← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Bitcoin CRUMBLES As Global Uncertainty Hits All Time High's! Should We Be Worried?
01:03:30
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- [00:02]
Scott Stornetta
Individual holdings of Bitcoin are crumbling as global uncertainty hits all time highs. Should we be worried about bitcoin? I don't know, but we should be definitely worried about the world right now. I mean, we have long jump athletes injecting filler into their penises to jump further at the Olympics. We have Epstein connected to literally everybody on earth and we have the entire United States military angling towards Iran. So yes, I think we should be worried. But I'm not that worried about bitcoin. I'm going to talk about it today with one of my favorite guests and human beings, Mark Yusu. Let's go.
- [00:37]
Mark Yusko
Let's do, Let's do.
- [00:52]
Scott Stornetta
Good morning everybody and welcome to Epstein's island where we are broadcasting live chasing down the facts from the Epstein files. No, I'm actually just in Tampa with a really cool background. As I said, we have some evidence that individual holdings of bitcoin are dropping dramatically. It's not really the price that's crumbling, but we're definitely seeing a major shift in interest. Mark's having a bit of technical issues so until he can get it going, we're going to roll so solo, but it's just going to be for the moment. So first of all, some housekeeping. I've switched my screens so I'm no longer looking down. And everybody on the Internet won't think that I'm checking my texts the entire show because all the comments about Larry and, and Mike that I could find was that Scott's not even moderating, texting his wife. But I wasn't, I wasn't. I was texting your mom. Anyways, remember we've got CoinMarketCap here. You can see the Bitcoin is 67,332American dollars. It's a pretty lame price if we're being Honest. Ethereum at $1,972.50, not a very inspired market if we're being very honest about it. But once again this is a tale of exceptional tailwinds with very little to show for it on price. Saw this news today when looking at Ethereum under $2,000. This seems very important. Black Rock begins acquiring ETH for upcoming Ethereum staking ETF. Now the mechanics of these are lost on me but I remember quite well when Anthony Scaramucci came on the show before IBIT launched first place it was ever discussed here and he said, I me, Anthony Scaramucci at skybridge have ceded the blackrock spot Bitcoin etf. He gave them the first hundred thousand dollars A million dollars, whatever it is. Well now blackrock has a similar situation where they have been seeded with a hundred thousand dollars to start buying ETH for their upcoming Ethereum Staking ETF. Last I checked, we don't have those Ethereum Staking ETFs quite yet. So the very fact that we're talking about this means that it is definitely coming soon. I've got great news. We got Mark. Good morning sir. How are you?
- [03:10]
Mark Yusko
Well, you know, can't hear him. If you can find a way for me to short all of big tech From Apple to AT&T, I'm in. Holy moly.
- [03:22]
Scott Stornetta
But you can do it. You just stop. We can just short them. Let's short.
- [03:25]
Mark Yusko
I. I think I need to do it. I. Anyway, tough morning, but I'm here. Sorry for being late.
- [03:32]
Scott Stornetta
All that matter. No, it's fine. We got all day. I mean listen, it's a crypto show, so obviously we have to talk about the top story of the day. Which top plastic surgeon fuels penis gates as he injected ski jumper last month. We're like going to war in Iran and all I hear about on the news is bigger suits for the long jumpers.
- [03:53]
Mark Yusko
Bread and circuses, Scott. Bread and circuses. It's all about bread and circuses. Right?
- [04:00]
Scott Stornetta
As funny as it was to show that, that is exactly kind of what I wanna get to right now. It seems like. Listen, you're never short on some very well thought conspiracy theories. I. I look at what's going on right now in the news and in the media and it seems like they're just wagging the dog like don't look at Epstein. Don't look at Epstein. Don't look at Epstein.
- [04:20]
Mark Yusko
Oh my gosh.
- [04:22]
Scott Stornetta
Penis gate, whatever it is we got, we're shorting big tech again. Mark is currently shorting big tech, but I'm going to do him a favor and not make him look like that. But yeah, that was r. Brutal. There was a story that I wanted to show and now I've lost it. But it was a interactive map of Epstein and it's absolutely incredible. Mark, you there? Mark, you there? You working? Yeah. You're working. You're back. You were going into it. Can you hear me? We're doing good, Doing good. So guys, I want to tell you about my sponsor, Lacroix. It's a good time to do it. Okay. We're having trouble obviously with Mark, but I was an interactive Mac, basically showing every contact that Jeffrey Epstein had. And spoiler, it's everyone everywhere. And so yeah, pretty Brutal. The next thing I wanted to ask Mark about if we can get him back was going to be Mamdani's proposals in New York. But I'm going to go ahead and dive into the actual topic here, which is Bitcoin's original purpose of separating money from state is not faring well. As individuals sell their Bitcoin to state regulated entities, Bitcoin's price will continue outpacing everything. But the promise of freedom from centralized autocrats isn't resonating. So many of us obviously bought Bitcoin for the first time because it was like f you to the Epstein state and the government. And we believe that it would give us self sovereignty, not what's happening now. Take a Look at this. 2025 change in Bitcoin ownership plus 500,000 for businesses, down 696,000 for individuals. I think we got Mark back. We're going to try. He's gone again. And very clearly as Max Kaiser of all people, to admit that the main narratives for Bitcoin is not resonating is really, really telling. And we have this other crazy kind of interactive image here showing who holds Bitcoin throughout time. Obviously you start here at the very beginning. You can see most of it's not yet mined and the bulk of it is individuals and it continues to be individuals throughout time. You can see as it evolves. But eventually governments enter the chat. El Salvador companies start to enter the chat. But we still peak up at in the 70 mid high, 70% for individuals, 75% there. And then it starts to decline as companies and governments buy more ETFs and funds going up massively, not yet mind dropping. And of course individuals now down to I think it's 62% here in this image. Now I think that many would argue that there's a natural transition obviously of whose hands these assets are held in. Many take the bullish view and say listen, those early holders, those quote unquote individuals and maybe it's more whales than in like I don't know if it's more coins held by individuals or more individuals holding those coins. I'm assuming it's the actual amount of coins held by individuals. And if you see whales selling 30, 40, 50,000 bitcoin from the early days, I would imagine that counts as individuals and the buyer probably is natural increase in the ETFs. But either way we're seeing a very definitive shift in who holds these coins and how they are holding them. Hence the Bitcoin crumbles as global uncertainty Hits a high. And if you're wondering what that metric is, well, we got it right here. And this is an actual chart on the Internet, so it's gotta be true. World Uncertainty Index reaches historical highs. I mean, this is higher than Covid. This is higher than the Iraq war. This is higher than 9 11. And it's not like a little bit higher. This is like, hey, Doge trades at under a penny for all time and then goes to 79 cents in a month. And the rest of the chart looks absolutely dwarfed. I think that this is very telling. And this is obviously not a result specifically of the Epstein files, although this does seem like 2025 is a massive increase here. But man, I mean, nobody trusts anything anymore. And hopefully I think we got Mark back to discuss it because I circled perfectly back to the topic at hand. No problems, man, the Internet's bad. You're on your phone. Looks good.
- [08:47]
Mark Yusko
Oh, this is. This just such a nightmare. I. I don't even know what to say. So apologies.
- [08:56]
Scott Stornetta
I ended up right back where we were. We're talking. I went through sort of how Bitcoin has changed hands from individuals largely to corporations. Even Max Kaiser sort of, you know, bemoaning the fact that the sovereignty and libertarian ideals maybe have not resonated over time. But it brings us right back to this chart that I was just showing. I'll just show it to you again in case you missed it, which is, you know, world uncertainty reaches historical highs. I mean, dwarfing 9 11, Iraq war, Covid. Nobody believes anything anymore. And I don't blame them because I'm one of them.
- [09:27]
Mark Yusko
No, look, in fact, I actually was thinking about starting the show that I was going to practice my April Fools, saying, well, Scott, this is the last time I'm going to come on the show. You know, it's my favorite thing to do, but I'm literally packing it up and I'm getting out of bitcoin and crypto. It's over. We've lost that. We've lost the plot, we've lost the narrative. The tech just, just isn't there. Everyone I talk to tells me the tech's not there. There's no use. It. It's phenomenal, right? Every four years, remember, the four year cycle is dead. I've been told over and over, you know, I should, I shouldn't call him out, but I will, you know, Fred Krueger, you know, just, just incessantly calling me out on, on the Internet about this. Like, well, if the four year cycle is dead.
- [10:24]
Scott Stornetta
Oh, no, it can't be happening again. Yeah, so anyways, if the four year cycle is dead, it was a good face. We're going to get Mark back. I believe he's back. He's gone. He's back. He's gone. I can see it. I think he's back. Okay.
- [10:49]
Mark Yusko
Four year cycle, even the phone doesn't work. So now we got to add a third company to the short list, which is Verizon. So my home Internet @&t that isn't working. My phone, Verizon, that, that clearly isn't working very well. So I don't know.
- [11:12]
Scott Stornetta
We've never had the tech issues. Okay, so you were saying four year cycle.
- [11:17]
Mark Yusko
You know, three years, 11 months. You know it's not four years because it's actually the number of blocks. Not, not time, but like clockwork literally, or block work. Every three years and 11 months, every, I think it's 40,000 blocks or something like that. We get a halving and, and the halving leads to price movement. Price movement leads to, shall we say, euphoria and speculation and gambling and then those gamblers have to get washed out and we have a bear market and I don't know why that's surprising to people, but every time that occurs, every time the price starts to go down, people throw the same tired fud, you know, the fear, uncertainty and doubt back into the mix and we, we have these conversations again and I just, I'm actually kind of tired of it to be, to be honest.
- [12:17]
Scott Stornetta
Right, yeah. What I find interesting though is to the point on the four year cycle, I think it might be breaking, but we didn't get the euphoria part. Like we never got the retail participation or the euphoria or the blow off top or any of that. That said, like to your point, like, I mean people were literally on Reddit saying October 6th will be the end of the cycle and like into the day.
- [12:40]
Mark Yusko
Right.
- [12:41]
Scott Stornetta
So that's a bit suspect, but we didn't have any of the telltale signals I think of previous cycles, like massive altcoin gains, blow off top, retail participation. It was definitely participants that were driving the price this time.
- [12:53]
Mark Yusko
Well, there's, there's the reason, I'll make the argument that the reason we didn't have the extreme up cycle is because of the fallout from the last cleansing post ftx. Right. So when, when the bad actors get caught, unlike what we started with about the whole the Epstein Files, like we know who all the bad actors are, but none of them are going to suffer any Consequences it seems. But in, in this case there were bad actors, there were people lending invest. Well you can't call them investors. They were lending gamblers a hundred times leverage to speculate on a 80 Vol asset or worse. Right. Some of the altcoins have worse than 80 volume. That's just a bad strategy. Well, unless you're the lender and your goal is to confiscate the assets, then it's actually a good strategy. Not very ethical but okay, so that got tamped down. So 126 was about 40 odd percent above fair value. So we didn't get the two times above fair value that we got in 13 or 17 or 21. So the downdraft should be lower, which it has been. Right. And so I agree with you, we didn't get the super crazy two times speculative blow off. And part of it is what fuels, I will argue what fuels the big altcoin gains are the rotation.
- [14:46]
Scott Stornetta
All happening.
- [14:47]
Mark Yusko
Or eth or some other gains into the more speculative assets as that ramp starts to happen. So there's a lot of factors but ultimately here we are, we hit down 51% almost perfectly to the floor that I. Now I'm going to say this out loud and then it's going to haunt me because you should never say things definitively but in the history of the asset, in the history of bitcoin, of the network, it's never traded below the cost of electricity. Not the total production cost for a miner, but the electricity cost for a, for the miners. On average it got close, right? 58k ish. Right now we got to 60, maybe it was even 59 something. But on a, on a wick, you know, closing price was still 62, 375 or something but, but we wicked down. So we got close but, but we didn't get there. So all these people talking about oh we're going to 25 or going to you know, 15 like based on what? I mean if you're saying it based on well we went down 84, 74. 84, 83, 74. Do we got to repeat that?
- [16:09]
Scott Stornetta
Like well why, why if we didn't get the upside repeated, I don't see why we need to get the downside repeated.
- [16:17]
Mark Yusko
It doesn't make any sense. And the other problem is if you look at the order books most, I won't say all but most of the levered longs have been eradicated. You tweet about it all the time. Guys, we can fix this, just don't use massive leverage. Right. I mean actually shouldn't use a lot of leverage at all on Bitcoin. A little bit. 80 volume asset is tough and even if the volume isn't 80 anymore, even if it's 40 or 50, that's not an asset that you want to put a lot of leverage on. Generally.
- [16:55]
Scott Stornetta
Yeah, I obviously 100% agree with that and agree with the entire analysis. Like whether the four year cycle is intact or not, even both camps should now align at 51% is enough.
- [17:10]
Mark Yusko
It is enough. And here's the thing that doesn't mean V bottom right. This is, this is the part where.
- [17:17]
Scott Stornetta
We'Re going to be here for a long time.
- [17:18]
Mark Yusko
I think personally I'm, you know, I think we're snake in the tunnel for a while finding the natural buyers to return because you know, here's the thing. We've talked about this. There are four types of participants in markets. There are investors. I think that's what you should aspire to be. Generally. I, I, I think of myself as one. What is an investor? An investor is someone who tries to buy things below their inherent or fair value. That seems like a pretty novel idea and people who do that over and over and over again seem to do pretty well. And there are two ways to do it right. You can buy a dollar for $0.75 or $0.60 value investor or you can buy $1.20 tomorrow for a dollar today. Growth investors, either one is fine. But the problem is once the investors are all in, they've bought the asset below fair value. Well, now the price starts to move. Right. Because there's more people buying well as the price moves. Traders and a lot of people that watch your show and other shows are traders. I, I suck at trading technical term. So I don't do it because I'm.
- [18:38]
Scott Stornetta
Hoping, I'm hoping the trader that we're not the traders here anymore. I think we've had a very long, I'm hoping you know that over the last four or five years we've transitioned. Yeah, yeah.
- [18:47]
Mark Yusko
But I mean I think, I think in, in every financial media show there are going to be some traders and there's nothing wrong with trading. And if you have some skills at, or better if you have a system or process like Peter Brandt, he's a technical analyst and a trader. He's actually quite good at it because he follows a very disciplined process and he doesn't screw around. You know the worst, the worst thing you can do in trading is to say well I'm right and the market's wrong. Well, the Market's never wrong. I mean, you're wrong. And it's okay to be wrong. Being wrong is okay. Staying wrong is not. So the best traders cut their losers fast and they press their winners right. They double up, they never double down. Doubling down is, is a loser's game. But you know, look at Paul Tudor Jones studied the best traders and here's the crazy part. The very best, the, the legends, they're only right 58% of the time. So they are even wrong 42, most of us are wrong. 51, 52. So it's pretty uphill climb with poor risk management. Yeah, you got to be good at risk management. So then once we get to fair value, then what happens is the hedgers come in. Because if I'm below fair value or below my cost of production, if I'm producing an asset, oil, gold, Bitcoin, I'm not going to sell it. I'm going to wait till it's above my cost of production or above fair value. Okay, You gotta have the other side of the trade. There's always two sides of a trade. Those are speculators. It's not an evil term. It's not bad. They just happen to be the other side and that pushes the price even up more. But then the problem is the gamblers come in and the gamblers come in with leverage and they cause those parabolic moves and you see it everywhere. I mean, look what's happening in the DRAM companies or look what happened at Nvidia two years ago. Or I mean the gamblers come in and they push way above fair value and at some point the emperor has no clothes and we start the cycle all over. And in most assets it's normally tied to the liquidity cycle or the business cycle. I know there's some that say the four year cycle never existed at all. It was all the business and liquidity cycle doesn't match up. But okay. But generally speaking, any asset is going to follow these four market participant activities. And now we flushed out the gamblers, so now the traders are still shorting or longing occasionally. And now, but now we're trading materially at if 81 is fair value. Metcalfe's law, we're trading well below that investors like we initiated yesterday at we had our investment committee meeting, we initiated a weekly purchase plan. So over the next 20 weeks we're going to continue to acquire because remember, our funds are venture capital funds primarily, but we can do 20% in the liquid protocols and we still had some capacity. So we're Going to, we're going to add some, um, but we're not going to do it today or tomorrow.
- [22:16]
Scott Stornetta
Yeah, Bitcoin specifically, in that case, Bitcoin specifically.
- [22:20]
Mark Yusko
And you know, we can own anything but we only really trade in or invest, I guess we don't trade. We, we buy and we hold. We invest in, in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana. Occasionally we'll do another. Like we have owned some uniswap, we have owned some graph, but mostly and avalanche those four Bitcoin, Ethereum.
- [22:50]
Scott Stornetta
Now every guess is like, I own Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. Even the old school altcoin degenerates who are flipping everything. It's just like they got ETFs, they've got Wall street adoption. It seems pretty easy to see who they have and have nots are in this market. You mentioned the gamblers, by the way. I just want to say I think we flushed out the gamble gamblers, but I also think they found greener pastures in obviously prediction markets and silver specifically. But so not only like did we flush them out, but they actually don't need crypto to gamble anymore, which I think has been a problem for the altcoin market. And by the way, we're going to see a lot of fights over predictive markets whether they are gambling or not. This is the next big battleground, I think, of regulation.
- [23:35]
Mark Yusko
Oh, Scott, that is such a great insight and analysis in the sense that it might be, it's in the top two for sure. It might be the greatest rebrand in history to change the name from gambling to prediction markets. And now it's like an academic pursuit. They sit in their study with their smoking jackets. I mean, no, it's degenerate gambling. It's all it is. And I just find it comical. And look, the regulators, I think yesterday said, no, we're coming for you and we'll see you in court. And I get it that you can try to alter reality. People do it all the time and we have it in politics all the time. Well, no, you're a Republican. No, I'm a Democrat now or I'm a Democrat now, I'm a Republican. I mean if you tell people a lie often enough, they'll eventually believe it. And so you can rebrand something, but at the end of the day it is what it is. And so I think it's a really important point that let's take gold and silver. So gold and silver, everybody's like, oh, see, they are the stores of value, not bitcoin. Or anything else. Well, okay, from 2021 to 2023, two years, money supply went up a lot. Like a lot a lot. And gold and silver were dead flat. Why was that? Well, because of spoofing. What's that? Well, it's where the big, you know, financial institutions take money and short the crud. Again, technical term, short the crud out of the asset. And at one point, it was reported that JP Morgan was short two times global silver production. I don't know if that's true or not. Just like back in 2007, people went.
- [25:41]
Scott Stornetta
To jail for that.
- [25:42]
Mark Yusko
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [25:45]
Scott Stornetta
People love the. To think everything's a conspiracy theory. But.
- [25:48]
Mark Yusko
Theory.
- [25:48]
Scott Stornetta
But people at JP Morgan went to jail for spoofing the silver markets.
- [25:51]
Mark Yusko
Yes. Yeah, yeah. And. And back in 2007, they were two times short the gold market. And GLD had that period where it just went flat. And they paid. My favorite part is when they. They paid $960 million fine without admitting guilt. Like isn't the payment of the fine and admission of guilt. But. But okay. And then when the guy, when they asked the guy, you know, how does that make you feel? Cost of doing business, we made 20 billion. We paid one. No big deal. And so you're not going to stop these guys from doing that. But then what happens is, I think you tweeted this yesterday. You can only hold the ball underwater for so long. See, I. Look at your tweets. Look at that. You can only hold the ball underwater for so long. Because here's the interesting thing is people say, well, gold has gone up so much. Like, well, right. That's called a short squeeze. Right. Parabolic moves are not normal in any asset. They are short squeezes. And what you'll notice about short squeezes is there are no charts that go parabolic and then stay at that level forever. Zero. None. Zero. Every. Every parabolic, okay, goes like this. Make.
- [27:12]
Scott Stornetta
It's going to come back, make the.
- [27:13]
Mark Yusko
Eiffel Tower pattern, and then it consolidates and you get back to accumulation. And. And you go on. Oh, my God. So now here's the other problem. Not only does technology suck, I also live in the People's Republic of Chapel Hill. And the NIMBY here will not give us enough cell towers. So not only is it a technology problem that my Internet won't work or my Apple computer won't work, but now Verizon doesn't have enough cell towers. So. But anyway, I digress. Yeah.
- [27:45]
Scott Stornetta
So I want to go back to. I agree with all that. So I want to go back to a few things of sort of. Well, we had the misdirection we talked about before. This is the graphic I just wanted to show for anyone who's curious. Somebody made an infographic of Epstein's connections.
- [27:59]
Mark Yusko
Incredible.
- [28:01]
Scott Stornetta
And if. And you, like, let it run and it's like literally every person everywhere. So, like, I mean, I've never been a conspiracy theorist, but it's absolute insanity.
- [28:11]
Mark Yusko
Well, what's. What's crazy is that if you overlaid a picture of the Bilderberg Group board ownership. So search this over the weekend. The Bilderberg.
- [28:25]
Scott Stornetta
I was kidding, but I don't even know what Bilderberg is. That's how out of touch I am. I know. Build a Bear, though.
- [28:33]
Mark Yusko
Perfect Moment are at the center.
- [28:38]
Scott Stornetta
They're good. I think maybe. Kind of lost Mark. I think he's going to come back. Yeah. I never thought we would be doing an Epstein show, but I think if you're a bitcoiner, it just speaks to the lack of trust. Because I can only talk about myself anecdotally, but that was kind of the last straw for me. And when I see charts like this and keep going further down the rabbit hole, it only gets worse and worse and worse. And we got Mark back. Mark's going for a walk now. I like it.
- [29:17]
Mark Yusko
All right, you know what? I'm literally gonna go outside. So I said the black cats are probably going to show up because I talked about the Bilderbergs. The Bilderbergs are. Oh, you still don't got me.
- [29:34]
Scott Stornetta
No, we're good. You're perfect.
- [29:37]
Mark Yusko
Okay.
- [29:37]
Scott Stornetta
You're good.
- [29:38]
Mark Yusko
The Bilderbergs are a group of families they meet every year out in the open. And they are the same families that, you know, run. Run the world. And if you. Someone did a similar map to your Epstein map of all the birds that the people that go to this meeting sit on, and it looks just like that chart. It's. Every company in the world has a member of this set of families that basically control everything. And it's not surprising they have ties to the Same organizations that Mr. Epstein and others have. So it's a big club and we're not in it.
- [30:25]
Scott Stornetta
So it's weird that we've never been invited. I want to tell you a club I don't want to get invited to, that's the New York City club just in. We are forced to raid the Rainy Day Fun, the Retiree Health Benefits Trust Reserve, and to increase property taxes. How's this going to go.
- [30:44]
Mark Yusko
You know, it's so scary to see this happening in real time because it's a controlled demolition and it's intentional. Right? This is not an accident. You know, he didn't, he didn't run on a socialist platform because he's actually a socialist. He ran because look at where he's from, who his parents likely are. I mean, it's, it's a very deep story. And you look at, you know, the future leaders of wef, right? Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany. I mean, the uk, London mayor, the arranged marriages, this. I mean, you can get me started down Saturday, but it's pretty, it's pretty insane.
- [31:47]
Scott Stornetta
But has this ever worked anywhere? Just me. I'm saying, has this ever worked anywhere? These policies, I mean, I don't understand.
- [32:00]
Mark Yusko
No, no, no, no, no. They can't work mathematically. They can't work, Right? Socialism doesn't work when you run out of other people or stops working when you run out of other people's money. So they can't work. And, and yet they are so. I don't know, they're so appealing to the underclass, obviously, because you're telling them you're going to give them free stuff and you're going to take it away from the big overlords, but it's not true because the big overlords are the ones that put these people in place. It's like, does it surprise anyone that our current president is listed more times than many people in that chart that you showed? Does that surprise anybody? Like, well, if it does, then you're just not paying attention because remember, like, Ronald Reagan, the guy was a lifelong Democrat. He was not a Republican. He isn't a Republican. He ran as a Republican to get into office. But why did he get into office? Who put him there? Who financed him? Who? And again, if you believe in the controlled demolition, you know, theory, which unfortunately I do, it. It's all kind of part of the plan, and it's. It's a very scary time. And, and these are real, what you just showed. Raiding trust funds and cutting benefits is exactly the antithesis of what the guy promised when he ran, right? Which is what you hear about the President and you hear it about the London mayor and you hear it about the New Zealand prime minister. And that should start to be a trend for people, right? If, if the same people promise the same things, then don't deliver and do other things. We should probably figure it out.
- [33:58]
Scott Stornetta
But I guess, you know, I guess my question is we've shown all these charts, right? Uncertainty Is at all time highs. Somehow individuals buying into the bitcoin narrative as it lows. I have another chart here that's interesting. I don't know if you can see it, but it says euphoric investors and depressed US consumers. Unsustainable combination. You can see that the consumer and the investor were always well aligned from, you know, the 90s through 2020. Then Covid hit and consumer sentiment is in the absolute, absolute dumps. China. It's horrible. But look at investor sentiment. They're having the time of their lives.
- [34:31]
Mark Yusko
Of course, because this is the case. This is, this is the K shaped economy, right? This is like, like people think that 2020 was an accident. People think that it was random. People think that it wasn't again, a controlled demolition. It was the greatest transfer of wealth from the masses or the poor to the rich in human history. Now that's just the law of large numbers. But it's not. It was a controlled plan and it was planned for the better part of two decades, right? This is not like, oh, let's have a pandemic next week. No, this was a. They did, they did trials and they did practice runs and they named it and, and then it happened and we complied. I mean, think about the lunacy of what, what we did, right? We stayed in our houses, we shut down global supply chains, we. Cat wants to be on tv. So bring the cat.
- [35:40]
Scott Stornetta
We need to come on.
- [35:42]
Mark Yusko
Cat's probably smarter than me, but that is definitely true. So I, you look at, at that chart which is such the perfect chart. The haves have never had it better. But the have nots have never had it worse. And think about Venezuela. The haves have never had it better. Venezuelan stock market, one of the best performing stock markets in the world over the last five years because you devalue the currency. 99.999%. The haves in Turkey have never had it better. The have nots have never had it worse because you devalued the lira. And I don't want to get all Weimer Republic here, but the volatility of gold and silver is actually a leading indicator of currency crisis. I mean it is and it has historically been. And you know, we are one little executive order away, like 6102 from a complete confiscation of what's left of people's livelihoods and wealth at the, at the lower end and just handing it to the elite class that are all. And here's the problem. All those dots on, on your chart, the Epstein chart, are the people who are benefiting from all these policies, but yet they committed atrocious and egregious violations of ethics and all kinds of other things to get that. And yet we aren't raising up pitchforks. And I'm not trying to incite violence, but I am trying to say we can vote. We can vote some of these people out. Maybe. I mean, like John Deaton running against Missouri.
- [37:45]
Scott Stornetta
I was going to say the same thing.
- [37:46]
Mark Yusko
I mean, don't. Yeah, don't even get me started. Like, how is it possible that a, that a, that a populace that should be. Because, you know, Massachusetts, you know, around a lot of education, there should be some pretty smart people there. How could they look at the facts and the graft and corruption of that woman and not act like it just doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't make any sense.
- [38:16]
Scott Stornetta
This time he's not running against her. I was going to literally tweet this morning, like, I so done with politics, which I always have been, you know, but I support John Deaton and I'm doing a fundraiser for him next month. But he's like one guy because I know him and I trust him. And the rest of them can kick rocks. Yeah.
- [38:31]
Mark Yusko
And, you know, I'm here in North Carolina and you know, our crop of politicians is, is about as bad as it gets. And you know, terms of corruption and, and, and just, just doing whatever it takes to stay in, in the club. But anyway, I back to, back to what most people want to talk about, which is, you know, bitcoin and digital assets and crypto, you know, Mike Cagney. So today's a big day for us, right. Our largest investment, most successful investment figure not only went public, but today they are issuing the first on chain digitally originated shares. So you can take your NASDAQ listed shares and, and basically put them originally digitally on chain. Not a tokenized share, but a digital ownership record, which ultimately I believe every asset, every stock, every bond, every currency, every commodity, every. Everything will be this and open. You know, the name of the network could be one of the biggest networks.
- [39:40]
Scott Stornetta
The DCC is literally saying they're going to do it. By the way, we have the story right here, so. Yes, you're right.
- [39:46]
Mark Yusko
Yeah. And, and so I'm super excited and we're participating in this and it's. And I'm, you know, Mike is one of the best CEOs I've ever met, ever backed. Look, I have this, I have this super lucky, right. I like the greatest job in the world. I talk to smartest people in the world and give them money. It's like, super fun. And I don't have to be smart. I just have to meet a lot of smart people. And Mike is one of these. And his wife June is equally smart and talented, but together they are a formidable duo. And they now have created what I believe will be the base layer for ownership going forward. So it's a big day, but most people still doubt that this is all going to happen. My point was this, that Mike wrote a very nice piece about. Never been more excited about. And again, when he says crypto people. Oh, my God. Bitcoin only. I mean, crypto stop. It's cryptographic security. That is a technology. That is a base layer for cryptocurrencies, but also for digital assets. And yes, bitcoin is digital gold. And the base layer of money, it's the future of value. But we can have other forms. We can have smart contracts. We can have other forms of transactions, stablecoins. But the. The infighting between the. The warring factions. Shit gets tiresome. And it's actually. It goes back to what you were saying. To begin. It's why we get penis stories on the news. Because if you can't even agree that you're all working towards the same goal because you're distracted by the garbage, you know, look, not to take away anything from the incredible feat that the woman speed skater from the Netherlands winning. Winning the medal, but that's not what the stories are about. And that's sad to me. Right? I mean, whether she's pretty or not shouldn't. I mean, it shouldn't matter. Matter in terms of her athletic prowess, what it should. We should be talking about the training and the. But that doesn't get clicks, I guess. Yeah.
- [42:09]
Scott Stornetta
It's a different world. So there's two directions I want to kind of just ask you about. So first, you made the point about silver and gold. And just to wrap that in a bow.
- [42:18]
Mark Yusko
Let me finish that because that's an important. Thank you, Scott. So what happened was the spoofing, the holding the beach ball underwater, can only happen for so long because eventually, like, one of the misconceptions is. And actually, I think you had this guy on Monday, and he's just wrong. And other people that say the same thing are just wrong. Futures do not create more of the physical asset. They do not. Right. Oil futures don't create more oil in the ground. Gold futures don't create more gold in bars. And bitcoin futures don't create More Bitcoin. So there is not unlimited supply of bitcoin. That's just a stupid argument. But what they can do is they can temporarily suppress price through derivative actions. But eventually the spot.
- [43:11]
Scott Stornetta
Right.
- [43:12]
Mark Yusko
If I am charged like I'm an ibit, if I ran IBIT and enough money comes in, I can't just put futures contracts. I have to go find some physical bitcoin. So eventually the spot market pushes up against that spoofing level. And when it breaks through, you get these parabolic moves. That's why silver went up 300% is why gold. And there was a rumor that a bank.
- [43:44]
Scott Stornetta
J.P. morgan.
- [43:45]
Mark Yusko
Yeah, J.P. morgan. We're not naming names, but there was a rumor that. That they would be bankrupt because of the losses. Now, no one's going to make them take those losses. Just like no one's going to go to jail for Epstein, but. Because they're part of the club. But that's real. And so. But then what happened?
- [44:04]
Scott Stornetta
Right?
- [44:05]
Mark Yusko
What happened? All those gamblers, like you said, they went from altcoins or bitcoin and they start chasing silver and they got their ass kicked because guess what? Ken Griffin and Jump and Susquehanna and all these guys, I'm not saying they're smarter than you, but they're. They're more well equipped in terms of technology and systems and. And knowledge.
- [44:31]
Scott Stornetta
Insider knowledge.
- [44:32]
Mark Yusko
Insider knowledge, yeah. And. And so again, you didn't see silver go like this and flatline. You saw it go like this and boom. And people lost a bunch of money. And again, what does that do? It goes from the masses to the rich. And so that K shaped economy chart just keeps getting worse. And the same thing with gold. And look, Peter can take his victory lap because gold did better than bitcoin. So far this year. So far. But if you look back further, three years, five years. Hmm. It's interesting. They kind of have the same return because of course they do. They're the same thing. One ounce of gold is one ounce of gold. One bitcoin is one bitcoin. But we don't price gold in gold or bitcoin. And bitcoin, we price them in dollars, euros and yen. And that devaluation trade is the same like houses. I talk about this all the time. My house did not get more valuable in the past year. Zillow says it did, but it did not. It did not grow. It did not get more efficient. The currency got devalued. Now do I win? Yeah, kinda. Except I took my son doing lacrosse tryouts. So we took him out to dinner, you know, celebrate lacrosse. And we go to. And we go to this little taco place and we had a handful of tacos. Not a lot of tacos. We had a few tacos and it was $100 for the three of us. They were good, but they weren't that good. And that's just. It's not their fault. They're just trying to make a living and they're just trying to get by. But it's that their electricity price is going up because of all the stupid cat videos and the AI garbage. We don't need more data centers. We need smarter chips, less power hungry chips.
- [46:33]
Scott Stornetta
When I think about the example you just get Dave, you know, the tacos. I always get stuck mentally on the $5 milkshake part in Pulp Fiction. That better be a great shake. In the 90s, $5 was so outrageously expensive, you couldn't even imagine it. Couldn't even imagine an entire movie. And now, like if a milkshake was 20, 20 bucks, nobody would even flinch.
- [46:58]
Mark Yusko
No one bad in aisle. I mean, look, there's a, a hamburger joint in New York. I can't remember the name of it. It's famous. For years it had this $30 hamburger and you pay cash. And there was an ATM outside and I'm like, oh, my God, I'm not paying $30 for a hamburger here. Locally, in Chapel Hill the other day, I paid $26. Now that's not 30, but it's also. Wasn't as good as the one in New York. The one in New York is pretty good.
- [47:26]
Scott Stornetta
There's a Minetta Tavern probably in the West Village.
- [47:28]
Mark Yusko
I think that's it. I think that's it. Yeah.
- [47:30]
Scott Stornetta
Good burger.
- [47:31]
Mark Yusko
It's probably 50 now. It's probably 50 now.
- [47:35]
Scott Stornetta
Could be hundreds. And the extra point I wanted to make on the gold and silver wrapping in a bow when you talked about the Weimar Republic and the hyperinflation, is that the other thing that we've seen when currencies hyper inflate in the Weimar Republic and beyond is everybody gambling on everything. And the rise of prediction markets aligns with that so exceptionally well. And now you can just. Everyone can gamble all the time. And the only reason people gamble all the time is because they feel desperate. There's a dopamine hit, but underlying is because, well, if my money's not worth, if I'm not getting paid anything, if I'm living in my mom's basement, like, I might as well gamble.
- [48:12]
Mark Yusko
Yep. No, no, it, you're. You're Right. It is desperation. It's why the lottery is such a big business. Rich people don't buy lottery tickets. They just don't. Right, because they understand math. And I'm not saying that the people who buy lottery tickets don't understand math, but a lot of them just. They don't do the math. They just don't buy. They're just like, I'm hoping that I win. But you don't have the money to speculate, right? I mean, you should be either investing the money or spending the money on food and things like that. But it's a tax. Those. Gambling is a tax on the masses. And again, the revenues go to the people at the top. And you're right, it's an escapism. And someone wrote the piece. I don't remember. It'd be better if I could give people credit for their work. But someone wrote, all empires end the same way. Every single one from the Ottoman to the Roman to you just go back in time. They all end the same way. It's like nine steps, and we're on step six, about to go to seven. And it's exactly as you described, is when people get desperate, they start doing desperate things. And governments do the same thing. We all know why we have ridges on the side of our quarters. So they can't clip the coins because they used to clip the coins. Or worse, they would melt the coins down and then add some less valuable metal and recast the coins. And they were lighter, Right? Which is why you drop the coin to listen for the sound. And if it clinked instead of clanked, then you knew it was a bad coin. And so. But eventually what happened with the Roman Empire, right, they. They devalued the coins so much that the soldiers finally said, screw that, we're not going to defend your borders. And the Huns came or not? The Hun, whoever conquered, came in and they lost. So eventually you create a despair and a despondency. And you saw it in that it gets consumer confidence and we're not there, but we're getting closer, and I don't like it. And what I really don't like, again, to go really super sinister, is there's an argument that all of these developments in AI and data centers and all of that is actually the. The next step, which is the digital prison that they want us all to live in, where the CBDC controls how and when and if we can spend our money. And if we do something wrong, our social credit score goes away and we can't you know, get access to our apartment. And, you know, it's the whole. You don't own anything. You just.
- [50:57]
Scott Stornetta
Right.
- [50:58]
Mark Yusko
Yeah.
- [50:58]
Scott Stornetta
Yeah. I mean, so I had him just. It's going to come out. But I interviewed him in person last week, and he basically said that's what the Genius act was. And he is the least hyperbolic, panicked conspiracy theorist person ever. And we've all celebrated the genius act. And he very, like, calmly was like, we've locked in the bank secrecy act into stable coins, and now we don't even have just surveillance from the government. We have surveillance from a private company. And our worst fear is about stable CBDCs were no privacy and fear of surveillance from the government. Well, they can now. The government and a private company can surveil it. And that's what we just did. We don't need CBDC's Oops.
- [51:34]
Mark Yusko
I know. A double oops. I mean, like, the fact that. That they went into Tether and seized tethers from people who supposedly were. Were supporting Iran is a absolutely frightening thing. And look, is it. Is it a coincidence that Canner bought part of Tether before he was appointed to the administration? I don't think that was a mistake. I don't. I don't think. I don't think that was a coincidence. And so I'm 100% with you. And. And look, the Market Stability act, or, you know, Clarity act, there's a reason they are trying to paint Brian Armstrong as, you know, rebel without a cause and an enemy of the state. I mean, he's the only one, at least so far, that I'm. There's probably other people fighting behind the scenes, but. And look, I actually did think that Senator Lummis was our friend. Not anymore. I mean, the fact that she's pushing this Stability act bill is mad frightening. Because if that passed in its current form again, I think we talked about this two summers ago. I went on two trips looking for my safe haven. I don't want to leave. I like where I live, but if things go the wrong way, I went looking and I visited Portugal and Costa Rica. And Costa Rica is great, but it's still not quite there. I know Adam and others would say it's. It's beautiful, but I. I just didn't. I didn't feel 100% confident. Portugal tomorrow. I would. I would move there tomorrow. But the problem is, that was before the Iberian Peninsula shut down for the day. And I was like, oh, Jesus. Okay. So they got control of that, so now Portugal's out. So Now I gotta go find another place.
- [53:29]
Scott Stornetta
You're gonna need a, a bunker on a deserted island. And by the way, just to wrap a bow in it since.
- [53:37]
Mark Yusko
Somebody building a bunker on a deserted island that we're trying to acquire. Yeah, something like that.
- [53:41]
Scott Stornetta
Yeah. But I mean, so like, because I, I, I'm not a conspiracy guy, but now like the Epstein thing is just rocking my world. So now I'm getting like spammed with things I didn't even know. Like just Mamdani's mother here on Epstein island with him as a baby.
- [53:56]
Mark Yusko
Yeah, that.
- [53:59]
Scott Stornetta
I, I, like I said, I don't know what's like real, I mean, it's real. I don't know what it means. Like, I just like, I can't anymore. Like it's, I, I, why It's, There.
- [54:10]
Mark Yusko
Are no accidents in government. Right? William Jefferson Clinton is named William Jefferson Clinton for a reason. Right? His great, great, I don't know if it's two, two or three great grandfather. He's on the back of the two dollar bill, for God's sake. I mean, that's not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence that John Kerry and W. Two people you would say are ideologically totally opposite, are cousins? Come on. I mean, it's not, There are no accidents and, and it's been this way for hundreds and hundreds of years. And you can go, you can go all the way back 1602 in the Netherlands, the creation of the first central bank. And you can just follow the path and look, life is actually pretty good. All the conspiracy aside and all. And yeah, bad stuff happened, but generally speaking, we made pretty damn good progress since 1602. So I'm not complaining completely. But that part of it, the, hey, let's keep our people in charge and let's rig every election and let's make sure that we have know, you know, secret footage on everybody. Like, I mean, come on, you go to a private island for whatever bad stuff was happening and again, I was never there, so I don't know. But, but I, I'm assume some of the stuff is true. You didn't think people were recording? Really? I mean, come on. I mean, these are smart people, right? Maybe, yeah.
- [55:56]
Scott Stornetta
It's the shared discomfort and that nobody has plausible deniability that lets you in the club. I'm not curious. This, I'm just saying, like, if you all have something on everybody, then everybody is aligned. Right?
- [56:10]
Mark Yusko
Of course, I mean that, but that's always been the way it is. And look, blackmail's, it's Been around for a while and it's at that level. I get it. International intrigue and global conspiracies have been going on for forever on our day to day lives. Can we fight it and bring it all back to what we love is Bitcoin actually does fix this, which is why they hate it. And it's why. And we've talked about this, right? We're past the first they ignore you phase. We're past the then they laugh at you phase. We're in the then they fight you phase. And it's going to probably last at least a couple more years. But we all know the end of the quote, which is, then you win. Now, is it possible we lose because of this regulatory gulag that's being built? Yeah.
- [57:11]
Scott Stornetta
Yeah.
- [57:11]
Mark Yusko
Is it possible that what's going on with the AI stuff is bad, not good? Yeah. Is it possible? Is it a surprise to anyone that the same names and the same brothers and the same girlfriends and boy boyfriends, you know, happen to be at the top of every company and they're all interconnected? That probably isn't a surprise to anybody. Is it a surprise that they're also all on this list? Probably shouldn't be a surprise. But we as individuals can still, I think, resist a little bit by having some portion of our wealth outside that system and keep having shows like this that educate and, and, and keep raising the questions because ultimately the questions are more important than the answers.
- [58:06]
Scott Stornetta
So you're hired. That's exactly the outro I would have given. And I will just say I wrote a long thread on it, that the Epstein list was kind of my last straw, if whatever. But for me, the silent protest is buying bitcoin. And yeah, maybe it was created by the CIA or by Epstein. I have no idea. Like, I know what it is now and I know that nobody controls the network. And even if it's just symbolic in my mind that I'm doing something, it feels right. Whether I'm being duped or not, I have no idea. But I know that right now I do this thing sometimes on my show where I say I'm an idiot. And I admit all the times I was wrong, which is like all the time. Like, I'm not a person has a problem doing that. I thought, like, clarity. Act genius, act great. And I've had more conversations and I'm like, I don't want these guys touching any of it.
- [58:51]
Mark Yusko
No, no, no, no. And look, I'll leave you with this thought, which is the. The origin of bitcoin could Quite possibly have some, some connections to nsa, CIA, Chinese government, whatever. And the reason I would say that is when I first got into this years and years ago, I googled like any good self respecting person who's Satoshi Nakamoto. And what comes up, which is kind of interesting is the name Satoshi means intelligence and Nakamoto is the surname from families in the central provinces. I'm like, whoa, intelligence, central? That's like pretty close to central intelligence. So I freaked out about oh my God, if they created it. And it's really just a way to replace the declining dollar because the dollar is going to zero and then they're going to steal all the money out of the back door. And so Scott Stornetta, who, you know, is listed three times in the white paper. Three of the eight footnotes are his work. He and his partner Stuart Haber. He's the guy that coined the term blockchain in 1991. You know, computer scientist from Berkeley and Stanford, and, you know, pretty smart guy. He's a venture partner of ours. We were friendly. I wouldn't. We're not friends, but we're friendly and we work together. And so I asked him. And so, and then I'll tell you a funny story about him. So, so I asked him, said Scott, you know, I heard this theory and, and what do you think? And without hesitation, Scott, like no hesitation, like, nope, like how? How? He said, well, you know, it's definitely possible that it was created by the CIA or nsa, but the way it works, there can be no backdoor.
- [60:39]
Scott Stornetta
Exactly.
- [60:40]
Mark Yusko
Because of the air gap. And I was like, and it was just so definitive and so fast and just so matter of fact. But then the funny part, and maybe we've already, I may have already told you this, he said, but Ethereum. Yeah, there could be one. Okay, that's hilarious. And then you look at, you know, who created it and who is ties are to Peter and it's like, okay, but a story for another day. But the funniest one about Scott. So we had him on our podcast, we do digital currency. And we said, you know, you are in the white paper three times and you have some email traffic and maybe you might know. And he's so like, he starts speaking, he says, whenever, whenever someone asks me, who's Satoshi? I give the same response. And he starts speaking fluent Japanese because he lived in Japan for a long time, speaks fluent Japanese and basically he then translated. He says, what I, what I say to people is, well, I might know who it is, but if I did. I probably wouldn't tell you. And since you don't speak Japanese, you have no idea what I'm saying, so you'll never know. I thought it was pretty funny.
- [61:57]
Scott Stornetta
Wow. We went over time. It was a great conversation, as always, Mark. Wow. This is one of the funniest comments I've ever seen. So much so that I think I'm going to tweet it. Where'd it go? When the white smoke appears that signals the new Epstein has been elected.
- [62:13]
Mark Yusko
That is really funny.
- [62:14]
Scott Stornetta
That's really funny. All right, guys, that's.
- [62:17]
Mark Yusko
I apologize for all the technical difficulties. Thanks for sticking with me.
- [62:21]
Scott Stornetta
Not your fault, Big Tech. It's not you. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you next time. Bye.
- [62:27]
Mark Yusko
All right, thanks, Scooter. Let's do. Let's do.