$200 Oil Is Coming and Nobody's Ready | THE ₿ROADCAST EP. 26

All right, everyone, welcome to the broadcast. This is where Bitcoin culture meets business and finance. We catch up on news, tweets, videos, charts, trends, and any other Bitcoin related content that stood out to us in the past two weeks. This is episode 26. And Brian, I'm happy you're back. Happy to be back. I I miss you guys actually, that that's not true. I didn't really miss Michael. I I see him way too often. But Bron, I missed you, missed your your smiling face. That's sweet to hear, but we had some, we had some fun standing. So we did. Although we did miss you, we, we did have fun. I think, you know, like, like Michael said, I think sentiment is interesting and you know, Bitcoin is Bitcoin is dead yet again. But now, I mean, maybe that's a nice first link, but it feels like, you know, the, the, the state of the world's possibly opens up some sort of opportunity for Bitcoin to actually shine. And what we think it's, it could shine. It's funny how silent the gold bugs are currently. With cold. But yeah, I, I think what I really like actually, I think, you know, Bitcoiners are just having fun, right? So when it goes up, we're just having fun. When it goes down, we're just having fun. We're just, we're just chilling. And I think for the gold people, it's really more about like, Oh my God, it's finally happening. And then when it goes down, they're like, oh shit, yeah, there, there's, there's an actual market, you know, it could actually go down. So did you get? Any I'm assuming you get some pushback or blowback from pods when we talk about certain things that you're getting from last week, the tail end of that pod. Any DMS? No, not really. I you know what I think? I think there's not that much discussion to be honest. There's not that many streams like this, although not that I'm seeing. There's there's a there's a few, but I think people actually enjoy just seeing like, OK, what are people reflecting on? Like what are they seeing? And so, yeah, for anyone in the chat also, if you have any questions or comments or links or whatever, just let us know and we can we can gem about it. So let's just move to the first one. This was Brian, I think, yeah. So this is, I mean, just top of mind given sort of the past three weeks where the United States and Israel are at war with Iran and there's, you know, basically an energy crisis going on spanning from oil to now more recently LNG and Petro chemicals and fertilizer. Basically everything's cooked. The straight of Hermud's closed. And these charts were just fascinating to me. Like I've never seen something like this in, you know, my decade plus of covering financial markets where you have such a divergent in a commodity like oil in terms of. So what's being shown on the price on the chart here is like basically the divergent in oil price by geography. So like in Oman and Dubai, the price is like 150 to 170 and in Europe it's like maybe 1/21/30. And in the United States it's kind of like being capped around 100. And I just found this very fascinating in the sense that it, it sort of relates to a few different things. But basically the the reason this is happening is because there's basically an overhang of inventory or supply that's in the United States that's allowing the price to sort of remain capped around those levels. Whereas a lot of the oil that's coming that would have been coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, out of the Gulf primarily goes to to Asia, Asia countries including like China and India and others. And so that is even more constrained acutely sort of more near term. And there's going to be a lag effect basically. So like these divergences will collapse like over the next few weeks as sort of the that constraint sort of materializes across the world. But it's very interesting to see what's happening like in the moment. And it's it's sort of like almost foreshadowing of what's coming. Like the price of oil in the United States is going much higher because this is sort of the origin of a lot of the the base commodity being produced and then being shipped around the world. And so I just found this super interesting. It also relates to like what we talked about around gold and physical delivery. Like there were stories from last week of the price of gold being sold at a discount in the sense that people needed to move capital out of these regions where there's intense conflict going on. And in order to do that, you might, you know, sell your gold at a discount because it's very hard to move a lot of coal. Conversely, Bitcoin might have been ripping last week for the exact opposite reason of if we can move it easier, it's easier to basically get capital out of conflict zone. So super fascinating and just, you know, to me, this is like the biggest story obviously in the world right now. And, and you know, I think the oil is going much, much higher. I think it's going to be over 200 in pretty short order based on everything that's happening. I think two things. What I find very interesting is that in this sense, kind of like artificial, artificial scarcity right through this blockade. And eventually also the lack in certain places of enough already stored like oil, right, eventually creates A scarce commodity and therefore the therefore the price goes up. And yeah, like I said this, the one thing that I take away from this is that sometimes, you know, also in in a Bitcoin context, there are people that say, you know, like, it's not, it's not about scarcity, it's more about like the functionality, right? Like, like what is the function that a certain type of commodity has and that's where the value comes from, etcetera. Well, obviously oil has a, has a function also, of course, way with way different applications than than Bitcoin. But I think it's interesting that even the projection of more scarcity makes the price makes makes the price go up. And on the other side, I do think that what you said about about Bitcoin and having that capital, at least, you know, under your control and easily, more easily movable is proving itself to be of value in stages like this, right? Because eventually the whole goal is that you use this store of value and can actually keep this store of value, right? So once you get into a conflict zone and you have to sell it at a, at a discount, OK, you have a swath of cash, right? Or, or you, you, you basically transform what you sell it for either into cash or you put it on some sort of bank account. And I, I just wonder, like, do people have more security or, or a better or a better sense of security? Does that make sense? Right? Like it's just, you're moving this capital that's stuck in the, in the, in the, in the middle, you're moving it to a different place that is maybe not less secure, right? But with Bitcoin, like Bitcoin is all of these things in, in itself, right? It is all of these things. So you can, it is this, this digital commodity, you can move it, you can actually, you could actually transact with it, right? Like no one can shut it down. So I think it's just very interesting to see that there is not really anyone pointing this out that like all these characteristics come together in, in, in Bitcoin and that even in a time, a time like this, we're not seeing demand explodes. So again, I still think we're very early because this is in my opinion the prime kind of like situation for for Bitcoin or for people to understand what Bitcoin could do for them. Yeah, I mean, I think I would, I agree, I think from a different angle. But this is it hit me when Brian was talking about this like this chart and this what's happening right now is easily like the most not only bullish for Bitcoin, but outlining the thesis from a geopolitical macro perspective for the next 10 years in the sense of a like similar to gold and Bitcoin, we talk about the market doesn't really appreciate or realize what's money and what's credit. The market doesn't really, and this is by design, understand and appreciate oil and gas, the byproduct of petroleum sitting within everything that we interact with. And then when you go to fertilizers, like how disruptive this truly is, if it continues, it persists. There's a different segment or link that we'll talk about like some of the ramifications, but without going deep there. The idea is that if you have a bifurcation in three different oil markets, right, you start to go from this notion of being in a unipolar world to a multi polar world. And that chart, the thing that it's not apples to apples, but it reminds me of the enemy of my enemy is my friend in the sense that everyone was incentivized to trade beyond a certain standard and have certain routes and it was the most efficient way. And whether you go to Russia and and as original sin and sanctioning the treasuries, there was 2014 something happened. There was 2008 with the crisis. And then we basically the the world bailed out, you know, the US and others. Point being is that trust is breaking down and when trust breaks down, then the rails that delivery in value are going to start to break down and then you start to naturally need a sovereign reserve currency, but then it needs the properties to be able to be delivered. Obviously gold can be delivered in final settlement, but there's a bunch of issues between sending large amounts as you alluded to. So that's really where this I think really stands out. But obviously we're still early too. It's going to take a lot of time. I mean, this is Bitcoin is so small comparatively when you think about oil markets breaking down and the cost and the the stuff that's happening right now. But over time, I think as that price depreciates, it'll, it'll become obvious. The thing I will say is this is pretty much the reason why gold went to 5K, right? When you think about the price jumping 100% or whatever it did in the past 12 to 24 months, it's the forecasting that this was going to happen. Energy production and oil markets were going to go through the roof. And then the way you offset that as a sovereign is if you're holding a harder form of money because then you're going to be able to stay up with the amount of oil and gas you need. And so if you take that to a logical extreme and if this is going to continue to persist, we'll think gold is going to definitely RIP because that's how you insulate yourself as a sovereign if you want to be able to provide oil and gas for your country and other commodities, because everything's a derivative of that. So if oil and gas go to $200 a barrel, oil barrel plus everything else is going to go up in certain extremes. And if you do that well, then the only way to offset that is literally to have more money that can keep pace. Yeah. I think that's a good, good point, Mike, because as you were walking through that, like I almost think the past few days of gold price action is almost like a sell the news type event. Because I think a lot of the move to 5K, to your point was baked into basically whether it's sovereigns or just market participants pricing in the likelihood that something like this, we were going down this path effectively because this kicked off many months ago, you know, when we originally struck the the nuclear facilities and even before that as like talks were breaking down. And so I think I think you're right in that a lot of the move probably could be explained by by sort of how we've gotten here and maybe the past few days is just to sell the news event. But I do think gold's going much higher. I mean, like this is everything that's happening, everything we're describing is massively inflationary on top of existing inflationary and forces, forces that we all I've talked about that I'll see I'm on this podcast. Like this is just adding fuel to that fire. Yeah, I I like Mike that that you touch upon this. I I talked about this on a podcast today. This is for me bar part of my bigger kind of like Bitcoin thesis. You see that there is a multi polar world coming. You see that trust is breached and also I think people realizing that the assumptions underpinning, you know, regions like Dubai being like a Switzerland of the Middle East type situation, you know, doesn't doesn't really matter if you live next to a country that is able to do what they're what they're doing today. So I think a lot of kind of a lot of ideas around the underpinning of how certain structures worked, as you alluded to, I think it'll become clear that that won't be enough in the future, right? It's not a, it's not at a trust me, bro level, but fundamentally, you know, it, it broke pretty pretty quickly, I, I, I would say. And so in the future you, or at least I think in this multipolar world, you will also see that, you know, even though countries are stockpiling gold, how are you going to settle that gold for real with trading partners that is not just changing a number on a Ledger between, you know, your central bank directors or whoever's, whoever's doing that. So I think this is going to take time, but eventually there is a solution like you also said. And, and, and that is just Bitcoin like if, if the trust is really breaking down, I think then you know, the whole point that Bitcoin solves the Byzantine general problem is actually going to be applied in, in the physical world, in global trade, etcetera. But but again, I, I do think that's going to take a long time. We'll probably see some trading blocks first or whatever, but I think it's just interesting to see that, yeah, what everyone thought worked can be destroyed pretty quickly. Yeah. I mean, we're we're not, we're not we're an interesting spot. I mean, I think like a lot of this stuff is was forecasted. I think what's interesting from the Iran perspective in like hitting the UAE and some of these other like places is obviously like disrupting global trade around oil, but then somewhat posturing these. It feels like this ends up in a very much like bricks, China LED versus Western US-led and you just end up with when, when the dust settles, it's going to be part of the negotiations of like where the cert factions start to align. Because you don't want, you know, you the UAE wants to come back and have people come and live there and not disrupt everything they've built the past 30 years. And so this is part of the like, it's almost like just like tagging them, tagging them. And as this like plays out, it's like, OK, now where are you going to align with? Because we can do this forever. And so there's just this natural kind of like reorienting that's happening and it's really based on, you know, this, this straight that, you know, nobody talked about, but disrupts all global trade because if oil and energy production is disrupted, everything else again, it's disrupted. And and that was always understood. And because China is the sitting there, you have this like persistent help and support. There's a lot of good like anecdotes about like Afghanistan as an example, was able to consistently stay relevant and arm themselves because you had these like fighters coming in through the mountains through Pakistan because they were always like helpful for the cause for whatever reason. I mean, there's reasons, but that's going in there there. But the point being is if you have these other sovereigns that are incentivized to help continue this, whether it's providing, you know, from the drones and missiles, IE China, you have like a sovereign that's backed by other sovereigns to make sure that this this order goes in a way that you want. And I don't think we're, like, prepared for that. And I think we're just, it's going to play out long, much longer than we expect for that to like happen. I don't think it's just like resolves itself and we go back to put the, you know, the genie back in the bottle and everything goes back to normal. Yeah. This the main thing that I fully fully agree with it's like this. This is levels worst and although Ukraine, Russia is also bad like this is this is just another level of irreparability or something like like you said, this is it something changed. This is a new path. This is like we we took an exit. I don't know where it's going, but we definitely took an exit yeah, let's let's move on to the next one. Something totally different. Mike if. The Bitcoin price doubled tomorrow. Would you feel good about how it's being secured right now? Most people have not really pressure tested that and I get it. I have talked to people who have self custody for over a decade and others who stayed on exchanges because they could never get comfortable managing their own keys. Both camps have real concerns. That is why we built on ramp multi institution custody so no single company can lose it, move it or use it. Lloyd's of London Insurance inheritance planning built in and a team that can walk you through the entire setup. Get started in 15 minutes. Book a free consultation at on rampbitcoin.com On ramp secured by three controlled by me. Yeah, I mean, this was completely different then there's not even Oh yeah, we, we should actually listen to the the clip. Let's let's hear the clip. Let's do it like. Let's just talk about plumbers. OK? Let's say the entire world, everything in our world was automated except for plumbers, OK? You had machines making buildings. You would basically have like 1000 buildings a day, 1000 buildings being built at a single time in Los Angeles alone. Just machines doing. Except plumbers. How? Valuable would those plumbers be OK those guys are each and every plumber would be like LeBron why why because because because plumbing is the long pole in the tent to progress I'll just make. I love that. By the way, shout out to TBP and I think they these guys are really dope. Yeah, I so maybe it's good we we switch it out because we'll probably get darker after this, but I I do think there's a few angles to call this out. One is I think there's just a growing sentiment. Well, one is Travis Kalman came back. He was in stealth, one of the greatest kind of entrepreneurs of our kind of vintage building, You know, when Silicon Valley was in its heyday, got ousted by Uber. You can make the case that he was the type of founder that was willing to do what it takes to win. And obviously, when you're winning, you're going to rub people the wrong way. He was ousted from Uber. He went dark for 7-8 years and is coming back. I would forecast in 12 to 24 months. He probably ends up as the CEO of Uber. But the point being is that so there was a, came back, but B, there's going to be a growing sentiment. We see this across the board, whether it's Elon Musk, there was a column founder that was recently on invest like the best building a company on his own balance sheet, got margin calls again, a billion dollar loan. He was former Plat Co founder, went and bootstrapped, bought a bank as a fintech. He backs like now powers the Mercury's, the Rexes of the world. The ramps that we're going to go back to founder LED businesses from whether it's public or private companies, those are going to be the ones leading. We're going to see more of that. But the point is in that video. Explains it all because the academic or normie crowd would say is humor, everyone's toast. But the reality is if you're building with robotics, if you're building in the real world, you come to these understandings and rationalizations of like, sure, we can automate things, but you're just going to push things out on the margins for others to sit and like fill in. So the example here is, OK, we can automate this stuff, but somebody still has to provide plumbing services and everything we talked about with commodities as the production, you know, maybe get scarcer so there's less plumbers, the cost goes up and then incentivizes more plumbers to come in. And he has this key point of plumbers are the individuals that are the long pole in innovation or progress in the sense that we can innovate with the bots and droids, but you still need humans to do it. And you still need humans to sit in the middle of these different actions. And it takes somebody that's building to be able to forecast and have a vision for that because if you're sitting from the outside, you're just like, oh, it's going to cook us all. And so I think that's the bullish part for humanity and building. It's going to take the people that are actually getting their hands dirty and, you know, think about going, getting ousted, going quiet for eight years. Like you can't do that unless you just enjoy what you're doing. There's no like video or accolade or TVPN or whatever pod or article. Because most. Founders, that's what they're interested in is how do I get in front of people, How do I get loud, how do I raise some money, get secondaries, blah, blah, blah, versus just like living and dying by their sword. And that's what this guy is. And so anyway, I just think it's very bullish for humanity that like at the end of the day, the cost of capitals risen, it's going to continue to rise with inflation, with interest rates and then when Bitcoin ultimately gets understood and see the only people that are going to be winning in this new world are people like this guy. And I'm just pro for that because that's how we like get rid of a lot of the fat that exists and like the economies that are building. Yeah. So I, I really like that you brought this link because one of my ideas about the future is not only this kind of like multi polarity that we talked about, right? Which is basically also would basically also force countries to be more sovereign, have more agency, be more self sustainable and, and everyone living in those countries too, right? So I'd, I think we are moving towards a more time, a time where sovereignty becomes more important, decentralization becomes more important and you just have to be a builder or you need to have valuable skills basically. And I think it's so interesting that there's always people like Kalanick that kind of like see that already and not just like move into it a little bit, but but just making big strides already and just kind of like embracing a certain idea of the future and then and then trying to move toward it. So this is also again, I'll, I'll tied back to Bitcoin, but this is also why I think this, this sovereignty with, with money is going to be so interesting because it is all going to be very insecure this future. It's going to be very difficult to really paint, paint like a solid picture of what it's going to look like for, for someone who's our age, like their career, or what it's going to look like for our, our children. So just as you know, fiat's monetary debasement is infinite, you have a a problem in the future that you need to take care of today. That might be Bitcoin if you know if if you do the work, but I think the same goes for career or how do you fill your time, what do you study, what you know where, what are you going to do for your children, etcetera. So I think it's similar way need to understand at least the direction of where the future might be going. And then trying to figure out, OK, how how do I act upon that today? Because like you said, you know, some people still say like, Oh yeah, ChatGPT that's or like, you know, open AI or AI that's like a nice chatbot or whatever. You know, sometimes I see an interview here on like public radio with some sort of professor in AI, whatever. And they're like, because, you know, they don't like America, they're talking about like, oh, no, but it's a little bit of a bubble. They said that, you know, and, and I just think like if you see what I'm seeing on the X every day, I would be fucking terrified. Like if you're, if you're seeing what you can do already today, like you can build, you can build a company in a Mac mini, you can do that today. If you're a creative entrepreneur person, you can do that today. But an infinite amount of of employees basically that work for you 24/7. That last week I showed a friend of mine who's not really into computer stuff, I showed him odd Co work just on my desktop here on my Mac. And I just showed it how it rearranged the folder. And he was mind blown. And I said, you know anything I I could have done this either by hand, which would have taken me way longer, right? Or I had to like Google to find the scripts to instruct my Mac to like figure out all this stuff. And now, yeah, I was looking at the chat screen and I waited for three minutes, but it was done and and it was probably 10 to 20 times as fast as I, I could do it. And I'm good with computers, right? So think about all the people that are. Just. Using a laptop for their job right? And just typing and doing excel or whatever every day. Like the computer can just do what they are doing. And as follows. Interesting to see how he reacted to something which I think is very basic but has definitely not trickle down. The majority of people that perhaps are are, you know, on their laptop every day just, you know, doing what they think is work. But yeah, you know, it's probably already over for them, but they're not. Most likely. I mean, yeah, IA couple of things. Like I definitely agree it's super bullish humanity and it's it's nice because I think it's easy to get doom and gloom about a lot of the AI stuff, whether it's like all these layoffs that are happening or just general to your point, like the perception. I think there's been multiple studies around like the general normie perception of AI is a pretty negative because what they hear is like it's got to take your job at some point. We don't exactly know when, but like, you're pretty much fucked. The flip side of that is like it's never been easier to be a founder. And so to Michael's point, it's like founder LED businesses are the best businesses. That's always been true. That's not like even a new thing. Like I remember, I think back to my, my time at the private bank and like sitting in an allocator seat, like we looked at various funds that would only invest in public companies that still have their founder as the CEO. That was like a a very important, if not the most important criteria in their investment strategy in philosophy. And it just makes sense, right? Like, you naturally have more skin in the game. Like it's your baby. You do like you make better decisions if that is the case. And I think that there has been some sort of move away from that over the past couple decades in terms of just, you know, Serb era growth, growth at all costs doesn't really matter who's leading. Just like throwing money at the problem instead of like actually having someone disciplined who cares about what they're doing. And so it does. It is nice. So we are moving back to that world where there's greater recognition of the importance of of founders. But the, the Super Bowl is part is like, it's never been easier to be a founder if you can leverage these tools. And obviously it takes agency. Not everyone's going to do it. Some people are just going to like, accept the panopticon and accept the the serfdom. But like, you have more tools at your disposal than you ever had in human history to become a founder and do something like this. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think the the reality that nobody talks about is there was always like a coming to Jesus moment of washing out of people. But it's not about AI. It's just that the the market papered over the amount of jobs and need for people. And so they just, you know, that was that was coming in the sense of you got to, you don't even necessarily have to become a founder. You just have to be valuable for a company or the tools are going to do it because they're just a collective of the average. And so you can just get average at lower cost. But two quick things to hit on. One fun one is that he's also texting Brom. So if you're, you know, interested, he's down in Austin now. He's been there for five years, but now full time, I guess for tax purposes in, in California. The other one is I was thinking about it, he has to be a heavy Bitcoin holder like, and, and the the main reason why is because he had another podcast on the all with all in in Austin versus the year in South by. And he was referencing how like, you know, in the 90s, it was Microsoft 2000s, it was Google 2010. It was like Uber in the sense of like, oh, Uber's just going to do that. Google's just going to do that. Microsoft's going to do that. And in 2020, it's really a Musk when it comes to production because he understands like vertical integration and 1st principles of the energy doesn't just come from places. The manufacturing doesn't just come from places. The rare earth don't just come from places. You need to be able to control and manage that. And so that's where he's going on the robotics and mining side, very similar to how like Musk is vertically integrated from whether it's boring to the manufacturing plants to go into space for all these different things. Like there's a, a deep level of lack of understanding and the Bitcoin crowd or Bitcoin side gets it because you had to get it from understanding first principles and then just understanding how Bitcoin works, right? Because like money doesn't grow on trees. So if there was no proof of work, then you wouldn't be able to put all your money in it because there needs to be some scarcity and effort. But then you have to understand how energy works to get there. And so it just reminded me of like, if he's able to understand all that build businesses there, he has to understand the money's crap, you know, messed up. And that like I would. I would be hard pressed to believe that he was a pretty big Bitcoin man. I, I would, I would definitely agree with that. It is just, yeah, well, we'll see later. I have some links. But just like, you know, if you are a first principle type thinker, and I think Kalanick is then and you're as rich as he is, then you should be able to see that problem because your problem is protecting your wealth, right? So I would assume the same. I have Michael's favorite topic, micro strategy. This was the fourth biggest buy if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if anyone if there was a commentary. Well, anyway, it was the 4th biggest buy and I just wanted to point it out because although I've always been kind of in the middle on all the Bitcoin treasury type companies and skeptical of their execution. I do think Sailor has something that is extremely interesting, which is stretch, which for me, if this becomes even more widely known, I think this is a real threat to the banks. Like just just normally people would be pulling out their money from their savings account that it has. I don't know what the rate is in the US, but here it's very low. And yeah, like you don't even have to understand Bitcoin. Do you want to get like 1012% on your savings yet? The like people are going to do this and he's going to have an accelerated way of buying Bitcoin. And I also saw this one by Fong that showed like the sharp ratio. I mean, it's kind of, you know, I. Stretch is. Stretch is. So young that I don't think this is an applicable metric. They're not. I don't. Need to be. Calculating it right. Oh really well, that that I don't know, but I'll let you be the judge. But just if they can keep it stable, it's going to be extremely interesting and they're really going to ramp up the Bitcoin buying. So I just wanted to throw it in here, see what you guys think. But I, I personally think Stretch is a, is a crazy product and it will work really well for them. And in essence, I think they are just using the, let's call it the, the, the field money delusion, right? Every, everyone who understands Bitcoin is not buying Stretch, right? So it's just people that still live in the field world. I think that that is what they are obviously gearing towards. It's just like, you know, I'm going to put in this traditional financial product and I'm going to see how I can compete with all the alternatives that people could use and then, yeah, use cheap money that's losing value to buy the hardest money to ever exist. I mean, I think it's quite brilliant, but I want to order you guys, maybe Brian. No, I mean, it's interesting. I guess I don't have a ton to add, I think. I guess I have more of a question of like, and you kind of allude to this. So like, OK, if you understand Bitcoin, you're not buying this, well, then who's buying this? Because I also think if you are an institution, an allocator, I think you're probably pretty skeptical of strategy and Mike Saylor and I don't think that you probably look at a 1011% yield and think that the execution of counterparty risk is worth it. So I'm actually curious, genuinely curious, sound off in the comments. Who is buying Stretch? Where are these flows coming from? I'm sure there's data on this. I just haven't looked at it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean as I. Understand this is this is a wrapper in a way that well, OK, maybe there are funds right or institutions that cannot buy Bitcoin directly that maybe do understand Bitcoin, but Stretch is kind of like a wrapper to actually excess some of that in in what they're they're not by the. ETF. I don't know. Yeah, I am. I mean, I think there's a reality to call out. It's like the market can say irrational longer, you can say solvent or whatever in the sense of like this stuff will persist and it's interesting for people that find it interesting. There's some demand, somebody's buying it. I think that at the end of the day, what you described about everything that's interesting in the product is the same thing that caused, like Terra Luna, to collapse. In other products that offer high yield, there are different flavors of backing with Bitcoin promising dollars. And ultimately, if it's too good to be true, it's generally too good to be true. So how long does it take? And then to Brian's point, there's like a more first principle backing into like who's buying it? And then if somebody's buying it because they don't understand Bitcoin will ultimately if the plan is if anybody's long Bitcoin that everyone's going to understand it will then that starts to collapse in different ways. The thing that I would just like rationalize or just but then. He has a million Bitcoin and then there's a different business model. Yeah, I mean, there's different, there's different levers to where there's a whole, the whole slew of levers where the the underlying could not work out. So one of them is just like if one of the custodians are hacked, well, what happens to all of that and then that just all kind of evaporates. So, but independent of that is, and it maybe does tie into that is like if you live in this world today and all these people, if you're listening to this in your long stretch and you're buying it, you're touting it. You're probably like plugged into Twitter and you're seeing like what's happening in credit, private credit. You're seeing what's happening with gold getting out of certain countries. You're seeing what's happening geopolitically, counterparting of risk just lives on a spectrum. And so it doesn't like we always like to insulate ourselves that it can never happen to us. And the real point that anything can happen should have been covered for everyone where they locked everyone in a box to everyone in the in the West, especially in the US and Texas, Florida would have thought that could never happen and it did. So everything's on the table and everything's up for grabs. Your bank, you're not giving me your money. Tomorrow is up for grabs. Sailor getting hacked, tomorrow's up for grabs. Coinbase getting up hacked, tomorrow's up for grabs. In the same way that Iran, you know, getting bombed is happening and all these things. So the point is that counterparting risk and maintaining your bag and allocation should be of the 1st order, second order, and 3rd order if you want to make it. And so if you decide that 11% makes sense for you, knowing that inflation probably honestly is 11%, I would challenge anybody to say that inflation isn't 11%. So you're basically staying par and you want your dollars and you want seller to manage and you want everything to go right, like go right ahead. But I'm just telling you it's just not going to work out long term. And the reality is you can just get your cake and eat it too and buy U.S. Treasuries, get your 5% at least backed by the government plus counterparty risk and then buy Bitcoin and cold shortage and end up with a blended rate that is not only higher long term, but you also reduce the counterparty risk because you can take different forms of self custody. That's just first principles thinking. It's not like crazy. It's not asinine. It shouldn't even be debatable. But if somebody wants to go and by stretch like by all means, but like the rest of the market is going to come a coalesce around what I just described. These is the rational thing to deal with. Your economic value is at risk. And that's why none of this stuff makes any sense. Well said. I wouldn't disagree with that. I also don't think there there is 0 risk or whatever. What I just find interesting is that it is, I think a very innovative way to get capital from yeah, like I said, just just a capital like money that is losing value to buy better money. I think it's just a way to do that. I don't know. I never. Discount that like there, there there's innovation, there's financial engineering going on that's good for Michael Saylor and good for strategy. It doesn't mean it's good for people necessarily buying these products and and maybe it does persist for longer than Michael or I think I'm I'm certainly open to that or there's. Also an end to it. That's kind of what I'm thinking. Like it is a, like I said, at one point, he has a million Bitcoin or whatever. I mean, there's going to be a point where he cannot accelerate, I would assume because there's there's other parties buying. But if your goal is to get as much Bitcoin as you can, this is kind of like a rocket ship to do it from a pool of capital that for for a large part is still blind to Bitcoin. So in that sense, I think it's smart whether it's going to work or has zero risk or whatever. I I definitely. Doesn't have zero risk, no, no. But I mean, more like obviously there's risk, There's risk in everything. That's more like. That's probably how. Far I I go in terms of why why I find it interesting. It's it's just a rocket ship in in Bitcoin accumulation. So that's it. I want to learn more about this Mike. Yeah, I think I brought this one. Michael can share his thoughts as well. But you're you're on mute, bro. But yeah, this is the latest update on something I've been thinking about tracking about for some time now. I wrote about it a couple weeks ago in the honor of newsletter Basically private credit funds. Are getting squeezed right now people are attempting to pull money out of these things and they're basically getting halted or gated saying, you know, you can only pull out X amount we can't give you exactly what you want or withdrawals are entirely halted and inserted cases. And it's not just like some, you know, random firms that that this is happening to, it's the biggest firms on Wall Street that all have private credit funds of some flavor. And for some context for people that maybe don't really know what private credit is, but this is sort of an industry, an alternative space of traditional finance that really got popular, call it like a decade or so ago, 2015 to 2020 is when like these things got really popular. Basically think about it like making making loans to mid market sized companies and they're all private loans. So private companies, private loans, pulling them together in funds and basically marketing them as like anywhere from call it 8 to 16% annualized returns on a lot of these things. And these were all generally propagated when interest rates were much lower, close to 0. And so the basically the strategy for a lot of these funds was you give out these laws, restructure the business and you basically create, there's an arbitrage there, right? Because if you're borrowing at close to 0, you can basically restructure the business in an efficient manner. And then, you know, turn out the other side and, and pass along some amount of that to the investors. And so these things got really popular. A ton of capital came in and the the fundamental problem is there's like a duration mismatch in terms of of most of them sort of offer or market like quarterly redemptions, meaning like if you put money in you theoretically should be able to get it out quarterly. But a lot of these loans if not all of them are longer, medium to longer dated. So like anywhere from three to seven years if not longer. And so basically as rates had risen beyond that sort of 0 level that they were when these things really got popular, it's causing a lot of issues for these funds. And basically they're, you know, it's a House of Cards to some extent to, to put it bluntly. And now investors are trying to get money out and they're, they're basically closed their door, holding the gates up and saying we can't, can't do that because one, these loans aren't like mature. And so we actually don't have the money to give you. And so in the best interest of everyone, we have to get these funds and actually not allow you to redeem in the manner that you'd like to. And this is spreading. It's, it's sort of started to get really hot from a, a sort of narrative and headline perspective probably like 2 weeks ago, but it's continued. And then this latest one that I saw today, of course, now JP Morgan, Goldman are offering ways to short private credit. And so this is very eerily similar of what occurred in O8 when basically when people started to realize the House of Cards that was about to come down. We lost them. Oh yeah, I was just. I was just waiting for him to come back. But you're still here, The house. Of cards, you know. Yeah, yeah, I was pausing because I was going to hope he's going to hear this because I wanted his response. But there is a Bruce O'Brien came from. He was at Brown Brothers Harriman, one of the oldest private banks in the country, I think over 100 years old and very, you know, risk averse. And he spent a lot of time and a lot of their practice about around value investing, which, you know, Warren Buffett, he didn't necessarily pioneer. It was Benjamin Graham who's really like ultimate value investor and one of the big buffetisms. And I think there's there's great pieces on this was around what Brian's alluding to, which was O 8 and then long term Capital Management. It was a lot of these like old kind of leveraged buyouts that just completely like evaporated. And he in this really great clip, it was either 1993 in Florida and he's effectively saying he never understood. These are the smartest people in the room, right? Like the smartest people in the room, whether it's stretch, whether it's this stuff doing these products. But he never understood how the smartest people in the room could get into a position where they just blew themselves up. Because the way he referenced it is if, if I could make a billion dollars and I have 1000 chances at pulling, like I get to pull the trigger with a bullet in there and there's 1000 chambers and there's only one bullet. That's what he likened it to. Because he's like, I would never pull that because the odds are I'm not going to pull the trigger and kill myself, but but it's possible. And so, so there's this four layer conundrum that happens though. And this is where the meta eventually on your side will really appreciate what multi institution stands for. Brian, I'm going back into basically referencing long term Capital Management Warren Buffett is and going through describing and tying it in because I'm tie back to stretch. But also the conundrum Bitcoin holders find into is that the angle of the game in life and This is why diversification is supreme. We understand diversification is a fool's errand because nobody knows where the risk is. So they spread it across all of these things because if something goes belly up like private credit or stretch, you know, stretch holders, unless you're just insane or probably holding only 20% of their bag at most in the deal because it's like they don't really believe in it that much. But the point being is that they also aren't wrong because they don't feel comfortable in putting 80 to 90%, even though it might be the rational thing to do if you can withstand the volatility in Bitcoin because they also don't understand custody or haven't figured it out. And even if they did, they're probably on a Ledger or treasure and then they still have to worry about themselves messing up their family. So the point being is there is no like safe spot until you really do the work. And and this is what this stuff reminds me of is that it doesn't matter if it's private credit, if it's OA long term Capital Management or sailor, there's always a bullet in that thousand round chamber that by definition you shouldn't play because if you if you hit that bullet, you're dead. And why would you play the game? And there's all this risk embedded in those products. And that's the thing that the market just doesn't appreciate. Yeah, I don't know where I got. I got axed but that was a good it was after. The O 8 deal and it was just basically referencing like that this stuff just exists everywhere and it will continue to exist because it's the way just like risk is embedded into a system. If somebody's making money, somebody has to be taking risk. And there's a difference between investing and risking risk taking versus savings and we're talking about investments and risk taking versus just saving and. These were seen. The only other thing I'll add is like when these things were getting really popular, they were seen as super safe. Like super safe. Oh yeah, guaranteed like 12 to 14%. You're going to be good like. Mortgages like stretch like fucking. Stretch. It's like stretch. Like this is the thing that I always cannot fully comprehend or not comprehend, but it like gets me excited of like when you go back to biblical times, they sacrifice children and everyone today would be like, that is insane. But at the time they didn't know any better. So take that corollary. And every couple years in Bitcoin, somebody takes people's money, something blows up. Something happened in financial markets into Brian's point. When you're in the middle of it, it looks genius and there's always somebody telling you it's not. But nobody likes that because they like 11% and then it blows up and they're like, how could we have missed this? Like, and the funny part is it's always the new people that are coming in to stretch excited. Like there's nobody that's like been around Bitcoin for a long time. That's like, oh, this is the best product ever. Like I love this thing. It's always just a net new person that didn't live through XY or Z that's out there counting it. So like it's not like this just comes out of nowhere. This is just like timeless wisdom. I'm happy you're our sage. I don't, I don't really have anything to to add. I just, I, I really wanted to learn about this and, and I, I, I, I have to say I again, I'm not saying there's zero risk or whatever, but, and I agree with what you said there. There's always something like this. It's so strange that this what we're looking at with the with the private credit and the fact that they're shorting and stuff and they're packaging it up. What does it say? Like they're packaging it up? Where did it say like baskets of companies with exposure? I mean, it's eerily similar, right? And one other thing. Just add to this like, yeah, talking about who owns Stretch Food by Stretch the people, the the allocators that are allocated to all these private credit funds are like pensions, like a lot of like pension bonds like this. This could have serious ramifications that I think people are still kind of underselling because these things, like I said, were were perceived to be pretty safe and got into the hands of a lot of like pretty conservative, risk averse large allocator pools. So maybe a question for you guys. If if you are an A capital allocator like a pension fund, right and you need a very long term outlook and you have calculated whatever the return has to be, whether you understand monetary debasement or not, whatever there's a, there's a number, right. Gold. They should be in gold. Yeah, OK. Why not Bitcoin? Well, because they're just not going to be able to stomach the volatility. They're the everything under the sun that goes around with it. Like you can go back to 5000 years, you can go to Lindy, you can go to structured products, you can go to actual bullion depositories that can secure it. You're not going to get fired for going to gold like you would go to Bitcoin if volatility happened. You don't have to worry about quantum. I was just staying I. Was sort of like, and maybe this is too, too racency bias, but like energy, infrastructure, agriculture, real assets in that vein, I mean. The real play, if you really like to be serious because you were kind of throwing it out there. I know where you're going with like stretch and where would somebody go? It's like do whatever allocation to gold, do whatever small allocation of Bitcoin and do whatever allocation into treasuries and just like either rebalance or whatever. Because the reality is the the reality is like there's two sides. One is it's just a great business. Jeroen is close to it, but he's kind of like in in Europe and it's not hasn't made its way to to Jerome block block. And I think he's your friend who put us in touch. But. This just. Notion that whoever leads on gold Bitcoin in whatever structured products are just going to outperform 99.9% of the market like hands down and you add silver to that if you want there's a commodity trade and there's just a money trade and you don't have to deal with any of like the execution. But the other side to all of this is, is just the the the counterparty risk stuff just really like actually matters. And it doesn't seem like it does until it does. And that's going to just come and hopefully doesn't happen to Sailor and them I don't think. I mean, maybe it will. I don't know. Nobody ever knows. But the point being is that when it does happen, somebody big is going to lose a lot of money in the next, call it 36 months in Bitcoin. And, and the reason why is because every 36 months somebody loses a bunch of money in Bitcoin, like a large amount. And then all of the thesis starts to break down because of it. And it's all built on like the naivete of like what the market understands of Bitcoin, where the risk lies. And so that's just like a, it's just a thing. And everyone just puts it that, oh, he'll figure it out or whatever. He doesn't have the incentives. It's like there's $50 billion worth of incentives for him to figure it out. He's shown that he doesn't care. And so the question should be like why so? All right, I want to move to the next one. I brought this I I thought it was a really interesting tweet and I just want to have a little a little Bitcoin philosophical talk. Maybe there's AI don't know a governor, Bank of England deputy governor. She's confirmed that self hosted wallet will not be permitted under the UK stable coin regime. She's saying like self hosted wallets allow individuals to hold assets directly without using an intermediary. And our foundational feature of blockchain technology, they want to propose a limit of 20,000 lbs for individuals and 10 million for businesses. And what I really liked is what Freddie shared. You know, it's likely time to recall one of the very best pieces of writing on the subject from GDII want to read it and just get get your thoughts because I think you know when you when you think about. Just. Bitcoin being code and us being speech, you know, this whole idea of, you know, we're going to ban Bitcoin, it's just silly. And I think also a great expose of, of lack of understanding when people that have a serious job title at a Bank of England, for example, say stuff like this. So I'll I'll read it quickly and I just want to get your thoughts. Understanding Bitcoin from first principles will make it obvious that the idea of betting anonymous crypto wallets is not feasible. You would have to outlaw the generation of entropy, the act of coming up with random numbers. You would have to surveil everyone at all times, kicking in their door and arresting them once they sit down and start flipping a coin or rolling some random dice. You would have to pass legislation that criminalizes fault itself, since creating an anonymous Bitcoin wallet is nothing more than coming up with 12 random words their legislators, I ask you earnestly, are you prepared to outlaw fault itself? Should math be illegal? Do you genuinely believe that outlawing speech is a good idea? I hope that we can all agree that fault and speech are paramount to a free and prosperous society. And I hope that as more and more people understand how Bitcoin operates, citizens and legislators alike, or realize that Bitcoin is just that fault and speech. And you know, I, I just love to read that today, since, you know, the whole sentiment is down to shitter and you should have a long term outlook, obviously on, on Bitcoin. But I think for me, this is one of the most profound things, things of Bitcoin in general. Like it exists, but it also doesn't exist at the same time like it, it can be or it is obscured in a very foundational way. And this is something that that breaks a lot of brain. So I just wanted to throw this one in there and get your thoughts on this. Yeah, I mean, my main take away is there's there's maybe this realization like the end state is kind of predetermined. It's just who makes it to the other side of pulling Bitcoin or figuring what you just described out is like the fight, what the fight's over. It's like the notion of sales is you're really selling to the middle third because there's one third that's always going to buy. There's the other third that's never going to buy, and then you're just fighting over the middle. It's like it reminds me of, you know, this notion of like they kind of know this. Maybe she doesn't, but like the powers that be know that like, you know, you kind of cats out of the bag around certain things, around data encryption and self custody. But if you create this like mosaic or this, like I feel like pentopticon is my favorite, right? Because you can somebody can, you know, promote pentopticon, right? In like a prison or theoretical prison, you can have like 100 prisoners, but if there's one guard at a higher level, then nobody knows who's being watched. So everyone is like on their best, their best behavior. And so it just just makes me think like you hear all these crazy things. Another example of this is like bitcoins not used for payments or it will never be used for payments. And it's like just as irrational to think like that. If people want it and then they'll they'll want to accept it and then you'll have to use it. But the point being is if you can just get enough people, because we already have this happening, right? How many people think Bitcoins crazy speculative use for drug dealers that exists because people like that propagate crazy things and then the rest of the market goes and then by the time it's too late. And by the way, this is what stretches right? Like you just centralized and tell people this is a better product, it's less volatile, it's better go and do this. And it's like there's very few people that will go and do the work to understand the risk embedded into like that Lady saying that you can't sell custody of your own money or you should park it somewhere else. I think that's where I pause like this. And it's important to speak out and then do, you know, provide education for the people that are going to have agency to go down the rabbit hole because those are the people that are going to make it. It's the same thing with AI, right? When you think about forget about the agency of using the tools, there's going to be a next step there, which is you're not going to want to give up your data. This isn't a topic, but it's a fun one with the CIA and Niantic, and everyone was just taking pictures of all their shit. I don't know if you saw that, Brahm. Like that's a whole fun rabbit hole around. Everyone was taking pictures for the Pokémon Go app, and that was used to train all of this stuff. There's a realization the market's going to wake up to that, and then you're going to realize I don't want to be leaking my thoughts because I am the alpha in that situation. But it's just a progression and it's just how many people you can get to the other side or help get to the other side of that. Yeah, not a ton to add there. I've I've read that GG piece before, but it's got to be like several years ago now, right? And it's like, it is interesting to think like I agree with everything that's written there. But at the same time, like some of those questions, like those questions towards the end, it's like, well, some governments may actually want to to ban thought like at some point in, in the future. Like that's not out of the realm of possibility. Now you can still leverage tools like Bitcoin, other open source tools to prevent or combat against those types of forces. And that is what will be necessary and most likely. But you know, I think it's not don't think that those things aren't impossible, I guess would be my my main take. Like there's a real chance that people try to ban thought at some point. I mean, nothing has a non zero chance. So we might, we might, we might get there. Yeah. Well, maybe we get there faster now that Michael is going to share stuff about this. Oh God, yeah, that's. Serious, no one's ready for what's coming. Yeah, I think, I mean. There. Was to tie it to what he was saying there. Like I had this thought and I didn't end up tweeting it, but it was like there's a non zero chance you really actually only have 12 to 24 months first first serve them. But it was in the the sense of like less around AI. Sorry. You're laughing, but how serious are you about this? For pretty serious, I mean non zero chance, like it's just it's not a zero chance. It's not what's the likelihood? I don't know, but it's it's because of this and and it's the tying of like this clip, which Marty's been crushing it lately with, you know, a lot of the content he's putting out. But the title is our end didn't close the Hormuz. the US did 33% of global fertilizer exports, 50% drop in global fuel supply. We've seen and I think Scandinavia is halting a bunch of flights. South Korea doing work from home. Like this is that energy climate crisis coming out that everyone was like conspiracy theorists were talking about. And when you look at oil production, Matt had been talking about this for a while, it sounded crazy, but like the notion of insurance and car driving really being like the kind of like inertia that gets people to not drive and go in self driving because insurance will go so high for people that want to drive. And so the point being is that as price of goods go, inflation goes, there's only so much time. I mean, you'll always have these hard assets that you can save your money into. But if you're really trying to protect yourself from debasement and figure out the playbook, you might only have 12 to 24 months before the world completely changes again. Because a lot of people are saying this feels like a pre COVID era. COVID had this more of like, you know, physical like errors, more of on the the medical slash health side. This is more on like industrial movement, goods, services, the things that we all like the notion of the thing that we don't we really talk about a lot. But like when you go into a grocery store, like it is a economic wonder, all of the things that are able to coordinate and come and just come there every week, Like we take that for granted. And those things we saw in COVID like completely shut down. And so you take what's happening, if it continues to persist, like we truly don't understand the ramifications that are at play. And then you take all the AI stuff, you take all the changes and you know there will be layoffs, there'll be increased layoffs. You take inflation and then you take money movement. Bitcoin won't set these levels forever. Gold will sit at these levels. And there's just real like economic consequences for your day-to-day life. Because I still think goods and services will flow, but it's going to be harder and harder for I mean, it really is harder and harder for people to reach think about. Good food everyone. Listening and probably us know about how poison the foods are, but like very few people can actually afford the stuff that isn't poisoned. And like that's a corollary to like where the rest of the stuff goes. If you want the hard drive on the MacBook, it's going to cost an insane amount because of where the chips are going to be produced. I mean, it's looked at as Taiwan might have some issue or blockade coming. So it's just the world's changing faster than I think anybody. Would you? Would you say, well, I don't know, maybe it's more like a question like like you said, Bitcoin won't stay in these levels. Do you think this would be eventually a net good or negative for, for Bitcoin? I think this is kind of like also a run up to what, you know, on one side, it could be like crazy money printing or whatever. Not really thinking about that, more about the just the the functionality of of of of Bitcoin and how you can use it in a possible time like that. It's. Probably. A. Big test of. People. Understanding or thinking about it as a risk on or risk off asset, but I just wonder what you what you think? Yeah, real quick, because I'm sure Brian has thoughts. I was thinking about this. I said it yesterday, but I was thinking about it before. It's a real probable. There's a higher than 50% chance we're going to get the moon we wanted and we're not going to be happy about it. It's going to be the truest sense of like, it's a joke when you watch the like, dunk dance deal in the Big Short. But there's a real chance like that will that will play out where the the price of Bitcoin will be ripping. But it's going to be at like very kind of darker, weird time. And it was probably always going to be that case, to be honest. Yeah. I, I think that's, I think that's true. I mean, I think particularly like if it does happen very quickly, I think that's that's always been the rub. It's like people root for that to happen, but it's like, OK, if you're being realistic about it, like that means some really fucked up shit is going on. And so yeah, that's kind of where I land. But to answer your direct question, bro, I'm like, yes, I guess technically this is this is all bullish for Bitcoin. I mean, everything's bullish for Bitcoin to some extent, but like, yeah, like hyperinflation really landing in the United States like, well, orange pellet fuck ton of people and not to. Scare anybody? But like, this is something we've always been saying, like just think about all the tools, how much you use perplexity and clod, and how much data you can find on an individual. All of that data exists. It's out there today. People can do it. They're increasingly more and more desperate, so they're using it. What happens in that world? Because it's not unnotable. It's not we're all on pods. People are out there. I mean, it came out, I've been wanting to write about it like 2 weeks ago and three weeks ago there was all these Telegram channels with hardcore Bitcoiners that were getting fished from people that were going in telling them. So this is the hardest core that people should know better. We're losing Bitcoin and clicking these links and getting on zooms with bad actors and sending Bitcoin. So again, if those people are at risk and then we expect everyone else's data out there, it's going to be an insane time when that like desperation comes in and then everyone's known to be holding these assets is what we've been talking about forever. But when it really happens that hard, there's gonna be a real realization around like what we're building and why there's a need for it. Because you just ultimately don't want to be in control of all of your wealth on your person next to your family. It's just not a rational thing today. It's definitely not a rational thing if everything goes crazy. That look point I want I'm looking at the time I wanted to move to Yeah, just a little bewilderment from my side again. I mean I I I jokingly retweeted this this week. You know, it's just this drug, a Miller quote saying you don't get rich by the 1st fighting into 50 video grass that you get rich by fighting two or three asymmetric asymmetric home run home runs. Well, we all think Bitcoin is an asymmetrical opportunity, right? So, you know, I just tweeted, you know, druckerman, there's a bitcoiner. He called Bitcoin at the fastest horse before, but then I see this and again, guys, what do you what do you think? Wait, this is 44 seconds. But to a point, I think they're fine. And crypto, I said this a long time ago and I'm going to say again, it's a solution looking for a problem. I'm very sad that it ever happened as a store of value because it wasn't needed, but it's a brand and these people love it. So it's going to be a store of value. On the other hand, blockchain and the use of stable coins, if you want to throw crypto into that tokens incredibly useful in terms of productivity. I'm I assume our whole payment systems will be stable points at 10 or 15 years, efficient, quicker, cheaper. Yeah. So what is standing out to me? I'm always confused when guys like this use the word crypto, right? Like do you mean Bitcoin? Do you mean do you mean crypto when you say stable coins? You know, he said, well, I'll put that in with crypto. My feeling here is that he's talking about Bitcoin because he talked about Bitcoin being, you know, a store value before etcetera. So I wonder what you guys think. And also, and I said this before we started, but why I'm so bewildered is that I think someone like this should have like a zoomed out view, you know, and you think, you know, he's just. I'm going to let you talk, but. No, there's even better. It's even better. I want to say to yourself, I don't think you're right. Like because I'm pretty sure Brian's going to. I'm not trying to get. No, I'm not. Saying he's dumb or anything. I'm just saying like I think, I think he. Misinterpreted what he said. I think he misinterpreted. OK, OK. I like, I truly like basically what he was saying was Bitcoins a solution looking for a problem that I wish I never existed, meaning we messed up the money and so now it has to exist. That's what he was saying. He's still long Bitcoin. He wasn't saying like it's a solution. Yeah, Yeah, I'm fairly confident. I mean, Brian, what do you, what do you think? I think. That's right, because otherwise it makes into 0 fucking sense what he's saying. He said it is a store of value and he said it's. Still a store of value, but. Because it's a brand, people like it. It's more, it's more like, you know it's going to happen. Can you play it louder? Can you play it louder and listen it through that? Listen it listen. This was the. Loudest. Listen, but let me listen it through, Listen to it through that lens basically because I'm fairly confident like that's looking and this guy's been the longest Bitcoin bull. Like I don't think it would have just changed. That but that's that's why I'm bringing it up guy. I think it's strange they're. Fine and crypto. I said this a long time ago and I'm going to say it again. It's a solution. Sorry I. Cannot I cannot play it louder. But he says I'm saying I said it a long time ago, go back because he just. Went over the main point. Yeah, you can read the the caption. I said this a long time ago and I'm going to say it again. No, it's a solution looking for, sorry. Guys, I'm messing up. I wanted to show it on here. Then you can read the fucking caption. I'm sorry, crypto. I said that a long time ago and I'm going to say it again. It's a solution looking for a problem. I'm very sad that it ever happened as a store of value because it wasn't needed. Yes, we. Said I'm very sad it happened as a store of value. So I'm very sad it turned into a store of value because it wasn't needed in the sense of like, we have the dollar, we have the money, we fucked it up. That's how I'm hearing it differently, but unless he's totally. Pivoted his stance on like but this. Is why I'm bringing. Gold then when he what you're saying or what he sounds like he's saying initially makes no sense. Again, it was needed. We did need. That's why I'm thinking. It I also would probably like bet if you did this before the pod, it would come up. But you do this personally or anybody can. If you just go look into Claude or whatever and say go back to every quote Druckenmiller's had on Bitcoin, he would break down why what it is. So then if that's the case, then there's only two logical conclusions. We just misinterpreted or you misinterpreted what he said, or he's like a spook and then he's doing the Dalio thing and talking about dollars. Yeah, I mean. But OK, so I'll tell you my point is, if someone like if in, in what world would someone like this with a zoomed out view like he has talking about Bitcoin like he has, why would this even come out of his mouth? Maybe it's very weirdly worded right in my perception. He said. I wonder what the comments say. I'm not reading the comments out. There's no comments. I feel like he's saying something better came along and maybe then that's the stable coin thing, whatever he's talking about. I think I also hear what you're saying, Michael. That could very well also be possible then. It's extremely weirdly worded. Would you? Agree. If if it's what? Michael is saying, I think it's just strangely worded. But yeah, we can also continue. I was just, I was, I was just very surprised to just hear these, hear these words and they usually I think he's a he might have. Sold the bottom. I just typed in the Claude Stanley Stanley Jacamelo review on Bitcoin. What are his latest views? Based on recent interviews it says. Here's a synthesis of his latest views, primarily from Morgan Stanley Interview published on March 13th, 2026. The headline position? Skeptical. That's this one. That's. This yeah yeah, skeptical but not dismissive. Called bitcoins role as a store of value unnecessary saying he regrets it was ever used that way but acknowledges become a brand of love so it will remain a story value as a meaningful possession wrapped in a critique he doesn't own Bitcoin in September 2022 he sold all this Bitcoin all things as monetary tightening meant speculative assets too risky so he just sold the bottom guys so maybe that's why he's saying this but what? A weird cope. What weird Weird. I'm here. OK, I'll give you another one. Look, look what it says, Drucker Miller when asked what he would buy if he was building a brand new portfolio from scratch. AI long Japan and Korea. Bearish on US, bearish on US. Long Gold as geopolitical trade, not monetary short bonds. Yeah, Yeah, I think I think you're right. Wrong. Based on what I saw, it actually like break. It goes through. Yeah, well, but more than that, it tells you why he sold. So it goes to like general skepticism and then he basically keeps calling a solution in front part of a problem and then he says flips, but he basically references he didn't flip on his own. It was because and it. Just zoom in because. PTJ called them. So he bought because somebody else he bought that bought. I can guarantee you this guy didn't sell, he bought. Because Paul Tudor Jones bought Yeah, I. Mean because that's what people do. Like if you have somebody that that recognizable friend, but point being is so then he comes here and you go full articulation of the thesis, but he still keeps coming back to a brand. So he doesn't even understand he goes on Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is more on store value because of its brand. It's been around 1314 years finance supply and then it goes 22 sells. So it sounds like he just never actually even understood Bitcoin. Which if that's the. Case then yeah, of course he's gonna. He's gonna sell. Asymmetric opportunity guys based on publicly information. I'll flip on a dime broom. I was I've misinterpreted. I mean, it's he made it ambiguous like it was it was. It was just weird wording, but. Anyway. You know, what's the part that's interesting about that is you have like these guys, like Bill Miller who gets it right, And I would make the case that Paul Tudor Jones, that's it. Even Luke Groman as an example, like Luke Groman, he called out on our pod that in 2019 he realized it was a currency problem. Like we have a currency problem. That's where he fundamentally understood Bitcoin is a currency, bought it, he sold it, but he didn't sell it because he doesn't believe in it. He just is a trader. He understood and he made the right trade. He sold it, and now let's see when he gets back in. But I think those guys are fundamentally different than somebody like Drac, who, you know, to our discredit, we didn't go deep there. We just assumed he understood it. But it's the same thing with these guys. Like there's different incentives on why people tout these things. Some just fundamentally don't get it. Others, you know, we look at Dalio, I think he has a heavy bag. He just doesn't. Sorry, you can go back to the other. No, no, but I mean, This is why you understand my bewilderment and that's why I think it's so funny to just go back to Bitcoin is an asymmetrical opportunity. This is going to take a long fucking time. Even the guys that that we all would expect to understand what this is even saying stuff like all Bitcoin is the fastest, worst just fundamentally don't understand it. And I just think that's interesting. That shows, I would also say, kind of like the complexity of what this is and also apparently even why it exists. We saw the Michael Berry clip, same stuff. He talks about the. Exact problem like he to the teeth right he just explains the issue and he doesn't see what's in front of his face they're. Possible to they're kind of also. Insights into like these guys being very bearish on humanity because if you think about it like how hard is it to a get back when and then realize that once everybody else gets it and they'll buy, it's really pretty straightforward. But if you're just betting on humans and the inertia that exists in the legacy frameworks, it's an easy thing to bet on because the status quo, status quo for a reason. Then you're just basically hope you're just planning on it, not to change or the time horizon to take forever. And then they're just going to go into what other whatever assets that you know be buying. I agree. All right, let's wrap up with the last two if something. Happened to you tomorrow. Could your family access your Bitcoin? Not, probably not. They would figure it out with certainty. I thought about this a lot. You may feel confident managing your own keys, but are your loved ones? Billions of Bitcoin have been lost already because someone died without a plan. With Onramp, inheritance planning is built in directly into your custody setup. Your Bitcoin stays segregated and in your control, insured through Lloyds of London and accessible to the people you choose when they need it. Get started in 15 minutes. Book a free consultation at onrampbitcoin.com. Onramp secured by three controlled by me. Yeah. So this is kind of the the solution to the other side, the Iran stuff. But it's ultimately just showing from ADCA perspective, if you go up $100 a week since 2020, independent of, you know, FTX collapse bear market, the crashes from $100 in 2020 to today or I think all that, that price point was like 74, you'd have from $32,000 invested, you have a little over $88,000. And I think they'll play whether you're an individual, a business solver is just to deliver value and then just continue to stack, especially given the geopolitical risk that exists. And it's to hold Bitcoin in some form of offline cold storage and reduce as much levels of counterparty risk that exists. It's really as simple as that. Every other layer you add to that complexity just further puts more counterparty risk on you and then ultimately ends up with you potentially losing all of that. So if you can keep it that simple and you can withstand the volatility and be prepared from like a capital outlay perspective for your mortgage, your house, your business, medical bills, whatever, you're going to end up in the green, then you're just going to be better off for it. And then you can go back to vibe coding, working on your craft. It's really that simple. The problem is, and why nobody says this is because they don't really make money from that. Yeah, the. Only thing to add is I love DCA visualizations charts like this. It's very illustrative of like why once you do really fully understand Bitcoin, why you perceive it as a savings technology, because if you are diligent and you are literally steadily saving in it, it smooths out the volatility, right? So like when people look at just trailing returns sort of like point to point, well, the five year number right now like looks really bad compared to gold or the SP. It's like, well, that's fine for an investment like you look at point to point trailing returns, but it's like for savings that you're accumulating over time, you need to look at it on some sort of rolling period or some sort of like DCA analysis like this. And it becomes very clear that it's extremely advantageous to save in this form of money. So most stuff like that, I think it, it gets overlooked by like most, most people who are still sort of like dismissive, skeptical on the cursory of Bitcoin who still perceive it as an investment. And it's like, whoa, you know, five years is done terribly. It's like, well, that's really not how you should be thinking about it. Yeah, I I really like this. I think you guys should also do more of this stuff eventually the boring approach is also the the best approach, right? And it doesn't get as many clicks as the Oh my God, what is happening? Is everything fucked again and blah blah, you know, but I actually think it's very dope when you when you visualize it and can just show that this is just a way to go. And it's just like like you said, it's huddle, chill and and build stuff. You know, you can actually do that when you just have a strategy like this. So I think it's very cool. All right, let's move to the last one. I think this was Mike. Knows who made I know Michael. Michael hates when I talked about the Federal Reserve and red tea leaves, but I do think it's relevant in these super uncertain times. The Federal Reserve is still making decisions that are relatively speaking, important and they're working off of very bad data. And so some of that data came in yesterday morning around inflation and CPI and PPI, much higher than sort of consensus and what was expected. Even though we know those numbers are garbage, the fact that they come over expectation is like the the important part, like you, you can't, you can't always hire all of it, right? Like there's still some increase that shows up. And so basically the what I wrote here for the newsletter this morning for on ramp was just this position that Powell and, and really the Fed has a whole kind of doesn't matter about Powell at this point. Like he's a lame duck. He's going to be replaced in May by Kevin Warsh. But the Fed as a whole, as an institution is completely trapped and and has really no good solutions. And they've gotten, you know, they put themselves in this place, obviously, but they are now at a point where, you know, they had started cutting rates. I think they cut it three times in a row back in the sort of back half of last year. And now that for the past few meetings, they've paused those rate cuts and it's primarily being led by sticky inflation. So inflation is not going down like it was previously, even though we know in actuality, inflation is just going up. It's not actually going down. But the these numbers that they're using to, you know, make these decisions, but those came in a little hot yesterday. And so they really have no room to to cut rates. And they also really can't raise rates because the labor market, which is their other sort of mandate now and their mandates, again, a caveat all of this by saying like this is all bullshit. This is all Fed speak, but there are two quote UN quote mandates are price stability, so like worrying about inflation and full employment. So the labor market, which is also weakening right now. And so you can't really raise rates into a a weakening labor market where you know, we're seeing some of the largest layoffs since the pandemic and even prior to that. And you have all of these fears around AI disruption and, and displacement. So they are really, really trapped. Like they kind of have no choice but to just pause. But the problem is like just pausing also just compounds the issues that are, that are occurring. So there's no, there's no will out for them. And the other thing that I just want to like highlight and I try to articulate this and this piece and I have written about it in the past, it was like they're trapped. They can't go either direction, but either direction is like good for Bitcoin in the sense that like if they were to cut rates, like that's good for risk assets. And the people that perceive Bitcoin as a risk asset is going to be good for for Bitcoin's price. And if they were to raise rates, then like at some point they have to print money because there's going to be a global recession and basically the labor market's going to break. And then when they print the money, that's good for Bitcoin. So like either direction of travel, you know, the time horizon may change in terms of Bitcoin's response to it. But the the net of it is they have no good solutions because Fiat is broken and they put themselves in this position. And so even though they're trapped and don't have, you know, they don't have any tools left in the toolkit per SE, regardless of what they do, even if they just do nothing, it's good for Bitcoin in the sense that it is explicitly and even, you know, increasingly so very apparent that these people don't know what the fuck they're doing and they're going to continue to up the money. And that's what we're seeing. And so all that is good for people recognizing the value problem Bitcoin and why it exists. How are you guys looking at the the what is it 9 trillion debt that needs to be rolled over this year? Like how how does that even work? Is that already like a money printer go money printer goes or like like, how does that work? How do you how do you think Trudeau? Well, they're. They're going to roll over some of it, I guess at marginally lower rates because I guess rates are are somewhat lower than they were from their highs. But it's still the interest expense is still going to be the largest light item on the budget. And so it's still a unsustainable path, as Jerome Powell likes to say. It's kind of fake. Still not you, but Jerome, it's an unsustainable path. Yeah, I see it. Purposely they. Are there any exits on this path or is it just the path? I'm sorry, Mike, You you. I don't get, I mean, like we went from, you know, 2% interest rates to five and everyone thought that was like couldn't be possible and everything would break. And we're still sitting here. Nobody knows anything. It's all bullshit. I don't have, I don't have much on like the Fed and debt, you know, they just like Fugazi here, Fugazi there, switch, swap, you know, there's swap lines everywhere. It almost feels like a humiliation ritual at this point. It's like it's unsustainable. Everyone knows it, every policy. What's the end? What's? The end, you just deal. With it, same way you deal with like you know your your dollars go to bombing people, but you just pay it. Well, all right, I don't. Know I do have a bonus. I have a bonus round for you, though. Just go for it just for balm really quick because it's really get them, get them going. We don't even have to. We don't even have to clip it unless you want to hear the beginning because I found it where they're at. Yeah, play zoom in, zoom in and and put. This is. A look at look at all these guys like look at this is the who's who. It's only like the first. Let me ask you a question about open source. So we have these closed source models, they're excellent. We have these Openoid models. Many of the Chinese models are incredible. Absolutely incredible. 2 days ago, you may not have seen this because we were busy on stage, but there was a training model that happened in this crypto project called Bit Tensor Subnet 3. They managed to train a 4 billion parameter llama model totally distributed with a bunch of people contributing access compute, but they were able to do it statefully and manage a training run, which I thought was like notion of like bit sensor and all these things like all these ideas don't need a token like this is the future like distribution and you don't have to go to central servers. They've been talking about this forever. Netflix, like all these things like the Internet will be fundamentally changed once there's a portal, less form of money that can be moved digitally. But you don't need to fucking token. And so you have like these guys, you know, at the top of their game talking about it, which is just going to be something that's going to come like your credit to Barry Shilbert. You know, that sensor and AI it's they put a lot of money behind that. It's going to pick up scene. I mean, it is I I I love, I love this. This is a good ending, right? Yeah. Yeah. You don't need to fucking token. Like what? How's the? Yeah, well, you should buy the token if you think the company is going to do well. It's just such a stupid crypto 2017 ICO type legacy thing. But maybe that's the team of this episode a bit, right? Like a lot of people are just traders and they will grift and promote scammers. Or literal scammers. Right. Well, I later I made a little money on the virgin space back, but anyway, not in the majority there. But I think that is just it like how do you look at Bitcoin? Is it a trade? Is it a stock? Is it, you know, and, and I think we just have a fundamentally different view on what Bitcoin is and what the future, what how, how useful it is in the future. And other people just see it as a trade and they move between all those things. And yeah, that's fine. Anyone can do what they want to do. But maybe to tie back to the Fed piece, like underpinning all of this is something that is extremely fragile path dependent on and on this unsustainable path towards some sort of ending where in my hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is the end. Yeah. Well, you don't want to be in that system, You don't want to be in that system, and you don't want to be in anything that that system touches. I would say so. Yeah, maybe that's a super summary of the Bitcoin thesis, but yeah. All right, guys. Well, let's let's wrap up, unless Mike has anything else to add. No, it's good. Good pod. I think we're. We'll get some good. We had a lot of different topics, so thanks everyone for watching. Hope you join us next time and see you there hopefully. Cheers.