Are we seeing the beginning of the Bitcoin treasury bubble
collapse? Everyone focusing on Michael
Saylor's 100th Bitcoin buy, but they're ignoring the Bitcoin
treasury company that just liquidated 100% of their Bitcoin
holdings. Now we know that MicroStrategy
is safe, or at least most likely safe, but what would happen to
the price of Bitcoin if we continue to see more companies
dumping their entire Bitcoin treasury?
Now, I know, I know you, you guys are probably in the chat
saying we're fighting. But hey, we've been talking
about this for a minute. And if you're looking at the
Bitcoin treasury stock prices, a lot of them are not doing very
well. Now, Nico and I have been saying
on the show, most likely micro strategy and maybe one or two
other ones are going to be going to be, you know, flying high,
they're going to be good to go. But a lot of the smaller ones, I
don't know if they're in trouble yet, but we are starting to see
some worrying signs. So I will start with, of course,
Michael Saylor. Michael Saylor did do his 100th
buy for MicroStrategy. They acquired 592 Bitcoin for
roughly 3 three $39.8 million at 67,286 per Bitcoin and now they
have about 717,722 Bitcoin. So they are lowering their you
know cost per Bitcoin. Obviously they're buying the dip
They're they're essentially doing ADCA strategy here every
week. We know sailors said, hey, we're
going to be buying Bitcoin every week most likely every quarter
forever. So Sailor and of course we did
play the clips last week where sailors saying, look, we're
pretty much good to go. We're we're going to be able to,
you know, survive for an extended period of time, even if
Bitcoin got to a ridiculous 8K price.
So Sailor is good to go. We're not here to fund
MicroStrategy or Michael Saylor. It's really about talking about
everyone outside of the, you know, Sailor camp here.
There is a lot of Bitcoin treasury companies.
Now, of course, we covered this last year that it seemed like
the Bitcoin hype was shifted into the Bitcoin treasury hype.
And now we're starting to see that it it is, or I mean, the
Bitcoin treasury bubble probably popped a while ago, but now
we're starting to see that a lot of them are getting in trouble.
Now, what am I talking about here?
So it's not the big Bitcoin treasury companies, you know,
the pure Bitcoin treasury company plays, but we did see
bit Deer liquidate its entire Bitcoin treasury.
Now you're probably like, OK, you know, they're a Bitcoin
mining company. But again, all the rage was
Bitcoin treasury companies, people adding Bitcoin to their
balance sheet and they just liquidated in the last month or
so about 1500 coins and they finally dumped about 1000 coins
over the weekend. So here we go.
Bit Dear liquidates entire Bitcoin treasury.
The miner has sold 100% of its corporate Bitcoin holdings.
943.1 Bitcoin from reserves sold.
This was the final batch and they even sold the 189.8 Bitcoin
that was newly mined. They're officially at 0 Bitcoin
holdings now. They are saying that the
proceeds are being redirected and that they're trying to just,
you know, beef up their their liquidity here.
So you can see the chart. They've been selling a lot of
Bitcoin. They had a, you know, a high of
Bitcoin and in the last couple of months they have completely
sold out of all of their Bitcoin just completely to 0.
Now their official response here is or actually let's let's go to
this headline. This one's a little more
interesting. I think it says a little more
this from Coinbase and it goes bit dear sold all its Bitcoin to
fund its move into AI data centers.
So we've been seeing this, a lot of Bitcoin miners have been
pivoting into the AI space and you're starting to ask yourself
why. Obviously, as we've been seeing,
the hash rate has been down, the hash price has been going up.
It wasn't, it was tough for Bitcoin miners for the last
couple of months, but now it seemed to have cooled down a
little bit. And here they are.
They're liquidating their entire holdings so that they have
liquidity to acquire some land. Now here is the official
response from Bitgear and they're they're spinning this a
little more positively and they go our decision to sell Bitcoin
should not be concerned for the broader market.
We are currently evaluating multiple non binding powered
land acquisition opportunities as a coin to this article said
for you know, AI basically and we believe it is prudent to
prepare liquidity. Now, our hash rate will continue
to grow and we will continue to mine more Bitcoin for the
interest of our shareholders. Now, if you're looking at what
happened over the weekend, you might want to attribute the
Bitcoin dump we saw to 64 K because of bit deer dumping
their Bitcoin. Now, I don't think that that was
the case. I think it's probably more to do
with the whole tariff stuff going on right now.
Of course, on Friday we covered the news or I, I slightly
covered the news in the culture that the Trump tariffs were
knocked down from the Supreme Court.
They basically said, hey, this is illegal.
And then literally right when I got off the show, I saw Donald
Trump basically say like, it doesn't matter what the Supreme
Court said. We are doing tariffs anyways.
And then over the weekend we saw that now there's a across the
board 10 and potentially 15% tariffs on every country right
now. So Trump is using other means
for the tariffs. And I think that's probably what
caused this Bitcoin price to dump, though.
It literally happened at like 10:00 last night.
On Sunday, I had a friend text me.
He's like, yo, the Bitcoin price dump.
I just responded with Lowell because, you know, at this point
it's either you, you laugh or you cry.
Now to add, you know, a little more wrinkles to this and to
prove that this isn't just an isolated event from bit dear, I
have this tweet right here. Rather this chart right here by
Charles Edwards, who has been very big on the idea that the
reason Bitcoin price is down is because of quantum computing
concerns. But he did drop this chart and
he goes a new first consecutive weeks of first time digital
asset treasury sells. Is the Bitcoin treasury model
unwinding? And you can see here is this
weekly. Yeah, weekly.
So three weeks in a row that we've seen Bitcoin treasury
companies selling Bitcoin. This is the first time we've
seen that. So with the price going down
with the current, you know, price action, with a lot of
uncertainty in the markets and the broader markets,
geopolitical markets at large, you are starting to see a lot of
pressure on these Bitcoin treasury companies, these
companies that maybe took a lot of debt to get Bitcoin.
Now we, we might be seeing more of a trend, we might see this
trend continue. Now to really, you know, put
this in context here I am on Bitcoin treasuries and of course
we, we've been talking about this for a while.
The Bitcoin treasuries, or rather the public companies,
Bitcoin treasuries, they hold over a million Bitcoin.
Now there is the public companies withhold about 300,000
Bitcoin. So that's a total of about, you
know, almost 1.5 million Bitcoin that are sitting in Bitcoin
treasury companies. That's where this is starting to
get really big and concerning guys.
And obviously that total 1.5 million Bitcoin isn't going to
get liquidated tomorrow. But if we do start to see the
price action get lower, continue to go sideways for who knows how
long, A lot of the companies that probably aren't managed the
best, they don't have a, you know, rocket scientist behind
them manufacturing some financial engineering here.
There could potentially be more Bitcoin selling on the horizon.
And as we've been covering for the last couple of months, you
know, we can we can attribute the Bitcoin drops to a lot of
stuff there's been a lot of speculations about.
It's Binance selling a billion coins instead of buying a
billion coins. There's a lot of OG selling
Bitcoin for the last year and a half.
If we get in more hot water here and now, a lot of these Bitcoin
treasuries are going to have to dump, you know, potentially
their entire holdings here like bit deer did.
That's 1.5 million Bitcoin that's going to hit the hit, you
know, the exchanges hit the market.
On the one hand, hey, cheap sets for us distribution of coins.
Again, this is healthy for bitcoins distribution of people
holding Bitcoin. But what is that going to do to
the price if we have to deal with another 1.5 or rather just
flat 1,000,000 coins being sold being dumped on our heads again,
guys, we might be in for as Nico was saying, you know, 40K
Bitcoin price if this actually happens.
Now I'm again, I'm not spreading FUD and saying, oh, it's going
to happen. All I'm saying is we are seeing
a trend of Bitcoin treasury companies needing to sell their
coins. And if this bit deer scenario,
this isolated scenario, bit deer is a broader trend of what other
Bitcoin treasury companies are feeling, feeling like, hey, I
might need to get into cash. I might need to liquidate my
holdings. I might not be able to continue
the strategy, especially when a lot of the Bitcoin treasury
companies are like 90% down it. It's starting to get bloody out
there, guys. Now, is this the, you know, the
final sacrifice we need for the bear or the bull market to
continue? Is this even Nico said this
morning, You know, we might be seeing some some bottom signals
now with these Bitcoin treasuries coming.
I think we do potentially or rather we will potentially see
more capitulation here. I know the bit, dear official
Twitter account. They kind of spun this a little
more positively like, hey, we're not in trouble, but it it is
something that is on my radar right now.
If we if we see more Bitcoin treasury companies sell, then
hopefully it happens quickly so we can find a bottom quickly and
not go sideways with all this uncertainty.
But it does look rather maybe, Nico, maybe this does confirm
the idea that we've been talking about for a while that the
Bitcoin price was, for lack of a better term, suppressed because
all of the capital, all the hype was going into the Bitcoin
treasury companies. And like we saw in 2017 with the
ICO booms, they're finally, you know what, they're finally
interacting with gravity. It's finally coming down and we
are getting back to reality here.
Hopefully this happens a lot quicker because then finally we
bought them and we can continue the game.
We can continue rising up. We can finally get our our, you
know, as all of us Bitcoiners always talk about the final
sacrifice before we can start to run up again.
But what do you take? What what's your read on this
bit, dear announcement? Do you, do you think this is PR
spin or you know, or, or are we seeing a a greater trend for the
Bitcoin treasury bubble collapsing?
I mean, dude, look, I, I, I called this, I called this in
October, right? I told you that as this bear
market progresses, while you and Walker were like literally
beating me up, I said guilty. We are going to see a bunch of
different treasury companies collapse and that's exactly what
we've seen playing out. Like not only not only has it
been bit deer, bit Deer's the the, the biggest one, they're
huge public miner, but also we saw sequins.
We also saw Nakamoto, I believe sold some Bitcoin as well.
So in there was a a recent interview with Michael Saylor
and for the first time ever, he goes out and he tells his
investors that, hey, look, if you know Bitcoin is below, you
know our M NAV is below a certain price, we might be put
in a position where we have to sell Bitcoin, right?
So you know paper Bitcoin summer is officially over.
Thank God. Honestly, paper.
Bitcoin summer is officially over.
The market is based basically checking out these treasury
companies and they're coming to a realization that, hey, we
actually have to become a company, We actually have to
have cash flow. I was actually having a, a very
enlightening conversation with Jack Mahler's or Jack Ballers,
however you want to call them. Big fan of, of just his media
and his, the products that he's built.
And he, he has even come to this realization.
We, we were having a, a like a, you know, a conversation and at
Plan B, which by the way, we posted on our YouTube, you guys
should go check it out. And he, he even said, like, look
like we have 21 has to take a look at, you know, on, on how to
make, how to build a profitable business.
It's not just about holding Bitcoin on your balance sheet.
It's about about actually having the cash flow as a business and
then using Bitcoin as as a treasury asset, not just the
company being a treasury asset itself.
Because it actually doesn't quite it doesn't make sense,
right? Like if you think about it like,
OK, let's say you're an institutional investor, or let's
say you're you're someone who's older and and you don't feel
comfortable with just buying spot Bitcoin and putting it in
self custody. I understand that argument, but
then why not just buy the ETF, right?
Because if you're just buying the treasury company, you're
taking additional risk. Like you're not just buying
exposure to Bitcoin, you're actually betting on the fact
that management is not going to dilute your shares.
You're actually betting that management is going to do a good
job. It's, it's, it's a lot riskier.
So what is the actual point of buying a treasury company?
And one of the things that I've noticed on, on I think it was
Bitcoin treasuries like it, look at the M Navs.
The craziest M Navs that are like 50X40X are Tesla block.
Basically what that means is the companies that actually have
cash flow are significantly higher in their M navs because
their valuations are significantly higher than the
Bitcoin that they hold in their treasuries.
Right? Because the company is being
valued based on how profitable that company is.
And you know, a Bitcoin treasury is a part of that equation.
It's a part of that, of that math, right?
I think strategy in and of itself, I'm a fan of sailor.
I think that, you know, buying strategy at $50 a share would be
a steal. I think buying it under $100
would be a a, a a great purchase in my opinion.
You know it it right now it's at what, 125 or?
Something. Yeah, something like that.
So I, I, I have, I have all the confidence in the world that
Strategy 21 and potentially Nakamoto are going to return and
all their glory when we when we hit the next bull market.
But what I've been saying for the last couple of months, and
I've been right and I'm sticking to it, is the fact that, hey,
the smaller treasury companies that took on riskier debt or
diluted their shareholders to buy additional Bitcoin, I was
telling you that those companies were going to find themselves in
trouble. And one of the largest Bitcoin
miners in the world, bit dear capitulated and they capitulated
hard, like hard. And they had PR blowback, by the
way, they had to go out on Twitter and basically say, hey
guys, we still believe in Bitcoin 100%, We're still mining
it. But essentially we've sold all
our Bitcoin. Like that's not like that's not
a sign of confidence. And by the way, it's not just
bit deer doing this. We we saw a post, it was
actually by pleadator that post. Oh yeah, I have.
It let me pull that up. That basically you know the
Winklevi, which I'm also a fan, a fan of, I think Gemini's great
in terms of the products that they offer.
The Gemini credit card's pretty cool.
And basically he's like, I, I've never seen sentiment this bad.
And then platitor found receipts of basically the the fund that
the Winklevi have, they've been selling Bitcoin for over a year
now, right? So it's like you're basically
saying, I've never seen the sentiment so bad, but
simultaneously your fund has been selling Bitcoin this entire
time. That's not a really good sign of
confidence. But I'm going to weave it back
in and I'm going to bring all this back in and just tell you
guys because it has been negative Nancy for, you know,
the, the beginning part of the show.
But what I will tell you is that I, I love this.
I really love this because for the first time in many, many
years, we're seeing uncertainty in the markets.
We're seeing doubt creep in. We're seeing.
Here's a tweet, Nico, here's a tweet.
Do you want to read it? Yeah, you did.
You pull it up. Yeah, yeah.
So Tyler Winklevoss 14 hours ago goes basically saying exactly
what Nico just said. The sentiment in crypto right
now is so bad that I'm actually pretty optimistic.
And then Plederner goes, then why has the Arkham tag
Winklevoss Capital wallet been selling off Bitcoin non-stop for
a year, a year straight? And you can see here they had
about 23 and some change thousand Bitcoin and currently
have have under 12K, so around 11 K Bitcoin.
So they sold also 50% of their stack here.
So it's further proof that this is going around and and people
are selling Bitcoin even though a lot of the narrative is, hey,
we're going to be holding this Bitcoin forever.
So all right, anyways, continue Nico.
So, yeah, I mean, like, look like fundamentally at the end of
the day, it's like, don't pay attention to what they say, pay
attention to what they do. And the reality is that I think
right now there's like this, this shaking of confidence.
The shaking of confidence I think comes from the fact that
Bitcoin didn't perform to the expectations of many this
previous cycle. Like even Lynn Alden, I saw her,
I think it was on the What Bitcoin Did podcast where she
was basically saying something along the lines of like look
like I had I thought Bitcoin was going to hit at least $150,000
last cycle and the cycle before that I thought I was going to
hit at least 100. And the previous cycle 20/21, it
only hit 69 K and then this previous cycle and only hit 126
K. So it actually underperformed
Linalden's expectations, right. So there's this kind of loss of
confidence in Bitcoin being this alternative to gold.
Like that's really what's happening here.
That's the really the main story.
So you have gold answer this historic parabolic year in 2025
goes up 60%. It's an asset that's $35
trillion for. So for it to go up 60%, I mean,
holy shit, the amount of money that needs to go into this asset
and it performs amazing. And then silver basically like
acts like a, a shit coin essentially.
It's like 2-3 Xing like over a short, a short amount of time.
Like it's crazy. So like I think like right now
the digital gold narrative is being called into question like
that. And that's a reality that a lot
of people are not. Take into account, but here's
the thing and perhaps you guys don't remember this from the
early days of of Bitcoin and and how Bitcoin has functioned.
This is how Bitcoin normally has been right?
Like this is what people have forgotten.
Like this is what people need to remember.
Like in 2017, the reason that you had such crazy potential in
terms of gains was because there was so much uncertainty back
then. Like if I would, if you would
have told me in the beginning of 2017, which for the price of
Bitcoin was $1000 at that time, that, you know, in less than 10
years it was going to essentially 100 X, I wouldn't
have believed you. I, I, I wouldn't have believed
you. I would have been like, that's
crazy. But there was a lot of
uncertainty back then. BlackRock was our enemy.
Even Sailor didn't believe in Bitcoin in that era.
There was no Bitcoin content, right?
It was like very, very early days.
It wasn't as early as 2013 or 2014, but there it was still
early and there's not that much confirmation.
What I disliked about this epoch, what I, what I would and
obviously hindsight's 2020, but what I disliked about this epoch
is that there was so much certainty.
There was so much certainty. Think about it on Twitter right
now, there's entire accounts that their whole growing
strategy and maybe we're a little bit, we have to talk to
the Twitter team about this, but maybe we're a little bit guilty
of this themselves. But it's basically like, look
like Bitcoin's going to hit $1,000,000 guaranteed.
It's a sure bad 100% like whatever.
And everyone just smashed like like 2017 that they didn't even
exist. Like there, there was no Bitcoin
standard. Like there was no, none of these
like, like highly intellectual people that have the Iqs of like
150 basically making these incredible pieces of, of, of,
of, of like of, of literature of, of just like creating these
incredible pieces of, of, of just books and writing and stuff
like that. To, to make the thesis for as to
why Bitcoin's going to win, None of that existed back then.
So because there is so much uncertainty, because there was,
it wasn't a sure thing. It created this asymmetric
opportunity if you believed in Bitcoin very early on.
For me, the like the factor that really changed my perspective
and made me go all in was Andreas lectures.
When I heard Andreas lectured, I was like, Oh my God, like this
isn't just about making money. This is like, like we're going
to win basically. And it was a lot more
revolutionary back then. It, now it, it, it kind of
transforms like now it's the financialization of Bitcoin.
And you know, I, I kind of like what happened because these
treasury companies are either going to be forced to pivot
except for strategy because strategy has a different
strategy, no pun intended. Metaplanet might be good too.
And metaplanet, but more so strategy.
Strategy is going to be OK. But you know the the concept of
just a company buying Bitcoin and being public and then the
markets assigning value to that, I think that concept is over.
I think it's done. I think it had its moment over
the summer. We had our blow off tops in
Bitcoin in those companies. A lot of the capital that it
would have otherwise just bought spot Bitcoin went straight into
these treasury companies and that's what happened over the
summer. And I think that's part of the
reason we didn't have this crazy normal parabola.
And now we have uncertainty back in the markets again.
And now as we head into the new cycle, which we're beginning,
we're in the we're congratulations guys.
This is like the new cycle. You've made it a cycle.
We're in a new cycle without a doubt.
Now the question is, how are we going to, you know, where are we
going to bottom out? That's the big question.
Are we going to bottom out at, you know, at AT60K?
Are we going to bottom out at 45?
Are we going to bottom out at 31?
Right. That's the big question.
No one knows, but I am. I, I am pretty confident to say
that I think we're going to bottom out this year without a
shadow of a doubt. And I think that, you know, the
cycle's going to repeat itself. You know, nature's going to
heal. I think 2020 at the end of 2026
is going to be a great year. I think the big 2027's going to
be a great year. I think 2028 is going to be in
great, a great year and 2029 is going to be an incredible year
as well. But but basically the cycle's
just repeating itself and let's see what the you know, let let
let's see how Bitcoin does it. It my personal opinion is I,
I'm, I feel incredibly bullish after we get through this kind
of nature healing itself, because it really did need to
heal itself. Like a lot of these companies
were treasure were trading at like 5X5 M NAV, like 10 M NAV.
I'm not going to name any names, but some of the some of the
Bitcoin treasury companies and the way that Mauricio, the Co
founder of lead Leaden described it to me, he was basically like
Nico, like essentially, if you were buying one of these
companies and they were trading at 5 * M NAV, you essentially
could have put that same amount of capital into Bitcoin and you
would have gotten five times as much Bitcoin then if you just
bought these companies trading at 5 M NAV like it was.
We did have a mania phase. It just didn't happen happen in
spot Bitcoin. It happened in like, you know,
in the traditional financial markets and these Bitcoin
proxies, so to speak, in these paper Bitcoin vehicles, so to
speak. I know that could be
controversial to say that, but anyway, always.
Wait, wait, can we? I also have a theory as well, a
very interesting theory. And we're right more we're more
right often than we are wrong. OK, so no, that's not true.
I'm. Trolling.
I'm trolling. I'm trolling.
Dude. We're we're trolling.
We're more right than we are wrong, but I'm going to, I'm
going to tell you guys this theory.
I've. I've been thinking about this
over the weekend. I want to, I want to get your
guys this thoughts. So in 2021 the bull market got
cut short. We essentially we didn't go as
high as we normally would. And the reason, the primary
reason for that, and I know people disagree with this, but
they can shut up because I know I'm right on this.
The correlation is just too strong.
But basically the 2021 bull market, it was cut short because
of the China mining man. You literally saw Bitcoin had
this double top. And in between the double top,
you saw a direct correlation between the hash rate and the
price of Bitcoin, right? This cycle, we didn't really
have a top. We had this like like this top
on apathy. But it was strange because
instead of Bitcoin going parabolic, you saw gold go
parabolic in the meantime. And before that we basically
gold went sideways for like, what was it like 10 years, 10-15
years before that happened? So like in my mind, I'm thinking
like, if you're a government and you don't want people to use a
non sovereign alternative to your local Fiat currency, what
would you need to do? The primary thing that you would
need to do is for the Bitcoin price not to go up.
Like when we had these leaks coming out of these European
politicians when they're talking about the Mika laws and like
whatever, like some of their, their communications, like what
they would say is basically like we, we, we, we have to do
something about the price. We have to do something about
the price. So think about this for a
second. What is one of the best ways for
people to lose confidence in Bitcoin?
In 2021, it was basically the Chinese government canceling or
basically banning all those Bitcoin miners.
We didn't get a normal parabolic.
We're on. We got a blow off top.
I would call it a mute off top, a muted top.
And then in 2025, instead of Bitcoin having a parabolic year,
it was gold. And you know who controls all
the gold in the world? Banks and central and
governments. So like I I'm not trying to be a
conspiracy theorist here, but. No, no, it's actually I, I
wanted to explore that idea in the culture.
I I have some good tweaks on this, so we'll continue the
combo. But yeah, keep going.
It it, it's, it's, it's surely convenient is what I'm trying to
say that in the two years that's that Bitcoin was meant to go
parabolic as in 2017. And the parabolas are really
what drives the crazy adoption. You have the China mining ban in
2021, and in 2025, instead of Bitcoin going parabolic, you
have gold being going parabolic. And conveniently, you know who
controls gold? Governments do, right?
So it's like, and you know what, what, what one of the biggest
narrative killers of Bitcoin succeeding would be because
again, this is what Michael Saylor was saying for so many
years. He's saying the US government
should sell all that gold and buy Bitcoin because gold is
essentially this dead metal. And then the year that Bitcoin
is supposed to go parabolic, gold goes up 60%.
How convenient, right? So it could be, again, there's
no confirmation of this, but I don't have any shame like I used
to when I used to have like connect the the dots the way
that I have because we've been more, we've been right so much
more than we've been wrong over the years.
You know, bringing you tomorrow's Bitcoin news today
here at Simply Bitcoin. Could this be a sabotage by
central banks to basically psyop people into losing faith in
Bitcoin by essentially finally allowing the the gold price to
run? Because we all know that gold
essentially has been suppressed by the paper gold mechanism for
a very long time now. We've, I've had Caitlin Long
come on the show to talk about this.
I've had Larry Leopard come on the show to talk about this and
it's like an open, it's an open secret that, you know, paper
gold should be a lot more expensive, but because of the
paper gold in the market, it's not.
Could it be that the year 2025 governments are like, listen, we
can't stop this Bitcoin thing. So what we're going to do is
we're going to let gold run. We control gold anyways.
We have total control over the custody of gold.
Most of the gold is in our vaults, right?
Let's just let gold run. Allegedly.
Let's just let gold run. We can't have this non sovereign
alternative of which the majority is held by individuals
continue to go parabolic because that's just going to lead to
more adoption of this and more adoption of Bitcoin means less
control for governments. It that like again, that I, I, I
wouldn't, this is completely speculative.
I have no evidence of that. But again, the incentives do
line up. They do line up.
You can't, you can't question that.
And then you you put in, you weave this in the civil war that
is happening between the Federal Reserve and Donald John Trump,
right? President Trump, like we're
basically they're, they're artificially keeping the
interest rates high, basically making the argument it's like,
oh, no, inflation is running too hot, while simultaneously, you
know, they, they, they were very easy in terms of their monetary
policy when the previous administration was in power,
right? So again, I, I, I think that
there could be something bigger at play here that is trying to
stop the adoption of Bitcoin and the inclusion of Bitcoin in the
traditional financial system. And the one of the best ways to
stop Bitcoin is for number not to go up.
If number doesn't go up, I'm telling you guys that that is
the most important feature of Bitcoin is number going up.
Like, yeah, the sovereignty is. Good.
The self custody is good. All of that is good.
Like make no mistake. But like the absolute scarcity
narrative, no one gives a flying fuck about that narrative unless
number goes up, right? Like the success of Bitcoin is
binary. Michael say, Michael Saylor said
it the other day. This thing either goes to 0 or
it goes to a million. It doesn't just go sideways
ways. Like if Bitcoin can't even beat
the S&P 500, if Bitcoin can't even beat the price appreciation
of gold, then what the hell are we all doing here, right?
Like, that's the, that's the blunt, honest truth, right?
So I think there could be some dark forces at play that are
trying to basically stop the adoption of Bitcoin by
suppressing the price of Bitcoin.
What the hell do I know, That's just the theory I have.
Q Alex Jones with the tinfoil hat on now, I I kind of agree.
Look, I, I've said it before and, and the chat never really
likes this when I say it, but I, I completely agree with Nico on
the fact that like you may like other reasons about Bitcoin, but
the most important thing to get people to adopt Bitcoin is
number go up. That's that's just how it is.
Look, all the other features that we love about Bitcoin are
all great, but without number going up, people don't find a
reason to get into Bitcoin and without number go up.
That is, This is why no one's here now.
Who'd you say? You say say Sailor said that
about gold. Because I, I'm, I'm being
reminded that even safety had said this a long time ago.
He's like, the only thing that could really stop Bitcoin is if
the world went back on a gold standard.
He said that years ago. But when I interviewed him in
Lugano, he said that, yeah, that was one of the things he said.
He said the world going back on a gold standard and how
convenient the day, the the year that Bitcoin is supposed to go
parabolic all of a sudden, like gold wakes up from a slumber and
you know it. It has this amazing performance
like how convenient bro, what a coincidence.
Oh my God, right. I, I think, I think guys like I,
I think people forget what's at stake here and like we're really
playing for all the marbles here, ladies and gentlemen.
Like this is about control over the money.
You control money, you control the world.
Like this rabbit hole is deep. Like, I mean, the world wars,
the, the, the, is it over, boys? No, I don't think so.
And if it is, if it is like if it is, I'm gonna stick to.
Hey, if it is, at least we tried right if it.
Is like, it's not over. It's not over.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick with it through the very end, like
I'm gonna stick with this thing. I, I truly believe in Bitcoin.
I truly believe in the properties of Bitcoin.
But like once we start getting to the final levels and make no
mistake, we are in the final levels like we are, we are very
close to, you know, winning this game.
I think they're going to pull out all the stops.
And this could totally be one of the things that they're doing to
shake your confidence in this thing, right?
Because ultimately, that's what it's about.
Like this is about shaking your confidence.
And I think this bear market's going to be especially brutal
because even in the 2018 and 2019 bear markets, we still knew
that Bitcoin was going to recover.
Like we knew that Bitcoin was going to RIP eventually this
bear market. People are questioning like we
had, I don't want to mention, I don't want to mention who he is,
but like we had someone that even works for us was basically
like, man, there's, there's things over the next 10 years
that could potentially outperform Bitcoin, right?
You know, like even even like, you know, kind of internally
like we're, we're starting to see that doubt and and and.
Bottom signals. I was saying bottom signals that
doubt. Creep in.
So, you know, like I, I would say, listen, guys, hold strong.
Remember the remember the conviction that you have
remember why you are here. I, I think we're going to win.
I think Bitcoin has the best characteristics.
It's, it's backed by, you know, the largest decentralized node
network in the world. It's backed by the largest
decentralized computing network in the world that's actively
mining it on a 24/7 basis. And again, nothing has absolute
scarcity the way that Bitcoin has absolute scarcity.
You can, you know, store it on a 12 word, 24 word seed phrase.
It's incredibly easy to store. You know, all the, all the
arguments are there. So I think it's just a matter of
the huddle, the huddle. Baby, are you, are you huddling?
I'm huddling. Are you huddling?
Let us know in the chat if
you're huddling or, or you, you got shaken out of your bags.
Like some of these companies are being shaken out of their bags.
Right. Anyway, seems like the Rumble
chat is, is popping off. Shout out to all of you guys on
Rumble. Someone actually gave me nice
thing Nico right on on the nail head.
Love it. Nico the violin player on the
Titanic. That's hilarious.
You go Nico Nico's Bitcoin being controlled potentially could be
being controlled. I don't know That's a that's a
good question, my friend. But anyhoo guys, it's going to
be a great show. Someone said I sold at 115.
Smart move bro. Hindsight's 2020 Love you Nico.
Hang in there. It's going to be OK someday
maybe. Anyways, guys, it's going to be
a great show. Nico's a fan of Sailor?
Since when? I've always been a fan of
Sailor. I just think that, you know, he,
he has, you know, he's running a public company and he wants his
stock to go up. But at the end of the day, you
know, I'm, I'm also a fan of Coinbase cause Coinbase has been
one of the biggest lobby lobby. They, they've sunk in a ton of
money into lobbying pro Bitcoin policies in Washington, DC.
So you don't need to have, you don't need to be completely
aligned with a lot of these entities to, to, to be fans of
them. There's, there's things that I
dislike that, that, you know, the traditional, how traditional
finance treats Bitcoin. There's things that I dislike
about the altcoin casino industry.
But there's things that I like about traditional finance and
there's things that I like about Coinbase.
Anyways, guys, it's going to be a great show.
We have tons to cover today. I want to let you know I, I
want, I want to hear your guys thoughts about my theory.
We're going to talk about more about it during the culture
segment with Opti and it's going to be a great show.
I got some videos, got lot lined up.
Larry Leopard, he's got some bull juice for you guys.
And then we got a critique of Bitcoin.
And the critique of Bitcoin is coming from actually someone
who's a famous movie star and they come from a huge YouTube
channel. And the reason I want to play
you guys this critique is because the midterms are coming
up. And I think that a lot of a lot
of people have forgotten that, you know, that, that we were in
a hostile political environment almost two years ago with the
previous administration. And I, I, I want to remind all
of you guys that the members of that political party have not
changed their stance. In fact, the Clarity Act right
now has a 43 percent chance of passing.
I also called that. Got to take credit for that as
well. So yeah, guys, it's going to be
a great show. Also, we got Bram.
We got Bram joining us on the show.
We're going to let him up on the show.
We're going to let him up in a little bit.
So guys, it's going to be a great show.
One or two. You guys want to.
What's wrong with me? Dude just hit the ad.
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Alright everybody, we got Bram joining us in the house today.
Guys, go to stampse-ed.com today.
Use promo code simply again promo code simply to get 15% off
anything on the store. Bram, thank you so much for
joining us. At the time of recording the
Bitcoin price is 64,797 seven 60 sixty $4970.
I don't know what was wrong with me today.
Sats per dollar 1539 block height 938,005 Realized monetary
inflation .84% market cap 1.3 trillion Bitcoin versus gold
market cap 4.34% percentage. Just remember when we celebrate
it got to 10% gold. Just took us to school, bro.
Percentage issued 95.2% decline from all time high.
If you're buying Bitcoin right now, you're getting it at a 50%
discount. 50% discount. That's a pretty good discount.
Anyways, before I get Bram's thoughts, I have this clip of
Larry Leppard. Larry Leppard had some thoughts
regarding where Bitcoin could go on its next wave, what those
price targets could be. Let's check out the clip and
then we'll talk about it. Few people understand is how
when this thing does hit, when this next wave does hit, it's
not going to 140, guys. It's going to 250 or 300 or 350.
I mean, because there will be so much, you know, there'll be two
things happening. There'll be all the shorts who
have to cover or else they're going to get the faces ripped
off. And then it'll be a whole new
category of long D Jens will come in and he'll lever it and
go along it. Right.
And that's that's what will shove it to 400 and then from
400 by the way, it'll correct back to 150.
But I mean, it's, it's the nature of a speculative, you
know, asset that's being adopted.
You know, this is, and if you go look at a very long term price
turn of Amazon, which is a similar network based business,
it had multiple, you know, one had 190% correction, had
multiple 6070 out of 4050% corrections.
I mean, either it's going to take over the world or it's
going to die. And right now bitcoins in the,
you know, right now we're kind of hearing it's not.
I mean, I just saw a tweet this morning from a gold guy.
Well, not really looking like digital gold, is it?
And I was just calling you wait, OK, You know, just just wait,
you just you just relax. You know, it's it's not a
straight line, but you know, I I'll take the other side of that
bat in two years. We'll see who looks right.
So all right, everybody, we got Bram in the house host of the
Bitcoin for millennials podcast. Bram, welcome to the show.
I want to get your thoughts. Is Larry Leopard being overly
bullish, overly optimistic, Bram?
I see. Yeah, Thanks guys.
I'm happy to be here. I see a comment on the screams
screen saying this. This is hopium.
I, I think for the people that have been in Bitcoin for a
longer time, this, this ain't nothing new, right?
I think the, the bearish people, the people with all the anti
Bitcoin takes coming out of the woodwork when you know, the,
the, the price goes down. These are all people that have a
high time preference in their life.
They think everything goes up in a straight line.
They think because they didn't study, but they hear us talk
about Bitcoin, you know, that that we are moon math boys or or
whatever. But I think the deeper
understanding here and that is what Larry was also alluding to,
right? This is the monetization of a
totally new asset, monetary asset, but also an asset of
which its characteristics have never existed before.
So I've always said, you know, price is a proxy of
understanding of a certain amount of, of people of Bitcoin.
And I think that is what we're seeing.
I think you guys probably also talk about manipulation and
whatnot. I, I, I, I think manipulation is
done by people that actually understand it.
But in general, all the people that they're coming out of the
woodwork with all their, their anti takes, you know, I think
it's a joke by now. It's intellectually lazy to
never question what is money, to never dive into Bitcoin and then
the price goes down. You, you think you are dancing
on someone else's grave basically.
But I, I posted this today, you know, if Bitcoin goes down 30%,
all the people that understand it are happy.
They're happy. They know that they have the
possibility to buy it at lower prices.
If the S&P 500 goes down with, I don't know, 7%, you know, Tratfi
is in meltdown. The, you know, mainstream media
is in meltdown, like, Oh my God, what is happening, etcetera.
And I think fundamental understanding of Bitcoin is the
most important task you have. If you are insecure about your
future, if you don't want a CBDC, if you don't want other
people to control the value of your time and energy, so you
need to do the work. Literally the understanding.
Proof of work takes proof of work.
So I don't think Larry's bullish.
I just think we are extremely early.
We have a lot of foresight and that sounds like amazing cope,
but I still think the world is crazy.
So let's talk about that, right? I guess I.
Keep like that. Yeah, that was I love amazing
cope. So we keep we, we keep hearing
that right, which is we're, we're extremely early to Bitcoin
Opti, I want to get your thoughts on that.
Do you think we're still early to Bitcoin?
I honestly do. I know I get yelled at
constantly when I say this. Everyone's like how we early to
Bitcoin. Bitcoin's at 100K and I, I just
use this simple, this simple heuristic.
It's like go talk to average people.
They either think you're an idiot still or they think
Bitcoin is a dumb idea. And we've gotten this far to
100K and like you talk to normal people, most people don't hold
Bitcoin. But I mean, OK, but hold on.
OK, Yeah, hold on a second. I agree.
Central banks don't even know what they are buying.
Bitcoin, guys. All right, sorry.
You're better buying gold. Why they're buying?
Gold, I I, I agree in terms of the overall grand scheme of
things that we're early to Bitcoin in that.
Bro .02% of world capitals in Bitcoin.
You're telling me we're not early?
I don't know man, I don't. It depends on your definition of
early. That's what I'm saying though.
Depends on your definition of early.
I would say depends on your. Definition, dude.
Niko. Niko's such a bear.
I, I, dude, I I have to, I have to.
Level it out here 'cause if you and Walker had your way, bro, on
the October show, bro, we got to be bull tarted always.
I don't care if I'm wrong, I'm going to be right, you know?
I may not be right right now, but I am right.
The bottom is marked when opti, when opti starts crying and and
capitulates. Not going to happen.
It's optimist for a reason bro. Even if you tell me it's going
to zero, I'm like, Nah, there's still a chance. 5000.
Dollar Bitcoin dude $5000 Bitcoin.
You know how many coins I'll be able to buy like?
I'll be all dialysis for life guys.
Oh, man, all right, everybody, it's going to be a great show.
We're going to talk about Bram later on during the culture
segment. Also during the news segment, I
got an interesting video for you guys.
I told you guys the midterms are coming up in November.
And what a lot of people forget this always happens by the way
in in American politics is people forget that the previous
political party that was in power before the Republicans had
a complete sweep still has an anti Bitcoin stance.
And one of their one of one of the most popular YouTube
channels that is pro this political party continues to
make very high production videos criticizing the Bitcoin and
crypto industry as a whole. And again, you have to pay
attention to these things because when the political
pendulum inevitably swings back, and it could swing back because
a lot of people are not very happy with the Trump
administration, don't be surprised if once again you have
Elizabeth Warren coming in and you have operation choke point
choke .3 point O begin and then you get caught.
You get caught by a surprise. Don't be surprised if that
happens, right? Because fundamentally the core
of this political party has not changed their perspective on
Bitcoin. My thesis, my belief is I think
they're 100% bought into the ideas of central bank digital
currency currencies, very similar to how the European
Union is doing. The European Union is hell bent
on rolling out a central bank digital currency.
They call it the digital euro. I don't really think that they
give a flying F about, you know, what the masses believe.
I think that they're just hell bent on rolling out the digital
euro because it's a continuation of the Fiat system, whereas Jeff
Booth likes to call it the system of theft, right?
I think they're hell bent on continuing that system.
And I think they're doing that via digital digital via CBDC,
specifically the digital euro in in Europe.
And you guys have to remember there's a major political party
in the United States that has the same philosophy.
And just because Trump won and just because he signed a couple
of executive orders, the only actual pro crypto piece of
legislation, not talking about the Genius Act, which was
focused on stable coins, the only pro Bitcoin piece of
legislation that has a lot of crypto stuff in it as well.
The Clarity Act went down from 80% a couple days ago.
Now it's down to 36% that it could pass.
I mean, it went up a little bit. Now it's at 52%.
And again, there's a March 1st deadline.
So if this doesn't get passed by March 1st, the probability that
this thing will get passed at all, it's going to, the
probability is going to continue to head down to 0, right?
Which is something else that I called last year, by the way.
So anyways, we have an update for you guys there.
And then we're going to talk to Bram about the Bitcoin for
Millennials podcast, what he's working on, what he wants to
talk about. So it's going to be an
incredible show. You guys are going to want to
stay tuned in. We're going to be right back
after the commercial break. I want to give a shout out to
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for $99. All right, everybody, let's get
into the bulk of today's news story and I want to take
advantage of the fact that we have our frem, our friend, our
fellow content creator, fellow Bitcoin content creator joining
us as a guest today. We got Bram in the house.
All right, everybody, let's check out today's news story.
So the clarity act, this is not good, ladies and gentlemen, but
I predicted it. I'm calling it, I'm taking
credit for it. I told you guys this was going
to happen in September of last year.
The moment that I heard that Bo Hines resigned and he joined
Tether, which is great news. Tether's a, a good company and
then when I heard that Senator Cynthia Lummis was not running
for re election, I told you guys right then and there I'm like,
guys, this, this Bitcoin legislation or pro Bitcoin
legislation stuff is not looking good at all.
And you know, a lot, a lot of people gave me a lot of shit for
it, but I stuck by my guns and it looks like it's looks like
it's not playing out so hot. So anyways, this is Matthew
Siegel and he says clarity Act odds of passing fall sharply as
March 1st deadline approaches with no meaningful movement on a
compromise. Coinbase is still moving full
steam ahead. They they announced a couple
days ago. We actually talked about it
during the show and I said, listen, Coinbase is literally
going out on Twitter and they're still announcing their rewards
program. And by the way, the, the main
block of the Clarity Act is 2 reasons.
Reason #1 there's a big portion of the, of a certain political
party in the United States that is still anti Bitcoin.
It's not monolithic, but there's a big portion of them that don't
support Bitcoin. And they're, they want a central
bank digital currency. That's thing number one thing #2
is that the big banks actually don't want Coinbase to be
offering rewards on their stablecoin.
And the reason for that is because these rewards would
function as interest and. The big banks in the United
States aren't offering interest at all to any of their
depositors. So if you deposit money in a
bank in a big bank in the United States, they do technically
offer you interest, but it's comical.
It's like .38% on top of the maintenance fee that they charge
you for holding money in that bank.
Simultaneously while all this is happening, the bank is making
money off of your money because they're going out and they're
lending that money. What the stablecoin issues are,
are are are realizing specifically Coinbase with USDC
is that they're saying, hey, listen, we'll offer you, we'll
offer you rewards and not using the word interest on purpose,
we'll offer you rewards if you hold USDC.
So if you hold USDC on Coinbase, if you put, you know, let's say
$100,000 of USDC and you put it on Coinbase, they're offering
you 3 and a half, 3 1/2 percent in Bitcoin rewards.
So they're literally paying you for you holding dollars or the
equivalent of dollars in a coin base account.
They're paying you for that. And if you look at exchanges,
like for example, River Financial, they're offered, I
think they're also offering you interest in Bitcoin.
So if you hold over a certain dollar, no, a dollar amount or
whatever, you hold dollars on the River Financial platform,
they're giving you that 3 1/2%. And this is threatening to banks
because there's a whole new generation.
I know some of these people that don't even have bank accounts,
they use Cash App as their de facto bank account, right?
So this is threatening to banks. Banks don't want to compete.
So they're using, they're trying to use the heavy hand of
government to stifle out competition, which again, I
think is not extremely non competitive.
But this is the reason there's a primary reason as to why the
Clarity Act hasn't been signed. Coinbase is like, listen, the
status quo is better than the law.
The legislation that you want to pass, because the legislation
that you want to pass is actually going to stifle
competition, is actually not going to allow us to do that.
And how does that protect the American consumer?
I don't know. I think it protects the American
banks, that's for sure. So anyways, I want to cover the
other side of this, which is again, there's the you guys have
to remember this. And, and unfortunately, when we
started talking about politics, initially, you guys didn't react
very well to this, but we kind of stuck to our guns.
I remember I was one of the first people on Twitter and I
had this tweet saved in my drafts for the longest time.
And it basically said something along the lines of it's probably
not a good idea that the Biden administration wins another term
for the Bitcoin industry. And the reason I had it saved in
drafts for the longest time is because the Overton window
didn't shift sufficiently enough for me to send out that tweet.
It was only until the Samurai wallet developers got arrested,
It was only until the continuous attacks on Bitcoin self custody,
the continuous attacks on the Bitcoin mining industry that I
felt like it was so incredibly obvious that the Biden
administration wouldn't be a positive towards the, towards
the, the, the Bitcoin and crypto industry as a whole, that I felt
like I could send out that post. People have forgotten because
it's been 2 years and the repubs essentially control the house,
they control the Senate and they control the executive branch,
the AKA the presidency. So people forgot like, oh, OK,
you know what? We won.
We, you know, we got a Bitcoin president in the White House,
ladies and gentlemen, the midterms are literally in a
couple of months and there's an 80% probability that the
Democrats, which again, the not the party as a whole, but a big
portion of the party, the portion of the party that
actually has influence and power, still do not like the
Bitcoin slash crypto industry because for them, they only want
CBDC. That is their main priority.
They want a central bank digital currency.
I want to play you guys this clip again of more perfect
Union, which is a very pro, you know, pro Democrat type of
channel to give you guys an idea of what they're telling their
audience and what the current narrative is, and then we'll
talk about it. Let's check out the clip.
Here we go. You may have noticed the cryptos
crashing again, like it did in 2022 and 2018 and 2013.
You get the picture. But there's something different
about this crash that you need to know about.
Crypto has always gone through boom bust cycles.
But now, thanks to loosening regulations, people can buy
financial products that give them exposure to Bitcoin and
other cryptocurrencies through the regulated stock markets.
They're called ETF's and over $100 billion worth of crypto was
bought by ETF's in the past two years as the size of the market
seemed to only go up. But in October of last year,
after Bitcoin briefly reached an all time high price of $125,000,
investors began to take some risk off the table and sell
their shares of these ETFs. The result?
The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has nose dived.
As of the time of recording this video, Bitcoin is down nearly
50% in just four months. So what happens now?
Well, we'll see how much actual money is backing these
cryptocurrencies. When people sell their shares of
the crypto ETFs, the Wall Street firms that issue them, like
BlackRock turn to the crypto exchanges like Coinbase to
actually we sell the Bitcoin. But if there aren't enough
buyers, then the price starts plunging.
What's the floor? Well, zero.
As I and many economists much fancier than me have argued,
Bitcoin is an unusual investment in that there is no product or
service behind it and it produces no revenue stream.
Essentially, when you're buying Bitcoin, you're buying bits of
computer code uncorrelated with any real world asset.
This is different from buying a share of stock in a company like
Google or Apple. Whatever you think of them, and
trust me, I have thoughts. They are businesses that make
products, provide services, and produce profits.
And as a shareholder, you benefit from the company's
success in the form of an appreciating stock price and or
dividends. Cryptocurrencies have none of
that because crypto doesn't do anything besides offer Bros
something to gamble on and criminals a way to get paid for
their crimes. In December 2022, I testified to
the Senate Banking and Finance Committee saying that the
cryptocurrency industry represented the largest Ponzi
scheme in history. Why was I testifying?
Well, you might know me from TV, but I actually have a degree in
economics. Yes, that's right, Ben McKenzie
is a secret econ dork. For the past four years, I've
been investigating and documenting fraud in crypto.
It's led to a book on the topic with Jacob Silverman, who's been
talking about this stuff with More Perfect Union for years
now. And I'll be releasing a movie I
directed in theaters this spring.
Crypto is a Ponzi scheme. I stand by those words, and we
may soon find out the ramifications.
The problem with crypto being tied into our regulated
financial markets is the contagion effect.
If crypto were to continue to crash violently, the selling of
these assets would push the prices of crypto companies down,
which can lead to the selling of other companies.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Here's hoping that the crypto crash we're currently
experiencing doesn't take the rest of the regulated financial
markets down with it. Fingers crossed.
So again, that's the general narrative, ladies and gentlemen,
right, which is This is why Elizabeth Warren fought so hard
with Operation Choke .2 point O to try to keep traditional
finance separate from the Bitcoin industry.
The reason that the ETF, the reason that they gave such a
hard time in approving the ETF is that they did not want
Bitcoin being essentially accepted within the traditional
financial system. They didn't want it.
He even mentioned it there. He also tried to use a lot of
scare tactics, basically saying, look, I, I have a degree in
economics. It's like, bro, F you, dude.
Like what does that even matter? Like what is it like?
You have a degree in economics. You testified in 2022, dude.
If you would have bought Bitcoin in 2022, even with the 50% dump
that we have now, you'd 3-4 extra money, bro.
So take that degree in economics and shove it where the sun don't
shine, my friend. All right, that's the first
thing I got to say. The second thing I got to say is
like look, they're trying to paint a narrative and you guys
have to understand that the people that the midterms that
are about to happen. This is the mainstream consensus
in the political party that is running against the current
political party that has power. So you could see another
operation choke .23 point O start once again once a
political pendulum swings back. So it's incredibly important to
stay on top of these things, ladies and gentlemen, so you
understand the narrative because at the end of the day, you guys
are the frontline soldiers because you're going to have
family, you're going to have friends.
If you have a following like Bram who has a podcast, you're
going to have a lot of people that are listening to you.
You're going to have a lot of people that are potentially ran
into that video and say, hey, Nico, I saw one of my favorite
TV actors, he made a documentary.
He has a degree in economics and he's telling me that crypto's a
scam, right? So, and again, he's being a
little bit dishonest here because again, he's once again
taking advantage of the fact that people can't differentiate
the difference between Bitcoin and crypto.
And he's commingling the two, he's putting the two together
and he's, and he's basically selling it to you that, hey,
listen, all crypto's a scam. I, I would agree and say,
listen, crypto is a scam, but Bitcoin isn't crypto.
But he's not being honest. He's not being sincere.
He's not telling you there's a difference between Bitcoin and
crypto. He's also conveniently leaving
out the fact that, hey, when he testified in front of Congress
in 2022, the price of Bitcoin was significantly lower than
what the price of Bitcoin is right now.
So again, it's it's it's it's a political narrative.
It has to do with control. It has to do with the fact that
these people want a central bank digital currency.
And if you have Bitcoin, a non sovereign alternative that is
superior to a central bank digital currency, it impedes
their political goals. That's what it comes down to.
It comes down to power at the end of the day, full stop.
Bram, I want to get your thoughts on this man.
You're based in Europe dude. It is significantly worse the
situation over there than it is in the states.
It's it's digital euro full steam ahead.
Christine Lagarde, Opti's ex-girlfriend doesn't give a
flying F what people actually want, what people actually think
she's shoving down the digital euro down everyone's throats.
I want to get your take man. What is the regulatory
environment look like in the EU right now?
Oh, man, big question. But yeah, by the way, to go back
to Ben McKenzie, I made this meme that says, you know, I I
don't understand Bitcoin, but but it sucks.
I have it. I have an opinion.
It is, it is to connect back to, to what I said before.
It's all so tiring. It's all so intellectual,
intellectually lazy. And I agree with you.
Eventually it is about control. It's about keeping people
asleep, dormant, not questioning what money is, where it comes
from, who controls them, but basically just looking at the
government and being like, oh, yeah, please, please tell me
what to think. Please tell me what to do.
Please tell me which money to use.
And I see that. I see this comment now, right?
Like, people find it easy to dunk on Bitcoin when there is
this volatility in price. And whether or not you have a
degree, like Christine Lagarde also has a degree.
She also has a criminal conviction, by the way.
I think honestly the the digital euro will fail.
There is a well, not public debate, but sometimes there's
people that that work on the digital euro that are on
podcasts or whatever. And when you hear kind of like
this, I want to say corporate speak where they talk about,
well, currently it's a bit in a bit of a pause moment and we
need to find clarity and alignment on everyone
participating etcetera, etcetera.
I honestly think it's going to fail.
But you're seeing this push for centralization like you're
seeing everywhere. And in my opinion, it is kind of
like the last. They are like the last
struggles, the last attempts on this kind of like pendulum swing
we've been on towards centralization, where I think
there will be a point in the not so distant future where people
will realize, well, what are the actual benefits of more
centralization? If a government is growing, if
my taxes go up, if I cannot afford the same type of living
standard anymore, whether it's housing or food or leisure or
whatever, what what is the benefit to me?
And I think eventually there's this point where the obfuscation
and the obscurity of everything that they're messing with and
which is not giving us any added benefit or, or value to our
lives will just be too much for them to to keep on covering up.
And so I think it's funny your, your, your differences in, in
the studio, like should we be bullish or should we be bearish
like we talked about just now? I think we are still extremely
early. We, we, we have a certain
foresight of where the road of Fiat money is going and ending
and we're already acting upon it.
I mean, I think we are like the, the, the preppers in the 90s
that you saw on TV right there in the early 2000, you saw these
preppers and we all fought like these people are crazy.
I think, I think we are basically digital, digital
preppers. But as far as Europe goes, you
see we're going towards more and more centralization.
Even this whole chat control, you know, digital ID to be on
the Internet, all these things. I, I think it's all connected
and they are trying. But like I said, I think people
will figure out and I think on time that there are no edit
benefits to more centralization. It's becoming more and more
clear that there are no added benefits for more
centralization. Yeah.
But I mean, like I, I hear you on that, but the political
situation is not clear in that regard in terms of like it's
like, yes, I agree with you. There are no added benefits to
your added centralization. But if that were true, that
people were realizing it, then at the end of the day, we
wouldn't find ourselves in this situation, right, where major
political parties in both continents, in the Americas and
in the EU still think that centralization is a good thing.
Those major political parties wouldn't have the influence.
They wouldn't have the power that they have today without
popular support. So it's like, I agree with you
that maybe eventually one day people will realize that more
centralization is not a good thing, but the political reality
is telling an an entirely different story today on the
ground. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I also
agree with that, right. And This is why you and I are
are talking about this. And we're, you know, putting our
efforts in in, in our own way. So, you know, you're, you're
definitely not wrong there. I do think, you know, and by the
way, we could obviously also be wrong.
If 80% of the people are just sleeping and NPCS and they allow
themselves to be taken advantage of.
People know better than them that want to control them, then,
well, maybe that is our faith, right?
Eventually, I don't know. But my, my, my kind of
conclusion always is, well, what else, right?
If, if we know, if we know all of this, right?
Or, or I follow what you're saying, well, you know, should,
should I also start voting for these people or following these
people? Should I adopt the CBDC?
You know, this is not in my individual interest or that of
my, of my family. So I am acting based upon the
information that I have, the view of the future that I want
to have also, and that is what I'm working toward.
And is that 100% certain outcome?
Definitely not. I think that's also what Larry
Laparte, you know, alluded to in the video.
And I agree with that. You know, Bitcoin in that sense
is also still an experiment. You know, it is either 0 or it's
the black hole of value, the measurement of all value or
however you want to define that. I don't personally don't really
see that there's like a middle of the road ending for for
Bitcoin. And again, that's that's what
I'm acting upon. And also I don't I don't think
it's going to be quick. I think this is going to be a
very slow long grind. Maybe we get 5 or 10 years of
dystopia with central bank digital currencies in between.
I don't, I don't know. But my, my rebuttal to, you
know, when someone says something like you just said,
it's like, yeah, OK, then, then what?
Right. Like what?
What should I do? Should I just lay down, roll
over and be like, OK, please, you know, Daddy government, tell
me, tell me what to do, right? Like what?
What do you expect? I think, I think we just got, I
think we just got to all move, to move to El Salvador.
Maybe, if push comes to shove, maybe we should Opti.
Opti doesn't want to. What does Opti think?
I'm not leaving America. For as long as possible.
You guys are tripping. No, look, I, I actually was
going to troll. I, I was going to come on here
and, and troll and be like, you know what?
I really do want the Dems in power right now because, you
know, Bitcoin was pumping when they were in power.
We have the Republicans embracing us and we're down 50%.
I was promised 150K quickly here we are and we're getting cooked.
But no, I mean obviously like that's just me being cynical and
trolling. I I totally agree with Bram.
I was like like it's very easy. Like the chat said, you know
it's very easy right now to dunk on Bitcoin like we're down 50%.
It's a bear market. It like this happens all the
time. But like you said, Bram, it's
like, if not Bitcoin, like what, what else is there?
And, and I'm, I'm, you know, 100% on board with that.
I'm like, look, if Bitcoin fails, like we have literally no
options here. So I'd, I'd rather try than just
basically, you know, bend the knee and just be like, OK, you
know, give, give me, give me whatever you want, big daddy
government. Because it's just, I'm, I think
inherently kind of anti authoritarian in that respect.
And I just, you can't tell me anything.
So I'd rather fail trying than just accept what the powers that
be have for us. But with that said, just like
we, we knew this was going to happen.
We, we knew we were going to have actors and left-leaning
media come out and be like, oh, look how bad Bitcoin is because
Trump did embrace Bitcoin so much.
I've actually been saying this for over a year, or rather since
November of 2024, that I was like, guys, this was going to
happen. And now that the midterms are
coming up, it is funny to see. Or rather, maybe not necessarily
funny in like an actually funny way, but it's interesting to see
that the propaganda machine is coming out.
And starting to lay the foundation to be like, ha, ha, I
told you guys Bitcoin was a bad investment.
And then they literally have like an actor, you know, making
content and being like, oh, I have a degree in economics.
And it's like a cool story, bro. Like you, you were wrong about
Bitcoin. But now, now you can say, oh, I
was right about Bitcoin. Look, it's 50% down in a year or
two when you know, Bitcoin is ripping.
He's not going to be out here saying anything.
He'll just continue to be. It's the biggest policy in the
world. And you're like, OK, cool, bro.
Like just tell me you missed out on it.
I don't really you need to listen to your opinions here
because you're just missing the best asset, period.
You're missing the best investment, you're missing the
best money and you're too blind to see that because of your
prior. So like I'm OK with I literally
at this point, I'm OK with people metaphorically shooting
themselves in the foot right now.
Let's just hope we can protect the people that are listening to
them and be and get them all into Bitcoin.
Yeah, absolutely. Anyways, guys, it's going to be
an incredible show. We're we're going to talk to
Bram about his podcast. What?
He's you? Have to look at the at the, the
comments, the comments. Are so brutal dude.
Welcome the comments are the comments are cooking.
Welcome to simply Bitcoin. Bro.
We literally have the most brutal comments ever man.
You should check out the Rumble comments, they're even worse.
No, dude, wait, sorry. Do you know what it said It
said? I hope when I watch your show
they tell they they said. Bro, I hope when I watch your
show and talk about how you were invited to simply Bitcoin and
didn't get to speak a fucking sentence.
Bro, they're brutal. They make fun of me.
They fun and make fun of me a little bit more than than.
Opti dude, the chat loves me. But yeah, the it's the comments
are the comment box is spicy and legendary, but we love all you
guys anyways. If you guys are enjoying the
show, make sure to smash that like button.
We're going to talk about all things Bram during the culture
segment. We're going to be right back in
just a little bit. I want to give a shout out to
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Wait, I have to address this comment.
Nico can't even pronounce the word.
I'm saying El Salvador so you guys understand it.
Do you want me to say it with a Spanish accent every time, El
Salado like. No, don't do that.
That's really annoying. Like I'm trying to, I'm trying
to like say it for you guys. So anyways, Bram, welcome dude.
How you been? How's life?
I'm happy I get to talk now. No, I'm kidding.
No work work. I mean, dude, we could have no.
You know I love you. We could, we could have invited
you, we could have invited you at the, at the 2:00 PM mark,
which we usually do for some guests, but I, I, I thought we'd
want to have you included in, in part of the show, so.
And then you rented for 20 minutes and then.
So we, we, we did, you know, we, we invited you a little bit
earlier than what we than we normally invite people in.
But I don't know. I thought I wanted you part of
the, I wanted you part of the show, man.
Next, next time I know I'll invite you at 2:00.
I'll invite you at 2:00 next. Time.
He's spicy, Optic. He's spicy.
Yeah, yeah, I've been trolling him a lot.
So now he's, he's a, he's a little sensitive this morning,
not just because about us trolling him.
He, he's getting a little sensitive this morning.
So, you know, we'll, we'll be OK.
We'll I'll, I'll make sure he, he eats good and maybe takes a
nap later. He'll be OK.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
No, man, I'm, I have to say I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm good.
I think I think, yeah, you know what I what I just said.
I think it's just so interesting that and I think you guys have a
similar. Yeah, well, maybe this ties into
that. I think you have a similar
experience, right? Like, I last week I realized
that I've experienced 570 plus percent drawdowns, but honestly,
this one feels the most random because nothing really, nothing
really happened. There is no reason.
There's no FTX, there's no China ban or whatever random thing
happened. So yeah, I just, I, I wonder
what's going on. I like the takes where it says,
you know, like the people that understand this in the financial
world, they're trying to, you know, manipulate and flush
everyone out and blah, blah, blah.
You know, I, I think anything that we can say is probably just
interpreted as cope. But what I get back to is just a
fundamental analysis of what what Bitcoin is.
And again, we just touched upon it a little bit.
You know, Fiat money debasement is mathematically assured.
It is a path dependent thing. The end is 0.
So if you are a millennial, like like you said, my podcast is
Bitcoin for millennials. I focus on educating my
generation. I think there is no pension for
you. I think there are no social
benefits for you. And so you have a problem today
whether you want it or not. And so you have to start looking
for something that can keep your purchasing power toward the
future. And for me, that eventually has
become Bitcoin, right? Like even today, if you say
like, oh, well, the price is going down, It's, it's, it's
nothing. I'm going to, you know, sell
Bitcoin, then, you know, it's sell, sell for what the money is
being debased. Real estate is never your stocks
are never your yours gold. You you cannot take anywhere on
on a plane to to another country.
You cannot have that in in self custody to a degree.
So for me, the most rational conclusion in the digital age is
Bitcoin. But I also think I also think
we're early and I think we're also in a stage of let's say
the, the US, you know, world reserve currency 4th turning,
however you want to define it, which is just incredibly chaotic
and will become more, more chaotic.
And I also think that people are the majority of people is
returning to what they think has value, right?
Like central banks are buying are buying gold.
That is usually an argument for some people.
Like, you know, central banks are buying gold and they aren't
buying Bitcoin. But if you objectively look at
the characteristics of gold and Bitcoin next to each other,
Bitcoin is vastly superior, right?
So even this whole notion of calling Bitcoin digital gold,
that is it. It's so funny when you read like
all these bearish comments on X, right?
Like it's, it's not digital gold or we don't know whatever the
fuck their arguments are. No, like digital gold is an
illustrative description to give you a certain sense of how you
could think about Bitcoin. But when you look at at the
characteristics of Bitcoin, you will see that it is, like I
said, vastly superior. So it is itself, it is just
Bitcoin, but just the term digital gold is just to help
people to think in a certain direction, as my understanding
currently is that Bitcoin is a profound technological discovery
that everyone should understand. Ended up but the world still
thinks I'm crazy. Yeah, bro, the the world thinks
we're all crazy. They think, you know, they
think. We're I might actually be crazy
though. Opti, you're crazy.
I know, I know, I I'm leaning into.
It But maybe we're all crazy. Maybe.
We're friends. So you're definitely crazy.
Yeah, yeah. And Bram likes us, so he's
definitely crazy. Yeah, we're all.
Crazy. We're all crazy.
Bram, talk to me about the Bitcoin for Millennials pod.
A huge fan of your podcast, man. I think you make incredible
content. You know, I love the love the
interviews that you conduct and and the conversations you get
into. So talk to us a little bit about
that. Perhaps our our viewers have
have not seen your work. So Bram is the host of the
Bitcoin for Millennials podcast. Talk to us a little bit about
that. Yeah.
Well, thanks. Thanks for thanks for that.
And, and like I said, I, I'm really focusing on my
generation. I think we are all, you know,
millennials are like late, late, between late 20s, late late 30s,
like very early 40s. And we are, we are in a big
stage of our, of our lives, right?
We have followed a certain path into adulthood and now have,
yeah, big decisions to to make, where to live, who to be with,
having children or not, right. Like what, what is your career
even with, you know, all the AI stuff coming.
And so we have followed this path.
But I also think that this path eventually LED us to something
that was different than the thing that we've been told or
sold along the way by the generations for us, that
actually, that actually we're able to follow this path and,
and build wealth. And we are living in this age
range. You know, we are in this age
range, but we are living in a time where we see this
accelerated debasement of the money that we're forced to use
this whole push towards centralization, right?
Very high tax pressure and whatnot.
I mean, in the US, people work, you know, 20% of their taxes go
to paying interest on the debt, right?
It's not even going to paying off the debt, let alone it goes
to investing into society. And so I, I think when you just
look at it in, I want to say like a primitive way, and you
realize that the debt will never be repaid.
The push for centralization and control will only be higher
because they need more revenue, government revenue, so taxes or
just creation of money, which leads to price inflation.
And they know that people won't be be happy.
So they're scrambling towards fabricating some sort of
solution or or band aids for yeah, what I what I call a path
dependent development, which is the, you know, Fiat, Fiat money
eventually going going to 0, which will create all the
imaginable unrest that that comes along with that.
So I think the millennials have a problem today that they cannot
ignore and I like to focus on talking about that.
Of course, I also talked about Bitcoin.
It is called Bitcoin for millennials.
I think Bitcoin is the vehicle to protect yourself toward the
future. But I've come to the realization
that talking about the problem that basically no one is really
aware of, which goes from this monetary debasement to even
understanding what fractional reserve banking is, that money
in the bank is not yours, right? That you never really own a
stock, etcetera. Is is.
Yeah, it's something that I, that I want to focus on just
because I'm seeing no one has a clue.
And everyone is just, you know, doodling, doodling along and
they're just, you know, living their life, whatever.
And I, I think there is something coming toward us that
is not as positive as, as, as, as people might think.
And so that's what I'm trying to help people with to, to
understand. And yeah, it's very fun to do.
I still learn a lot after 10 years in Bitcoin.
Every week there's new stuff where you know, I, I'm, I'm
surprised by what I'm learning and I'm inspired by what I'm
learning. And so it's a very rewarding
thing to do. Fantastic.
Well, guys, go check out the Bitcoin for Millennials podcast.
Bram, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
Really, really appreciated it, man.
Always love when you come on. And yeah, guys, go check out his
podcast. I think I've been I was a guy
actually. I want to tell the story the
first time, first time Bram invited me on his show it we
went back and we literally played tag for like at least six
months because like literally it was like he invited me and then
I had to cancel because we were both having like kids at the
same time. It was like, it was like kind of
like it was, it was strange. We were both having kids at
around the same time. The first time I was like, hey,
Bram, I'm sorry, I can't. It's just like my wife or
whatever. And then he's like, no worries,
we'll reschedule. And then the second time he's
like, Nico, sorry, you have to cancel.
So like my wife or like this, this and that.
And it was like actually like it took us like 4 times until we
actually made, we were able to actually record the podcast and
we're like 6 months of like back and forth.
But I had a really, really good time joining his show.
And his questions were excellent.
And he just didn't talk the whole time like I did.
So it was a great time. So go check it out.
Bitcoin for millennials. Go follow Bram on X.
And Bram, thank you so much for joining us on today's show.
Cheers guys. Thanks for joining us, Stick.
Around. Stick around backstage for a
second, guys. We're going to close out the
show. Like it?
Smash the like button, subscribe and we'll see you tomorrow on
the next one. Simply Bitcoin Live.
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