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Yo. Welcome back to another episode of the Jack Mallers Show. Guess what, My name is. Jack. You are listening to yet another edition of Mail Bag Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, episode 109 to another episode of the Jack Maller's show. Guess what, My name is Jack. Not a professional podcaster. So sorry about that. Without further ado, let's get this show on the road. I'm talking to you all at a Bitcoin price of 74,470. That puts Bitcoin's market cap just below 1.5 trillion. At US$1.49 trillion, our all time high has not changed. 126,160. We are now 41% down from that all time high that was made one hundred and sixty one days ago. From today on October 6, 2025, what was the last bitcoin block mined since I hit stream? That would be block height 940,944. All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, as you can tell, I'm on the road, on the road again. And I'm very unfortunately on the road. I'll tell you guys about that during my Grind My Gears segment. Nonetheless, give me feedback. I hope the sound is coming through. I hope the Internet upholds in this hotel. So if it doesn't the live chat, I hold you guys responsible for keeping me honest here and having me audible in real time. But I'm going to assume that we're all good to go and with that we're going to get into the show. So today's episode is titled Uncle Not Taco. Oh, quickly, real quick. As you guys know, I'm now an AI wizard, a guru. I'm a hacker again. I'm just building, building, building non stop. And all jokes aside, I push each episode, all of the resources that I accumulate, all of the screenshots, the entire deck, I push it now to the web so that you guys can reference the episode. Okay, so the episode now sits@jms.jack mallers.com episode number. So this would be 109. You can see it if you're watching on YouTube in the URL up top there. So if you want to see the deck, be able to link to the resources that I reference, whether it's articles, tweets, reports like from Luke or Michael Howell. You can go to jms.jackmallurs.com 109. For those of you taking notes at home, those of you taking it seriously. It's not a game. It's not a game. They are who we thought they were. All right, let's go. The title today, Uncle Not Taco, Bitcoin in a World that can't be reversed with a tweet. And just for those of you I know, half of my audience is American and the other half is a hash posh from all over the world, which I love and I adore. But the just so you guys know, Taco stands for Trump Always chickens out. And the In a World that can't be reversed with a tweet. The idea is Trump, typically, he wrote a book once called the Art of the Deal. I think that was the title, at least. It was about the art of the deal. And the idea was Trump, he likes pushing people to the limits. He's a master negotiator. He's constantly pushing for ultimately what he wants. And he's willing to push, push, push, push, push people to their absolute limits in order to get what he wants. You ever heard of, you know, shoot for the stars, fall on the moon, or Shoot for the moon, fall on the stars? No, the first one. Shoot for the stars, fall on the moon. His idea is he's going to be extreme. He's gonna point the gun at ya, not to actually pull the trigger. But Trump just wants to compromise. He just wants to get his way. And we've seen this traditionally with tariffs, he'll come out with something so extreme, so over the top, and a lot of the media or a lot of our foreign counterparts will take it literally. And all he's trying to do is get you to the negotiating table, get you to sit down, and then he's built a reputation for always chickening out, for never actually following through. So that's Taco always chickens out. Now, what's uncle? In at least American culture, uncle is when you call it quits. When you surrender, you call uncle, you scream uncle. Okay, So I want to make sure that my. And maybe that's a global thing. I don't know. Okay, listen, I'm not a professional podcaster. I'm just a bitcoiner. I don't know what is global culture? What is American culture? Okay, but where I'm from, you want to quit, you scream uncle. Okay, you scream uncle. So the title uncle, not Taco. What am I saying? I'm saying Trump cannot back out with a tweet. This is not tariffs. This is not just pushing it a little far to get his way because we're dealing with real world commodities. This is not tariff negotiations. I'm telling you guys, this is different. The point of this episode is to very briefly explain that this is different. And I expect the US to scream uncle. As an American, I'm concerned. And you guys could say, oh well, who are you? You're just this like 31 year old Bitcoiner. And I'd say you're right. I am. And you take my opinions as they are. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. But the reason you're listening to this is for my opinion and you want my opinion. I'm worried. I don't see a clean way out. Trump cannot taco. I don't know how this ends well for America. And so the title of this is uncle, not Taco. I expect some form of a surrender. Now obviously the media won't display it like that, the White House won't describe it as such, but I expect some form of the US Screaming uncle, tapping out, giving up. I do not expect a taco. So without further ado, let's get into it. Chapter one. This is not a taco. The war, why it won't end soon and why that matters. Okay, first of all, the straight of Hermuz, for those that don't know it is critical to the world not only getting oil, which we've now learned, but for supply chains for all sorts of things we consume. We'll get into it in a second, but our food supply chains are being disrupted. Fertilizer, if the fertilizer supply chain is being disrupted, that means our agriculture commodity supply chains are going to be disrupted as we'll get into it. Brazil for the first time maybe ever, but at least in the last 20 years has gone no bid on agriculture commodities. So the Strait of Hermuz being closed, I've talked about it on this show. This is Iran's way of fighting back. They're going to choose inflation. And inflation is, is a direct relationship to energy. Energy is a direct relationship to oil. It's not that complicated. They're going to choose inflation over nuclear. Iran's not going to go nuclear. That was, that was my prediction weeks ago. I don't think Iran is going to fight back with nuclear. I think Iran is going to use oil. They're going to use the straight of Hermuz. And I tell you guys this, this is a quote from Luke Groman. What's the US Iran scoreboard? How do you know who's winning? This chart right here, this graphic right here, how many ships are getting through the Strait of Hermuz? Because Trump can say whatever he wants. If he had the most powerful military in the world we'd be able to escort our ships through, period. We say all the time, the dollar is backed by the US military, the dollar is backed by the strongest military in the world. Okay, well then escort the ships through. Look at this thing drop to zero. This is total tanker transit calls. How many transit calls since this thing started? Zero. We can't get anything through. And I told you guys last week, Trump's like, oh, this war is going to take a few days. Oh, wait, now it might take a week. I told you guys this war wasn't ending anytime soon. Anytime soon. And we'll get into it in a second. The game of military has changed. There are now drones, there is now artificial intelligence. The US by hollowing out its industrial base, its ability to produce things, it's come solely reliance on China. The rate of production across all things that matter. We're getting our ass handed to us by foreigners like China. And remind you who was in Venezuela, who had their paws all over Venezuela? Russia, China, Iran or Iran? It. It's an. It's it. You guys were clowning me. You're like, get a load of this jackass American saying Iran, like Iran a marathon. Okay, It's Iran. I think Iran, whatever. Russia, China, Iran. So this graphic, total tanker transit calls for those of you listening and I'm in your ears and you can't see, go. Going back over the last year, total tanker transit calls across the Strait of Hormuz were always range bound between 50 and 80. They've fallen off a cliff to zero. Iran shut it down and there's nothing the US can do about it. That's a huge problem. When I said, why are we playing such high stakes geopolitical poker? Why in the best case scenario, we have to embarrassingly call uncle and back out of Iran in order to open this back up. And I'll get into it in a second. But they're saying an oil price above $120 triggers a recession. Not just inflation. Oil prices right now at $90 a barrel, $100 a barrel. That's inflation, 120, recession, 200 margin call. What are we doing? Uncle not Taco. Okay, now let's get into the war a little bit. Neither side wants out. Okay, so on one side from Iran, this is direct quote, a ceasefire is not on the table. People say, oh, Iran will take a ceasefire. Trump keeps tweeting it out. The people of Iran would be lucky. I'm willing to come to the table. Their response has been. And you're not going to read this in The Western media, their response have has been a ceasefire is not on the table for us. The guy who's running Iran right now, we blew up his father and his mother. I mean, like, listen, I'm happy to be wrong, but you want to talk about, I'm 31, I'm barely a millennial, right? I've grown up with a distrust of the media, only knowing war, debt and inflation. As an American in my life, I don't trust anything I'm reading. The expectation is that we're going to blow up this guy's dad and that he's going to want to come to the table knowing that we can't get a ship through the Strait of Hermuz, that they've out droned us. I'll get to it in a second. Our, like recent military weapons were being out engineered. Iran is saying, no, no, you started this. A ceasefire is not on the table. You're going to have to try and get a ship through the Strait of Hermuz. We can't, we can't. Now the former IRGC commander in chief, direct quote, Trump and Netanyahu are trapped in a slaughterhouse in the Persian Gulf. I'm just, listen, I'm just reporting. I think we thought it was sweet and it's not. And at the end of the day, as it relates to this show and macroeconomics and Bitcoin, you gotta do the proof of work. You cannot just print money out of thin air and expect every like. That's not how Mother Nature governs, period. Sorry. And people say, oh, Jack, Jack doesn't root for America. Jack's not American. Is lying to ourselves and to you guys. American, Is that what you want? You want me to lie to you? If you want the truth, if you're man enough for the truth, if you're an adult, keep listening. If you want lies, if you want to be tucked into your crib like a little baby and I stick a pacifier in your mouth and lie to you, then go, go watch some other show. Now the graphic on the right, check this out. Israeli army chief of staff said, and guys, this five days ago. Stopping the fighting now is a mistake. We are prepared with combat plans until Passover in mid April of next year. Remember last week when I said this thing might last till September, this thing might last until 2027? People say, no, Jack, no. Trump said he's about to end it. It's not up to Trump. If Trump wants to end it, he has to scream uncle, he has to resign. You guys have to Understand something. America's not necessarily winning this war. Now, I'm not saying we're losing it, but I am saying we're not necessarily winning it. And what is Iran's plan? Iran's plan is not to fight back with nuclear. Listen, anyone that wants to battle with the United States now knows where the United States is weakest. Where are we weakest? Debt. Economically, we have too much debt. Iran is going after us. Where? Our bond market, Inflation, Oil. Where? Where's the United States? United States. Weak proof of work, that's where. We're weak proof of work. Debt. Borrowing from our future with no productivity and growth to pay it back, hitting us where it hurts. We go to the next slide. So listen, I'm not a military combat guy, okay? I can only read a few things when I have time and give my opinion on the show. And it'd be one thing if I was selling advertisers and telling you guys I was an expert in any everything. I'm doing the opposite. This show is fully sponsored and hosted by me. There's no team, there's no ads, none of that shit. It's just my corner of the Internet where I get to voice my opinions and tell you guys how I feel. I could be wrong, I could be right. Not charging for it. Okay, so you take all my military weaponry opinions with a grain of salt. I'm far from an expert. This stuff's way over my head. I travel, I sit on planes. Right when I have my free time, I'm sitting in the terminal. I read news, okay? I like the little newsletters I subscribe to. They're valuable to me. Helps me form my economic opinions where I feel I am more of an expert. This stuff, I don't really understand, but it felt worthy. Okay, this is from a private military contractor in the war zone. Okay, how are we finding out? Drones are inbound. We are literally looking up in the sky to see if a steel bird is circling above us like a sign from God. How is the Royal Air Force finding out? Goat herders and oil field workers are calling the military. And this. It's a longer passage that. I didn't put it all in here, but this is a direct quote. The Straight of Hermuz stayed locked down as long as Iran wants. Since all this is simple tech, we are being. You guys see in the bottom right here? The Pentagon thinks it'll take them at least a month to begin. Navy escorts. At least the Pentagon. We can't reopen Hermuz. And mind you, the title of this is $30,000 drones versus $300 million radars. Our tech is getting a little old. Our ability to produce newer weaponry is getting a little worse. Why? Because we hollowed out this country. We're reliant on China. China graduates, graduates, graduates. More engineers per year than the US has in total. You break the money, you break society. You fix the money, you fix the world. You cannot proceed print time and energy out of thin air and not expect to. I mean, all of these are just natural consequences. I don't know how else to say it. I don't know how else to say it. We're getting our handed to us by $30,000 drones. We're reliant on farmers to be like, hey, guys, there's a metal thing flying above my corn. And the Pentagon says I need at least 30 days. And I tell you this, if the Strait of Hormuz is closed this time in April, markets have exploded. Washington and Trump are on the clock. And by the way, they know it. This is Iran's point in fighting back. The US doesn't have unlimited time. They are in debt. When you're in debt, when you owe, you don't set the terms. The US does not have unlimited time. So now let's go to chapter two, Smoking craters, the financial cascade that's already underway. Let me tell you guys more about the system that's breaking. Okay, this was interesting. Besant is the BOE of 1992, the bank of England. So it's kind of just a funny way of conceptualizing this. But for those that don't know, Scott Besant, Besant was the one, along with Soros and Druckenmiller, that broke the bank of England. Okay, for those that don't know, now you know Druckenmiller and Besant worked for Soros. You guys should go watch Druckenmiller's recent interview. But the point is, Besant has found himself in a very similar predicament. So in 1992, the bank of England had finite FX reserves to defend its its unsustainable British pound valuation. Soros and Besant shorted it knowing that the bank of England would run out of ammo, would run out of reserves to defend it. Okay, now fast forward to today. Besant has a finite amount of SPR petroleum reserves to defend the dollar against oil while Hormuz is closed. So the market is doing to the United States and to Besant, which what he did to England, you're caught in a pickle. You don't have unlimited. So the SPR is effectively empty. Why is it effectively empty? Because the only other time oil rallied like this and it didn't cause a recession was when 2022. Why? One of the reasons is because we emptied out our reserves. Joe Biden did this. So? So for all the political activists in my comments, kicking and screaming like a daycare, this isn't about being Republican or Democrat, left or right, blue or red. I say this every episode. Biden was the one that emptied out our reserves in the first place. Trump is the one playing high stakes geopolitical poker with a bad hand. This is just about printing money out of thin air and doing no proof of work. This is about broken money, breaking the world. That's what this is about. So if you look at the imagery on the left, Dubai crude just broke above $150 a barrel. So you have these analysts that say, oh, oil markets are calming down. No, the fuck they're not. Middle Eastern fiscal oil is bid up into the right, up into the right. And this is more evidence that the straight of her moves is on lockdown and there's nothing we can do about it. Again, I. Again, if I. Guys, if the United States has the strongest military in the world, why can't we do anything about the entire global supply chain being turned off? And mind you, it's not that no one's allowed through the Strait of Hermuz to. Do you know who's still getting oil out of the Strait of Hormuz? China. In fact, Iran. They're just fucking with us at this point. Over the weekend they came out and said, as long as you're not the United States and its allies, you can get oil. Because you see some people say, well, no one's. If the US Isn't getting oil, no one's getting oil. And we're really starving China. No, but we're not starving China. China's still getting oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. We're. We are not. And you're gonna look me in the eye and say, we have the strongest military in the US Dollars backed by the military. Yeesh. So I wanna bring you guys, this slide here is supposed to illustrate why when you're so indebted, the game changes. So on the left here, you see the 1973 oil shock. Okay, now let's look at how the US was positioned fiscally in 1973 versus where we are today in 2026. Because people will say dumb shit like, well, when Clinton was president, or well, in 1973 during that oil Shock. But you know what? We didn't have $40 trillion of debt, you moron. Do you see why that would make it a huge difference where when Clinton was president, we ran a surplus. We run $2 trillion deficits annually. Now, do you understand that the entire problem is monetary. Look at where Iran is hitting us monetarily. We can't afford it. We're too indebted. This Fiat game is over. So in 1973, what was our debt to GDP? 32%, guys. Our debt to GDP today is 122%. What was our deficit to GDP in 1973? 1%, guys. Today it is 6 to 7%. What was our net creditor to debtor? 10% in 1973. Today it's negative 85%. Do I make my case? Why is this different than the times in the past? Is that a joke? It's because Fiat has reached its limits. And I put on the right. Just the only other time. Because the other thing people are saying is, well, in 2022, a rise in oil didn't cause a recession. Yeah. But there were serious reasons why the labor market was super hot. Record amounts of immigration, which drives gdp. So, I mean, okay, so in 2022, we had a massive reserve that is now depleted. Labor market was hot. Which, by the way, why is the labor market not hot now? Because AI is taking everyone's jobs. Right. So there was an AI competing for your job. We had a full reserve of petroleum, and Biden was letting anyone walk into the country across the border. Which, again, I'm not political, not saying that that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it has a direct impact on gdp, on the things that I do talk about on this show and that I do care about, and that is related to Bitcoin. So that's why none of those things exist today. So Trump's behavior was like, why is Besant unsanctioning Russian oil? That has to be a joke. Russia and Putin are openly supporting Iran, who were in a war with. It's because these guys don't have a choice. They're on the clock and they know it. I'm telling you guys, this is uncle, not Taco. This is different. This one is different. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not saying the world's gonna fall apart. Okay? I'm just telling you guys, this is not Trump. People typically say, oh, this is Trump being Trump. He's just trying to get his way. I don't know about this one. I genuinely don't know about this one. This one. I and I've been saying it for weeks now. Everyone says this war is gonna be over in a day and then two days and then a week. Guys, I. So now back to markets. The title of this is credit is cracking. So we all know private credit is in a world of pain. It continues to get worse. And interestingly, bond yields, which we've talked about, continue to go up. So let me take a step back. What is bond math like we talk about on this show? When the demand for bonds goes down, the yields go up, vice versa. So yields going up means demand is going down. Demand to lend to the United States is going down. Bonds have traditionally been a safe haven asset. When things are uncertain, you rush to safety, you rush into lending to the United States. That is no longer the case. Which is extremely telling and validating for everything we've been talking about on this show. And so Arthur's tweet on the left, oil and the 10 year treasury are going, or excuse me, the 10 year treasury yield are going in the wrong direction. You've got oil going up and the yield on the 10 year going up. Guys, that's bad. That's really, really bad. And then on the right you have from Zero Hedge. This is a disaster. Cliff Waters $33 billion private credit fund Q1 redemptions reached 14%. Not good. It's not good. I mean all of this. And listen, actually let me change my tone a little bit. It's not good for the legacy fiat system. As a bitcoiner, it's emotionally complicated because on one end, these are all the things that we've been saying for years. All anyone had to do is listen to a lick of what I've been screaming for over a decade and they wouldn't be surprised in the slightest about any of this. And so on one end, I feel vindicated, I feel right. I feel all sorts of good emotions and I'm extremely bullish on bitcoin. I've been building a bitcoin position for over a decade. I have two bitcoin companies. I'm very excited about, about how I'm positioned and my ability to do good work for the world in the coming future. That's one side. On the other side, this is not. This is scary. You know, you, like people always accuse bitcoiners. Bitcoiners want the world to fall apart so that their number can go up. Unfortunately, everyone results to being, you know, the emotional maturity of a kindergartner. You know, it's not that black and white. Yes. I want to see bitcoin as the ultimate money. I think Fiat is gonna fail. Do I want Americans to get punished in the process? Of course not. I want everyone to win. The reality is there's not enough room for everyone to win. Unfortunately, bitcoin is a lifeboat. But it doesn't have unlimited seats. Well, let me rephrase that. It has unlimited seats, but not at the same price. The price to exit varies. The price to exit varies. That's why my suggestion is get yourself an exit ticket, because the longer you wait, the more expensive it is to get out. So it's emotionally complicated, man. It's like we're right. Every chart I look at, every article I read, we are right. And now sometimes bitcoin is a leading indicator on us being right. It's a lagging indicator. It just needs time. I think bitcoin's going a million dollars a coin. It might take a few years or five years. I mean, this is nothing in the grand scheme of changing the money for the world. We're talking about Fiat eroding, going back to hard money standards. I mean, when my great, great, great grandchildren are taught history, they're not going to say, yeah, and it took four years for bitcoin to get to a million from here. And boy, was that a long time. They're not even going to cut. This is a blip. A blip, a blank, a snap. Got to be patient. But yeah, man, I mean, it's emotionally complex, like on one end. I'm worried for Americans in some sense, America. And again, I, you know, sometimes people come to this show to get their, like, weekly dose of news, and I'm not trying to fear monger you and have you put in a panic, you know, like, it's just. I wouldn't say I'm the most optimistic about America's future as I've ever been. I think we have very difficult lessons to learn. Let me go on one more rant real quick here, because here's the thing. I think the social contract in America is drastically changing. Let me put, Let me, Let me play a version of our future. And it's just a version. It could happen. It could not, but it will. It will help me convey my point. Now, let's say that the only reasonable outcome that we have from here is extreme levels of inflation. Because like I said, we either. I've said this for the two years I've been doing this show, we either default or we default via inflation. Those are the two options. Okay, so let's assume, which seems like a fairly healthy assumption at this point given gold's at $5,000 an ounce, oil's at $100 a barrel. Let's just assume it's not rocket science. Let's assume serious inflation's on the horizon. Okay? Now let's also combine that with AI and a productivity boom that's displacing the entire labor market. Okay? So your cushy white collar job is no longer available. Okay, let's play out this future. I am a investment banker. I'm making $400,000 a year, not including my bonus. And I've got a mortgage on a beautiful home. I've got a car note on a beautiful car. My kid I was able to put the down payment on for Harvard, but I let them, you know, they need to grow up and be a man or be a woman, and they've got a little bit of student debt. And so I live this indebted life. All of a sudden I wake up and that job is gone. That job is gone. The social contract of I was a productive person to society has flipped entirely. You don't get to live in a big house, you don't get to drive a nice car, your kid doesn't get to go to nice schools, you don't get good vacations, you don't get good food. Because the combination of productivity displacing the social contract you thought you were in, you for the last recent memory, you've considered yourself an elevated part of society. You get to eat nice steak dinners, you get to live in nice houses because you're an investment banker, because you did all the school and you do all the excel sheets on all the companies and you deserve the best of this world. And in the snap of a finger, both via inflation that's monetizing the US's debt and deflation in the productivity that is displacing your job, you found yourself defaulting on your mortgage, defaulting on your car, not able to afford the stake because of inflation. That is the social contract. Like I am very worried about that. I think Americans in America have a lot of really difficult lessons to learn because the question you'd have to ask yourself was, how productive was I actually? Was being a fancy schmancy banker really that productive to the world? I don't know the answer to that. But if you have a country that's not doing any manual labor, that's not doing any blue collar work, that's not producing real world commodities, at least on net, they're Consuming more than they're producing. What are they producing? They're producing Excel spreadsheets. Okay, well what if a machine can do that now? And what if the world around them gets hyper inflated? The social contract changes. Everyone that thought they were important is no longer that important. What's going to happen? How are those people going to behave? How are they going to act? Are they going to be violent? Are they going to vote in someone that's going to try and take property of other people that are still productive? I'm worried. I'm worried about that. I think that it's long overdue that America and Americans have tough lessons to learn. My advice remains the same. Do something of true value to people. Earn more than you consume. Save in a hard asset that no one can take from you. Remember, property rights are often rented from the state. Your house can be taken by the state. Remember that. So that's not real property rights. Those rights were rented. So my recommendation, own Bitcoin. It's the only real property that I can put in my brain that no one can take from me. And yeah, man, I mean, try and find a way to be productive that can't be disrupted. And listen, I'm not trying to overly shit on investment bankers or whatever, but if a computer can take your social contract of I'm rich and I'm wealthy and I get the hot wife and the big, the big house and the nice car and the beautiful steak dinners and I'm the best and everyone else in society is below me and one clawed code version wipes me out entirely. How productive were you actually? Was this whole fiat thing of a fake, a phony, a fraud. So America runs a $2 trillion deficit, does no blue collar work, produces no real commodities on net, and instead everyone's sitting on the coast building a bunch of shitty Excel sheets. Yeah, I just don't know how, how that's going to play out. I just don't know. So, more credit problems. JP Morgan marking down their loan portfolios of private credit groups. Jamie Dimon has now made a public statement at this point about the private credit market. So the private credit market is a legitimate concern. It's starting to ripple through and supply chains are breaking. So I had brought this up before, but Brazil agriculture markets have gone no bid for the first time in 20 years. Middle east bookings are suspended by Maersk. I mean, it's just, it's not good, guys. It's really not good. And I don't think people saw this coming. And I still don't Know how many people, if this is a normalized and socialized realization yet, that like, this war is not ending anytime soon unless the United States effectively screams uncle. That's the only way out that I can see. And so now let's bring in bitcoin. So Michael Howell, he wrote this substack recently that I thought was really good. And he basically gave this framing, which was gold has already begun being repriced. And we've talked a lot about on the show how gold is a leading indicator. Gold has been leading. Why? Because gold is big enough to absorb sovereign bids. Right. I've said before, bitcoin's like the size of Tesla's market cap. It's just not big enough for China's trade surplus to pile into it for people to rotate out of US Treasuries and into bitcoin. It's not big just yet. Right. Like the whales in bitcoin are reflective of how big it actually is. You know, the biggest whale in bitcoin is strategy and Michael Saylor. But that company is like, I think that company has a smaller market cap than Robin Hood. So, like, as bitcoin matures and grows, the whales will too. Then sovereigns will start buying in real size, endowments will start buying in real size. But right now it's just not quite big enough. And that's okay. That's okay. It's. It's still a teenager. Keep in mind, bitcoin would be in high school if it were a human. Okay, so it's still a teenager. It's gonna take a little bit of time. That's fine. So what, what's the tool that the world is using to rotate out of the Fiat world and into the hard money world? It's been gold. Now Michael in his piece makes this point that oil was going to catch up one way or the other. Yes, this war has greatly exaggerated and exacerbated that. But nonetheless, oil was going to ratchet up at some point because the world is actively being repriced against a debasing Fiat world. Fiat and US Treasuries and just bonds and sovereign paper in general is becoming lesser and lesser and lesser valuable. The. The world is eroding in trust, and that's ultimately what Fiat runs on, trust. Okay. And then the argument is that bitcoin is likely next. Like, he has this quote, monetary inflation is the only viable solution. We are simply debating the speed. And I loved that quote. That's why I put on the slide. Just love that quote. The unequivocal future is all the prices of things that are hard to produce is going to ratchet and reprice way higher. All that you guys are doing on the Internet yelling at each other is debating the speed. You're just debating the speed. Who cares about the speed? Stay humble. Stacks ads. If bitcoin hasn't repriced too much higher yet, then what an opportunity for you. We can debate that bitcoin is now. You know, we'll talk about it in a second. Bitcoin's been outperforming other things recently. It's been a great week for bitcoin. It's shown a lot of resilience. I'm not entirely sold that bitcoin is in a bull market again, that it's, you know, totally out. I am worried about the conflict in the Middle East. I don't see a clean resolution. I think markets are going to have to face the reality that this is going to be painful and there's no clean way out. So I'm hesitant to assume bitcoin's going straight to 250k from here. But nonetheless, I think Michael Howell's right. Monetary inflation is the only viable solution. We are simply debating the speed. So we go to the chapter three, the puke before the print. Again, this is my opinion and I share this opinion with a lot of other smart people, but it does mean it's right. But I do think that there might be one last puke. So to set the stage, this tweet from Arthur. Bitcoin which is in White is up 7% and has outperformed Gold down 2% and the Nasdaq down 50 basis points since the US Iran war started on February 28th. Relative to similar type large risky assets, Bitcoin did the best when viewed against oil and gas energy price spikes. So it is interesting. And Luke who has, you know, very famously lessened his bitcoin position in the 90ks, he has not added bitcoin back but he said my finger is hovering over the buy trigger. So the question is, what does this mean for bitcoin? Is bitcoin back in a bull market? It's been eight straight days of green. Are we going to new highs? What's your opinion, Jack? I don't know. I don't know about that. My opinion is there's likely one more puke left. I think that the stock market is in trouble. I think that the bond market is in trouble. I think that there is one more big wash through of pain. I'm just hesitant. I'm not bullish or Bearish in the near term, in the long term, I'm, I've never been more bullish. This is crazy. What a crazy timeline to live through in the immediate term. I'm watching. It doesn't really matter what I think because I'm fully allocated to Bitcoin anyway, as you guys know. So I'm only saying this just for the, for the love of the game, for the shits and the giggles. Like I, I don't, I don't live like a trader, so it doesn't matter. But anyway, you just do the math. And the debt held, by the way, is not 36 trillion. I think it's actually 38 point, point something at this point. But this is just crazy math. We hold so much debt. Our blended interest rate on that Debt is above 3%. Our annuals interest, annual interest is over a trillion dollars annualized at this point. And on the left, this is more the timeline that I'm expecting and watching. We've talked about him before. QT ended by the Fed in December and they started this reserve management program where on an annual basis they would buy about $500 billion in treasuries through this reserve management program that they set up. I've said it a lot. Next, I expect some form of yield curve control. I really think that that's the only viable option that will cause tremendous amounts of inflation, but it's the only way for the US to be able to afford the fiscal position it's in. And then after that, I expect some form of qe. So I'm watching right now very carefully because I'm waiting for. You know, what always happens is something blows up in a big way. Like US equities go down 20%. The bond market move index goes to 180. Something extreme, something that crosses the line and that gets politicians to react and portray themselves as heroes. That's when you get Trump that comes out and says, I've ignited the ABCDEFG program to save your, save your income from AI disruption and protect us from Iran and their nuclear program. And it's like, okay, there comes, Here comes all the money printing. We haven't gotten it quite yet. We just haven't gotten it quite yet. Now at the same time, Bitcoin feels like it's been exhausted of sellers. It looks like something that has no seller left. Like that's what it looks like. Which is so cool because again, it's just with a finite supply asset and it's. We've never seen anything like it. But anyway, this is What I'm looking for, These are just a lot of the people that I follow. So, Luke, Michael, Arthur, everyone's got the same language. Morgan Stanley now has a bitcoin trust. This is structural. That's a big deal. I mean, when you start getting passive flows, structural flows into bitcoin, it's really rare, guys, because bitcoin is finite in supply. There's just only so many natural sellers. And so when you get structural flows like 15,000 wealth advisors that are selling bitcoin through Morgan Stanley, then you just outbid the natural sellers every day. The world has never, ever seen something finitely scarce. We get, we get flack for comparing bitcoin to gold, but mind you, bitcoins orders of magnitude better than gold because gold's not finitely scarce. If gold keeps going up, we will produce more gold. The only reason we're not producing more gold is because it's uneconomical. But if the price of gold gets high enough, it becomes economical. That's not the case for bitcoin. We've never seen anything like it. So everybody seems to be warming up to the idea. But again, we haven't seen the bazooka print yet. Now do we need to see the bazooka print? Is bitcoin actually a leading indicator this time? Has it already? Like, let me, let me say it this way. Bitcoin somehow leads always. It's such a mind fuck for me here. Let me explain. FTX blew up before Silicon Valley Bank. I remember when FTX blew up and I told people internally at the Strike Team, bitcoin, this open free market is just so much more efficient. Free markets are so much more efficient at punishing misallocations of capital and rewarding proper allocations of capital that a legacy financial institution will blow up shortly after this. It's just going to take time because it's in a centrally planned and controlled market. There's so much less efficient than if you just let the free market govern. So FTX blew up in November and Silicon Valley Bank, I believe, blew up in March. Right. And that was just, it was so fascinating to me where I was just relying on a truly free market to tell me the truths that the rest of the world took five, six months later to tell me. You know, and bitcoin bottomed before everything else as well. So I guess my point is bitcoin broke below its support and entered this bear market we're in now before equities did. Equities are just now getting there. So the question is, is bitcoin gonna lead equities back to the upside? Are equities about to crash while bitcoin is finding strength? I don't know. I really don't. I'm being just honest with you. You know, in hindsight, that would make a lot of sense. Bitcoin's a sufficient free market. It's smelling the money, printers warming up, yada yada, yada, yada, yada. It's acting as. You know, I know a lot of people think that it's been this resilient because capital in the Middle east is, it's really hard. I mean, what I'm hearing is that gold is trading at a discount in the Middle east because capital flight is hard with physical gold. How do you get it across borders? How do you travel with it? How do you get it in large size where gold is trading at a discount? Like, people are like, fuck it, just take the gold I have. And bitcoin's trading at a premium because it's so easy to just put it on a hardware wallet and get the out of there. So maybe there's capital flight implications for bitcoin. I don't know. I don't know. I, I see in the chat people saying Jack's being harsh to us farmers. They're the most productive. I'm not talking about like people specifically. I'm not saying like, I'm not implying that your buddy Joseph is not productive. Come on, let's get a grip here. I'm saying the US on net is minus $2 trillion in consumption over production. That's not good. So this is the sequence I expect, I expect some form of a puke. Credit markets break, some form of forced selling, some form of pain. Maybe it's the bond market gets too volatile. We know that the, the move index, the bond volatility index, as soon as it crosses numbers like 160, the Washington investment in Trump hit the panic button. We know that when equities fall a certain mark, like during Liberation Day or Liberation Week, they hit the panic button. I expect something like that where the Fed or the treasury or someone has to step in and effectively enforce monetary inflation as the only solution. And then it's, then it's back up the truck. Everyone's gonna pile in to the scarcest risk on thing they can find. And that's where bitcoin mops the floor. Now again, have we already started that as bitcoin kicked this off already? I have no idea. And it doesn't matter because again, I don't hold any fiat Anyway, I'm just doing it for shits and giggles. I don't know. So, in summary, do your own research on this conflict we have in the Middle East. Be careful. Earn more than you spend. Find ways to be truly productive. Truly productive. And find property that you're not renting the rights from the state. That's my advice. I have a feeling we'll be talking about this conflict for many shows to come in the future, because it's hard for me to see how it ends unless the ending is fairly abrupt. And it's more like Trump screaming uncle than Taco. Okay, with that? Everyone's favorite section. What really grinds my gears? You know what really grinds my gears? Las Vegas. That's where I am. Holy shit, is this place awful. This place. This is the most pathetic expression of humanity I've ever seen. I can't imagine visiting America from another country, landing in this piece of shit and think, I mean, if I were a foreigner and I were visiting from some other country, and I landed in Vegas and spent 10 seconds on the Strip, or I would say, holy shit, blow it all up. I mean, what the fuck? This place is fucking horrible. I mean, I'm gonna get fired up here. Because here's the thing, my girlfriend and I were supposed to come here for a family trip to see some musician that was performing here. I don't know. I'm not into any of that, but you know how it is. Girlfriend, family. So you got to do what you got to do, okay? So I say, let's do it. It's gonna be a ton of fun. I love her family. They're the best. And so, like, let's go. Let's go now. Long story short, the trip totally changes. People gotta back out. My girlfriend's like, hey, you know, it's around my birthday anyway, why don't we just make a trip out of it and have some fun? So we say, screw it, Chicago. It's cold, it's rainy, it's snowing, it's gross. We look at our phone, it's 80 degrees. We go to Vegas. Holy shit, this place is cancer. And by the way, if you want to see what Fiat has done to society and the true state of what's wrong with the west, come see this shit for yourself. Everybody is grotesquely obese. And listen, I'm not gonna pick too hard on people's weight, okay? No one wants to be fat, okay? No one wakes up and is like, man, I wish I was fatter. So I'm not going to be Too hard on people's weight. But the obesity in Vegas, it's like a particular level of obesity. Like people are grotesquely obese in areas of the human body that I couldn't even imagine by closing my eyes. Like I'd never seen a human species shaped the way people are shaped. And they're lugging around pounds of sugar. It's donuts, it's cinnamon, toasted cocktails. It is fucking disgusting. You've got these people that can't even walk down the Strip. So they're literally in machines that wheel them from casino to casino to gamble and play. These slot machines. I mean, this is pure human degeneracy. This is grotesque. Obesity, gambling, drugs, alcohol. This place is fucking gross. The fact that there is enough capital to be misallocated for this to be a mainstay of where people go and expend their time and energy. I mean, blow it all up. Whatever system has allowed for this place to exist. Blow it the fuck up. After being here for three days, I've had enough. I've had enough of fiat and enough of the West. I don't even know if I want to fight for it anymore. Blow it the fuck up. This is an abomination to humanity. This should never exist. This is absolutely disgusting. I hope my kids and their kids and their kids never even knew that this was a place I visited and could have visited. This is an absolute embarrassment to my generation. This. This place is filthy. I feel disgusting. There's not enough time in a day for me to shower off how I feel. I feel gross. I feel absolutely disgusting. I had to go find lunch today. I couldn't find. I just want some grilled chicken and I want a place that's clean. It's impossible. It's littered with prostitution fucking advertisements. I can't find something that doesn't have a seed oil or fried breading or alcohol in it. I just want grilled chicken and water in a clean establishment that takes themselves and their customers seriously. This place is absolutely filthy. And you can't help, as a bitcoiner, you can't help but look around and think this is the result of fiat in a truly free market and anyone that spends their days getting grotesquely obese and poisoning themselves with metabolic disease and gambling their life away. I mean, surely this can't last forever. But if you just bail everybody out and you keep government funding everything, this is what you get. You get. This place is a walking living disease. It is absolutely disgusting. I've never seen anything more fiat than this. Place I. My girlfriend. And I said, I'll never come back here. Except, obviously, the bitcoin conference. I don't have a choice. I said, holy shit. Vegas twice in one month. I might die. I might. This place is. Guys, this grind. My gear section could go for an hour. Because here's the other thing. I was supposed to go home on Sunday. I said, good Lord. And by the way, just a little bit about me. I'm not the biggest consumer of alcohol. It's not my thing. I don't want to gamble. I want to buy bitcoin. I don't like. That's not my form of entertainment. It was nice to lay in the sun. But like I said, there is no, like, if there was a Vegas hotel that served ribeyes and was clean. It's just. It's impossible. You're just rubbing shoulders constantly with the most, like, disgusting version of humanity. It's gross. It just feels gross and it smells gross. It's like someone shoved, like, a Bud light, a cigarette Bud and a prostitute up your nostril. It's disgusting. Everything about it is disgusting. You can't escape it. It was nice to be in the sun, but good Lord. And it's crazy, because people come to the United States, say, oh, let's go to Vegas, and this is what they see. And it's like, honestly. And everyone's. I was talking to this guy sitting in the lobby. I'm like, where are you from, man? Like, what's your opinion on America? He's like, this place is. I mean, what are you. This place is nuts. It's disgusting. It's so gross. I was supposed to come home on Sunday, and because of the weather in Chicago, my flight was cancelled. Not even delayed canceled. Like United said, like, we're not getting you home. So here I am, stuck in this hellhole. I can't get out. This is. I literally think I'm dreaming. This is torture. I'm stuck in the capital of fiat. This is Fiat headquarters. They just serve you sugar and seed oils and donuts and gambling and prostitution. It is disgusting. I'm just holed up in my hotel room. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, man. Seriously. I mean, dead serious. Nobody. I've never met anybody that looks at Las Vegas and goes, that is a good. That's a good representation of everything that's right with the world. Someone that was born this morning should really take a look at Las Vegas to understand what humanity and our future is all about. I've never heard anyone say that. I mean, this Place, man, this place. I mean, I literally. I looked at my girlfriend. We looked at each other like, never again. Never again. And I can't get out of here. I might. I kid you not, if the weather in Chicago doesn't start getting better, I might just start walking home. I might just start walking. As I think about it, there's not a large body of water between me and Chicago. Just might be time to get some steps in, walk off all of the sugar I must have eaten just by being within the vicinity of this abomination. I mean, it is crazy. And this place, it just preys on what's wrong with people. I mean, you've got these grown adults sitting at these slot machines. It is so sad. You just want to go up to these people and shake them, Just take the money and buy some bitcoin. Go. Good Lord. They're just these old people just slamming these big shiny buttons all day. I wake up to go get a coffee this morning, just old people with alcohol and gambling addictions, like, yeah, welcome to America. And obese in areas that I didn't think fat could accrue in a human. Just like the size of people's ankles. Like, is that. Is that your ankle? That's bizarre. So sad. Bizarre. This place. This place. Anyway, it felt. It felt vaguely related to bitcoin in this show. It might not be. Maybe this is just a random tangent, but, I mean, holy shit. Fix the money, fix the world. This place is fucking disgusting. Sorry. Teach their own. Who am I to tell you how to live? If you want to come add £300, lose all your money and become an alcoholic, by all means, but not me. Not for me. Not for me. All right, with that. This section of the show, man, it's taking on a life of its own. I enjoy it. I'm glad you guys enjoy it, because I really enjoy it. Here's the sources. By the way, I added a separate section with all the sources of this stuff. I'm just. I'm still iterating. I'm still trying to get your guys feedback iterating on how to, I don't know, do the best for you guys that want to learn and are supportive of me. I really appreciate it. So let me know if this is better and then strike. So let me pull up. We actually tweeted out. Let's see. Let's go to Twitter. Let's go to strike. So we actually tweeted out a thread of everything we launched last week. I think we'll do this consistently because we launch so Much stuff on a weekly basis. It's hard to keep up with. So you guys should check out this thread. I'll actually, I'll retweet it right now. So what did we do? Over the last week we expanded our line of credit to to pretty much the entire United States. So I talked to you guys, I said the line of credit product was only in Georgia and Massachusetts. We just wanted to test a few things. So we've turned it on in the entire United States. Just for businesses. So just for businesses. We've seen a ton of businesses open lines of credit. It's really, really cool. It's really, really exciting. So if you are a business, it's in 43 states, it will be in 50, I think very, very soon. I'll check with the team. But like I said, we're going to continue to roll out line of credit as we feel ready. It's not something though that we're going to gatekeep for a very long time. We're just truly testing iterating. I want the product to be really high functioning and as close to perfect as we can possibly make it. But this is huge. If you run a business now, you can get a strike account, you can do all of your fiat things there, you can do all of your bitcoin things there, you can get a line of credit, run your business on. Instead of a heloc, we call it a block, a Bitcoin line of credit. Really, really cool. Really really exciting. We also lowered our termed loan minimums in the EU and UK for businesses it's at €5,000. So really cool. This minimum used to be €100,000, it's now €5,000. We've brought it down consistently since we launched lending in Europe and UK regions. So again really exciting, really proud of the team. We just keep shipping stuff. Next we lowered some of our pricing. So this is specifically some whale tiers. So people sometimes assume that strike is for small purchases or just for payments. And obviously they must not be familiar with the recent developments over the years of the company. We're for every aspect of bitcoin. There's not a pocket of bitcoin that we don't serve well or we're not the best in the world at. So this is for some whales. So if you are doing a 5 to 15 million dollar transaction, you used to pay 0.49%, we've now lowered that to 0.39%. And if you do over 15 million dollars and this is in a month, you used to be 0.39% and now you're 0.25%. And I know people are going to say, whoa, what the hell, who do you think I am? We have a lot of customers like this. I mean, people trust us to do bitcoin well and we got some. I mean, customers are always looking for opportunities for us to bring our pricing down. I met with the finance team and I said, given the growth of the amount of customers we have in this pocket of our company, I'd be comfortable in lowering pricing. So we did that. So if you are a business, a high net worth individual, we're continuing to bring our pricing down. And all of this is based on the feedback, by the way, from customers from you guys in the YouTube chat. So keep giving us feedback. And then lastly, we've greatly improved our onboarding experience. We've seen a ton of new registrations, we're seeing an uptick in people coming to bitcoin, which is exciting. And so we're always optimizing. I mean, that interaction is deeply important to us as a company. Right. Obviously someone's first impression with Bitcoin or with Strike is important. And so we're always iterating. We always wanted to make it better. So we came out with a brand new onboarding experience that we think is head and toes better than what we had before, which is cool. And I told the team we should do this every Monday, which is just a little recap roundup of everything that we launched the week before. So you can expect this from us on a go forward basis and let us know what we should build and what you think we're building. So that's what we did with Strike. Let me go back. Oops. For 21 message remains the same proof of work mode. I know everyone's like, well, I don't see the proof of work. I get it. You don't. You're not wrong. We're excited to share it soon, hopefully. But public market rules are public market rules. It is what it is. Only so much I can say, but we are, I would say the message that I want to proliferate and I want to be repeated is that we fundamentally believe in being a bitcoin company that both produces operational cash flow and profits in products that has customers and upside. And being a Treasury, we think that it's going to be increasingly difficult for companies to do both. And we think we're uniquely positioned to be both to be a company that has customers and products and growth and profits and we can use that to Finance our conviction in bitcoin. So we will still, of course, be. Have a bitcoin treasury and accumulate bitcoin, whether it's through leverage. Like, what if we went out and got a bunch of leverage, but we financed it via profits from our company as opposed to dilution? And so it's not to say that one way is right or the other. People are always like, you're so mean to Saylor. I'm not saying Saylor's way of doing things is necessarily wrong. It's just not our preferred way of doing things. I believe in companies being productive via cash flow, being profits via customers, via products. That's the company that I want to build. That's the company that Tether wants to build, and that's the company that we are building. And that's. That's my update. And when I'm allowed to share more with you guys, I will. As I. As I've said, it's a sooner rather than later thing, but that, according to my lawyers, is all that I'm allowed to say for now. And with that, let's get into some q and a. Well, 13 minutes past the hour mark, so not too bad. We got a little bit of Q and A time, and. And we'll take advantage of it. Let's see here. Let me blow up my camera. Look at this guy. Look at this guy. Get a loaded. Ish guy. Oh, I forgot. I need to update you guys tomorrow. The plan is I'm supposed to be in New York now. Is my flight gonna get me there? I think so. It should. If it doesn't, obviously I'll let you guys know. But tomorrow, New York, pub key. We got our bit license. We're throwing a party. The word on the street in New York is that pub key can only hold like 120 people or something like that. And that we're gonna cause a block party in New York because there's gonna be more people showing up than pub key can fit. And no one knows what to do about it. Everyone's like, should we have tickets? Listen, don't tell them I told you this, but fuck it. Just show up. We'll figure it out. Dylan was like, dude, don't tell people to just show up. We don't know how to accommodate it. We don't know how we're gonna make it work. And I said, listen, man, I don't give a fuck. I'm not. I'm not telling bitcoiners not to show up. We've been working on this license for over three years. If I have to have a beer with a bitcoiner on the street, I'm gonna have a beer with a bitcoiner on the street. But I'm not a bougie guy. This is where. This is not a gala, is not a fucking prom. We're talking about having a Guinness with a bitcoiner to celebrate the fact that we can serve them in New York and all their support over the years and that we're working towards a bitcoin standard. And we're gonna fix the money and fix the world. So if I gotta have a beer with you guys on the street, we're gonna have one on the street. Just show up. Obviously, I would recommend if you can. The sooner the better. I don't know how the capacity thing is gonna work. I don't know how it's all gonna shake out. But I'm gonna be there. Dylan's gonna be there. A lot of the strike team's gonna be there. The drinks are on us. So we just. I mean, listen, guys, at the end of the day, I'm just a dude that really appreciates your support. And so. Least I can do is get you a beer and give you guys a hug. I think we'll have some live Q and A or something. Live. I'll be doing something live. I actually don't even know what I'm doing. But my flight is tomorrow morning at 6:30am If I. If I have issues getting out, I'll let you guys know, but it should be fine and I'll see you there. Just show up. I don't know. It'll work out. It always does. And with that, let's do some Q A. Oh, man. Hate this place. Las vegas. Hold on. Sorry. Without being on my monitors, is difficult to do this. Okay, there we go. Jack, question. Why is bitcoin reacting to high oil prices the way it is? I. I mean, the true answer is, I don't know. You know, sometimes people are like, dude, you got this wrong. What the fuck? Well, like, I don't know, like, turn your brain on. Why would I know the future? Okay, I just need a disclaimer. I don't know the future. I'm not a professional trader. I'm a CEO and a founder. I don't fucking know the future. Sorry. I'm sure the guy that asked this question is, was. Was a very nice guy. This is just all the other people that are like. Jack once said bitcoin was gonna go up, and it didn't. Yo, shut the fuck up. How about that? Duh. Like, I don't know the future. Do I need to say that disclaimer before I make predictions? Guess what, guys? I'm not a genie in a bottle. Do I look like fucking blue skin genie? Okay, anyways, why is bitcoin reacting to oil prices rising this way? I don't know. The. I mean, my logical guess, which could have some merit, but again, could not. Capital flight out of the Middle East. I mean, how do you get money out of the Middle east right now? And if the answer is gold, really, how are you lugging. Oh, how are you lugging gold out of the Middle east right now? Do you have a plane? You have a truck? How are you even, like, let's say on a Sunday night, you need to buy a lot of gold. How are you picking it up? Like, what if the guy's on the other side of the country that's selling it to you? So I would say true capital flight is the most inspiring. And let me tell you guys a story. When I first got into bitcoin, this was in 2013. There was the Greek Cyprus crisis where everyone's bank accounts were getting frozen. And you saw bitcoin catch a bid then. And the bitcoin price was like, I don't even remember a couple hundred bucks or something. Couple hundred dollars per bitcoin. But you still saw people fleeing to bitcoin. And it was fascinating. This was 13 years ago. And I was like, wow. And I was asking my dad, so I was, what, 18 years old? I was asking my dad, fuck's going on? People in Greece are running to bitcoin because their bank account is frozen. And he was like, dude, think about it. If you had to get your money fast out of the country or like, how else would you do it? So, you know, gold going up over the last year, year and a half is very likely due to China. China's not capital flighting. It's the opposite. As a country, they're remonetizing themselves on a hard money. This is capital flight. This is people in the middle of war that are trying to like, secure their assets and get it out. That's my best guess. At the end of the day, people can say what they want about bitcoin. Nothing else can go in your brain. Nothing else can teleport over a communications channel like the Internet. That's one of my favorite satoshi quotes ever. He said, imagine an asset like gold that could teleport over something like the Internet. That's the king during capital flight. So that's my best guess, but I could be wrong. Save the comments. Like, dude, you tried to predict the future and you were wrong. Yeah, no shit, idiot. Okay, next question. Your thoughts on what the Federal Reserve will do this year. P.S. i got Arizona beating Duke in the finals with an OT win. 93. 91. Well, just for that reason alone, I'm not answering your stupid fucking question. I'm just kidding. I'm a die hard Duke fan. Die hard, Die hard. As a kid, when Duke got knocked out of the tournament, I used to cry and I, I buy a white pack of T shirts and I would write on the T shirts and Sharpie, like, please, no crap about Duke. Like, I would write a message about Duke, go to school, say, no one talked to me about Duke. Okay, so we're the number one overall seed. Best team in the country by far. What did you expect? Down two starters. Down two starters. Still blowing teams out. Still winning our conference tournament, by the way. Nobody had a tougher schedule in the country than Duke. We're running from no smoke. We want all the smoke. Down two starters. We want all the smoke. Anyways, what did you ask me? I hope Arizona gets knocked down the first round. Your thoughts on what the Federal Reserve will do this year? Okay, let's be more serious. What the Federal Reserve will do this year. I don't know if it's this year. I think they got to do yield curve control. And so just for everyone at home, what's yield curve control? It's where. Listen, the U.S. how. How does the U.S. get lent money? The U.S. gets lent money via the bonds. They sell these bonds. And so when bond yields go up because demand for bonds go down, that's a very fancy, complicated way of saying the demand to lend to the United States is going down. No one wants to lend to the United States anymore. If no one's lending to the United States anymore, who's the lender of last resort? The Fed. They will print the money to buy the bonds. That's yield curve control. And it's called yield curve control because you're capping the yields. Put it to you guys this way. If the U.S. yields right now for the 10 year, like 4 1/2 percent, I actually don't know what they are today. Let's just, let's call it 4 and a half percent. Let's say no one wants to lend to the US at 4 and a half percent because the amount of inflation that's coming, oil's now $100 a barrel, gold's $5,000 an ounce. I'm not lending to you at 4 and a half percent I'm gonna need. Then the market goes to 5%. No. No bid. 5 and a half, no bid. 6%, no bid. 10%, no bidding. Guys, listen. The US can't afford that, so those higher numbers aren't an option. Back when Janet Yellen was the treasury secretary, anytime the 10 years sniffed 5%, she printed a ton of fucking money. And so the point is, the US can only afford so much, but the world is demanding what they deem reasonable given inflation and what they're seeing with commodities all over the world. So if the US can't afford more than 5%, but the world's not lending at anything less than 5%, then the Fed has to print the money to lend to the US and that's called yield curve control. And that's my expectation. For the very simple reason that I don't think there's enough money out there that's stupid enough to be buying U.S. bonds. Nobody wants those pieces of trash. I've been saying that for years. And now we're right. Who the fuck wants to lend to the United States right now? Nobody. So I think yield curve control. Will it be this year? Maybe. We'll see. When. When's the new guy start? May, Jack, can you please do an easy to understand episode on the properties of bitcoin versus the properties of shitcoins? Clearly laid out so I can use it to convince my buddies. Yes, I will. But does that. Or I will make. I'll do a section in some future episode. But does that mean I also answer it right now? I'll do it later. I'll do it at some future episode and hold me to that. We'll do a bitcoin versus shitcoin section where we'll have assets and you can clip it and send it to your buddies. Yes. Question. Which metrics would you look at to track bitcoin adoption? I love this question. The price. That's it. Let me tell you guys something. People that say, you know, you know the bitcoiner that says shit like I'm not in it for the price. I don't care about the price. I'm in it for the adoption. Hey, idiot. The price is adoption. What does the price tell us? The price tells us how much of the world is using bitcoin as money. I did a rant about this last episode. Money is very simply the thing you acquire, not to consume. You don't eat the money, you don't drive the money. You don't live in the money. You acquire the thing to save it and then you later exchange it. I also saw idiots morons that say, no, Jack, money's a medium of exchange. Yeah, you idiot. The thing that you acquire to save and then later exchange for the things you need is also your medium of exchange. You can, moron. So that's all money is. It's just the thing that you acquire. Like this water bottle. I acquired this water to consume it, to drink it, not to save it. The bitcoins that I acquire, I'm acquiring to save and then later exchange for the things I need. I need to. I'm gonna get married soon. I need to get a wedding, I need to get a house. I need to get a plane to New York. Right? Okay, very simply put, now the price, what the price tells us is how much of the world is using bitcoin as money. Because some of the world uses dollars as money. Some of the world uses real estate as money. Some of the world is using equities as money. The price is the core KPI for Bitcoin. If Bitcoin grows to be 100 trillion dollar market, that means bitcoin is getting more adopted as a money. People are saving and exchanging in it. And people say, no, they're not. I'm not buying my pizza directly with bitcoin. Yeah, but you're using a credit card to get the pizza and then you're paying your credit card bill with strike with Bitcoin. Like these are rounding errors at the user experience level and we will get them right over time. What I'm saying is how much of the world's time and energy is being saved and exchanged in bitcoin. And right now the answer is about 1.5 trillion. If that grows to 5 trillion, that's to me what matters. How much of the world's cash, balance, time and energy, excess productivity is in bitcoin. So it's not the only thing that matters. But it kills me when people say, I'm not worried about the price. It's like, dude, stop being a hardo, stop. Like, these people think they're hard. They're like, yeah, I'm morally above you. You're shallow. You care about the price. I'm too cool to care about the price. Shut the fuck up. What are you talking about? Do you understand that we're working on money? The price is the only thing that matters. Arguably, if there was one thing that mattered, it'd be the price. You can't work on money and not care about the price. Anyways, found found that question to be an excuse on what to rant about. Dylan's messaging me things that I don't understand. Deal with it later. Question, Dylan, do you think bitcoin adoption is driven by better technology or by collapsing trust in the current system? I think it's both. So what I've said is Bitcoin is some combination of technology plus fiat liquidity and fiat liquidity. What I mean by that is them printing more money. But that's another fancier way of saying the collapse of the existing system. So I would say bitcoin is some combination of technology plus the existing system collapsing and they kind of take turns at which one's driving Bitcoin more economically. The current time. I would say in this current moment, it's about the collapse of the system. I mean, we're literally living through the craziest timeline right now. But there have been times in the past and there will be times in the future where Bitcoin's technology has major breakthroughs and global payments or global trade settlement. I mean, there's all sorts of things that bitcoins technology will enable. But at the end of the day on net, Bitcoin is some combination. Like when I think about the bitcoin price, the bitcoin price is very simply some combination of the technology plus the collapse of the existing system plus fiat liquidity. And I would say right now we're in a fiat liquidity era where there's no, there's no like lightning network feature that's going to do more for the bitcoin price than yield curve control. You know what I mean? I don't mean that super literally, but just directionally, that's. I feel like that's the era we're in question, Jack, how does Bitcoin avoid being fractionally reserved if users aren't cold storing and transacting on the base layer? I think it's critical that users can and do transact on the base layer and hold their own keys. So I mean, you know, people talk about proof of reserves all the time. The only real proof of reserves is withdrawing your Bitcoin and holding it. You know, there are ways that you can improve on transparency and, you know, earn more trust, but at the end of the day, that's the only way is that if the entire bitcoin supply was on coinbase, there is no true and honest way for us to prevent fractional reserving. Now, thankfully, the way Satoshi distributed Bitcoin was to the people via proof of work. And so the bitcoin supply is very fairly distributed. Like there isn't 80% on Coinbase. The top holder, Michael Saylor, doesn't own 40% of the Bitcoin supply. These numbers are very small, especially when compared to an asset like gold. So we're in a really good spot. But if over time nobody holds their own keys, then yeah, I mean it's incredibly important. And these are things like the block size wars was to make sure everyone could run a node. It's incredibly important that at the very least everyone has the option. That's what holds businesses accountable. That's what will hold governments accountable. That's what is that at any point I can withdraw. And over time you see a maturing like after ftx, how many people are willing to just trust institutions with their shit? Less than before. And increasingly, the cool thing about free markets is they punish misallocation of capital. When people fuck up, there are consequences. There are not just bailouts. So you trusted Sam Bankman, Fried. You didn't learn how to self custody. You, you didn't take precautions on what institutions to use and whatnot. You have to pay that cost. And so over time it's like a self governing free market system. And it's just definitely important that we don't compromise with things like big blocks where not, well, not everyone can run a node. But not everyone's gonna run a node anyway. That's not the point. The point is that anyone who wants to can. And that always has to be the case. Always. Okay, Strike questions. Not sure how to get questions to the producer. Well, here you are. But when will bitcoin backed loans be in a be available in South Dakota? There may only be five of us looking for them in the whole state, but we need them too. I don't know if we have a timeline for South Dakota, but definitely soon. We're working on it all. We are working on it all. All. Next. Hijack and Dylan. I cannot wait for bitcoin back loans to be available in the uk. Any news? Even if not till later this year, will there be something to look forward to? Again, no timeline, but we're working on it all. I do know that it is a this year thing for the UK. Like I think it might be a Q2 thing. Might be like the next three months. Don't hold me to that, but it might be. Jack, I noticed my business account on strike doesn't have direct deposit option. If I use my account wire info while I'll be able to get money sent there safely yes, you should be able to. Also, if you want to reach out to support for any reason, feel free. By any means, feel free for Strike. When can we expect a high yield savings account? We are working on this right now. I don't want to promise any dates, but it is like it's an active priority internally at the company. We're building it as we speak. Can we get a function to toggle between our personal and business accounts on Strike? I know that that's a frequent request. I don't know when we plan on releasing that, but that I know that it's on the roadmap. Hello from Costa Rica. I have a question for Jack. Did you name Strike in honor of Atlas Shrugged? And also, is the logo a middle finger? That's not entirely why we named Strike. Is the logo a middle finger? No, I'll explain the logo another day. But this is true. If you rotate the logo exactly 69 degrees, it does present as a middle finger. Now, that was on purpose. What basketball players do you respect and attempt to emulate your pickup runs? How would you describe your game? I shoot well from the three. I have a heater. Heater. And I'm quick. I'm small. I joke. If I wasn't 5, 8, 150 pounds, if I was 6, 4, I wouldn't be working on bitcoin. My running joke is Satoshi made me small so that I could work on bitcoin. But I'm very quick and I shoot it well. Defend well. Hey, Jack, can you. Or hey, Dylan, can you ask Jack to give us a yo? He didn't give it in the beginning. Oh. And then? And then we're done. Okay. I'll end it with a yo. And then I got a pack because I got to get to New York, man. The weather, the Midwest and the east is tough. So here's your yo, yo. And with that, I'm out of here. I appreciate you guys. Love you guys. As always. Be careful the news. You read about this conflict in the Middle East. Do your own research, including on myself. I could be wrong. Who knows? But I think there's more to the story. Be productive. Earn more than you're spending. Save. Try and find ways to own property that no one can take from you. My favorite is bitcoin. And stay safe out there. Stay safe out there and give me feedback. As always, I read all the comments. I make sure I incorporate the advice you guys give me. One of the most unique relationships on the Internet and in corporate America has. Has got to be mine with you. Guys. I mean, no one, I would wait to say no one runs companies as big as strike in 21 like I do. And I love it. I love it. Man of the people. I wouldn't have it any other way. So thank you guys for all the support. I'll see you next week if you're in New York. I'll see you tomorrow. And take care. Peace and love.