Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Dr. Jeff Ross & Tomer Strolight | Philosophy + Economics | Simply Bitcoin IRL
Transcript
- 0:06Hello everybody, Welcome to another episode of Simply
- 0:08Bitcoin IRL. Today I am very, very happy.
- 0:12We have two special guests. We have Tomer Strollite and
- 0:15Doctor Jeff Ross. But before we jump into the
- 0:18show, I want to give a very special shout out to the Bitcoin
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- 0:47purchase. So no more delay.
- 0:49Let's bring up our very special guest, Tomer and Dr. Jeff Ross.
- 0:54I want to say something about Tomer before.
- 0:56Tomer is the most awesome person to have conversations with like
- 1:02we get, we get spiritual and like it gets deep and it's
- 1:06awesome and I really appreciate it.
- 1:08And of course, Dr. Ross, I love their conversations at Pacific
- 1:12Bitcoin. And every time you we, we, you
- 1:15come on the show, we go down this like Bitcoin macro rabbit
- 1:19hole. So I was like, okay, let's let's
- 1:21bring on these two Bitcoin legends together and let's see
- 1:25where the conversation takes us. How you gentlemen doing?
- 1:27Great. Doing great.
- 1:29Thanks for having us. Yeah.
- 1:31So I want to start off with you, Doctor Ross.
- 1:34So I think this is like a, a big announcement quote, my
- 1:38unretirement from healthcare commences on August 1st.
- 1:42So is that a, is that a congratulations?
- 1:45Are you excited? How you feeling about it?
- 1:48Very much, in fact. If you've ever for people in the
- 1:51audience, usually you have a different background.
- 1:53I have a map, but I changed my office back to the old way.
- 1:57So behind me here, these are the monitors that I'm gonna be
- 1:59reading radiology from SO. Very excited, actually.
- 2:05I had to leave Radiology about almost two years ago because my
- 2:10business, my fund and investment advisory business was growing so
- 2:14fast. It was just too kind of
- 2:16overwhelming. I'm at the point now where I'm
- 2:19going to. It was a hard decision.
- 2:21It was a I had to really look inside myself and see, you know,
- 2:25how good am I for my own business, right?
- 2:27I've been running Veilshare for 10 years now.
- 2:30I've decided that I'm actually the linchpin at this point.
- 2:33What I love is investing. That's why I started doing it 10
- 2:35years ago. What I don't love is running
- 2:37kind of the daytoday operations and dealing with compliance and
- 2:40all the other kind of things. So bringing on a new hire a guy,
- 2:44that's fantastic. I'm really excited to announce
- 2:46it, hopefully in the next couple of months.
- 2:48And that allows me to just basically focus on investing for
- 2:51my clients, but then at the same time I can go back to reading
- 2:54radiology again, which I enjoy doing as well.
- 2:57So back to two careers. I'm highly enthused about it, so
- 3:01it seems like you're mining Fiat hardcore.
- 3:05This is the time to be buying for sure.
- 3:07Now to be fair, it's been the time to be buying for the last
- 3:11year or so. And I don't want to do any
- 3:13spoilers, you know, for where I think things are going.
- 3:15But but yes, I still think this is a fantastic time to be a
- 3:18dollar cost averaging and smash buying Bitcoin.
- 3:20Smash, smash buy smash. Omer, what's on your mind these
- 3:24days? I'm gonna say this again.
- 3:26I'm gonna fanboy over Tomer. Tomer is fucking awesome.
- 3:29I can't emphasize this enough. If you see this guy to
- 3:32conference, have a conversation with them.
- 3:35What's on your mind these days, Tomer?
- 3:37No, it's like, listen, it's different things I really like.
- 3:42I like to try to put together different pieces of what's going
- 3:45on today. In particular, I've been writing
- 3:49a piece about the all the various mysteries inside of
- 3:52Bitcoin. And you know, there's Bitcoin is
- 3:55just this. It's mysteries all the way down
- 3:57is is kind of where I'm getting at.
- 4:00And it was brought. It was brought on by a
- 4:03discussion I had with an artist about something, and he's
- 4:08building like a vault so to. Symbolize artistically what a
- 4:14Bitcoin UTXO was. And I started to go down the
- 4:17rabbit hole of, you know, Bitcoin is actually like every
- 4:19Bitcoin block is like a vault within the last Bitcoin like
- 4:24this. Two kinds of security.
- 4:25One is your private public key, the other is the the work, the
- 4:28energy that secures each transaction.
- 4:31And they just are layered one inside the other.
- 4:33So it's like you're taking the vault that was the last block
- 4:35and putting it into a new vault That's whose strength is all the
- 4:38energy that went into that most recent block.
- 4:41And you know, these come in 2016 vault chunks, every difficulty
- 4:46adjustment so that when the difficulty goes up, the vaults
- 4:48get harder and harder to penetrate.
- 4:50And sitting at the center of all of these vaults, now there's
- 4:52like 800,000 and 200 and something, 300 and something
- 4:56that's the block height that we're at.
- 4:58Is that one original UTXO? That one with that opera turn
- 5:03that says Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for
- 5:06banks? And if you want to go in and
- 5:08double spend that one, you've got to break through every one
- 5:11of those 800,000 vaults in the next 10 minutes, because in 10
- 5:17minutes someone's going to find another vault that you need to
- 5:19break through before you can break through all the other
- 5:21ones. So it's just it's it's
- 5:23incredibly secure architecture. But that got me into thinking,
- 5:26you know, to solve a block, it's.
- 5:29It's a mystery what nonce is going to solve the next block.
- 5:32So each each block is like this mysterious puzzle that people
- 5:36have to figure out and and the the the solution to the like
- 5:42when you saw the block then it releases the next puzzle because
- 5:46you need the solution to the previous block to be a part of
- 5:49the solution to the next block. So there's all these mysteries.
- 5:52And of course there's the mysteries of who is Satoshi
- 5:53Nakamoto and why did he make all these things the way he made
- 5:57them? And how does?
- 5:58You know how does all how do all of these things about Bitcoin
- 6:01work? The whole field of cryptography
- 6:03is of course comes from the great word crypto for cryptos,
- 6:07for hidden. So it's just it's it's this
- 6:10amazing mystery thing and to me like it's what draws mysteries
- 6:13draw the curiosity in us right They they get they you hear
- 6:18there's a mystery. You're like you want to solve it
- 6:19or you want to hear how somebody solved it or you want to hear
- 6:22the solution. And Bitcoin is itself the
- 6:24solution to this Byzantine Generals problem, which was a
- 6:27problem that. Theoretical mathematicians that
- 6:30said they had proven cannot be solved.
- 6:33And yet this unsolvable mystery unsolvable problem was solved in
- 6:38a probabilistic way by Satoshi Nakamoto using this proof of
- 6:42word puzzle. You know, using mysteries.
- 6:45He used a mystery to solve the unsolvable mystery.
- 6:47So the whole thing is really fascinating.
- 6:49I'm trying to figure out a way to put it all into a article of
- 6:52the right length that isn't too much of a repeat of.
- 6:55Some of the other articles that I've written on the similar
- 6:58theme, but yeah, it was all kind of invoked by I think Level 39
- 7:03had a tweet storm this morning about because the alien
- 7:07testimonies, the UAP testimonies.
- 7:09So he said, like, here's all these things that we know so far
- 7:12about it, and he tied it. And he cited a couple of my
- 7:15articles. There's one I wrote a year and a
- 7:18half ago called Why People Wonder if Bitcoin is alien
- 7:21technology. So that obviously fit in there.
- 7:23And then. And then I think he was
- 7:26questioning whether Satoshi was an alien.
- 7:27So he cited my article, The Legendary Treasure of Satoshi
- 7:32Nakamoto. And that everybody is exactly
- 7:36why I'm a huge fan of Summer. Those those those articles, his
- 7:41work by the way the video that you made that was produced
- 7:47Bitcoin is beautiful. Holy cow guys.
- 7:49Definitely recommend that you guys could check it at the swan
- 7:53channel. But anyways Dr. Ross so we had
- 7:59the infamous and I'm gonna bring it back to hopefully we can.
- 8:03I wanna see, I wanna see if we could tie the I wanna see if we
- 8:07could tie these two ways of approaching Bitcoin together.
- 8:12And it's gonna be fun and I'm looking forward to it.
- 8:15So we had the FOMC meeting today.
- 8:19There was a .25 hike, right? Did that surprise you?
- 8:24What were your thoughts on that? First of all let me just while
- 8:29Tomer's here say that I truly believe that Tomer, and this is
- 8:32not to you know blow up your skirt Tomer, but I think Tomer
- 8:35is going to go down in history as one of the great Bitcoin
- 8:37philosophers of our age And so that's cool.
- 8:40So I'm. I'm honored to be here with you,
- 8:42Tomer and and it's while Tomer elevates all conversations I
- 8:45like to bring them down and then and what could bring it down
- 8:48more than by talking about central bankers and Powell right
- 8:51so. Okay.
- 8:52So to get to your question, they raised 25 Dr. Ross.
- 8:55I am Tomer's #1 fan Okay. Let's let's just establish that
- 9:00we just established. All right.
- 9:02All right. I can be #2.
- 9:03That's Okay Powell. So they raised 25 bips.
- 9:08Was it a surprise? Not at all.
- 9:10It was I think 99% certain based on CMA futures.
- 9:14Heading into it, so there was no surprise at all.
- 9:16What I was waiting for is, is he going to come down as being
- 9:19overly hawkish or not? How will the FOMC minutes,
- 9:22that's the statement they released at 2:00 PM Eastern.
- 9:25Was that really any different than six weeks ago?
- 9:28And the answer is no. No, there was really nothing
- 9:30exciting at all about it. He basically said exactly what
- 9:33they said before. The only change that I saw in it
- 9:37was before they had said there was probably only going to be
- 9:40modest economic growth for the for the rest of this year and
- 9:44now they think there might be moderate economic growth which
- 9:47is like a bump up. Otherwise I said you know
- 9:50inflation is still a problem. They say we're still going to
- 9:52you know remain vigilant, we're going to watch the data.
- 9:54We might, we may or may not raise again at the next meeting
- 9:57which is in September, but we have, you know, some significant
- 10:00data points. Two rounds of CPI coming in
- 10:04before that and other you know, inflationary data and economic
- 10:08data. So basically everybody kept
- 10:11asking these questions, are you stopping, are you not, are you
- 10:13stopping or not? He's just like I'm telling you,
- 10:14I don't know, we're just waiting to see what the data shows and
- 10:18then we may or may not hike again in September.
- 10:20And so non event it was enough. Nothing Burger.
- 10:25Central banking is a mystery. Yes, right into it.
- 10:29This is exactly why I brought you guys together.
- 10:31I'm trying to synthesize the things we we talk about it.
- 10:36It's interesting. I mean I don't view central
- 10:40banking as that much of A mystery.
- 10:41It's a system that is that's kind of like broke broken at its
- 10:48fundamentals and and it's just hope that if enough people trust
- 10:54you. And you're benevolent enough you
- 10:56can get away with doing something that no human being
- 10:58should have the power to do, which is to distort the the, the
- 11:05meter stick, destroy the unit that people are are trying to
- 11:09use to measure value. And it's the intention is
- 11:12obviously not to destroy it, but in a sense it's to destroy the
- 11:15integrity of it, right? Central banking says the dollar
- 11:18shouldn't have integrity to it. It shouldn't be a fixed.
- 11:22Unit of value. It should be one that we can
- 11:25manipulate to some arbitrary goals that we feel are right.
- 11:29Like we feel 2% inflation is the target.
- 11:33Why? Why?
- 11:34Why not 3%? Why not 1%?
- 11:36Why not 100%? Why not minus 5%?
- 11:39Like there's a whole range of numbers.
- 11:40There's a whole real number line to go for.
- 11:43Why 2% is is perfect and and how they trade that off.
- 11:47So it's just like, it's amazing to me how arbitrary a system we
- 11:50live in and if. If we're talking about
- 11:52philosophy and history, I think I I think people in the future
- 11:58who live under a Bitcoin standard will wonder how
- 12:02primitive we were. In the same way that we might
- 12:04look at people who used beads or seashells as money and say what
- 12:08a primitive form of money people, people will look at
- 12:12central bank issued currencies and say what a.
- 12:16What a vicious and primitive form of money.
- 12:18At least there was nothing vicious about using the
- 12:20seashell. I mean, they were hard.
- 12:22They were rare and hard to collect.
- 12:23But someone, I guess, could collect them all day.
- 12:25But here someone can arbitrarily decree that there will be 3
- 12:29trillion more of these things. And who gets them and under what
- 12:33terms? And and these are always terms
- 12:35that don't treat everybody equally.
- 12:37So there are people who are. Implicitly disadvantaged by the
- 12:42system. And those are the people who are
- 12:43doing the hard work that the people who print the dollars get
- 12:46to enjoy the benefits of. So it really is a very much a
- 12:49master slave relationship. And that's what makes you know,
- 12:53we look back at the times when slavery was permitted and we say
- 12:57what a primitive and brutal time.
- 13:00And people in the future will look back at this time and say
- 13:02the same thing. And they will, they will pity
- 13:06those of us who were victims of the system.
- 13:08And they will view with this, with what's the word with anger
- 13:15and shock, the people who who ran the system this way.
- 13:19And I think kind of what's interesting about it, in the
- 13:21same way that you look back at people who owned slaves and they
- 13:25didn't necessarily think they were evil.
- 13:27They didn't necessarily fully contemplate the consequences on
- 13:33others of what they were doing. It was just the way I don't, you
- 13:36know. I don't know if Jerome Powell is
- 13:39overtly evil. What he's doing is participating
- 13:42in a system that's evil and that history will judge as evil.
- 13:46But he's just putting on his suit and coming into work and
- 13:49doing what he's been told to do. Possibly.
- 13:52I can't. Yeah.
- 13:53I mean, I would say that he's just a product of the incentive
- 13:58structure, like the incentive structure.
- 14:00Like he, I think this is where you get caught in these
- 14:03situations, where you where you really, truly are in a position
- 14:06of tremendous privilege and tremendous power and you
- 14:09intentionally blind yourself to the consequences.
- 14:13Like I remember, I don't listen to his speeches regularly, but.
- 14:17I want to say like roughly a year ago as they were starting
- 14:20to raise rates, he acknowledged. He said this is mostly harming
- 14:23poor people and people of color. I can't remember the exact
- 14:26expression he used, but he was saying like this is harming
- 14:29those people who are suffer, who are already disadvantaged in our
- 14:33civilization. It's making, it's making them
- 14:35not able to afford things. It's putting them out of jobs.
- 14:39And we're going to continue to do it.
- 14:40So, like, he knows that what he is doing to get inflation under
- 14:44control is making things harder. And he knows that he was the
- 14:47cause of the inflation by pumping trillions of dollars
- 14:51into the economy to fix what you know.
- 14:53And his whole job is sticking his finger in the dike.
- 14:56Like, oh, there's a problem. You know, people are locked down
- 14:58at home. OK, well, we'll, we'll print
- 15:00more money in a helicopter. And yeah, well, now there's too
- 15:02much money. That's OK.
- 15:03We'll raise the interest rates so people can't.
- 15:06Spend the money that we helicoptered into them.
- 15:09They have to spend it on interest, you know.
- 15:11And so he's just pulling and pushing these levers back and
- 15:13forth, and the whole thing's out of control and it's unstoppable.
- 15:16As you know, other people speak about much more eloquently than
- 15:19me. It's like the system.
- 15:21The system. Is based off of debt.
- 15:23And in order to pay the debt, the money supply needs to grow
- 15:26to pay off the debt. So it's like it's inherently an
- 15:28inflationary system. And what's happening now with
- 15:32high interest rates, you know what, what's the rate today, 5
- 15:351/2 percent or 5 1/4%? Well, that's that's not just
- 15:39like thinking that's not 5% more than .25%, which was where it
- 15:42was at the low. That's 20 times the rate, 22
- 15:46times the rate, right. Interest.
- 15:47You know if. .25, a quarter of a percent interest on $100,000 is
- 15:52121, twentieth the rate of 5%. So if you're on a floating rate,
- 15:57you have to pay 20 times as much interest as you had to just a
- 16:00year and a half ago. The inflation and you know, so
- 16:03like the CPI on interest has been 2200% like or 2100%.
- 16:10So starting from the basis, I don't want to exaggerate it,
- 16:13which is interesting too. 2100 percent, 21 million coins.
- 16:17Maybe this is where they stop or this is where it all breaks.
- 16:21It is just it's shocking the severity of the intervention
- 16:26that they've had. And you can see it explicitly
- 16:29whether you're looking at the money supply or the interest
- 16:30rate. Our our money system is in
- 16:35danger. I I agree it it it does feel
- 16:39that way and and I I know and I want to pass it on to Doctor
- 16:42Ross like from the from my generation specifically like it
- 16:47is. You know we can't afford
- 16:49anything Like I'm super, super lucky to have got into Bitcoin
- 16:52the time that I did and I've been here for a very long time
- 16:55but like the vast majority of of my generation we can't we can't
- 16:59afford anything. We can't buy anything.
- 17:01You know, I'm still renting and that's a story that you hear
- 17:05time and time and time again and from the Contillionaire
- 17:08conference, which people call the World Economic Forum, but I
- 17:10really call it the Contillionaire Conference.
- 17:12Their own rhetoric is even telling you like well you'll own
- 17:16nothing and be happy. And I and I really think that
- 17:18they're telling you this type of stuff because they fully
- 17:21understand the severity of the situation for you know the if
- 17:26you're for for for the younger generations.
- 17:28And I think they're trying to accustom the custom them to this
- 17:31new normal. So I mean to adding to what
- 17:34tumor was saying, Doctor Ross, it seems like this system is, is
- 17:39completely unsustainable. It seems like this is something
- 17:42that this is not a solid foundation for society to move
- 17:47forward on. So what's your take on that?
- 17:50Well, for sure, right? We know from history that all
- 17:53Fiat currency eventually goes to 0, right?
- 17:55Governments can't. They can't resist the temptation
- 17:59to debase their currency. And when they do that, what
- 18:03they're doing is just stealing purchasing power from their
- 18:06citizens, right? Everybody knows that, although,
- 18:08well, I should say all bitcoiners know that.
- 18:10And people who understand money know that.
- 18:12And the people who control money know that.
- 18:14But the vast majority of Americans still don't know that.
- 18:18So what happens is they can't resist.
- 18:20Purchasing power continues to decline over time.
- 18:23When we have this Keynesian credit based economic system,
- 18:26you have to have inflation. You have to continue to grow
- 18:30your credit base. Because you're constantly just
- 18:32rolling over your debt and rolling over your debt and
- 18:34compounding and compounding and compounding.
- 18:36That's what we call the debt spiral, which eventually turns
- 18:39into a death spiral for the underlying currency, right?
- 18:42So it continues until basically people are like, I don't want
- 18:45your Fiat currency anymore because it's basically
- 18:47worthless. Why would I continue to get paid
- 18:49in this currency that costs you nothing to make, but you're
- 18:53giving that to me as payment. You know, eventually what
- 18:55happens is people lose confidence in that currency.
- 18:58And it goes to 0, and that's literally 100% of the time.
- 19:01With Fiat currencies, you go to 0.
- 19:03So I have no doubt in my mind that all of the current
- 19:06government Fiat currencies are going to go to 0.
- 19:09Not in my lifetime necessarily. They could.
- 19:12But I do think the dollar you know it's the strong, it's you
- 19:15know that it's the best crack house on the crack St. as as
- 19:17Foss would say or something like that.
- 19:19But it and it is right. It's the strongest Fiat
- 19:21currency. It has the strongest military in
- 19:24the world behind it. They have this sweetheart deal
- 19:26with the rest of the world where you buy our bonds and you'll
- 19:29you'll fund our military whether you want to or not.
- 19:31And we'll basically provide worldwide military service for
- 19:33you. For us though.
- 19:36And so, so we get to export our inflation to the nations and we
- 19:39get to enjoy lots of the benefits that, you know, people
- 19:42have been calling for the demise of the dollar for a long time.
- 19:44It's not going down anytime soon, but I do believe with my
- 19:47I'm with my whole heart that it is going down eventually.
- 19:50And you know, it's one of the laws.
- 19:52It's almost like a law of physics, right things.
- 19:54You can count on death and taxes.
- 19:55You can also count on Fiat debasement, but you can also
- 19:58count on Bitcoin. Deflation, right.
- 20:02So, so growth of purchasing power over time and it's just
- 20:05the mechanics, it's the math behind the system.
- 20:08So like we were talking about coming full circle, you know,
- 20:10why do we blather on about why don't why do I talk about
- 20:12Powell, well in the, in the central banks and what is the
- 20:15Fed doing? We unfortunately, we have to
- 20:18because in 2008, 2009, the Fed wrested control of the risk
- 20:24markets from the underlying economy almost completely.
- 20:29And and it's now based on monetary decisions and fiscal
- 20:33decisions and not necessarily on what the economy is doing
- 20:35underneath it. And that's not just true in the
- 20:38US, it's true with all of the major economies around the
- 20:40world. And so, you know, all of our
- 20:43governments have spending problems.
- 20:44The central bankers and Powell and the Fed, they get a lot of
- 20:48Flack and they should, but it's actually not their fault per se.
- 20:52It's actually the fault of governments that just cannot
- 20:55stop spending. The government spend and they
- 20:58spend and they spend and they create debt.
- 21:00And if nobody is willing to buy that crappy debt that's actually
- 21:03losing purchasing power to inflation overtime, the Fed is
- 21:07the buyer of last resort of these treasuries.
- 21:09So that's the purpose of these central banks is to be the buyer
- 21:11of last resorts of the government's debt.
- 21:14And so they're, they're very intricately, intricately linked.
- 21:18So, so what's the end? You know, this is a really long
- 21:21answer to your question. The end is 0.
- 21:23The dollar is going to 0, all Fiat currency is going to 0.
- 21:26Again, I'm not saying that it's happening this year or next
- 21:28year, but it is happening in some government Fiat currencies,
- 21:30right. We were watching it in real time
- 21:32in Lebanon, Argentina. You can see lots of countries
- 21:35that are struggling around the world.
- 21:36One by one, they're going to figure out that, hey, we
- 21:38actually have a viable alternative.
- 21:41It's as accessible as the Internet is.
- 21:43It's called Bitcoin. And this can actually save us
- 21:46from our governments. And then the final thing is, and
- 21:49then we'll go back to Tomer. You know, whoever controls the
- 21:53money has the power, right? We all grew up knowing the adage
- 21:56money is power. So the makers of the money and
- 21:58the controllers of the money have all the power.
- 22:02Governments have all the power. the US government is the most
- 22:04powerful nation state in the world in the history of the
- 22:07world because of the monetary policies that we've had since.
- 22:11Basically, you know, post World War Two, we don't want to give
- 22:15up that exorbitant privilege. It's a huge privilege.
- 22:18It's a huge benefit to Americans as well.
- 22:21And so I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no, you said we would
- 22:24transition. So I wanna I wanna point out
- 22:27that that privilege. Comes at a big cost.
- 22:31And again, when we say we, the people who've paid a very dear
- 22:37price for that privilege, is the American middle class, the
- 22:40American working class, the American union worker, all of
- 22:43those people. Because what happened when we
- 22:46went off the gold, when the world went off the gold
- 22:48standard? And America.
- 22:51And this is Peter Zahan's original thesis right, that
- 22:55America became the superpower, protected the shipping ways,
- 22:58gave everyone access to their to their economy.
- 23:02And when we went off the gold standard, basically America
- 23:05exported protecting military protection of importing stuff
- 23:10made abroad into America in exchange for U.S. dollars which
- 23:15secured. You know the world and prevented
- 23:18wars as long as you accepted it. You didn't accept the US dollar.
- 23:21War somehow came to you, but but peace came to you in the form of
- 23:26military bases and and ships, naval ships to protect your
- 23:30goods, to be shifting to America.
- 23:32But as that happened and this was a long, slow shift, Niko's
- 23:35too young to remember it. I don't know how old you are,
- 23:37Doctor Jeff. I'm probably a little bit older
- 23:39than you, and people older than me remember even the time when
- 23:42they were like no imported cars on the roads.
- 23:46And and what what what this led to was everyone who had U.S.
- 23:52dollars in the US basically buying goods that were made
- 23:55abroad and shipped and imported into America.
- 23:59And that led to the erosion of. Most manufacturing, like a lot
- 24:05of manufacturing jobs, not your house, can't be imported.
- 24:08So real estate, you know, house building is still done locally,
- 24:12but many, many components are now imported.
- 24:15And certainly just about, you know, this computer I'm talking
- 24:18to you on was made and manufactured assembled in China,
- 24:21even though it was designed by an American company.
- 24:24And and just about everything that I'm looking at, this piece
- 24:27of assembled furniture that it sits on, I did the assembly
- 24:30work. Not an American paid worker, but
- 24:33the Chinese factory assembled it.
- 24:35And so what's what's what happened is we hollowed out the
- 24:38middle class and they're the ones paying the price today
- 24:40right there. The number of people who are in
- 24:44the middle class or the amount of income.
- 24:46The middle class used to represent something like 60% of
- 24:49all the income and now it's under 40%.
- 24:54So like a full third roughly of of the income that the middle
- 25:00class had is no longer middle class income and and you go to
- 25:03WTF happened in 1970 one.com, you can see where it all went.
- 25:06It went to the very, very top. Elite.
- 25:09So we've paid this big price for this privilege.
- 25:12That isn't a privilege that all Americans benefit from.
- 25:15Are all N Americans Are all Westerners benefit from?
- 25:17It's a privilege that the elite class doesn't it.
- 25:21And many of us are in that elite class.
- 25:23We're service workers. We're executives.
- 25:26We're lawyers. We're professionals who who
- 25:29haven't lost their share of the income as a as a result.
- 25:33But this is oh, there we go. There's an interesting chart
- 25:35right 1971. Thank you for sharing this.
- 25:38Who? Whoever is doing that magic,
- 25:40worker productivity has gone up by 150% to like 2 from 100 to
- 25:45250. But worker compensation has
- 25:48hardly budged. So all that productivity, all
- 25:52that increase has gone somewhere else.
- 25:54And there's there's lots of other charts along this these
- 25:56lines that people can check there or do or do your own
- 25:59research. You don't have to do too much
- 26:01research. The number of people employed by
- 26:03unions who protected, who worked for people to have pensions,
- 26:07Nobody's getting a. Anymore nowadays who work for
- 26:10people to have safe working conditions, all this kind of
- 26:13stuff like that's dropped dramatically and and most
- 26:16importantly right it's in the private sector, it's dropped off
- 26:19profoundly right like in the government sector.
- 26:22Well government union those kind of things end up working
- 26:25together. People work together but they're
- 26:26providing service work right and so they're not building things.
- 26:30So we've just had this hollowing out of our ability and like some
- 26:33of this knowledge is is lost to the point where.
- 26:37We don't have it anymore. Like we can't just tomorrow fire
- 26:40up all sorts of factories. We have to learn how to fire up
- 26:43factories. We have to learn how to make
- 26:44things and and things are made the way that they're made
- 26:46abroad. You know, the reliable, durable,
- 26:49unbreakable kind of appliances that we used to have, They don't
- 26:53exist anymore. Everything is built to be as
- 26:54cheap and breakable as possible. I'll just like one final
- 26:59anecdote. I It was part of this was seen
- 27:02through the Walmart ization of retail, right big box retail.
- 27:06Where? Where the intention was.
- 27:10And again, these good intentions, right?
- 27:11Like the intention was so that ordinary folks could afford the
- 27:14nice things that wealthy people could have, but that came by
- 27:18making slave slave labor overseas produce those things
- 27:21for what we called ordinary folks who now are finding
- 27:25themselves buying much lower quality things than they ever
- 27:28imagined. They would and and don't and
- 27:31have a bleak outlook for for their future.
- 27:34So it's kind of the pivot point I I just want the pivot point
- 27:36that we stand at is this continues and we end up with a
- 27:40very bifurcated West right with people who have a lead access to
- 27:45things. Manufacturing doesn't serve the
- 27:47masses anymore. It's just we just build fancy
- 27:50yachts for the of the ultra rich and and other people eat garbage
- 27:54or we find the pivot point and which is people.
- 27:58The masses get sound money and use sound money and don't get
- 28:02exploited by all the things that are broken with the dollar,
- 28:05right? The dollar isn't just the elite
- 28:06have the privilege of printing it and keeping it for
- 28:09themselves. It's like.
- 28:10Well, we use it, we all. You collectively fell into the
- 28:14fallacy of using it to buy cheap foreign products.
- 28:18Look at all the stuff I filled my house with.
- 28:19But I was filling it with lost jobs, lost North American jobs
- 28:23and lost quality of North American manufacturing.
- 28:26Some people would argue it wasn't high quality enough, but
- 28:28it's it's like anything old in your house and anything new in
- 28:32your house. You can see the difference,
- 28:33right? Ones made of plywood and and
- 28:36stickers and something else is made out of an actual.
- 28:39Piece of wood or piece of metal that's solid and not the minimum
- 28:43thickness it needs to be to be able to be assembled before it
- 28:47collapses. Yeah, man, it's.
- 28:52I couldn't have said it like that, Tomer, But yes, the money
- 28:55is definitely broken. There's definitely consequences
- 28:59to that. And I think what you described,
- 29:03you know, so eloquently was basically the hollowing out of
- 29:06the middle class. And then if you think about, it
- 29:08from, you know, the younger generations, right, younger
- 29:11generations if they haven't had so many, so much years in the
- 29:14workforce. So we generally tend to start
- 29:17off poor, right? We don't, I don't think we have
- 29:19the opportunities that at least my parents had.
- 29:22And I think This is why Bitcoin is so.
- 29:25Important to me specifically and you know, and to everyone
- 29:28really. So Dr. Ross, back to you.
- 29:31Okay. So we had some big news with the
- 29:34BlackRock Bitcoin ETF, the SPOT ETF.
- 29:38I had two interesting conversations.
- 29:41I had an interesting conversation with Caitlyn Long
- 29:43and Lawrence, and they come from the skeptical perspective where
- 29:46they're just like they're gonna rehypothecate the F out of this.
- 29:50And then I talked to Foss and Lavish and they're like, no,
- 29:53this is good for Bitcoin. They're not gonna be able to
- 29:55rehypothecate it because it's a spot Bitcoin ETF.
- 29:58So I wanna get your take on to that and then we'll pass it on
- 30:01to Tomer again. Okay.
- 30:03So that's deep. So.
- 30:04So where do I come in between all those four people whom I all
- 30:08respect greatly? Let's see.
- 30:12So couple points, First of all, you know Larry Fink, what is was
- 30:19the king of ESG which I think is actually pretty evil.
- 30:23I I think people think they're saving the world and the
- 30:25environment when they are pro proponents of ESG and it
- 30:29actually causes more harm than good.
- 30:31And he, he has been pushing that narrative as well as this anti
- 30:34Bitcoin narrative for a very long time.
- 30:37So it is a big deal that Larry Fink of all people is out there
- 30:42on the, you know, CNBC and Bloomberg and these major
- 30:45economic news channels talking about Bitcoin.
- 30:48Like it's a good thing. That is a huge narrative shift.
- 30:52Why? For people who are around three
- 30:54years ago or so, you may remember when some different
- 30:57hedge fund managers came out, big time hedge fund managers
- 31:01like Drunken Miller, Paul Tudor, Jones, even a little bit Ray
- 31:04Dalio, they came out and we're talking favorably about Bitcoin
- 31:07and saying that they own some Bill Miller as well and.
- 31:11And what did that do? It removed career risk for hedge
- 31:14fund managers to own Bitcoin at in size.
- 31:19Now Fast forward to today when somebody like Larry Fink of
- 31:23BlackRock says, you know what, we want to create a spot Bitcoin
- 31:27ETF and I think Bitcoin is sort of like, you know, digital gold,
- 31:31it's an international asset, those kind of things.
- 31:33He's not by the way, a Bitcoin guru.
- 31:34He, I think he's, I have, I think he has his own Fiat
- 31:39purposes for it. He wants to wrap it in a Fiat
- 31:41wrapper and make a lot of money off it.
- 31:43And he will, but he has changed the narrative.
- 31:48So when he comes out and says, I, you know, you should have
- 31:50Bitcoin in your portfolio because it's this asset that's
- 31:53here to stay. What that does is it changes the
- 31:56career risk equation for fund managers and for investment
- 32:01advisors and financial planners who before this had been
- 32:05extremely opposed to Bitcoin. They believe the headlines, they
- 32:09said yes, it's evil, it's used by criminals, it it's boiling
- 32:13the oceans, blah blah, blah. All of the nonsense FUD right,
- 32:16that we've been forced to listen to and read for the last several
- 32:20years, all of that has changed. I think there's, there's a
- 32:23palpable shift in the narrative because of Larry Fink and coming
- 32:27on board with that. So that's net positive.
- 32:29It's obviously net positive for the price of Bitcoin, right.
- 32:33If if people are in this technology because it's number
- 32:36go up technology and it is, this will help the price to go up.
- 32:39More institutions could not participate in for the most part
- 32:44in Bitcoin rallies in the past. Now they have the infrastructure
- 32:48in place and setting up more so, so that they will bring in a
- 32:51wave of liquidity into the price and that will be net positive.
- 32:54Now to to to the points of these other people.
- 32:57What are the downsides? First of all, Larry Fink, I do
- 33:01not believe is a fanatical. He's not Michael Saylor, right?
- 33:04Not not even close. And he's he doesn't understand
- 33:06it like we understand it. He wants to wrap it.
- 33:09I call it wrapped Bitcoin. A spot Bitcoin ETF is basically
- 33:12sort of the same thing. It's not.
- 33:14It's not the same as owning Bitcoin.
- 33:16For people who own Bitcoin and have it in cold storage, and
- 33:20they are their own banks, they are enjoying the benefits of
- 33:23Bitcoin, the permissionless nature of Bitcoin.
- 33:25When you buy a spot Bitcoin ETF, if and when they get approved
- 33:29you, you own a product, you get to enjoy the price appreciation
- 33:33of Bitcoin, but none of the other benefits and you don't
- 33:36actually own that Bitcoin. You own an IOU of Bitcoin.
- 33:40So that those are my statements on there.
- 33:41And then finally, you know can it be manipulated For sure Wall
- 33:46Street will always find ways to manipulate.
- 33:48You know can they really do that with this spot Bitcoin ETF?
- 33:52Not really. So I would side on that right.
- 33:55They the rules of those are you just buy and sell shares based
- 33:58on the the support, the demand of Bitcoin whether it's going up
- 34:01or down. They should technically hold the
- 34:03amount of Bitcoin in their trust that the the people demand.
- 34:07And by the way, one other point, All we ever talk about is
- 34:09BlackRock and Fink, but there's going to be 15 to 20 other spot
- 34:12Bitcoin ETF's out there within a few few months of BlackRock
- 34:16approval if that happens in the near future.
- 34:19So that's what I hopefully that all made sense.
- 34:21I do have a lot of opinions on that.
- 34:22It's definitely gonna be a positive for price action, but
- 34:27we have to fight for the soul of Bitcoin to maintain this
- 34:31parallel financial and monetary network.
- 34:34And all stuff there. Okay, I wanna end that.
- 34:36With that, we have to fight for the soul of Bitcoin.
- 34:39Comer. That's right up your alley.
- 34:41So it's so good. Thank Thankfully we have
- 34:44something that's attacking Bitcoin.
- 34:46That makes us fight for the soul of Bitcoin.
- 34:48Because the only danger the Bitcoin is that there aren't
- 34:50people stop fighting for the soul of Bitcoin.
- 34:52The complacency on our part thinking that we've won that the
- 34:56that the war is over is is the only real danger Bitcoin faces.
- 35:01Like as long as. There are people explaining the
- 35:04things that Jeff just explained about how important it is to
- 35:07hold your own keys, about how important it is to not let
- 35:10everything get wrapped up or rehypothecated at all or any of
- 35:14these things. That's that's the movement,
- 35:17right? Bitcoin is.
- 35:18Bitcoin is not just a piece of technology that runs itself,
- 35:21although nobody is in charge of it.
- 35:23We are all in charge of it, right?
- 35:25Like we all, we all run Bitcoin. And so it requires that we run
- 35:29it with. Attention to the detail of how
- 35:31it's meant to be run and the people are curious and and as
- 35:35long as there's people out there saying if you only hold
- 35:39BlackRock ETF Bitcoin, then BlackRock can change Bitcoin.
- 35:42But if a whole lot of us hold? Self custody Bitcoin.
- 35:46All BlackRock can do is make some stupid fork, which has
- 35:50happened before in history and will certainly happen again.
- 35:53And it'll serve wonderfully as another reminder of what real
- 35:56Bitcoin, what real free money is, what real decentralized
- 36:01money is against someone who's tried to create a centralized
- 36:04fork of it and is going through machinations and.
- 36:07Pretend things. And you know, as we move forward
- 36:09through history, different things are are going to happen.
- 36:13And as as is the case with history, things will rhyme.
- 36:16They won't. They won't repeat themselves,
- 36:17but they'll rhyme and they'll be similar.
- 36:19And so people being concerned about BlackRock succeeding and
- 36:23trying to take control of Bitcoin is wonderful.
- 36:26Right, Because it means people are becoming vigilant or
- 36:29remaining vigilant about what it takes for Bitcoin to succeed.
- 36:32And I think as long as we do that, we actually have nothing
- 36:34to fear, right? Like I I can see there will be a
- 36:38big, let's say the BlackRock ETF gets approved.
- 36:40There's a big rush of dollars in into the bit, into the BlackRock
- 36:44ETF. It ends up owning a whole lot of
- 36:45Bitcoin. What's going to happen is.
- 36:48A lot of people are going to warn a lot of other people to
- 36:50say, you know, they can rehypothecate it and you don't
- 36:53have proof of reserves, you don't actually control the
- 36:56coins, you can't do a BCD with it.
- 36:59All you can do is sell it for dollars and then and then use
- 37:01dollars. And so as as all the various
- 37:03things happen in the Bitcoin ecosystem, more and more people
- 37:06will want to say, well, OK, how do I convert my BlackRock ETF
- 37:09not back into dollars but into actual Bitcoin?
- 37:12And not all Bitcoin will be self custody, right?
- 37:14This is another important thing to remember, but there are
- 37:16different ways in which Bitcoin might seem.
- 37:18To be wrapped that are more or less secure, you know, more more
- 37:23or less decentralized. And I think that's part of the
- 37:25growth. Like, I don't have the answers
- 37:27to exactly how it will fully scale up.
- 37:30There's all these new scaling solutions.
- 37:32They each have their strengths and weaknesses.
- 37:34And the mix of all of these scaling solutions, I think, is
- 37:36what's going to keep Bitcoin decentralized while also scaled
- 37:41to hopefully every single person on the planet, or, you know,
- 37:44every single one of them who wants to use it when many of
- 37:47them realize that. All of its benefits and do want
- 37:50to use it, so maybe pause there. There's a few other angles to go
- 37:54down, but this is good for Bitcoin because it looks like
- 37:57it's gonna be bad for Bitcoin. Yeah, I love that angle, right,
- 38:03Which is it gets people to care and people are suspicious,
- 38:08rightly So, what you were saying earlier, Dr. Ross about?
- 38:12It's true. Larry Fink was one of the
- 38:15biggest proponents of, you know this whole ESG movement.
- 38:19But I was actually talking to I think it was Jimmy Song a couple
- 38:23weeks ago Tomer and we were talking about the, the and I
- 38:27think we we were talking about this and earlier in the
- 38:30conversation as well. Is this kind of misalignment of
- 38:34incentives I think feed the Fiat system itself as Frankenstein
- 38:39the incentives and I think. People like Larry Fink and
- 38:42people like Powell, you're basically making the case that
- 38:47they because they're in these positions of power at such
- 38:51heights, they choose to put a veil over their heads and just.
- 38:55Blank out, they blank out. A lot of the externalities of
- 38:59what they are, correct. So it's a good life, right?
- 39:02It's like you. Yeah, you have a safe job.
- 39:05There's no danger. You have access.
- 39:06You get a, you get a pension, you have inside information
- 39:09which you kind of trade on, but you also have protection from
- 39:14insider trading rules. Like you, you are super
- 39:17privileged, right? You're you, you get caught drunk
- 39:20driving, the police officer turned away, or the charges get
- 39:23dropped, right? Like there's a tremendous amount
- 39:25of privilege involved in in these situations.
- 39:29And listen like. Put yourself in the position
- 39:32that you actually were drunk driving and you got caught.
- 39:34And because of your position, the person said the officer let
- 39:38you go. Would you say no, no, you should
- 39:41charge me, you know, because it's not fair, because I know
- 39:43you would charge somebody else. You you take what you've got and
- 39:46you take and you accept the privilege and advantage that you
- 39:49have. And I think that that's that's
- 39:52what everybody is fundamentally guilty of.
- 39:54In a lot of cases, they're not like, no, you know, I I deserve,
- 39:58I deserve my just desserts. They're like.
- 40:01Good thing, I Good thing I got away with this this time.
- 40:04Maybe I won't do it again because who knows if I'll get
- 40:06away with it next time. But there's just a lot of this
- 40:09brokenness and and you know that I don't want to say that this is
- 40:14that this psychological factor is something that Bitcoin fixes,
- 40:17right? Like people who find themselves
- 40:20in a position of privilege taking advantage of it when it
- 40:23presents itself is is a flying human psychology right?
- 40:29It's not it's not even a flaw. It's a self-defense mechanisms
- 40:32rival mechanism, right. Like you, you should die.
- 40:34I will let you live. Which do you choose?
- 40:36Well, I choose to live, right. So like that's that's incentive.
- 40:40I think what what Bitcoin fixes, it's taking away all of these
- 40:43broken incentives and and broken privileges and everybody's like,
- 40:48it's a peer-to-peer system, right?
- 40:50Everyone. There's one rank in Bitcoin.
- 40:53Everybody has it peer and everyone has access to it and
- 40:57there's no special rank, there's no, you know, there's peer which
- 41:00is participant and then there's non participant and non
- 41:03participants don't influence and affect the system.
- 41:06But what we're trying to do is educate everybody in the world
- 41:10so that they choose to be a participant, not are forced to
- 41:13be a participant. Although in many cases in the
- 41:15futures people might say what choice did I have but to use
- 41:18Bitcoin, that's what everybody wants.
- 41:20Well, you still have the choice to not use Bitcoin, right?
- 41:23Like nobody is holding a gun to your head and saying you must
- 41:25use Bitcoin. People are holding a gun to your
- 41:27head and saying you must pay. You must use the dollar, right?
- 41:30Like over here it's it's quiet but if you don't use the dollar
- 41:34you're forbidden you know from from transacting but it's it's
- 41:37it's worse than a gun to your head.
- 41:38It's a nuclear missile to your to your state.
- 41:41It's it's fighter jets over your state if you don't use, if you
- 41:46don't use and accept the dollar. So like this is a really it's
- 41:50the biggest revolution because it's the voluntary revolution.
- 41:52You know people call it the peaceful revolution in a sense,
- 41:55yes, but it's it's the voluntary revolution.
- 41:57Every bitcoiner in the world chose to be a bitcoiner.
- 42:00They weren't born into a Bitcoin standard.
- 42:03They weren't born into a world where someone said you must use
- 42:06Bitcoin. So like it's going to take time
- 42:09because this isn't we conquer nations one at a time like
- 42:12Alexander the Great. We March in and we say from now
- 42:14on, these are your coins. It's like every single person is
- 42:18persuaded individually and they're not even persuaded to
- 42:21make it their sole currency, right?
- 42:22Like every one of us, I think is mixed, right?
- 42:25But I still have dollars. I still have I.
- 42:27I have Bitcoin. I want to be able to rid myself
- 42:30of the dollar. But even in that case, I
- 42:33acknowledge that I live in a reality where where it's mixed.
- 42:35So this this peaceful empire, this of the of the realm of
- 42:40Bitcoin, where Bitcoin is the coin of of the realm is a 11 by
- 42:461 revolution through reason not through violence.
- 42:51And and I I think that's kind of where it's interesting.
- 42:53We haven't heard that much from Jason Lowry lately.
- 42:56He had this thesis of Bitcoin as some is a kind of military
- 43:00technology as a form of software.
- 43:01And I I find myself like split so far apart that I come back
- 43:07around to myself on this like we're at war over market share
- 43:11of what we use as currency, of what we use a store of value.
- 43:15And bitcoins at war with a dollar, the dollars at war with
- 43:18real estate and other securities and everything, because many
- 43:22people have chosen that they don't want to use the dollar.
- 43:24And so the dollar is there by force of government and all
- 43:26these other instruments are there and ways to avoid the
- 43:29hidden tax of inflation. And Bitcoin is fighting that.
- 43:33And Bitcoin survives it in a very different way.
- 43:35It survives it by having very, by having no leaders and having
- 43:39nothing that you can touch and destroy and not being in any
- 43:41place at any point in time and hiding behind encryption.
- 43:44And so it's like it's a survival.
- 43:47It's a it's a survival thing. And and so in that sense, it's
- 43:51at war. But war involves destruction.
- 43:55Typically when people talk about it involves destruction and
- 43:58violence and bloodshed. And Bitcoin doesn't.
- 44:01And Jason acknowledges this in his book.
- 44:02So I don't want to mischaracterize what he says,
- 44:04but this is something where, you know, even if you want to attack
- 44:07Bitcoin, you don't do it by force, you you do it by trying
- 44:11to mine, trying to double spend a block and mine it.
- 44:14So you do it through this nonviolent means.
- 44:16So even going to war with Bitcoin is nonviolent.
- 44:20So the whole thing is just, it's so new.
- 44:21And so like I, I it's such a revolutionary idea.
- 44:26Not on the sense that it's a yes, it's a revolution and how
- 44:28we think of money, but it's an idea that's so extraordinary,
- 44:31that's so unprecedented. It's so revolutionary in that
- 44:33sense. It's just even thinking about it
- 44:35and using typical words to describe it is really, really
- 44:38hard because. So, so Tomer, and that's why,
- 44:42like that's why this revolutionary idea it's ground
- 44:45up. I agree with you, right It's
- 44:46it's winning over. It's not this top down.
- 44:50Type of movement that's being force fed down people's throats.
- 44:54It's really winning over the hearts and minds of people via
- 44:58greed and and that's why and I want to pass it on to doctor
- 45:01Jeff Ross. I want to get your your your
- 45:03thoughts on this. That's why I believe, like,
- 45:06maybe you're starting to see Larry Fink bend the knee to
- 45:12bitcoins. Irresistible incentives.
- 45:16And then maybe is that what we're seeing Dr. Ross or is this
- 45:20is this, are you still cautious? So, so couple things.
- 45:25Well, first of all, regarding Fink, I am still cautious.
- 45:27I think he's still a Fiat Maxi and he's just using this.
- 45:31He sees this as a new product where he can make a ton of money
- 45:34by building ETF's around it. So he wants to wrap Bitcoin in a
- 45:37Fiat product and make a ton of money.
- 45:39And he will. He'll get even more wealthy than
- 45:41he is. But so but.
- 45:43Getting to your point and to Tomer's point about, you know
- 45:46Jason Lowry, in the military, Bitcoin is for everyone, right?
- 45:49It's inevitable that at some point just like everybody uses
- 45:53the dollar today or most people use the dollar.
- 45:55I I truly think that at some point possibly in my lifetime,
- 45:58every and by to answer your question told me I'm 48.
- 46:00My birthday is next month but. That's I think everybody is
- 46:05either pre Bitcoin or a Bitcoiner.
- 46:08And So what are we gonna do? Will Wall Street embrace it?
- 46:12Sure, at some point, Wall Street will absolutely embrace it.
- 46:14In fact, they are now, at some point, will presidential
- 46:16candidates start talking about it?
- 46:18Sure, they already are right now, right.
- 46:19That's a huge change, a huge shift from four years ago.
- 46:23Which is pretty amazing, if you think about it.
- 46:25Will military officers be into Bitcoin?
- 46:27Absolutely. You know, and so you can just go
- 46:29on and on. If you're a person anywhere in
- 46:32the world, will you someday embrace Bitcoin?
- 46:34I think the answer is yes. And everybody has their own
- 46:37belief system. Everybody has their own way of
- 46:39viewing the world, right? To a hammer, everything looks
- 46:41like a nail. To a surgeon, everything looks
- 46:45like it needs a surgical fix. It's just how the world works,
- 46:49right? And so and so to get back to
- 46:51Tomer's point earlier, we shouldn't really be overly
- 46:55worried about it, because the fact that it raises the hackles
- 46:58of true bitcoiners when we see Wall Street come on board and
- 47:01try to wrap it and package it in their own entity.
- 47:05It raises hackles. The cyber Hornets come out.
- 47:08We fight again for the heart and soul of what Bitcoin is.
- 47:11Everybody is out there encouraging people.
- 47:14Hold your own keys. Not your keys, not your coins.
- 47:16Not your keys, not your coins, right?
- 47:17Like, don't trust BlackRock or any major institution with your
- 47:21Bitcoin because we don't know what they're going to do with
- 47:24that. You don't take that risk.
- 47:26There are tons of risks to not holding your own Bitcoin.
- 47:29So that's how I view it. I think it's inevitable.
- 47:31And with every new group, every new institution.
- 47:34Every new government that comes on board, and I do think every
- 47:37government at someday will come on board with Bitcoin probably
- 47:41in my lifetime. You know, if I live a typical
- 47:43age, we'll have to deal with the repercussions of that.
- 47:46What does it mean if America comes into Bitcoin in force?
- 47:49And just like, you know what, we are going to literally turn our
- 47:51printers on and just buy as much Bitcoin as possible.
- 47:53Obviously that would be huge for the price.
- 47:56But it would, it would change, could change the heart and soul
- 47:59of Bitcoin. So we would need to fight
- 48:00against that. What about if it was China or
- 48:02Russia, right? That's that.
- 48:03That brings on whole new belief systems to deal with.
- 48:06So we just got to keep fighting and take things as they come.
- 48:09I think all of it is inevitable. We will fight every one of those
- 48:12battles in the next 1020 thirty years, I think. 100% agree with
- 48:17You have to stay vigilant. I want to throw.
- 48:21Another macro question back at you, Dr. Ross, and then of
- 48:25course Tomer's interpretation of it.
- 48:28So okay. My question to you is, I feel
- 48:33like you've been on the pod the last year at least twice and
- 48:38I've asked you the same question.
- 48:40Where's the recession? It hasn't come yet, right.
- 48:43It's going on. Did they achieve the soft
- 48:49landing? If they achieved the soft
- 48:51landing, does that mean that? Doesn't that mean that the
- 48:53central bankers got their way? What's going on there?
- 48:56Where is this recession? So there's two ways to think
- 48:59about it, right? So there's one is that the that
- 49:02narrative is correct and that we are going to have a soft
- 49:05landing. Could that happen?
- 49:07Sure. The last time that happened
- 49:10significantly was 2000 to 2003 or so after everybody remembers
- 49:14thatasthe.com crash. But we did have a mild recession
- 49:17during that period as well, and stocks did not, did not do well
- 49:20over that period. And NASDAQ stocks got decimated.
- 49:23They went down like 80 some percent.
- 49:25What happened then? It's similar to what we're
- 49:26seeing so far today. We're we're actually in
- 49:31indisputable. Manufacturing recession.
- 49:34Right now, manufacturing has been contracting both in the US
- 49:37and around the world for several months now.
- 49:40It's absolutely in a recession. People are losing manufacturing
- 49:43jobs. New orders continue to kind of
- 49:47dry up. It's pretty ugly out there if
- 49:49you're in the manufacturing industry, but.
- 49:52America is not a manufacturing economy anymore.
- 49:54Tomer actually touched on this earlier.
- 49:55I had to do with why. The minute we had a prosperous
- 49:57middle class before, what did we do?
- 49:59We exported our manufacturing offshore, gave gave most of it
- 50:03to Asia, lots of it to China. So America is a services, a
- 50:08service based economy. Now services are not yet in a
- 50:12contraction and they may not be. So when we get these, what we
- 50:15call soft landing recessions, what usually happens is.
- 50:19Similar to what we see, what we're seeing today is
- 50:21unemployment doesn't budget too much.
- 50:23Manufacturing goes into contraction mode, but the
- 50:27services sector remains in a somewhat mild expansionary mode,
- 50:31which is what they are right now.
- 50:33If it's it's possible that manufacturing will bottom in the
- 50:36next couple of months and then turn higher and get back to
- 50:39expansionary mode, we may actually avoid a significant
- 50:42recession. That's actually possible.
- 50:44But when you look at things like the credit standards are
- 50:48tightening, lending is is kind of drying up significantly with
- 50:52banks. We still have these regional
- 50:54bank issues out there. We still have these rates that
- 50:56are suffocating businesses. We still have lots of junk rated
- 51:00companies with junk rated debt that are not going to be able to
- 51:03roll over their debt. They've been paying really low
- 51:05interest rates on, you know, even though they have a crappy
- 51:08business. Those interest rates are jacked
- 51:10up like 6% or more higher. And to Tomer's point, they're
- 51:13paying many multiples of dollars more than they used to have to
- 51:16pay. They're going to go under.
- 51:18We're seeing lots of defaults already start to happen.
- 51:20The longer rates stay high, the less chance these companies, I
- 51:24call them zombie companies because they can't afford to pay
- 51:26their debt, the less chance they have it surviving.
- 51:29If that happens and it rolls over quickly, that could throw
- 51:32us into a deeper recession. So that's the other path.
- 51:35So path one is we actually do get this soft recession.
- 51:37And it turns out, hey, I guess. Those guys are right.
- 51:40The other path is services get sucked down into contractionary
- 51:43mode or recessionary mode, like manufacturing is.
- 51:47We see this huge spillover into these junky companies and they
- 51:51go up, they go belly up, They default.
- 51:54On their debt and we have a serious recession and and you
- 51:57know, you look at the yield curve still being inverted.
- 51:59What that tells me is we're still not at the point where the
- 52:02recession is ready to start yet. Look at the yield curve
- 52:05inversion, look at unemployment, it still remains low.
- 52:07It's undeniable. It just continues to remain very
- 52:10low. If we do head into a deep
- 52:12recession, that will spike, and it will spike quickly.
- 52:15And then the other thing to look at as far as a recessionary
- 52:19indicator is the high yield, OAS options adjusted spreads.
- 52:23That's the difference in the yields between this high yield
- 52:26or junk debt. What that yields, which is
- 52:28typically much higher than what underlying treasuries.
- 52:32Yield, when you're in a complacent economy and the stock
- 52:37markets doing well like we are right now in volatility is low,
- 52:40that spread shrinks overtime. But when you head into recession
- 52:43and people start to panic and those companies start to go
- 52:45bankrupt, you'll see that yield blow out.
- 52:48So right now we're in this. Kind of like Goldilocks happy
- 52:51place with with that indicator, if and when we do head into a
- 52:55recessionary bear market, we'll see that spread blow out and
- 53:00that'll be the time to to get nervous, to get to get worried.
- 53:03So to answer your question, where is it, it's not here yet
- 53:06and and I don't think it's coming, you know, anytime soon
- 53:08based on the indicators I look at.
- 53:10If it does, you know I'll have you can have me back on your
- 53:13show and I'll let you know that I'm starting to get nervous
- 53:15again. But I'm not nervous right now.
- 53:16Gotcha, gotcha. And then my question to you,
- 53:18Tomer, is if they pull off this soft landing, doesn't that kind
- 53:23of defeat a lot of the narratives that bitcoiners were
- 53:26saying about central bankers? Like, it's interesting I try to
- 53:31focus on real life rather than all the financial instruments
- 53:35and derivatives and and where things stand.
- 53:38And as far as I'm concerned, in my own personal life and in the
- 53:42lives of the people around me, we've been in a recession slash
- 53:46depression since March of 2020, since COVID hit.
- 53:50And we started to lock down and we found ourselves hoarding
- 53:53toilet paper and we couldn't find toilet paper and we were
- 53:56not going out to the movies anymore and not going to plays
- 53:59and not going to sporting events and not going to restaurants and
- 54:01not going to theaters. And our quality of life in terms
- 54:06of what we're actually doing and spending and enjoying has took a
- 54:11step back. And for very few people who I
- 54:14know has it does it seem to have returned to pre 2020 levels.
- 54:20And so like for me, there people are, people are watching what
- 54:24they buy, they're pinching their their pennies, They are
- 54:29concerned, they're carrying anxiety around because they
- 54:32don't because the future seems uncertain.
- 54:36Many people still carry over concerns about healthcare.
- 54:40What we do spend our money on has become skewed not the things
- 54:44that increase our actual quality of life, but increase our, you
- 54:47know, our concerns. There's more money spent on
- 54:51anxiety, medication, vaccines, all these sorts of things.
- 54:54I can't be too concrete about everything because everyone's
- 54:56experience is different. But I just see that there's
- 54:59less, you know, there's less steaks in the supermarket
- 55:02because the price is higher and people are buying less of it.
- 55:05That is that to me is a recession, right?
- 55:08I used to be able to afford steak regularly and now I buy
- 55:10ground beef when I can't and I buy ramen noodles if I'm in a
- 55:14different situation. So I I think I think we've,
- 55:17we've suffered A setback, you know, some of it.
- 55:19To again be fair to the Central bankers is the world got caught
- 55:22in a panic, maybe right? And believe, maybe wrongly,
- 55:25about how dangerous COVID was. And we went into this lockdown
- 55:31mode, and a lot of the economy shut down when people didn't.
- 55:33People stop going to the slaughterhouses.
- 55:37So no wonder meat dried up, people stop going to factories,
- 55:41people stop doing all sorts of things.
- 55:42It's kind of easy to restart a service economy, but if the
- 55:45services are, you're going to see a therapist because you've
- 55:48got psychological conditions that measures as a growth in
- 55:51GDP. It does not measure in a growth
- 55:53in our quality of life. If you didn't need a therapist
- 55:56before, that was a better situation.
- 55:58So I'm I I find this very cloudy picture.
- 56:03It's one thing to just measure things as a number, as GDP, but
- 56:07it is it's quite another to say like what's my quality of life?
- 56:10What's my quality of happiness? Am I happier?
- 56:12And that that's why I think recession is kind of this word
- 56:15or the real word is the word that people used to use was
- 56:17depression. Am I finding myself depressed as
- 56:20my mood, my quality of life destroyed?
- 56:23Or am I in a joyful period and I just don't see anywhere near as
- 56:27much joy as we used to see years ago?
- 56:30And we're at the risk of forgetting how joyful we once
- 56:34were and how how anxious and anxiety ridden we we now are.
- 56:39So I don't mean to paint it as a negative picture, but but
- 56:42zooming out, I'm just not seeing the kind of happiness and joy
- 56:45that we that we experienced before all this got going.
- 56:49And so I'm less, I'm less focused on these small
- 56:52percentage points of numbers and yield curves and options and
- 56:55stuff. I'm just saying I want to be
- 56:57happier. I want to see the people around
- 56:59me happier and doing the kinds of things that make them happy
- 57:02and not so distressed. But I don't know.
- 57:04Maybe I'm gloomy and turning people off, but it just seems to
- 57:08me that that is. I love, I love the way that you
- 57:12define that. And I actually want to push it
- 57:14off, push it back to Dr. Ross. Under that definition, under
- 57:18that outlook, right, Cuz it's a lot more personable, would you
- 57:22say we we like we're in Tomer's definition or the way that Tomer
- 57:27described a recession or depression?
- 57:29Yeah, 100%. In fact, to piggyback and
- 57:32accentuate what Tomer said, we went over 2 years, which I think
- 57:38was the longest streak ever for the United States with
- 57:41decreasing. Real income.
- 57:44Meaning that even though Americans had some income
- 57:47growth, inflation grew faster for over two straight years,
- 57:51meaning quality of life for everybody went down, meaning
- 57:54everybody's working hard, but they can afford less and less.
- 57:57So the stake Tomar was talking about, Now they're buying
- 57:59hamburger, right? And and that's happening all
- 58:02across America. And so you see that you know
- 58:04money isn't happiness, but man, when you have money problems.
- 58:08You struggle and it's hard to to to be happy, right.
- 58:10And that causes, that's number one issue in marriages, so bad
- 58:14marriages. The number one thing that people
- 58:16struggle with is, is money issues.
- 58:19So totally agree with that. And in fact, I think that's
- 58:22going to be unfortunately the theme of this decade.
- 58:25I think we're going to have what what we call stagflation.
- 58:28Again, that's just another fancy turn.
- 58:29All that means is a stagnant economy, so not much growth.
- 58:33Happening but higher than we're used to and more volatile
- 58:36inflation. The last time we had that
- 58:38significantly was back in the 1970s, even though life is
- 58:41really, we have a lot more debt now, So it's actually worse now.
- 58:44But the last time we remember it was that I'm old enough to
- 58:47remember it. Right, right.
- 58:49Yeah. I was born in the 70s.
- 58:50I think I was born in the worst year of of that.
- 58:54But, so, so case in point though, that was remembered as a
- 58:57tough decade for America and a tough decade around the world,
- 59:01mostly the Western world actually emerging markets did
- 59:03OK. There are different.
- 59:05So you know, as an investor, there are different ways to
- 59:07think about things that do well, things like hard assets, things
- 59:11like gold, you know, property did well, commodities in general
- 59:14did well, emerging markets did well as investments.
- 59:17And I think, you know, obviously they didn't have Bitcoin around
- 59:20that time. Now we do.
- 59:21To me, that's very encouraging for people who are in the
- 59:24Bitcoin space. If you're just hunkering down
- 59:26and working hard and staying humble, as Odell would say in
- 59:29stacking Sats you're, I think you're going to do pretty well.
- 59:33And you may notice that your quality of life and your
- 59:35depression levels should improve relative to the rest of America.
- 59:40I'm actually worried for America as a whole for this decade.
- 59:43I think it's going to be a really rough and tumultuous
- 59:46decade in general for America, and we're already living through
- 59:48it. It started in 2020 and it's
- 59:49just, it's just continuing on. Yeah, So I want to be respectful
- 59:54of you guys's time. We are at the top of the hour,
- 59:56so I want to get some closy thought, closing thoughts from
- 59:59you, Tomer first and then Dr. Ross.
- 1:00:01So Tomer, how do we bring back the joy?
- 1:00:03How do we bring back the the, the happiness?
- 1:00:06That's a great question. I mean, I I think part of it is,
- 1:00:11is is learning to, you know, I think back to the 70s and again
- 1:00:15this notion of history rhyming and people became comfortable.
- 1:00:19They adapted to the fact that the economy wasn't growing.
- 1:00:22They adapted to the fact that there was inflation and they
- 1:00:24found happiness and it through culture, right.
- 1:00:26Like you take a look at the music from the late 70s, it's a
- 1:00:28little bit sad, but it's beautiful music and you know,
- 1:00:33and we ended up with good movies and we ended up with a lot of a
- 1:00:36lot of good culture. So I think, I think we kind of
- 1:00:39went to this point where our culture really got corrupted and
- 1:00:42and maybe I'm hopeful we'll start to see positive culture
- 1:00:45emerging from the from the the decadence and the blood of the
- 1:00:49decadence because you can't, you can't rely on decadence for it.
- 1:00:53I think, I do think Bitcoin is the unique, you know, it's a
- 1:00:56wild card in history that didn't exist back then, right?
- 1:00:59That 70s recession was caused by none other than 1971, right?
- 1:01:04Like suddenly the government's had all this money they started
- 1:01:06spending. You can take a look at the
- 1:01:08charts again, like deficits. And suddenly in 1972 there's a
- 1:01:13deficit as big as World War Two, even though we're not at war and
- 1:01:16and they only grow from there. So Bitcoin is this wild card
- 1:01:21because it offers this transition to a way to get back
- 1:01:25into sound money that the government can't stop.
- 1:01:28Like they seized, they seized all the gold.
- 1:01:30So you couldn't get, you couldn't get the gold back to
- 1:01:32return to a gold standard and and everything was accelerating.
- 1:01:35So I'm hopeful that there is this gradual adoption of Bitcoin
- 1:01:39that brings us back to sound money and makes us respond and
- 1:01:42you know, returns this notion of responsibility.
- 1:01:45And with responsibility comes joy.
- 1:01:47Some of the stuff is cycles that repeat.
- 1:01:49Some of it is accelerated or amplified by other kinds of big
- 1:01:54problems we've had, and I think we've had all kinds of big
- 1:01:56problems. I don't have the crystal ball,
- 1:02:00so I don't know exactly where we sit in the course of the demise
- 1:02:03of the Fiat currency. But given that we're headed for
- 1:02:08tough times, I think people will learn to learn to live with
- 1:02:12tough times and and that and then the joy comes back.
- 1:02:15Because right now it's a the depression comes from the fact
- 1:02:17that you missed all the all the decadence that you had and you
- 1:02:21want it back and you feel poor about it when you come to accept
- 1:02:24it, learn to have fun. Staying poor is part of it, is
- 1:02:28part of the answer, but you know and part of it is just bearing
- 1:02:34down and and continuing to do what's good.
- 1:02:38Yeah, and staying humble, stacking sats and.
- 1:02:41Dr. Ross, how do how do investors navigate the next 6 to
- 1:02:4612 months? And of course, this isn't
- 1:02:48advice. This isn't this isn't financial
- 1:02:51advice, but as if we were speaking as friends.
- 1:02:55Yeah, never advice, right. I can't give that.
- 1:02:57I literally can't give it. It's it's not not legal for me
- 1:03:00to do so. So just in general, right?
- 1:03:02What are we talking about generally?
- 1:03:03There are still, there's lots of ugliness out there.
- 1:03:06I think we're going to be talking about this kind of stuff
- 1:03:08for the rest of this decade, probably.
- 1:03:11It's gonna be a frustrating, volatile, tumultuous decade.
- 1:03:16In general, the things that worked really well last decade,
- 1:03:20when we had zero interest rate policy and just massive QE, are
- 1:03:23less likely to work this decade just because it's a different
- 1:03:27decade, right? And so you just have to think
- 1:03:30about things to sum everything up and to sort of piggyback on
- 1:03:34what Tomer was saying. The people who control the money
- 1:03:37have the power, right? And so that control right now
- 1:03:40rests almost predominantly with the United States government and
- 1:03:44their central bank. Bitcoin is so unique because
- 1:03:48what it does is it transfers the ownership and the control of
- 1:03:52money back to the people. That distributes it out to the
- 1:03:55world, to the people. So over time, I do think that in
- 1:03:59our lifetime, in my lifetime, we're going to see that Power
- 1:04:03Distribution. Get sucked out slowly from the
- 1:04:06government in this sly, roundabout way and go over to
- 1:04:10the people. And so over time, what we're
- 1:04:12going to see is bitcoiners start to flourish, right?
- 1:04:14They're gonna start to work hard.
- 1:04:16They're gonna start to build things that last instead of this
- 1:04:18cheap stuff that breaks. They're going to be become
- 1:04:21savers instead of speculators, and it's going to incentivize a
- 1:04:25totally different and I think a much better world.
- 1:04:28It's going to take a while though.
- 1:04:29I mean, it's not going to happen tomorrow.
- 1:04:31It's not going to happen because we voted the right president in
- 1:04:33for sure, right. It's not the politicians who are
- 1:04:35going to do that. It's because of this sly,
- 1:04:38roundabout incentive structure that's different from the
- 1:04:40current one and very and and I think much better the people who
- 1:04:44are in charge right now, who benefit from the current
- 1:04:47structure and from the cantalon effects, from being close to the
- 1:04:49money printer. For those kind of people,
- 1:04:51they're gonna still hate it all the way, you know, until they
- 1:04:53die, probably. But for the rest of the world,
- 1:04:57for humanity, I'm actually extremely hopeful.
- 1:04:59Despite this really dark decade, in this kind of scary and
- 1:05:02tumultuous decade, I'm very hopeful that the future is going
- 1:05:05to be much brighter and much better for, you know, when I'm
- 1:05:08older, but especially for my kids and grandkids, I'm, I'm
- 1:05:11looking forward to what's next. That's really maybe I can just
- 1:05:15finish off, finish that thought off with with a capstone of a
- 1:05:19thought on it. I think your happiness isn't a
- 1:05:23sense of function of what you measure your happiness with.
- 1:05:27And for those people who are measuring with a low time
- 1:05:30preference for the long term, we're at the dawn of an amazing
- 1:05:34age and we're at the dawn of the return of multigenerational
- 1:05:37projects. Money that can last, money that
- 1:05:39is sound. A civilization that will be
- 1:05:41based off of sound practices, right?
- 1:05:43That when I talked about how the future will look back at this
- 1:05:47time and say we used a primitive money, we're on the verge of not
- 1:05:51being primitive anymore. But for people who measure
- 1:05:53everything in the short term, who are like next month, next
- 1:05:56week, next quarter, they're in for many quarters of misery
- 1:06:02because they won't be seeing the big picture of what's shifting.
- 1:06:05They're they're just seeing what's short So and they'll be
- 1:06:08critical of Bitcoin. They'll say, look, Bitcoin, you
- 1:06:10know, Bitcoin hasn't gone up in the last year.
- 1:06:12How can you tell me it's the next great thing?
- 1:06:15I'm not focused on the next year, right?
- 1:06:16I'm focused on my kids and their kids and and what the
- 1:06:20generations can do and the excitement about the
- 1:06:23generational projects we're going to get into.
- 1:06:25Bit Bitcoin is itself, of course, a generational project,
- 1:06:27right? Just phase one, the initial coin
- 1:06:29distribution takes 140 years. I like that's the way that
- 1:06:33Satoshi was thinking about this thing.
- 1:06:35So it's like this is not. He didn't build it to succeed in
- 1:06:38the first quarter that he launched it.
- 1:06:40He didn't even necessarily build it to succeed what in his
- 1:06:43lifetime. He didn't build it to succeed in
- 1:06:45our lifetime. They built it to last for
- 1:06:48generations for who knows how many years, right, that that
- 1:06:52initial block is there forever, right?
- 1:06:54Like it's indestructible in malleable.
- 1:06:57So it's a monument to last forever.
- 1:06:58And and I think that that's that's where the hope and the
- 1:07:01joy can really come from. And as we start to see success
- 1:07:04in there, you know like people were poor people have been very
- 1:07:07joyful in history. People came who came to America
- 1:07:10to escape cross the persecution and got to build from nothing,
- 1:07:15right that you got to America. There wasn't like a welcome
- 1:07:17party, There wasn't border security guard, there wasn't a
- 1:07:19highway, there wasn't there was nothing.
- 1:07:21But it was a chance to build your, to build the future for
- 1:07:24yourself at the frontier. And I think that's where we are
- 1:07:27right now, the frontier of a new world with all the benefits that
- 1:07:30the last 200 years have built. So that's not be too self filled
- 1:07:36with self pity. Amen.
- 1:07:38I love it. I love it.
- 1:07:40All right. Gentlemen, thank you so much for
- 1:07:42joining us today. We really appreciate it.
- 1:07:44Dr. Jeff Ross. Thank you, Tomer Strollite.
- 1:07:47Thank you so much, gentlemen. Really, really appreciate it.
- 1:07:50Put you guys backstage for a second while I wrap it up.
- 1:07:53Thank you guys so much for tuning in.
- 1:07:54If you enjoyed the episode, smash that like button, consider
- 1:07:56subscribing. If you feel like we provided you
- 1:07:58value. We'll be back tomorrow 12:15 PM
- 1:08:00Eastern Standard Time. I'm not gonna be.
- 1:08:02I'm gonna be at A. I'm going to be at the Mining
- 1:08:04Disrupt conference, but Opti's going to be holding it down.
- 1:08:06Love you all. See you guys on the next one.
- 1:08:09Peace out.