While everyone is distracted with what the US is doing with
Bitcoin, a massive Middle Eastern giant might have just
went all in on Bitcoin. A government sponsored bank in
the UAE just announced they are opening Bitcoin trading for all
its clients. If you're not paying attention,
you really need to be this Bitcoin bull run could be unlike
anything we've ever seen before. Let's get into this guys.
And of course I'm not alone here.
I got what what do I always say your your neighbor neighbor
favorite neighborly friendly bitcoiner.
I, I butchered that one today. Anyways, we got Chris Alamo
here, one of our good friends. What's up, dude?
All right, guys, let's get into the headlines.
So as you guys know, the game theater around Bitcoin is
getting kicked into OverDrive. And now it's not just happening
in the USI think since Trump came out and said they are going
to make the US the Bitcoin superpower of the world,
everyone one is scrambling to position themselves to also
compete with Bitcoin and make sure they don't get left behind.
So the big news for today, Rockbank becomes the first UAE
bank to offer crypto trading for retail.
And Rankbank becomes the first traditional bank in the United
Arab Emirates to enable crypto trading for retail users through
its mobile app powered by Bitpanda, which is a big
European exchange. Now the real interesting part
about this is RAC Bank is a state government owned bank.
So this isn't just like in the US, you know, you see a bank
they they kind of announce, hey, you know, Trump's going into
Bitcoin. We got to also go into Bitcoin.
No, this is backed by the government.
So the National Bank of Ras Al Kamal, forgive me.
RAC Bank, a government owned bank in the United Arab
Emirates, is the first conventional bank in the country
to offer retail crypto trading. In a Tuesday news release, the
bank announced the launch of a crypto broker service through
its mobile banking app, allowing customers to buy, sell and swap
crypto currencies directly from their UAE Durham account.
Quote, We recognize the opportunity this solution will
provide the customers in the UAE as we believe they deserve a
more efficient and seamless crypto buying selling and
swapping journey that is fully regulated and entirely in AED,
which is the local currency Durham's said the CEO Raheel
Ahmed of rock bank. The new offering is powered by
Austria bank based bit Panda with transactions facilitated by
bit Panda broker MENA DMCC going further.
Of course, this is probably super interesting as we've been
covering on the show here for a while.
We're starting to see the trickle, the domino effect of of
countries embracing Bitcoin, of banks embracing Bitcoin, of
sovereign wealth funds embracing Bitcoin and of course of
companies, corporations embracing Bitcoin and, and we
have been hearing some kind of rumors coming out of the Middle
East of countries embracing Bitcoin.
The biggest news was obviously a sovereign wealth fund buying
Bitcoin. It was really through the ETS
and MicroStrategy and now we have the first conventional bank
to embrace Bitcoin. Now what is interesting, of
course, if you're familiar with UAE, United Arab Emirates, it is
made-up of seven Emirates. So Roz al Kamar or Kamai, sorry,
is one of those Emirates here. And of course, they're not the
guy that backs this is not the king.
The king is usually from Abu Dhabi.
But what is interesting is that it is backed by the government.
Now, I know a lot of Bitcoiners out there probably saying, hey,
I thought we were here to separate money from state.
Yes, this is true. But what we're seeing is a
watershed moment where everyone is embracing Bitcoin.
And This is why personally, I think that we are entering into
a new epoch in Bitcoin. Last cycle, 2017 cycle, we
didn't have banks, nation states, literally the biggest
institutions in the world embracing Bitcoin.
And we're all still kind of thinking, or rather maybe we all
still have PTSD based on the last cycle that hey man, we're
going to double top. It's only going to go, you know,
6X. It's going to be diminishing
returns, bro. But the foundation that I'm
seeing here and especially the announcement of the ETFI think
it's fundamentally shifting how we should view the Bitcoin cycle
is moving forward. The main take, most of the
traditional Bitcoin take is a four year cycle, you know, 2025,
which should likely be a parabolic run.
And then we're going to see a 2026 bear market.
And maybe they're adjusting and saying, hey, it's not going to
be 80% bear market. It might only be like a 50% bear
market. But there is interesting news
coming out or rather some interesting data coming out
since since the the ETF dropped, it looks like the structure of
the Bitcoin cycle is fundamentally changing.
And I'll pull that out for you guys in a little bit and we can
chat about that as well. But what is interesting here is
of course there is interest coming out of the Middle East.
There is at least eight large regional banks participating in
quote blockchain platforms used for payments, which indirectly
of course support cryptocurrency infrastructure.
But we haven't seen an official bank, a traditional bank
official, you know, government sponsored state backed bank come
out of the Middle East embracing Bitcoin.
There is also, you know, we've we've heard some news coming out
of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, but nothing really
coming out of the United Arab Emirates yet, though this is
changing in real time. And it just makes me think that
we are kind of entering a different time here.
It does seem like things are changing really quickly on the
more cultural view of Bitcoin. Remember, for a long time it was
basically, you know, a career detriment to embrace Bitcoin.
And now it's the opposite. If you're not embracing Bitcoin,
then you're going to be left in the dust.
Now this bank here, roughly $24 billion in US currency, it's
88.3 billion in the Durham. So it's a big bank.
I think it's the fourth largest bank in United Arab Emirates.
So I think this is one of those moments where maybe a smaller
regional bank, still a huge bank.
It's one of the top 50 banks in the world starts embracing
Bitcoin. And I think this could be one of
those ideas where it's a test bed.
If this does well, if they get a lot of traction, a lot of
liquidity going to them, then I think this will happen very
quickly and we're going to see things start to snowball
extremely fast here. Now, I'm going to pass this over
to Chris real quick before I show you kind of this new view
of maybe the ETFs have fundamentally shifted the
Bitcoin cycle. So Chris, you've been along on
the journey with, I think you've literally been on every show
we've done about the Middle East embracing Bitcoin.
So what's your thoughts on seeing this?
And really on on top of that, also let's emphasize just how
you, whether you love Trump or not, he's fundamentally shifted
the game here and now everyone is taking Bitcoin seriously.
So what's your thoughts upon hearing this news, Chris?
Well, definitely the Overton window has shifted.
I'm just imagining this like young 2324 year old intern being
like, you know, working for this bank and now day trading inside
the bank using bank funds. I'm just just kidding.
Obviously that would probably be illegal, not allowed to do that.
But no, I, I honestly think that the Overton window has greatly
shifted. I think when Trump spoke at
Bitcoin 2024, he basically put the world on notice.
And then obviously winning the presidency, signing an executive
order, a Bitcoin strategic reserve, trying to account for
how much Bitcoin the US government has, which a lot of
people are speculating is way less than we were expecting they
had. But yeah, no, I think it's a
huge deal. And as you were saying, like
this bank, if you want to come back into frame, you're saying
that this bank is one that is kind of in collaboration with
the government. So obviously, so obviously the
UAE and their government are basically, yeah, it may be a
private bank, but basically them and their government officials
are signalling we know about Bitcoin.
We recognize Bitcoin. It's a serious asset and that's
why we're opening it up. I know obviously you and I are
in the boat that, hey, it should be a Bitcoin only bank or a
Bitcoin only play. They're doing crypto play, I
think. I think the way that I view
this, this and Opti, I know that we've talked offline about this,
that basically everyone needs to take their lumps Back in like
the 2015 to 2017 era, there was a lot of people like, you know,
Icos and people day trading other cryptos.
They were kind of getting distracted by all the shiny
objects. I know many legendary Bitcoiners
were in the same way. And then basically right after
the fork wars in 20/17/2018, it was basically like it's Bitcoin
and everything else. And I think that kind of
solidified it for a lot of the people that were in for 2018 and
and before obviously 2020, there was a very strong class of
Bitcoiners then. I consider myself, I'm part of
that class, but a lot of people were learning from the mistakes
of Bitcoiners and people that had come before us.
Like it's Bitcoin and there's everything else.
I think governments and everyone else in that is not familiar
with this industry still says crypto, you know, Oh, we like
the underlying block tame technology.
We really like what Bitcoins offer, but it's not going to be
the best currency in the world. Well, dude, it's called the
leaderboard. And Bitcoin is the 5th largest
asset in the world. It is by far the largest
cryptocurrency. Not even, you know, not even
close. So I just want to say look at
the scoreboard when anyone's telling you otherwise so.
Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, I forget who said, I
think it was actually Mr. Hoddle who first said it is everyone.
Basically there's like there's a journey when you get into
Bitcoin and usually you do a pit stop with shit coins and then
you finally end up at the what we always talk about being
Bitcoin Maxis, Bitcoin only, like all roads lead to Bitcoin
and one of the surest ways to become a Bitcoin maximalist or a
Bitcoin only person is by burning your hand on shit coins.
And could we expect, or rather should, should have we expected
that when nation States and banks come into the space that
they aren't going to kind of take that shit coin pivot right
now. Now, of course they could.
They could just not even be fully ideologically aligned with
any of the shit coins. They're just like, hey, look,
these are the biggest ones. You know, as, as Gary Gensler
was saying for a while, we don't want to pick winners and losers
here. We're just going to open it up
to the top. What do they call them?
Blue chip cryptos? It seems like that's kind of
what they're doing. And of course, people want to
trade this stuff. It's a bank.
They want profits, they want feeds.
They want to make money off of this stuff.
Now I think, oh, oh, oh, OK. Hold on, Hold on, Chris.
I I forgot. I forgot.
To plug this in. I'll feel a Buster while you're
there. Well, I know we all know that
Opti is secretly a Gary Gensler lover.
He thinks he is the ultimate Bitcoin bull.
Obviously, you know, he was talking about how Gary Gensler
was actually protecting everyone.
And, you know, he is actually doing what he said, even though
he's holding back the Bitcoin ETFs.
And I think a lot of Democrats, or at least the liberals and
Democrats from the DNC blame him for why they lost the election
in 2024 to Donald Trump and JD Vance.
You know, obviously. But Opie's like Gary Gensler,
Dr. Daddy Gary was protecting retail investors.
He was doing right by everyone else.
I mean, obviously that's Opie's take.
I don't think that's my take. But obviously with the Trump
administration, when they're laxing regulation for Bitcoin,
they were also doing it for the crypto folks as well.
And I think that's kind of what a lot of people have the problem
with. I know people are brought up.
I mean, Trump launching the meme coin like 4 days or two days
before he's about to take office before inauguration is pretty
crazy. And kind of, you know, basically
I'll call it what it is, a spade, a spade.
Like basically people were buying favor by buying the Trump
coin. You know, Justin's son had an
opportunity to, to sit at the Trump's round table.
I think there was like 25 seats that they were selling.
And basically this is a way to buy direct access with him and
his family. So want to call it money
laundering? Want to call it a bribe?
It is what it is. I'm just calling how I see it.
But maybe Opti was on to something like Gary Gensler was
actually a team Bitcoin and protecting Realtor investors and
everyone else, but I don't know. Well, to be fair, I was actually
kind of trolling when I was going the whole Gary Gensler was
a Bitcoin maximalist. I was kind of using his own
words against him in that in that sense that this is what he
was saying. And then he came out and rather
he got pretty much pushed out of the SEC position.
And he's just like, yeah, it's Bitcoin only.
And I'm like, look, he was a maxi all along.
I was obviously trolling here, but at least that was his
official position, right? It was 2, which protecting
investors. And we don't want to pick
winners and losers. And now in hindsight, you can
make whatever argument you want about it.
It's like, you know, you can pick whatever side of the coin
you want. Was Gary Ginzer good for
Bitcoin? He did allow the ETF even if it
was delayed? Or was he actually fighting
Bitcoin, which is like what all of his Bitcoiners were saying
for a long time. Considering he taught a course
on blockchain at MIT, Like you'd think he'd know better.
And then he gets out of the SEC position.
He's like, actually, you know, there's Bitcoin and there's
everything else and you're like, OK, so maybe maybe he was on our
side the whole time. My favorite conspiracy on this.
I wouldn't even say it's a conspiracy.
My favorite take on this is that the reason Gary kind of fought
the Bitcoin ETF launched for so long is because he wasn't able
to find a way to stop the floodgate of shit coin ETF's
being launched. I kind of like that take.
Whether that's real or not, I don't know that that might be a
more positive, optimistic view of Gary Ginzer in hindsight.
We can always we can always, you know, make whatever narrative we
want around Gary Ginzer, paint him as a good guy or a bad guy.
But that did make I was like, OK, that that seems a little bit
favorable. Anyways, let's everyone's
talking about my Eric right now. It wasn't a Peaky Blinders fade,
guys, OK? It was a Miami fade, all right?
Different. Anyways, as I said a minute ago,
shouts out to our boy Mitchell Harto, literally one of my
favorite zoomers out there, and he's making the case that ever
since the ETF was launched, the fundamental cycle of Bitcoin,
the fundamental market structure of the price has changed.
Now we don't have enough data for this, but it is kind of
making a good case, so here we go.
His tweet BTCUS dollar looks to like 2 entirely different assets
before and after the ETF launch. The days of parabolic bull
markets and devastating bear markets are over.
Bitcoin is going to $1,000,000 over the next 10 years through a
consistent oscillation between quote pump and consolidation.
It will bore everyone to death along the way and shake the
tourists out of their position. Strap in.
And I don't know if we have enough data to really show this,
but this does, you know, on a intuitive level makes sense to
me. One of the real basis for this
is this idea that when the institutions kind of come into a
market, especially a small market like Bitcoin, they
obviously have enough capital and sophisticated financial
engineering to kind of control the market for a little bit.
Now, a lot of people have been saying this is market
manipulation. They want to keep the price
down, they're suppressing it. I don't know if that's
necessarily the case. Obviously, I think there is some
paper Bitcoin and there is some quote UN quote price suppression
in the Bitcoin market, but the bigger idea I think is if you
look at the S&P 500, and I've been making this case for a long
time. If you look at the S&P here,
actually maybe I'll pull it up for you so you guys can see see
what I'm saying. If you look at the S&P 500 and
I've been joking for a while that we're basically just
trading the S&P 500 now because we're just getting bored to
death. It does kind of have this very
boring up and to the right look here.
So here I'm on the month chart. So, so it's not not fully ideal,
but look at the S&P 500 again, this is the monthly candles.
And, and I'll zoom in a little bit.
It is starting to kind of look what we're seeing in the Bitcoin
market. It's just kind of has this
gradual boring up and to the right.
It's got like 2530% corrections and then it recovers and then it
just keeps pumping up and to the right.
Well, this is what these institutional investors are used
to trading and and so I wouldn't be surprised if this is what
we're seeing right here. And you could kind of make the
case that that's what Mitchell Hartle was saying.
It's like these big institutional investors are
coming into the space and it looks like we're just going to
be seeing these kind of boring, you know, dips.
Like for us, a, a dip's like 80%.
That's when we, we get ravaged out there and we're like, we
need to buy the dip, buy the dip.
It's on discount. We might not be seeing 80% dips
now obviously we won't know until the end of the year.
But if you do kind of zoom in here, you look at this, you
know, let me let me cut off. Oh, it won't let me, let me cut
off the end here. Look at this market structure
and then I'm going to go back to the S&P 500.
And I don't know, guys there there, you could make an
argument that this is kind of what we're seeing play out in
the market. Now, of course, with more huge
capital, with more banks and more nation States and a more
ETF capital coming in, you could make the case that we are now
trading this to V500. Now, do I agree with Mitchell
Hoddle on this idea that we're not going to see crazy pumps
anymore? Not really.
I did a tweet the other day. Now, as I told you yesterday, I
was watching Mark Moss this weekend.
I I went to a Mark Moss rabbit hole and he said something that
was super interesting and actually like, since since I'm
since I'm alone here with Chris, I will bring a meme for you
guys. And I made this last night just
on a whim. It actually it dude, it did some
numbers, bro. I, I did some numbers yesterday.
OK, it's got like 100 likes numbers.
Dude, I'm doing numbers. I'm literally the meme, it's his
idea. So what Mark Moss said that
really kind of planted the idea. He's like, look what you're
seeing in the Bitcoin price. The 1st 16 years, obviously,
like it was incredible. It took Bitcoin, how long, you
know, 10 years to get to a trillion dollar market cap.
It went very quickly to two. And what I think we're going to
see in the next 16 years of Bitcoin is what we like to call,
you know, the S curve adoption. Like I think it's going to go
even more parabolic the next 16 years.
And my tweet was something on like the next 16 years, this is
going to be more bullish in the 1st 16 years.
And I'm fully convinced of that. Like I'm seeing what I'm seeing
on the adoption level with like the news.
We're seeing Middle East starting to embrace Bitcoin.
We're seeing sovereign wealth funds literally being created
just to buy Bitcoin. We're seeing the US superpower,
economic superpower pivot and say they're going to literally
open up the floodgates into Bitcoin And we don't even have
to get into my whole stable coin thesis of they're going to
expand the money supply to essentially pump assets up into
the moon. This was my meme from yesterday.
And this is, you know, for you visual learners is literally
what I'm thinking is going to play out and it goes Bitcoin in
the 1st 16 years. You know, the roots, the
foundations are being built and then Bitcoin and just to be
hyperbolic in the next 12 weeks, because I think my math is way
wrong because it should have been 24 weeks.
What, 6 months? That's 24 weeks basically, I did
12 weeks, 3 months, whatever is when the plants, when the leaves
start to sprout. And this is where you really
start to see all the crazy stuff play out.
And I think that's kind of what we're seeing right now with all
the news we're seeing. You know, Nico keeps saying this
is the most bullish cycle in terms of news, but it's the most
boring in, in terms of price action.
I think we're just getting, I think we're just getting heated
up. I think it's going to still
pump. I think it's still going to have
an incredible price move. It's just hard to see with so
much liquidity buying Bitcoin every day.
There's a new Bitcoin treasury company announced.
I don't know if you guys saw them, but Jack Mahler's 21
Capital, of course, partner with Cantor Fitzgerald.
They just announced that they have, I think their initial
announcement is they wanted to get 50,000 coins.
They literally in the in this week have jumped all the way up
to the third largest Bitcoin treasury company.
They have something around like 43,000 Bitcoin already.
So it seems like they are being overcapitalized right now.
They have way more Bitcoin than they even claimed they were
going to get. And I think this is only going
to increase. And I think as the meme goes,
every company will be a Bitcoin treasury company.
Will they be a strategy Bitcoin company in the sense of they're
going to be taking free, you know, basically free money, free
debt and. My Bitcoin I don't think so, but
I think every company in the world will have Bitcoin on their
balance sheet and essentially be a corporate quote UN quote
corporate Bitcoin treasury company.
Anyways, I'm I, I'm starting to make myself even more bullish.
I'm I it's hard to make yourself more bullish.
Yeah dude, everyone in the chat, S&P and chill.
Literally it's guys we're going to be bored to death to
$1,000,000. I'd like this is this is
probably the truest thing I've heard in a long time considering
this year, I think we're going to be bored to death to
$1,000,000, but it's going to be like bored to death to
$1,000,000 in like 2027. So in like 2 years you're still
going to get a 10X game, but it's just going to be a boring
10X game. It's not going to be like a 12
day pump. I don't know.
That's kind of just what my intuition's telling me.
That's, that's where I'm at right now.
But Chris, what are you? What are you thinking?
I I got I got a question for you, Avi.
So I'm going to flip the script here.
I'm going to ask you a question. So I know I forget who
popularized this, but basically I was hearing like obviously a
lot of people are very hesitant about these Bitcoin treasury
companies or just even these companies in collaboration with
governments as we can see the UAE bank or even just a lot of
these banks and government officials that are like bullish
on Bitcoin. But do you see it?
I, I forgot who said it. Like I said, is this like
bitcoins Trojan horse? Like I think people are worried
about government officials, governments, dictators,
whatever, coming in and trying to change Bitcoin or changing
the culture. Or do you think Bitcoin goes in
and changes them? So a lot of people have said
it's a Trojan horse. Like everyone's like everyone
needs Bitcoin at the end of the day.
But I think they're worried about the consequences of the
culture and trying to change or modify or, or I hate to say
gamify, but like basically trying to potentially harm
developers. As we saw with choke point 2.0,
we're trying to stifle Bitcoins innovation.
So what are your thoughts on that?
Is Bitcoin the Trojan horse? Chris, I, I don't mean to side
swipe or step around your question, but I literally wanted
to talk about this on the culture.
I got some stuff. We're going to talk about this
later, So remember the question and we'll we'll rehash this at
the end of the show. But my take is Trojan horse.
So just just, you know, not to skip the question, but I
literally had, I have the culture built around that same
idea. So we're dude, we're telepathic
here. We're on a wavelength here.
But yeah, we'll, we'll talk about it towards the end of the
show, 'cause I, I think that's one of the big conversations
happening right now is Bitcoin Co opted, you know, can Bitcoin
withstand the interest, the lobbying from the the great
leviathan? You know, you know what is going
on right now. I think that's what, especially
with like shows today, we were talking about banks coming into
Bitcoin. Everyone does the same.
Like I thought we were, I thought we were, you know,
separating money from state, bro, we literally see it in the
chat. They're like you guys are
advocating for the banks to come in a big and we're like, no,
we're just covering the biggest news story of the day.
Like our view is still separation of money in state.
You need to save in Bitcoin, but you need to take that Bitcoin
into custody. Don't give these banks your
Bitcoin, you know, like guys don't give them your Bitcoin.
That that's the real take. But yeah, no Chris, let's put a
pin on it and we'll and we'll talk about it at the end of the.
Show I learned the same wavelength.
Yeah, I have the whole culture wrapped around this idea.
So all right, we'll we'll talk about this later.
Anyways, guys, before I move on, of course, I do want to remind
you to smash the like button comment on this show.
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today. Yo the the rumble chat, you guys
got a meme all right get get off my back for like a week, OK, at
least sheesh all right I'll be here on Clark Moody's dashboard
bitcoin.clarkmoody.com of course, going over the Bitcoin
numbers, the time change stats and the current Bitcoin price is
117,760. The stats per dollar is very
strongly under 1000 sets. It's crazy.
We're at 849. The current block height is
907,705 and the market cap in Fiat terms is $2.34 trillion.
And we have secured that 10% of the gold market cap.
There's still 90% of the hard money game to achieve and
everyone's freaking out and we're just at a, you know -4.4%
decline from all time highs. It's over guys.
It's it's never been more over. Now actually, I was going to say
no, we've never been more back. But actually, guys, I think it's
never been more over. OK, so we we got a clip coming
out and Jim Cramer is starting to get bullish on Bitcoin.
So I was trying to bring a little light heartedness.
You guys always yell at me about the memes.
Well, we have a living meme in real time.
But let's hear what he says. Some, some by Bitcoin, well,
Bitcoin, you can put it in the speculation basket, but at the
same time, how many companies who are just going over these
numbers have, are raising money to buy Bitcoin?
It's it's enormous, far more than has been raised by
companies going public. It's because it's almost, it's
almost encouraged. I mean, the, the the SEC chief
is like, yeah, yeah, this is a very crypto positive
administration, no doubt about that.
That's been a real positive for all of the different.
It's also a great hedge against the, the budget deficit.
Well, it may be, which is what it is.
Michael Saylor would say that, right Store of value.
I, I, I, I was with someone whose son took his paycheck and
bought bought Bitcoin. I started a job good job five
years ago and now it doesn't really have to work.
And he's totally hedge the kids hedge father has to work.
I'm I'm kidding, the kids hedge. Look, I mean, this is happening.
We won't want to talk about it. Or maybe we think it's Vimark.
Maybe it's Vimark 23? Well, I mean it's not often you
create a new asset class and then write the regs around it in
real time at the same time that's different and we we don't
know what that's going to bring. Well, like the guys from Circle,
I mean, I was, I said that maybe there's a possibility that JP
Morgan or BlackRock could do a stable coin and you get to usual
e-mail. She's like, you don't know what
you're talking about. It's much bigger.
I've gotten more I don't know what you're talking about in
emails since like there's like so many of us like wait, because
every time I know I don't know what I'm talking about.
I know what I'm talking. All right, guys, it's never been
more over. It's over dog cancel.
The bull run, all of my bullish talk in the beginning, has
completely been destroyed because of Jim Cramer.
Maybe the economists were right off the We become Weimar Germany
because of Bitcoin, because of Jim Cramer.
Well, I mean talking of Weimar, it is interesting like he is
directionally correct. You know what he said is crazy.
Maybe this is Weimar 2025 like maybe we are in the beginning of
the currency hyperinflate and I don't actually think that the US
dollar is going to hyperinflate that quickly.
I, I think they still have a lot of tools in their tool belt to
continue to, you know, make the runway longer for the dollar and
add, I think actually one of the hot takes that Mark Moss was
saying is like Bitcoiners are not going to like this, but he
believes that the Bitcoin will essentially give the dollar more
life. And This is why we're seeing
this push through stablecoins. And I think directionally he is
correct. Like what I'm seeing is also,
you know, this connection between the US and Bitcoin
through stablecoins, it does seem like they're doing whatever
they can and to elongate the dollar runway.
And even if you are a, you know, Larry Leopard Fiat dumer type
person, I think this can go on a lot longer.
I think the dollar is going to be with us for any at least the
next 1020 years. But during that time Bitcoin
will, sorry, the dollar will fundamentally continue to lose
value. It loses value by design and it
is very interesting to see the corallows between the current
dollar dominance and what we saw, you know in Weimar Germany
when the currency is hyperinflated and as you know
you need to protect yourself in hard assets.
There is that historical example of someone in Weimar Germany
that basically was hedging and trading in precious metals and
they made a killing throughout the time.
Now we just updated this to it doesn't need to be precious
metals. You just need to buy Bitcoin.
You could just need to continue to buy Bitcoin daily.
And this is how you protect yourself against whatever
craziness is coming. And actually in the news, we
have one of the, again, one of the biggest billionaires
essentially saying the same thing, continuing to double down
on the debt loop spiral or the doom debt spiral.
What's it debt doom? I forgot what they call it now.
Debt doom loop spiral. Doom loop, spiral, that's the
one. And so a lot of the signs are
there. Now, do you have to go full
doomer? I don't think you have to go
full doomer. I don't think Bitcoin's success
depends on the collapse of the dollar here.
Bitcoin's going to succeed either way.
As far as I'm concerned, it's just superior money.
But with a catastrophic collapse of the dollar, of course, you'll
see the Bitcoin price go absolutely nuclear.
Now the funny part about this though, of this clip from from
Jim Cramer is at the end where he's like, dude, I one of my one
of my friend's kids has hedged himself in Bitcoin and he just
kicked back by the pool. It's probably like American
Hoddle or something like that, chilling by the pool drinking
margaritas. Like, hey, you have to go to
work, dad. Like, are you winning, Dad?
No, I have to clock in do my 9:00 to 5:00.
Are you winning, son? Yeah, I'm chilling.
I'm shit posting on Twitter all day.
This is this is what's going on. We are in a new era.
We're in a in a totally new time.
And literally all you have to do is Bitcoin and chill saving
Bitcoin, taking into custody, you know, laugh on Twitter,
watch all the madness, and you are going to succeed.
It's literally the easiest playbook period.
And yet with all the good news we're hearing, people are still
laughing at Bitcoin and Bitcoiners.
It makes no sense to me. But with all that being said, we
have just been cursed by Jim Cramer.
So it's over, guys. It's completely over.
We've never been more over because Jim Cramer is starting
to say he likes Bitcoin. It's horrible.
Anyways, Chris, how over is it
does? This break the curse is he is.
He does this break the curse? Say Jim Cramer goes all in on
Bitcoin and that breaks the curse.
I don't think that actually happens, but maybe the local top
is in for the time being now that Jim Cramer is is Bitcoin
bull, Bitcoin maxi. Or maybe it's over to the
Bitcoin treasury companies. He was talking about the Bitcoin
treasury companies. Maybe it's over for them.
I don't know. It needs to be seen.
I guess I'll I'll add my my 2 sats to kind of your argument
with Mark Moss and always our good friend Mark Goodwin.
Shout out to Mark love the kid to death, but I I definitely
think, and we've even heard this from Ansel Lindner as well.
Like I definitely think the US dollar is going to strengthen
relative to it. And the, I think it's kind of
the scary or I guess the George Orwell 1984 kind of it all is
like as the US dollar strengthens in Fiat currency
purchasing power, it's, it gets more Orwellian in the sense that
like, you know, obviously there's bank limit caps of
$10,000. I know those were set in the 70s
right when we're coming off the gold standard.
And that back then was like 75,000 dollars, 80,000 dollars,
$85,000, whatever the purchasing power of that was.
So when you did more than $10,000, whether it was in
credit card or a loan or even cash, they had to report those.
Obviously, as the dollar has lost purchasing power relative
to assets, so it is strengthened relative to other Fiat
currencies. It has weakened relative to
anything you want to buy goods and services.
So with that being said, like we creep up to those limits, that
means that more and more people are being surveilled.
And obviously, it looks like Tether's going to get welcomed
into open arms in this administration.
But at the same time, back in 2022 and 2023, they're like,
we've onboarded the IRS and the FBI and the NSA.
It's like, all right, so it's like, you know, I know Mark
Goodwin hammers the drum on this.
Like while stable coins aren't CBDC's, they're almost a better
CBDC. Like yeah, they're not a central
bank digital currency. They're a private company
digital currency. But at the same time, they could
be Co opted just as the same and that your transactions can be
reversed when you're using Tether and things like that.
And like obviously many people have vouched for the Tether
guys. You know, they said they're
hardcore bitcoiners and I believe they have a great
business. They have a great business model
for what they do. They're giving dollars to the
rest of the world that can't that doesn't, doesn't have a
Venmo account or a PayPal or Robin Hood or a sofa or a way to
interact with U.S. stocks and equities and bonds.
But at the same time, like I worry that they're going to be
under the thumb and the regulation of the US government.
So my long winded response is like that.
We're building 2 parallel societies.
There's one that's Bitcoin and a Bitcoin freedom and oriented
society. And then there's stablecoin,
CBDC's and the US dollar strengthening and getting way
stronger and, and harming people that stay in that system.
But the weirdest thing is it's almost like the carrot in the
stick that people, the Internet like, oh, I have the US dollar.
It is the global reserve currency, not the global reserve
asset is still treasury bonds. But at the end of the day, I
believe that people are going to go into that system being like,
oh, like I was in Honduras or I was in XY and Z country that had
their country, their currency hyperinflate.
Well, and now I'm in the US dollar, which is superior, which
is the king. Cash is king, the old saying.
But I definitely think that you're going to harm yourself in
that society or that economy because of your losing
purchasing power just more slowly than the rest of the
world. And to Opti's point, I think a
lot of other currencies in the world outside of like maybe the
Japanese yen, the Chinese yuan, maybe the euro, maybe the
British pound are like the top five currencies that I see being
around long term. I think every other currency
hyperinflates relative that. And then once those hyper
currencies hyperinflate and they either dollarize or they go to
the Wan or the yen or whatever, eventually those start to feel
pressure globally. So while they are devaluing
slower, they're the best horse in the glue factory as it's
called. I do think long run that is not
the society or the world that we want to be in.
We want to slowly inch people over to Bitcoin, people using
Bitcoin as freedom money, sending Bitcoin over the
Lightning network where it's less traceable.
Obviously for the receiver it is a different story, but for the
sender it is very almost perfectly private.
So that's my long winded rent. Buy Bitcoin.
We're trying to orange peel you and you know, we're trying to
force you, bore you into financial freedom and financial
sovereignty. They humble stack.
That totally. I would make one caveat to what
you saying about the currencies. I think the EUR cooked
personally, I think the. EUR, I say it as a 5, but I
definitely think the Euros. No, I think the EUR cooked.
I think the Japanese yen though historically has been one of the
stronger currencies and and kind of one of the measuring sticks.
I think the Japanese yen's pretty cooked.
I think the main British pound's been cooked.
I think, you know, they, they have that legacy.
So like what? That's three of the top five.
The only one that you missed that I think will be one of the
stronger currencies is the Swiss franc.
I I I was just thinking the Swiss franc.
Yeah, I think the Swiss franc, the US dollar and probably the
Chinese yuan are like the main three, you know, Fiat currencies
that are going to probably last for the foreseeable future.
I think, I think the European EUR done, I think the Japanese
yens like live literally on life support right now.
And the British pound just been freaking absolutely nuked as
well. So if you are, you know, if you
happen to be on the show and you're a forex trader or
something and you trade traditional Fiat currencies and
those are the three currencies you're probably looking at.
I mean, I measure literally the dollar every morning against the
Swiss franc and the Japanese yen just because just historically
like the, the, the difference or rather the significance of those
currency exchange rates can tell you a lot about what's going on
in the global geopolitical macro environment right now.
It's like Japanese yen, of course, literally my favorite,
my favorite kind of take on the reason why Satoshi called
himself Satoshi Nakamoto is to essentially say, hey, U.S.
dollar, you're going to become the Japanese yen.
We've all been seeing what's going on in the bond markets in
Japan. They're not doing so hot right
now and they are literally like the first QE advocates.
They're the ones, hey, you can inflate your money out of note,
like up into Infinity. And then Swiss franc has
historically one of the strongest, most stable, not only
central banks, but currencies around the world.
So if you, if you want to start to kind of dive into macro
stuff, highly recommend you look at the US dollar versus Japanese
yen exchange rates and the US dollar versus Swiss franc
exchange rates. And it does tell you a lot of
what's going on in the world. Of course, you can also look at.
Treasury yields for the pound and yen, etcetera.
But there's a lot of information to be found in what Chris was
saying, that the relative strength of currencies between
each other do tell you a lot of what's going on in the world.
But of course, for us, you can simplify it.
Just look at what the Bitcoin to U.S. dollar exchange rate is,
and that tells you everything you need to know.
Are we pumping or are we dumping?
That's all we want to know here. The the easiest Fiat currency
short is to not actually short them because you can get
yourself blown up. It's to buy Bitcoin with the
Fiat currency. And I you know, that's another
spicy take. How long can you trade paper
money that's printed for free for a freedom money that is
Bitcoin? That that remains to be seen
when that ends. Yeah, dude, you can just short
all Fiat currencies by buying Bitcoin, you know, keep.
Taking in self custody? Yeah, buy taking in self
custody. Taking the self custody, this is
how you went. All right, guys.
And on that note of what's it called?
Death. Doom loop cycles, Spirals.
Death. Doom loop spiral.
Yeah, death, doom loop spiral we have.
We have an interesting update from Ray Dalio going around.
He is starting to get either rather more bullish on hard
assets or maybe just more extremely bearish on Fiat debt
cycle. So let's get into that.
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This is. So sexy.
A nice sax 1O2123. 123 Faraday bag Oh, oh, oh, where?
OK, this is the old one, all right, you know, protecting.
Look, I, I did just move from Dallas.
Chris, I haven't told you. I'm going to tell this on air
and I'm, I'm so paranoid, but so like I travelled through to
where were we just was the last conference we were at.
I forget anyways, Oh yeah, yeah. So traveled, so left Dallas,
traveled to Vegas and I didn't want to ship all my stuff, or
rather, I didn't want to ship my my hardware wallets to Miami
like in the case. So I carried them with me.
In your bag. In in my in my carry on bag and
I'm like, dude, I'm going to get so wrecked right now.
This like what am I doing? This sucks.
And then as I'm going, I'm like, wait, is the X-ray machine going
to ruin my hardware? Wallet.
It could. It could.
Right, that's what I was thinking.
So I literally I did this at just put, you know, put my my
hardware wallet in a Faraday bag, shipped it through the
X-ray, you know carried on and it still works.
So you know I did that. I I literally did that guys.
So I'm not just shilling just to shill.
It actually works. OK, anyways, as we were talking
about the death, what's it dude? How am I?
Debt doom Lube. OK, debt doom Lube.
Why? Why am I messing that up today?
Guess just not enough coffee. We've been covering Ray Dalio on
this show for like the last couple of months and it seemed
like slowly but surely he keeps coming closer and closer to
becoming a bitcoiner. He was originally very skeptical
of Bitcoin. Then he kind of dipped into his
toes and was like, you know, I'm not the biggest fan of Bitcoin,
but you should probably just at least hedge your portfolio with
1%. Now he's coming out and saying
you should probably have 15% in hard assets and that is either
Bitcoin or gold. And he's kind of recommending
like, look, I don't care what like how you split that up, but
that should be the recommendation.
So breaking news, Ray Dalio is saying you should buy 15% of
Bitcoin in your portfolios, but let's really breakdown what he's
saying and why he thinks you should be holding Bitcoin.
So on Coin Telegraph, Ray Dalio suggests putting 15% in Bitcoin
gold amid U.S. debt doom Loop Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio
suggests investors put 15% of your portfolio into quote store
value assets amid America's debt crisis.
Now, I think Ray Dalio is kind of historically been more of
like a a chicken little, you know, sky is falling type
person, but he did just drop a new book.
So maybe he's just, you know, shilling his bags here.
Like maybe he's just shilling his product here and he wants
people to read the book. But anyways, whether he's
scamming us into financial freedom or not, the point
remains the same. Ray Dali is saying you should
buy 15% of your portfolio and Bitcoin and going in here, Ray
Dalio has recommended a 15% portfolio allocation into
Bitcoin or gold to optimize for the quote best return to risk
ratio in light of America's crippling debt problem and
currency devaluation quote. If you are optimizing your
portfolio for the best return to risk ratio, you would have about
15% of your money in gold or Bitcoin.
And then he said, of course, you know some Bitcoin, but not too
much. And he still strongly prefers
gold to Bitcoin. I mean he's a boomer, can we
really blame him? Not all boomers are bad.
Again, before you guys start saying that bitcoins are Opti's
in aegis here and he doesn't like boomers.
I love the Bitcoin boomers. I'm just saying it's a lot
easier for him to be like, yeah, I want to hold physical gold
versus like, let me figure out this new tech money thing going
on. Anyways, he says the exact split
between Bitcoin and gold is quote up to you.
His 15% suggestion marked a sharp increase from 1 to 2%
Bitcoin allocation, which he recommended in January 2022.
The issue is the devaluation of money.
Hold on, Dalia said, while pointing out that the US
government will likely need to issue another $12 trillion worth
of Treasury over the next year to service its mounting debt.
Again, guys, the interest payment on our debt is bigger
than the money we spend on our military.
I repeat, the interest payments, just the payments on our
national debt is more than we spend on the US military
industrial complex. It's absolutely nuts.
And that doesn't even account for the unfunded liabilities,
which are in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.
It's absolutely nuts. Anyways, the reason I also
wanted to bring this up, not only because Ray Dalio is a
formidable name. You know, he's, he's a, a
maverick in his space. He is a well known person, but
he is kind of confirming what I and Mark Moss has been saying
about U.S. Treasuries.
And in reality, what what we've been kind of saying about
stablecoins, expanding the money supply stealthily, silently, so
that people on Main Street that traditional investors don't
realize that their currencies, their purchasing power is being
destroyed. They have to inflate their way
out of this. So AUS Treasury report released
on Monday projected another $1 trillion in new borrowing in the
third quarter due to weaker cash flows and lower reserves.
Again, it took the USI forget what the number is, someone can
Fact Check me. But it took the USI believe like
100 plus years to get to a trillion dollars in debt and now
we are about to issue that in just the third quarter alone.
It really is why I'm our vibes. I don't know man, it really is
when government kills money in real time.
The Treasury also expects to borrow $590 billion in Q4, added
to the US government's growing reliance on debt to fund budget
expenses and worsening concerns about its future physical path.
So what we're telling you guys, this is this is literally the
main signal that most people, I think on mainstream, your
friends and your family do not understand.
They have to continue to issue more debt just to keep the
freaking machine going. Guys.
This is the only way it's working right now.
It cannot be stopped. They have to continue to issue
debt. Dalia noted that other Western
countries, including the UK, face the same debt doom loop
issue. Hence why me and Chris were just
debating that the British pound is over guys, and that their
currencies will continue to underperform relative to hard
currencies like Bitcoin and gold, which he described as an
effective, diversified dude. We've gone so long, so far in
the last, I would say six months.
Bitcoin is now, you know, an effective diversifier.
It's a hard currency. It's going to protect yourself
from debt, doom loops. It's the best money out there.
You do not want to be holding currencies.
It is, it is. It's like common knowledge at
this point. Well, it's not too common cause
still a lot of people don't understand what's going on.
He does say he's skeptical about Bitcoin becoming a reserve
currency. He's talking about recent highs,
etcetera, but the point remains the same.
We are seeing a coming crisis. It might not happen this year.
It might take 10 years. It might take 20 years for this
to play out. But point remains the same.
If you are holding Fiat currencies at this point, your
purchasing power is going to get destroyed.
And I really like Matt Hogan's take right here.
So what's this? Rick Edelman last week, 2 weeks
ago says you should probably hold about 10 to 40% of your
portfolio in Bitcoin. And this week Ray Dalio says 15%
of your portfolio in Bitcoin and you, the viewer are still at 0.
What is going on Guys like you you we're on YouTube, so I got
to be nice, but get all your stuff together get it out of the
dark place in your behind and start saving in Bitcoin.
You need to understand what's going on in Bitcoin.
It's it's literally a necessity now you you don't have the
luxury of ignoring Bitcoin at this point, especially when
nation states biggest institution sovereign wealth
funds, basically every corporate institution is looking into it.
If you are still on the sidelines, you're literally that
you're not, you're not going to make it.
I'm sorry. It's just NGMI not going to make
it. Was it Jay yesterday?
He said some crazy, crazy meme that I really like.
He's like, if you're not buying Bitcoin today, you're going to
be working for someone that has bought Bitcoin.
I'm going to double down on that.
That's bars. I think that's absolute bars and
I think that's the future we're going towards.
Anyways. I ramble long enough, Chris, I
know you were kind of like a before you got into Bitcoin, you
watch macro stuff. So what's the significance to
you about Ray Dalio upping his portfolio allotment to Bitcoin
from 1 to 2% to 15%? Dude, we're making, we're inch
by inch. We are taking over the world.
I'd say it's huge to put it into perspective.
Like there's the big hedge fund managers of the world or the
big, you know, big money guys in the world, and there's Warren
Buffett probably as one. And then there's Ray Dalio at #2
and I really mean that maybe Carl Icahn, the guy that
popularized investing in S&P 500 index with Vanguard funds.
So like maybe those are like the big three, the Mount Rushmore.
Maybe you could add a fourth one on there.
But like when you think of like the guys when it comes to money,
Ray Dalio is probably one of the largest ever.
Obviously, he has famous books on or he has the famous YouTube
video on how the economic machine works.
It's and like millions of people have watched at this point.
It's actually a really great way of talking about how money gets
into the system, obviously with debt and treasury bonds and
central bank, like obviously for a for a bitcoiner, many
bitcoiners know this because we've been taught it or we've
learned it in our studies. But it's a great thing for
normies to kind of just slowly orange peel them into the world
of macroeconomics. And then now you've got Ray
Dalio backing it up with talk of instead of one to two percent,
15% saying that you should get into Bitcoin.
So I really respect Ray Dalio a lot.
I know many people have gripes with him because he's very pro
China. What was his last book Opti?
It was basically talking about the ever changing world order
and he talked about the US is a falling power where China's the
rising power and historically when those two meet and cross,
the rising power normally always wins and it runs in 250 year
cycles. Obviously the US is coming up on
250 years next year. So basically he was saying the
US has a falling power, China has a rising power, and that
China will usurp the US eventually and become the global
dominant world power at #1 obviously, you know, the British
empires before us and Spain and, you know, all the different
empires before that. And that's kind of the thesis of
his book. But maybe he's changing.
Maybe he's pivoting and seeing, you know, the sovereign
individual or Bitcoin being the rising power or the digital
nomad or the freedom oriented person.
But yeah, when Ray Dalio talks, many people, maybe not
Bitcoiners, listen to him. But Wall Street takes notice
when Ray Dalio speaks. Yeah, totally.
And that like I know a lot of Bitcoiners do the like slay your
heroes meme and they're very we're like in a wide sell
immunity. We we literally tear down
everyone but Main St. normies. They're completely different.
It's like they wait for these signals until they start to
embrace something. You know, it, it is a kind of
herd mentality over there. And Chris, to to your point,
let's let's read Ray Dalio's book titles because they are
like, they are progressively getting crazier in like in like
a a good way, guys, not like he's losing his mind.
So first one in O7, how the economic machine works at
template for understanding what is happening now.
Great title. Principles life of work 2017 is
most famous. It's kind of OK, whatever.
Next book 2018, principles for navigating big, big debt crises
in 2021, principles for dealing with the changing world order,
why nations succeed and fail. And then the one this year, how
countries go broke. The big cycle bro.
I don't know if he's just caught up in the doom loop, but.
So what's his next book? Buy Bitcoin.
Don't get fucked. What's that?
No, he does the All right, so principles for how governments
broke money, you should buy Bitcoin.
Yeah, I'll take a royalty on that one, Ray Dalio.
All right, anyways, let's get into the culture because Chris
and I, Chris actually started the show with this question.
And I think it's a very interesting question because
I've been wondering the same thing and I and I got some
tweets that kind of lay lay the context here.
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All right guys, before I lay this down, shout out to Chris
for the 10 lbs for the 10 Great Britain pounds and he says we
got this Ron Opti get some sexy sats appreciate it and shout out
to Ron for peer pressuring you guys into sending us a super
chat. Oh man, love you guys.
This, this is so much fun. The the chat's fun today.
You guys are being nice. I like it.
You don't you guys don't have me crashing out over the chat
anyways anyways, before Chris asked the question this morning,
I actually wanted to talk about this yesterday on the show, but
we had a guest and so I wasn't able to bring it up, but this
tweet was making the round and it actually sparked a huge
debate on Twitter. It it pretty much went viral
within our circle and it's this idea of whether Bitcoin has been
Co opted and what is going on with a lot of these old Bitcoin
wallets from 2011, 2014 selling their Bitcoin.
Well, Scott Melker, the wolf of all all streets, kind of an 40 a
shit corner to to be completely honest here.
But you know, he he claims to be a Bitcoiner.
So we'll we'll give him the benefit of the doubt here.
Anyways, he tweeted this and it really sparked the debate on
Twitter. So it goes.
I continue to ask my guest quote who's selling Bitcoin?
And he goes. The answer from those who have
been here since the beginning, like Eden Yago and Bruce Fenton
is always the same. Early whales who are here for
the freedom and libertarian ideals who have thrown in the
towel because they see their community cheering the
government and Wall Street. It's an entirely new ball game
now and then going further. Bruce Fenton tweeted have a
listen. The world isn't supposed to be
like this. Bitcoin and this tech has power
to increase freedom instead or become more suburbian to
tyrants, AM LKYC accredited investors rules, etcetera
etcetera. It's all immoral tyranny and
unethical. Bring back the cipher punks and
then Scott follows this up a little later and he goes Bitcoin
is amazing, but it's obviously been Co opted to some degree by
the very people that it was created as a hedge against many
of the most ardent early whales have seen their faith shaken and
have been selling at this price and then the Bitcoin kind of
response to this. You can see Matt Hogan down
here. He's I get I get this, but
bitcoin's still pretty revolutionary.
It's the first global money back, not by the state and the
threat of violence, but by by logic and community respect to
the early whales and let's keep building the world needs more
Bitcoin or the world needs Bitcoin more than ever.
We have Alex Gladstein go no technical aspect of Bitcoin has
been quote Co opted. The network remains cyberpunk
and the tools get more so by the day.
Despite or even I would argue because of mainstream mainstream
adoption. Major challenges around
education, mining, decentralization, privacy
remain, but Co opted no. And then we have Pierre Roche
Shard quote tweeting that and he goes, you still have the freedom
to generate private keys, derive public addresses, contribute
hash rate, operate in mining pool and verify with a full
Bitcoin node. Early adopters got psyopped into
selling. Be grateful they gave buyers a
better entry point. Now I am kind of on the lines of
what Piero Shard is saying and we actually got a very good
comment in the chat. Let me see if I can find it real
quick. While while you're looking for.
It. Yeah, go for it.
I'll I'll kind of comment on this.
So it's very funny. It's like, OK, so they're
selling, but they're selling for what?
U.S. dollars? I give up the towel.
I throw in. So this great Internet money, as
Pierre Richard says, you can generate an address, you can
send it peer-to-peer without being stopped.
I'm selling it for U.S. dollars. You know, that's, you know, I'm
throwing in the towel because this this has been Co opted.
So I'm going to use something that's not Co opted, like the US
dollar or let's just even give them the benefit of the doubt.
Let's say they're using another cryptocurrency.
So they're losing purchasing power relative to holding just
Bitcoin. That doesn't make any sense.
So yeah, maybe they're disheartened.
Maybe they're selling, but also can we just say like, point this
out loud? Maybe they're just living life.
It's like, hey, I'm a billionaire or worth multiple
millions. Maybe I'm just selling it to
live my life. I'm selling Bitcoin or using
Bitcoin as a currency to buy goods and services to make my
life better. Buying a house, buying a car,
going on vacation. They're spending it, you know,
so maybe they're quote UN quote selling it, but I don't think
they're like just like they're selling it in a fit of rage.
They're like, I'm growing in the towel.
I'm I'm I'm cashing in my millions or billions or whatever
it is, and then I'm just going to hold the US dollar from here
until the end of time. I mean, they can do that, but
that just seems so counter. So Oh, I was so full libertarian
or early cypherpunk, and now I've just thrown in the towel.
It's like you can just do things.
You don't need to wait for permission.
It's like if you're so hell bent on KYC, AM L create a non KYC
way of selling and trading Bitcoin.
It's like, oh, but there's risk to that.
Obviously there's risk to anything.
There's risk to walking outside your house.
So I I don't buy this whole like throwing in the towel, giving
up. Yeah, one of the greatest quotes
that was said by Jeff Booth is the worst thing about Bitcoin is
it is going to be used by the person you hate this most in
this world. What that basically means is
Bitcoin is for anyone. Anyone can use it.
And there's nothing you can freaking do to stop it.
You can be the most powerful dictator in the world.
You can be the most powerful government in the world, and
there's nothing you can do to stop it, barring just killing
them. And like that's, that's a world
that gets very scary. I think it's very civil unrest.
Normally politicians don't like that.
So while governments or dictators do that, normally
there's huge revolutions. And normally it is not a good
time to be a politician or government official in that.
I'm not advocating for violence. I hope that does not happen.
But Bitcoin is a peaceful way to opt out to prevent that from
happening. I'll end my rant right there.
Sorry, Opie. No, it was great.
It was great because it just it took me this long to find that
comment. So it was a perfect rat and we
all will continue to chat on this for a little bit, but I
can't pull up the comment because it was too far lost.
It's too far up and it got lost on our on our streaming
platform. But skip on down the road says
separation of money and state is about the creation of money and
not who buys slash holds the money.
And I I think that's like the best way to sum this up right
now. Now my take is, is obviously on
the same lines as what Chris has been saying and what like Pierre
Rochard's been saying. Like, yes, there is a part of me
that feels kind of icky. Like feel like it feels like
there's a cognitive dissonance going on, at least in the
beginning of when we saw BlackRock kind of coming into
Bitcoin. It's like it feels weird
cheering on the BlackRock ETF And then you realize like the
best performing asset or even kind of watching what Sailor is
doing with all these different product offerings like strike
stride, stretch, all this stuff. Even my initial take on like
what stablecoins were doing and like, I think even Mark Goodwin
would kind of say the same thing.
Now he's like, look, I never said it was a bad thing.
I I just said this is what's going to happen.
And I think what skip down on the road is saying is I think
that like the the biggest signal here is like we we can't really
control who buys Bitcoin, but they aren't Co opting the
network. Yes, we saw the Black Rock kind
of what was that, that disclaimer that, you know, we
can choose which chain we are on and we all freaked out.
I don't think that what Scott is saying.
I think that could be a a general take.
Like I do think some people probably are selling their
Bitcoin and I see it in the chat all the time too.
You know, they they'll yell at us as like, how are Nico and
Opti cheering on banks and and nation states buying Bitcoin?
It's like, well, first of all, we're not cheering them on.
This is a news show and this is what the recent news is around
Bitcoin. So we have to cover it every
single day. But I don't think that the
network itself has been Co opted.
And to answer your question in the beginning of the show,
Chris, it was something on the lines of is Bitcoin a Trojan
horse here? And I I totally believe it.
And actually someone's kind of like low key trolling me in in
the chat. But like in, in the in the good
ways, like Bitcoin makes you smarter.
You guys are talking about money in a way that you used to not
even understand. It's like, yeah, we've been
learning on the job with a lot of the new product announcements
by like Saylor himself and with what's going on around the US
embracing Bitcoin, the the political sphere around Bitcoin
and them also kind of embracing stable coins, having to go down
the Mark Goodwin Bitcoin dollar rabbit hole.
All this stuff has. And you know, the doom loop
stuff, the Larry Leopard's of the world, the Lynn Alden's of
the world. It does start to kind of open
your eyes on what is actually going on.
And I think I saw Jimmy, Jimmy Song tweet this morning.
He's like, look, when I got into Bitcoin 1015 years ago, I didn't
think it would go this way. But I don't necessarily think
it's a bad thing. Like this is where we are.
And there's still a long time to, you know, quote UN quote,
like course correct here. But even with that, I think even
originally, if you look at what, what was the, how Finney tweet,
it was literally like 2 weeks after Bitcoin was created.
He's like, there will be Bitcoin banks that are fully reserved,
some that aren't like Wall Street's going to get in here
and they're going to take this thing to $10 million.
I think even some of the more insightful and far like open
minded. I, I don't know if open minded
is the right word, but more far seeing early crypto cipherfunks
here could see that this was where it was going to go.
Inevitably. Like if we are really going to
take over the world in, in the terms of like all capital is
going to flow into Bitcoin, then there will be kind of these
bridges from the Fiat system into Bitcoin.
And I don't necessarily think that that is, you know, quote UN
quote Co opting Bitcoin. I think that that's how you get
capital into Bitcoin. I think we we and I'm I don't
want to use we because I wasn't here in the early days.
You know, I'm not Satoshi, but from the earliest stuff that I
can read, it feels like the path that we are on right now is
inevitable. And I think Wall Street kind of
embracing Bitcoin, even banks kind of embracing Bitcoin,
nation states embracing Bitcoin. Like I think this was all going
to happen anyways. Maybe it's happening quicker
than we thought. Maybe this is kind of like the
WikiLeaks moment here where if you are familiar with the
WikiLeaks moment, it's like in the early days.
I believe I'm, I'm blanking on the the day, but I think it was
like early 2010 or maybe it was like 24.
Do you remember when the WikiLeaks was going to announce
Bitcoin trading and it was 2010? Cuz Satoshi was around.
Yeah. He's like, don't kick the
Hornets Nets. Like we're not big enough to
withstand basically the nation. Shit's coming down on us.
And I think this WikiLeaks thing is a bad thing.
Maybe this is kind of a same type of scenario where as a
community member, I hate using the word community member, but
as a Bitcoiner, someone that runs a node, someone that
advocates for self custody, someone that talks about Bitcoin
constantly, this might be kind of our next big test is what
we're talking about here. Is Bitcoin getting Co opted by
Wall Street? Is it big enough to withstand
the capital injection from all these big institutions?
I think it is, but also we won't really know until it happens in
real time and we're living through this.
So this is going to be one of those defining moments moving
into the future is like, can Bitcoin withstand this, this new
Wall Street injection because it's happening in real time, as
we've seen actually, maybe I can find that the tweet of sailors,
different products and how they tap into different capital
markets. Like it's say what you want
about sailor, but it's damn near genius what he's doing.
And this is how you get capital from the Fiat system into
Bitcoin. One of the things that I kind of
was again, I'm, I'm, I'm on this Mark Moss, the rabbit hole right
now. I'm like, I think he, I think
there's a lot of insight into what Mark Moss is saying.
And one of the things I took away from him, he's like a lot
of Bitcoiners need to understand that essentially 97% of the
world's capital is trapped in these illiquid zombie kind of,
you know, capital allocations that are Fiat back and the
products of like what sailors do and what ETFs are doing, banks
kind of embracing Bitcoin. It is unlocking the majority of
the world's capital. And if you think the majority of
the world's capital is going to go into Bitcoin, then they need
to find ways to come into Bitcoin.
There is so many staunch regulations around capital,
these capital markets that they can't find their way into
Bitcoin. Yes, for US Main Street
individual investors like it, we can just smash buy Bitcoin.
We could just buy spot Bitcoin. But for a lot of people and a
lot of capital around the world, the majority of the world's
capital, it can't find an easy way into Bitcoin without these
various different products. And maybe, you know, the if
there are being kind of, I guess a little more lenient on what
Scott Meckler saying, maybe people do believe that Bitcoin
has been Co opted. Maybe there are some early
libertarians that thought, you know, this was going to happen
on a grassroots level and every individual is just going to buy
Bitcoin. And that's how we take over the
world by, you know, person by person, individual, node by
node. This is how the world's going to
get here. I don't know, I maybe it was a
bit of utopian thinking. Maybe this is how it's going to
happen. And in turn, this will
fundamentally give us more freedom, more power, more
purchasing power. And this is just how it was
going to play out. So I don't, I, I think it's a
Trojan horse. I'm, I'm on the Trojan horse
side. And I don't think we're selling
out because Wall Street's here. Bitcoiners are, you know,
Bitcoin companies are entering Wall Street and they're getting
capital injections and we're seeing politicians land on our
doorsteps. I just think this is how it was
going to play out. Like we are maturing and for
better or worse, a lot of Bitcoiners do have this like
under underdog victim mentality. That's like now that we're going
mainstream, they're like, I don't like Bitcoins are like
hipsters. We're like, you know, I like
this band before people liked it and now that the world likes it,
I, I don't want anything to do with this Bitcoin.
But like Chris was saying, it makes no sense.
What are you going to do go back into the dollar?
It just. Go back into another
cryptocurrency that's getting devalued by the insiders.
Like, yeah, like what are you doing it?
Makes no sense to me. Yeah, I'll add to that, Opti and
I do think I think the thing that people think is that
Bitcoin's going to get Co opted and they're going to start
changing the rules and we're going to be forced to just sit
there and go along with it. But I guess people's memories
are short or some people haven't even been around since then.
Opti, you can talk about this with being in the in the block
size wars. Great book by the way.
There's like 4 Bitcoin books I recommend, Bitcoin standard by
safety, DNM Moose, the genesis book by Aaron Van Weardem, The
block wars by Jonathan Beer. And the last one was Oh the
price of tomorrow by Jeff Booth. Those are the four Bitcoin
books. You should read those, those are
excellent. But in the block size war,
basically there was a schism in the in the community that
there's people that believe that the block size limit should be
increased. And those were the big blockers.
And then there's the people that are the small blockers today,
the everyday bitcoiners, the bitcoiners of today that believe
that the Bitcoin limit should stay the same or even some
people advocated shrinking the block size limit.
So right now there is 4 megabytes per block per block
that is allowed of data in there.
There was a small upgrade of of SegWit that it actually 4X the
amount of ability to hold in the block size limit.
So it went from one MB to 4 megabytes.
But there was a compromises of compression of data, so they
were able to include more transactions.
Long story short, big blockers, small blockers, the big blockers
are known as people that were supporting B cash and then that
became BSV. There's a whole story there, but
basically they were supporting forking Bitcoin and making
Bitcoin cash. And then there was Bitcoin or
BTC traditional that wanted to remain Bitcoin in the way that
it is today. And back then there was this
there was a split in the community and I forget what
block number it was. You can probably look this up
right now, but there was one block when basically the chain
split, meaning that you had that they were using the same hashing
algorithm and or a different hashing algorithm, but they had
the same cryptographic way of of holding your Bitcoin.
So, you know, using private keys or bit 39 of your 12 or 20
forward C phrases, at that point, if you were to put those
C words into a Bitcoin Cash wallet or their fork, you would
have the equivalent of Bitcoin Cash and the equivalent of
Bitcoin. So you had your traditional
Bitcoin wallet. It had, you know, let's just say
one Bitcoin for easy sake, you had one Bitcoin cash at that
equivalent. And there was a, there was an
alternate market of trading where would Bitcoin cash price
be when it happened? And at one point they got to
like 40% of Bitcoin BT CS value was going to be Bitcoin Cash.
So it still was a lower evaluation, but people were
worried as that was creeping up from zero.
And it said at one point it was 42% equivalent to bit one
Bitcoin cash being of one Bitcoin.
So this is given everyone the context of the story.
So at one point you basically had the equivalent of 1 Bitcoin
Cash and one Bitcoin and you can do anything you want.
You could have held on to both. You could have sold Bitcoin Cash
to get more Bitcoin or or even just sold the Bitcoin cash for
the whole Fiat currency. Or you could have sold your BTC
to buy Bitcoin cash or you could have done nothing and basically
you had one Bitcoin cash and one Bitcoin and that would be the
same today. Obviously there was a lot of
scammers were trying to scam people like oh, use my Bitcoin
cash wallet that I just created. And when you enter your seed
words, they would steal your Bitcoin and your Bitcoin cash.
So it was called relay protection.
I know this is getting through weeds everyone, so I apologize,
but basically I'm just giving you the context.
There was the top 50 Bitcoin or crypto companies were trying to
push for Bitcoin cash. Coinbase bit main, the largest
producer of the bit main ASICS or the the Ant miner ASICS.
And so a lot of people were pushing or or supporting there
was Roger Burr or Bitcoin Jesus, as he his moniker was called.
Basically all these people were pushing or the money, the the
the institutional capital was pushing for Bitcoin cash, while
the small plebs were pushing for BTC or the small blockers.
And ultimately the small blockers want I do think like
BlackRock had that commercial where it said, oh, like, you
know, depending on the longest chain that we determine, like I
do think we meant we will have another block size work.
Maybe it's not going to be over the block size, but I do think
at one point there will be a debate of institutional capital
being like, well, what if we change it so we can whitelist
addresses? Or what if we could do that?
When that happens, the best thing to do, in my opinion,
that's not financial advice is not vice.
Just do nothing, do absolutely nothing.
Keep running the same Bitcoin that you're running and don't
upgrade to the newest software that they're promoting.
At the end of the day, I know and I'm not a lawyer, often are
not lawyers here, but I remember.
This is not financial advice. Not financial advice, but when
the Bitcoin ETFs came out in 2024, there was a stipulation in
there that said in the event of a fork, they are not allowed to
have the Bitcoin ETF and Bitcoin 2.0 ETF.
So they will have to make a decision which fork they go
with. And I think that was in the fine
print. Obviously that was when the ETF
was launching. If a fork occurred at that
moment, they'd probably have to pick one.
I don't think in the future they might just spin off and create
like we've now launched a new ticker with the new ETF symbol.
But I with that being said, if they had to pick and they picked
against BTC, I'm assuming Bitcoin's price would go down,
there'd be chaos and panic. But the worst thing to do when
that is going on is to panic yourself is to stay calm, to not
do anything brash, to not enter your seed words into anything
that you're unsure of that is not offline or not in your own
possession because that could be catastrophic.
You basically. Obviously people have used that
for social engineering attacks. But I do think that we will have
in the future another soft fork war or you know, a fork war
where we're debating on a different issue, whatever it may
be. And at that time, you're going
to have to decide. You can always do nothing.
And you have equivalent of both if there is a soft work that
occurs. So sorry for the long, I hope
that gives context for everyone that didn't live through it or
haven't learned about the fork wars, the block size war.
No, that was great. That was great.
I actually sorry this is a good comment.
This is financial advice by as much Bitcoin.
I actually came into Bitcoin after the fork wars.
I, I was, I didn't live through the fork wars.
I literally came like right when it ended and it was still very
contentious what was going on in the space.
So like I had to very quickly kind of catch myself up on what
just happened. I, I'm pretty sure like what the
fork wars happened in, I think it was like August of 2017.
I, I could be kind of pushing that back a little bit.
And I got in shortly after that. And I remember when I got in, it
was like we didn't have the big Bitcoin only accounts that we do
now. And you got in and there was so
much arguments going on, so much like people are slinging shit at
each other like, no, this is the real Bitcoin.
That's the, this is the real Bitcoin.
And you had to like very quickly catch yourself up 'cause
everyone basically you come into Bitcoin, you, you buy BTC.
And then when I got in, it was like Coinbase.
Now we have like Bitcoin only exchanges that make it easier.
And you had to very quickly catch up on wait, is BTC the
real Bitcoin or is it B Cash, BCH and?
Then Bitcoin SV. And then it was SV and you're
like, what is going on here? So yeah, it's I, I think I agree
with you that that will happen. And we're, we're kind of seeing
that with like the knots and core stuff, though it's not
necessarily like a new fork. We're starting to see this node
implementation battle going on, which can potentially lead to
another fork. So yeah, just stay vigilant.
That's why you guys should run a node.
And like Chris said, I will also echo, don't update your node
right away just because there's an update.
I literally I have the. Keep it simple, stupid kind of
mean where it's like I wait like a year or two before I even
think about updating my notes. Like yeah, cool, new notes
updated. I still run core.
I think it's like 17 or something like that.
I, I again, I don't have. You don't.
Even have you don't even have taproot.
I think taproot is like 20 or 21, so you don't even have that.
Ability. No.
Maybe it's 20. What are we on now?
It's like the. 2728's about to come out in.
The OK then, yeah, I think I'm on like 25.
I guess for some reason I I, I thought 27 was 17, but yeah, no,
I, I'm, I'm, I'm a few, a few node updates behind and and this
is by design. So I totally agree, Chris.
Anyways, guys, we are going to wrap up the show, but there is a
great comment here. Let me let me read this because
we do have some pretty big news coming out tomorrow and if you
are waiting to smash buy some Bitcoin.
I again, not financial advice here, but I would probably buy
today though maybe this is going to be a, you know, sell.
Buy the rumor, sell the news type.
I'll be telling you to buy, but Jim Cramer is telling you also
buy. So you should probably not buy.
Yeah, you should. Probably not buy I think.
I think Jim Cramer has way more aura than I do and he could move
the markets a lot better than I can.
So. Wait for tomorrow a better entry
place in and yeah, we all in and then you're kind of.
Exactly. But Ron P says, trust me when I
tell you, Bo Hines know this is going to go ballistic tomorrow.
And for everyone that doesn't know, the strategic Bitcoin
Reserve report will be released tomorrow.
I don't know if it's going to have come out before the show or
after, but if it does come out before the show and and we have
enough time to kind of read it or maybe we just get a clip,
that's probably what we will cover tomorrow.
That's a that's a huge, huge story coming out.
It's it's big news. We're going to see officially
what the US government is saying about the strategic Bitcoin
Reserve, whether we get some news on how they're going to
stack Bitcoin budget friendly, whether they have increased
their reserve count via, you know, government forfeitures,
whether there's some new regulations coming in.
We should find all that out tomorrow.
So we will, I think very clearly know what is going on with the
US Bitcoin that they hold and the strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
So that comes out tomorrow. Again, I don't know if that's
going to be released before the show, but if it is, we will
probably cover that tomorrow. On that note, guys, love you,
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We will see you tomorrow. Chris, thank you so much for
coming on today. Really appreciate you.
On that note, guys, Peace out. Get some sun today.
It's good for you. Peace.
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