Latest / What Bitcoin Did / Why Everyone Is Wrong About Inflation | Ansel Lindner
Transcript
- 0:00The credit-based system is going to malfunction. It's not going to work as it once did. Boom,
- 0:09inevitably, bust. What would happen in a deflationary bust situation?
- 0:14Pretty much that means everything goes to zero. Credit goes to zero. The supply of money actually
- 0:19goes to zero. Everyone defaults simultaneously. There's no more money and liquidity to go around.
- 0:25It's all wiped out. Do you still see this as being something that could cause the end of
- 0:29the fiat system. Yes, but it won't look like hyperinflation or hyper deflation even. I think
- 0:36what it's going to look like is countries backing their currency with Bitcoin. There's very low trust
- 0:42in the world. Bitcoin fits perfectly within that new system. As soon as Bitcoin finds its legs,
- 0:48I think it's going to happen pretty fast.
- 0:53Ansel, good to see you, man. This is the first time we've met. I've had quite a few people reach
- 0:58out saying I need to have you on the show. So welcome. Do you want to start with a bit of an
- 1:02introduction about who you are? Yeah, thanks, Danny. It's a pleasure. I'm excited for this talk.
- 1:08Yeah, so Ansel Lindner, I've been public in Bitcoin going back to 2016 with the scaling
- 1:14conflict, started a podcast back then. And right when the user activated software dropped that night,
- 1:22I made a podcast and said, this is how Segwit's going to get adopted. So I was on top of the
- 1:29scaling conflict back then, more from an economics angle than anything else. And then I just been,
- 1:36there's been a few hiatus breaks in my content over the years, but I've been producing content
- 1:41for this whole time. I concentrate on economics, of course, the macro of Bitcoin. I also have a
- 1:48background career in the military. And so this stuff around Iran and different things that have
- 1:54been happening recently, you know, with Venezuela and then Iran kind of have some insight there as
- 1:59well. Yeah, we should get into that because like, as you said, you sort of concentrate on the macro
- 2:04side specifically. And this around war seems to have changed everything. And there's a few things
- 2:09that have come out of it from a Bitcoin perspective that are particularly interesting, especially in
- 2:13the recent, you know, the last few days, really. But from a macro side, has this changed the entire
- 2:19picture, this war? No, I don't think so. I think it's a continuation of where we're going. So I
- 2:27think we've been evolving away from this post-World War II era into something new, into a
- 2:34de-globalized sort of paradigm. And this is just one more step along the road. And we're going to
- 2:41continue down this. I mean, the next one is going to be even crazier and people are going to say,
- 2:45is this the breaking point? Is this the break? No, it's just, we're stepping down the road
- 2:49towards deglobalization. And I think it will continue. So I'm not surprised at all that
- 2:55this is happening. I mean, it could be anything. I mean, it could be something blowing up in
- 3:00Eastern Europe or in the Middle East. I mean, anything, but that we're going to have these
- 3:05kind of breaks in the old system where we see allies not being allies, trade not being aligned
- 3:14the way it was before and getting rerouted. We're just going to see all these types of signs of
- 3:19deglobalization, and that's going to take us into the next paradigm. So your listeners might know
- 3:24like the fourth turning, right? It has something to do with that. There's these generational cycles,
- 3:29And we're about, what, 80 years since the end of World War II.
- 3:34And so it's right on time for the next cycle.
- 3:37So I think that's where we're at.
- 3:39It definitely feels like fourth turning times at the moment.
- 3:42And the most interesting thing that I've seen in Bitcoin in a little while, one that truly
- 3:46surprised me, is when the Iran government, whoever's in charge there now, said that they're
- 3:50going to take Bitcoin as payment for ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.
- 3:54And this kind of plays into that multipolar world thing you're talking about, where it's
- 3:58Like if you are in a situation with zero trust, what money do you use?
- 4:05You can't use the US dollar in that situation.
- 4:07You have to go to something neutral like Bitcoin.
- 4:10It feels like a really pivotal moment.
- 4:12But I know as Bitcoiners, we get sort of excited about things like this.
- 4:15Do you think it is a real shift?
- 4:19Yeah, I think it's an acknowledgement or maybe a wake up call for people because this was
- 4:23inevitably going to happen because the dollar system that we've been on, a credit-based system,
- 4:30you have global credit markets. And what happens to a global credit market in deglobalization?
- 4:37Well, it starts breaking down, starts shrinking, starts contracting. And so you have this
- 4:42financial system that was built for an era of high trust. It's not going to work as well in
- 4:50an era of low trust, if at all. I mean, some countries are going to be cut off. There's going
- 4:54to be these multipolar regional alliances that they might not be trusted by a whole third of
- 5:01the rest of the world or something like that. And so you need a currency that is able or money
- 5:06that is able to move between these big blocks when there's very low trust in the world.
- 5:13If Bitcoin didn't exist, that would be gold. Most likely we'd go back to gold. But with Bitcoin
- 5:19being able to be sent anywhere in the world in 10 minutes, very low storage costs, easy to assay and all this stuff,
- 5:28then Bitcoin is just really suited for this very specific use case, which Iran has highlighted now.
- 5:36And I think we will continue to see.
- 5:38I mean, we've already seen the seeds with the strategic reserves in different countries,
- 5:42different countries mining Bitcoin, even in that era or in that area with the UAE and Qatar and
- 5:49stuff, they're very interested in investing in mining and in strategic reserves of Bitcoin.
- 5:54So I think it's just one, again, it's one more step down this road towards deglobalization,
- 5:59and Bitcoin fits perfectly within that new system, at least as high-powered money.
- 6:06We might not be using it in daily transactions, but it will be used with international settlement,
- 6:11settlement between central banks, things like that. That I would think would be the first
- 6:17thing. And then eventually down the road, we will get peer-to-peer payments.
- 6:23That feels like the real Bitcoin story in this whole conflict. Alongside the fact that it's
- 6:28performed relatively well since the conflict began. While everything else was crashing,
- 6:32Bitcoin has been sideways to slightly up during that period. And there's a lot of people that are
- 6:37asking like is bitcoin becoming a risk-off asset which i think is way too early to say that but
- 6:43it it has almost been a hedge during this conflict um how do you see like its place in the markets
- 6:49right now well i reacted to i don't know if you know michael green yeah um yep i reacted to one
- 6:58of his posts a while back about bitcoin not being a geopolitical hedge and this was specifically
- 7:03around October 7th. So just going back a few years and that Bitcoin immediately on October 7th,
- 7:11Bitcoin crashed. And I said, well, okay, this isn't really, you're kind of changing the definition of
- 7:18what a geopolitical hedge is. A geopolitical hedge is not necessarily a short position,
- 7:25right? So you have a hedge that you take out that is specifically designed to move contrary to
- 7:32something else. But if you have a geopolitical hedge, you're actually trying to get uncorrelated
- 7:39returns. So it doesn't matter necessarily if something crashes and then Bitcoin skyrockets
- 7:45immediately or vice versa. It matters that over the long term, your returns are uncorrelated.
- 7:51And so there was actually somebody that did a study a couple of years back. I don't know,
- 7:55I cited it in that blog post, but and they detailed out statistically that gold and Bitcoin
- 8:02are really close to being the same from an uncorrelated geopolitical hedge type of scenario.
- 8:08And so, yeah, I pushed back on that. And I said Bitcoin was a geopolitical hedge at that time.
- 8:14And I think this time, too, it shows that, you know, Bitcoin is not crashing and it's not skyrocketing,
- 8:19anything like that. It's very stable. It's kind of uncorrelated to the craziness that we see out
- 8:25there in the world. So I think very much so that it is stepping out on its own right here as being
- 8:32a very good geopolitical hedge.
- 8:33At least it has to be in the conversation
- 8:35when you talk about gold,
- 8:38treasury bills, treasury bonds,
- 8:40and Bitcoin has to be in that conversation.
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- 11:35your first miner. That's blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD. The thing that I struggle with
- 11:42when you kind of call Bitcoin a hedge
- 11:44is the fact that it trades 24 seven.
- 11:48Does that mean it's very hard for it to be a hedge?
- 11:51Because we've seen Trump time a load of his announcements
- 11:54when markets are closed in the US.
- 11:56And so there's really one asset
- 11:58that can move a lot of the time
- 11:59and that tends to be Bitcoin.
- 12:01And so like it is the thing that moves first.
- 12:03And if it's a negative statement
- 12:05or something that the market deems a negative statement,
- 12:07then Bitcoin does sell off.
- 12:09Does that make it a tricky asset
- 12:11to be a proper hedge?
- 12:14Yes, if you're looking for,
- 12:16you know, you want to maximize
- 12:18or you're day trading
- 12:19and you want to make sure
- 12:20that you're scalping
- 12:21as much of the gains as you can.
- 12:23But if you're in it for the long term,
- 12:25I don't think so.
- 12:26I think that that stuff
- 12:28levels out over the long term.
- 12:31I mean, just zoom out
- 12:32to like 52 weeks
- 12:33or something like that
- 12:34and you won't see any of those
- 12:36real reactions to the market like that.
- 12:40Fair.
- 12:40I do think that's also one of the most interesting elements of Bitcoin in that it is like a 24-7 prediction market, essentially.
- 12:48And it does move first.
- 12:51And quite often it will move actually before announcements happen.
- 12:54It's like the way you keep your finger on the pulse across markets.
- 12:58But with this war, we've obviously seen oil prices go through the roof.
- 13:05And there's a load of talk of inflation coming back in a stronger way.
- 13:09And I know that's something that you've quite often talked about.
- 13:12And you think that instead of inflation being the concern, it's deflation.
- 13:16Has this war changed that perspective?
- 13:19Not at all.
- 13:20Not at all.
- 13:20It's just made it stronger, I think.
- 13:22So there's some people out there that talk about deflation as like prices falling.
- 13:28I don't talk about deflation like that.
- 13:30I think it's the money contracting.
- 13:32So the supply of money getting smaller.
- 13:36And what is money today?
- 13:37Money is credit.
- 13:39And so, like we just mentioned at the beginning, there was global credit markets and how are they going to react to deglobalization?
- 13:46They're going to shrink.
- 13:48I think about it like a carrying capacity.
- 13:50So the globe has a certain carrying capacity for debt and credit.
- 13:55But if you start deglobalizing, that carrying capacity goes down.
- 13:59So you had to shrink credit markets.
- 14:01And that is actual deflation that's happening.
- 14:04And the problem with actual deflation is that it spirals out of control. You get hyper deflation instead of hyperinflation. Everybody's been worried, myself included 10 years ago, was worried about hyperinflation. Right. But we didn't get that after trillions, tens of trillions of dollars of QE and fiscal spending and all that. And we still do not have hyperinflation. That's because the overriding pressure is deflationary.
- 14:32So in a bubble just think about boom and bust cycles right Boom inevitably busts right So you juice the credit you juice the inflation you get a boom and what happens It busts You can avoid the bust Even if you try to print your way out of
- 14:51the bust, you can extend and pretend for maybe a decade or something like that, but eventually
- 14:57it's a bust. Eventually it's a deflationary bust. And so I think that's what we're seeing here,
- 15:03specifically with the oil markets, I think that we have a surplus of oil right now on the market.
- 15:11It might not seem that way because shipping is affected. But in 2026, so far, up until the
- 15:19beginning of this conflict and all of the forecasts from most of the major forecasting firms in the oil
- 15:26market, they were thinking three to four million barrels per day surplus. So that means that they
- 15:33would go into inventories, et cetera, et cetera. So the world right now is in a fundamental surplus
- 15:39or glut for oil. That's why when you look at the chart, you see a spike during the Ukraine-Russia
- 15:45kickoff. It spiked up to like 120, 130, and then it drifted down for two or three years.
- 15:53Then we see this spike, and it's going to drift back down. It'll probably be faster this time
- 15:58if the conflict is faster.
- 16:01I don't think this conflict will last
- 16:03into the three or four years
- 16:05like the Ukraine-Russia conflict has.
- 16:07So overall, we're in a oversupply situation
- 16:10and the U.S. continues to increase its pumping.
- 16:14Venezuela now promises to increase its pumping.
- 16:17Brazil is forecast to increase
- 16:20by a million barrels per day this year.
- 16:25I mean, it's just everywhere you look,
- 16:27the oil market is oversupplied except for this Hormuz situation. So once the Hormuz situation
- 16:34gets cleared up, which I expect it to get cleared up relatively shortly, we're going to be back in
- 16:41that same situation. Oil prices are going to keep going down. Interesting. But what are you seeing
- 16:48in the broader market outside of just oil that makes you think deflation is coming? I mean,
- 16:53you can look at the bond market and you can see that, you know, people have been predicting bond
- 16:59yields to explode and get out of hand. That's what we would see in a high inflationary situation.
- 17:05Even at a high risk of inflation, we would see 10% on the U.S. 10 year, but we're not seeing
- 17:11anything like that. The kind of pressure is downward. Same with the oil price, same with a
- 17:17lot of commodities. I mean, commodities have had a little bit of a run here in the last six months
- 17:22or so. But overall, if you look back to the great financial crisis compared to today,
- 17:28very few commodities are above 15 years ago. They're all lower.
- 17:34You know, I speak to a lot of macro people and the general consensus is that inflation is the
- 17:39worry at the moment. And I'm just curious, like why you see it differently? What it is that you
- 17:43see that makes you go kind of go against that consensus view?
- 17:46because for inflation to be sustainable you need to have economic growth so in a system in a credit
- 17:57based system we're not in a real technically we're not in a fiat system we're in a credit based system
- 18:03when you print money if we were in a fiat system and you printed money you would have just assets
- 18:09being put on a balance sheet but in a system we have today you have asset and a liability
- 18:13so you don't have more money chasing the same amount of goods you have more money chasing more
- 18:19goods because that bond is actually tradable and stuff so you don't really have inflation the way
- 18:26that people that talk about fiat that we have inflation like that so to have sustainable high
- 18:33levels of of inflation and credit creation you have to have productivity gains you have to have
- 18:39growth in the economy. If you don't, then the pressure turns from boom into bust and you start
- 18:48getting contractionary forces. And that, you know, if the credit market isn't growing, it's shrinking.
- 18:54And so that's the bust phase. And overall, 75 years building up to now, I think now we're in
- 19:02this bust phase and we can't run away from it forever. We can kick the can down the road,
- 19:07but the overriding pressure is still going to be towards a bust like obviously with the people that
- 19:13think that inflation is going to get out of hand potentially move to the hyperinflation again
- 19:17timelines vary depending on who you talk to but eventually most people will see this as being like
- 19:22there will be a time when the fiat system comes to an end on the deflation side is it the same thing
- 19:26just it plays out in a different way like do you still see this as being something that could cause
- 19:31the end of the fiat system? Yes, but it won't look like what most people think about. It won't look
- 19:39like runaway hyperinflation or hyper deflation even. I think what it's going to look like is
- 19:46countries backing their currency with Bitcoin. So a lot of people, they just kind of completely
- 19:53discount the possibility that the US government decides to back the dollar with gold or Bitcoin
- 20:00again. I don't see why that would be the case. They've changed it so many times throughout its
- 20:05history. This has been a floating currency experiment for 75 years, and we're getting to
- 20:11the end of that, especially if, say, other countries are like, we don't want to accept
- 20:17your dollar unless you have some other collateral with that, which would be Bitcoin or something
- 20:23like that. So I think it naturally, the end state of this is towards backing of the dollar
- 20:32with Bitcoin or gold, but Bitcoin would be the better answer in my opinion.
- 20:38And what do you think would force a country to do that? Because like they will love having the
- 20:42superpower of being able to print money with nothing backing it. Like why do you think they
- 20:46would go back to a hard money backed currency? Credit collapse.
- 20:53Hmm. Because no one accepts their money anymore. Because to do business, you don't trust other people. You don't trust other countries. You don't trust other regions. And so you have to have some sort of asset that's flowing with the money to give it value. And so that's that's why they would do it. Because the old the credit based system is going to malfunction. It's not going to work as it once did.
- 21:18You know, it used to be where you could just, these developing countries could join the system, join the WTO, get access to foreign capital, foreign credit, build up their export industries, export to the world.
- 21:36Well, what if nobody's importing?
- 21:39What if they have to run a bunch of bilateral trade agreements instead of accessing the global market for things?
- 21:46You have to go to this country and this country and this country to negotiate your stuff.
- 21:50It's just a world where if you want your currency to work, you're going to have to do what the market wants.
- 21:57And if the market is demanding Bitcoin or a gold-backed currency of some sort, you're going to have to do that.
- 22:03You don't really have a choice.
- 22:05I know as Bitcoiners, we like to jump on these things quite often too early.
- 22:08But do you think the stuff that's happening in the straightforward moves with Iran taking Bitcoin as payment is like a very early sign of that happening?
- 22:16Yes. Yep. I think it's just a sign of what we're going to. I mean, like I said earlier, we're seeing some other similar steps. Just the U.S. talking about a strategic reserve of Bitcoin is a sign that it's going this direction. Now we have the Iran thing.
- 22:33One thing that I predicted last week in my newsletter is that we're going to see China easing the ban. So they're going to ease their stance on Bitcoin as well because they see that they probably, this is total speculation on my part, but I think that they might view Bitcoin as another attack vector on the dollar.
- 22:55So if Iran can use it, it's an attack vector on the dollar to circumvent SWIFT and to circumvent these other payment processors and things.
- 23:04And so they might look at Bitcoin as being a way to attack the dollar at the same time.
- 23:09But in reality, what they're doing is, you know, the U.S. has 300,000 Bitcoins.
- 23:14It has a push towards a strategic reserve.
- 23:18It's kind of in a first mover type of position for governments, at least.
- 23:22and so I don't think it's going to hurt the United States.
- 23:26But that was my prediction is China is the next one maybe
- 23:30that we'll hear loosening their ban.
- 23:33That would make sense.
- 23:33I mean, they've done that before.
- 23:35I could see them doing it again.
- 23:36But the interesting thing there is,
- 23:38you say they may see it as an attack on the dollar.
- 23:40We've obviously had a lot of people in the US,
- 23:43the sailors, the politicians, the policymakers in the world,
- 23:46saying that Bitcoin can actually help strengthen the dollar,
- 23:49which I've always found very hard to really believe.
- 23:53Which way do you see that going?
- 23:54Do you think it can help strengthen the dollar
- 23:56or is this just a straight up attack?
- 24:00I think it will be viewed as an attack by China
- 24:03but I don't think it really is an attack.
- 24:06Being that the US has the biggest government stockpile
- 24:10I think any adoption of Bitcoin
- 24:12is actually just going to help the United States.
- 24:14One thing I've said for a long time
- 24:16is that Bitcoin aligns incentives
- 24:18And I just I don't see how Bitcoin can be against the dollar.
- 24:23You know, they it's like saying gold is against the dollar.
- 24:27They're totally competing in opposite realms.
- 24:32The dollar can simply just say, OK, now it's 10 Satoshis per dollar.
- 24:38And that's the exchange rate.
- 24:39That's what we're backing the dollar as.
- 24:42And that's it.
- 24:43So in that scenario, how would the dollar be going against Bitcoin or Bitcoin be an attack on the dollar?
- 24:51I guess maybe I'm wrong in this, but I think my perspective on that would be it only helps the dollar if the U.S. adopt Bitcoin to a degree.
- 24:59Like I can see it really helping the dollar if they start doing bit bonds and they really integrate it into the system.
- 25:05But if they try and ignore it for too long, then I do think it's probably an attack on the dollar because it's just like a separate system that their fiat dollars can flow into.
- 25:15I don't think, to be honest with you, I don't think the people that are buying a bunch of treasuries are worried about if it's backed by Bitcoin or has some Bitcoin tied to it in the structure.
- 25:27I really don't think they care about that.
- 25:28It actually might be more of a risk to many of them if that was the case.
- 25:34So, you know, demand begets supply. A lot of times people think, oh, I can build this shit coin and people are going to buy it and it's going to be so great and it solves all these problems. But really, the demand needs to be there first. So the demand for these bit bonds needs to pull that supply onto the market. It's not like they're going to offer bit bonds and all of a sudden there's a market there. You know, you have to do the right order of operation.
- 26:02So if we do get this deflationary bust that you talk about, how do you think Bitcoin performs
- 26:07during that? Because in a hyperinflation event or a high inflation event, the sort of pathway for
- 26:14Bitcoin looks clear. Who knows what will actually happen, but you can see, you can project what you
- 26:19think may happen based on like COVID stimulus and things like that. What would happen in a
- 26:23deflationary bust situation? Well, a hyper deflationary scenario, like a financial crisis
- 26:29where you have, remember, during the great financial crisis
- 26:34and then during the September repo rumble in 2019.
- 26:392019, yeah.
- 26:40And I think also in COVID, for a very brief period,
- 26:43the markets went bidless.
- 26:46They had zero liquidity in the financial system,
- 26:51and pretty much that means everything goes to zero.
- 26:55Credit goes to zero.
- 26:56The supply of money actually goes to zero,
- 26:59which is very interesting to think about um so what does that actually mean the supply of money
- 27:04goes to zero well because money is credit and if everyone defaults simultaneously there's no more
- 27:13money and liquidity to go around it's all wiped out so anyway so they if if that happens i think
- 27:21that's very bad for bitcoin because people are going to bid for food and water and you know
- 27:26They're going to run out there and try to save themselves.
- 27:29But in the long term, in the buildup of those financial crises, I think it's going to be
- 27:34positive for Bitcoin.
- 27:35So Bitcoin is not going to do well in those instant crashes, but it will do well in a
- 27:42deflationary environment.
- 27:43For the same reason why gold will do well in like a buildup to a recession.
- 27:48People start getting worried.
- 27:50They start, you know, squirreling away their money and safer assets.
- 27:54The same aspect is going to happen with Bitcoin.
- 27:58And so, yeah, that's so the buildup is good, but the actual financial crisis is bad for Bitcoin.
- 28:05So deflation or inflation, Bitcoin wins.
- 28:09Yes, it actually is an inflation hedge and a deflation hedge.
- 28:12And gold bugs should tell you the same thing.
- 28:15And Bitcoiners should tell you the same thing.
- 28:17So in a system that's built on counterparty risk, if you have an asset that has no counterparty risk, then that asset's going to be bid in a period of deflation or default, I would say.
- 28:37That's going to be bid.
- 28:38So that is the deflationary side.
- 28:39And then the inflationary side, obviously, that's pretty self-explanatory.
- 28:43There's a fixed number of Bitcoin and the supply of money goes up.
- 28:47So the price of each Bitcoin is going to go up.
- 28:49So, yeah, it's an inflation and a deflation hedge.
- 28:52Let's go.
- 28:53And one of the interesting things that happened over the last 12 months or so is that commodities have caught a bid.
- 28:59Gold's been flying.
- 29:00Silver had an amazing run.
- 29:02And Bitcoin had an all right 20, 25.
- 29:05And then so far, a bad 26.
- 29:07Have you been surprised with Bitcoin's price action?
- 29:10Absolutely, man.
- 29:12Absolutely.
- 29:13I thought 2025 was going to be much.
- 29:14I thought by this time last year that we would be you know going in the top of the blow off phase of of the bull market But that never occurred It been very tamped down I mean it been how many years and we still at 70 When did we hit 69 the
- 29:34first time? Back in 2020? 21, I think. Yeah, 21. So five, six years later, we're still in the exact
- 29:43same spot. So I have definitely been surprised by it. How do I explain that? I think it is
- 29:51options markets. I also think that there was a four-year cycle that a lot of OG Bitcoiners
- 29:58that had tens of thousands of coins, perhaps. Oh, that's the end of the four-year cycle.
- 30:04We didn't get our blow off top. So I'm going to sell now. And they sold at 100K.
- 30:10I said before we got to 100K, I was like, there's probably going to be significant resistance of people selling at that round number.
- 30:18You know, like they bought in for $10 and then they held, I'm just going to hold to 100K.
- 30:23And they held, then they sold.
- 30:25It didn't happen right away, but that whole kind of zone around 100,000 provided a lot of resistance to the Bitcoin price.
- 30:33And so I think, you know, we just have to eat through that, eat through that supply and come out on the other end.
- 30:40It's just really hard to think, man, strategy is buying tens of thousands of bitcoins every week and the price is not moving.
- 30:49What's going on? So I don't know. It'd be interesting to hear your take on that.
- 30:52No, I'm the same. I was surprised. And I sort of fell into the camp of thinking maybe this time will be different.
- 30:57and so far at least it's not been.
- 31:00I still think there's the potential
- 31:02that it could be proven different.
- 31:04Like if we have a decent 2026,
- 31:06sort of end of 26,
- 31:08then I still think that-
- 31:09Like the four-year cycle, you mean?
- 31:10Yeah, I think it probably still breaks
- 31:12that four-year cycle idea.
- 31:14And I don't really understand
- 31:15why the four-year cycle would still exist.
- 31:17You know, the subsidy coming online
- 31:19is kind of irrelevant now.
- 31:21Like you say,
- 31:22strategy is buying way more
- 31:23than the mining subsidy.
- 31:25So I don't know exactly
- 31:26why the four-year cycle would stay. I don't see any real reason for it. So I would love to see
- 31:31that narrative get thrown out of Bitcoin, but I was definitely surprised. I thought we were going
- 31:35to go higher last year and I didn't think we'd go as low this year. But Bitcoin market humbles you,
- 31:42I guess. Do you think we're going to have a positive sort of second half of 2026?
- 31:49As soon as Bitcoin finds its legs, I think it's going to happen pretty fast. I don't think it's
- 31:55going to be like a slow buildup, you know, at the end of the year, we're at 100. And then six months
- 32:01later, we're at 125. I think it's going to go from 75 to 125 in a couple of weeks when it does happen
- 32:09eventually. Now, when is that going to be? I don't know. It could be some major country like Iran or
- 32:16some major situation that everyone has to sit back and say, okay, they're accepting Bitcoin.
- 32:21This is real. Maybe maybe the China thing. So we just talked about maybe China easing their ban on Bitcoin. Maybe that's a trigger to see a repricing in Bitcoin by 100 percent up. So I don't know. But that's that's kind of what I expect to happen is fast and furious when it does come because the market wants to screw everybody possible out of every last dime that it can.
- 32:45And so it's not going to let fence sitters get the chance to jump into a trade.
- 32:51It's going to happen really fast.
- 32:53And everybody that's in gets to go.
- 32:56Everyone that's not in, they get a buy at the top and we repeat.
- 32:59So that's what I'm thinking.
- 33:01Yeah, I think one of the other dynamics that was different this time is like since I've
- 33:04been in Bitcoin, we had the 2017 run, we had the 2021 run.
- 33:09And then and both those times, Bitcoin was like the exciting, fresh new thing that everyone
- 33:15was interested in, there was FOMO. Whereas this time that was AI, like it was the AI trade that
- 33:20stole so much of the hype. And even within Bitcoin, I think it was the treasury company
- 33:24hype rather than buying spot Bitcoin. I think that has definitely played into it. I don't know
- 33:30if that comes back. Maybe it does. I think price action fixes that. Like if Bitcoin starts absolutely
- 33:34ripping, it will get the attention. But you mentioned the options markets there and it's
- 33:40like, I don't pretend to fully understand options markets, but why would that have a negative
- 33:44impact on spot Bitcoin price. If you're in a different regime, you can have options that
- 33:49either accentuate the volatility or depress the volatility, depending on what regime you're in.
- 33:57And we've just been in this regime where the options are set up to sell the rips and buy the
- 34:05dips. So that keeps you in a range until something changes that. And that's why you see the very fast
- 34:13dips because it was being held, managed, and then all of a sudden something changed, maybe a big
- 34:18player blew up or something, and it went to a new level, and it has stayed in that new level
- 34:25in that regime in the options market. Now, it can happen in the other direction, and that's kind of
- 34:30what I'm talking about, is as soon as the regime changes to enhancing volatility, so you buy the
- 34:37rips and you sell the dips in the options the way you trade your options, then that means that
- 34:43it's a reinforcing loop higher. And also there's talk about, you know, a gamma squeeze or a Vanna
- 34:50gamma squeeze. I'm not an expert in the options market, but these things are reinforcing. So as
- 34:56price goes up, you know, these people have to reevaluate their risk. The market makers have
- 35:02to reevaluate their risk and they have to go out and buy Bitcoin. So if they're taking the
- 35:07other side of a trade and they're shorting Bitcoin and someone else is longing Bitcoin.
- 35:12Well, they do that based on a formula. How much Bitcoin do I have to have to hedge this short
- 35:19position that I'm taking to make a market? And as the price of Bitcoin goes up, well, they got to
- 35:26buy more Bitcoin to hedge that position that they have on. And so that is a reinforcing volatility
- 35:32loop and to the upside, right? And so eventually that will happen in Bitcoin. When that happens is
- 35:38unknown, but I tend to believe it's sooner rather than later. I don't think we can go on for another
- 35:44two years like this. I think it really does have to happen relatively soon, maybe around the middle
- 35:50of the year. We will see how it goes. The thing that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical
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- 38:36So this idea that volatility is going to be suppressed going forward in Bitcoin just because of how the sort of market dynamics have changed.
- 38:43Is that something you don't buy into then? You think we still can have, you know, the crazy run-ups, the blow-off tops. And then obviously bear market always follows a blow-off top, but you think we can still have that volatility in Bitcoin?
- 38:55Well, yes, I do. But I think it's going to be fewer and far between. So if you look at gold, right, gold has been, it's, it's not that much older than Bitcoin in the sense of having like an ETF. I think the gold ETF was in 2006.
- 39:14listeners can correct me if I'm wrong on that it's 2006 and you know we couldn't even own
- 39:22gold until my lifetime like people could actually own gold again in the United States
- 39:27so it's not that much older and it is it is also heavily manipulated in the same way
- 39:33but it has just done a parabolic move you know it did a parabolic move during the great financial
- 39:39crisis and then another parabolic move here now. So they can't, it can happen. It's just going to
- 39:45be fewer and far between. Um, but I think Bitcoin is going to have these like moonshots. One,
- 39:51one week it's going to go 50% up and then it's going to find a new level. And then maybe the
- 39:58next week it goes 25% down and goes at that level. But, um, it's going to have, it's going to break
- 40:04the options, uh, regime that it's in. It's going to reprice and then it's going to be held there
- 40:09for a while so this is the idea of sort of extended cycles you think the it might not be
- 40:15the four-year cycle but it's always going to play out in boom bust cycles yes that's how assets work
- 40:23pretty much uh that's how gold has worked um even though it's it was pegged to the dollar say
- 40:29and so 35 an ounce was that's how much gold was but its purchasing power did fluctuate and so
- 40:37So, yeah, I think there will be booms and busts until it's pegged.
- 40:41And then maybe that will even suppress it even more.
- 40:43Because once you back a currency with a commodity, that commodity is held in everybody's account, right?
- 40:51And it's a very, very deep market.
- 40:53It takes a lot to move and bring volatility to a market where everybody owns some.
- 41:00And so it will suppress it more.
- 41:02But it will happen in that respect as well.
- 41:04so a bit earlier in the conversation you called bitcoin currency and then kind of corrected
- 41:10yourself and called it money and i'm curious what you were differentiating between there
- 41:15yeah i think well first off i think a cryptocurrency was a really bad branding mistake
- 41:20and i don't think satoshi used it um i can't remember now but if maybe he used it later on
- 41:29after somebody else used it but he didn't come up with it he didn't brand it maybe later
- 41:34like 2010 or something like that, that he used the term cryptocurrency. But a currency is a
- 41:39measure of money. That's what I think of it as. So you have a money, gold or Bitcoin,
- 41:47and then you have currency that is a denomination of that money. So one ounce, you have $35 per
- 41:53ounce of gold. So dollars is the currency, gold is the money. And same would be for Bitcoin. If
- 42:00you pegged it at 10 satoshis you would have 10 satoshis per dollar the dollar is the currency
- 42:07and the bitcoin is the money so that's how i would define it so you don't think bitcoin can be both
- 42:14money and currency yes it can be a gold coin is both you know gold coin with a face value
- 42:22is both money and a currency it can be but it probably won't be the utxo set kind of limits
- 42:29how many people can use Bitcoin.
- 42:32Even if we had huge blocks,
- 42:36unlimited block space,
- 42:38you still would have UTXOs
- 42:40and you really wouldn't want to have a UTXO set
- 42:43that had 100 billion entries
- 42:45because it would take almost as long as a block
- 42:48to just find one UTXO out of the list of the UTXO set.
- 42:53It was always going to be a derivative.
- 42:57I mean, even Hal Finney talked about Bitcoin banks, right?
- 42:59And so it's always been known that most likely, if it really does become some sort of global money, then it will be a derivative that's traded.
- 43:12you don't think this will be solved with like layer two solutions layer three solutions whereas
- 43:18you might you know you might be using spark or arc or lightning or whatever like because even
- 43:22with an open time there's still a utxo there i know you can trade it physically so you don't
- 43:26need to do any there's no like on-chain footprint of swapping that utxo but you don't think this can
- 43:31just be solved technically at different layers well i really like side chains and i really haven't
- 43:37thought about this for a long time. I used to talk about sidechains being what's going to scale
- 43:43Bitcoin because you could, you know, each country could have its own sidechain and then you could
- 43:49have atomic swaps between sidechains and this would all be cryptographically proven and managed.
- 43:56And so sidechains are a really good solution. That way you don't have to mess with the on-chain
- 44:02UTXO set and all of this You just have your sidechain and you can have your own rules as well So one government might allow confidential transactions and another government might not
- 44:14allow confidential transactions. And so each government can have their own side chain that
- 44:19is cryptographically pegged to the actual Bitcoin and they can have as many transactions as they want.
- 44:25but overall I think that the biggest
- 44:28this I saw you had
- 44:30Jun Seth on
- 44:31one thing that he would always say
- 44:34at least in the past was
- 44:36you know there's benefits to
- 44:38fraud protection there's benefits
- 44:40to being able
- 44:42to reverse a transaction and
- 44:44if you have it on chain
- 44:46especially you can't do that but even
- 44:48if you had it on a side chain that would be much harder
- 44:50to have those type of
- 44:52protections and so I think
- 44:54there is demand for a layer like on-chain for major, major transactions, maybe even demand for
- 45:06a sidechain type layer. But then there's also a demand for just a regular old payment rail
- 45:10that's centralized that somebody can reverse and manage and you trust the bank and that's that.
- 45:18So yeah, I don't mind the idea of sidechains either. Obviously, Liquid really hasn't got
- 45:23any traction. People are trying to build out these BitVM things. We'll see if they work.
- 45:28But it sounds like you're talking about Bitcoin even, you know, decades into the future as having
- 45:34as fiat still being around. Do you think that is what's going to happen? Or when you talk about
- 45:39fiat, is this like a tether type stable coin? Like, what are you thinking the future looks like?
- 45:45Well, I think the dollar, I think currencies will be backed by Bitcoin. Or we might go into
- 45:50a Bretton Woods situation, you know, where the dollar is backed by Bitcoin and then all these
- 45:54other countries are backed by the dollar. But it really goes back to Bitcoin. You know, Bitcoin or
- 46:01the dollar at the end was 40 percent backed. So we had reserves to cover 40 percent of the supply
- 46:08of dollars. It could be reinstated something. Maybe it's 10 percent for Bitcoin. I don't know.
- 46:15There's all sorts of different plans and how that or there's all sorts of different ways that you
- 46:19could plan it to institute it. But that's what I see. If it's not backing of the dollar by Bitcoin,
- 46:27it's going to be what we have today. I really don't see Bitcoin just being floated out there
- 46:35as its own thing. You know, like gold has that opportunity right now, but it's not.
- 46:41Yeah, it's gone up to $5,000, but it hasn't really, it's not used in transactions with
- 46:49with central banks or with anybody. I think maybe Iran and some sanctioned people might use it once
- 46:56or twice, but it hasn't really been a currency used or a money used. And it's had a long time
- 47:03to do that. So I don't think that Bitcoin, if it doesn't get backed or if it doesn't back a
- 47:09currency, I don't think there is an opportunity for Bitcoin to really be used globally. I hope
- 47:15that makes sense it will always have a place in a portfolio and as a store of value but it won't be
- 47:22used for that medium of exchange rule so so in that like normal progression of money from store
- 47:30value to medium exchange to unit account you think bitcoin will never get to the sort of full stat
- 47:35no i think it will but i think it gets there by backing bitcoin or by backing the dollar
- 47:42and backing other currencies. Not on its own. Right. Interesting. I mean, that still seems
- 47:50like a massively positive outcome. I guess at that point, you probably don't have things like
- 47:55the Federal Reserve because there's not just six people in a room or 12 people in a room,
- 47:59whatever it is, deciding the price of money. Yeah. Well, I think that the Federal Reserve
- 48:04will probably lose its independence. I mean, it'll go away naturally. I don't think, I don't,
- 48:10I don't foresee like losing the actual role of the Federal Reserve for a long period of time, but there will be losing of independence of the Federal Reserve.
- 48:23So one thing we've seen recently, you know, Besant and Powell and Trump, they all are kind of, there's all sorts of different stuff going on.
- 48:33So Trump is trying to fire Lisa Cook, if you remember that.
- 48:39She's trying to fire one of the governors.
- 48:41She actually wasn't one of the bad ones.
- 48:42Like, she was relatively dovish.
- 48:45She was one of the dovish board members, which is what Trump wants on the FOMC.
- 48:51But he wanted to make a statement.
- 48:54He wanted to say that you guys work for me, and I can fire you at any time.
- 49:01Well, he tried to do that.
- 49:03Powell said, no, I'm not going to listen to you. And so now it's going to the Supreme Court and
- 49:08it's still at the Supreme Court and we'll see what they say. I think there's good, there's good
- 49:12arguments on both sides, but I tend to believe that if the government wants to subsume that back
- 49:19under itself, it eventually will. If it will be this president, the next president, somebody will
- 49:25bring that back in into the fold and put the Federal Reserve as a subordinate of the Treasury
- 49:32department. So I think that's going to happen maybe 10 years down the road, but that's going
- 49:40to happen for the Fed. I mean, I can totally buy the Fed losing its independence. I think it's
- 49:46arguable how much independence it has already, but I think we're about a month away from Walsh
- 49:50coming in as governor, as chairman, sorry. And I think that's already a huge step in the direction
- 49:56of it losing its independence. Do you think he will be a positive appointee? Oh, man.
- 50:02i think he is
- 50:08i think he's a yes man he'll do what he's told he'll do what he's told even though i think
- 50:15personally he probably disagrees with um letting you accommodate a monetary policy at this this
- 50:23time i think he personally will disagree with that but he will do what he's told and he'll try
- 50:29to run it hot. Now, whether he can or not, I mean, that's another question. Because I don't
- 50:35believe in like an omniscient Fed. I don't know if they can really do just anything they want.
- 50:41They can pretend to print money, or they can print money, whatever. But that doesn't mean
- 50:45the economy is going to take off and there's going to be inflation. Just look at QE. I mean,
- 50:51QE, people that were watching the markets in 2009, we thought there was going to be
- 50:57instant hyperinflation.
- 51:00Or at least over the next two years,
- 51:02there's going to be like really high 100% inflation rates.
- 51:06Never happened.
- 51:08It never happened.
- 51:08Didn't matter how much QE they did.
- 51:10Actually, when they were doing QE,
- 51:13yields dropped.
- 51:15You know, like this is not what we would expect to happen
- 51:17if inflation is picking up.
- 51:19And so what the Federal Reserve actually has power to manifest
- 51:25is up to debate, I think. So I think there is going to be somewhat of a boom in the U.S.
- 51:33relative to the rest of the world. But I don't think that's going to be a result of the Federal
- 51:37Reserve. I think that's just going to be the U.S. is booming. Okay, I want to get into both of those
- 51:44things. So first of all, with the Fed, clearly Trump wants him to cut rates. I think that's
- 51:50most likely going to happen, whether it's this year or next, it's going to happen at some point
- 51:54relatively soon. They've also been doing a small amount of QE over the last couple of months.
- 52:01Do you think that continues? Do you think it even potentially ramps up?
- 52:05Well, I predicted the QE that they're doing. And I said like a couple months before they started it,
- 52:11I said, you know, they're probably going to do something like a minimal QE and call it something
- 52:17like reserve management. And sure enough, like a meeting or two later, they came out with the
- 52:23the reserve management facility, I think is what they call it. So yeah, I think that's going to
- 52:28continue. As the amount of credit, as the absolute number in the banking system goes up,
- 52:36then if they say, oh, we need 20% reserves in the banking system to maintain stability,
- 52:43but the system keeps growing, they have to increase the amount of reserves.
- 52:48and so i think that's what they're doing that's that is what they're doing with qe at least that's
- 52:53the rationale what they're doing right now and i think they'll have that'll have to continue at
- 52:57least under this textbook of what they're using now does that mean they have to do that to
- 53:03maintain a good economy no they don't have to do that but they probably probably will
- 53:09is what you're saying there essentially even if they cut rates and they continue qe that's not
- 53:14on its own going to boost the u.s economy you think it's really because of the unshoring
- 53:18efforts that are happening right now. Yes. I think that they could have some confidence,
- 53:24you know, influences, but mechanically, it's not going to, that is not what mechanically
- 53:31makes the economy grow. And why are you so confident that the onshoring,
- 53:37one, is going to work and two, isn't going to be massively disrupted by sort of AI and
- 53:42automation and things like that? Well, one, I don't, I mean, those are several different
- 53:48questions there. Automation, I'm not worried about because automation is a good thing. You know, for
- 53:53when new technology is adopted by a market, it actually makes the market more complex
- 54:02and it makes it more productive and all those things. So I'm not worried about automation.
- 54:08I think it's good. If automation is adopted, it's actually a positive. It's like definitionally,
- 54:14it has to be positive to get adopted. Let's say AI is all it's hyped up to be.
- 54:19You could have a massive increase in the sort of K-shaped economy where there's still the people
- 54:25that become like almost a permanent underclass from this, but then you have the economy could
- 54:29be ripping at the same time. Yeah. Well, I think there's going to be a K-shaped global economy for
- 54:35sure um developing markets are going to go back to third world markets most likely
- 54:42and you're going to have a big divergence and are those developing countries are they going to be
- 54:49able to afford using ai maybe not maybe right now we have this uh kind of i think unwarranted
- 54:57assumption that running AI is cheap. Oh, it's cheap. I just asked this prompt and I get all
- 55:06this, or I asked it to build me some software with these specifications and it's really,
- 55:12really cheap. But that's the subsidized price. That's the subsidized capex price.
- 55:18I don't think it's going to be globally like post-scarcity. It's not going to bring us anything
- 55:23like that. That's just a silly assumption that people make is that we're going post-scarcity.
- 55:29Universal, what did Musk say? Universally high income instead of basic income? No, that's just
- 55:38fantasy land that that's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. I mean, maybe hundreds of
- 55:42years down the road, but we can't see that. So in the near term, it has to pay for itself.
- 55:49And right now it's being subsidized by all this CapEx. We'll see what happens when that
- 55:53subsidy runs out. So when do we get to the point where the working population isn't enough to
- 56:00sustain the retirement of everyone who has already gone into retirement? Like when do those payments
- 56:05stop? It's going to be different for different countries. The countries that are the worst off
- 56:11right now, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, these are hitting it right now. Like I did a calculation
- 56:19about Japan and they're not quite at 1% yet, but they're getting really close to losing 1%
- 56:25of their population every year. That's not sustainable for any sort of retirement or any
- 56:33sort of government assistance or pension plans. So if they haven't hit it yet, they can probably,
- 56:40you know, financially engineer it for a little while longer, but pretty soon, yeah, you have to
- 56:45have people there to actually work to not just pay, not just pay into the system, but to actually
- 56:53do the jobs of the economy to keep the economy running. And, but once those retirement accounts
- 56:59can't be paid, like the obvious thing is they're probably just going to print the money, right?
- 57:03It depends. Yeah. I mean, probably if they're, if they're on the same system that they're on right
- 57:08now, it, yeah, sure. They could, they could print the money. Um, but that wouldn't help them at all.
- 57:13that would just, it would be instantly into inflation.
- 57:18And people would be fleeing out of that system
- 57:21to buy hard assets of anything.
- 57:23Just like in any hyperinflation
- 57:25or high inflation environment,
- 57:26people instantly dump their cash
- 57:29and try to buy any sort of durable good that they can.
- 57:32If there is major capital controls in China
- 57:35and these other economies,
- 57:38then that's going to be more difficult.
- 57:39but no, that's not going to solve the situation. It's, there's still going to be the same amount
- 57:46of pain. It's just, um, whether it's pain with high inflation or pain with low inflation.
- 57:52And so this has been great. Is there anything that we've not talked about that you wish we had?
- 57:57Nope. Uh, deglobalization is my big thing, demographics, and then of course deflation.
- 58:02So I think we covered it all. I love it, man. Um, tell everyone where they can go to find out
- 58:07more of your work, hear your podcast, all that kind of stuff?
- 58:10Bitcoinandmarkets.com is my original podcast and content. I just recently started Rogue Macro,
- 58:16so you can check out roguemacro.substack.com for my writing. That's more 90% macro and
- 58:23only 10% Bitcoin. So you guys can check out Rogue Macro and Bitcoin and Markets.
- 58:29Awesome. Thank you, man. We'll have to do this again. I really enjoyed this. Thank you, Ansel.
- 58:33Thanks, Danny.
- 58:37Thank you.