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Transcript

#750: Stimmy Checks Are Coming Back with Joe Consorti · TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

• 0:00
  You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
• 0:10
  We talk about a Fed just gone nuts.
• 0:13
  All the central banks going nuts.
• 0:16
  So it's all acting like safe haven.
• 0:18
  I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins.
• 0:25
  In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
• 0:28
  I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
• 0:31
  If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
• 0:36
  Joe Consorti, welcome to the show, sir.
• 0:38
  I'm already bent. Thank you for having me on.
• 0:41
  How have you been?
• 0:44
  I've been good. My wife and I, I'm checking my whiteboard because she writes in on there.
• 0:48
  My wife and I are expecting a baby in eight weeks.
• 0:50
  So very excited about that. First time dad, going to be a girl dad.
• 0:54
  And yeah, so that's sort of top of mind right now.
• 0:57
  but beyond that i'm doing very well as it should be congrats thank you i'm sure you've heard it
• 1:03
  it's the old uh the old head dad joke for expecting fathers get as much sleep as you can
• 1:08
  oh you're gonna miss it funny yeah um no but i think we were i mean we were just talking about
• 1:15
  it before i hit record i was saying i've been watching your uh your youtube channel i think the
• 1:21
  the coverage that you've been um that you have out there particularly on the economy and as it
• 1:26
  pertains to Bitcoin is very important because like I said, I think people are missing the forest for
• 1:32
  the trees and forgetting about Bitcoin's fundamental value prop. There's a lot of people that are
• 1:38
  bearish right now at 76,000, but I think your coverage of the state of the economy, particularly
• 1:44
  the K-shaped economy that is developing as AI takes off and the haves and the have-nots seem to
• 1:52
  have a wider distance between them is an important reminder of why Bitcoin exists in the first place.
• 1:58
  Absolutely. You know, the K-shaped economy is, it's more pronounced now than I think ever before,
• 2:07
  particularly the consumer sentiment data. So my audience was quick to remind me that the consumer
• 2:12
  sentiment data from the University of Michigan is somewhat politically biased. They were saying
• 2:15
  that I have Trump derangement syndrome, which is not true, voted for the guy. But anyway,
• 2:20
  they were saying that, you know, it's politically biased, but either way, it came in at its lowest
• 2:24
  level ever, lowest level on record. But today, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, they're both ripping to
• 2:30
  all-time highs. So like, what gives? Why do people feel terrible, even though, you know,
• 2:35
  the stock market is doing exceedingly well? Like, you and I both understand, because we've been in
• 2:39
  this for a while, that the stock market is not the economy. But generally speaking, they're at
• 2:45
  least somewhat heathered to one another, right? You know, where they had this loose
• 2:49
  semi-directional correlation. But over the last several years, over the last four years in
• 2:56
  particular, since we hit 9.1% inflation in 2022, the two have diverged. And now we have two
• 3:03
  completely different worlds. And in my video, I analogized it this way. I said, you know,
• 3:08
  somewhere in the country right now, and perhaps this is you viewing this show as a family sitting
• 3:13
  at a kitchen table, trying to figure out how to pay the bills for the month.
• 3:17
  But then somewhere else in the country, maybe just a mile or two away from that family,
• 3:22
  there's a family who is watching CNBC, playing 18 holes of golf on a Wednesday afternoon,
• 3:27
  and they're checking their portfolio and it's doing exceedingly well.
• 3:30
  And all is well in the world.
• 3:32
  Two completely different worlds.
• 3:34
  And it's really enabled by money printing.
• 3:36
  The sole reason there is a disconnect between the S&P 500 and the fact that it's at all-time
• 3:41
  highs and consumer sentiments at all-time lows is money printing. It's the fact that we have
• 3:47
  detached money from physical reality. And now you can print in excess of actual physical reality.
• 3:53
  Money was created, of course, to be effectively a communication mechanism, communicate value.
• 3:59
  And now that we have detached money from gold, from energy, money doesn't communicate value well
• 4:07
  anymore. And really what it is, is people who hold on to the paper claims, they lose. And so
• 4:14
  the bottom leg of the K is just having a terrible time. Inflation has been running above 3% for
• 4:20
  four years now, or above 2.5%, but we'll call it 3% for four years now. And as a result of that,
• 4:28
  over the last 18 months, for the first time in well over a decade, for the entire year,
• 4:33
  wages have been outpaced by price inflation. It's not good. That's actually terrible. And so
• 4:39
  really, you know, people can call it the silent depression. People can call it the K-shaped
• 4:44
  economy. It all boils down to the exact same dynamic, which is that asset holders are doing
• 4:49
  exceedingly well. And I am of the opinion they're going to continue doing well into the midterms
• 4:53
  because it's really the only card that Trump has left because of the war and because of inflation.
• 4:58
  and the asset poor are not going to have a great time.
• 5:03
  Yeah.
• 5:04
  And that's the, I mean, even between the haves and the have-nots,
• 5:09
  I think the acceleration of this AI wave bubble,
• 5:14
  whatever you want to call it,
• 5:15
  I'm more under the impression that it's a wave and not a bubble.
• 5:19
  I think it seems real to me.
• 5:21
  We're using it every day.
• 5:22
  But if you look at what's dragging the stock market higher,
• 5:25
  It's anchored to a very small subset of companies that are anchored to that particular theme.
• 5:32
  And that is like the confounding problem that I'm focused on right now is like there's all this incredible innovation.
• 5:44
  It's making those who are high agency and willing to dip their toes and begin playing with the tools and use it towards something that's actually advantageous for them.
• 5:55
  there's a ton of companies that are just wasting money on this, but some that are using it to their
• 5:58
  advantage are seeing a lot of productivity growth and efficiency gains. But to your point about the
• 6:07
  stock market versus the common man who's got very low sentiment right now is battling inflation,
• 6:14
  delinquency rates rising, price at the pump is going up. I actually just saw a high school friend
• 6:22
  posting. He lives in California. I think it cost him $200 to fill up the tank of his truck.
• 6:29
  It's very clear that what's being portrayed in the mainstream
• 6:34
  is not what's happening in real life. And people still don't understand the money printing aspect,
• 6:42
  I don't think. And that's, I think, to your point, what you said earlier, we've been following this
• 6:48
  for a while and we've both been trying to educate people about Bitcoin, but what is it going to take
• 6:54
  to connect the money printer to the ills that are felt throughout the lower rung of the K?
• 7:02
  Yeah, it's, I mean, it sounds trotted out and played out, but it all boils down to education.
• 7:08
  You know, like people need to realize that to some degree it's, you know, mass migration. And
• 7:16
  And to some degree, it's like a lot of other things in the country that are causing what people are feeling every day, like the danger in their cities and the prices of everything going up.
• 7:27
  But the pernicious evil that actually enables all of that, all of those downstream things is the money printer.
• 7:33
  And so basically, it's just the same message that needs to be repackaged in like 100 different ways, you know.
• 7:38
  And so, yeah, it's just more people pounding the table on it.
• 7:43
  Right. And you bring up a bring up a really good point about AI.
• 7:47
  Like it's it's a wonderful tool because it means like you would think about you could basically transplant a 130 IQ individual into any household across the country for basically free at this point in time, because JGPT, obviously it's not the greatest.
• 8:05
  I prefer Claude. But, you know, you have free access to this tool that's basically a second
• 8:11
  brain that has an IQ that's higher than the median IQ of this country. And so you would think that
• 8:16
  that would raise people's awareness about this issue, about what's really at hand.
• 8:22
  But the unfortunate thing is you bring up agency. You know, you can give a, you can give just a
• 8:29
  random person the best sawzall in the world or the best hammer in the world. But if they're not
• 8:34
  a carpenter or a sculptor, it's not going to matter. In the same way, you can give just a
• 8:41
  relatively low agency individual access to this supercomputer where you could spin up a personal
• 8:48
  brand. You could spin up a second brain. You can spin up a business entirely using this tool,
• 8:54
  but they won't do it because doing that requires agency. It requires consistency. It requires
• 9:03
  focus, requires deep thinking, requires problem solving. And so even like giving them that tool,
• 9:10
  it's not going to necessarily do much. And so bringing this back to Bitcoin,
• 9:15
  there's only so much we can do to educate folks. And I think the logical step is to package things
• 9:21
  differently, bring it to them in a format that they can understand and jive with. But there are
• 9:26
  always going to be some people who just don't get it, whether because they're just not intellectually
• 9:31
  curious or because they're led astray by crypto or any number of things. It's really sad to see.
• 9:36
  But I think the message of the fact that, you know, you just need a dollar to buy Bitcoin,
• 9:42
  right? Just $1, probably got a dollar lying around. If you spend any time in a city,
• 9:46
  you could find four quarters, right? This is the lowest barrier to entry asset in existence.
• 9:52
  Obviously, now you can spin up an account on Robinhood and buy fractions of stocks. But
• 9:57
  The fact of the matter is, even with one cent, you can be allocating to Bitcoin.
• 10:02
  So it's just a very important message to hammer.
• 10:05
  Yeah.
• 10:06
  What in terms of money printing and bringing back to the core of why Bitcoin exists, you mentioned the Genesis block.
• 10:14
  I think before we hit record, but Chancellor on the Brick of Second bailout for the banks.
• 10:18
  I think that's one of the questions that people have as Kevin Warsh is taking the reign as Fed chairman, is what's he going to do when you have yields across the globe screaming Japan, UK, France here in the United States as well?
• 10:38
  You have inflation running pretty hot, too.
• 10:41
  And many people beginning to question what we're going to do in terms of saving that lower rung of the K if another liquidity crisis arises.
• 10:54
  And obviously, private credit's been a big theme over the last six to nine months.
• 10:59
  And many people are wondering if that will manifest and metastasize into a more systemic crisis.
• 11:06
  Doesn't seem to have quite yet.
• 11:07
  But I think looking at delinquency rates, particularly on auto loans and student loans and the specter of mass layoffs because of AI, whether or not it's actually because of the productivity gains or it being used as an excuse to cut bloat at some of these larger companies.
• 11:29
  I think that's one question that many people are beginning to wonder, is the Fed going to have to lower rates and stimulate the economy via something like QE if something like this manifests?
• 11:44
  And Warsh has explicitly said that he would like the lower rates, but continue on QT.
• 11:50
  It's like, will the market let him do that?
• 11:52
  Yeah.
• 11:52
  You know, honestly, I don't think the market will, because if you think about it this way,
• 11:57
  the bond market is clearly screaming that we need higher rates.
• 12:01
  But I actually think the bond market has it right because they're pricing in higher growth
• 12:06
  and inflation expectations by selling off.
• 12:08
  But they have it wrong in the sense that this is a type of inflation the Fed really can't
• 12:12
  do anything about.
• 12:13
  Right.
• 12:14
  You have two different kinds of inflation, right?
• 12:16
  You have kind of like push inflation and pull inflation.
• 12:19
  So like pull inflation would be where there's so much spending happening in the economy.
• 12:26
  Like consumers are just buying, buying, buying, you know, as a result of extremely low interest rates and or monetary stimulus of money printing, like helicopter money, which I believe we're actually going to see this year.
• 12:38
  I think we're going to see stimmy checks.
• 12:39
  I'll explain why.
• 12:40
  Um, you know, so there's, there's sort of that pull inflation, which the Fed can solve by raising
• 12:46
  interest rates, by increasing the price of money, making it more difficult for that borrowing to
• 12:50
  occur, making it more difficult for banks to extend loans. And then inflation comes down,
• 12:54
  right? Um, but then you have push inflation, right? The one way to describe it, which is
• 13:00
  where the input costs are materially rising. And it's not because of the level of interest rates.
• 13:06
  We're experiencing that right now. Inflation is being caused by the oil shock out of the Strait of Hormuz, largely.
• 13:13
  20% of the oil supply globally flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
• 13:17
  Obviously, being in the Middle East as well, they can export it much cheaper than here.
• 13:21
  And so there is a much larger price impact than just 20%, more like 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%.
• 13:27
  We've seen that with oil trading around $100 or over $100 a barrel.
• 13:33
  We're coming up on three months now.
• 13:35
  So you have that in the background.
• 13:37
  That's what the inflation is caused by.
• 13:40
  The Fed can't really do anything as far as interest rates are concerned in order to fix
• 13:45
  that inflation.
• 13:46
  The only thing that the Fed raising its policy rates would do, in my mind, is destroy demand
• 13:54
  even further, which would lead us into a recession, which would lead to more stimulus out the
• 13:58
  other side.
• 14:00
  And so in my mind, the order of operations here, what needs to happen?
• 14:04
  is the Fed is kind of stuck right now between a rock and a hard place.
• 14:09
  Our interest expense over the last 12 months, the rolling 12-month period, was $1.27 trillion.
• 14:15
  It's the second largest line item on the balance sheet. It's been that way for about a year and a
• 14:18
  half, two years now. If rates stay where they're at right now, within six and a half months,
• 14:23
  interest expense of the national debt will be the single largest line item on the U.S.
• 14:28
  government's balance sheet. That can't be allowed to happen. So what needs to happen? Well, a couple
• 14:32
  of things. And this also ties into the political incentives behind this war and why I think it's
• 14:36
  going to wrap up soon and later and why asset prices will do well. As I mentioned a couple of
• 14:41
  moments ago during the last question, the only thing Trump has left for him, in my mind,
• 14:47
  is asset prices. He had the younger voters with low inflation and no new wars, but now asset
• 14:53
  prices are really the only thing he has going for him. And so ending the war sooner than later,
• 14:57
  making sure inflation doesn't rise too terribly throughout the summer so that asset prices do
• 15:02
  well into midterms. It's kind of the Hail Mary last card he has left. And so in my mind,
• 15:07
  he's going to end it sooner than later, but that remains to be seen.
• 15:11
  Yeah. And I mean, you mentioned Stimmy's going to come in what form, in what way?
• 15:18
  Yeah. So I think, honestly, I think this happens if the war rages on past mid-June. The reason I
• 15:24
  say mid-June is because a lot of analysts from Goldman and JP Morgan have cited mid-June as the
• 15:29
  time when the world's largest country's strategic petroleum reserves will be depleted or at critical
• 15:35
  levels. And at that point, all of the downward price pressure that them draining their petroleum
• 15:40
  reserves will have had on oil won't be in effect anymore. So you'll see extreme demand destruction,
• 15:45
  you'll likely see recession. So in my mind, before mid-June, if the war rages on into July,
• 15:52
  into August, right, that is when you're going to see extreme inflationary demand destruction,
• 15:56
  because what we're seeing right now is sort of the first wave, if you will, of the oil shock.
• 16:01
  You're seeing it at the pump. It sucks. Like I live in Massachusetts. Normally gas is like $2.20
• 16:07
  a gallon, nothing terrible. I just filled up yesterday for like $4.80. It was not fun.
• 16:11
  But I also want to make sure my wife doesn't run out of gas on the way to one of her
• 16:15
  prenatal appointments. I have to bite the bullet and do it. In California,
• 16:20
  average price is over $7.50, I'm pretty sure, coming up on $8.00, which is, I don't know how
• 16:25
  they do it out there. I don't know how they survive. And so that's like wave one. Wave two,
• 16:30
  obviously this impacts diesel, but the second order effect of diesel prices being really high
• 16:36
  is all of a sudden farmers can't grow the food that they need. And then when farmers can't grow
• 16:42
  the food that they need, not just because of diesel prices, but because of high fertilizer
• 16:45
  prices, all of a sudden we get food shortages and many outlets have been talking about, hey,
• 16:49
  Like over 40 of farmers in the southern United States say they don have enough fertilizer for the growing season That not good at all And so you know the second order effect of the oil shock is food shortages So not only are you going to have food shortages and the price of the pump being extremely
• 17:08
  high, like everything is a petroleum product nowadays. So like the paint on my wall behind me,
• 17:14
  this microphone, this pen, all of it is a petroleum product. My glasses, my shirt,
• 17:19
  Unfortunately, it's not 100 percent cotton. And so like all of this, every single asset, every single price in the U.S. economy is going to be repriced higher if the Strait of Hormuz doesn't open up very soon.
• 17:34
  The bar that I'm setting on the threshold is mid-June. I'm no expert, but I'm listening to the experts.
• 17:40
  That's the extent that I will trust the experts as far as geopolitics are concerned.
• 17:45
  And so that's sort of my threshold. And when I say we'll see stimmy checks, I mean, this is like the last and final Hail Mary.
• 17:53
  If the war doesn't end and we are teetering on the brink of recession, then I believe the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve will get together because the reason Kevin Warsh was chosen was specifically because he's going to do Trump's bidding.
• 18:07
  he's going to do, Scott Pesent's bidding, the level of interest rates matters much more than
• 18:11
  it ever has before. And keeping them low matters much more than it ever has before. And so I think
• 18:16
  in the event of an inflationary recession, rather than allowing that to occur, you're going to see
• 18:21
  preemptive action. You're going to see stimulus checks, right? The thing I'll say here, the last
• 18:26
  thing I'll say to justify my thinking is that in 2008, the response time was like seven months
• 18:32
  between the first bank teetering on the brink of failure and then being bailed out
• 18:37
  to the Fed actually doing something right after other banks began collapsing.
• 18:42
  In 2019, I think the response was three days between the cash shortage in the repo market
• 18:48
  and the Fed's response. So it went from seven months to three days. Okay, great.
• 18:53
  March 13th, 2020, the response was overnight. So major market crash, major global shutdowns,
• 19:00
  the Fed stepped in immediately, literally overnight. And then with the 2023 banking crisis,
• 19:05
  Silicon Valley Bank blew up. Within hours, the Fed stepped in, had a brand new facility spun up for
• 19:10
  them. So the response time to crises has grown shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and
• 19:15
  shorter. What's the next logical step from here? Well, either it compresses more or we go from
• 19:20
  reacting to preparing for events like these. And so in my mind, either we get an inflationary
• 19:27
  recession and then stimulus checks, or in advance of an inflationary recession,
• 19:32
  we get stimulus checks. And this is, of course, assuming the war rages on throughout the summer.
• 19:37
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  Yeah, and I think that's,
• 21:51
  I just had a Luke Roman on last week
• 21:54
  and that was one of the things we discussed
• 21:56
  is did and is the Trump administration
• 22:00
  underestimating the leverage that Iran has
• 22:03
  and how far they're willing to dig in their feet
• 22:06
  and be a stick in the mud.
• 22:08
  Like, will they cooperate if Trump comes to the table
• 22:11
  and says, let's end this war?
• 22:12
  And they say, you know what?
• 22:13
  You started this, we're not ending it yet.
• 22:15
  And that could be a very interesting development.
• 22:20
  And then on top of that, too, another thing that Luke and I discussed, which is something I'm still very skeptical of, is even if Kevin Warsh and the Fed lowers the Fed funds rates, and the assumption is that that will bring down the long end of the yield curve.
• 22:35
  I think that's a faulty assumption, especially after what we saw in September 24, when Powell lowered rates and the 10-year and 30-year moved inversely to that Fed Fund's rate cut.
• 22:48
  And so that's like a whole other can of worms that I don't think people are really – they have amnesia.
• 22:56
  People forget what happened in September 2024.
• 22:58
  for it's like who's to say that that won't happen again if you're just looking at the the long-term
• 23:04
  charts and the 10-year and the 30-year looks like they want to go into a structural bear market
• 23:09
  in reverse the last 40 years or 40 years up until 2022 certainly looks like they do and ultimately
• 23:16
  like you know you've spoken with nick before you know great friend of both of ours like the one
• 23:21
  thing he taught me that stuck with me to this day is that rates lead the fed it's not the other way
• 23:25
  around. And that's what Luke was alluding to. Like the Fed's job is not to set interest rates,
• 23:30
  it's to set policy interest rates in order to create a corridor to try to influence the rates
• 23:35
  in the U.S. Treasury market higher or lower. But ultimately, the Treasury market is ultimate
• 23:39
  control, right? The bond vigilantes, as they're called. And so if they view what the Fed is doing
• 23:45
  as a policy error, right, or a policy mistake, then they will move markedly in the other direction.
• 23:51
  And that's exactly what you're seeing right now. Like the, there was so much easing bias before the war in Iran, like the year was looking up so well for asset prices, for everything, um, for price inflation. Um, well, maybe not for price inflation. It was still at like 2.6, 2.7% before the war. Um, and all of a sudden we enter into the war and the three, the three cuts we're going to have this year turn into two hikes, right?
• 24:16
  I tend to think that once the war ends, and I think it'll happen sooner or later, that that reverses, the bond market gets bid up again, particularly now because equity risk premiums are deeply negative, like the most negative they've been relative to the 10-year yield, like over a decade, I believe.
• 24:33
  And so the incentive to start bidding U.S. Treasuries relative to equities is so rich right now.
• 24:38
  So I think we're going to start to see a reversal in the equity market and in the bond market.
• 24:44
  But who knows?
• 24:45
  It remains to be seen.
• 24:46
  it might get a little bit more hairy out there and we might need to see some emergency intervention.
• 24:50
  I'm not on the, you know, yield curve control train just yet. But if we see a five and a half
• 24:56
  percent 30 year, then I just might be. Who knows? Yeah. What do you think this means for Bitcoin?
• 25:01
  Do you think people are being lulled into a state of complacency right now with the price
• 25:06
  trading where it is? I certainly think so. Right. Like I've spoken about this a few times, but
• 25:12
  the balance of risks for me are more so on the side of Bitcoin has found its bottom.
• 25:19
  Whether or not that means we continue going lower remains to be seen. I think 60K was the cycle
• 25:23
  bottom. And the balance of risks favor that with everything I discussed about ending the war and
• 25:29
  political reasons for doing so. That said, if inflation runs extremely hot, we get an inflation
• 25:34
  or a recession, every asset sells off. The bond market continues selling off into the stratosphere.
• 25:40
  then Bitcoin alongside every other asset would get sold off immensely. You would have this huge
• 25:45
  dash for cash. At what level that happens in the bond market? I have no idea. I was six years old
• 25:51
  in 2007. The last time of 30 years was this high. So I have no idea what could happen or the level
• 25:58
  of demand destruction that this level of interest rates could cause on the real economy. A couple
• 26:03
  of observations. First and foremost, you mentioned it earlier, record high credit card debt,
• 26:09
  highest level of credit card delinquencies since 2007, record high auto loan delinquencies,
• 26:16
  record high student loan delinquencies. So all of these are not very ideal. The student loans
• 26:20
  don't matter as much because it's obviously, you know, students fresh out of college or within five
• 26:26
  or 10 years of college, they're not major spenders in the US economy just yet. So student loan
• 26:30
  delinquencies, they don't matter all that much. And also they won't come after your assets. If you
• 26:35
  default. They will just tender your wages for the rest of your life, which is not ideal.
• 26:41
  What really matters is credit card delinquencies because that reigns in consumer spending
• 26:45
  significantly. You and I both know a lot of the consumer strength that we see today
• 26:49
  isn't actual strength. It's just a function of people putting stuff on credit, running up that
• 26:54
  balance, minimal monthly payments every month, take out a new credit card, rinse and repeat.
• 26:58
  But with delinquencies where they're at, all-time high, or highest since 2007, and with rates
• 27:04
  climbing, that means credit card rates can only climb. And beyond what point does credit become
• 27:10
  so constricted from a rates perspective that you start to see consumers actually pulling back on
• 27:16
  their spending? And so that's the main thing that I'm looking at. Really disconcerting to see that
• 27:21
  balances are at an all-time high, but it's like that happens every month. They're always running
• 27:26
  up. The delinquencies is the main piece of data that concerns me. Same thing with auto loan
• 27:30
  delinquencies. And so it's not ideal. And it's telling me that these really high rates in the
• 27:37
  US Treasury market are beginning to be felt across the economy. The main thing for me will be at what
• 27:43
  level does this begin to weigh on public companies? That will tell me, okay, it seems like we may be
• 27:49
  entering into a bear market as a result of the war raging on and Treasury selling off.
• 27:53
  I spoke with someone else earlier today, and I was saying this time could very well be different in the sense that we have the SpaceX IPO coming up.
• 28:05
  We have the Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs coming up.
• 28:09
  And so even though rates are at 5% of the 30-year, over 4.5% of the 10-year, and equity risk premium is the most negative it's ever been relative to the 10-year in over a decade,
• 28:20
  There's like a mania in the market where people just do not want to miss out on those IPOs.
• 28:25
  And so I think that because of that and because of the AI boom, I don't think it's a bubble either.
• 28:29
  But because of investors wanting to remain allocated, I think really high rates won't have as big of an impact on public companies as they should for longer than people think, just because people want to remain allocated.
• 28:43
  So, yeah, as far as Bitcoin is concerned, look, we'll have to wait and see.
• 28:48
  I think the balance of risks probabilistically is that Bitcoin has seen the bottom for this cycle.
• 28:53
  You know, the reason I say that is because generally speaking, when you see what happened at 60K, which is extreme demand and a bounce up from the bottom, literally less than 20 minutes spent at that level.
• 29:07
  Generally speaking, that is marked the capitulatory bottom.
• 29:10
  If you think back to 2022, we bottomed a few percentage points below the 2017 all time high.
• 29:18
  Um, and so a bottom of 60 K, which is a few percentage points below the 2021 all time high,
• 29:23
  like that wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for me.
• 29:27
  Um, so I'll have to wait and see.
• 29:28
  It all depends on the war in my mind.
• 29:31
  Yeah, I completely agree there.
• 29:33
  And then factor in all the fundamental tailwinds that exist for Bitcoin right now, the inflation,
• 29:41
  which is already here in May, may increase as you described with the supply shocks that
• 29:46
  that are hitting the economy will have a lagging effect on prices that will likely hit this fall.
• 29:52
  And then the war itself, I think what we've seen with Hermu's safe and the weaponization of stable
• 29:59
  coin rails to freeze assets held by the IRGC. And again, whether you like it or not, just looking
• 30:05
  at it unemotionally, the fact that it seems like the straight of Hermu's toll system will be using
• 30:12
  And Bitcoin, as a preferred currency, highlights one of the fundamental value props of the network, which is permissionless access to a final settlement network with a bearer asset digital currency.
• 30:24
  Yeah, no, it's money for enemies, you know, money for everyone, including your enemies.
• 30:28
  And it's kind of the way I view it all.
• 30:31
  And it's so fascinating to watch it all play out is that it's like this geopolitical Bitcoin arms race.
• 30:36
  Almost what Senator Lummis was talking about a year or two ago.
• 30:39
  And she said that, like, wouldn't it be?
• 30:40
  I think she was on Bankless or something.
• 30:42
  Wouldn't it be nice if we could race to accumulate Bitcoin?
• 30:44
  It said, you know, Bitcoin is proving to be of immense geopolitical importance in Iran, whether or not any toll actually gets collected in Bitcoin, whether or not any Bitcoin backed insurance policy actually gets charged.
• 30:58
  The point of what Iran did is that it showcased to the world that in an increasingly distrustful and fractured world order, Bitcoin is the neutral reserve asset of choice.
• 31:10
  It is the preferred medium of exchange. When you cannot trust anyone you're transacting with,
• 31:15
  whether we're talking global trade, whether we're talking shipping route, whatever,
• 31:19
  the money that you want to be holding, transacting in is one that nobody can seize from you.
• 31:24
  Nobody can freeze. Nobody can take away. Nobody can dilute or devalue.
• 31:28
  And the only thing that fits that bill is Bitcoin. Initially, you just mentioned it.
• 31:33
  When Iran first talked about this toll, sort of V1 of this program, they were accepting one,
• 31:40
  stable coins and Bitcoin. Those are the three things. Well, Tether froze $344 million worth of
• 31:46
  stable coins. So now it's just down to two, which is the Yuan and Bitcoin. Okay, great.
• 31:50
  But with the Yuan, between those two, where else are you going to transact? And also think about it
• 31:57
  from the perspective of somebody who is on one of these vessels. Let's say they're an American
• 32:02
  shipping vessel or a European shipping vessel. They have to onboard themselves into Yuan. They
• 32:07
  They have to figure out how on earth to convert their existing currency into yuan.
• 32:12
  They have to eat that differential.
• 32:14
  And it becomes a very, very difficult thing to do.
• 32:17
  Now, imagine you're a ship and you can use Bitcoin over the Lightning Network.
• 32:23
  You can really easily swap between your U.S. dollars or your euros or your yen or your yuan or whatever into Bitcoin, pay the toll or buy your Bitcoin back to insurance and then convert it back.
• 32:34
  Right.
• 32:34
  You know, and for Iran, from Iran's perspective, this is money that can't be frozen.
• 32:40
  And so really, it is the only solution.
• 32:43
  It's the only emergent financial technology that works as a neutral sediment layer in an increasingly trustless and fractured world order.
• 32:49
  And so pair that with what the United States has been talking about lately, like even setting aside the American Reserves Monetization Act, which is extremely cool.
• 32:59
  You have Pete Hegseth saying that Bitcoin is of immense geopolitical importance and we need to adopt it and embrace it before China does, before Russia does.
• 33:10
  Like for the everyman, you know, sort of the two different angles of Bitcoin here for the everyman, it's it's a hedge against perpetual fiat debasement, money printing, them stealing your time, them stealing your energy.
• 33:21
  But for sovereign nations, like obviously it's a great tool for doing that exact same thing, performing that exact same function.
• 33:29
  But more importantly, it's it's something you need to accumulate out of geopolitical strategic importance.
• 33:36
  Think about this from the United States perspective.
• 33:38
  BRICS is a total failure, complete and total failure. The leaders in the BRICS nations are
• 33:45
  trying to kill each other. Not ideal, right? So what do you need in that environment? Gold simply
• 33:51
  does not work as a settlement asset when you have high frequency high volume global trade but Bitcoin does And you pair that with the trustlessness factor then Bitcoin fulfills that role even better And so all of a sudden among all of those nations they slowly but surely finding the currency that actually works for what they looking to do which is creating a sort of secondary global economy like an Eastern global economy that isn reliant on Western consumers
• 34:17
  if you're the united states and you see that happening are you going to sit idly by and let
• 34:22
  them accumulate a ton of bitcoin and you know push you out of this system or are you going to
• 34:28
  use your world reserve currency status as the pawn in order to use your balance sheets strength
• 34:33
  your strength as a creditor globally in order to accumulate a lot of bitcoin before they can
• 34:41
  and make it prohibitively expensive for them to create this separate system that pushes you out
• 34:47
  of your global hedge bond status, right?
• 34:50
  I would say the former, right?
• 34:51
  I would print a ton of money to buy Bitcoin
• 34:54
  to prevent them from doing it before me.
• 34:56
  What's up, Fariqs?
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  new Bitcoin multisig vault. That's TFTC10 at unchained.com. I mean, I think one of my favorite
• 37:02
  theories out there, I'm not saying I believe it, I think it's plausible, but that strategy is the
• 37:09
  the strategic reserve if you wanted to tinfoil geopolitical game theory game and you didn't want
• 37:16
  to tip your hat to your adversaries about your you're accumulating uh your the way in which
• 37:24
  you're accumulating bitcoin you have a company in the public sector um excuse me the private sector
• 37:30
  via a public equities vehicle accumulate as much bitcoin and it'd be like what one and a half days
• 37:37
  a QE right now, as it was back in the 2009 to 2015 era.
• 37:46
  Well, I mean, hey, Tyson's corner is very close to DC, so who knows?
• 37:50
  Right.
• 37:51
  But to the point, it is becoming more geopolitically important to consider Bitcoin as a strategic
• 38:00
  reserve asset.
• 38:01
  The one thing I worry about with Iran and her move safe is if the government OFAC, the law enforcement agencies associated with these supranational entities look at this and say, all right, well, we can't have Iran using Bitcoin as this neutral settlement network.
• 38:20
  We need to shut down the strait.
• 38:21
  And they can't be doing this.
• 38:23
  And they try to find a way to freeze or prevent transactions from being included in blocks.
• 38:30
  The way Tether was able to freeze USDT held by the Iranian regime.
• 38:36
  And I think that's we're at that point now where it's like, in my mind, it's like, are they going to try to do this?
• 38:43
  And they're going to go mining pools and say, hey, here's a list of addresses that if they're moving Bitcoin or Bitcoin is looking like it's going to move toward them, you cannot include them.
• 38:56
  I think that'll be.
• 38:58
  If anything, like the decentralization of hashrate as a result of AI data centers, it's perfect timing for that.
• 39:05
  Right. If that does occur, it will be less and less powerful than if it was, say, a couple of years ago when it was centralized among a few big players.
• 39:13
  I agree. And I think the amount of hash rate in China that still exists, even though many will be led to believe that it's not in there. And then you look at Chinese mining pools as well. Like I find it hard to believe that those transactions wouldn't make it through.
• 39:29
  The point being is like, I think the U.S. government, it's time that they recognize like, hey, this thing isn't going away.
• 39:35
  You can't control it and you have to get comfortable with that.
• 39:38
  And it's not only a problem for the U.S. government, I think it's a problem for individuals as well.
• 39:44
  It's completely anathema to what we've come to be accustomed to, which is the financial system is very, very controlled and very easily manipulated by the powers that be.
• 39:58
  And there's this whole sort of social rewiring that is still necessary.
• 40:05
  I think for many of us, it's already happened.
• 40:06
  But for most people on the planet, it hasn't happened yet, which is we need to be comfortable that this neutral peer-to-peer digital caste system exists.
• 40:16
  It is money for enemies.
• 40:17
  And whether you like it or not, everybody's going to use it.
• 40:20
  And how do you get people comfortable with that without the government attacking it because they don't like that they can't control it?
• 40:27
  Yeah, it's going to be an interesting several years to navigate.
• 40:32
  I'd imagine you're going to see the Liz Warrens of the world blame Bitcoin for the next financial crisis if and when it does occur.
• 40:40
  You know, that'll sort of be her last hurrah of relevancy.
• 40:44
  I think as Bitcoin grows in geopolitical importance, one thing is that maybe not from all sides of government, but a lot of government will begin pointing the finger at Bitcoiners.
• 40:55
  if and when a major zero to a rather correlation to one event occurs
• 41:02
  where there's this huge crash and then following the crash,
• 41:06
  Bitcoin is the best performing asset.
• 41:09
  I just tend to think that the hostility toward Bitcoiners
• 41:11
  is only going to increase over the next few decades as we keep winning.
• 41:16
  It needs being the best performing asset.
• 41:18
  Lovely. Does it have to be that way?
• 41:19
  Is this the predestined path to victory?
• 41:22
  is a long-trodden, volatile trip up into the right over time until Bitcoin's a reserve currency,
• 41:33
  but everybody hates you on the way up. Is there a way to avoid the hate, or is it just part of the
• 41:38
  territory? I mean, I certainly think that the United States embracing it is one way, and I think
• 41:45
  Republicans maintaining control of the House and Senate in November and then winning in 2028 is a
• 41:52
  surefire way of making sure that that's the case. That at least here in the West, Bitcoin is viewed
• 41:57
  as something that is for the everyman, something that you can use to insulate yourself from the
• 42:02
  powers that be. But I think that if we lose in November, if the Republicans don't win in 2028,
• 42:08
  even though there are some people on the left that, you know, like Bitcoin, it's largely a
• 42:13
  Republican phenomenon, at least as far as DC is concerned, I think you're going to see a lot of
• 42:17
  hostility toward Bitcoiners, particularly if we get President Ocasio-Cortez, which would be
• 42:23
  incredible, incredibly insane, then that would sort of be the doomer road. Like, you know that
• 42:31
  meme where it's the light road and then the dark road at the inflection point? I really think it
• 42:36
  all rides on whether or not the US embraces Bitcoin as far as like the Bitcoiners journey
• 42:41
  over the next five, 10 years is concerned, whether it's positive or negative from an external
• 42:45
  perspective. And a lot of that is riding on, I think, for public control in DC.
• 42:50
  Yeah. No, you mentioned AOS. I'm sure you saw the SEC video going around this weekend.
• 42:56
  It was hilarious, but it's funny thinking that we're having, just as Americans having discussions
• 43:03
  like this, worrying about who's going to be in control of the House, the Senate, and the
• 43:08
  executive at any given point in time. And we're just thinking about how crazy some of the debates
• 43:14
  are, particularly around tax policy.
• 43:16
  It's like
• 43:17
  we've gotten so far away from
• 43:20
  what this country was founded on,
• 43:22
  where
• 43:22
  the founding fathers were
• 43:25
  throwing tea
• 43:28
  into the Boston Harbor because of
• 43:29
  a 2% tax to pay back
• 43:32
  a war debt that the
• 43:34
  British Kingdom had amassed.
• 43:37
  And now
• 43:38
  we're sitting here paying 30%
• 43:40
  to 50% tax
• 43:42
  rates.
• 43:42
  and it's not enough, particularly for the left, but even for the right.
• 43:47
  I think the interest expense on the debt is the big,
• 43:51
  and obviously the unfunded liabilities that sit off balance sheet
• 43:55
  are the big looming sort of anchor that force us
• 43:58
  into this incredibly extractive tax regime, which is insane.
• 44:05
  Even in ancient Rome times, I don't think tax rates were this high,
• 44:10
  but it's like fish and water.
• 44:11
  We're just taking it on a chin and like, oh, yeah, we'll have another conversation about raising tax rates.
• 44:16
  Yeah. Thinking it's not crazy. Absolutely insane.
• 44:20
  Yeah. You you never have. And I think it's more politically palatable to have both sides talk about raising taxes, even for Republicans.
• 44:28
  Right. Like in Florida, for example, you know, I I'm still 50 50 on the elimination of property taxes entirely, because on the one hand,
• 44:38
  that would be wonderful to be able to actually own my stuff outright and not have it taxed.
• 44:43
  And if I fail to pay it, then I get seized by the state. But on the other hand, it would just
• 44:46
  be another thing that allows boomers to remain in their homes forever. As if the tax code and
• 44:53
  the way we have responded to every crisis hasn't been favorable enough to them. And so I think it's
• 44:59
  politically palatable to talk about taxing people more rather than cutting spending because the
• 45:06
  former, you have a scapegoat. You get to say, oh, we're going to tax the rich if you're the left.
• 45:11
  And then if you're the right, you say, we're going to tax NGOs or whatever. Instead, it's just so
• 45:17
  unfashionable to say, we're going to spend less money. If you think it's not something people even
• 45:22
  do in their daily lives. And so if it's not something people do in their daily lives and
• 45:26
  the average IQ of Americans is like 103 and falling, nobody can extrapolate outside themselves
• 45:31
  and conceptualize that the government is spending so much money.
• 45:34
  So no one's going to vote for it, which is unfortunate.
• 45:37
  So I guess thank God for Bitcoin.
• 45:39
  Yeah.
• 45:40
  When you mentioned boomers in their houses,
• 45:44
  I don't want to give them a break, but it's just fascinating to watch
• 45:50
  because I think I tweeted out last week, we just bought a new house.
• 45:55
  Our forever home, first-time homebuyer at 34,
• 45:57
  trying to bring down the median new homebuyer age,
• 46:02
  doing my part to drop that down to the 30s from the 50s,
• 46:06
  the high 50s where it is now.
• 46:08
  And at the time, late February, I locked in a 6, 7, 5% mortgage.
• 46:15
  And I was like, oh, this is high, this is crazy.
• 46:16
  But now we're looking at mortgages like above 7%.
• 46:19
  And I tweeted out like, hey, if we're going to have structurally higher rates
• 46:23
  for longer and going up, maybe that was a good rate to get. The point being is you have two parts
• 46:29
  of this real estate price equation, which is the interest rate and then the cost of the house.
• 46:37
  They're supposed to be somewhat inversely correlated, and maybe that's beginning to
• 46:40
  manifest with home prices falling in different parts of the country. But it's still where home
• 46:46
  prices are is completely untenable for most people my age and your age who are coming up
• 46:52
  and looking to form families and buy homes.
• 46:57
  And I think one thing that Bitcoiner's been very right about
• 47:01
  for many years now is the fact that you have this monetary premium
• 47:04
  sitting in real estate and share points about how do you solve that problem.
• 47:09
  You don't want to lower tax rates for boomers,
• 47:12
  but maybe we would feel more comfortable doing that
• 47:17
  if more people realized that houses aren't supposed to be piggy banks.
• 47:21
  You're supposed to have good money to save in.
• 47:25
  And to your point at the beginning of the episode, many people don't understand that money exists as a tool to solve the double coincidence of one's problems.
• 47:33
  And you should be able to store value in that.
• 47:36
  The monetary premium that exists in the economy should exist in arguably money alone.
• 47:41
  But you can't today because of how much has been printed and how much they will continue to print because of the nature of fiat itself.
• 47:48
  Yeah, it's a really interesting dilemma.
• 47:52
  With real estate in particular, I don't want to see a crash in prices just because my mom is coming up on retirement.
• 47:58
  She hasn't sold her home yet.
• 48:00
  But also witnessing the extreme appreciation of our house, I'll tell you and I'll tell the viewers, she bought it back in 2004 for like 300 grand.
• 48:10
  22 years later, it's worth 1.3 million.
• 48:12
  So $1 million worth of appreciation.
• 48:15
  She hasn't upgraded a thing.
• 48:17
  She's had a power wash maybe every couple of years. She keeps the lawn in good shape,
• 48:21
  but a million dollars worth of appreciation better than the S&P 500 or teetering on the S&P 500 over
• 48:27
  22 years. That's completely ridiculous. It's gotten to like comical levels of absurdity.
• 48:32
  And granted, like, you know, she lives in a really good Massachusetts suburb,
• 48:37
  but even then like a $1.3 million home for newlywed couple wants to move in so they could have their
• 48:43
  their first kid, not going to happen. Like in order for that to happen, you would need to be
• 48:50
  earning, gosh, like 300 grand, 350 grand a year to qualify for a mortgage with 20% down on a $1.3
• 48:57
  million house. Like you would need to be making quite a lot of money. And even then you'd be
• 49:02
  stretched very thin. And so it's no wonder, like it's the money is the root cause of obviously,
• 49:08
  you know, there's a cultural battle, but also the cultural rot is the result of time preferences,
• 49:13
  um, being, uh, being heightened and, um, you know, that it, it all boils down to the money,
• 49:21
  right? People aren't having children because of the money. People aren't getting married because
• 49:24
  of the money. Um, only fans is a thing because of the money, right? It's like the number one,
• 49:31
  one of the number one career choices. It's, it's just this, this rot that goes beyond the physical
• 49:35
  and into the spiritual. And it's just, it's really, really sad to see. It is. I mean,
• 49:41
  And that's why I think staying on real estate will get into the cultural because I did have one thing I want to bring up is what happened over the weekend.
• 49:50
  But staying on real estate, I mean, you guys, I think you guys are trying to play a part in this at Horizon.
• 49:54
  But I think to solve this real estate issue that exists where you have boomers keeping it as their piggy bank and using your mom as an example, it's like, yeah, it's hard.
• 50:06
  You don't want the value of that home to be cut in half or 75% because she's depending on that for retirement and her quality of life.
• 50:18
  It's how do you begin to allow those homeowners to take some of that equity and put it into Bitcoin, right?
• 50:25
  And I think that something I identified I think over the last three years is if you looking for productive creative and I wouldn say seamless but somewhat bold ways to deflate the monetary premium while saving those homeowners or depending on it for a retirement It figuring out a way to bridge Bitcoin to the real estate market in unique ways You guys are experimenting or you doing that or Horizon
• 51:03
  I think Bitcoin as collateral is a piece of the collateral package for mortgages is another way to do that.
• 51:11
  Or you can have Bitcoin upside alongside the value of your house.
• 51:15
  And so if the house doesn't increase or God forbid decreases in value over the time you're living in there, you still have the Bitcoin kicker.
• 51:22
  included as well. And I think if you're thinking creatively and boldly, this is something that I
• 51:28
  think Bill Pulte and others should seriously consider within the Trump administration is
• 51:33
  figuring out ways to rip off the regulatory red tape to make products like these more widely
• 51:39
  available. Couldn't agree more. It's like we need to en masse begin treating our homes as places to
• 51:48
  live rather than places to store monetary value. And with Horizon, the trade is very simple.
• 51:53
  People are already stretched thin with their mortgage payment, all the other payments they
• 51:57
  need to make, the upkeep, the maintenance, the property taxes. They don't have enough in the
• 52:01
  tank, generally speaking, for another loan against their property to go and buy Bitcoin.
• 52:06
  But what they can do is sell a chunk of their home today in exchange for Bitcoin, tax-free,
• 52:12
  hold the Bitcoin for the period they're living in the house, and then swap it back whenever they
• 52:15
  move out of the house. It's a pretty understandable trade. And I think most Bitcoiners and even most
• 52:22
  people who are heavily allocated to equity indices, they would take it. You don't need to use Bitcoin
• 52:27
  with Horizon, but the product was structured specifically around Bitcoin. So I think it's
• 52:33
  one of the first steps in what I ultimately believe will be Bitcoin demonetizing real estate.
• 52:39
  I would love to see that happen. I think more young people, for a very long time, I said this
• 52:43
  on shows, the number one desired career for young people, apart from OnlyFans, was landlord.
• 52:49
  They wanted to be a landlord, which is just disgusting. Like, oh, I want to own property
• 52:53
  and just be a rent seeker all day long. That's what I want to do. And sure, it's a great career
• 53:00
  aspiration if you're in your 30s or 40s or 50s. Like, yeah, I'm going to buy a couple of properties
• 53:04
  and be a landlord. I'm going to maintain them, whatever. But just out of college,
• 53:08
  Right. It tells it's a very telling story at how money has sort of warped the mind.
• 53:15
  And, you know, we want money right now.
• 53:18
  Today, we want to be maximally extractive instead of maximally producing.
• 53:22
  And how real estate is now viewed as a monetary asset.
• 53:25
  First place to live. Second. You know, I don't want that to be the case.
• 53:29
  I want to be able to buy a home, you know, and help with my kids down payments.
• 53:36
  And then, you know, like all of these things, family formation, it's so critical for the survival of this country because the mass migration experiment has just failed miserably.
• 53:48
  You know, it's so critical for the survival of this country that home prices are attainable.
• 53:53
  The American dream is rooted in homeownership, not because it's the best financial asset, but because you want to plant roots.
• 54:00
  As an American, we have a fundamental urge to want to plant roots, to want to get married, to want to have as many children as God wills.
• 54:06
  But we cannot do that if there are no places where we can plant roots or if you have to live with roommates because it's so prohibitively expensive, even rent on your own.
• 54:15
  You know, so homeownership is important.
• 54:18
  Getting home prices down is important.
• 54:19
  Bitcoin being a superior monetary asset to real estate helps fix that at the margin.
• 54:24
  And where it doesn't fix that, owning Bitcoin can make it easier to own a home sooner in your life.
• 54:30
  Yeah.
• 54:31
  Yeah.
• 54:31
  We need to create those bridges.
• 54:33
  I think it's extremely important.
• 54:37
  And going through the, I mean, transitioning to the cultural route, which I think the inability to form a family right now due to many people will say, I think the economics, the economic reality of modernity is certainly a contributing factor.
• 54:55
  Others will point at the emergence of cell phones and smartphones specifically and say that the addiction to the screens is pushing or reducing the amount of sort of natural interactions people have in the wild with the opposite sex.
• 55:14
  And that's contributing to it.
• 55:16
  But I think economics plays a big role in it.
• 55:20
  And the other one is culturally.
• 55:20
  I think if you have a fiat-based high-velocity trash economy, it's going to be reflected in the culture, which will ultimately result in less people engaging in the low-time preference activity of finding a wife or a husband that they plan on spending the rest of their life with and building a family.
• 55:44
  So these things begin to permeate into the culture and manifest in many different ways.
• 55:50
  obviously only fans dating app culture uh is a big one streaming culture gambling addiction
• 55:57
  and i and said i wanted to bring it up and there's another whole nother um sort of aspect of this too
• 56:04
  which i think is this self-absorbed optimizer thing which i saw that you uh responded to
• 56:09
  the tweet i sent out over the weekend uh quote tweeting uh the the podcast host of uh what is it
• 56:18
  we study billionaires or we study millionaires.
• 56:20
  Oh no,
• 56:20
  that's Preston Bish's show.
• 56:21
  The diary.
• 56:22
  Yeah.
• 56:23
  Diary of CEO.
• 56:24
  Yeah.
• 56:24
  Which I had never heard about until like a couple of months ago.
• 56:28
  And apparently he's the second largest podcaster in the world.
• 56:31
  Really strange.
• 56:32
  But he was,
• 56:33
  uh,
• 56:33
  and he was talking with Chris Williams.
• 56:35
  If I've actually met,
• 56:35
  I liked my interaction with Chris,
• 56:37
  but,
• 56:37
  uh,
• 56:38
  and,
• 56:39
  uh,
• 56:39
  he's famously been an optimizer and has not settled down and is always
• 56:45
  tinkering with,
• 56:47
  with,
• 56:48
  parts of his daily routine to optimize his health and longevity. And I guess the
• 56:55
  diary of a CEO host was saying that he stopped drinking, which I think many people saw that tweet
• 57:01
  and say, hey, don't hate on people for not drinking. It's like, hey, I wasn't hating on
• 57:04
  him for not drinking. But he was saying that he had three glasses of wine and couldn't podcast for
• 57:09
  three days. And it was like, okay. Talking about the manifestation of this cultural rot stemming
• 57:16
  from the fiat system, I think a lot of that optimizing culture is very vain and sort of
• 57:27
  singularly focused on the individual in a way that's like, how could you ever take the
• 57:36
  time to start a family if you're focused on checking your whoop band on an hour to hour
• 57:42
  basis?
• 57:43
  I'm not describing it well, but it's very self-absorbed.
• 57:46
  No, no, it's true. It's it, it, it all boils down to vanity, uh, in, in pride. And it's obviously
• 57:54
  it's fiat, but it's also, it's godlessness. And it's a, it's, it's sort of what social media has
• 58:00
  done to our brains because in a way we're not necessarily serving a creator higher than
• 58:05
  ourselves. We're serving ourselves. We want the Instagram page to look great. We want, you know,
• 58:11
  to have X amount of followers. We want to be able to have a high body count or whatever,
• 58:18
  right? As disgusting as it sounds. It's like, those are the things that we're optimizing for.
• 58:22
  And in a world where you are living for the weekend, you are living between Netflix episodes,
• 58:29
  you're living between clubbing. Why on earth would you seek something higher than yourself?
• 58:35
  If you're worshiping yourself, if vanity is all you are, why on earth would you start a family?
• 58:40
  Right. That detracts from vanity. And it's almost like, you know, in the same way that a lot of the boomer cohort, not to rag on all boomers, we love Larry Lepard and Gary Leland and others.
• 58:51
  But, you know, largely the boomer cohort is sort of the first generation in American history that wants their children to be worse off than they are.
• 58:59
  If that is the case for boomers, then like for Gen Z, I would say it's the first generation, largely, unfortunately, and even millennials who aren't even concerned about having children.
• 59:09
  right? They simply want to live a good life, to live it for Instagram, regardless of whether or
• 59:14
  not they're alone at their deathbed. And it's just devastating to see. And all of it's downstream
• 59:18
  from, from fiat money, cultural rot, spiritual rot. Um, yeah, it's tough to see. It is.
• 59:27
  It makes you wonder like, Hey, where are we just going to go back to destiny?
• 59:32
  Are we just destined to be this bridge generation? Maybe millennials, Gen Z,
• 59:36
  that goes through the hard times, if you will.
• 59:41
  To that point, when does the pendulum swing back towards getting back to virtue
• 59:52
  and sound money and low time preference?
• 59:56
  It's funny, I think that was a very good response to the cultural rod.
• 1:00:01
  It's like, yes, there are a ton of godless people that are living for themselves.
• 1:00:04
  And it's funny how everything seems connected with particularly like sound money, time preference and doing something because it's for for God and not yourself or for something that's bigger than yourself.
• 1:00:21
  amen i mean it's it's all connected it's all interconnected and like we are particularly as
• 1:00:27
  christians right like you know we are called to live for christ and in all that we do like we are
• 1:00:35
  we are called to reject our flesh and you know it's one of the reasons like not to get not to
• 1:00:40
  get into this but it's like it's one of the very few reasons why you know christianity is the only
• 1:00:46
  true religion like the only true religion because every other religion promises that hey if you
• 1:00:51
  follow our tenants in the afterlife, you're going to get all of your fleshly desires. You're going
• 1:00:55
  to get 70 wives or you're going to get your own planet with 70 wives or whatever crazy thing they
• 1:01:00
  promise you. But with Christianity, it says like you need to reject yourself every day of your life.
• 1:01:06
  And then in exchange, you get eternity with God. That's it. You don't get all of your carnal
• 1:01:10
  desires after putting all of your carnal desires off. You get eternity with God. And so when you
• 1:01:15
  have that mental reframe, all of a sudden, like it doesn't matter. Playing video games doesn't
• 1:01:20
  interest me and gambling doesn't interest me. Like building something that lasts beyond myself
• 1:01:27
  interest me. Planting that tree outside that I'm never going to get to put a tire swing on
• 1:01:31
  interests me, you know? And like the great men of civilization understood that. Like of
• 1:01:37
  civilizations past, they understood that. That the only way to live was living a life
• 1:01:43
  to glorify something higher than yourself, to glorify God. And we've lost that completely.
• 1:01:50
  And it's upstream of everything we're experiencing now.
• 1:01:53
  What do you think about this?
• 1:01:54
  I mean, you had, I think, New York Times, maybe not New York Times, the New Yorker, I think, was writing about it.
• 1:02:00
  It seems to be, I don't want to call it a fad, but it seems to be in vogue to be converting to Christianity.
• 1:02:09
  Catholicism, I think, is having a pretty significant rise in conversions.
• 1:02:14
  And I worry that I think a lot of it, most of it is genuine, but you can see that there is some sort of cultural bandwagoning going on, too, where people are doing it because it seems to be the cool thing to do, which would be probably the most disgusting way to convert it.
• 1:02:38
  It's very Calvinist, right?
• 1:02:41
  Like the school of Christianity that basically says like, oh, you know, I'm saved by Christ.
• 1:02:47
  I don't need to do anything, right?
• 1:02:48
  Like he's, I already have eternity because Jesus died for my sins.
• 1:02:51
  Therefore, I can live however I want.
• 1:02:53
  I'm going to wear Christianity as a skin suit.
• 1:02:55
  I'm going to get baptized and put it on Instagram, you know?
• 1:02:59
  Like ultimately, I would wager that there is a decent amount of that.
• 1:03:04
  But the optimist in me, like the same version of me that knows for a fact Bitcoin is going to succeed one way or another, wants to believe that hopefully the lion's share of the younger people like myself that are converting and expressing that they're born again Christians are being genuine about it.
• 1:03:24
  Because ultimately, the wheat will be separated from the chaff.
• 1:03:27
  When you arrive at the pearly gates, you'll have to explain to Jesus that he'll have all of the receipts.
• 1:03:33
  So it's very, very important that people be earnest.
• 1:03:35
  But I think as with any major cultural shift, there are definitely people doing it just just for appearances sake.
• 1:03:41
  Yeah.
• 1:03:42
  No, and I think, I mean.
• 1:03:44
  As a cradle Catholic who strayed in my late teens, early 20s, I think COVID, I mean, for me personally, like made it very clear.
• 1:03:53
  Like, oh, like I, this is, I've got to submit myself to Christ again, or not again, but recommit myself to that because there is evil in this world.
• 1:04:04
  And I think a lot of people, I mean, I know for a fact that having had conversations with people who were completely non-religious, secular, even overtly atheists who sort of woke up to the fact that evil exists and maybe it's time to look into this Jesus thing.
• 1:04:25
  Yeah, there's a funny, not a funny quote, but I think it was a tweet from like 2016.
• 1:04:31
  And there's a tweet for everything. But I think that the way that what you just said is summed up was, you know, like someone saying, I've never been a religious man.
• 1:04:40
  Like, I've never been Christian. But if the opposite is, you know, evil, demonic people who want to castrate my children and turn my kid gay and all this other stuff, then maybe God isn't so bad, you know?
• 1:04:55
  Yeah, it's the Stranger Things guy lifting weights and smoking a cigarette.
• 1:04:59
  I didn't know we were going to end it here, but I'm happy we did.
• 1:05:06
  What should people be on the lookout for?
• 1:05:09
  Obviously, in the next couple of weeks, hopefully an end to the war in Iran.
• 1:05:16
  And if not, prepare for some fireworks on the back end of the year.
• 1:05:21
  That's a good way of putting it.
• 1:05:21
  Yeah, no, in the next couple of weeks, be on the lookout for an actual peace deal, not just a Sunday night.
• 1:05:26
  Hey, we're preparing one.
• 1:05:27
  So markets open green on Monday.
• 1:05:29
  Um, because if a peace deal is signed, if we actually get a ceasefire, um, and price inflated,
• 1:05:35
  then price inflation likely stands to come down as a result. Bitcoin likely won't make another
• 1:05:40
  leg lower. It's likely putting it a cycle low. And then in that case, the bull market will have
• 1:05:44
  started all the way back in February, early February, when we bottomed at 60 K. However,
• 1:05:49
  if the war rages on throughout the summer, be prepared. Right. Um, you know, that said,
• 1:05:54
  like on the other end of that, if we do wind up getting inflationary recession, like you and I
• 1:05:58
  bill to now, huge monetary response will come as a result, massive monetary response. So like the,
• 1:06:04
  I believe 12 months from now, Bitcoin is much higher than it is currently. I think Bitcoin
• 1:06:07
  easily is an all time high. The only question is between now and then, will we see a demand
• 1:06:12
  destruction event and a dash to cash and a massive sell-off across everything first?
• 1:06:17
  And that question will be answered, uh, based on whether or not the war ends over the next six
• 1:06:23
  week. So that's what I would, uh, that's what I would leave viewers with. Awesome. And where, uh,
• 1:06:29
  can those who are so motivated to find out more about what you're doing on a day-to-day basis?
• 1:06:33
  Absolutely. So if this is a collaboration, you can click right down there, click Joe Consorti,
• 1:06:38
  hit subscribe, or if it's not, you can search Joe Consorti right up there in the search bar,
• 1:06:42
  if you're watching on YouTube, um, or just, uh, on X Google Joe Consorti, I'm all over the place.
• 1:06:49
  Sweet. This will be a collaboration, so we'll make it easy for you freaks.
• 1:06:52
  perfect thanks buddy peace and love thank you for listening to this episode of tftc
• 1:06:58
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• 1:07:04
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• 1:07:16
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• 1:07:44
  Thank you for your time.
• 1:07:45
  And until next time.
• 1:07:47
  Okay.
• 1:07:51
  Thank you.