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Yo. Welcome back to another episode of the Jack Mallers Show. I am your host, Jack, and you are listening to yet another episode of Mail Bag Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, all signal, no noise, no ads. I go live every single Monday at Eastern, 5pm Central, 3pm Pacific, just to speak my mind, which generally consists of bitcoin, macroeconomics and culture. Without further ado, let's get this show on the road. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking to you all at a Bitcoin price of 70,810. That puts Bitcoin's market cap at US$1.42 trillion. Our all time high remains at $126,160. We are 43.9% down from our all time high that was made on October 6, 2025. 168 days ago. The last bitcoin block mined before I hit stream was Bitcoin block height 941,924. You guys are upset with my mic. Hold on. Not a professional podcaster. How does it sound now? Am I louder? Oh, wrong mic input. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Hold on, guys. Hang with me. Here we go now. I should be coming through loud and clear. Boom, boom, I'm back. Your boy is back. As the world is falling apart, we live in the best timeline. The best timeline. Sorry about that. Not a professional podcaster. Guys, for those that don't know, I'm a professional CEO, not a professional podcaster. This show is not for the faint of heart. It's for the brave. It's for the daring. It's for the curious. This is the weirdest corner of the Internet. But you might learn a thing or two. The title of today's show is when the Music Stops. Why Bitcoin is Next. This is one of the craziest times I've ever lived through. I'm 31. That may be old to you. That may be young to you. I don't know. But in my 31 years, this is easily one of the craziest times I can remember. We have a jam packed episode episode for you all today. So without further ado, let's get into it. Breaking news. Okay, so you know, the funny thing about making this show is is every single day where I feel like I finished the slides, you know, so I'll start this, I'll start making the slideshow. I don't know, Friday, Saturday, when I have some time. But this was one of those weeks where every single hour I refreshed the Internet. I was like the Show's outdated. I gotta update my slides. I gotta update my slides. I gotta update my slides. And that was up until about an hour ago. Okay. As of this morning. When I woke up this morning, we had a truth social post from the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. He wrote, I am pleased to report that the United States of America and the country of Iran have had over the last two days very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and punishment total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. Based on the tenure and the tone of these in depth, detailed and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Now, Donald Trump is very savvy. He knows when markets open, he knows when markets close. He's very aware the price of the stock market, the S P500 oil markets, the bond markets. I mean, if you look at his administration, you've got Donald Trump, who calls himself a businessman. Now, the validity, validity, validity, validity, validity of that is to be debated. Um, but Scott Besant is no joke, okay? Scott Besant, very fluent in financial markets. Probably one of the greater hedge fund managers and traders of our time is a Treasury secretary. And then you've got Howard Lutnick, who's the, what is it, business, commerce or something, whatever. These guys understand financial markets. So Trump posts this very intently right before markets open. Markets open, oil goes down, stock market goes up. I think Bitcoin was up 5% on this truth social post. When I tell you guys, within the hour, within the hour, Iran responds. By the way, the fact that I have to use Twitter to check the validity of what my president is saying is nuts. This is absolutely. I mean, I feel like I'm in a video game. I'll, like, get wind of something Trump is saying and not know if it's serious enough or not. So I have to go to Twitter and translate some Iranian post. But sure enough, Iran says the Iranian people demand complete and remorseful punishment of the aggressors. All Iranian officials stand firmly behind their supreme leader and people. Until this goal is achieved, no negotiations have been held with the United States. And fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US And Israel are trapped. Holy moly. You cannot make this up. Trump tries to calm markets, which we'll get into in a second. Tries to calm markets. He doesn't want the bond market to get out of hand. He doesn't want the stock market to crash. He doesn't want the oil market to get out of hand. And Iran comes on twitter.com and calls his bluff. This is spoken by a man in a country that doesn't really seem to be in the mood to negotiate. They further added on Twitter, our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors. All officials stand firmly behind their leader. Israel and America are in a quagmire. This guy does not sound like he wants to negotiate. Doesn't sound like he's up for a deal. Doesn't sound like he feels like he's dispositioned. He doesn't sound like he feels like he's losing a war. Am I right or am I right? And later on in the day, this was a few hours ago, we learned that Iran says the war will continue until all sanctions are lifted and war damages are paid for in full by the United States of America. So unless they get reparations from the US and full sanction relief, they're going to keep the straight of Hermuz closed. And let's just be clear about what's happening here. This meme from Luke says it all. Who's your daddy, Gary? Who's your daddy? Daddy? And it's the financial markets. If I go back, I say, what have I said over the last few weeks, guys? Iran is not going to use nuclear to fight back against the United States. How are they going to fight back? They're going to use markets. When people say, oh this reminds me of the 70s, oh, this reminds me of the 90s. No it doesn't. Because debt to GDP wasn't 125% real interest. Expense was in 130% of receipts. You guys have to, you have to understand what's different this time. You know, because it's very hard to say. You know, no one loves the guy that says this time is different, but this time is different mathematically. Why is this time different? Well, because we have almost $40 trillion of debt. We're coming off the back half of COVID with the highest recorded inflation in US history. And so this fiat regime has reached its dead end, its inevitable dead end. You're either going to have to face some form of hyperinflation and yield curve control or the whole system collapses. But the United States can't perpetually borrow money forever anymore. The bond markets are demanding higher yield. People are not willing to finance wars like this. And Iran and everyone around the world knows this. This is a known weakness. And so the reality of the situation is, who's your daddy? Why did Trump tweet this? Iran's exactly right. Trump was. Trump is trying to calm markets and buy himself some time. Israel comes out and says, I have no idea what Trump's talking about. Iran comes out and says, I have no. This guy's full of shit. This is the craziest timeline I've ever lived through. I have no idea if my country's lying to me or not. I have no idea why we're in this war. I have no, I have no idea about anything. It used to be we're taking out the regime, then it turned to nuclear. I still, I don't, I have no idea what's going on. But I, but I do know one thing, and that's the other thing, too. We're not in the Situation Room. You know, as a CEO, sometimes, like for my companies, I'll try and make a comparison to my businesses. Sometimes there's an incident, you're getting a DDoS attack or something and you're privy to information that the rest of the world isn't. And so you, you know, take a certain feature of your app down or something and everyone gets super upset. But, but they don't understand what's actually going on internally. And, you know, obviously at my businesses at least, we strive for transparency and the relationship that we have with the community and our customers. And so we end up allowing everyone to know as much as we possibly can. But my point is there are sometimes there's, you know, disperse information where executives or internal teams know more than the public, obviously. And so I will say I don't know. I'm not in the Situation Room. I have no idea what Trump and his administration knows that we don't and why this feels like such a pressing threat. Is it really all about ego? Is it really all about. I have no idea. I have no idea. But I'll tell you this, this time is different because we're so indebted. The bond market is so fragile and the US Is so reliant on folks like China. The United States cannot engage in a large scale conflict without China. It. The United States has relied on fiat and the ability to print money out of thin air for decades and decades and decades and decades. And despite warning after warning after warning after warning in every rational, any, anyone with a brain saying, this isn't going to work, this is dangerous, this is destructive, you're hollowing out the Middle Class, you're hollowing out your industrial base. You are pushing your smartest minds to be high frequency arbitrage traders. Instead of developing productive things for the market, real physical things for the market, in order to make it in the United States, you have to go get a university degree and become either a hedge fund manager, high frequency trader, Silicon Valley venture capitalist. That's the system we've designed and created. There's no market to make things with your hands. There's no market to make things of physical value. We print money, we ship it overseas, we import all the things that we actually consume. And you build, you build a world where, how productive are you actually? How productive are your people? How do you engage in a large scale conflict? How do you protect yourself? What happens if Iran says we're going to close the Strait of Hormuz? If you're the strongest military in the world, why don't you open it? So the United States is falling victim to policy decisions made over the decades prior. You don't do proof of work. You print money out of thin air. This is what happens. So let's dig into some of the details of the conflict. So the straight of her moose. This is all that matters. Okay, to make a long story short, this is a very sensitive choke point for the oil market. Obviously, we're all learning that in real time. Now, what's the scoreboard of this war? How do we know who's winning or losing? It's in my opinion, as Luke Grumman has mentioned many times, it's this had the strongest military in the world and could enforce things like the petrodollar and our monetary system and our desires for the world through physical force. Guys, we would be talking about something else on the podcast that. I mean, that's the unfortunate reality here is it doesn't take anything other than just basic common sense to understand what's going on. We can't force them to do what we want them to do. This visual shows that clearly, very clearly, very, very clear. This to me is the scoreboard. And this to me shows that the United States is losing. And I've said this on the show for the last like three or four weeks. I said, man, this conflict doesn't make sense to me. I couldn't believe the US Would be this stupid. I don't see how this ends well, I see how it ends. But Trump is used to taco. He's used his negotiating tactics. He thinks that this is like negotiating a new Trump Tower in Las Vegas. No, this is war. This is about oil and energy markets. There is no taco ing this. It takes two to taco. Iran's not going to say, ah, you got us jokes on us. You just obliterated our regime, killed our family members, bombed innocent civilians. The US we learned, was part of bombing a school. Can you imagine if Iran wiped out and obliterated in elementary school in America? So, no, the joke's not on them. Like I. So I said, I just don't know how this ends cleanly. I don't know how this ends well. I don't understand the strategy. None of this makes any sense to me. I can't believe the US could be this galactically stupid. And lo and behold, it takes two to taco. Trump comes out this morning clearly trying to get a foot out, clearly trying to signal that he's willing to negotiate and Iran tells him to go fuck himself and that he's a liar. Scoreboard. Scoreboard is that the US Military is not able to enforce itself on the Strait of Hormuz. We're clearly behind in drone technology. And so many people in my comments are like, dude, you're not American. Dude, you don't believe in Trump. Dude, you gotta be patient. Okay, fine, sure, okay. It's been four weeks now. It's been four weeks now. Nothing's changed. Look at this chart. Scoreboard. Nothing's changed. Trump comes out, makes a claim. Everyone in the world calls him a big fat liar that's manipulating markets. What do you guys want? You want to wait for the fifth week, the sixth week, the seventh week? I call a spade a spade here. I told you guys a million times. You want to feel good? Don't listen to the show. If you want to feel good, this is where you get the truth. You want to feel good? Go read, I don't know, CNN or whatever. Go. Go find your own political. Go find your political biases somewhere else. I'm telling you guys the truth. So anyways, as we take a deeper look into the oil market itself, it's diverged. So this is Brent Crute diverging from all the other benchmarks. And this is just very clear evidence that the market itself is breaking. And all that matters is physical delivery. And what's really fascinating is the implications that this has on the petrodollar system, which we'll get into in a second. The petrodollar system is that people sell oil for dollars. They take the dollars and they buy U.S. bonds with them. And we've talked about this on the show. The whole fiat system is a Giant Ponzi scheme. Because the US imports real stuff like oil, they print dollars out of thin air to finance it. And then it's effectively implied that people get those dollars and buy bonds, which is lending the money right back to the United States. So United States prints dollars, ships them out, that get lent back to it in the form of treasury bonds, and in return they get a bunch of real stuff and that system is breaking. It's obviously a giant Ponzi scheme. Now, the most fragile part of the Ponzi scheme is everyone else around the world is the one lending to the United States of America. In order for this continue to perpetuate, the United States needs infinite more lenders to it. Reminder, the US runs a 2 trillion dollar annual deficit. That means they're not a productive country on net. The US Is not productive. They consume more than they produce. And so in order to sustain themselves, they need people to continually lend to it. Now, the more debt you pile up and the worse your fiscal position is, the less likely people are willing to lend. If I have a buddy that makes $10 billion a year, I have no problem lending them $5. Here, beers on me. I know you're good for it. I know you'll pay me back. If I have a money that loses, a Buddy that loses $2 trillion a year and that's already $40 trillion in debt, why the fuck would I lend to him? He's not good for it. He's not good for it. And so we're starting to see the petrodollar system come apart. And by the way, the reason that the straight Hormuz and oil and energy markets are very different. Like when I say, I uncle not taco, Trump cannot taco this. He can't be like, aha, gotcha. I'm such a good negotiator. Have you ever been to one of my hotels? This isn't that. Okay, I don't know how, and I can't tell if he's just that galactically stupid or if there's something deeper going on that again, I'm not privy to because I'm not in the Situation Room, but when I tell you guys that oil and energy markets and the geopolitical game of chess that's going on. Yeah, this is not a hotel chain. This is not fake tariff negotiations. Remember when Elon said he was going to doge our country and run it like a startup and fix our fiscal problem? It was like, oh yeah, we can fix decades and decades and decades of printing money out of thin air. And faking productivity just by appointing this egotistical fucking entrepreneur. Dude, like, remember all of that. Yeah, this isn't that. This isn't a joke. This isn't abstract. This isn't pr. This isn't politics. This is real life. Sorry. People are catching strays on the episode. Elon just caught a stray. Elon's a great entrepreneur, but that was absolutely insane. It was insane to ha. To have the ego, to think that you can reverse decades of printing money out of thin air and faking productivity and faking proof of work just by running a tighter ship. So anyways, the point of this slide is. This isn't a joke. And, and I've been saying this for weeks now. I don't know what the United States thinks this is. This is not a joke. China. It's very clear the leverage China has on us. Anytime we do anything they don't like, they just take the rare earths away from us. They take the actual commodities away. We, we don't have the ability to produce rare earths. We don't have the ability to produce anything on our own. We've entirely hollowed out our middle class, the central of America, the, the blue collar, the ability to produce anything. So when you think about countries like China, Russia, Iran, I mean, this is not a joke. This is going to be a large scale conflict that's going to last a very long time. Every time I hear, oh, this conflict's going to end soon. No, it's not. He's lying to you. He's trying to buy time so the markets don't blow him up. Look at this. Thailand's out of fuel. The government's trying to subsidize for as long as they can. But that ad actually ended today. I believe Thailand is completely out of fuel. Like lines at the gas station are like American lines, TSA lines. And this Iran said the Strait of Hormuz situation won't return to its pre war status. This is not a joke. This is not Doge. This is not a hotel chain. You're talking about oil, energy prices, geopolitics, the next monetary order. So when a, when a. I consider Scott Besant to be a really bright guy. This is before he was into politics. And the Treasury Secretary. I think he's a smart guy, I think he's a bright guy. I think he's probably one of the smartest politicians of my time in regards to financial markets, monetary policy, the things that I care about or that I'm interested in. I'll say when Scott, besant does shit like this. It's concerning. Okay, Scott Besant has now unsanctioned Iranian oil and Russian oil. Why would he do that? Well, he's trying to drown the market in more supply to control the prices. By sanctioning oil from the market, you're making it more scarce. All right? Then scarcity is driving prices higher. So one way that they're trying to buy themselves more time again, the United States weakness is not necessarily military. I'm saying the United States military is not nearly as impressive as they advertise or else the straight would be open. I don't what the fuck we we're talking about. It's super simple. It's like, yeah, I have the best basketball team in, in the world. Well, why aren't you winning? Like what? Why aren't you scoring? It's entirely contradictory to the scoreboard, but I wouldn't say that the military is necessarily their weakness. What's their weakness? Their weakness is financial. If the bond market blows up, if the stock market blows up, if the oil market blows up, that's when the US has to bring troops home. Or that's when the US has to print an ungodly amount of money, which they're going to have to anyway. Creates more problems. That's the weakness. So how does Scott Bessant attempt to buy more time unsanctioning Iran and Russia is insane. It's really concerning. I mean this is a bright guy, this is not an idiot. For him to already be stooping to these levels. Concerning. And by the way, it doesn't work. Now on top of all of this, the job market looks terrible. Okay, so if you take non farm payrolls and you exclude health care and social assistance, it's been negative since the COVID boom. And on the right, if you look at U.S. job openings versus the S&P 500, look at the divergence. So another week, another Monday from me saying that I am generally concerned in the position America's in. I'm not saying we're all going to die. I'm not saying you should be frightened. You should lose any sleep again. This is my corner of the Internet. My journal entries. You know, you take them for what they're worth, you could value them. You cannot. I don't give a. I'm worried. I'm worried. Don't know how this conflict. Conflict ends. Well, I don't know how we get ourselves out of this. I'm really worried about, let's say, let's say we do get ourselves out of this. I'M worried about again. I mean, this is the dilemma bitcoiners face. This is everything that we predicted, this is everything we knew was going to happen. We're well positioned for it. So half of me is like, well, I've been stacking sats for almost 15 years. I've built businesses here I am ready for the world to seek out new money and provide services and for bitcoin to reprice against a worthless piece of paper. But the other side of me goes to the grocery store and looks around and these people have no idea what's coming. 0 terrifying. The graphic on the right to me is fascinating because obviously, so you're seeing The S&P 500 diverge from job openings and what's implied there is really fascinating. So I've talked about this concept a lot where to me, being profitable as a company is, is a moral imperative. Okay, what do I mean by that? Well, if money is a reflection of the value you've created, right? So money is your time, energy, effort, labor. When I produce a product and someone gives me money for it, the money represents the value I've created in the marketplace. So being profit, profitable, excuse me, being profitable means that I've created more value than it took me to produce, right? I'm producing more value than I'm consuming. That means on net I'm productive. And you know, that's how the free market governs is that something that isn't profitable isn't sustainable. Eventually you run out of money to be producing something that on net isn't valuable. And in theory, in a totally free market, the only products that are left for all of us to consume are productive. Products are great products. And to me, being profitable is the financial expression of making the world a better place. Because financially you are quite literally producing more than you're consuming. You're giving more value to the market than you're taking from the market. And so not only do I think being profitable is important for shareholder value and because I like having more money than less money, but I think it's morally and ethically the right thing to do because you are quite literally to the penny, technically making the world a better place, at least economically. Now, to see the value of equity in companies go up without jobs has a really strong implication. It means that these companies have an opportunity to, to be producing more value for the market without needing more human capital. Really fascinating. Now, there's probably implications of AI, but just software generally. A company like Meta, like Block, they could produce more value for the marketplace, produce More software without needing more human beings to do so. Now the other thing that I think is very relevant here is that how productive were people before AI can't. So do you guys remember when you'd watch these TikToks or these social media videos where someone would be like day in the life working at Google and they go, they walk in late, they're at the food bar the whole day, they're playing like virtual car games and and then they go home and it was like outrage on the Internet. It's like these people aren't even fucking working. And another thing that you have to ask yourself without humans and that's like the social contract, change is tremendously profound there because what is the known social contract in the United States? Well, as long as I do my homework well enough as a kid, I will be admitted to a prestigious university which to me within itself is absolutely insane. Who, whoever likes Shakespeare more or tortures themselves to do something that they aren't actually enjoying gets a prestigious honor. It's fucking stupid. It's the dumbest thing. But okay, fine, once I get into this prestigious university then I will have the credentials to get a high paying job and that high paying job again. My point is none of this is forcing any of these people to be productive. So you have people that work in big tech, that work at hedge funds and they think they're inclined to the bigger house, they think they're inclined to have more family, to have more vacations, to have more food, they think they deserve a two car garage that's guzzling oil and guzzling energy. Right? They are energy consumers to the max. These people want to take the nicest flights, have the nicest vacations, the nicest cars, the nicest houses, the nicest everything. That's the social contract. Why? Well, they did their Shakespeare homework as a kid, they got admitted to do a prestigious university, they work at Google, that's why. But what if that doesn't imply that you're productive to people because you go to work and you just eat food bars and take TikToks all day. You don't do all. What if the world has to actually change the social contract because we can't just print money out of thin air forever and keep up this facade that the United States is super productive. What if you're not? What if a Claude model can do your job? You then go from the most prestigious Cornell educated hedge fund manager in your high school class to being worthless. You default on your mortgage, you default on your credit card, you Default fault on your car note, then what? I genuinely think that's what we're seeing. Not only jobs, declining potential recession, all these technicalities that you'll read. I think we're seeing a change in the social contract. Who deserves to consume more energy than their neighbor? Who deserves the bigger house? Who deserves the first class flight? Who deserves the car that's guzzling gas every single day just to take their kids to school? Product. The people that are producing the most value for society. I think that's going to change dramatically. And I think in that change in social contract you'll also see a lot of violence. Because the guy that feels like he did everything he was supposed to do to live the life that he feels like he deserves and he feels as if that's taken from him because the social contract is changing right before his eyes. What do you mean? Being an investment banker that's working on Excel spreadsheets all day isn't actually productive? What do you mean? A Claude agent can do what I did. I went to Harvard. Yeah buddy, it doesn't fucking matter. You're making spreadsheets all day like snap out of it. That's not a productive use of human capital and artistry and creativity, you fucking cog. Does that person pick up a weapon? Whose fault is it in their eyes? Do they pick up a weapon? Do they protest? Do they, do they vote in a politician that's going to violate the property rights of other Americans and steal their shit? Are they going to vote in someone that says it's bitcoiners fault, It's Jack's fault. We're going to take all Jack's bitcoin and distribute it evenly to make it all fair. So anyways, long way of saying I think being productive. That the social contract of what it means to be valuable to the market, what it means to be valuable to society, what it means to be healthy, what it means to be righteous, what it means to be moral and ethical and hardworking is all changing. I think we are repricing, we're going back to basics. I've said before a million times, I think we're destined to be governed by mother nature. In a way we are a product of mother nature. In a very fundamental way. We're a product of the universe. And whenever we stray too far away into these abstract realities that we have built ourselves, we where monetary policy is built by humans and social contract is just made up out of thin air by humans, we lose ourselves and we end up really violently, almost like repricing Back to what's real. Real money, hard money, real productivity, real things, real value, real profits. Not judging your company based on revenue. What good is a company that does all the revenue in the world but loses money? Stupid. How was that ever valuable in the first place? Insane.
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How?
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Just because you were. You suffered and put yourself through torture studying Shakespeare when you were 13 years old. And because you work at Google and eat bagels with cream cheese all day. Why does that make you productive? It doesn't. I think the United States is in for a very rude awakening. From everything from energy consumption to military enforcement to bond markets to social contracts. The job markets look bad. The conflict in the Middle east looks bad. The oil prices look bad. The bond market looks bad. It all looks bad. The good news, well, the positive spin in my eyes is that. Tough times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. And I feel as if that's the cycle of life. And I think that that's very applicable to the US over the last hundred years. I think some very hard times on the back half of the Great Depression created tremendously strong men. We cleared out all the debt and all the leverage in our economy. On the back half of the Great Depression, we built the strongest manufacturing base in the world. We came out half standing after the world wars. And you know, there were some great times. The founding fathers of this country, America, what it meant to be American. You see, some of the founding fathers talk about the dangers of things like banking and central banking and destructive currency manipulation. Those were strong men that were born out of hard times. And those strong men created great times for America. Now unfortunately, I think those great times breeded a lot of weak men. Right? Strong times or hard times? Excuse me. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Those good times create weak men, weak leaders, selfish leaders, liars. People are live, lying, self interested, blackmailed by guys like Epstein. Disgusting child rapists, murderers, killers, warmongers, thieves, stealing either outright or via things like inflation. Weak leadership, weak men. No backbone, no morals, no principles, no vision. Unethical scumbag. That's, I mean, that's the leadership I was born into as an American. There's no leader for me like the leaders I look up to are like basketball coaches. There's no leader I look up to that's like. That is a moral, righteous, ethical badass. None. So unfortunately, what happens with weak men, weak men create hard times. And that's what we're in right now. Some hard times. Social contracts are Changing inflation is real in the United States. Currency manipulation and debasement. Everyone's a speculator. Bond markets are fragile. Debt to GDP is 120 plus percent true. Interest expenses well over 100% of receipts. Everything across the board. Bleak. We have this highly levered, indebted financial system that's running full speed into a highly deflationary AI technology that is like head to head. Mano e mano AI is going to win. Terrifying. But hard times create strong men. And it is an opportunity. I believe I'm ranting. I'll go to the next slide in a second. Because the last thing I'll say is some people like, why are you working on bitcoin, man? Like, do you think it's actually going to work? And my answer is, what the fuck else do you want me to do? I'm working on bitcoin because I'm a tough motherfucker. And a lot of strong men are being breeded in these hard times. That's why I'm working on bitcoin. And when I say strong men, I'm not talking about a gladiator on a horse with a shield in a spear. I'm talking about Satoshi Nakamoto. That's a strong man. That man didn't want any award. That man didn't want any recognition. That man didn't want any wealth. That man wanted positive change. That's how great, great times are born. Out of strong men that resisted the urge and the desire for fame, for fortune. And put the betterment of others before him. That's a strong motherfucker. People like Satoshi Nakamoto are only born out of hard times. Only born out of the 2008 financial crisis. So why am I working on bitcoin? What the fuck do you expect me to do? Look around.
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It's our only way out.
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So the glass half full. I wrote this on nostr. I'm lucky to be alive and healthy and building right now. But man, is this a wild timeline concerning timeline. So anyways, we move on. How does an oil shock break our financial system? Well, this visual is meant for you guys to screenshot and share with your friends. The straight arramu's closes like what it's estimated a fifth, a fourth? Some high percentage of global oil is just shut off. The petrodollar system breaks. So all of a sudden oil producers stop recycling the oil for dollars. And those dollars go to treasuries. Those Treasuries are lending to the US So a big source of demand for treasury stops Yields go up, which means the bond prices fall, the collateral and the financial system gets destroyed. People start selling their Treasuries to finance. Like when countries like Thailand are running out of fuel, how do you think they get their country and their people gas? How do you think they get their country and their people food? They're going to sell their collateral, they're going to sell Treasuries, they're going to sell stuff. And inevitably it forces either an utter and complete collapse of the financial system or it forces the Fed to print money. And that's going to bring us into chapter two, which is the plumbing. So Michael Howell, I've referenced him a few times by the way, guys. Jms.jackmallards.com 110i Post, I, I publish all of my slideshows here. I make these from scratch and I publish them on the Internet so that you guys can access them. And every single slide is linked with a source. So I tell you guys, I read a lot of macro research. I'm a customer to Luke Gromen, Michael Howell, Lynn Alden had a piece recently, Arthur Hayes. And so all of my slides will either link to their research, their substack to a tweet I'm quoting. So if you guys do want to get this presentation. Jms.jack mallers.com and then the episode number. So this is episode 110. So Michael Howell highly recommend subscribing to his stuff. I've learned a lot. He has something called the gli, the Global Liquidity Index. And what he's trying to do is estimate global liquidity. And as I've talked about on the show, Bitcoin, for all intents and purposes is, is a reflection of global liquidity. It's priced almost primarily and entirely on the expectation of future fiat. So as liquidity gets tight, Bitcoin tends to sell off, at least for now. You know, obviously as it gets big enough and becomes a viable gold competitor, that will change. But today it's about the size of Tesla. It trades more like liquidity plus technology. It's like a hybrid of tech and, and liquidity. It's like macro technology. And so understanding global liquidity and the trends are really important if you want to understand the general outlook and pulse for Bitcoin. Michael wrote a really terrifying piece actually where he said his Global Liquidity index projects a 28% decline. And he cites oil, the move index, which we'll get into in a second, and the US dollar. But he says it's his global liquidity index is projecting levels that scream financial crisis. So levels that scream Things like 2008, levels that scream things like Covid levels that scream credit crisis. And so a lot of my sentiment is not only coming from myself, but a lot of the folks that I respect. Again, concerned. I don't want to fear monger concerned. Like I'm not like packing my bags and like fleeing to a bunker. Just saying like markets could fall apart. I don't know if this conflict in the Middle east is going to end anytime soon. You just have to change, you know, the social contracts that you are expecting and some of your expectations on a go forward basis. So this is something to, you know, be aware of, is that whatever the US is doing in the Middle east, it is greatly exaggerating what was already a problem, which was global liquidity, the bond market, the marginal lender to the US Government, potential inflation, I mean gold going on the tear that it was implied commodity inflation intensely. So these were all problems, real problems before this conflict. Now this conflict is greatly, greatly exaggerating them. You know, you can see markets chop around for many, many, many quarters until they find an inevitable bottom. And you have to have money printing and some form of stimulus at this point. You know, if this trader Hermuz is closed for another week or two, everything's going to blow up financial markets wise. Excuse me, I can't mince words here on this show given all the context. So anyways, what is the MOVE index? We've talked about it a lot on the show just to remind you guys, the MOVE index, it, it's measuring bond volatility. And so the reason the MOVE index is so sensitive is because right now the marginal lender to the United States is actually levered hedge funds. And so what hedge funds do is called carry trade, basis trade. And so they are doing a tiny, tiny, tiny little arbitrage. But you know, say they're making less than a penny on an arbitrage trade. You're like, well, what's the good in that? What am I supposed to do with less than a penny? I can't even get a piece of gum for that now. Yeah, but what if I can lever it times a billion, then you know, less than a penny times a billion every second all of a sudden turns into a lot of money. But the reason that you're able to do it at such a scale is because of leverage, because you're borrowing capital. Now what is the enemy of leverage? Volatility. Right. And so when the MOVE index gets higher and higher and higher, which measures more and more and more and more bond market volatility. That creates more instability for the bond market because the higher the leverage, or excuse me, the higher the volatility, then the unwinding of the leverage that's supporting, ultimately supporting the bond market. And so when you see the move index go up like this, usually a move index of like 150, 160 is financial crisis and they have to print the money. This happened during Liberation Day. Actually last time the MOVE index got to crisis levels was Liberation Day when the stock market's down 20%. The move index I think hit 168 intraday and we saw Trump entirely taco and reverse his position. Again though my warning is this is not a tariff Liberation Day bluff. This is not a hotel chain. This is not doging America with Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. That's not what this is. We have started a conflict in the Middle east, effectively forcing one of the most sensitive and important energy corridors in the world to shut off that like that's not like, ah, we're just fucking with you guys. Never mind. That's not what this is. So I don't know how this ends, but the move index is now above 100. You know, before the conflict it was below 50. So it has more than doubled and it is well on its way back to crisis levels. Let's take a look at the bond markets in the West. The UK two year yield was up another 16 basis points. This was last week. It's up 49 basis points in two day trading, its biggest jump since September of 2022. Mind you, that was FTX blow up right before Silicon Valley blew up. The UK two year yields are up over 100 basis points, meaning over 1% in the last two weeks. The Western bond markets are in trouble. They're in trouble. Who is lending to these people? And by the way, everyone that has lent to them that owns these bonds needs to sell these bonds because energy markets are a mess. If you need to finance food, oil, energy, you sell your Treasuries so that you can eat, so that you can stay warm. I mean this is just basic common sense. The more the strait gets closed, we are accelerating towards some very, very, very, very serious crisis credit spreads. The bond market is getting twitchy over the past 20 years when credit spreads blew out. But The S&P 500 was even beyond a pullback yet it was 3 for 3 in bear markets. So now credit spreads are also telling us in plain English that there's A crisis of brewing. The stock market is on its way way lower, very likely, especially when you pair it with the oil market, with the energy market, with the conflict in the Middle East. All of this is spelling out that markets are twitchy, global liquidity is going to come down. There is the potential for a very, very, very serious credit crisis. So now if there is a credit crisis, which I'll get to in a second, what's going to happen? They're going to print a fuck ton of money. And so my message to you guys, again, don't freak out, don't get all doomsday. I'm not trying to fear monger, I'm trying to be honest. You know, I think that society lacks candid, transparent conversation, open dialogue. So I'm just trying to be a different form of media that hopefully is relatable and educational in a very piercing and honest way. But I'm not trying to scare you. What will happen is there'll be a lack of liquidity that supports this highly leveraged system. There'll be some form of a crisis and the financial authorities will bail it all out and then everything's going to go up a ton at the expense of the fiat currency going down a lot. So what is my advice? Do not hold financial assets at other institutions. You do not want to have your life savings in the bank that goes down and needs a bailout. You do not want to, you know, hold your assets at the ftx. If there's a credit crisis and there's run on the bank for all the institutions, make sure that you hold physical value like Bitcoin. And if you can and you feel confident enough, hold it self sovereignly. Hold your own keys. Not your keys, not your coins. Other things. Do not have non productive debt, okay? Make sure that you aren't over levered in any serious way. Make sure you are earning more than you are consuming. Leave yourselves with net excess cash. You do not want to be in a position where you are reliant on some form of credit to sustain your lifestyle, to meet rent, to meet everyday expenses. That would be a not good situation. And you just need to find a way to survive the other side of it. You do not want to be a victim of it. You want to be a beneficiary of it. Because there will be some incredible opportunities likely to buy the dip. There'll be some incredible opportunities likely for those that are solvent and those that are holding their own keys. And so that's all I'm saying. It's not doomsday they, they're going to print the money anyway. I guess this is just how it's going to happen. At least that's my prediction. So onto the money printing. The Fed take this all with a grain of salt because again, in order for me to understand what's the truth or not nowadays, it's an extreme amount of work. I can't just like, read what the President of the United States is saying and assume it to be honest anymore, unfortunately. So I couldn't help but notice this. This morning, the Fed's Moran says that they have revised plans and now expect to make four rate cuts down from previous projections. Pulled back to pencil in four rate cuts. So it's confusing to me what the Fed's plan is. Bond markets were actually implying a Fed hike because of the oil market and energy prices. Can you imagine if the new Fed chair gets in, if Warsh gets in, and after Trump's been kicking and screaming for rates to get cut, he hikes? That would be absolutely hilarious. But the point is, the Fed, very slowly but very surely, actually, not so slowly, very quietly, very unassumingly, they've been expanding their balance sheet. So on an annualized basis. So this is from Lyn's latest newsletter. Currently, the balance sheet is up $120 billion from its low point in early December, which would be $420 billion annually if sustained at this rate all year. Okay. And so the point is, the Fed, through its repurchase program, has slowly but surely, quietly, unassumingly been expanding its balance sheet. At, at some point, the Fed is going to have to participate in a bigger way. And there's different, you know, like Larry Leopard has said, there's going to be a massive print. It's going to be like flipping a switch. This is going to be a bigger print than Covid and 2008 combined. You know, I know Luke Roman feels similarly, and Lynn is on the opposite side of the spectrum. She thinks it'll be consistent and more gradual. There will be no, like, oh my gosh moment. The Fed will just like, methodically pad the balance sheet to higher and higher and higher levels to manage any form of credit crisis. Now, obviously a conflict in the Middle east, that's, that's the wild card. If this can. I'm telling you guys now, if the straight remains closed for one to two more weeks, we will probably see fireworks. And I think that's what Trump is worried about. I think that's why he posted that this morning. It is pretty crazy to see everyone call him The United States President a big fat liar, but we'll see. But the US Fed working its way up to $420 billion of annual liquidity already is not anything to ignore. So let's talk about the end game quickly, the Petra gold thesis. So the thesis, I don't know if this caught you, I should have put this headline in here, but Iran asked for oil settlement in Chinese yuan, which is fascinating. Now why would they do that? Well, no one has the yuan. Why? Well, why does everyone have dollars? Because we run deficits, remember? That's the role of the world reserve currency. You run deficits, meaning you print more dollars than you import stuff so that there's an excess amount of dollars that gets shipped out into the world. The job of the world reserve currency issuer is to just print money and ship it out. How else would you distribute the money? How else would people get dollars? When you are the world reserve currency, there's a default demand for your currency. In order to meet that demand, you have to run a deficit. Right? So who's running a deficit with China? Newsflash, Nobody. They're the most productive country in the history of mankind. They're running trillion dollar trade surpluses annually. Crazy. They're like the world's factory. It's insane. And so no one has the Chinese one. Think about that for a second. Think about the chess that's being played. Nobody has the Chinese currency. So when Iran's saying you need to give us the Chinese currency in order to get oil, why are they saying that? Well, the only way, the only real practical way to get the Chinese currency is in exchange for gold. It's in exchange for gold because no one's running a deficit against China or excuse me, a surplus. Right. China's not running in a deficit against any country, which would mean they're printing more yuan than. Right, they're importing. So. So it's a de facto way of going from petrodollar to petro gold. Fascinating. Chess. Fascinating chess being played, rotating out of dollar and treasuries and into a system that's backed by hard money. And so as you see, I think the gold oil ratio will be something to watch. And just a reminder this from the Wall street journal recently, US trade deficit shrinks 25% driven by its gold exports. So the second largest non monetary export for the United States last year in 2025 was gold. We know gold's price has been catching a huge bid over the last 18 months and that's driven by China. And when I Read, oh, Iran's willing to accept oil trade with some selective countries that it considers allies. So not the US obviously, but you need to give it Chinese currency. And I was like, what? Who has Chinese currency? No one has Chinese currency. How would they get Chinese currency? And you realize, oh, the way the flow of funds, as they say in fintech world, the flow of funds would be your local currency. You have to buy gold with it. And then the gold gets shipped out east and they'll give you little paper Chinese notes in return. Again, all of the world's gold is going east. All of it. Again, slightly terrifying me. What's actually in Fort Knox? Are we ever going to know? Is that gold still there? Because China and everyone out east has been very slowly and tactically engineering markets to get physical gold out of the west and East. So something to keep an eye on. Really fascinating chess being played. And these charts, again, are just more proof. So the east is buying everything. Gold flowing Saudi Arabia, Chinese exports to the Gulf is going parabolic. So keep in mind, guys, throughout the course of this show over the last six months, China's been engineering physical gold. So there's a squeeze on commodity markets because China is effectively saying what's going to matter is actual physical commodity. These paper claims that live on the CME are worthless. You can't build AI infrastructure with a futures contract. You need the physical metal, you need the physical silver. And so China's been rotating to a gold standard, debasing their own currency against gold and trying to get physical gold out east. And I remember Elon said, hey, let's check on Fort Knox while we're at it. And Trump said, sounds like a good idea. And we never heard about peep. I'm concerned about that too. How much gold is actually here? I don't know. I don't know. And then more on the fiscal math. I hinted at this earlier. So interest expense is 130% of receipts. And if tariffs disappear, which we know the court ruled, then that jumps to 140%. So I know that this is small font here, let me zoom in. And this is from Luke, so I'll read it verbatim. The US fiscal position in February deteriorated notably with true interest expense. True interest expense is Social Security, health net interest, Medicare and VA totaling $408 billion versus only $313 billion of receipts. So just to try and simplify this for the common man out there, what this is saying is our interest expense, the amount of money that we're paying, what Luke calls true interest Expense. So on interest that is 408 billion. And the amount of revenue we're bringing in which the US calls receipts like tax receipts is only 313 billion. So our true interest expense alone is already way more than our revenue and that's not factoring in the other expenses that we have. So when your true interest expense is more than the revenue you're generating, you're in some serious fucking trouble. So I continue totaling 408 billion versus 313 billion of receipts. So true interest expense was 130% of receipts. And if 80% of tariffs went away due to the Supreme Court ruling, true interest expense would be at 140% of receipts, which is a big problem. I continue fiscal year to date through February, true interest expense is 104% of receipts. And if 80% of tariffs went away, true interest expense would be 110% of our receipts. Again, big problem. Crisis levels before the likely recession due to an energy shock. So just to give you guys an insight on to the math again, and that's February's numbers. We're talking like pre conflict in the Middle East. So don't get it twisted when these politicians are saying, oh this is short term pain, we just need to make sure Iran doesn't have nuclear capabilities. The pain was here before Iran. Like before Iran is like two more weeks of this and I don't know what's going to happen. Something really drastic and dramatic is going to happen. And then lastly, this website is just crazy. I linked it here in my tool so if you guys wanted to go check it out. But this is a live dashboard that tries to track what U.S. jobs are exposed to being disrupted by AI. It's a crazy dashboard, but it claims that there's 143 million U.S. jobs that are exposed to being disrupted by AI. Mind you, what, the U.S. population is so pretty nuts. The point is, you take our fiscal position, you take the fact that we're now a self induced energy shock with the conflict in the Middle east, and then you take on the fact that AI is a deflationary technology force that's going head first into a highly leveraged system. And when I say highly leveraged system, what I'm saying is everyone you know has a mortgage, has a car note, has a credit card. They're living their life on leverage. And if people start defaulting on these loans, then the whole system goes kapoof. Like JP Morgan stock goes to zero if delinquencies start to go up. Who wants to own equity of someone that's left lent out a ton of money to finance the American lifestyle. And the Americans can't pay it back anymore because a new Claude model took their job. So all of that combined again. To me, it's a matter of when, not if, they print the money. And if the straight of her moose continues to stay closed for, I don't know, a week, two more weeks. If we get into the middle of April and that thing's still closed, which I have no reason to believe, it's not going to stay closed. Yikes. Yikes. The last thing I'll end it with before we get into grab my gears is just, interestingly, I wanted to give a little bit of context here. So very interestingly, bitcoin has outperformed gold tremendously since the beginning of the conflict in the middle east. Beginning. Really interesting. Really interesting. I continue to believe bitcoin's just too small to be the world's store of value at the sovereign level. I said earlier in the introduction, bitcoin's market cap is $1.4 trillion. China's trade surplus on an annual basis is about that size. So it can't be yet. The asset that these sovereigns pile into, it's just a little small. It'll get there. It's just. It's actually one of the cool things about bitcoin is that it allows the little man an advantage because the larger folks, like when I first got into bitcoin, it was too small for anyone like Saylor and strategy to be doing what they were doing, right? So over time, it scales and grows into different use cases. So it's still too small to be competing at a sovereign level with gold. But it is interesting that since the conflict started, it's been the de facto safe haven. And I think it's very telling because of the properties of the money. If I was in the Middle east or I was in some conflict area and I needed to get money and take it with me, or I needed to get money out, I would not have gold. How the would I travel with a bunch of gold? How would I keep a bunch of gold safe? Again, I can take bitcoin. I could put it on a USB stick. I could put it in my backpack. Nobody knows I have it. That's the other thing.
- [64:40]
B
It's hard to.
- [64:41]
A
It's hard to hide that you own a ton of gold. You know, people come over to your house, people see your vault. I mean, you'd have to register with a bank if you wanted to store it with them with Bitcoin, I could put it on a USB stick. Nobody knows how much money I have. Nobody knows that I even have it on me. I could put, I could put 12 words in my brain, memorize it. So I find it interesting when people say, oh, gold's the de facto safe haven.
- [65:06]
B
Gold.
- [65:06]
A
Gold is what China is using to rotate out of the US dollar and bonds and the current, you know, 1971 fiat system and into something else that they're just using. But when there's real conflict and real danger, bitcoin seems to be the better money because it has better properties. It's more divisible, it's easily transportable, it's easy to store. It's. It's weightless. I don't have to lug it around in a truck. It's invisible. Nobody knows that I have it on me. It's better. It's better at being money at the end of the day. And the other thing that I will say is, guys, if you zoom out long enough, Bitcoin's been chopping around for like almost two years now. Just been around this, you know, 70 to 100 to 60 to 80. When this thing does, when they print the money and this thing moves, this thing is going to rip. It's been, it's been built like it. Bitcoin's been impressing me through all of the, like, the US President comes out and says something, the world's calling him a big fat liar. There's more conflict, there's more war threats. Israel doesn't seem to give a fuck about what anyone's saying. They're just bombing the out of Iran no matter what. Bitcoin's hanging in there at 70. It's hanging the in there since the conflict started. It's greatly outperformed the stock market. It's greatly outperformed gold. Really impressive. Really impressive. And as someone that works on the protocol, builds companies, I don't care for the near term price action. I don't give a. In fact, the, the near term. With bitcoin going down, it's great opportunity for me to buy dips for my companies to buy dips. So I pay it little to no mind. It's the long term. Does bitcoin have the properties that make it the best money? If not, I'm going to work on something else. And this is super inspiring because it just does. If I have to get capital out, if I have to hide the fact that I have capital, if I need privacy, if I need mobility, like, I mean, bitcoin there's just nothing better. There really is nothing better. Okay with that, everyone's favorite. Oh, I didn't even remember I have this slide. Oh, this is just what I think is going to happen. It's my prediction. Schrader Hermu's closed, global liquidity is going to cause a crisis and they're going to print money. And I, I would say, you know, before all of this Iran stuff was like, ah, it could be, could be a month, could be six months, could be nine months. I don't really know when credit is going to become such a problem with this crisis. If the straight doesn't open in one to two weeks, I don't know, Latest May, that's my prediction. I'm wrong all the time. Take it for what it's worth. All right, let me get some water. Time for grind my gears. You guys like the Vegas one? Except the people in Las Vegas so sensitive. Like, bro, you're the one to talk. Have you seen Chicago lately? Shut the up. Nobody likes the Strip of Las Vegas. Unless you're fat and like snorting cinnamon. Nobody likes the Strip of Las Vegas. All right, here we go. You know what really grinds my gears? Coinbase and these fake pretend financial freedom platforms. Let me tell you guys something, okay? We're living in an era of currency debasement, right? It doesn't matter where you are, it doesn't matter who you are. Your currency is being engineered to be worth less. And I mean worth less in how much food you can buy, how many vacations you can take, how much housing you get, access to, how many kids you can afford to raise. We're living through currency debasement. When you're living through currency debasement, everyone is a speculator. Whether you know it or not. You're getting paid in something that by the day is worth less stuff. So whether you know it or not, you have to speculate. You have to take your hard earned earnings and invest it into something else
- [69:50]
B
just to get by, just to have
- [69:52]
A
the right to the same amount of
- [69:54]
B
housing, food, vacations, energy, everything that you
- [69:59]
A
were yesterday, you have to speculate. One way to monetize that era is to create a casino. So this tweet from Brian Armstrong. We live in an incredible time where
- [70:12]
B
this is all you need to access
- [70:14]
A
decentralized financial services accessible anywhere in the world. And it's a cell phone.
- [70:19]
B
And the thing is, that's the vision I share as well. As long as you have an Internet
- [70:25]
A
connection or some way to relay messaging digitally, you can have Property rights.
- [70:32]
B
You can have hard money. You can participate in this global market
- [70:36]
A
of labor and effort and value exchange. Bitcoin is the.
- [70:41]
B
Is.
- [70:42]
A
It's the best invention of my lifetime. But this is what Coinbase is. So you go from we live in an incredible time where this is all you need to access decentralized finance to this trade. The madness. Gamble on sports. This is when. When bitcoin maximalists call everyone else a scammer and people go, oh, don't be sad. My impressions during these segments.
- [71:20]
B
Oh, don't be so harsh.
- [71:21]
A
Not everything's a scam. You bitcoin maximalist. You guys are so angry.
- [71:26]
B
This is what the fuck we're talking about. How is this not deceiving?
- [71:31]
A
Scam.
- [71:32]
B
Financial freedom is betting on March Madness. Seriously, Coinbase, I read their. I read their shareholder letter because they just had earnings recently. Coinbase holds $10 billion of fiat on their balance sheet. They own only a billion dollars of bitcoin. Do they even believe in what they
- [71:58]
A
claim to be working on?
- [72:00]
B
This is financial freedom. Sending people push notifications to bet on basketball. This is. And coming off the back of Las Vegas, Coinbase is Las Vegas. Just less cinnamon churro cocktails and more Silicon Valley. These guys have no problem being an affront to everything they claim to stand for. No problem. This is financial freedom. On what planet is this financial freedom? In democratizing access to property rights, Telling people to bet on Michigan IT guys. It drives me nuts and I'm about to.
- [72:39]
A
I'm about to explode. You know, I. Sometimes I watch Back at the Grind, my gear segments, I'm like, man, I got fired up this time. I'll be a little bit more even killed. I just can't help myself. My personality is my personality. I'll die this way. I can't stand this. Because here's the thing.
- [72:53]
B
I think that Coinbase, Robin Hood, Poly Market and DraftKings are all going to look the same in 12 months. They're all going to have crypto equities, prediction markets and sports gambling.
- [73:06]
A
Why?
- [73:07]
B
Because they don't give a about what the they are the casino. As long as everyone's drunk and having
- [73:13]
A
a good time, they make money.
- [73:15]
B
Why doesn't Coinbase hold more Bitcoin on their balance sheet? Why do they hold more fiat than Bitcoin? My guess, I don't know the answer. I'd love to hear a literal answer, but I think the answer. Because literally, if you believe in what you're building and what you're claiming, your money speaks louder than words ever Could. That's the point of money. The money is the time and energy.
- [73:42]
A
Words.
- [73:43]
B
Everyone has words. Words aren't scarce. Words aren't hard to acquire. This is financial freedom. This is bullshit. Let me go to my next slide because you know what else is hilarious? And I won't just pick on Coinbase.
- [74:01]
A
I'll pick on all of them.
- [74:03]
B
You can go look at Robinhood's shareholder letter. So I read. I read all their earnings.
- [74:07]
A
I read the shareholder letter.
- [74:10]
B
And because Robinhood is trying to promote itself as assets under custody, and look at our balances are growing, you can actually engineer how much money Robinhood customers are losing because their deposits are up. So Robinhood guys, check this. Robinhood will say, we grew in our deposits, but our assets under custody is down. How? Because the customers are losing fucking money. That's how. It's statistically proven that over time, when retail gambles, they lose money. So this from James Chanos. It looks like hood customers lost almost 5% in February. Total platform assets dropped $10.2 billion in the month to 314.2 billion. And that includes 5.6 in net deposits. So the implied loss of $15.8 billion was 5%. End of January, total platform, the S P 500 was only down a percent. This is financial freedom. Gamble on sports, punch coins, speculate on the weather, and people get mad at guys like me. Like, yo, don't be so hard.
- [75:18]
A
You could never build anything like what, what Coinbase has built. Don't be so hard on them.
- [75:23]
B
Yo, what type of guy would I be to watch tweets like this and not call, on what planet is this financial freedom? It's not financial freedom. In my best guess of why Coinbase doesn't have a balance sheet of Bitcoin is because they have to be a neutral platform. If Coinbase only held Ethereum, because that's what they actually believed in, then all the Dogecoiners and Solana coiners and shitcoiners and this coiners and that coiners are upset. Coinbase's position is neutrality. They don't have a stance in anything. They don't have a backbone for. I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm calling it how I see it. They claim they want a new financial future, but they own dollars instead of Bitcoin. And this is financial freedom. And here's the other thing. Gambling's fine. Go ahead and gamble like all the. All the people.
- [76:27]
A
All the Coinbase guys are going to
- [76:29]
B
be in my comments or someone's going
- [76:30]
A
to Clip this and tweet it. And Coinbase employees gonna be like, ah, have you seen this kid's hoodies? Loser.
- [76:35]
B
Here's the thing, Coinbase employee, you can gamble.
- [76:39]
A
Be honest about it.
- [76:42]
B
Be honest about it. I'll tell you what I do respect about Vegas. They don't pretend that, that it's financial freedom. No hooker came up to me at Las Vegas and was like, hey sweetie, you want to know how much I am for a good time? It's financial freedom. No hooker said that. They know that they are scum of the earth. Filth, degenerate, obesity, gambling. That's what Vegas is and they know
- [77:10]
A
it and they're proud of it.
- [77:11]
B
They don't lie to you about it. The problem that I have is, is just, just admit it. If Coinbase said we are a Silicon Valley casino, we've taken Las Vegas and we've digitized it, I'd have 10 times the respect. 10 times. Because I, I personally, I talk about this all the time. I will not build a product that
- [77:34]
A
I don't use myself.
- [77:36]
B
I am a customer of what I build. I would never use all these degenerate options and futures and prediction this. You just lose money. It's the same reason that when I go to Vegas, I don't really gamble. I don't play slot machines. What the fuck do I look like? You crazy? So guess what? I don't sell slot machines to other people. I find that highly unethical. I find that gross. I find that scummy. So when people say all these bitcoin maxis are douchebags, that makes me a douchebag for saying, can you be a little bit more honest with your customers? That they're all losing money month over month. All you have to do is track the earnings calls to realize holy Robinhood, customers are getting murdered. Is that is is easy access to speculating your your wage away. Is that financial freedom? Why don't we just call it. Because that's a thing. Nobody would deposit all of their paycheck into Vegas and just go gamble all day every day. No sane person was Robin Hood have 25 million daily active users. Like that level of scale of slot machining, that's what we're experiencing. You want to, you want to sell gambling? Sell gambling. That's fine. Be honest about it. On what planet is that financial freedom? Gambling on March Madness. Oh, and by the way, this screenshot
- [79:17]
A
here, look at the middle here.
- [79:18]
B
So on the far left, Madness is in full swing. Howard just won their first ever tournament.
- [79:22]
A
Game on Tuesday, but are now facing
- [79:24]
B
a 1% chance to beat man Michigan. The tweet below it goes, Coinbase Financial Markets is registered futures commissions merchant with the CFTC
- [79:36]
A
guys,
- [79:41]
B
that's the commodity. Coinbase spends all their energy lobbying in Washington D.C. to be regulated by the CFTC to avoid proper regulate. So they're claiming that this is not gambling because they're regulated by the cftc. So get this, this financial freedom platform that's supposed to embrace and embody bitcoin actually owns 10 billion of US dollars
- [80:06]
A
and $1 billion of bitcoin.
- [80:08]
B
Like I said, I would never. You guys know I don't own any fiat like practice what you preach. Be honest, be transparent, be one with the mission. What the is this? You guys claim to believe in something, you don't actually own it. You guys claim financial freedom and you are out promoting gambling and then you spend all your time in Washington D.C. campaigning to be regulated by the CFTC. Just to say that this isn't technically gambling. And I'm an for calling that out. Is this not absolutely insane to anybody else? Of course this is gambling. What are we talking about?
- [80:49]
A
Because it's technically.
- [80:50]
B
Because they lobbied in Washington D.C. to be regulated by the CFTC.
- [80:54]
A
It's not actually gambling. It's not actually a security.
- [80:56]
B
What the are we talk like, is this where society's gotten to.
- [81:00]
A
I'm like, well, I can't, I can't actually speak my mind about Coinbase because although you can bet on March Madness and degenerately experience Vegas from the palm of your hand, I mean they are regulated by the cftc.
- [81:13]
B
What the, that's the world you guys want to live in.
- [81:19]
A
I don't know, man. And I, I already know all the that's gonna like this is gonna get clipped. Go on Twitter. I'm gonna get blasted. Whatever, man. I, I, I stand for what I believe in. And when I'm wrong, always the first one to put my hand up. I have no problem admitting I'm wrong. It's the, it's, this is not financial freedom.
- [81:44]
B
This is not property rights.
- [81:46]
A
This is nothing to do with Bitcoin.
- [81:48]
B
All these platforms are going to look the same.
- [81:50]
A
The difference between Robinhood and Coinbase and
- [81:52]
B
Polymark and all these bet on sports,
- [81:54]
A
bet on the weather, bet on coins, bet on penny stocks.
- [81:58]
B
That's not financial freedom.
- [82:00]
A
That's not a new monetary system.
- [82:02]
B
What is the difference? Let me ask you guys a question.
- [82:05]
A
Do you think that Coinbase is closer to the Vegas Strip or to Strike?
- [82:10]
B
Because you let them tell It.
- [82:12]
A
They're a bitcoin company.
- [82:15]
B
What if Strike had less than 10%
- [82:19]
A
of its balance sheet invested in bitcoin, I would want someone to hit me over the head with a baseball bat.
- [82:28]
B
What do you mean? We believe in what we're doing. In my opinion, this is closer to
- [82:37]
A
the Vegas strip that I just ragged on last week.
- [82:42]
B
But the difference is Vegas was honest about it.
- [82:45]
A
They're like, hey, welcome.
- [82:47]
B
Snort cinnamon churros up your nose, and over there are hookers. Over there, sports gambling. And right here's a slot machine. Either way, you're gonna feel horrible, you're
- [82:56]
A
gonna get sick, you're gonna lose money,
- [82:58]
B
but that's who we are. At least they're honest.
- [83:13]
A
It's man.
- [83:14]
B
And the problem is all these.
- [83:19]
A
All the people ask, like, what's the hardest part of my job? It's being associated with the coins and all. All this stuff. That's because, yeah, we move on. That's my problem. That's what grinds my gears now. Now I'm preparing for the war on Twitter. When that gets clipped. Strike, I love. So every Monday now, we tweet what we launched the week prior. I love this. Do you guys remember the UPS commercials? Like, what was it? What would. What does brown do for you? Or what has brown done for you? Or something like that? I love that. Like, what has your bitcoin exchange done for you lately? Because one of the things I'm most proud of at Strike is we ship products nonstop. We are a machine that just gets stronger with time and with feedback and with learnings and constantly engaging with customers. Constantly engaging with you guys, whether it's on Reddit or on Twitter, Twitter or here on the show. And we build and we build and we build and we build. One of our greatest products is the velocity of the team. We have the licenses and the technology and everything required to distribute anything you want when it comes to bitcoin. And so, you know, Strike can serve any bitcoin product at this point, and inevitably, we'll have every bitcoin product ever. It's just a matter of how we get there. What should we be build next? And so every every Monday, I'm going to walk you guys through what we built last week. You can follow us on Twitter and you can see it there. But I love this tagline. What has your bitcoin company or your bitcoin exchange or your bitcoin app done for you lately? Because pound for pound, I think Strike ships the most. So I read March has been an incredible month. For us, last week alone, we expanded our bitcoin line of credit product for individuals in about half the United States. You can go on our website and see if your state is in there. But I know we started with two states and I told you guys I just wanted to make sure things go well. We're going to continue to test. We're not going to go full 0 to 100 like we would with other products. So Big Leap expanded it a lot. A lot of you guys opened a ton of lines of credit, which a line of credit by the way, is like a HELOC for your bitcoin only, only get charged for the capital that you actually use. It's not like a free fixed term loan. There's no due date. Really, really great product. So check that. If you guys want to see where it's available, you can go on our website and check it. Term loan minimums so Utah, we drop the minimum from 74k to 10k for everyone in Utah and in Maine we dropped from 250k to 74k. This is just again about regulations. The more licenses we get, the more comfortable we get with regulators for people that don't know. Our products are regulated both at the federal level, so the entire country. And then at the state level we're regulated by both. And so we do have to go state by state and work with regulators. Sometimes some state requires multiple licenses or certain restrictions. And so the minimums are almost always not imposed by us but by our regulators. And so when you see us drop these minimums, it means we worked actively with a specific state to drop the minimums and expand our product. And then the last one is business loan minimums. So in most US states, almost all we drop the minimum down to 5k. So if you're a business and you want a loan, you can get it as low as five thousand dollar loan. So we continue to ship and this was just the top three of we ship about, I don't know, half a dozen to a dozen things a week, at least one a day. Really exciting. So what has your bitcoin company done for you lately that strikes new tagline? I love it. Okay, 21, I wanted to just spend a little bit of time here on this one because you know, sometimes I get questions about 21 online and I can never tell if they're genuine or if people are just upset with me. And again, like I said, both are valid. I'm not going to argue against either intent. But obviously if they're genuine and people don't Know the answer. I would love to provide the answer. So I think one of the things that people ask me all the time is why aren't you buying bitcoin? Why haven't you bought bitcoin? Hey, here's an idea. Buy bitcoin. And obviously that's not a new idea, buying bitcoin. If I could just buy bitcoin all day, every day and it made sense and we would. So I want to answer the question why we aren't buying loads and loads and loads of bitcoin. And ultimately this comes down to who's funding our bitcoin conviction at 21 versus other bitcoin treasury companies, for example. And here's my normal disclaimer before I get into it. I'm not saying any bitcoin company or bitcoin treasury strategy. I'm not saying any of it's bad. They're different than what we want to do. I, I think 21 is aiming to be fairly unique. We'll see how that goes. As I said, we're either gonna build a really valuable company or we're not. Proof of work. Time will tell. Very. I'm very confident, but I'm biased. Obviously, you guys know that. But we're very different in our intent than other businesses. And let me explain why. So I pull up the screenshot. Let me zoom in here. So the reason I have this screenshot displayed is because do you guys see the little number on the right of each row here that is in gray and is bracketed? That is what the industry calls the mnav. So what is the company's market cap relative to the amount of the value of the bitcoin on the balance sheet? So Strategies market cap is a little bit lower than the bitcoin on their balance sheet. Okay, now we see 21. So strategies trading at point at 93% of the Bitcoin on their balance sheet. So they're trading at less. 21 is at 80% where other strive 68%. Okay, now why is 21 not. Why don't you just buy bitcoin? Why don't you just buy bitcoin? That's the questions we get. Well, my response to you would be, how do you want me to buy the bitcoin? With what? And if what you want 21 to do is what other bitcoin treasury companies are doing, which I'm saying is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just different than our approach. Sometimes companies are selling shares to buy the bitcoin. That's how they're Raising the cash to buy the bitcoin. Obviously no one's going to give you bitcoin in exchange for nothing. So you got to come up with cash somehow. How are they getting the cash? They're selling shares, but they're selling shares sometimes under the value of the bitcoin on the balance sheet. And that is dilutive. And so the reason that we at 21 aren't doing it primarily is because we're trading at 80% of our balance sheet. So I could sell a share, but I'm only getting the way to think about it without spending too much time here is I'd get 80 cents for every dollar I sold. Who wants that deal? I don't want 80. I don't want to be selling dollars for 80 cents. Doesn't make any sense. That would be bad business in our opinion. Okay, Now I think the ultimate question that for Those interested in 21 should conceptualize is who's funding our bitcoin conviction? This is kind of how I would phrase it if people are interested in how our strategy differs from others. Because what I would say is as a company, you know, like I've said before, I believe in building profitable businesses. And the reason I believe in that is philosophical before it's economical. Because I believe in building something productive that has products and that has customers and that is growing and has a vision and is working towards some productive future it's contributing to. That's fundamentally, I believe in building those types of businesses. And so in our version of the future that we are working towards, our bitcoin conviction is funded by our customers, where we make more money from our customers than we consume from the market. So let's say it costs us 80 cents to build our product and we're able to sell that product for a dollar. We have 20 cents of net productivity left over for every unit sold. That we can then pile into bitcoin or finance leverage to buy bitcoin. But the point is we want to finance our bitcoin conviction via the productive output of our business. Now Bitcoin treasury companies have an entirely different strategy or and I don't know if we're a bitcoin treasury company necessarily, I don't know what the definition is and where the lines are drawn, but I would say, you know, microstrategy or a strive or I'm not sure how many other ones are doing these type of preferred high yield instruments and stuff. But the question is who is financing their bitcoin conviction? Because ultimately that's what they're selling, right? They're selling bitcoin conviction. They're saying, we believe in bitcoin, we believe in getting exposure to bitcoin via our equity. That's my interpretation of what they're selling. And again, it's not a good or bad thing, it's their strategy. I'm not talking trash. People accuse me talking trash. I'm not talking trash. Now the question is, these companies are not focused on building an operating business with cash flow and growth. And so who's financing their bitcoin conviction? And it's just materially different than what 21 wants to be. 21 wants to build bitcoin products, grow them, make a bunch of profit, which we'd be proud of, which is we're providing value to the world on a net basis. We are productive as a company and we're going to take our productivity and we're going to finance our conviction. Like, for example, Google finances their vision of AI and they finance their vision of space and all of the crazy cool projects they're working on via their profits, right? Google builds a product for customers. Customers enjoy their product and in exchange, you know, they monetize that and they take the excess productivity that they're generating as a company and they finance their future convictions with that. And that's who we want to be. We think that that is, that doesn't necessarily exist in the market. You know, you have a Coinbase, for example. Coinbase is a business. It's a real business. You know, I can talk all the trash I want and say, you know, they're a casino hiding as a financial services platform, but they're a business and they make money and they have customers and they operate at a huge scale. But I would say Coinbase lacks the, the bitcoin conviction. As I said, they own way more cash than bitcoin. They don't seem to be focused on bitcoin. It's hard to tell how much they actually believe in bitcoin. So they're a business without any conviction. And then I think existing bitcoin treasury companies have a lot of conviction. There's no doubt they believe in bitcoin, but they don't have an operating business that they're focused on or that they're invested in or that they're proud of or that they care much about. And the question is then, who's funding their bitcoin conviction? And I think it's iterated and changed. There's convertible debt market, now there's a preferred market, but at the end of the day. Who's financing their conviction and their ability to buy bitcoin? Who's the one paying for that? And for us, we want to be different in that way where we think we can both have a company and also have conviction, believe in something, believe in bitcoin, go all out and acquire as much bitcoin as we possibly can, not get distracted by anything else, but build, you know, be a productive business alongside that, that has customers and products and margins. And so that is, we think that's really hard to do. It's, you know, I would say it's easier to raise a bunch of money, de spac a company to go public and come out with some convertible product. I think not everyone can do that, but a lot of people can do that. As we've seen how many bitcoin treasury companies have sprouted up over the last 12 months. It's not that hard to go to Wall street, raise a pipe, transaction de spack into the public markets and then come out with some financial product. And it might work. I have no idea. And I'm not, I'm not saying they shouldn't do that. But I think it's actually much harder to build a productive product that serves customers and generates profit, because in the event that we have an operating company that's financing our leverage or our purchases without having to sell shares, then we're financing our bitcoin conviction with the productivity that we're producing in the marketplace via the profits we're earning from customers. And to me, that's like. And it's just my opinion, and we'll see how much of the market agrees with me. Maybe everyone's like, well, that vision for a company is fucking stupid. I don't think it is. I think that that's peak company. That's, that's the peak, is that you're building things that people value and people are willing to pay for and you're producing profit, which means you're productive because you're producing more value than you're consuming from the world. And you're able to take your excess product productivity and invest it more into the future you believe in. And I think that is really hard. Not anyone can raise money on Wall street and do that. That is really, it's really difficult to execute, build products, build technology, be licensed, distribute, market. It is not easy to do that, especially at scale, and then pair that with serious conviction. You know, whether it's Robin Hood or Coinbase or any of these companies, I don't think they have the conviction that we have at 21, that I have as a bitcoiner. And then I think some of the other bitcoin companies that have the conviction, like these treasury companies, I don't think that they're as focused on building an actual business or maybe they don't believe they can do it or whatever. So Tether and I have always viewed ourselves as. That's the difference. And so why are we not buying bitcoin? Well, because we. We want to launch our businesses first. There's no. I don't want to sell dollar bills for 80 cents. Not. It's not what we're about. I don't know if that didn't make sense. You guys can ask me questions in qa. Okay, cool. Let's see. Let me pull up Dylan's questions. We'll get this show on the road. Okay. Question for Jack. Today we chat about AI disrupting software. Do you see it also disrupting other industries like accounting? I do, yeah, I do. But I've. I've talked about this plenty of times before. I think. I think AI is a great thing. I know it'll be challenging as the social contract changes a little bit and people's expectations on being productive and the way I think about being productive and having wealth is really just like, how much access to energy consumption do you have? Like, someone who's really rich and can fly a private jet, that just means they have access to more energy consumption than their neighbor. They can guzzle more energy. And, you know, the correlation between your quality of life and energy consumption is direct. You know, like, the more access you have to energy consumption. Oh, I don't have to take an Uber to the airport. I can take a helicopter. That's just inability to consume more energy than the next guy, you know? And so I think the social contract of who has the right to be consuming more energy is going to change, and that'll be disruptive, and that'll be painful for a little bit. But on the other side of that, I think what's happening is humans shouldn't be doing the type of labor that can be automated by AI Anyway. I would say over the longer arc of history, humans are creatives. We're champions of culture, we're artists. And I think that we'll all get back into the artistry that is human. And I don't mean literal art, like music or painting, although that's obviously included. But being a founder is a form of artistry. Being a podcaster, right. Like, I like. I think I'm really bullish. On content creators because AI has to consume something in order to get smarter. And so AI is eating like my podcast, like it's getting information from people like me. And so people that are in the artistry of creating, creating products, creating content, creating ideas, creating visuals, creating music, creating sounds, I think those are the people that will be more rewarded in the marketplace and everything that can be automated by a machine. What do machines lack? Machines lacked character, they lack taste, they lack touch, they lack feel, they lack intuition, they are programs. And so I think it will disrupt accounting. I think it'll eat everything it possibly can. But if it can eat it, that means I don't think humans were destined to do it forever because we're best as champions of culture in my opinion. And so I think that AI will actually bring about an art renaissance, like a new aged art renaissance, because I think the combination of Bitcoin and AI, because if we have a hard money where we don't have to gamble on March Madness, we don't have to gamble on equities, we don't have to gamble on shitcoins, we don't have to gamble on the weather just to get by, all you have to do is save, earn more than we consume and save. And so if you have a money that can actually protect your property rights, protect your rights to the future and then you have a technology that can automate all the mundane tasks, then what's left for you to do? And the answer is create. The answer is art. The answer is culture. And so I think we'll see like a huge rush of creativity and innovation and artistry on the other half of what will be like obviously some dark times because when that social contract changes and the guy that, you know, his expectation for the rest of his life is he's going to be a top energy consumer, right? I'm going to get the first class flight, I'm going to have the two car garage. I'm going to have, I'm going to have, I'm going to have. And that changes is, you know, it's no telling how these people are going to react in that world. Are they going to be violent? Who are they going to vote in? How is society change or how does society react to the change in social contract there? I'm not sure. Hey Jackie, pause. What is going to be the settlement layer the world banking institutions are going to use soon? I'll give you a hint. It's not Bitcoin. Is that a question? I guess it's stable coins. I don't really know. I think inevitably it's bitcoin. The problem is like, especially now, trust is entirely gone. So, like, you think Russia wants to use the US Stablecoin to settle with the US Treasury? No, because the US Took their Treasuries, said, your property is now our property. Get lost. And so at a certain point, physical commodity, physical value, physical money is the only thing that you can trust. I think that's a large reason why China's been getting as much physical gold out there as possible. Can't trust, can't trust anybody anymore. One day you're going to wake up and all of your money is gone. So stable coins don't solve that problem. Are stable coins better than the Fed wire? Sure, but I don't know. That doesn't matter to me. I might matter more to someone in Nigeria. And I mean that genuinely. Like strikes serves USDT to our Latin American and African markets. And people love it. And I'm not taking that away from them. It's hard for me to relate to that. But I don't think that that's the inevitable frontier we're going to have to fight and change. At the end of the day, trusting some central authority with your right to property is a dubious proposition. And that is the core issue of what's happening. Like, think about it. Even me and my relationship with the Fed and the US Treasury, I'm trusting them with the right I have to a certain amount of food, to a certain amount of housing, to a certain amount of energy consumption. And they violate that trust all the time. One day I wake up and they printed more money. And now, due to inflation, my right to consume from the market has been greatly lessened. And so I just think the issue is the trust factor. Stable coins don't solve that. Gold solves that. But gold doesn't solve a host of other things, which is like, how do I move it, how do I store it, how do I get privacy? Like, you know, if we go onto a gold standard and everything's rioting in the streets, they're going to point, hey, that guy has gold. Like how, how do I hide? How, hey, you know, you. No one knows how much I have, what's on me, what's in my brain. So inevitably, I think the frontier is bitcoin because it solves fundamentally the issues. If stable coins are marginally better than the Fed wire, Sure. I just, I don't find it interesting. I don't think it solves the real problem. I think it says more about how bad the Fed wire is than anything else, bitcoin markets. Do you think KYC is a threat to the future of bitcoin? Will people prefer a ledger that is hidden from the government? I don't think KYC is a threat to bitcoin. I think it's a severe inconvenience to society. My personal opinion, I've been very vocal about this. Like at strike we perform KYC because it is imposed on us by the law and we still have to like implement fraud controls and stuff. So I guess KYC doesn't eliminate all crime. KYC also doesn't eliminate all fraud. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. So at least in our experience. So I would say it's more a severe inconvenience to society that you have to turn over your data to the central parties that are providing you services. And I think it does far more harm to good people than it does inconvenience bad people. Again, in my experience, I think that's widely, that's a widely shared opinion throughout the financial technology space. I don't know if there's too many people that would disagree with me there, but would I say it's a threat to Bitcoin? I would not say that bitcoin is going to succeed with or without kyc. KYC can remain forever. Bitcoin's going to go on to be the world's money. But I do think that society is inconvenienced by kyc. I think so society would be better off without it. With. We should take a look at the bank secrecy act and all of the related regulations and just try and apply something that makes more sense for the world we're in today. That I will say and I will stand by. But a threat to bitcoin. Now you're going to threaten bitcoin's future. You're going to have to come with a lot more than an old banking regulation question. Do you think microstrategy is a centralization concern? If they are successful, wouldn't this harm be harmful for hyper bitcoinization and moving away from fiat? I. I'm not concerned about the centralization aspect of strategy. I've said this a few times before. My opinion here is, you know, in order to corner a market and be of grave concern, you have to be substantial in size relative to the rest of the market. I'm talking 25, 35, 50% of outstanding supply. Like when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market, like they were seriously outsized. The rest of the market strategy. I mean if you look at the amount of bitcoin that's been sold in the open market over the last two years by whales, it's way bigger than microstrategy stack. So granite. Like, what Saylor's achieved is unbelievable. And, and he owns or not him strategy owns the most bitcoin by far of any other corporate or individual holder. As far as I'm aware. It's still such a small percentage of the outstanding bitcoin that there's not much they can do. Like, if they had to sell all of it in a day, sure, the bitcoin price would go down, but for a few months, for a year, it'd be fine. Like, bitcoin would be fine. It's nothing to do with the protocol, nothing do with the monetary policy, nothing to do with our nodes, nothing. It's fine. And if Saylor wanted to impose, not accusing him of this, but in some hypothetical future wanted to impose some consensus change to bitcoin or change the protocol or change the rules, say it's not 21 million anymore, it's 42 million. He can't do that either. Because the bitcoin protocol doesn't rely on how much you own. Right? It's. That's proof of stake. Proof of work is, you know, it doesn't matter who you are and how much you have. So both from a protocol level, not a concern. And then, I don't know, could, like, if he had to sell all of his bitcoin, the market would absorb it. Now, it depends how fast and how he do it, but the market's absorbed far more over the last few years alone. So just not a. Not a concern, to be honest. I mean, it's a $1.4 trillion asset and their holdings are what, like 40 billion or something like that? Again, it's like it's not. Not a huge deal. And so that's my opinion. And it goes to show, one of the geniuses of Satoshi Nakamoto is somehow he distributed bitcoin to the individual before corporations. I say this all the time. If Satoshi went to Goldman Sachs and said, hey, I solved the Byzantine General's problem, I have a new concept for money. I want to IPO it on Wall Street. Well, Goldman Sachs would have had like an early investment banking allocation of 20% and. Right. But he used proof of work and leaked it on a mailing address. Anyone could run a node mine. And for that reason, individuals own the vast majority of bitcoin. And you know, that may re level. But let me rant here a little bit because it's actually really interesting conceptually. The way I think about individuals owning the vast majority of bitcoin, but we're seeing these whales start to sell, start to take profit, is because legacy wealth has all the equities, all the real estate, all the private planes, all the legacy wealth. And individuals like bitcoiners, we are, have all of the newfound wealth. And there needs to be some exchange in the future that rebalances everything where, like bitcoiners get, oh, we'll take a few private planes, take a sports team, we'll take some more real estate, we'll take some more farmland, we'll take some more stuff. And in return, a lot of this legacy wealth has to get some bitcoin exposure. And so it's like a very natural exchange. And so, you know, inevitably it'll even out a little bit. But anyway, Satoshi's a genius for that because somehow he found a way to distribute the money evenly and fairly to the people. It was not biased towards any group, towards any country, towards any race, wasn't biased towards anyone. And by the time the world kind of caught onto it and we got ETFs and nation states and stuff, the individuals already own all of it, all of it's distributed. Pretty amazing achievement. So by the time someone like Saylor goes on an absolute tear of buying bitcoin, I mean, he can't corner this market. How's he going to get 50% of the outstanding bitcoin? There's just no way at this point, I think that that opportunity's long gone. Dylan, question for Jack to pick his brain. If bitcoin removes trust from money, what does that expose about everything? I'm already running on two hours of this episode, so I don't know how much time I have for that one. But what I would say. What is my short answer to that? Money is supposed to be a technology that allows humans to price and exchange their efforts. Like, hey, I'm going to go out and build a lemonade stand. Well, how much is that worth in the world? How many cars is that worth? How many houses is that worth? How many meals is that worth? How many dinners is that worth? How many bottles of water is that worth? It's a really complicated conceptual problem right now. Money solves that. It's a market good that abstracts value into a unit of itself so that we can start to price and exchange our collective efforts. You don't want trust involved in that. I shouldn't have to trust anyone to be A valuable contributor to this world. That should be a native right that I have is that I can go out there and I can try things. And if people value it, then I will have the right to consume from the market. And if people don't, then I won't. And it's the best judge and the best ruler to determine who has right to consume and who has value and who has an ability to invest more in the future and who doesn't. That's all money is. And so the notion that money has involved trust at all to me is blasphemous. Should never. Like, I trust my girlfriend, like, whatever, she has keys to the house and I trust that she locked the door when she was on her way out, whatever. Like, that is a reasonable. You're building relationship and family, like time, energy, effort, labor. The fact that I would need to trust a central banker with my ability to contribute and be valued in society is outrageous. Should have never been a thing in the first place. Okay, Strike, questions. Dylan, why can't we link Strike via Plaid to other platforms? It's because Strike's not a bank. We are built on top of other banks like Cross river or Lead bank or Columbank. We work with a lot of banks, but we can work with Plaid. Maybe we're big enough at this point where Plaid will allow us to do that integration, but it isn't natively in there because we're not a bank. We sit on top of the banks. Dylan, when is Michigan gonna get Bitcoin line of credit? Probably within the next few months. I think we're waiting on a license. Hey, Dylan. One Strike in Switzerland. I can't wait to drop my bank relationship as a US dual citizen. There is only one bank left that is willing to bank me and I don't want their business. It is a 2026 milestone for us, so it is within this year. I know we're doing. We're focusing on a lot of Europe stuff in Q2, which starts in a week. So. Yeah. Is the Strike logo a middle finger? Dylan wrote in his notes? No, it is not. Is Twitter back up if it is? Ah, it is. Okay, let me show you guys this real quick because I think it's funny. So I tweeted this recently. Oh, man. Where was it? Oh, here it is. Okay, let me show this to you guys. So if you rotate our logo exactly 69 degrees, it does present something that can be interpreted as a middle finger. I don't know if Dylan's going to be upset by this, but it's the truth. It's a little Easter egg for the kids at home. But our logo, obviously, without rotating it is not a middle finger. No, it is. Maybe we'll do some history one day. It's like a comet crashing into the legacy fiat system. Like a meteor.
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The banks.
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But if you rotate it exactly 69 degrees. Hey, get your head out of the gutter. Why does bitcoin line of credit require 1.5 BTC minimum as collateral? That's too much. It varies by state, so it definitely does not require that. Like in my state at least it didn't. So I don't know what state you're in, but we're, we're trying to lower it if, if you have a really high minimum. It's not our intent. We're working on it. Best believe that. But there are, I mean there are states that have a minimum of like two grand. I think 2,500. So certainly not 1.5 Bitcoin. So if you're in a state that has tighter rules. For now, I apologize for that. We're working on it. Only so much we can do at the moment. Dylan, question for Jack. Can we get a function on the strike app to toggle between our personal and our business account? We are talking internally about it, so yes, it is, it is within our lexicon of things that you guys would find valuable. So it'll inevitably get built. My guess would be sooner rather than later. But thanks for the feedback. Hope you guys know that when you do request stuff and give us feedback, you know, myself, the presidents of the company, Dylan, we're all very active on social media and take your guys feedback and we bring it straight to the team. You guys heavily, heavily, heavily drive our strategy because we work for you. At the end of the day, I'd much rather build stuff I know you guys are going to want than just guess like hey, hope they like this. I'd rather just say, hey, we're the bitcoin distribution platform for the world. What do bitcoiners want? And you guys tell me. We build it, so keep it coming. Okay. Question for Jack. Are we ever going to get another dollar bill segment? I miss your dad being on the podcast. Yeah, for sure. I don't know if he loved being on the podcast. He. He's a much more behind the scenes guy, but I will ask him. I mean, I love him on the podcast too. Question for Jack, who you got in the NCAA men's basketball championship? Duke. I'm a die hard Duke fan. Speaking of my Faja. That's where my dad went to school and I didn't go to school. So I'm a Duke fan. Die Hard, Die Hard being a Duke fan. Everyone hates Duke, hate us because they ain't us. And by the time you're 18 years old, it is war being a Duke fan. So I. I bleed Duke blue. And that's who I have every year, no matter what. Oh, Dylan just added a new question in real time. How do you keep your mental with work, travel and everything else? How do you chill? I don't know if I chill. That's a question for Dylan. Honestly, I'd be curious his answer to that question. I don't know if the people around me would describe me as a very chill guy. I'm a very intense dude. But how do I. I mean, I'll. I. There's all sorts of stuff that I do. Like I, I told you guys, I super into like health tracking and stuff. So whether it's like before the show started, I did this like breathing exercise, I'm like carnivore ish. So I, I think that diet has like my respiratory system, my heart health, all of that is really good shape according to the data. And so I do a lot of that to take care of myself and allow myself to perform and travel and work many hours and all that good stuff. I see a note from. Who is that Dylan or Manuel? I'll get to that in a second. I play a lot of chess, but I don't really chill. I would say I was at the pub key event, obviously in New York, and people were asking about my girlfriend and they were asking if she is a bitcoiner. And my answer all the time is she's a Jack coiner. She's not necessarily a bitcoiner. She's a bitcoiner because I'm a bitcoiner. But her favorite thing is Jack. And I would say that is also probably where I get my chill from. I've told you guys before, as much as I love you all and I love bitcoin, the ultimate peak of the mountaintops for me will be the day I get married and have a child. The day I became. Become a father. That'll be. That'll be peak for me. That'll be. That'll be a big deal. So yeah, the fact that I met someone that cares about me so much no matter what, that also has been invaluable to my development as a person has allowed me to probably be like super crazy intense on everything else. Like I'll get off this show. She's probably making food and if I want to talk about bitcoin, she's happy to talk about it, but she doesn't give a fuck. She just wants to eat dinner with me and so that's pretty relaxing. She doesn't need to talk about Iran or macroeconomics or bitcoin or any of that stuff. And with that, I think we're out of questions. But I would be curious to get Dylan's answer because I. I just don't think I'm a. I don't think I'm a chill. Oh, he just wrote hanging out with Dylan. Dylan's obviously very helpful, but I wouldn't describe myself as chill. I think I'm fairly intense. Just kind of comes with being a leader, though. Oh, Dylan answered in the chat. Let's see what he said. I don't know what he said. Whatever. All right, two hour show. Give me, as always, feedback. Appreciate it. I saw some of you say the grind. My gears are getting too long. Any feedback on the show, let me know. You guys like the longer ones? We made it longer. Do you like the longer? Do you like the sections? I don't know, whatever. You guys will figure it out. You're smart and you're not shy. Give me feedback. Can't hurt my feelings. Try and be better each week. And with that, I'll see you next week. I expect the straight of her moose to continue to be closed and chaos to continue to unfold. So fasten your seatbelt, take care of yourselves, be healthy, be sane, and I'll see you in seven days. Much love. Peace.