young. Nobody wants less family, nobody wants less housing, nobody wants less life. So the fact that this is a trend that's happening and something that we can be so confident isn't, you know, purposeful or intentful from the people it's happening to. Society has structural flaws in. And then obviously I had to include that. The tweets trump rush from stage as shots ring out. Political violence is another sign of a disordered society. Again, I'm not, I'm done with the political stuff. I'm done with politics on the show. Obviously, if there's someone to comment on, you guys know me, I'm going to say, I'm going to speak my mind. But I'm not, I'm. My point is, you guys got. We have assassination attempts at the second highest level in the United States since the mid-1800s, which was the Civil War. You have all the signs in the makings of a, of a society that's sick, that is, that is structurally broken. You can't tell me whether it's obesity rates, whether it's lifespan expectancy, whether it's cancer rates, whether it's metabolic disease, whether it's political violence, whether it's general violence, whether it's assassination attempts, whether it's suicide and whatever forms of self harm, whether accidental overdoses or purposeful overdoses in, in young to middle aged Americans, all of the, these are terrifying metrics. And at the end of the day, you know, you know, people will accuse a bitcoiner and say, bitcoin doesn't solve everything, stop selling it as a silver bullet. Of course, should, should there also be health podcasts? Yeah, of course. You know, I'm, I'm no stranger to listening to some of these. You know, whether it's Dr. Sean Baker or you know, the guys Joe Rogan will have on from time to time learning a thing or two about the sauna, learning a thing or two about whatever type of, type of health hacks. Of course there should be health podcasts, there should be peace podcasts. I don't know. Bitcoin's not a silver bullet, but again, just a reminder of why at least I'm here. Because I think if you can fix the money, you can fix a lot of the world's problems, you can make a tremendous amount of progress. I think that we have distorted our ability to understand and relay value, to price each other's worth, to relate to each other. I mean, think about things like the wealth gap, how dividing that is for society, what it does for our conceptual understanding of how much we love or hate one another, how we value one another, where then we are raised, who we meet, how we think about family. I mean, it's all so fundamentally distorted. We, from the basic sense that we can't freely share information of what is worth what, what is worth value, who is worth doing none of that. And I will continue to pound that drum that I think we can build a better world by building a better money, period. And that's why I'm here in Las Vegas, just straight up and I thought this was interesting. Shout out on ramp for creating this graphic. I mean, bitcoin outperforms in every crisis. I think the last seven. So you've got the U.S. iran escalation, Covid outbreak, Russia invades Ukraine, U.S. banking crisis, yen carry, trade unwind, Trump's Liberation Day and the Iran conflict. That original start to it, not the escalation that was in 2020. I mean, Bitcoin's outperformed in all of them. You know, people like to rag on bitcoin like, oh, it's Supposed to be a risk off asset like gold. And it's actually trading more like tech. And I've said my piece on this. I think bitcoin is some combination of technology plus fiat liquidity. It is technology. It is better technology. It does grow with traditional tech trends like growth of the network, growth of new addresses. So it is technology, but a lot of its price is actively driven by currency debasement and fiat liquidity. And so it kind of lives in this weird hybrid. And so it's not fair to compare bitcoin strictly to gold. Gold's not technology. Gold can't have new features. No one's building new innovative businesses that disrupts payments or prime brokerage services or lending. No one's building anything new on gold. You can't submit a pull request to Gold's GitHub repository. It's not a fair comparison to compare bitcoin to gold. It's also not a fair comparison to compare bitcoin to Nvidia. It's not a company, it's not a pure technology play with a cap table and in a balance sheet, it's more like a commodity. And so at the end of the day, it's its own unique thing. Humans are going to waste a lot of time and effort trying to box it into something that it's just not. It's something like unequivocally new, straight up. There's no if, ands or buts about that. And when you look at when, you know, the world goes through crisis, bitcoin, Bitcoin wins. I mean, the fact that bitcoin's pushing up against 80,000, I mean, hey, listen, I'm one of the guys that are like, man, surely the market's gonna puke. Surely assets are going to get distressed if global supply chains start to fall apart. And here this thing is just chugging along. Now, that's not a price prediction. I've told you guys, I have no idea what the price is going to do. Neither does anyone else. If, if, if someone tells you they know the future, red flag. Nobody knows. But yeah, I mean, listen, bitcoin is the most impressive technology I've seen invented in my lifetime. And I think it will continue to be. I know AI is cool and all. I think bitcoin will be the most important invention of our lives. Okay, grind my gears. Try and do this one quick. But I know it's a really, like, popular subject because I got to. I gotta do some Q and A, or at least I want to. It's this Q Day project 11, quantum FUD stuff. I haven't had the time to do like a proper quantum episode or section. I was hoping to do it today. I just. This conference is always so hectic for me. So much going on. I just didn't have the time. But I. I did want to give my opinion on this. What I think can be factually described as FUD. So project 11 is the quantum startup that I actually don't understand. And I'm not here to talk. I don't know much about the company, I don't know the founders or anything like that. And I, I also just don't think it's. Which I'll get into in a second. I just don't think it's worth our time. You know, like for me, you know, I wake up, I got a ton of things that I want to get done because there's a version of the world that I want to see in our future and, you know, this type of stuff just doesn't meet my bar of worth my time. So I'm not here to talk shit. I don't know this company, but I don't. They're, you know, there exists to help resist the quantum threats to bitcoin, to my understanding. And yeah, I mean, I'll read this tweet on the left from this Dr. Hugh guy. Project 11 has put on a master class on how to blow up your rep, you blow up your credibility. They offered a Q Day prize, one Bitcoin awarded for breaking a 15 bit ECC key with Shor's billed as a 512x jump on public quantum hardware. So just to take a step back and I promise at some point I'll have the time to dive more specifically into quantum tldr. I think all of this is far overblown. Bitcoin is in a totally okay place. Of course quantum theoretically is a threat and of course the bitcoin community should work on it. But no one's refuting that it is theoretically a future threat. And bitcoiners are working on it. I think the gravity of it being like an impending thing that can crash bitcoin in the next few years is way overblown, totally misrepresented. And the fact that people say the bitcoiners aren't valuing the idea of quantum and that the development community isn't thinking about it, isn't developing potential solutions, all of that's just a lie. So I've been around, you know, bitcoin soft forks debates within the developer community, the developer community is doing great with Quantum. There's tons of progress to point to. There's tons of different proposals. And on the Quantum side, just for this episode, because I have to keep it short, the way I would explain it to the common man on the street is, you know, Quantum needs to be divided into two distinct categories. There's the software side of Quantum and there's the hardware side of Quantum. The software side is making tons of progress, which is cool. At the end of the day, I'm not rooting against Quantum. It's cool. Okay, now what runs the software? Quantum hardware is so far behind, like so far behind. The software, by the way, is. Isn't necessarily in a place that's dangerous either, but it is making progress, which is cool. But when I tell you like orders of magnitude to explain to the common man on the street, orders of magnitude behind. So combined, is Quantum a near term threat? No. Okay, so when I read this tweet and it says they offered a Q Day prize, one bitcoin awarded for breaking a 15 bit ECC key, with Shores billed as a 512x jump on public quantum hardware. That's the key part is it's billed as this massive 500x leap on quantum hardware. Okay? So you guys can understand the distinction. The hardware piece is the one that's behind and this sold as like this, this massive leap. Okay, then I guess this, this guy. I don't. Again, I don't know who this is. I'm not talking shit. I have no idea. I just, I just know what, what was published, this bounty thing. And I think it was, it was misleading. This guy swapped the quantum calls for a random number generator and got the same results. It gets worse. They had courted Google to be involved. He declined and Express expressly flagged this as a way it was likely going to end. They ran the comp anyway, picked a winner who fell straight into the predicted trap and are now defending the results on X. The competition was meant to raise awareness about Q Day. There have been amazing breakthroughs in the past 12 months which should have been celebrated. Instead, they've tortured reputation. Again, I don't know if they've tortured reputation. I just know that this was really misleading. Total waste of time. I think that the way the community is talking about Quantum is misleading, inaccurate, arguably just factually false and fud and waste of time. So this from Robin Google, quantum researcher. This is a quote. This guy, the Google guy, wrote a blog post. You guys should read it. But the quote is the fact that Project 11 is boosting these results instead of shunning them has hugely damaged my perception of their credibility. And ultimately, listen, like, decisions for bitcoin of things like, should we freeze satoshi's coins? I mean, that has. That is arguably one of the most important decisions the bitcoin project will ever make. That has a serious implications for property rights. These decisions, it's not about. People can, of course, anyone can speak their opinion. Say what you want about quantum. Okay, of course. But upselling these threats and misleading what is, you know, the accurate state of the developer community addressing these things. There's. There's plenty of really good proposals. Ultimately, as bitcoin does, we need consensus. But there's so many ways for us to resolve these problems. Plenty of time. None of this is immediately threatening. I find it extremely dangerous that on a lot of these really critical points of like, do we freeze satoshi's coins? What does that mean for property rights? That it's being pushed by some of these bogus bounty narratives. It's stupid. It's a waste of time. And, you know, part of me was gonna come in here and you guys know how I get. I'm yelling, I'm cursing, I'm fired up. And I just think that sends the wrong message because it's so validating to all this nonsense. Like, it's not worth the time. So anyway, grind my gears is just, just a FUD man. And I will spend more time. And like I said, yo, Strike as a company has made plenty of mistakes and we fucked up all the time. Does that make us a bad business? No. So I don't know this company. I don't know these guys. You know, being an entrepreneur is hard. I'm not gonna sit here and, you know, curse and yell and kick and scream, but it's. It's fud. It's unfortunate. I think it finally crossed the line where, you know, the community was like, yo, enough, enough. And I, I. It's crossed the line where I will do a quantum section on one of these shows when I have the time. But I figured it was worth. Because it's. It, it's. It just this, this specific little project thing. It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. And, you know, with such important decisions for bitcoin, and I think bitcoin is so important to the future of society. You can't. We cannot have borderline blatant lies. Fud, misrepresented representation of information and trying to convince the world of a version of society that's false can't make really Important decisions on FUD, ultimately. So, anyways, yeah, I mean, this tweet from Jonas, I mean, kind of sums it up. Project 11 paid one bitcoin for a quantum break of Bitcoin style crypto. The quantum computer, like the actual hardware, contributed nothing. It was just noise. The answer was recovered by a classical checker sifting random noise. I reproduced this whole thing in 20 lines of Python with no quantum computer at all. So, again, not that quantum isn't theoretically a threat, not that it isn't making progress. The progress is on the software side, not the hardware side. So if you just focus on the software side, it's. It's extremely misrepresentative of the overall threat and the progress that's being made at whole. There's plenty of work going into Quantum. You know, on a future episode, I can go through countless developer proposals of how we as a community should address this. But, like, things like this are just. They cross a line. They cross a line. Okay. Company updates for strike and 21. I'm gonna skip these this week because I. I think I'd mentioned this. I have a feeling I will be talking about my companies a decent amount this week. I think I'm gonna have media, there's podcasts. I have a keynote on Wednesday. I can't talk about things I plan on saying, but I. I don't know. I. I might. I might have a thing or two to say about. About strike or 21 or who knows? But I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna do it today. On Monday, I'm gonna allow this week. There's a lot that's gone on to this week. Everyone that works with me, a lot of our partners, and so I'm just gonna let that play out. And next week on Monday, I'm sure you guys will have questions and comments and stuff, and we can talk about it then. But for this week, we'll. We'll let the week play out. Cool. Okay, let's. Let's do some Q A. I got maybe 10, 15 minutes max, and then I unfortunately got a jump, so I apologize. These weeks are intense for me, but let's hang out. Let's see what Dylan's got for us. Hold on, let me. Blow me up. I just got a haircut. How do you guys think it looks? Grade it. Don't flatter me. Be honest. All right, let's see, let's see, let's see. Dylan. Where is Dylan? That is Mr. Dylan. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. There we go. Let's do it. This way. Okay. Okay, let's do it. Ready? Question 1 Dumb question. What is a swap line? The very simple answer is it is a facility that allows counterpart, traditionally, like another country or, or a domestic bank. I don't know if they're called swap lines when, like, Chase bank uses it, but it's a facility to borrow a bunch of dollars. So the point is, someone needs dollars, but they're being asked to or don't want to sell something like stocks or bonds or. Or land or real estate to raise the cash. You know when people say whenever markets go haywire, bitcoin goes down? Yeah. Because it's a highly liquid global commodity and people need to raise cash. They need to raise cash to meet a margin call. They need to raise cash because there's a crisis. And so you see things like gold and bitcoin sell off in those moments because you use assets to raise cash. And if someone like the UAE is being asked not to sell their assets to raise cash, then a swap line, and Besson said it, either from the Fed or from the treasury, is a way to borrow dollars. Now, if obviously, like, collateralized lending is totally different because you're posting collateral that is worth something and you're borrowing capital that is worth less. And obviously if the collateral value falls, then you get liquidated. But traditionally in these swap lines, they just start printing dollars that are quote, unquote lent. But obviously when you print more money, you're increasing the supply. You increase the supply, that's inflationary, that weakens the currency. So it's a fancy way of handing out dollars in times of crisis. Now it's called swap because historically the two central banks or whatever, the treasury swaps dollars for another currency. But, you know, the whole reason it exists is to prevent dollar shortages, stabilize markets. These are the things you'll hear from central planners. Stabilize asset prices, stabilize markets, avoid crisis, and prevent dollar shortages. It's a way to puke dollars out into the world so that people don't sell assets and crash markets to raise cash. Does that make sense? Let me know if. If that makes sense. Hey, Jack, can you think about doing a podcast with an in depth look at what makes bitcoin better than gold? Totally. You know what's interesting? And I posed this question to you guys. I get a lot of requests like, hey, can you do an episode on what makes bitcoin better than other crypto coins? What makes bitcoin better than gold? And there's another version of the show I can do where basically I put together a Presentation, which maybe would otherwise be a key keynote at a conference or something. And I just present it live on Monday and upload it to YouTube. Obviously, I wouldn't then be doing kind of this hybrid macro opining on real world events. You know, I. I don't know if I have time to do all of it. I could try, but, you know, if, you know, for the next few episodes, you guys would rather have an episode, like an hour long episode on why bitcoin's better than gold or why bitcoin's better than other cryptos instead of macro, you know, news, societal trends, how it relates to bitcoin. Let me know in the comments. I'm. You know, I like doing all this stuff. I like trying to educate champion bitcoin, Trying to be helpful. So let me know. Okay. Bitcoin markets. Hey, Jack, did you watch a documentary that came out last week called Finding Satoshi, and what were your thoughts? I did not watch it yet. I'm sure I will. I'll give you my thoughts then. My overall thoughts on Finding Satoshi. I've said this before. You know, listen, Satoshi didn't ask for anything from us, except for one thing. Okay, but satoshi didn't ask for money, fame, awards, credibility, control. Trust me, I've been in tons of business negotiations. I've been in tons of meetings, tons of partnerships. Hell, I mean, I was involved in a country making bitcoin legal tender. So I've been up close and personal with government. People ask for lots of things. People want control. People want veto rights. People want equity, cash. People want. People have egos. People want to be the man. People want to be popular. People want to be recognized. Satoshi Nakamoto wanted none of that. For arguably one of the greatest gifts to mankind, Satoshi wanted one thing, and that was to be left alone. And so I, for one, will always respect Satoshi's one request. Now, obviously not literally to me, but because I'm a bitcoiner to me, to us, to the people. Leave the fucking guy alone. It doesn't matter who he is. It doesn't matter what he intended, what he wanted. This, that, and the third. Bitcoin's far bigger than any one person, any one government, any one company. It doesn't matter. And Satoshi couldn't have been more clear. Leave me alone. I don't want you guys to know who I am. I don't want you guys to look after me, try and figure me out, try and investigate and track me down. So I know that there will always Be people that want to go off and do that exercise. I'm not going to participate in it. And I don't find it. I don't find it interesting. I don't know what we would benefit by finding out who Satoshi was. And I find it just a violation of the one ask that this, I mean Satoshi Nakamoto might go down as the most generous person in human history. I mean there's been plenty of people that have invented amazing things, but obviously you read all about them and their lives and they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize or time person of the year or they got a key to the city. Like this person gifted better money. I mean Satoshi could have pre mined a bunch, could have IPO'd it on the stock exchange, could have tried to sell it as software to solving the Byzantine General's problem. Could have brought it to someone that was willing to hire him for a lot of money. None of that. None of that. So I don't know. I saw the documentary dropped. I wasn't interested. I don't give a shit. And then the other thing I will say is, you know, I remember I was with Dorsey during one of the like episodes where everyone was convinced Dorsey was satoshi, which he has said he's absolutely not. I was with him and that was scary because like there are immediately questions about our security. We're like going to dinner and like the whole world is trying to be convinced that this guy created bitcoin. Do you know what that does to a person and their security and their well being? If some, if the world is convinced that they have access to a million bitcoins and created bitcoin and created this money, like what the fuck? Why would, why would we do that to somebody? Unless someone has cryptographic evidence, all of this is far more endangering and rude and pathetic than it is helpful. What are we doing? Endangering other people? What the fuck is that? Nobody deserves that. So anyway, Satoshi didn't want to be known when was was clear that bitcoin was bigger than him. If we were to find out who this person was or is, it doesn't matter. It won't change my opinion on bitcoin. It won't change how bitcoin works. So I certainly don't care. And then I've also experienced what it like could do to a friend. That's fucked up, dude. That's not cool. So I don't know. I'm sure I'll watch it. But that's my consistent take on the Whole who's satoshi stuff, it's just a waste and I think it's dangerous. It's not cool. Yo, Jack, do pleb nodes really matter or is it economic nodes that have the real power? I'm not sure I understand the question. You'll have to define what a pleb node and an economic node is. But does running a node matter? Yes. If you don't run a node, ultimately you're trusting someone else to validate for you. Right? So the true and most pure way to use Bitcoin is to run a node and receive your bitcoins to your own node. Because then you are literally verifying cryptographically in accordance to the consensus rules that like your bitcoin is real and it's not forged, it's not faked, it's not double spent. You know, obviously by using Strike, you're using Strikes nodes and I use Strikes nodes. But Strike's nodes are my nodes. So ultimately you're trusting me. Now that's not a good or bad thing. You know, I think businesses will continue to exist. People aren't ultimately going to run all their own financial services for themselves. But yeah, when you use Strike, you're not running your own node. You're, you're using my node. And so do nodes matter 100%? Because here's the thing, Bitcoin doesn't work like Fiat or like Ethereum with proof of stake, where whoever holds the most coins benefits. It's the same rules for everyone, no matter what your balance is. It doesn't matter if you're Sailor, if you're Satoshi, or if you're someone who doesn't own any Bitcoin yet nodes enforce the rules. And so whenever people have tried to change the rules in Bitcoin, the only way to change the rules is if we all change the rules. And so if the bitcoin network says no, we don't want to increase the block size, we don't want to increase the supply cap from 21 million to 42 million. No, then by changing the rules, you're creating a totally different coin because it does not, it does not validate within the rules that we all run. So it actually doesn't matter how many coins you have. When it comes to governance and property rights went for Bitcoin, what matters is the nodes. What rules are the nodes running? And so why is it important that you run a node? Because you're casting your vote for what the rules are, what makes a Bitcoin real. If I, if I run a Node and I change the 21 million cap to 22 million and I try and transact with you, are you going to accept that Bitcoin? Is that a real Bitcoin to you? Because if your rules are, no, no, no, the supply cap's 21 million, well, then your node will reject it. Fake money. Fuck you. And so I. Guys, I've been in bitcoin for almost 14 years. People have tried to change the bitcoin rules all the time. And what's critically important is that everyone can run a node and that people do run nodes, because then we get consensus on what Bitcoin is. What are the consensus rules? The monetary properties that make a Bitcoin a bitcoin. And that's why when people say, you know, we need to raise the block size, we need to do all these fancy crazy things, and that prevents the everyday person from running a node. That's really dangerous. Because if the only people that can run nodes are large data centers and large companies, then those are the people that are ultimately going to set the rules. So we want Bitcoin to be able to run on extremely cheap hardware on your phone even. Because if everyone needs to be able to participate in validating and asserting the rules, it doesn't matter how much money you have who you are, you can run a node if you want and you can cast your claim for validating and enforcing the consensus rules. Does that make sense? Question for Jack. How can Bitcoin be labeled a trustless protocol if it's 100% dependent on trusting somebody else will accept it later. Bitcoin is a trustless protocol in that you do not have to trust your counterparty to achieve finality. Meaning this gold did not scale to 8 billion people that are now using the Internet because you can't send it over a communications channel like the World Wide Web. And so in order to use gold in today's society, you have to deposit it with someone else and they give you an iou and then you can send that IOU over the Internet. But at the end of the day, you end up trusting the US government or Chase bank or whoever tether gold. And so gold is not trustless when used in that way. And that's the only practical way to use gold in today's society. Bitcoin is both a monetary asset and a monetary network. You can achieve transaction finality without needing to trust anyone in the middle. You do not have to trust your counterpart. Enemies at war can trade Bitcoin trustlessly. The US cannot rug their counterpart in bitcoin, they can't sanction it. They can't say that bitcoin is now worthless. They can't do that. That's the trustless piece. Now, depending on will someone else accept it later. Now that's just money in markets, right? Like, you know, if I wanted to use my toenail clippings as money. Sorry, that's kind of gross. Example. But whatever. If I wanted to use my toenail clippings as money, I could do that. I have every right to do that. You know, for every dollar I earn, I exchange it for toenail clippings. But if I were to go to Whole Foods and say, here's a bunch of toenails for steak, they have every right to say, I don't want that. It's their good and service they're exchanging. So ultimately that's just markets and that's a huge property of money. When people say bitcoin is highly liquid, highly saleable, these are foundational properties it has achieved new monies have a really tough time garnering any network effect because you're right. Who values it? Who wants that? The fact that bitcoin's a trillion plus dollar global money is a huge deal. It's a huge deal because it's highly liquid. And 24 7, you're very likely to now find someone that's willing to exchange for it. So, but, you know, there's no protocol that solves for that. There's no protocol to say like, we're going to trustlessly make sure that Whole Foods accepts it. Of course not. Of course not. That's just how markets work. That goes for any money, by the way. Maybe there's a day where Whole Foods says, oh, you have dollars? Yuck, I don't want that fucking shitcoin. Right? Who knows? There's no protocol to solve for that. What has the coolest part of the conference been so far? Dylan and Jack. Well, I'm not gonna lie. I just got here. Well, I got here two nights ago. I got your Saturday night, and I think the conference started today. But I will say I'm looking forward to the strike event tonight. We're hosting an event tonight, Strike Private, so some of our most loyal customers that have done a lot of business with us, after this, I'm actually gonna go hang out there and meet some of our customers. I love hearing from you guys. Meeting you guys, I don't know. Bitcoin's a movement, man. It's a revolution. So I'm looking forward to that tonight. And then My keynote is on Wednesday, so I'm really excited about that. These are always opportunities for me to announce new stuff, convey plans and ideas, talk about new partnerships, and, you know, just, I don't know, convey my contribution to this greater story we're all on. So, yeah, and then I always like stopping by the strike booth. The strike booth is pretty cool this year. We've got a bunch of exclusive merch we're handing out for free. A bunch of the employees are here because now strike is. Is getting big, man. We. We have a whole lending suite of products. We have our brokerage business. There's all sorts of things we now sell as products to bitcoiners. And we've got a team here to help everyone through it. And I always love stopping by the booth again, just meeting, meeting our customers, meeting bitcoiners, hearing what we could be doing better. I love asking people what their bitcoin story is. It's so cool that we're all kind of united from around the world on this one thing. And I think it's cool that we're all so different. So, anyway, those are probably some of my top three things. Question for Jack. I'm 19 and a very serious bitcoiner. I think most bitcoiners think young people are more hip to BCC than they really are. Young people are skeptical and dumb. What do you think? Shout out to you. That's cool. I was once 19 and a Bitcoiner, and I got a lot of respect for you. And I'm curious how you found the show. It's cool that you're listening. Whenever I hear the people that actually listen to this show, it always blows my mind because it's a weird show. I'm talking for hours to myself. And so it's always funny to realize that there are real people listening on the other side, and I really appreciate it. So my opinion on young bitcoiners. Yeah, I mean, listen, what we've realized that strike majority of our business and our volume is actually not from young people. I think people look at me and I look young. And depending on the context, I am young. And people assume, oh, Jack is the millennial bitcoiner and he sells his services to young people. And the truth is, that's not the case necessarily, because at the end of the day, bitcoin is the largest wealth transfer in human history. Right. We are. You know, wealth is leaving analog assets like old real estate bonds, you know, old equity portfolios, and it's entering bitcoin. Bitcoin's Being monetized in the face of analog ways of persisting and exchanging wealth. And 19 year olds don't have old art paintings, a real estate portfolio, a basket of equities. Of course, how the fuck would you. You're 19. And so the reality is the people that have the wealth today, those are the people that are wiring strike $20 million to buy Bitcoin or taking out a $50 million loan, not 19 year olds. We, of course serve tons of young people as well. But to your point, young people are far more skeptical and they're just generally less educated on things like money in the world and themselves. I mean, it takes time. Like I jokingly say, all the time. You can print money, but you can't print an 18 year old. Right. Like it takes time to come into your own as a human being. And so, you know, I think that what I found really interesting is I should have put this. Maybe I'll do this next episode. There's a lot of growth in religion recently, and I'm not a particularly religious person. I have no opinion on religion itself. But it's fascinating to see society reevaluate what it means to be human and conduct the human experience. Experience. I think people are sick of being sold and are finding purpose and a sense of self and a sense of being. Like religion is being rediscovered again, seemingly. And it's being driven a lot in the youth. And so to me, that tells me that the youth is not only skeptical about bitcoin, they're skeptical about the world. They're skeptical about what they're being sold, they're skeptical about the situation they've been born into. And they're generally cautious and they have every right to be. And so I'm hopeful that a lot of what we're living through, like the necessary inflation, currency, debasement, will end up driving the youth to discovering Bitcoin. But it's going to be a journey. I mean, think about it, guys. Like the youth doesn't have a basket of assets that they're trying to manage. They're kids, man. They're fucking kids. And so anyway, shout out to you, Whoever you are, 19 years old and all you young folks out there. I mean, obviously if there's ever ways we can help either at STRIKE or myself personally, I have a huge passion for the youth. I associate with the youth more than I do older generations. Those are my people. And I ultimately think we don't control what we were born into, but we control, you know, what comes next. And it's a really tough and mature thing to do to be like, you know what, I forgive those before us. There's nothing we can do about that. The best thing we can do for each other is build something better. And eventually people will come to that. But for the 19 year olds that have already gotten to that place and feel that way and are on this show listening, it's cool. So huge respect. Thanks for listening. And yeah, I agree with you, bro. It's something we have to solve. So I don't know, any feedback you have educational content I can put out. I mean, sometimes universities ask me to come and zoom into their class or to their, like, what are these programs called? Like the Bitcoin Club and stuff like that. And I never say no, ever. You know, if it's kids or youth or college students, you know, I always will have time for that. So if there's anything I can do to help out, help educate you guys, just let me know. Okay. I'm gonna try and blitz through the Strike questions and then we'll have a few other ones and then I'll try and get out of here in the next five, ten minutes. Jack, can you add little orange dots to the price chart in our strike app for each of our strike purchases weighted by the size? Oh, like how Sailor does. Yeah, it's not a bad idea. I think we've looked into this. It's on the roadmap. I mean, when building a company like Strike, it's always hard because there's so much we want to do. But the challenge that you have to implement as an entrepreneur is, you know, what is the. It's, it's not what's. How do I say this? It's not difficult to have a lot of good ideas. Ideas aren't scarce within themselves. Like, Mark Zuckerberg wasn't the only person that came up with the social media. What's hard is, well, what's the most important thing to do now and what's the right order of operations to build the vision? Ideas are easy. Like, yeah, not easy. I don't want to undersell them. But ideas are abundant. Everyone has opinions. Those things are not, they're not, they're not scarce. What's hard is the execution. And so it's definitely somewhere on our roadmap. It's just competing with. It's competing with all sorts of stuff like liquidation proof loans or like yield on your cash right now. You know, some of our customers want to explore yield on their bitcoin. Like, it's competing with all those things. And so it hasn't been the top priority yet, but I know it's somewhere on there, and I would expect to see that something like that within this year. Don't hold me to it. Hey, Jack, you've mentioned strategy is borrowing at very expensive rates. The bitcoin line of credit on strike is easy, even higher. I think they're kind of the same. Maybe not. When do you anticipate strike having comparable rates to other lenders? What other lenders are cheaper than strike? We may or may not have some exciting announcements related to this topic later this week, but I would be curious to hear what lenders you're talking about. I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, these things are expensive because the capital, getting capital to finance bitcoin loans are expensive. And sometimes what you see is like, startups or companies will like, raise a bunch of VC money and they'll try and undercut the market and they'll be like, oh, our loans are 7% or 8%, we're the cheapest. And then they run out of the money that funded them and the products stop working. Like, at the end of the day, a HELOC, like a home equity loan still even like, you know, 8, 9, 10, 11%, it depends on your house and who's doing it for you. But with fed funds where they are and markets where they are, like, money's not cheap. And I mean, bringing up strategy is a great point. Like, if Saylor could get cheaper money, he would. He would. If Saylor could get money at 0%, he would. He's not an idiot. He's trying to get money from you guys. Who's lending Saylor money, you guys? Anyone that buys stretch. And that's not a secret. And so getting money to finance things right now is not cheap. So Saylor, who's like the largest holder of bitcoin, he can't get money any cheaper than what, stretch at 11, 12%. And so our rates will come down, but when markets come down, because ultimately you're asking someone to give you cash at a cheap rate. Like, why? Let me put you this way. I would love to give you a loan at 1% rate. Of course I would. I mean, what are you? I'm not a bad guy. But who in their right mind would take billions of dollars that they have and give it to you for 1% instead of buying bitcoin, buying T bills, doing something else with it? So the question is, by giving really cheap rates, someone's getting fucked. Someone is. Someone is losing. And you say well, mortgages are cheap. Yeah, but mortgages have the implicit backing of the US Government. Bitcoin backed loans don't yet. And obviously once they do, someday Strike will be super cheap. But right now we are kind of pioneering ultimately, and I will talk about this later this week, like ultimately Tether and Strike are pioneering bitcoin lending and like trying to build this market from scratch. And so you're always going to get startups that raise $50 million from a venture capitalist and use that money to, to try and do really cheap loans. But there's no one has billions and billions and billions of dollars that are cheaper financing than like HELOCs and like, because why would a massive institution that has $10 billion give it to you for 1% instead of buying bitcoin, instead of buying equities, instead of doing something where they can get a greater return. So, and I've talked about, you know, at Strike, we want to build what we call yield on cash, where our customers at Strike say, hey, if you give me 5%, 4%, 6%, whatever the number is, yield on our cash. You know, you can use my cash to help finance bitcoin backed loans or people's Bitcoin's line of credit. And we're creating a two sided market where you have people all over the world depositing cash on our platform. We have people all over the world wanting to borrow cash against their Bitcoin. And that could be cheaper because you're basically, it's not peer to peer because Strike is helping facilitate the market, but it's people borrowing and lending to people. And then when you say I want my cash back, obviously that's the value Strike would be providing is we're making sure that this market is functional. But that would be the way to ultimately get it cheaper. The cheapest capital is the guy standing next to you in line at Starbucks, right, who's like, oh yeah, yeah, no, I take four and a half percent yield on my cash on Strike and then I can say, okay, now I will lower the cost of everyone else's bitcoin line of credit because now my capital cost is only 4.5%. But to go to an institutional investor and say I'll give you 4.5%, they're going to say why would I do that? I could buy, why don't I just buy bitcoin instead of that? That's stupid. Does that make sense? So it's no accident that strategies Stretch and Strikes products are similarly priced because you know what, what yield would it take for someone to forego buying bitcoin and doing a bunch of other things and instead getting, you know, a yield for stretch, it seems to be 11, 12%. And so the market is similar for bitcoin backed lending products. The block is one of our more expensive ones because it's a smaller loan. If you borrow 500 grand or a million or 5 million or 50 million from strike, we go as low as, like, even 7%, to be clear. But that's because, like, it's a tremendous amount of business. Does that make sense? Hopefully it does. Okay, next question. Buying. Buying on bitcoin via strike is seamless, but selling via strike isn't integrated. Others support both directions. Oh, I didn't know that. I'll ping the team and ask why we don't support the cell flow. No problem. Thanks for clarifying, but I didn't know that. Okay, a few other questions, which are usually fun because they have nothing to do with bitcoin. Question. What's your preferred sauce or sides with your rib eye? Big fan of sour cream and honey with hot sauce. Wow. I have had honey on steak. I have had hot sauce on steak. You guys are gonna kill me in the comments for this. I love ketchup. I use Primal Kitchen ketchup. So this is kind of like, you know, a carnivores version of ketchup. But as a kid, I mean, I. This is so gross. Don't judge me for it. I was like 4 years old, but my dad said I used to put ketchup on, like, pancakes. I mean, I've always eaten ketchup as a kid. I know you guys are gonna look at me different. I'm sorry. Hey, if. If I'm anything, I'm honest. Okay. I was four. I don't remember it. But, you know, growing up at home, I was always like, I put ketchup on. You know, I put ketchup on my eggs. Put ketchup on steak sometimes. But if the steak's high quality and good enough, just eat it with salt. But I had my phase of honey, but honey is just too much sugar for me. I know the saladino crowd likes it, but all the fruit and all the honey is just so much sugar. I prefer the ketosis. So. But I have. I use the Primal Kitchen products. So I. At home, I have Primal Kitchen Ranch, Primal Kitchen buffalo sauce, and Primal Kitchen ketchup. That's my rotation. And it depends because I got a smoker. I got a Traeger on the roof. So, you know, sometimes I'll be smoking Tri tips. Sometimes I'll be smoking chicken thighs. Sometimes I'll be. Sometimes I'll grill rib eyes. And so it kind of depends on what I'm eating. Sometimes I go in my own homemade Buffalo ranch for some chicken. Anyway. Hey, Jack, I'm going to Chicago for three days to catch the Cubs. Give me two great steakhouses to visit. I'll give you more than two, because it's not a guarantee you're gonna be able to get a reservation. Chicago and the Midwest, that's steak country. You know, that is Midwest homegrown crop. And so that's, in my opinion, the best steak in the country, which means it's. It might be tough to get a reservation. My favorite steakhouse is Maple and Ash. But it's a combination of the ambiance, the experience, the quality service, and the food. The only food, the only steak that could be better than Maple and Ash, in my opinion, is Bavettes. So the top two, if you can get a reservation, it's Bavettes and Maple and Ash, hands down. But I would be shocked if you'd be able to. To nail both of those other steakhouses that are probably easier to get into and still, like, unbelievably good. Let's see, Dylan. What's the steakhouse next to Bavettes that we go to sometimes? That place is good. Oh, supposedly I'm too close to the camera. Sorry. What's that steakhouse still? Anyway, the. The live stream has a lag, so Dylan's not gonna be able to answer in real time. Maple and Ash and Bavettes. I'll come back to you. Okay. After the engagement, what was the first thing that Jack and the future Mrs. Did? Spend time with family and friends? So that was the Soho House roof in Chicago. That was the first time I ever took the future misses out for lunch. It was the first time we, like, ever asked her if she wanted to hang out with me alone. We went and got lunch. It was on that roof, so that's our spot. It's a fun place to hang. So I rented that place out and filled it with friends and family that were hiding out the floor below. And so the future Mrs. Thought we were going to an event. Elevators opened, and nobody was there. I got on my knee, I asked if she would marry me. I'd be the luckiest man in the world. And then all the people that make life worth it to us came on up, and we just shared the moment. It was really cool. I'm excited for all the photos and videos to be produced from that. So it's a cool moment. Like I said, you know, prioritize family, find relationship. You know, it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. This bitcoin stuff has its ups and its downs, its goods and its bads. My career has been quite the journey. But, you know, my future Mrs. And what I'm building over there, which is my family, makes it all worth it. Jack, do you get paid to give keynote presentations at the bitcoin conference? I don't get paid for none of that. Buy my own travel, my own hotels. Sometimes people offer, but to be honest, I don't know, I don't like. So the answer to your question is no, I don't get paid. But I also. I don't know. I don't want the incentives to be like, I'm a paid speaker. That's, you know, another reason I know don't do advertisements on here. You know, I want you guys to know where I make money. I make money. One, I've been holding bitcoin a long time. And two, by selling products through my businesses, like, when you guys use strike, that's how you support me. You know, I've gotten a lot of licenses, we built a lot of technology, we've designed a lot of apps to give you a product, and we charge for that. That's how I pay rent. And I don't want people. I don't want to, you know, collect money from selling you guys ads that can be convoluted and conflated with my opinions. And I don't want to get on stage because someone paid me. I'm here because I want to support bitcoin and I have things to say that I think are valuable given, you know, I'm a small piece of this overall story. That's why I'm here. So no, no one. No one's paying me to be here and, you know, make sure we get our own hotels and stuff. I just like separating. Separating that stuff. Like, I like being truly authentic, truly transparent, truly, truly, truly, like, unbiased. Like, I'm not for sale, you know, and at the end of the day, I'm gonna miss rent if my companies fail. And my companies will fail if people think my products suck and what I stand for sucks. But that's how I make money, is if you guys use strike and, you know, support 21 ultimately. Okay, and last one, the chat wants to see my shirt. It is a satoshi shirt. Let me push this back and I'll show you guys so the front says Satoshi Nakamoto. And let me zoom this in here because this is cool. These little. These little things here that says. Can you see that? Those are programming languages. So it says Linux Python on there. You see that? HTML. So Satoshi Nakamoto. And then the back. I'm gonna go shirtless, but we're not gonna do any nips. Let me pull the camera up. The back is cool. Can you guys read that? It says it isn't who has the most money or the most clout who wins. It's who has the best code. Badass, huh? And with that, shirtless Jack is out. I will see you guys either at the Strike event tonight at the strike booth or on stage on Wednesday. Much love. Appreciate all the support, as always. Comments, questions, leave them down below. I'll read them and I'll see you guys.