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Oh. Welcome back to another episode of the Jack Maller Show. I am your host, Jack. You're listening to yet another edition of Mail bag Monday, episode 111. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let's get this show on the road. I'm talking to you all at a Bitcoin price, US$6,770. Bitcoin's market cap sits at about 1.34 trillion in size. All time high. It was made on October 6, 2025. It remains the same. 126, $160. We're about 47 down from that all time high. We made 175 days ago. The last bitcoin block that was mined since I hit stream was Bitcoin block 942, 980. It is March 30th. There's a lot going on in the world. This episode could have been 10 hours long. Instead, I'm going to try and keep it to an hour long. But for those of you listening years in advance thinking about what it was like for bitcoin during Trump's second administration, during the conflict in the Middle east, during the rise in oil prices, were welcome. It is very, very, very chaotic. So without further ado, let's go. The title of today is they're lying to you again. Stay humble and stack sats. So what do I mean by they're lying to you again? The time we're living through now, I find it very difficult to not be reminded of COVID Doge. I feel like I'm being gaslit. I feel. I feel like I'm being lied to. I feel like I'm being manipulated. And it's funny because I swear to you, I got people in my YouTube comments or tweeting at me like, jack might know a thing or two about bitcoin, but he simply doesn't understand Trump's genius. Jack should just be patient and let the United states develop their 4D chess. Jack is young. He has no idea the profound mastery we're witnessing from the US Government. And I'm like, okay, well, because what have I been saying? Week after week after week after week, the only thing that matters is the Strait of Hormuz. Open or closed. That's the only thing that matters. If we cannot open it, we lose. And it doesn't matter. Like, I'll just. I'll repeat myself again. It doesn't matter how many people we kill if the head of the former regime is dead. I mean, at least I don't think it matters. What matters is if they can keep the straight of Hermuz closed, we will suffer a, a fatal collapse in the United States because we are solely and wholly reliant on people like Iran, Russia, China, the global supply chain energy markets. We are not self sufficient. We are the country that runs the deficits. We are the country that lives in perpetual debt, that is losing control of its treasury market. And so we can kill as many people as we want. If, if they can keep that thing closed, we're going to lose. And I've been super consistent on that. And I'm like, guys, I don't know how this opens. I don't see it opening anytime soon. Every single day that it remains closed, I get more nervous that this is going to escalate, that there's going to be mass amounts of casualties due to this conflict, that energy prices and oil prices are going to get out of control, that markets are going to fall apart, that sovereign debt crisis is going to be greatly exaggerated, that we're not even going to have the luxury of paying attention to the most devastating deflationary technology trend in human history, which is AI. Everyone's totally forgot that we're also facing a unemployment crisis that's also going to drive us into a financial crisis greater than anything anyone has experienced that's alive today. I've been super consistent about that. And week after week after week. Oh, you just don't. Silly kid. You don't understand the 4D chess that's being played. Did you not hear that Trump is a master negotiator. Oh, you must not know, the U.S. government is unbelievable at the fog of war. Here we are, week five and the fucking Hormuz is still closed. Oil's over $100, global supply chains are breaking down, the S&P 500 is down 10% like, hello, and it reminds me of COVID I kid you not. People are saying you got to go get a shot. Just one shot though. I say, really? Will it prevent me from getting Covid? Oh, no, no, no, you'll still get sick. Oh, okay. Will it allow me to go back outside and interface with people again and have social experiences and not be trapped in, in jailed and on house arrest? No, no, no. You have to get a shot. But you'll still get sick. And you're not allowed to leave your house. Oh, and inside your house you still have to wear a mask. Well, then why would I get a shot? Oh, no, now it's not just one shot. You just got to get two. But then you're fine. No now it's three shots, but then you're fine. Well, now it's three shots and boosters, but then you're fine, but you still can't go outside and you're still gonna get sick and you still have to wear a mask. But any time during COVID I was like, hold on a second. Sorry, guys. This isn't political. I do the whole spiel. I'm not red or blue, I'm not left or right, I'm bitcoin, I'm orange. I'm pro distributed networks and open source software. And this isn't a political statement. This isn't supposed to offend you and who you perceive yourself to be or your political alliances. I'm just trying to bring rational common sense to the conversation. Remind me why this. Why I should inject my body with something that is not provably tested and gone through proper due process and doesn't seem to actually resolve the problem. And people at the time were literally, what, are you trying to kill people? You murderer. You murderer. You disgusting pig. You're a murderer, a disgusting pig. You're selfish. You're not thoughtful, you're shameful. You're the worst of society. That is what was happening during COVID and it was ultimate gaslighting. The government was going to employers and saying, fire people that do not get the shot. Fire people. Don't let them in your restaurant, don't let them fly on your airplanes. Don't let them out the house. They're selfish, they're murderers. Fire them, unemploy them, render them useless, kick them out of society. And it was ultimate gaslighting. It was like, what? It was like, I'm just being lied to. And again, it wasn't political. People say, oh, Jack's such a Republican. No, I'm not. I've never voted Republican. People say, jack, such a Democrat. He grew up in Chicago. No, I'm not. I've never voted Democrat. How is that possible? I've never voted. I don't believe in how big the US government is or anything about it at all. At all. I vote with my time, my energy, my effort, and my labor. I vote with the work I do every day, which is in alternative systems that will provide and support society with something that I believe is more equitable and fair and prosperous. Just not political. You guys can be in my YouTube comments saying all sorts of dumbass bullshit. It just. I. For those that want a rational sense of what's going on, let me remind you of COVID Same thing with Doge Elon said, we're going to cut. We run a $2 trillion deficit. Well, I'm the greatest entrepreneur of all time. Let me cut our, our spending by 2 trillion. Here, hand me the keys to the balance sheet. It was like, Elon, no offense, dude, the fact that you think that this is possible, like, you can't be an expert in everything. I'm sure you're an expert in all sorts of stuff, but, like, you clearly don't know. That's how I felt when he was talking about bitcoin. It was like, come on, dude, you're embarrassing yourself promoting dogecoin. You don't have to be the main character in everything. Maybe you just don't know what you're talking about when it comes to this topic. No problem. You don't have to pretend, though, and say you understand bitcoin and why dogecoin is better because those of us that actually know what we're talking about, it undermines your credibility. It's highly embarrassing. You're clearly not that educated. And it was the same thing with Doge. If the United States were to cut $2 trillion of what they were calling waste, the whole Ponzi scheme would have collapsed because so much of the stimulus and GDP growth for the US Economy was coming from government spending. So if they cut that, the whole thing falls apart. And then it was, oh, oh, oh, oh. Well, it's not going to be 2 trillion, but it'll be a trillion. Do you guys remember when there was like, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon, we're going to have like, America Day, doge. America Day, July 5, 2026. Right. Are we still. Is that still on in July? This upcoming July? I was looking forward to that. And then it was instead of, we're cutting 2 trillion, then it was, oh, we're just going to cut a trillion. Then it was, well, we found some fraud. We found. Which they did. They found some whatever. Minnesota fraud, California fraud. I mean, you guys found fraud. The whole thing is a fraud. The whole fucking thing is a Ponzi scheme. The Federal Reserve's never been audited. What do you mean you found fraud? Yes, there's fraud in Minnesota. Should we allow it to happen? No, but the ultimate fraud is this entire thing. It's the thing that you said you were going to cut the $2 trillion. That. That's all of its fraud. And then here we are today. The deficit is now bigger. Trump is spending more money, plans to spend more money, said we weren't good. He was the peace President, we weren't going to be in war. Here we are with a conflict in Iran. I still don't understand. Why is it. Because the funny thing about the conflict is, he goes, these people are so hostile and dangerous with their nuclear tendencies and the weapons they're building, that they can't even be negotiated with. They're too dangerous. If we negotiate with these people, we endanger the American public because they're so dangerous, you can't even sit across from a table and negotiate with them, because they're here to kill us all. Two weeks later what's the update? I'm negotiating with them. What? You just told me that the reason that we just started bombing them and is because they couldn't be negotiated with because they were so dangerous we had to obliterate them over the map. And I taught. You told me last year in June, that you already took out all their nuclear facilities. But now we had to go in and skip the negotiating phase and blow out their nuclear facilities. So I already knew you were lying to me because you said you did this last June. And now I know you're lying to me because you're negotiating with people that you said you couldn't be negotiated with. And then every single Monday before markets open, it's, we're in talks. We're in talks. We're in talks. It's winding down soon. It's winding down soon. It's winding down soon. It's just like Covid. It's just like Doge. They're fucking lying. This isn't a blue thing. This isn't a red thing. This isn't a left thing. This isn't a right thing. This is. Government's gotten too big. They have a monopoly on printing money. They can finance these things at the people's expense because they can print. They. They can steal our wealth through dilution, through inflation. And so if you want to revolt against this, you gotta just pack your bags and get out. Store your wealth in something else, Work on things more productive. This is why I don't vote. This is why I don't entertain this nonsense, is because it's a waste of time. This country is not missing the right president. The whole system is ridiculous. The whole system is a fraud. The whole system is pathetic. And we're better off building something else, building something new, saving in something else, saving in something new. So we move on. I mean, this is what the news like. You know, I was over at the gym earlier in the little club I belong to, and you got the TVs on. These are the headlines I read. Trump pauses attacks on Iran's energy plants. Says the talks are going well again. The talks with the people that he previously said he shouldn't talk to and should just bomb because they're so dangerous you shouldn't talk to them. All of it's a front. And, and by the way, it's so disrespectful because. How dumb do you think I am? I mean it. The incentives of the system are so broken. The incentives are for the people to be dumb, to be high time preference, short attention span. Dumb rocks. How dumb. I feel so disrespected reading these headlines. How stupid do you think I am? It's so insulting to all of us. Rubio says Iran wore to last weeks, not months with no US ground troops needed. Okay, well then what the fuck is this? What's the letter to the Marines saying? Prepare your family. We're going to war. The US sent troops to the Middle east to be deployed. So these are all like in our face lies simply to manipulate the bond market which is the only way this scam can perpetuate is the United States needs to find a way to afford people continuing to lend it money. I've never, I'll tell you this, I've never seen a sitting president when trying to calm the public about a war that he against the voters interest. He did not campaign on this. Against voter interest. He's trying to calm markets. Getting community noted on Twitter Trump 20 large oil tankers to transmit through the Strait of Hermuz under US escort. He's trying to tell the markets we're in good standing with Iran. Oil and energy markets will come back down to earth. We're working on it. And that was a bold faced lie. The community note says that the 20 takers were Pakistani flagged vessels. The US isn't escorting. Jack shit. It's a lie. And meanwhile you know what's not a lie? You know what you can't print? You know what you can't manipulate? Time, Energy, physical commodities like oil. Gas prices in the United States are through the roof. Southeast Asia is having an energy crisis. I think Australia has like two weeks left of oil reserves before they go into crisis. It's so like, I was like should I make this episode 10 hours and explain why the straight of Hermuz is so important and make a map and a diagram? No, I've been saying the same thing every single week for the last five weeks. Guys, here's the other thing. We killed plenty of people in the Vietnam War. Way more than we did in Japan. Way more than we did in Germany. We lost. We lost. So what? What? And here's a good question. I don't even know the answer for President Trump. What is winning the war mean? Is how many people we kill? Is it getting a regime in place? Like, does anyone know? Because they keep coming out with headlines, the US has killed another person. Okay. Is the Strait of Hormuz opened? Yes or no? China is getting oil from the Strait. You want to talk about projecting power? China has four years of oil reserves. We depleted ours during Biden's term. So China's sitting on four years of oil reserves, and they're escorting oil from the strait. That's called power projection. I don't care. Every headline I see, cool story, bro. Is the straight open. If I had a press pass, I would walk into the White House and ask, if we are the most powerful nation with the most powerful military, why is the strait closed? Super simple. Why is the US Treasury Secretary unsanctioning Russian oil and Iranian oil? Mind you, we unsanctioned the oil market from the people were supposedly in war with the secretary. The treasury secretary is helping our quote, unquote enemies were actively in war with. This was all part of the plan. That's the 4D chess you're talking about? No, but please. You know, all the geniuses in the comments are gonna tell me I'm young and I'm dead. Oh, my goodness. So you guys want my opinion on what's going on? Why financial markets. And by the way, who sniffed all of this out? Bitcoin, mind you. Bitcoin still ranging in the 60 thousands as it has now for months. And what's catching up to it? Every other asset, Gold, the S&P 500. Bitcoin remains the king in the freest market that is not subject to manipulation to central bank interference and coercion. It is a true smoke alarm. You can look at it in its price, and you treat its price as an asset independently. And it tells you what's going on in the world, what sentiment is like. It's so impressive. It's so cool. Oh, clearly I've just had enough with the government because I'm a young guy in America. I got pulled out of second grade during 9 11, so, mind you, my entire experience is just full of being lied to somehow, no matter who's the president, we're in conflict. Bush conflict, Obama conflict, Biden conflict, Ukraine, Russia, Trump conflict. Spend, spend, spend. Debt, debt, debt. Lie, lie, lie. War, war, war. That's my lived experience. Had enough? Had enough. You can't convince me to vote for any of these people. Vote for what? It's a humiliation ritual. I'm going to go stand in line in the cold in Chicago for what? Humiliate me? I mean, literally, that's. I could never get myself to even convince myself that I was helping anybody. Might as well take those six hours of waiting in line and submit a pull request to Bitcoin. All right, let's go through the actual tangibles of why the world is falling apart. Because the strait of Hermes is closed. And I told you guys plenty of times, the Iran strategy is very clear. It's not to drop a nuclear bomb on all of us. It's they're going to attack the US where it hurts the most, which is financial markets. We're extremely indebted. We're the debtor nation. We have serious problems in trying to re industrialize this country. Not being self reliant on China, not being self reliant on global supply chains, and just the littlest bit of volatility in our treasury market and in the stock market threatens the entire notion that the United States is the Western empire and, you know, a place for free markets and, and for prosperity and for growth and for property rights. All of it, all of it, all of it. You just need to sneeze on this thing before the deck of cards comes collapsing down. And so that's what we're seeing. So on the left here you see the 10 year yield. I mean, you can tell when the conflict in the Middle east broke out, the 10 year yield had actually gotten below 4%, which I found impressive and a little unreasonable. I don't know who the hell would want to. Despite this conflict, I don't know who would want the amount of money printing that quite literally has to happen over the next 10 years. But the conflict happens the 10 years now at 4.4%. And every single time the 10 year hits 4.4% or higher, you get a tweet from Trump, you get a new lie, you get a new story, you get a new narrative. And if it gets any higher, they're gonna have to print the money. They just don't have a choice. This tweet from Luke I thought was great. Secretary Besant in February said, judge US by the 10 year US treasury yield. That's when it just got below 4. And it's like, I mean these, these things, you know, it's almost like they write themselves. Okay, fine, we'll judge you by The US ten year. So it's sitting at four and a half right now. What about that? Oh and by the way, it's moving with the price of oil. So this is a risk off environment, oil's going up, conflict in the Middle east, stock markets going down. You would assume that people are risk off in running to safety into US Treasuries and they're not. It's the opposite. All of a sudden all these gray haired boomer farts that are like, Bitcoin's a risk asset. Bitcoin's a risk asset. Gold and Treasuries are not risk assets, they're safe havens. Well, gold and Treasuries are selling off with Bitcoin, with the stock market while oil is going the other way. Guess what motherfucker? When we're living through this giant fiat Ponzi scheme, we're all quote unquote risk asset assets. You guys can't escape this pain either. Welcome to the fucking show. Welcome to the show. Risk on, risk off my ass. Guess what? If the straight of her moves remains closed, this whole thing is going into flames. Everything that you think you know and understand goes kaput. This will be the greatest financial crisis for anyone that's been alive. Period. Period. Way greater than Covid, way greater than 2008. It won't be close. They will print the money. They will. At this point the best outcome of this conflict in the Middle east is for the United States to humbly say, nevermind, we're out now. That'll have all sorts of knock on effects of oh wow. The petrodollar cannot be enforced by guns and weapons in the US military. Wow, what does that mean? Iran is demanding settlement in Chinese currency. And China's not a debtor nation. They don't print more currency than they make. Which means the only way to get Chinese currency is through gold. So it is now a petro gold system, not a petrodollar system. But. But that's the best case scenario for the United States of America at this point. That's the reality. Oh, and by the way on the far right, let me read you guys this tweet. This is pretty iconic. Goldman Sachs estimates that the US economy will be twice more affected negatively than the Chinese economy by the oil supply shock. These are all the smart geniuses. They're like, oh, the 4D chess. We're just starving China's economy. You think we have it bad? Trust me, I read up a lot about China. Guess what? China's oil reserves dwarf hours. China's productivity dwarfs hours. The pain China is feeling is marginal compared to the United States. They don't give a fuck. By the way, they're getting oil from the Strait. The only people that aren't getting oil are the US and its allies. So again, it's like in. In mind you guys, I'm not a political expert. I'm not shit. For all you guys that you know, I'm not shit. I'm 31, I'm passionate. I want the world to be a better place. I work hard, I care. And I'm here to just try and be reasonable, relatable, honest, not have political biases or corporate biases. I tell you, I don't have any ads on this podcast. I'm very transparent about who I am, what I stand for, every metric. You want to know about my company or about myself personally, I expose my personal financial situation. I'm just bringing common sense, like sue me. What is anyone talking about? So the Straits closed for five straight weeks. Our Marines are getting letters that they're being deployed. Our, our troops are getting letters that they're being deployed. The 10 year yield sitting at over 4.4%. And China is projecting power and I'm supposed to be told that this is 4D chess and I just, I'm just too young and naive to understand the true genius of the US government. Fuck you. I'm not that dumb. Fuck off. Off. It's the same shit of here. Take all these shots and all these boosters and wrap your face in cloth and lock yourself in your attic. How about no? Fuck you. No. All right. Well, this is the position the United States is in, ladies and gentlemen. One, our oil reserves are entirely depleted. We don't have any reserves. So we are entering a conflict in the Middle east where a massive supply chain chokehold is unopenable, seemingly. And it's also now public knowledge that even if it is marginally open after a lot of conflict, it's not going to go back to normal for a very, very long time. Everyone's preparing for sustained high energy prices and high oil prices. And we're doing all of this without any real reserves. Our reserves haven't been this low since I think the 70s or the 80s. The US deficit to GDP ratio is almost 6%. It's the 50 year average is 3.8%. I know best since target was 3. He's going the wrong way. Really, really, really bad. Before a conflict in the Middle east, we were spending like we were in conflict. And it's because we're in so much debt. And then the last one on the right is foreign ownership of U.S. treasuries. So foreign. Foreign lenders to the United States of America is at its lowest percentage in 30 years. So as I've said before time and time again, they're going to have to print money to lend to themselves. They don't have a fucking choice. Now let me bring this back to bitcoiners. Make this about bitcoin, make this relevant for why we're all here, which is the alternative system we're building. My dad once told me, and I've referenced it on the show a lot, markets either scare you out or they wear you out. That's the psychology of being in this human construct called markets. Okay? Scare you out is putting you through this massive dip. Bitcoin down 20, 30, 40% in a day. Bitcoin's gonna be banned. China's doing this or that. Exchanges are hacked. Blah, blah, blah. Lots of fud, lots of fud, lots of fud scaring you out. Now, in my opinion, the more lethal threat is wearing you out. That's what I call time pain. That's when bitcoin just grinds you down. The worst wear you out I've ever experienced was the bear market after Mount Gox fell apart. As Mount Gox fell apart and Bitcoin grinded down from $1200 per Bitcoin all the way down to $250 per Bitcoin over two years. Grinded and it sat down there. There was no, like, oh, that was the bounce. There was no good news. There was no nothing. Mount Gox got hacked. Silk Road got shut down. Bitcoin was terrorist drug money for criminals, for the black dark web. And the only, like, actual exchange that had any liquidity was a fucking joke. There was no bounce, government support, etf, nothing. And it grinded people down and it wore them out. This thing's over. It's finished. It has no life. I'm bored. I'm sick of this. That's where we're at right now. It's just wearing you down. October 10th happened and it was supposed to be Binance's fault and whatever, and bitcoin was going to bounce and Trump. It was strategic bitcoin reserve. And the US government was supposed to do all this stuff. And then now there's a conflict in Iran, but bitcoin and gold and this, and it's just gonna wear you down. And it's gonna grind and it's gonna grind and every bounce is going to get hit with another sell off and it's gonna quantum. Remember Quantum fud. Where'd that go? All the fud, all the narratives and it's gonna just pop you in the mouth and pop you in the mouth and pop you in the mouth. And this from I, I source him all the time. Michael Howell. His liquidity indexes. I mean the Fed has not been really printing money in QE quite some time. And global liquidity is trending down. So liquidity is not necessarily in our favor. And here's some charts I would recommend. Check on Chain. He's awesome. I'm also a paid subscriber for his work. I love his stuff. And these charts just show you guys what time pain looks like. It just is a grind. You gotta let the market puke play itself out. The coins have to transfer into a home that will actually treat them well. In my message to you guys is one, have self dignity, have self respect. Do not let the powers that be lie to you. Make you feel worse about yourself, make you feel stupid, make you question your principles, your morals, your ethics, your purpose. I personally am just like you guys. I don't believe anything anymore. I'm out. This is dumb. It's not even worth putting together a two hour episode. I've said the same thing for five weeks straight. It's been the same headlines. The market doesn't even believe it anymore. Off. I'm working on bitcoin. You can only lie to me so many times. I'm not that stupid. I have self respect. You okay? And now for the bitcoin piece. I'm staying humble. I'm stacking sats, heads down, working profitability at Strike, working on our efforts at 21. Keep buying Bitcoin, keep holding a conviction. This is where the legends are made. This is where people get bullied out of bitcoin. They feel like there's no hope. They feel like bitcoin's gonna go lower. They just cannot sustain sideways chop and just ups and downs and just punching you in the mouth for too many consecutive. And so that's my real advice to all you guys out there that are struggling with this or frustrated with the conflict. And listen, they have to print the money I found. I mean this middle screenshot is insane. Powell today he spoke at Harvard and he had a few lines that were very eye opening. He said no sign that past Fed bond buying was inflationary. So you're saying if the Fed prints money to buy bonds that like that, that's all good and well, by the way, that's Yield curve control. So it's clearly on their mind. What I've been saying over and over and over, if no one's willing to buy bonds, yields keep going up, they're going to have to print the money out of thin air and buy in themselves. That is literally, quite literally, money printing. It's the most inflationary thing you can do. This is the same guy, by the way, speaking of lying and gaslighting and manipulating the public, this is the same guy that said inflation was transitory. Same guy. How, how is this guy looking anyone in the eye and telling them what is and isn't inflationary? There's never been anyone more wrong about what's inflationary and how inflationary it is than Jerome Powell. But I kid you not, he gets at Harvard, gets in front of Harvard University and says that the Fed buying bonds so the central bank of the US Dollar lending money to the US government is not inflationary. I mean, these people think you're stupid. You, these are not serious people. They're literally like, these are not serious people. I do not take these people seriously anymore. I just don't. So just keep in mind they have to print the money every single day. The straight of Hormuz is closed. The pressure and the amount of money they have to print only amplifies by a lot or we're going through. I tell you guys this, if in two to four weeks this thing is still closed and they haven't communicated how they're going to print the money, I would say go to the grocery store, get everything you need to kind of be hunkered in and like living off, you know, rationed food and you know, self sustain, whatever, whatever that plan is. Because I mean like the time is of the essence. We're effectively out of time at this point. It seems we're deploying actively into the Middle East. And listen, I, I would love to be wrong. I would love if Trump was like, hey, here's me and the regime. The straits open and all of a sudden oil prices go back down to $40. And I would love to film that episode and be like, you know what? This is the one government that wasn't lying. But I just don't have any evidence of that. They have to print gargantuan amounts of money. Look at bitcoin if you want to see sentiment, Bitcoin will move first and puke. If we're going to get a financial collapse and crisis, it will smell it out first. And if they start printing money and finally bailing this thing out, Bitcoin will move first as well. Stay humble, stack sats, be patient, be calm. Just look at bitcoin. Hold your convictions. Another thing my dad told me, my dad is the best. I mean he had some unbelievable one liners. One of my favorites is trade the position, not the money. And his point was, because I asked him one time, I'm like, man, dad, how do you stomach when bitcoin goes down a lot. I mean our net worth, it's hard to fathom the amount of money that's being either made or lost on a daily basis with this amount of volatility. And he's like, I trade the position, I don't trade the money. My, my conviction in bitcoin doesn't change based on commas and numbers being added, like with more zeros or less zeros. Bitcoin is bitcoin. There's a block every 10 minutes. The white paper is the white paper. And my conviction and what it is hasn't changed. Now I would trade the position differently if bitcoin hard forked and you know, showed it wasn't resilient to, you know, changes to the consensus rules or you know, uncapped itself from 21 million or for, you know, all the sorts now that is when my position would change. But the numbers on the screen don't change my conviction, don't change the properties, don't change the thesis, don't change the idea, don't change the princip. And so you guys trade the position, not the money, hold the conviction. Nothing about bitcoin has changed. It hasn't gotten any more inflationary, it hasn't gotten any weaker, it hasn't gotten any slower, it hasn't gotten anything. All it's doing is reflecting the natural state of the world. The world's fucked up right now. And when they start printing the money, trust me, you'll know. Bitcoin will tell you. And if we need to go through some more pain before they print the money, which typically is what happens, you know, they need a financial crisis to justify the money printing. Bitcoin will tell you that too. So they're lying. This, the stuff we're living through is absolutely real. Look at the 10 year, look at the price of oil, look at gold. I mean this is very unique times. Hold your dignity to a high standard. These people think you're stupid, you're not. And stay humble, stack sats. You know, my same advice as always, produce more than you consume, earn more than you're spending. Get rid of useless debt in your Life. Stay humble. Lower your time preference. All of the good things. All of the good things. Okay, Grind my gears this week. This will be a unique one. So obviously my Blue Devils lost last night. Tough loss. I mean, I think Duke was the best team in college basketball for two straight years. Now, I mean, Cooper Flagg and Khan Knipple are competing for what would be a record setting Rookie of the Year. Doesn't matter which of them wins it. I mean, Khan broke every record for three pointers made by a rookie in a season. I mean, Steph obviously is the most storied shooter in basketball history, but he did not have the start to a career like Khan has had. And then Cooper is the closest thing we've seen to a generational prospect. Him and Wemby are going to save the NBA. And so, I mean, the fact that we didn't win a championship last year, that was devastating. And then this, I mean, Duke, Duke, this Duke team, we lost three times this year. We lost to Texas Tech, we lost to Carolina, and we lost yesterday to UConn. We lost those games by a combined five points. Two of those losses came at the buzzer. And then the Texas Tech lost also came with under a minute. It was also, you know, like, not technically, but practically a buzzer beater. So we, our only losses were three buzzer beaters, by the way. In each game we had a double digit lead. So we were the better basketball team. We just go and close it out. So this is again one of the best Duke teams. It sucks. I. I'll get to the basketball part in a second. But what this isn't. This will be a unique grind my gears. Oh, and by the way, like, all the people are like, don't talk about sports. I don't give a. It's my show. You guys don't pay me for this. I don't. I don't owe you anything. These sections are fun for me. People like them. You can skip it. Feel free to. You know, I don't give a. Skip, skip this part if you don't like it. I'm talking about American sports. And, and one of the. The reasons I am. Well, there's a few. One, I think I'm probably one of the only CEOs that like also plays basketball. And you know, I don't know how many other Bitcoin CEOs you know, I, I like talking sports and so I. That's probably a little bit unique. And the other is you guys, not. Some of you guys love me. Some of you guys hate Me, for whatever reason, hate me, love to see me fail. And so the amount of like, people, I mean, as soon as Duke lost, my phone blows up and it's all, you know, Twitter and Noster of like, aha, Duke lost. Fuck you. How's it feel, loser? You suck. I hate your companies, I hate you, I hate your closet, I hate your hoodies. And I'm actually not here to kind of passively aggressively and defensively refute against that. I actually kind of wanted to philosophically propose some ideas of, you know, what the Duke loss kind of has, because it was an epic proportional collapse. I mean, and UConn, that was like, I mean, if you're a UConn fan and Dan Hurley, I mean, that is like legend defining stuff. That's cool. It's cool. I got no hate. I mean, I think Dan Hurley makes it a little bit too much about himself, but on net, I like the guy, I really do. I got nothing bad to say about Hurley and UConn. So I'm actually not going to be passive aggressive and cursing people out and reminding people how awesome Duke is or whatever. This is a just an interesting. If I, if I have a platform and people are willing to listen. This is just an interesting philosophical thing that I wanted to get out into the ether, get into the public conversation. Curious how people respond to it. So there's, there's two things. One is Schroden fraud, which is the idea that people get joy, specifically when someone else fails. And you know, I grew up a Duke fan. For those that don't know, my dad went to Duke and I didn't go to college. And so I'm five years old, I'm cheering for Duke. And growing up a Duke fan is, I mean, it's, it's war. Because when Duke loses, everyone is in your face about it. And when Duke wins, everyone hates you. So by the time you're 18 years old, you know, being a Duke fan, being a Die Hard, bleed Blue Blue Devil's Duke fan is like part of your personality almost by the time you're 18. Like March is a difficult month because all your friends want to see you fail. And if you ever win, no one wants to celebrate with you. I mean, people hate Duke that bad. So that's one Schonen fraud is that, you know, somehow in society today there's joy in experiencing others failure. Which is a fascinating insight I'll get back to in a second. The other is Tall Poppy syndrome, which is the social impulse to cut down on whoever rises highest. So There's a difference between the two. One is like the internal joy that is experienced during the failure. And then tall Poppy syndrome is actually acting on that joy and creating a social norm and a social contract that you can mob mentality and attack people that you know are successful and experience a failure and experience a mistake or experience something that is bad happening to them. And so anyways, you know, everyone was tweeting at me and posting at me and commenting at me like, oh, I want to hear what this has to say about Duke losing. And like, this better be the grind my gears and he better. And you know, I, I feel so bad for Kaden Boozer and some of those Duke kids. These kids are 18 again. Some of you guys are going to call me a loser and, and whatever, but just let me rant. That kid's 18 years old. His twin brother is going to be national player of the year and a lottery pick. At best, he's number one overall. At worst, he's probably the third overall pick Caden never made this season. He was never insecure about the fact that he's not an NBA talent, at least not yet. He wasn't even a starter. The only reason he started is because Duke had serious injury problems. Our starting point guard had a broken foot, literally wheeling himself into the game, playing a little bit. But if he wasn't on the basketball court, he's fucking on like a medical device. It's the only reason he was starting. So this kid, I watch every Duke game, this kid never made it about himself, ever. Our, our offense was get the ball to your twin brother and get the fuck out of the way and let him get national player of the year. All the flowers, all the NBA salary money, all the endorsement deals, he never made it about himself. Unselfish player, stepped up and stepped into a role that was over, probably overwhelming for him. And I feel so bad for him to carry the weight of, of this and to see the reaction from the public of just tearing this 18 year old down. I mean, I went through, I went on his Instagram and saw the comments. I mean, people are saying he should kill himself. They're going to kill him. His life is worse. Worthless. And it was interesting because now I am in no way comparing myself to a Duke basketball player. Nothing like that. I swear to God, guys, I'm not, I'm not. I know I'm going to get shit. I was talking to Dylan, like how to, how to weave through this without sounding like an asshole, without implying that, you know, I'm being defensive or passive aggressive. So I just have to be repetitive that I'm none of those things. But I went through something like this in my career that was really changed my life. In 2021 when strike we announced, well, not we. I announced with President Bukele the El Salvador stuff. And that was a huge moment for bitcoin, huge moment for El Salvador. Obviously a really impactful moment in my life and in my career. Shortly after that, we partnered with Twitter and integrated lightning into twitter.com which is the first time bitcoin and payments ever achieved anything like vaguely relevant ever at that scale. And around that time I went from like, you know, within the bitcoin circles, I don't know if I was a nobody, but you know, no one gave a shit about me, what I had to say, my ideas, my thoughts. And that was like a really high growth period for myself and my career and my network and my businesses. And I went through what ended up being the most difficult time of my life where I was just surrounded by the wrong people. And you know, a lot of people wanted to give me money, wanted to encourage me to do things. And I just didn't know any better. I didn't know any better and I was too gullible and I was naive and I kind of lost myself and, and what I stood for and what I wanted to build. I kind of got lost in all of that. And that bull run was like really distorting for me. And it ended in making an announcement that I thought was real. And we announced NCR and all this stuff. And turns out the people around me didn't necessarily have my best interest and I was too wide eyed, too hopefully too naive, too ambitious, not grounded in who I am as a man and my principles and my purpose. And what followed was I got destroyed for the first time in my career, like destroyed every single day on Twitter. Jack Mallers is a liar. Jack Mallers is only a marketer. He's only successful because his dad, he's only successful because his grandfather and you know, you're reading lies about your family. His dad did this, his grandfather did this. Jack's a CIA plant. Jacks of this, Jacks of that. And it was devastating for me because bitcoin was my entire life and was the reason for my career. And bitcoiners meant so much to me. And to see bitcoiners turn on me and to see even like people competing with Strike cheering on my downfall, like There are entire CEOs of other Bitcoin companies that are, you know, to this day, like tweeting, you know, like implying I'm a criminal, I'm a liar, that strike is misleading, that we're this, that we're that. Like so many marketing departments out there are just trying to convince people that we suck, like, use our platform. Because, like, Jack sucks and you know, is egotistic and his closet is this way and he dresses this way and he looks a certain way and he sounds a certain way or. And back then it hurt me so bad, it was so difficult. And I just. There's a few things I want want to say. One is on this concept of Schone Fraud and Tall Poppy syndrome, I did some research because, you know, I've ended up growing through that. And what I will say is it is the most valuable chapter of my life. I would not trade anything for the world. And the way I think about it is I acquired such valuable lessons. I treat these lessons and these experiences as if they're physical assets. And I acquired such valuable assets for so cheap. I mean, I got dinged up and went through some really extreme lows. My companies got dinged up and we went through through some extreme lows. I had to lay people off. I had to make decisions that I didn't want to make. I mean, it was painful. But in hindsight, I still have my health, I still have my family, I still have my companies. I still have my bitcoins. And I think I couldn't have acquired the true assets that is growth and life and experiences and lessons any cheaper than I did. So I wouldn't trade it for the world. And I've grown tremendously through them. But in that growth, I was curious of like, what an interesting relationship that I have with the Internet and with the public and with people online who are saying hurtful things to me. And I looked into this Schone Fraud and Tall Poppy syndrome concepts and I was just genuinely curious, like, is this always been a societal norm? And I find it fascinating because in, you know, ancient human history, we actually used to celebrate our best. And again, I was talking to Dylan's like, how do I say all this without implying I'm the best? And like, I'm not saying that. In some ways I think I'm pretty good. In other ways I think I'm God awful. And so, you know, I have enough self awareness. Hopefully those that are frequent listeners know that like, you know, this isn't bitcoin's, not about anyone. No one's the main character. I'm an idiot. I'm not a professional. Podcaster. So take it all with a grain of salt. But the point is that society used to celebrate because, because like your local community, like your warriors, your best hunters, benefited you. Like the, the wise and elderly, the person that found a way to live to 90 years old was celebrated and sought after because they have such a wealth of knowledge, you know, and somewhere in society it changed where those that achieved and those that found success unlocked something new, built something valuable, went from being celebrated by like the Elon Musk's of the world to being demonized and these ideas where like people would see joy in them failing and people created a social contract that whenever they encountered anything challenging to socially like mob them and tear them down. And I really, truly believe that this has a lot to do with the money because, and people are going to discount this and call me crazy for it, but you know, society and all of us, whether it's a local town or a tribe or a country or a species, when you can prioritize the future, have a low time preference and you're all incented and aligned and everything's equitable and fair, then everyone's on the same team. We benefit from someone innovating in getting rockets to space. We benefit from someone building Facebook, we benefit from innovations, from technology. Every time someone builds something valuable, it actually, it's deflationary. It makes our lives cheaper, it makes our lives better. And we all benefit from the greatest producers in society, whether they're athletes, innovators, entrepreneurs, businessmen, doctors, whatever the case is. But when the money gets printed and reality gets distorted in that way, where those that work the hardest don't necessarily win, there aren't necessarily consequences that are fair. The universe isn't, society isn't governed by the universe, by the laws of Mother Nature, by things that are real. It's governed by, you know, unelected leaders, central bankers, politicians. Then all of a sudden, you know, people project that, you know, they're where like they project that, like my problem, like, I feel better about the position I'm in by watching, you know, someone else fail. And I do think that this is like a societal and social media obviously exacerbates this. This because you're not even comparing yourself to, you know, the kids in your high school class. You're comparing yourself to the whole world. Like you, you have access to all information, all people, all performance. So I, I, I genuinely think that. I don't know why I was so inspired to kind of rant about this, but when everyone was on me last night, my girlfriend was like, hey, you okay? Like, you know, people are posting at you telling you, fuck you, you're a loser. Duke sucks. And I was like, I'm fine. I mean, my sports team lost and we'll, we'll talk for all my basketball heads out there. We'll talk basketball in a second. But whatever. My sports team lost. It's. I've been through far worse in my life. I'm fine. But it was funny because it just, I went on this rant with her. I was like, you know, this reminds me of like the personal growth I experienced and this really interesting societal trend where we talk about fix the money, fix the world. I don't know if I'm landing this plane at all, but it, it really does. I think that there's a lot of hate and anger embedded in society because people feel dispositioned because of the inequality with money printing. And you know, when your time and energy and effort and labor and time preference aren't respected and governed by free markets and by the laws of mother nature and instead there's, you know, selected winners despite hard work, despite ethics, despite principles, despite anything, people are angry. And I think shodan fraud and tall Poppy syndrome are a function of fiat. I find it just weird that people get such joy from others failures and that there's this societal norm to tear down those that rise. And anyway, yeah, like at strike, I think it's the same in bitcoin. Like why are people so pissed when you know, as a bitcoiner, I think we all feel as if we're trying to do what's right for the world. We're trying to build money for all of our future children. We're trying to fix some of the world's hardest problems. And for people to tear down. Michael Saylor for people to tear down bitcoin and hate us and fud us and it's just like it's the same thing. It's like why and why are people so upset when bitcoin goes up? It's the same thing. It's like they're projecting onto us is like they wanted to achieve wealth, they wanted to hedge inflation, they wanted to be able to afford the house. They want this empty closet. They're mad that they don't have the empty closet. And so they see, they see, see great joy in watching bitcoin crash. And it's a societal norm to shit on bitcoiners. We're druggies, we're hackers, we're blah blah, blah. So anyway, something about the Duke loss just made Me wanted to turn this into a philosophical insight because if I have a platform, I have no idea who watches this. I've never looked at really the analytics, if anyone that even watches college basketball watches this show. I think so, because I saw in the live chat before, before I hit stream, everyone was on me because of duke, because these 18 year olds lost their basketball game. But you know, my message to anyone, like my message to the Duke basketball team and Kaden Boozer, but even to just like young kids out there that are building, they're inevitably going to face things like this. You know, the reality is the trap isn't the hate. The hate you'll learn comes with any version of success. The trap is optimizing for the love. Because I'll tell you guys what I went through when I realized, oh, wait a second, these people that follow me on Twitter, they don't love me. They don't. They love bitcoin and they love other things about their own lives. They don't know me, they don't care about me. And one day they're really nice and complimentary and the next day they're as evil as possible and sending me into like bouts of depression. And so you go through this really interesting thing where you're like, well, what these people say don't define me and my worth. And so what you, you look internally, you say, well, who does love me? Who is family? Who are the relationships in my life? And you know, my relationship with my girlfriend is unbelievable. And so much growth and strength for me as a boyfriend and as a man came from those moments and realizing that there are people in my life that love me unequivocally. And all of you listening, there's people in your lives that love you no matter what. And that's family and that's relationship and that's the most valuable. And so you go through, you know, it's not the hate that's the trap, it's the optimizing for the love. It's making your self worth about that. And so my message to Kate and Boozer is like, this is going to be such an incredible moment for you to unfortunately, but fortunately grow and realize who family and relationship is in your life. And you're going to find so much value and growth from that. And you'll realize that, you know, the people on the other side of the TV screens, they're not your family. They don't necessarily love you. The same people that were complimenting you two weeks ago are saying, you should kill yourself today. And I Think that's an unfortunate function of the society that's sitting on top of piles of debt where people are disproportionately disadvantaged and have the, have the desire to project that onto others because they feel it's unfair. And it is unfair. That's, that's also the truth. I'm not even shitting on it is unfair. The money printing and the debasement and the wealth inequality is unfair. And this is like really dark societal projection of a UP system. And so I just feel so bad for these 18 year old kids. I feel so bad for Kaden Boozer and I don't know, some of it reminds me of my own experiences, my own journey, which is mine to own and totally unique but just interesting like it. I was in the deepest, darkest pits at some points in my life when investors turned on me. You know, the bitcoin community and in, by the way, guys like the bitcoiners were right. I'm not complaining. I made a shitty announcement. I made a huge mistake. I was global. I fucked up. I own that wholeheartedly. Wholeheartedly. Bitcoiners did what bitcoiners are supposed to do, Protect the asset. Like be harsh critics, make me a better entrepreneur, make me a better bitcoiner. But those were just dark, dark, dark times. And it's just interesting. It's just interesting. So anyway, like when I say I, I say you guys write in the comments. You can't hurt my feelings. You really can't at this point. You know, I have my corner, I have my family, I have my relationships in my life. And I've been through the experiences that, you know, make a Duke loss, whatever. A funny story. When I was in elementary school, I created a T shirt. I bought a big white T shirt and I wrote with a Sharpie. Please don't. It was please, no crap about Duke. If I find the picture, I'll post it online. And I, and I would wear it every time we got knocked out of the tournament. And so these losses used to weigh on me so heavily. And it was so, you know, people just love watching others fail. Love watching bitcoin go down. Love saying strike comes out with a lending product. Oh, they're rehypothecating. Jack's lying. Jack's a criminal. Jack's charging too much Jack. It's, it's all Jack's dad. Jack's being manipulated by Tether. The watching people get mad at Tether. It's all projection. People love talking about Tether because they're jealous that they didn't invent tether. That's why if you zoom out, what has tether ever done wrong? Ever? Turns out they are full reserved. Turns out they built a great business. Turns out they've changed the world. Turns out they're good guys. Turns out Paulo's a really sweet guy. Turns out he's an incredible engineer. Turns out all of those things are not true. Why do people seek out their failure? Why do people derive so much joy from every bit of fudge? Why is there a societal norm to shit on them, to lie about them, to attack them? It's a fascinating philosophical exercise. And so, yeah, you know, why are people so happy? Duke lost. I don't know. Iowa also lost. Tennessee lost. No one seems to care. I don't know. You know, Duke is Duke is Duke. It's a hard one to explain. I don't understand. Interesting, philosophical. I went through this journey on my own and I don't know. I'm sure I'm gonna get on for this rant, but I thought it'd be an interesting grind my gears. Now, as for the actual basketball, my thoughts. I mean, hats off to UConn, obviously. I mean, like I said, I think Duke is the best college basketball team. It sucks. We ran into some health problems towards the end of the year. Two starters have had broken foots. I mean, they both played yesterday. You know, very limited minutes. Like Kaden Boozer probably isn't out on the floor if Caleb Foster is healthy in the. On that last play, but just in general. So, you know, like I said, there's. If Duke was healthy the entire year and a few buzzer beater attempts bounce out of the rim. You're talking about a team that is undefeated going into the final four. I mean, combined losses of five points. What more can you ask for from a group of kids that, you know, two starters, 40% of our starting lineup had a fracture in their foot. So tough. Credit to UConn. That's what March is all about. I actually like Dan Hurley and then, yeah, I thought in the actual game for all the basketball heads out there, you know, Duke, a few things. One, when we have issues, it's always because of turnovers. So I think we lost the points off turnovers in the second half. 16 0. You know, you can't turn the ball over at that level. I think we also got out rebounded. They had way too many offensive rebounds, so they were winning. Loose balls, they were turning us over. They also sped us up. Duke is a half court team, both offensively and Defensively, I think there was a stat that in the last five minutes, UConn did not score outside of points off turnovers and from the free throw line. And so Duke is by far and away the best defensive team in college basketball. It wasn't close and efficient. We were the most efficient offensive team as well in the half court. And so in the first half, it was a clinic because we played at our own pace. We were the more physical team. We ran offensive sets. On the offensive side of the ball, we got any shot we wanted. And on the defensive side of the ball, mean Yukon couldn't score for a Dan Hurley coach team. I mean, they couldn't get a good look outside of that Jaylen Reed kid. And so in the second half, they found a way to speed us up, which, you know, you got to slow the game down. You got to limit turnovers and you got to rebound, and that's what got them back in the game. Listen, what won them the game? I mean, as a basketball player, you're caught when breaking a press. You catch a ball and you square up and you keep your three point stance. Three point is. Well, you know, he's sitting at half court, but it's, I can dribble, I can pass, I can shoot. You do not. You absolutely do not ever, ever, ever, ever take a dribble and then pick up your dribble. You lose your dribble, you're going to get trapped. And people weren't talking about this enough. UConn had the possession arrow. And so people say, why was Duke passing it? Why didn't they just hold the ball? Well, if UConn caused a jump ball, then they would have gotten a turnover. They had the possession arrow. So actually passing and breaking the press was phenomenal. Basketball broke the press very easily. Kaden Boozer took a dribble, picked it up, and then was forced to try and throw a pass over two defenders. If he keeps. If. If he catches the ball, turns and faces, he can pump, fake, he can use his dribble again. If, if he. He gets them up in the air, he can use his dribble. He could have thrown a bounce pass. So that's just, you know, that's not how you're coached. The kid made a mistake. They hit an unbelievable shot. Other things, you know, this is going to be classic. People accusing me as a Duke fan of complaining. This is going to be classic. But, you know, what wasn't talked about enough is the whistle changed in the second half. I mean, people talk about Duke getting A whistle. I mean, we were, we were in foul trouble. Three minutes into the second half, the whistle changed. I don't know why that's not going to be talked about because Shire and Duke fans can't possibly bring that up given all that conspired. But I mean, the whistle changed. They were in the BONUS with like 15 minutes left to go and they were in the double bonus at the end of the game. So the kid that got fouled, that ended up putting them down two, he missed the first free throw, if that's a one and one, he doesn't even put them within two. So the three actually sends them to overtime and doesn't win the game. So the whistle changed. You know, I think Duke got a bad draw because we're Duke, we draw ratings. And so they wanted us to play Yukon St. John's Jamie Dixon and, and Jerry McNamara in the first round. I mean, that's an impossible draw. Other teams made it to the Final Four by playing Iowa, by playing Tennessee, by playing an injured Iowa State. I mean, it's just, it's frustrating, right? Like, it's obviously Duke had the hardest road, although we were the best team in the country, we're the number one overall seed. The whistle changed. I think they wanted to make it a game. It became a game. So those are some other things. And then on the John Shire topic, I mean, Shire's the most achieved coach under 40 in the history of the sport. He's been to the Elite Eight every single year. Been to the Final Four already in his career. I mean, in the last two years, Duke has lost seven times. That's outrageous. I think we're like 70 and seven in like almost a thousand years or a thousand days. That's outrageous. I mean, he's had two of the highest Ken Palm ratings in the history of the sport and back to back years. And people say, oh, you got to do more with talent. It's like, yeah, like, well, first of all, it's a single, single elimination tournament. That's why this is not the NBA. The NBA champion is usually, almost always the best team in basketball because you can't, you know, seven game series is hard to win on, on flukes. The better team prevails. Single elimination, that's what makes the sport great. The best team doesn't always win. And so single elimination tournament, Elite Eight, every single year is a hell of an achievement. Final Four already. Hell of an achievement. And by the way, he's responsible for getting the talent. I mean, in this new Shire's first Year as a coach was the nil. Imagine taking over for Coach K and the first year you take over. Welcome to the nil where kid, it's not about getting recruited anymore. It's about donors and payment and transfer portals and you know, Duke played a Houston team where everyone, you know, Yaxel Lunderberg's 24 years old. Jaxel Londonberg was in the same class as Jalen Green. That kid's been in the NBA for like six years. So I mean Shire's done an unbelievable job and yeah, I don't know, I mean tough loss but I don't know. My sports team lost for the. There's people that just like seeing me fail, I guess. Like, I don't know, they tweet at me that the price, that the, the price of my company stock and Duke losing sucks. I appreciate it though when I say at the end of these episodes like I genuinely appreciate you guys. I do. I've grown into the relationship but I know that's what everyone wanted. A 20 minute segment on Duke choking and losing that game. And my philosophical journey through being a semi public figure. And my message to the Duke kids is these are incredibly valuable moments, man. Trust me. I would not trade anything for the experiences I went through, how deeply I feel and bond with my girlfriend, with my best friends, with guys in my life like Dylan who are there for me no matter what. Those are the people in my wedding that I'm going to build a family with. It's invaluable to learn how meaningful those relationships are and how to care for them and how to grow them and how to grow as a man and as a leader and as a CEO. I mean wouldn't trade it for the world. And so I think these kids are going to go through that and in hindsight they'll feel similarly. And in this weird fiat world of Shodan fraud and tall poppy syndrome, the trick is not. It's not the hate, it's that you don't optimize your life for the love. You'll be truly free. When you speak your mind, have ideas. You aren't a failed to afraid to fail. You're ambitious. Like that's when you're truly free. I mean since then I've been on a tear in my career. I started 21 strike turned into this profitable bitcoin bank. I started these shows. I'm wrong all the time. I up all the time. You guys, let me hear it. Every single day I open my phone and there's really mean lies and rumors about me. But I found a way to grow through it and it makes me a better man. So that's my grind my gear segment today. Okay, strike. Let's see. I don't have too much. Oops. I don't have too much today. Just a reminder that we ex exploded the expansion of the line of credit product. So the line of credit product is now in 42 states for businesses, 21 for individuals. We're just going to keep expanding it. The more comfortable we get and the more boxes we check. So just be on the lookout. And then Thursday is a really big day. We plan on turning our credit products and our lending products on for New York. So we're going to keep shipping. This week is about turning on for New York, also completing our Q2 planning. So I don't know, I might share some of that roadmap with you guys. We got some really exciting stuff coming, but we keep expanding the line of credit production, which is really exciting. And this week we plan on getting that live for you in New York and then for 21. Yeah, I mean, you know, we had the goal, or I had the goal of hopefully telling you guys all that we're working on in Q1. Obviously Q1 is there's 36 hours left in it. I don't think we're gonna be able to hit that, which sucks. Obviously, I own it. I'm the CEO. All the mean tweets, you can point them at me. But the work continues, the thesis continues, nothing's changed. And this business is just, you know, tether. And I share that low time preference of trying to build something incredible. I would say, you know, people are going to ask why, what the fuck? I would say, you just. In the, in the public markets, things tend, tend to go a bit slower. And so, you know, building, building, strike and building 21 are worlds of difference. There's all sorts of filings and rules and conditions that need to be met operating in the public markets. And that just changes timelines in our ability to get things done. Or I take that back, not get the done work done internally, but externally. Talking about it, it changes those timelines and when we can launch things and talk about things. So I own it. All the feedback can come to me, all the questions can come to me, but it's still a sooner rather than later thing. And yeah, that I don't know, you guys will have questions, I'm sure. So with that, let's get into Q A. Okay, let me blow up my camera real quick. It is cool though, that so many of you guys want to talk college basketball. I know a lot of my audience is not American, so I was a little nervous doing a grind my gears about a sport that people might not give a shit about. Who knows, maybe you guys will hate that segment and I'll just never do it again. But I don't know. There's not a lot of overlap in sports and like financial markets, I think. I mean I was making a joke with Dylan. I'm like one of the, it feels rare to be a CEO of public company that like wants to get married and have kids and like, you know, it's so, I don't know, it's my whole personality. It is the Jack Maller show, whatever. Okay, how do you know you're seeing enough unbiased or at least both sides of the Iran coverage? TV news is all garbage. I guess that's a good point. I, I read all coverage. I find the most signal on like public forums like Reddit, Twitter, Nostr, but. And I derive most of my opinions from data. You know, I'm obsessed with things that aren't printable, aren't manipulatable, that you cannot boldface lie about. Like where's the oil? Is the straight open or closed? What's the 10 year yield at? So anyway, that's kind of I try and get. But also you have to have the open mind that I'm also wrong. I could be wrong. I've said that a few times. I just feel confidently enough that they're trying to manipulate my opinion and lie to me. And I've lived through that. We all have. And so I'm skeptical at best and at worst. Yeah, everything I'm saying is true and they're going to have to print a ton of money. This conflict in the Middle east is going to last longer than we're all being told and things are ugly out there. Jack, are you concerned that the government, through the Clarity act will have the power to quarantine freeze your self custody wallet if they deem you a threat similar to how Citi debanked people? Well, the cool thing is they cannot freeze my self custody wallet because it's technically impossible. I'm not concerned about that. And then no, I don't have a concern. You know, everyone's always worried about, you know, what if they do what they did to gold and seizing gold from the American people and making it illegal. What if they do the same to bitcoin? I'm not a believer there because it'd be such a violation of Property rights. And to, you know, why did Trump, in large part, win the election? He won it because he had the doning base, donating base, and the voting base of tech. You know, bitcoiners are now also Wall street, are now also Silicon Valley, are now also big tech. So we are, you know, part of this new wealth class and the class that's innovating. And we're the CEOs of companies where the leaders of industries, bitcoins, matured to that point. And so it'd be such a violation of core property rights of those of the very people that help finance the things that matter and help vote you in. And so I think it's just too far gone at this point. But, you know, obviously, we'll see. But no, that's not a concern of mine. And by the way, just to remind you guys, that's not practically, that's not physically possible. They can come after a public figure like me and say, hey, Jack, we know you have bitcoin and cold storage, and we're gonna come put a gun to your head in your house. That's a risk that I, you know, that's part of the social contract I signed up for when I was like it. I'm a public figure. I'm gonna go down this road. That's it. You know, it's one of the things that comes with my territory. But that's not a threat to you guys. That's, you know, no, no one. It's impossible to know who has bitcoin in cold storage and who is. And like, they can't physically spend that. Freeze that. There's no such thing. Physically impossible. That's why bitcoin protected by math in that way. Question FOR JACK. It's 2028. President Gavin Newsom signs a 10% wealth tax into law. Are you parting with 10% of your Bitcoin? Are you bailing El Salvador yet? I'm out of here or I'm not paying that. My dad once told me, you know, taxes are ultimately set by what the people are willing to stomach before they find a way not to. So that's the problem. You can try and set taxes to 90%. I guarantee you we either put our wealth in holding companies offshore, we all move. I mean, no one, like no one, no human or society is going to reasonably let 90% or 10%, well, 10% of their time and energy, not that they're continually producing even, but all stored effort of their past life go to government that's proven to just waste it, debase it finance war with it. So, no, personally, I'd be violently against that in every way. I mean, I might run into this issue here in Chicago. I mean, how are these guys going to get out of the fiscal situation here in Chicago? Who do you think's paying for all that? Probably guys like me. At least that's going to be their proposal. The money's not going to fall out of the sky. So when push comes to shove and bills need to be paid, what's the proposal going to be? Will the people with the property, with the time, energy, effort and labor, will. Will they pay for it? My answer is going to be absolutely fucking not. Fuck you. So I don't know. I'm a firm believer in free markets, property rights, you know, the whole campaign of everyone needs to pay their fair share. It's such disrespect. What does fair mean? Taxes and all that stuff is just such a violation of property rights, in my opinion. So I'd be against. I'm against taxes. Just period. Honestly, you know, on a. If you, if you think more philosophically about it, what we, in my opinion, what we want is our greatest producers in society to be building the things that matter the most. So right now you have people like, you know, Elon Musk getting taxed out the ass, giving the money to the government, where people like senators and congresspeople are tasked with building railroads and building new, new city infrastructure and they're clearly really bad at it. And if you think philosophically for a second, why wouldn't I want Elon building new roads or building new bridges or building new transportation mechanisms? Why don't we let the most. The biggest net producers. The net producers, the people that are producing the most profit, the most value to society. Why don't we just let those people who are clearly very productive people, why don't we let them build all the infrastructure? Why are we giving their production to people who aren't productive, who have never been really productive in their life, which are politicians, and just letting them squander it and be idiots. Like, think about what El Salvador is doing. El Salvador is saying no taxes. So who's building El Salvador's infrastructure? People like Tether. Tether's building the Tether tower and helping build the airport. You know who, who would you rather build El Salvador's infrastructure? Guys like Paulo, who are engineers, incredibly successful businessmen, super bright, or Salvadoran politicians. It's not even fucking close. So I'm against just like handing over net productivity from those that are productive to people who are unproductive charlatans that just find ways to squander it. Historically crazy. If you have productive people in society, don't punish them, support them. That's what I think. What El Salvador is doing in regards to taxes is brilliant. Hey, if you're productive, you build productive things, you have net productivity, feel free to come here. We're not going to tax you on it at all, but we'd really appreciate if you help support the country. Yeah, look at the new, look at the new infrastructure that's being built there. Look at the new city town hall, the new airport, the new tether tower, the new restaurants. Why is that happening? Because all of the productive people are the ones building all the builders. It's super simple logic. So much of my opinions I believe are just common sense. They're not like genius novel insights. Jack, what happens when all the mining companies like they are right now, switch over from mining bitcoin to dedicating AI? Google and AWS are going to take them all from us. It doesn't really matter. One of the, one of the. Listen, I guess it matters in that obviously the more hash rate the better, of course. But one of the most genius parts about bitcoin is the difficulty adjustment. That might be Satoshi's most genius insight was the fact that if everyone is trying to mine bitcoin, Bitcoin gets more difficult to mine. If no one is mining bitcoin, Bitcoin gets easier to mine. And the software is targeting a block to be found on average every 10 minutes. But for that reason the system is self reinforcing and it's stable and reliable no matter what. So if a bunch of people leave to go to AI, well, bitcoin will be easier to mine. So that means other energy sources that are too expensive for AI, or that AI doesn't give a fuck about now have an opportunity to, to mine, to mine bitcoin. So there's always a market for energy, Always. That's the currency of the universe. And bitcoin is constantly repricing a bounty to get energy to dedicate itself to it. That's all. And so like if people leave and go mine for AI, then bitcoin will be easier to mine. Maybe it'll be so easy to mine, all of us can mine it on our laptops. Wouldn't that be great? And surely Google and Amazon aren't going to want my laptop for their large language models. But the bitcoin network might. It depends. But I assume bitcoin's so valuable and people Aren't that silly that there is a market for some level of energy to be dedicated to the bitcoin network. And so we'll figure that out. But the difficulty adjustment is the most brilliant design. Bitcoin is so defensible, no matter what the outside environment does, it isn't wholly and solely reliant on a specific amount or because then it would be subject to a specific group. Bitcoin is unbelievable. That is probably Satoshi's greatest insight is the difficulty adjustment. Because it also guarantees a fixed issuance of supply. Bitcoin would be highly inflationary otherwise. If someone just jacked a ton of hash rate into the network and there was a block found every second until all the bitcoins were gone, Bitcoin would have been highly inflationary and all the bitcoin supply would have gone to the one person that just like super mined at all. But because Bitcoin's issuance is stuck in time, in order to get more bitcoins you got to travel into the future. You got to travel into 10 minutes into the future to get them. They're stuck in time because of the difficulty adjustment. Question, is there a way that the US could weaponize the BTC infrastructure the same way it did with Swift? I doubt it. And I love that I doubt it because it's open source neutral. I mean what's going to. How can we weaponize the Bitcoin network when anyone can download bitcoin anywhere in the world and run it on their phone? So it's not ours to monetize. Which is the point? Money. Our time and our energy, our labor, our effort should not be subject to trust and manipulation and control from a country, a government regime, none of that shit. So no, I hope not. If we build Bitcoin the right way, that's not an option. My question is for those who are concerned regarding the network side of Bitcoin. Given that the base layer can only handle five transactions per second and the lightning network hasn't seen widespread adoption, isn't Bitcoin's throughput fundamentally insufficient to support global daily value exchange? And if so, doesn't that mean Bitcoin mining design, the very thing that makes Bitcoin both secure and scarce? Also, what both limits and destines Bitcoin to be a stagnant hold in place expression of money rather than a true money? No, Bitcoin hasn't been adopted for payments because there isn't enough demand for Bitcoin to be used in payments. The problem is people get paid to use their credit card in the form of rewards. Let me explain to you guys how payments work in modern day Main Street. The merchant foots the bill. The merchant is paying 2, 3, 4, 5% to process payments. And that 2, 3, 4, 5 percent is in large part split between the banks and the consumer. So who's paying for your airport lounges, your Napa Valley wine, your free flights, your cash back? Who's paying for that? The merchant is paying for that. And so somehow Visa, MasterCard and the big banks have put a chokehold on the merchants, where the merchants have to accept these payments because there's no other way to accept money. If you don't accept cards, you lose a lot of business, so you don't want to lose the sale, so they have to pay it. And the banks are basically bribing people to keep using this payment method because why wouldn't you? I get to fly to Europe for free if I just swipe this card versus paying in cash. Fuck yeah. I'm swiping the card, I'm getting cash back. I'm getting free shit. I'm traveling for free. When I do travel, I sit in first class, I get access to the lounge. And so it's like an incredibly monopolistic, bribed system. And so why isn't there demand to use Bitcoin at the grocery store? Because nobody's paying for people's flights to use Bitcoin. Also, by the way, it's potentially a tax headache. It's potentially an accounting headache. So there's just not demand. On top of that, there's not demand because Bitcoin goes up and the dollar goes down. So people innately don't want to spend their Bitcoin because they'd rather save their Bitcoin. That's Gresham's law. Spend the bad money, save the good money. And so there's all sorts of practical reasons Bitcoin hasn't gotten adopted in payments. And there's nothing to do. People like to spread fud. Like, oh, it has everything to do with the technology. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. Trust me. I integrated lightning into twitter.com not a lot of people used it. No one cared enough. Facing debasement and inflation and having your future life eroded no matter how hard you work is a far more pressing problem people want to solve. Apple Pay works. It works. No, no one is. No one is revolting online and creating a community because Apple Pay is ruining their family and their country and their lives and their morals and their health. Apple Pay is great product. Now I believe that value transfer should live on an open distributed protocol. I'm super happy with Dorsy and Block and all they're doing. I continue to fight the fight in my best capacity. At Strike, I've been a oneman wrecking ball and I think bitcoin's time and payments will come. I'll leave that for a separate rant, but please don't conflate bitcoin's technical design with any lack of adoption. It's a load of horseshit. It's bullshit. The people that perpetuate this, by the way, are the same people. They're saying bitcoin failed in this way. Buy my shitcoin, buy the coin that I printed out of thin air. It's always a selling point for something that's in their self interest. It's a nonsensical narrative. It's fucking stupid. Now on Bitcoin can only process five transactions per second. You realize bitcoin is competing with the speed of light in its protocol design. This is the depth in which Satoshi had to build this that laymans on the Internet can't comprehend. It reminds me of people that hoop at LA Fitness that are talking to Duke basketball players on Instagram. Comments like, you guys have no place to be telling John Shire how to coach 18 year old superstars that are going to be in the NBA. You play at LA Fitness, it's the same thing. You got these people on Twitter like Bitcoin can only process five transactions per second. I can't believe Satoshi didn't think of upping that. You literally think the greatest invention arguably of our lifetime that you had a novel insight. You, you egotistical moron. Seriously? That's it. It's the LA Fitness guy telling Kaden Boozer how to break a press. Really? Really? The reason that Bitcoin has 10 minute blocks is because you need to take into account how fast information can travel. If a block is found every second, let's say, then that means, let's say someone on the other side of the world, their interpretation of what the ledger is, what the bitcoin blockchain is, is going to be different than yours. You need to give information enough time to propagate and be validated. Because the whole point is that everyone maintains a universal account of bitcoin. There isn't 77 different versions of what the ledger is. We all have the same one. And so the speed of light needs to be accounted for because how fast can information propagate? Because if information is physically limited to something like the speed of light, well then we have to at least account for that. Now the question is, well, how much buffer do you build in? Let me do the math now for you guys. For all you LA Fitness Hoopers out there, crazy speed of light. So. Bead of light and. Yeah, so the moon to earth is about a second. So the question is how much time do you buffer to allow the information to propagate for the network to achieve consensus? This is what makes bitcoin important, by the way. There's no unlimited scale. You can only scale in layers. It doesn't matter. If Bitcoin was 5 transactions a second, 50 transactions per second wouldn't be enough. 500 wouldn't be enough. You optimize to build the base layer as secure and reliable as possible so that you can build scaling layers on top of it. By the way, Visa is a second layer to the banking system. Nothing in the world, it doesn't even matter if it's a distributed network, can scale universally. The Internet is seven layers. So this is all just like very well known common engineering in design knowledge. Very well known. So Satoshi opted for 10 minutes because 10 minutes isn't an unlimited amount of time. But it's way it's plenty of time for the network to be reliable in achieving consensus that can support the global economy. Because the scale is in the price of the unit. The scale is in how much is one bitcoin worth? What's absolutely impressive. You want to know how well Satoshi scaled bitcoin? There are people that are credible out there that think bitcoin's going to hit $10 million in the next decade. That's what analysts of Fidelity are saying that scale and we scale it in the. At the transactional thing, transactional sense in layers. And bitcoin will achieve adoption when there's demand for it. It has to solve a problem people have right now people are tapped to pay, Apple pay and flying for free. So why would they use bitcoin and give up hard money? Rant over all these la Hoopers out here. I can't believe Satoshi Nakamoto hadn't considered. Dude, Satoshi Nakamoto is the greatest inventor maybe in human history. Did you think for a second that you might not understand certain principles of network design? Distributed systems cryptography, like the lack of self awareness from some people on the Internet is honestly astounding. It's impressive. Hey Jack, when the US dollar fails, how do you see that playing out? Do we shift to gold which will be bitcoin's final hurdle. Cheers from Australia. So I've talked about this before. I'll try and be brief. I think that gold is the only neutral reserve candidate that can absorb the required size that the world demands. Today we're talking about tens of trillions, hundreds of trillions of dollars. Bitcoin's only 1.37 trillion as the introduction of this show. So an hour and a half ago, that's just not big enough. So I think gold will play some role. It's unclear to me the split in the near immediate between bitcoin and gold, but gold will likely have the larger share. Its market cap will remain larger for whatever the near to medium term. I think bitcoin will win out over the long term simply because it's better money. Again, that's that trade, the position, not the money. My conviction and my thesis hasn't changed Bitcoin scarcer. It's easier to store. It's, it's more divisible, it's easier to verify, it's easier to transport. Like all the things that you would actually care about for money and monetary properties and how these things compete. It's better pound for pound, no matter what. And every single ounce of FUD or Ray Dalio says it's not private enough. It's software. We're going to continue to improve it. So bitcoin, like gold, you can't submit a pull request to gold. Gold can't get a new feature. It's, it's, it's. So bitcoin is the better money. It's a matter of when it wins, not if it wins. I think gold has its place today because it's the only neutral asset that, that could replace U.S. treasuries while the system fails. How will the system fail? It will just be a, a soft default. So they'll default through inflation. So it'll get to a point where fiat currency is just so worthless, you're wheeling it around like you're in Venezuela. And so that will likely take time, but they will default via inflation. And yeah, the losers will be those that don't have real wealth, which is things like gold, bitcoin, land, real estate, good health, you know, all that stuff. So that's my personal, that's my expectation question. Jack, do you expect, oh, how do you expect bitcoin to become a medium of exchange if the base layer 1 transactions are slow and expensive? I kind of already explained that and I feel like that'd be repetitive if I didn't though. You guys can ask next time. Dylan, question for Jack. What is the most number of bitcoin purchases on strike by a single person? I'm pushing 20,000 individual hourly purses. That's fucking awesome. Thank you for being a customer. Really appreciate that. According to our president, who's in the chat here with me, the record is 48,732, which is insane. Shout out to whoever that is, but thank you for the support. Really means a lot. Okay, other questions. So these are. Look, these were probably Duke questions. Question for Jack. Do you think Duke basketball needs to lower their time preference? New team every year. UConn has a mix of seniors and freshmen. UConn has six championships in a smaller time span than Duke. No, I don't. I mean, we also started a senior last year, our starting point guard, who has a broken foot, who's a junior? Isaiah Slim. Isaiah Evans, he was a sophomore. So, I mean, it's just the hip. The hypocrisy is crazy. Like, the kid that hit the 40 footer to send UConn to the final Four is a freshman. Should he be on the floor? Like, so we had a mix of upperclassmen and freshmen. It's a great roster. And in modern day college basketball, it's not about building a team that doesn't change over every year. Now you're dealing in the nil and the transfer portal. That's the sport. The sport is. You have to replace your roster every single year. If you're not doing that, you know that. That UConn team was replaced just like Duke was. I mean, we had people return. I mean, Big Pat, Isaiah, Malik, Caleb. I mean, half the team, five guys returned. We had five incoming freshmen and five returns that went to the Final Four. So, no, I don't. I don't think so. And yeah, UConn having six championships in a smaller time span. Congrats. That's awesome. I don't know. Yeah, I. I personally think people hate Duke because Duke is everything they're not. These kids are going to the NBA. Duke's an incredible university. Co founder of Coinbase went to Duke. Tim Cook is a Duke fan. Like, and. And even the way they handle themselves, I mean, the kid Kaden last night, after that turnover, sat in front of the media and owned it. Wore it on his face. Said, I made a mistake. I let. I let the program down. I mean, that's such a leader. I mean, you got Dan Hurley headbutting refs. You got Yaxel Lindenberg of Michigan, you know, holding his follow through and talking shit in every press conference that freshmen are guarding him, that no one else is 24, playing college basketball. It's. It's. I mean, Duke is just high class. Exactly what you would want out of a program, out of kids. And so I think people hate that. It's. You know, they don't hate Kaden Boozer. It's a. It's a mirror. I don't know if UConn's a more successful program. What's the hate? You guys should be plenty secure in yourselves. Question for Jack. How did the event go in New York? The event, it was awesome. Had an opportunity to. I spent. I. I feel bad because I didn't hang out with my employees and my team as much as I would have liked, but it was because I spent three hours just meeting everyone that was waiting in line. I spent. It was awesome hanging out with you guys. Now that, you know, like, the personal story that I shared of my career and some of those hardships and stuff, the people that do wait in line to ask me a question or that support the show or that our customers. I mean, I've never, ever, ever turned anyone down that wants a picture, that has a question, that needs some advice. Anytime we host an event like that, I wait until the line is totally cleared. So it was overwhelming in the amount of support. I think it was four minutes into opening the bar, we were at capacity where the security couldn't let anybody in or else it would have been a hazard to the city. So it was. I mean, the support was unbelievable. And just spending time with you guys and that personal connection is just so cool. It's so valuable to me, so meaningful to us as a company. So it was great. You guys showed out and just really genuinely appreciate the relationship that we have with the community and that I have with you guys and the support you give me. And. Yeah, because the other thing when I go through these hardships, the support, like, there's people that have consistently supported me throughout my whole career, and it just, like, means the world. Like, it really, truly. Like sometimes this job is really hard and I just wouldn't be able to do it without you guys. So I just never take those moments for granted. And I just always try and reciprocate the support that I feel from you guys in the small opportunities that I have a chance to meet you in person. So it was really cool. I'm glad we did it. Jack, do you think John Shire should get fired? He has top recruits every year and blows huge leads in the tourney. Unlike UConn, who gets decent but not the best recruits and has a lot of success. No. Dan Hurley's been coaching college basketball for over 20 years. How many years do you think it took him to win his first national championship? I'm pretty sure the answer isn't four. Right? Let me put it to you this way. How many championships do you think John Shire is going to have coaching 25 years of basketball? That was his fourth year. Do you think he'll have more than Dan Hurley? I'd say the Vegas odds on that are pretty high. By the way, he doesn't get recruits. He is the recruiter. He also recruited for Coach K. I can't stand that. I can't stand people dismissing that level of accomplishment for John. People want to play for Duke. They want to play for John. John won a championship at Duke. You can't take that from him. So he's the one that gets the talent. Cooper Flagg wanted to play for John Shire. The Boozer brothers wanted to play for John Scheyer. Con Knippel wanted to play for John Shire. There's a reason they don't want to play for UConn. And this is before and after they were getting nil money. It was before and after all of it. Again, it's because the CEO of Apple is sitting in the stands. It's because the greatest coach of all time is who built this program. It's a level of success that drives people nuts. It brings out everyone else's insecurities. So do I think that. Listen, John will figure it out again. He's lost seven games in two years. He's broken every single record as a head coach outside of obviously winning the national championship. Now, I think he should have won these last two years. I think Duke was the best team in college basketball these last two years. But like I said, single elimination tournament. It's brutal. It's brutal sport. But, I mean, fire John Shire and hire who? I mean, we mop the floor in the acc back to back ACC Tournament champs. I mean, it's not close. The ACC is a joke relative to Duke basketball. This year we beat Kentucky, we beat Kansas, we beat Michigan, who everyone's all up in arms about. We beat Michigan, we beat Florida. I mean, we beat everybody. And we were the better team yesterday. I mean, no sane college basketball fan is going to take that away from us. It's not any disrespect to UConn. UConn won the game. And Dan Hurley's unbelievable. The generational run that Programs on is unbelievable. But I mean we were the better basketball team, so I. It's outrageous. Four years into his career, Shire's broken every record and lost seven times in two years. Lost three times this year by a combined five points. Twice at the buzzer, the other one in under a minute. I mean literally, like there's a version of the universe. Duke is heading to Indy in the final Four undefeated. And that's like not an unreasonable thing to say. That's actually like statistically what should have happened. So it's tough. But I just like, again, it's crazy to me and people just don't. I see another one of the questions here, like why didn't Duke just hold the ball? You know what's crazy is if Kaden Boozer gets fouled, which by the way, when they went to trap him, there were six seconds on the clock, which is a lot of time he gets fouled. Let's say he misses the front end of the one on one. One and one. They six seconds left. You think they couldn't get off a shot just past half court? That's where that kid hit that from. So let's say the reverse plays out, then the blame is why didn't he pass it? There were two guys unguarded. All you had to do was get the ball across half court and they win the game. All of these. It was the slides that I made in, in my presentation. Let me pull the definitions back up. Shodan fraud and tall Poppy syndrome. It's a fiat generated societal norm and contract that's new. You used to celebrate the best of your tribe because that guy that was unbelievable at Hunter gathering benefited you. The guy that was successful enough to live long and accumulate a wealth of knowledge benefited you. To educate the small town, to give wisdom to the youth. Nowadays it's the opposite. People being successful reinforce the decisions you made and the success that you aren't. And there's a natural, there's a natural sense of inequality felt because of the money printer. And so instead of cheering these people on, it's projecting. Like when Shire got hired to replace K. If you would have told me the four years he would have had after taking over the greatest success story arguably in the history of the sport of basketball. But let's just say college hoops for now, I would have taken it a million out of a million times. Duke's been the dominant program in college basketball since and guess what? We have all the best recruits next year too. It's crazy how deep fix the money, fix the world goes where so much of society finds joy in the failure of others. And like you get these keyboard warriors and that's also just. It's interesting how technology greatly exaggerates this. Like social media, like turns every. Everyone now has an opinion worth publishing which you know, that's freedom of speech. I appreciate that but holy hell, these basketball takes are so bad. But some of your guys, bitcoin takes are also really bad. Question would love to hear how you managed to be such a young and successful CEO of two companies. Do you have a system or use any tools, products to stay on top of things? Oh, I very much appreciate that, thank you. I would say not very successful at all though relative to where I want to be and some of my other peers like Dorsey and stuff I haven't achieved Jack, look at my stock price. I have to see it every day. Damn, we'll get there. What do I use? I kind of referenced this earlier. The relationships in my life are invaluable. Dylan, who you guys know, you guys haven't met and I don't ever plan to introduce you to my girlfriend. That part of my life is for me and me only. But Megan is the best. So the relationships that are meaningful and real are a critical piece of infrastructure, you can call it to my life. Exercise and health I think is as critical a piece to success as any. So I really take care of my body. I use aura and other ways like you know, blood draws to, to capture data. I optimize through diet and through exercise and through things like sun and grounding and then I don't know what else. Like also you know, the skill of humility. I think there's a lot of humility in surrounding yourself with incredible talent. So the people that work with me on all of these things are way more talented and way smarter than I am. And I think it requires a level of humility and self awareness to understand what you're not good at, which is probably everything but like a few skills and finding the best people you possibly can to do those things and giving them whether it's your equity or profits or whatever you can to make their dreams come true. So I give so much credit to them too. So those are some of the things that come to mind. My family, my, my friends, my colleagues, my health and. And in these really dark times, by the way, you're extremely challenged to find who you are. I was really challenged like I was running a high growth startup that was not focused on revenue or profits. I mean strike didn't give A about any of that. Back in the day, I was just a kid and I thought, oh, VCs just are the ones that pay my payroll and like, I don't need to worry about making money. And you know, when you get challenged in such really harsh ways, you know, it's a focus of like, what do you believe in? Who are you? What do you stand for? And I would say that's a critical piece as well, is always having a really grounded sense of self. So I was able to find that again in the last bear market and that's been able to stay with me. And that's another really key ingredient to two just being who I am. And some people are gonna look at me and say, hey, I could, you know, take a thing or two from that guy. And some people want nothing to do with who I am. But that's kind of like the cocktail that is. That is me. You grew up with that sports mentality, Jack, or is it recent that you became that way? No, I grew up, I joke with my dad and my friends that Satoshi Nakamoto made me 5, 8 and 150 pounds. Or else if I was 6, 4, I would have worn the Duke uniform and I'd be on the Chicago Bulls. I mean, I was a Hooper. I know this. Nobody in bitcoin can guard me. I know that for a fact. So no, I grew up as a three sport athlete and a chess champion. I was, you know, like, when people judge me on my skill set, I want to be known. If I could choose to be known for any like, skill. When my time is, is gone and I meet my maker, it will be like Jack was the greatest competitor. Whether it was basketball or chess or building companies or fighting for bitcoin, you just were better off on that guy's team than standing in his way. That guy was just a Michael Jordan level competitor, a Kobe Bryant level competitor. And so I was that long before I knew what bitcoin was or before I dropped out of college, I was that as a kid, I was an athlete. I just, I'm. I mean, I'm small, so I just couldn't hoop at a high level. I could have played D2, D3 college basketball, but I just, you know, it was time to hang it up. And I always had the ambition to, you know, have a meaningful impact on the world in a way that I, you know, felt was relevant. So at first I wanted to be a, the world chess champion. So I went to university initially to pursue a chess career in New York. And Very quickly realized this, this is stupid. And chess people don't make any money. And that's when my dad taught me about bitcoin and financial markets and stuff. So I don't know, I was destined to compete in something. I would say I'm the furthest personality from like being a yoga instructor. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I, I run my companies like a basketball program. Very intense. I would say I'm much more like Dan Hurley than John Shire. I mean I'm definitely not like Dan Hurley. But in regards to like how my companies are run internally, it's intense, it's fast paced, it's work hard, play hard. It's true ownership. It is, it is ultimate competitive nature. And that's what, you know, some people like that, some people hate that. I don't really care. That's my way of doing things. That's all I know. That Midwestern pit trader basketball, like one of my greatest teachers in life outside of guys. Like my father was my high school basketball coach. I take taken a lot from just being part of that program and that basketball team. So yeah, always been a part of me. My dad was raised as a pit trader here in Chicago. Midwest grit, salt of the earth, selfless. I was taught. You know, dive on the, on the floor for loose balls, take a charge others before yourself, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Be a man. A man's true resume is his work ethic. Like no one outworks me. Nobody cares more. You'll never find a better teammate. You, you'll never find a more loyal friend like those. That's how I was raised. That's how I run my businesses. It's been that way long before I was CEO and long before I found bitcoin. Okay with that? That's two hours almost on the dot. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for tuning in as always. Comments, questions, feedback. Leave it in the comments section. A lot of college basketball, but it's the Jack Maller show. It's kind of cool that we can relate on interests that aren't. War and murder and government lying and inflation and debasement. But there was plenty of that too. The straight remains closed. Hopefully a week from today. We can all celebrate that it's open. Doesn't look like that's going to happen though. So the money printer is going to turn on at some point. Markets try and scare you out and wear you out. Hold your ground, stay humble. Stack sats, lower your time preference. This is where heroes are made. But be warned, that shit is getting real out there. Okay. Love you guys. Talk soon. Take care. Peace. Go, Duke.